Estimated reading time — 11 minutes

I’m about to dive into a cave filled with screams of the dead.

It’s insane. Even after the complete upheaval of everything I thought possible, the most pressing thing on my mind are two words:

I told you.

She’s going to hate reading this, but that’s why I’m doing it. Sorry sweetie, but after a lifetime of teasing and getting one over on me, I’m riding this victory into the sunset. And not just because I got the victory: everyone needs to see what I’m typing, and that includes this post and where it’s being posted and possibly updated. We both frequent the subreddit a lot so it’ll piss her off even more when it inevitably gains some traction.

For everyone that’s just arrived and reading this (probably in some future bestseller or even academic textbook with my name on it), I’ll call myself “B” for now. I’m majoring in Audio Engineering at the local university which, for privacy reasons, is going to remain anonymously local.

I’ve never really had an interest in the supernatural, aside from the occasional book, movie, Netflix documentary, or episode of Ghost Adventures. My buddy, the one I addressed at the start of this? Can’t get enough of it. Any of it. All shades of occult, paganism, theology, she eats that shit up like an RV sewage pump.

It would have been her making this exact post, but she’d sprained her leg outside of the cave.

One thing I’ll have to make clear was that she made the initial discovery and called me while she was still climbing down the hill. I don’t even think she could feel the pain in her ankle from all the excitement.

“B!” She shouted into the mic as soon as I picked up. “You need to do me the biggest and most important favor, I’m begging you.”

She’s never said anything like that to me, so I knew she wasn’t kidding. That and I could hear her stumbling around in the dark and even guessed where she was before she told me.

Our university is set near the bottom of some mountains. Not super close, but close enough that it was less than fifteen minutes to a lot of popular hiking trails. A half an hour down the highway and you reached the spot where popular hiking trails used to be. That’s one thing about this discovery: I probably won’t be able to tell you exactly where it happened for a while, if ever. The cave is in a mountain range owned mostly by a big mining company. There’s even a horror story about the mine, that a dozen workers used the wrong type of bird for sussing out dangerous gasses and died because of it. I think that’s a load of bullshit, but whatever.

“I heard something,” she told me, tripping over her own words while I heard her clamber into her KIA. “I swear I heard something and I need you to check it out.”

Nothing was going on in my life besides drowning the sorrows of a failed test in green dab, so I went, if a little reluctantly. I have nothing but water, snacks, an audio recorder for what my friend told me she’d heard, and a laptop hooked to a premium signal booster that I’m using to type this post. I didn’t bring it for that reason, honestly, I just wanted to play a game of League out in the wilderness. I’d always wanted to try that for some reason, but God am I glad I’m stupid enough to actually try it out. Hell, I’ll probably play another game before heading back, but that’s more likely because I just can’t bring myself to leave yet.

As pumped as I am, I’m a little scared. Writing this is helping, but that feeling is so god damn strong. Plus, it’s a nice excuse to get a post up about my discoveries before I can get home and upload the audio files, so definitely stay tuned for that. I don’t dare upload them onto my laptop out in the wilderness; audio equipment isn’t as prone to failure and fuckery as video equipment, but the chances still ain’t zero.

So… Here goes.

God, now that I think about it, it happened as soon as the cave came into view. It had been a pretty good walk, all over-the-hills-and-through-the-woods type shit. I got a few pictures of the hill that’ll look great in the history textbooks I was talking about: a peak on top of a valley of low hills covered in long, dewy grass with bunches of fir and aspen trees scattered around. The moonlight was reflecting off of everything, so much that the green waves and brown leaves were illuminating almost as much as my flashlight. It was something you’d see in a cheap frame at a shitty small-town thrift shop, and it was the first time I’d really appreciated how dime-a-dozen paintings like that could be seen as beautiful.

My first step onto that long grass, I heard something. Not very clearly since my headphones were blasting John Lennon into my ears, but what little I could hear sounded like someone coughing right next to me. I damn near pissed myself, and my phone fell out of my hand as I fumbled it out and paused my music.

Nothing moved or made a sound, except for some crickets and cicadas out in the trees. My head turned, very slowly, to see whoever had followed me up into the hills.

Nothing. Just the same grass and trees that had been there before.

“Holy shit…” I whispered, flinching a bit from the sound of my own voice. “Holy shit!”

I dropped to my knees (bruising them and not noticing) as I yanked my audio recorder out my pocket and replayed the last few seconds.

Moans.

Guttural, soggy moans that sounded zombie-like, but not really the dissociated hunger and “braaains” type of moaning. The ones I heard were wails and croaks of pure agony, and there were so many. My mic was good, and I almost wish it hadn’t been, because I could hear what sounded like a whole crowd of people crying out in pain. They sounded too weak or sick to do anything else.

But, no bullshit, I was just as excited as I was scared.

If you’ve ever gone ghost hunting or urban exploring, or even just listened for something in the dead of night when you know nothing’s there to make a noise, I think you’ll understand what I was feeling.

The question wasn’t “what if” anymore. Even if I somehow lose everything I recorded, I’ll know deep in my soul that it’s now a question of “what is.” There’s something equally comforting and scary about that. Like I said, I’ve never been into the supernatural as much as my friend is, but who needs to be when something falls into your lap like this!

From that moment on, I might as well have been as die hard about this shit as my friend. Nothing like a cold splash of something real and tangible to spike your interest.

After listening to the recording half a dozen times and spilling water all over myself from my hands shaking, my feet pounded into the soft grass as I cut and ran for the cave entrance.

When I got to the mouth of the cave, I heard something again. Like the lightest whisper you’ve ever heard.

Even without my headphones blaring it was still hard to hear, plus I almost broke my neck from the shock and very uneven footing of the hill, but it happened! My ass was on the ground and recorder next to my ear in half a second, holding my breath and clicking play.

Again, clear as crystal from my recorder but barely heard by my own ears, more moaning and crying.

Except now there was more energy to it: horrible coughs, what I think was puking, and fucking weird scratching sounds.

After a few replays (and even though it tipped the excitement/fear scale very heavily towards the latter), I had to admit it could only be the sounds of fingernails digging into skin. I tested it out myself by scratching the cave wall and floor as hard as I dared, but it didn’t give off the same fleshy give that was on the recording.

The last thing on the recording was someone’s dying whisper that was choked with phlegm or blood.

“Death…”

I might be wrong, but it’s the closest word I can point to what I can hear.

But even crazier than that? In the middle of eating some chips and drinking some water, I heard that initial whisper at the edge of my hearing again and nearly shit myself again. And on the recording? The exact same thing I’d just recorded. The weird reality of what I think is happening hit me so hard that I almost broke my legs sprinting back down the hill to test a hypothesis.

Ten minutes later at the bottom of the hill, the hypothesis came true or however the fuck you’re supposed to say it: The ghost noise happened again! On the replay I heard the same sound from the bottom of the hill again, and only my recorder could pick up the real sounds!

“Like echoes…” I whispered out loud. Two things hit me at once: Disappointment that what I was experiencing wasn’t some conscious ghost or entity (although I guess it makes a little more sense, since why wouldn’t they have spoken up before now), and the title of my book or documentary:

“Echoes of Death.”

Genius. Again, there was no thought of turning back; I sprinted back up the cave and got ready to go in to listen for more echoes.

But first, I had to call her (I’ll refer to her as “D”) and let her know.

“Did you hear it!?”

I told her I had.

“That’s incredible! As soon as I’m out of here I’m coming back up with you!”

I told her to take her time and wait for her foot to be up to task, that I wouldn’t tell a soul about the spot. This post doesn’t count, by the way, I’ve given nothing away about the exact location of the cave.

The only other thing we talked about was our guess for what the echoes were from. I’m pretty sure some college kids caught something in the cave and that’s why the university sold it off to a company decades ago. She thinks it’s the echoes of a cannibal killing from when the area was first being settled centuries ago.

The last thing she did on the call was beg me to wait for her and some hiking buddies to explore the cave with me. “For my own safety” she said, but I’m gonna call bullshit. “D” knows how big this is and probably already knows how much it means to me now, ain’t no way she’s gonna let me get all the glory.

But fine. I’ll wait.

*

Update:

I went into the cave. Promises “shmomises”, I’m too excited to even consider the reasons why I shouldn’t, of which there are about one thousand and one reasons to stay away. You can look them up yourself, but the ones I was worried about were: sudden drops, the cave collapsing, pockets of toxic air or radiated gasses, and my own biggest fear: spiders. Some spiders love a nice moist cave and that freaked me out almost as much as the voices. “D” will probably rip me a new one for going into the cave without the proper precautions, but two things:

The cave is on company property and isn’t blockaded, which means it must be safe to explore and-
Fuck her and the KIA she’ll ride in on, I’m perfectly fine. A lighter in my pocket would do just fine against pockets of gasses. It’s like I’d seen on this one video: If the flame goes out, get the hell out.

I’ll admit though, I should’ve been more worried about the voices.

The cave struck me as odd before I’d made it far enough to hear anything. I know a lot of caves go downwards in certain patterns, but this one was almost perfect in its slope and how easy it was to climb down. Well, not even climb, just straight walk like it was a wheelchair ramp. When I’m done posting this I’ll have to look that up. Still, easy walking or no, I moved very slowly and ran the little lighter flame all over the place looking for pockets of gas or whatever.

Not too far into the cave, the hairs on my neck stood up just before I heard another whisper. Even in the tightness and quiet of the cave it was barely audible. And something about that tightness made the possibility of my death feel much more real. That was the closest I came to turning back and running screaming out of the cave.

But I still wondered.

“What” and “Why?”

The lighter’s flame bounced all over as I pulled out the recorder and studied the playback.

There was a lot of coughing again, this time really hard wretches. I wouldn’t say “healthy,” per se, but I would say that the people coughing had more strength to cough. This makes it more likely that whatever this was had started from the bottom of the cave. That has me a lot more on edge than before, but I couldn’t help but want to go just a bit further.

Because, on that last recording, I heard someone whispering, clearly this time:

“I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry…”

Whether the echo was only three words long or simply being repeated by one person, I couldn’t tell. Neither could I tell exactly what the voice was saying until I’d listened to the recording twice.

I think whatever was happening to these people, it started in this cave. What I was hearing sounded like it was being spoken through a throat that had a cheese grater running against it, but it was still more coherent than what I’d heard before. It’s one thing that has me leaning a bit towards D’s theory, in fact it’d actually make a bit of sense if whoever was in this cave had just gotten through some intense survival situation.

After that last recording, the cave became a lot narrower, to the point where I had to shift my body sideways. A ways later it narrowed even further into an abrupt crawlspace-sized hole.

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY!”

A scream from the hole in the cave, and one I didn’t need the audio recorder to hear. The lighter fell out of my hands and onto the stone floor, the flame going out.

In a blink, the cave had gone from wide enough to be comfortable and only a short distance underground, to a tomb that I’d never be able to escape from. The air I could breathe felt thin. My fingers bumped and scraped against the floor and walls of a rock coffin, searching for the tiny piece of tin that had given me so much safety and comfort. Finding it and flicking it on was both an intense victory and one of the scariest things I’ve done in my life.

In my head I saw, and still see every time I think about it, the rotting face of whoever had been in that hole.

The flame went up. The crawlspace was empty. I filled the silence with my own breathless cursing and “Jesus Christ’s” as I fumbled backwards towards the cave entrance.

“Nope,” I kept whispering, both outwards and inwards. That was enough adventure for me, I’m out. I’m gonna sit on my ass and wait for “D” to be able to come back up here with me. I have more than enough to make the internet explode

*

Update:

I listened to that last recording. Couldn’t help it. I need to know.

I’ve replayed it a few times. It’s been horrible every time. Just in case I lose the recordings, I told myself when I went into the cave and when I started writing this. Maybe that’s not the case, but I don’t have a lot of time, and I want to put this into words so that I never have to listen to it again after it’s gone online.

So, again, here goes.

It starts with that scream.

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY!”

The voice is muffled, and there’s retching and coughing, but just a bit less severe than it sounded before. It adds to my theory that the echoes go from inside the cave to out.

“Cut him,” a woman’s voice said between retches. She sounded distant, probably a ways beyond the crawlspace. “Please cut him he’s gonna kill us all we’ll die!”

“Just calm the fuck down,” a man said, the voice muffled and blocked by something. “Just let me catch my breath and I’ll be able to squeeze out!”

A few more voices, including the woman, argued, the intensity escalating rapidly along with whatever was making them cough. There must have been half a dozen people stuck behind whoever was in the crawlspace.

I couldn’t catch any other words, but I did hear a metallic, muffled click. The man I could hear clearly, most likely the one blocking the crawlspace, began to scream. He didn’t stop until he was dead. And he begged, over and over, for the people cutting him apart to stop.

It was a lot, is a lot, for me to handle.

I’d like to think that my spine is decently sturdy, but I’m shivering while I type this. My ass is never going back down there, to hell with all the excuses I’d made for myself going in. Sitting at the entrance now, I can hardly believe I’d gone as far as I did.

I’m getting the hell outta here.

*

Update.

Hey, just got out of the ER. I’m doing the right thing and waiting for the soreness to get better before I come up, but I did tell a few of my climbing buddies and they’re headed your way. They’re gonna want to go in the cave, DON’T LET THEM! Be safe!”

A text from “D” I got at the bottom of the hill, where all this started. Her telling me to be safe was what clinched it. God damnit, I am safe. There was nothing in that cave but the biggest discovery of the modern age, it’s perfectly safe up until the crawlspace and probably beyond it.

So I’m going back in. Sorry “D,” but this is mine to see through. If the friends want to go in the cave, I’ll lead them, and we’ll find out what’s at the bottom together. Even if it’s just quartz in the middle of some loose rocks.

If I find anything, I’ll update this page. Wish me luck.

*

Update:

Des if you can read this stay away
They werent echoes from the past

Credit: Chance Kimber

Instagram

Ko-fi