#cave camp had just such a peofimf impact on me omg

[sock-ness-monster]

Excuse is granted. Please. I beg of you. Infodump away

Thank you so much I love telling people about this guy

So, to preface this, I'll be telling this story exactly how it was told to me by our camp counselor at a Caveing camp I went to, so it's very much an oral history that maybe can't be fact checked but the broad strokes are genuinely 100% true

TRIGGER WARNINGS: DEATH, DARKNESS, CLAUSTROPHOBIA, GRAVE DESECRATION, CRICKETS

Now that that's out of the way (and please mention if there's any other TW's I should add) the story of

Floyd Collins, The Man Who Was Buried Six Times

This story begins in Kentucky in 19very early, a young Floyd was plowing his family's field when he suddenly dropped through the ground and discovered an unknown cave system. Super cool! Now, people back then did not have television, keep in mind, so caves were really big deals and they were a brand new and lucrative tourist escapade. Floyd's family seized the idea and quickly made a little tourist attraction out of it and started raking in the dough. But they weren't the only ones who had a cave you could tour, Kentucky's geology is super unique in that it has tons of limestone and sandstone which is perfect for underground rivers to carve cool caves out of. They are everywhere in Kentucky and the surrounding area, there was a lot of competition for who had the best, the biggest, the longest cave. And Floyd and his brothers were seized by cave fever and were exploring all around looking for new tunnels and chambers. A large part of this business, unfortunately, was not just walking people through the caves but was letting them take home souvenirs. People could carve their names in the wall, take a stalagmite or stalactite or whatever cool rock they found. Destroying the sensitive ecosystem of the caves. Floyd, the cool dude that he was, was one of the only people who was against this at the time. Good for him! Salamanders are important!

Anyway, Floyd and his brothers are always on the lookout for new opportunities, and there were tons in that area. But, not all of them would pan out. Floyd had heard rumblings about a new cave system called Sand Cave that wasn't far from his family's original cave, which by now had been dubbed Crystal Cave. It didn't seem that promising to most, but Floyd was hoping it actually connected to Crystal cave, and they could tack on so many feet to how big their cave was. So he set off to see if he could find a connection.

He had been surveying the cave for a few hours, and decided to call it quits. He was crawling through a tight tunnel upwards toward the opening of the cave when a rock slide pinned his ankle down tight. He was laying flat with his hands reaching upwards, and there was no way for him to reach back behind him to free his ankle.

He had gone on this expedition without telling anyone.

This was the first time he got buried.

Three days pass, and his brother Homer finally finds him. He tries everything he can think of to free floyd, to no effect. Realizing that this may be a bigger endeavor than he can pull off, he crawls back out to go and find help. It is January of 1925, what else is there to do but go to the newspaper? They publish the story of the man trapped in a crawl way, and it's a huge hit!? People are fascinated by Floyds predicament. They want to help, they want to see, they want to know more. It even makes it on the radio! The three biggest news stories of the time were

1) the war (oof)

2)Charles Lindbergh (will come up again later)

And 3) Floyd in the hole

Everyone in America is anxious to find out how they rescue Floyd. "They" being everyone from the local cave experts to the military corps of engineers to the freakin freemasons, they're all trying to figure out how to free Floyd. Who, ya know, is just chillin in the cave, because caves stay at a constant temperature of ~54° , not too bad for January. His brothers and a reporter take turns crawling down to deliver him the three essentials; food, whiskey, and news. The reporter, "Skeets" Miller, would later win a Pulitzer Prize for his correspondence with floyd in the shaft. Now, as mentioned before, it is a cold and snowy January, but people (nearly 10,000 according to some reports) are so fascinated by the goings on at Sand Cave that they travel from far and wide to be there at the triumphant moment when Floyd emerges. Weeks have gone by at this point. Radio stations are reporting every day, Charles Lindbergh is hired to take photographs of the terrain from above. It's like a big party up top.

They camp out around the cave mouth.

They build fires for food and warmth.

The snow melts.

The cold water trickles down into the cave.

Floyd....... starts to cough.

The cave's already sketchy structure is further compromised.

There's another rock slide.

Floyd is now cut off from contact with the up side world, and the engineers panic and go with a last ditch effort they had been debating beforehand. They can't go around they can't go behind, the only path left was straight down. They drill a hole that reaches the 150 feet from daylight to Floyd's prison. They are too late. He was estimated to have died three to four days before they reached him. His leg is still stuck, and half his face has been consumed by cave crickets. And they just.....leave him there. Whatreyagonnado they shrug, he's already gone we can stop now. They fill in the shaft again.

This is the second time Floyd is buried.

Homer, his closest brother, can't accept this as his final resting place. A few weeks later, they un block the hole and carry Floyd to their family's funeral plot and have a small service with just his closest friends and family present.

This is the third time Floyd Collins is buried.

A few years go by, and the Collins family sells their farm and cave. Unfortunately, they did not see the part of the deed that entitled the new owners to everything in and under the property. Floyd's body is now legally theirs. He is exhumed and placed on display in a glass coffin in Crystal Cave (which years and years later would eventually be proven to connect to Sand Cave).

This is the fourth time Floyd is buried.

If you haven't pieced it together yet, caves were a pretty big deal. We now enter a time in Kentucky history known as the Cave Wars, and they are brutal. How brutal, you ask? Well, to answer with one scenario that happens to be related to this story, the owners of nearby cave were jealous of the attention Crystal Cave was getting from their cool exhibit of Floyd's body, against his family's wishes. Why, the only logical thing to do is steal the man's body and throw it off a cliff. Crystal Cave's new owners would recover it, though minus the left leg. And the next logical thing of course is to put him back on display but this time with a bunch more chains.

This is the fifth time Floyd Collins is buried.

Then, the 60s roll around and Crystal Cave and Floyd are purchased by the National Parks Service on the grounds of being connected to the Mammoth Cave System (the longest cave system in the entire world now). Floyds family is still fighting for his body, and in the 80s they finally get their wish. Floyd is removed from the cave in a 15 day trip and buried at a real cemetery again.

This, is the sixth time he is buried.

A pillar is constructed in honor and perhaps in reparations to all he's gone through, but it is struck by a semi truck and demolished less than a week after its unveiling.

Floyd.......went through a lot. All he ever wanted to do was see some cool rocks and support his family. And to this day, cavers do their best to do right by him. When entering Mammoth Cave, they often ask the darkness to look after them. They aren't talking to the darkness, of course, that darkness that can never be described properly. They are talking to Floyd. Asking him to watch over them as they wish he had someone to watch over him. In the caves everyone is above you, but that's not what they mean. And when they hear a whistle through the tunnels, they like to imagine it's Floyd. Floyd, who was right. The cave was so much more than people thought, in so many different ways. To this day, there's a saying in the caveing community.

"Floyd Lives"

It's like the geology version of "Eddie Would Go". As long as we carry on his legacy of exploring bravely, daring to go where noone has gone before, and do our best to preserve the natural beauty and habitat of the caves, floyd will live on. Floyd lives in our memories and hearts and the drips of water that will one day be pillars.

I don't really know how to end this. Here's a picture of the man himself;

(the picture above is not the tunnel he was trapped in, to be clear)

#cave camp had just such a peofimf impact on me omg #the best week of my whole life #and to think i almost chickened out the night before leaving #i still keep in contact with those guys #we all have tshirts with you guessed it floyd on them #floyd collins #caves #geology #stories #humanity #infodump #*profound i meant #claustrophobia tw #buried alive tw #darkness tw #longish post