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Last Updated: Jul 2nd, 2008 - 21:15:22 |
Down in the wooded ridges of Southwestern Kentucky are the various openings to what has been confirmed as the largest cave system in the world. From the time humans first came to the area, Mammoth Cave has been used as a place of shelter. Europeans first encountered the mineral wealth of the cave in the eighteenth century and for many decades processed the saltpeter of the cave for the materials of war.
By the turn of the twentieth century, tourism had become the primary role of these vast underground caverns and it is through the reports of visitors, park employees and guides that the stories of the ghosts of Mammoth Cave began to be exposed.
Workers and explorers of the cave have discovered a number of mummified remains in various parts of the cave system, some have been carbon dated as over four thousand years old. Whether the spirits of these lost or buried persons remain in the cave is unknown but many reputable reports describe something out of the ordinary haunts the cave.
Not only tourists but the guides themselves have reported sightings of figures in "old fashioned" clothes that occasionally join tour groups for a while. Sometimes they see people standing in parts of the caverns not accessible to the public.
Another frequently reported series of occurrences stem from a tragic joke gone astray in 1858. A girl, Melissa, had led a former lover, a Mr. Beverleigh, into the depths of the caves purportedly to show him the cave's wonders. Slipping away down a side passage, Melissa left him there to mull over his rejection of her. But when she returned the next day to show him the way out, he was gone and was never found.
Many times since, there are reports of a woman's voice calling out for someone. Occasionally there is heard a woman coughing down empty tunnels. Melissa had died of tuberculosis only a few years after the loss of Mr. Beverleigh. Does she still wander the deep caverns in search of the man she led to his doom?
Near the "Crystal Cave" section of the system one of the cave's owners and major explorers was trapped in a narrow passage. Despite a drawn out effort to release him, Floyd Collins died with his leg still pinned firmly under a fallen stone. His calls for help can still be heard near the entrance he was excavating.
The most recent report comes from two geologists who were hired in 1976 to study groundwater flow in the region. In what was to become his last night on the job, Bill Cobb was spooked to hear cries for help wafting across the area as someone pleaded they were trapped and called for someone named "Johnny".
It is a recorded fact that Collins' friend, Johnny Gerard, was the last person in the rescue party Floyd talked to before further cave-ins drove the rescue party out.
Mysterious sightings, strange noises and lights and even an antique whiskey bottle falling from out of nowhere have all added their legacy to the stories surrounding the largest haunted place in the world, the deep darkness in Mammoth Cave.
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