The bottomless hole that KILLED people │ cave diving disaster _ The Shaft _

There is a bottomless pit of water in Australia that kills people who enter it. Today, I'm going to go over the detailed account of a group of divers that entered that hole and what happened to them. This story is not for the claustrophobic or anyone who has anxiety listening to disastrous cave diving stories. If you are looking for scary stories to binge to, you've come to the right place because I tell new stories multiple times a week about distressing and chilling events. Let's start the story. It all began as an intended pleasure dive in one of the largest, deepest, and most spectacular water-filled caves in the world. The divers had explored the cavern the previous day to a depth of around 165 feet, and their plan the next morning was to complete the circumnavigation of the main chamber. The party consisted of nine people, all of whom were very experienced divers. They should have never entered this cave. This deadly cave, named The Shaft, was discovered by chance after a confused farmer in 1938 couldn't figure out why his horse had suddenly tripped up in a field and got stuck. The farmer could not believe what he saw with his eyes and thought he was losing his mind. He witnessed the cave, which was actually a sinkhole that would claim many lives over the years. The sinkhole went down far deeper than the farmer could ever attest. A pile of rubble, about 115 down, was the family's only successful attempt at trying to fill it. There ended up being a lot of little rock piles throughout the inside of the shaft due to their attempts at filling the sinkhole. The farmers had no clue how big the shaft was, and all they wanted to do at this point was seal it so no one would fall in and get hurt. They ended up putting in so many different rocks that they looked like little anthills inside of The Shaft. The farmers got together with some of their neighbors and friends and tried to fill the hole with hundreds of pounds of stones, but the sinkhole seemed to be endless. It was described as the closest thing to outer space. Not far from The Shaft was another farm with an impressive patch of groundwater that is easier to access. This other sinkhole is a 195 foot deep limestone cavity in the middle of a sheep property. This property has become one of the most popular dive sites in the region. The farmers would rather have the land to be used for farming and growing vegetables than to have a giant dangerous hole in the ground. But they soon learned that this hole was remarkable and people were excited to travel from all over the world just to take their shot at exploring it. The sinkhole is renowned for its clarity of the water and the beams of light that pierce through it on a sunny day. To have the beams of light line up perfectly, the sun has to be positioned in the certain way and this makes for a much more enjoyable diver experience when the light is shining straight through. This hole is so intense that in the 1970s it was leased to the defense department for weapons testing. This caused The Shaft to be somewhat unstable and a bit dangerous for divers, but it's still world-class. To anybody above the ground on the farm that is not a diver or adventure seeker, this is just a hole with a lot of water underneath. The cave is one of the several deep caverns made of limestone in this part of South Australia. Limestone formations are dangerous because the roof of the underground caverns can quickly become or are already weakened and ready to collapse at any time. Collapse can be gradual or sudden. Although natural sinkholes develop over time, there can be a collapse when people mess with natural formations. The main chamber is about 460 feet long by 260 feet wide, forming a lake. The water level is about 23 feet below ground level and the hole is considerably wider down there. There is a small dry ledge running around one side. After climbing 18 feet down the rope ladder from the field to the lake, divers can use this ledge as a convenient gear storage point before commencing on their dives. A rock pile directly under the surface opening rises up to a depth of about 118 feet. A tunnel extends to the northwest to a depth of about 260 feet and another to the east reaches a maximum of 470 feet. So you can tell this cavern has a bunch of different areas where you can get lost. Divers have to lower their equipment into the hole because there is only a tiny opening at the entrance. There's also quite a drop when you first enter the hole, so you have to be tethered in to make sure you do not fall to the bottom and land on one of the rock piles. The sinkhole got its name from the bright shaft of sunlight that penetrates through when the sun shines through the small entrance and strikes the lake. It creates a brilliant blue underwater spotlight which illuminates the enormous boulders in place more than 180 feet below. It is so bright that it easily lights up the entire dark walled cavern. Viewed from the surface, the spectacle is unequal to anything else in Australia. Because of this, the shaft was the most popular diving site in the early 1970s. The first reasonably accurate map of the cavern was not made until 1984. Before this time, anyone who entered the cave was mainly on their own navigation. It was very easy to go down the wrong part of the shaft and end up in a death trap. There was another exploration in June 1992 where the deepest sections of the cave were surveyed and mapped. The eastern tunnel is obstructed by restrictions at about 187 feet down. It continues all the way downward to 407 feet before it comes horizontal and a giant rock pile is blocking that exit. The water itself is about 21 feet down and once you get there, you'll hit the underground lake. The lake is the part where you need the Once you get down to the lake, you'll notice two tunnels that go off in either direction, but these are almost a death sentence if you decide to go down them. While the group was made up of experienced divers, this time they did not do a great job of accounting for all the dangers that could arise on the dive. There are many dangers diving, and especially cave diving. You always have to be at the top of your game or else you can die from even the smallest of mistakes. Some of the major factors in this story have to do with nitrogen narcosis, oxygen toxicity, and pulmonary embolism. Nitrogen narcosis usually appears in deep dives approaching 100 feet underwater. Around that point, gases that have been pressurized start to potentially alter a diver's consciousness. Scuba divers must be aware of the effects of nitrogen narcosis because it can lead to errors of decision making, which can prove fatal. Symptoms can include dizziness, euphoria, memory loss, confusion, anxiety, and even death. Each and every dive is unique and must be approached with caution and proper training from experienced coaches. Diving to 100 feet can cause a diver to forget something as simple as how much time you have at that depth, leading to panic to sense, which can cause the bends and other problems. During the course of earning a dive certification, your coach may take you down to that range and let you experience the symptoms for yourself in a more controlled environment. Oxygen toxicity is usually a problem only encountered by deep divers who go below 135 feet. Like nitrogen, the body absorbs extra oxygen under increased underwater pressure as well. For most divers, this is not a problem. But at extreme depths, so much extra oxygen is absorbed that this life-giving gas becomes toxic. The effects include tunnel vision, nausea, twitching, loss of consciousness, and even seizures. Another risk factor facing divers who rapidly ascend to the surface is pulmonary embolism. The increased pressure from the undersea environment results in the gas a diver breathes becoming denser as more gas is crammed into the same small space under pressure. The gas held in the lungs will expand at the same rate that the pressure on the body is reduced, so a rapid ascent can cause the lungs to swell and even pop like a balloon. Scuba divers guard against pulmonary embolism by making slow, controlled ascents to the surface and by never holding their breath. Glenn and Stephen, like their sister Christine, were qualified diving instructors and worked in their dive shop in Sydney. Although they were fairly young, they had been diving since childhood, and Robert, who was also a qualified instructor, had deep dived before claiming to have been to a depth of 300 feet using air without being unduly affected by nitrogen narcosis. John, Gordon, Larry, Peter, and Joan all had done a lot of diving, but Joan decided not to dive this time because she encountered some problems negotiating the ladder the day before. Joan also just had a really weird feeling about this whole trip. She wasn't sure about the shaft, and she was just generally on edge. The rest of the group was pretty excited. They all were looking forward to this. It was a big deal to them. They were going to the shaft. I mean, everyone's been talking about it. I think there was some concern at first, but once they got to the shaft, they all realized what they were about to do, and they couldn't wait for the stories that they were going to tell their friends. There was so much adventure to be had down there. It was such a good experience for them, too. Now they can be those divers that have went to the shaft and tell everyone. It's a badge of honor. The divers got into their wetsuits, climbed down to the ladder to the lake, and swam across to the ledge so that they could put on the rest of their equipment. They talked briefly about the intended dive as they began to put on their air tanks and get strapped up, and they decided to go to the depth of no greater than 180 feet in a region where a low, deep tunnel could be found to the northwest of the entrance. A 105-foot-long vertical dive line had been dropped down the hole, but they decided not to take a smaller offshooting guideline because it would become snagged on the huge boulders, and there was not enough light to see anything in this part of the cavern. They entered the water at around 1 p.m. and descended together without pairing off or putting spare cylinders on the dive line for decompression. This was a mistake. They reached the top of the rock pile 90 seconds later at a depth of 108 feet, which was the shallowest point in the cave. After quickly exchanging okay signals, the divers moved off together and swam down to the boulder-covered floor at 150 feet. When they reached a depth of around 165 feet, Robert began to feel strangely ill, so he signaled to Gordon and Christine that he was going back. They acknowledged but continued their descent, so Robert returned to the rock pile alone. He felt worse, so he inflated his buoyancy vest and was rapidly lifted to the surface. However, when he reached a depth of about 30 feet, the sickness passed, so he decided to descend to 120 feet again to explore and look around the cavern until the others returned. Meanwhile, the other seven divers reached a depth of about 171 feet, where the floor almost met the wall. Here, the bottom seemed to drop off, and they approached the tunnel. Despite their earlier agreement not to enter this tunnel, they continued their descent. As soon as they entered the side tunnel, the shaft of light disappeared from behind the boulders, and the chamber appeared to be plunged into total darkness. And then there was some suggestion that the small brilliant beam of light that had just disappeared around this time was because of the arrival of dense clouds over the field, which was just bad timing. Things were definitely starting to go south very fast, and they couldn't keep up with all the mistakes they were making. The divers had not been down there for very long when Peter became frantic and swam across to Glenn so that he could see the depth gauge. Christine at this point seemed to be fine and not too badly affected by nitrogen narcosis, but then she continued to descend even further. Glenn, however, felt like he was close to blacking out, so he stayed at the mouth of the tunnel and waited for the others to turn around. He was kind of confused and not sure what was going on. Glenn watched with growing anxiety as Gordon, Christine, Larry, and Peter descended further into the dark zone, where they had to totally rely on their small torches for light. At this point, if their torches went out, they had a death sentence. They didn't realize how dangerous this was. Members of the group started to become very scared as they reached a depth of 204 feet. Gordon turned to Christine and Larry and showed them his decompression meter, indicating that it was time to ascend if they did not want to do a lengthy decompression on their way up. However, they began their ascent immediately from that location. Before they had retraced their steps back out of the tunnel, and they were stopped when they hit the ceiling, which was about 75 feet above. At a depth of around 135 feet, still well within the nitrogen narcosis territory, they swept their torches around as they searched for a way out, but when they could not see the main shaft of light or the other divers from this position, Gordon raised his arms to the ceiling and shrugged. At this point, he realized that there was no way of getting out, and the expression on Larry's face was that of complete dread. Away from the group, Glenn caught a glimpse of the shaft's sunlight, so he immediately began to head to the surface, flashing his torch behind him as he swam. He was desperately trying to signal for the other members of the group, but he couldn't find them. Peter, who was below the other three in the tunnel, was running low on air. He saw Glenn's light and turned to follow him. Larry was still stuck on the ceiling with Gordon and Christine, and all of a sudden, his torch went out. As he struggled to turn it on again, he descended slightly and almost landed on top of Peter, who was following Glenn out of the tunnel. Larry was almost out of air too, so he followed Peter, and although he could see Gordon and Christine on the roof of the tunnel, he could not attract their attention. There was no way they were going to be able to connect. After about four minutes, when Glenn exited from the tunnel and headed for the surface of the lake, Robert, who had earlier been feeling ill, was now waiting at the top of the rock pile at a depth of around 108 feet. He saw Glenn rapidly heading to the surface and followed him, thinking he was the last diver to ascend. He thought everything was good at this point. Soon afterwards, Peter and Terry swam into the main chamber, and Larry pulled his reserve air lever as he headed straight to the surface. Glenn reached the air chamber first, and he called to Joan, who was still waiting at the entrance because she never entered the cave in the first place. Joan then lowered her unused air intakes and gave them to Glenn. All of a sudden, Larry and Robert surfaced to the entrance of the shaft, and they were shocked and horrified to only see Joan and Glenn waiting there. The last survivor, Peter, performed a short decompression stop using his reserve air supply before he surfaced as well. It was obvious to everyone that the other four were still down there somewhere. Glenn immediately dived again on his remaining air in a desperate bid to locate them, but after reaching a depth of 135 feet, he was forced to ascend, and he realized that the others would have run out of air by that time. Robert donned the fresh cylinders and dived soon after Glenn surfaced. He descended to 165 feet, where he last saw his friends, but he found nothing, and then he went down to 198 feet, where he then located Stephen's camera and torch. The water was very silty down there, almost impossible to see anything, although it cleared up again at about 213 feet. At that point, he decided to surface. It was no Peter did not want to give up on his friends. In a last-ditch effort, he decided to dive in again, but once he got in the water, all he could see was a cloud of silt. Even though at this point, he was running off of pure adrenaline, the dreads started to hit him, and it was crippling. There was nothing else they could do, so the authorities were then notified. During the next few months, the police squad performed many search dives, but they could not find any of the bodies. They were working on vague directional information supplied by the survivors, but the sinkhole had never been mapped out, and they later learned that they were looking in the wrong section of the cavern the entire time. The coroner's investigation was held in the absence of any bodies being found. Some of the survivors alleged that the local dive shop had filled their scuba cylinders with bad air. They claimed that it was poisonous air, and not just at the depth that they were diving, which had caused the tragedy. Although the survivors' tests came back in Sydney apparently confirmed, all these allegations and other forensic tests, which were more scientifically carried out, totally disproved that the air was bad. The coroner found that the victims had inadequate air supplies for the depth of their dive, and that they had drowned and ran out of air. He also pointed out that none of the group was an experienced sinkhole diver, and no proper safety precautions were taken. On January 22nd, 1974, a Sydney-based film crew making a movie on diving safety in the shaft noticed an extra diver on the sloping roof of the cave. Illuminated by their bright movie lights, upon closer inspection, they realized that they had found one of the bodies, which was later found out to be that of Steven. It was in about 45 feet of water, and was being held under a small ledge by its partially inflated buoyancy vest. The police divers moved it from the ledge, and it floated to the surface unassisted. Another search was initiated below Steven's body, but again, none of the bodies could be found in this area of the cave. A month and a half later, at the request of the increasingly distressed landowners, a team of very experienced civilian cave divers from Victoria, Australia, initiated a major search for the bodies, and during one of the dives, they found all three on the bottom depth of around 180 feet. The police divers recovered the bodies of Christine and Gordon first, but John's body was later found at 192 feet, and narcosis severely hampered their attempts to retrieve it. After making a number of special deep acclimatization dives, the police divers returned to the shaft and finally retrieved John's body on the 9th of April, 1974, almost 11 months after the four divers had first disappeared. Despite the problems of performing autopsies on badly decomposed bodies, which had been immersed in the water for too long, chemical tests show that they definitely had not breathed contaminated air. They had all drowned.