This is a very scary webpage

[Sir_Die_alot]

It's an obvious fake due to his "journal entries" being written in a retrospective past tense. Like this one:

It took us three weeks before we got back out to Mystery Cave again.

Not the way you would expect it to be worded had he just returned to write in his journal, especially due to entries being dated.

As for the picture of him in the cave he did say on page 8 when that was taken by Joe:

When I reached the tight spot of the squeeze I had Joe snap a picture of me.

[Yrrek]

I had suspected it was false, but this guy definately has talent. While reading things I don't usually pay much attention to things like that, but instead enjoy the story. On my second read-through however, I tend to pick it clean of what I can find. :)

[Selby]

Maybe someone could enlighten me, but I failed to see what was so scary. The guy has a way with words and is a storyteller, most definitely. But what was so scary? A cave with a symbol that had a funny odor from time to time and moving rocks and a rope that was pulled back from them? Oooh!! Scary! I for one don't buy it. But then not much tends to scare me =\

[Oomph-aak]

HP Lovecraft started this fad a long time ago. Classic HP Lovecraft type of story written in modern terms with plenty of description of the fear the protagonist was feeling. I loved it... A delicious horror story with the level of realism high enough to make it "believable". HP's stories were always just bit too fantastic for the fear to really stick in but this writer's descriptions of the tight spaces in the cave and the way the fear drove him back thru Floyd's Tomb was very psychologically compelling. Also the part about the "comedown" after the adrenaline high was really descriptive of the way a meth addict feels most of the time, hallucinating and alternating between periods of manic paranoia and mind numbing depression filled in with hours of meaningless activity searching for "connections" and "clues" to the mystery which doesn't actually exist.

The cliffhanger ending is really the only way to end a story like that, having the protagonist and his buddies go back one last time to "get to the bottom" of the mystery and never return.
It would be an anti-climax to actually have them meet Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth and come back alive, wouldn't it? :o


Oomph-aak

[Artega]

Thanks, Oomph. All the while I was reading it (and picking out bits that stood out as just making it OBVIOUS it is fiction), I kept thinking that it was similar to something I had read before. Now I remember that it was one of Lovecraft's works. I think I'm gonna have to go find some more of his works :)

[Cryptic]

Real-life claustrophobia:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/03/...reut/index.html

[Taem]

The Caver

This website chronicles the exploits of an amateur spelunker (cave explorer).  I have no idea whether it's fact or fiction, but I DO know that this is one of the scariest things I've ever seen, read, or heard.

It's ~10 pages (images linked inline for 56kers), but it's well worth the read.

I have no idea why anyone found that scary. I thought it was very intriguing and SUSPENSEFUL, but not scary.

Up until the end, its seemed like it could be realistic on several levels until the author said he had continual nightmares and decided to go back with a rifle. Once that I read that, I felt it got a little hokey, especially since it supposedly ended right there leaving the reader to wonder, what, where, and why? Classic Blair Witch Project syndrome.

I think it plays on several known hypothetical facts about yeti and sasquosh, such as their stench (much like an apes if you even smelled them at the zoo), their yell, their silent movement, and a general feeling of panic when around these creatures of myth.

I actually got upset when I read the authors reaction to the creature and his attempt to return to the cave with a gun. Typical Salem witch logic here without any heed to the creatures habitat, whom made no offensive move; such a pity. I suppose I was most angered because I have personally seen a creature I guess you'd call a sasquosh (sp?) and it was quite an unnerving experience. This is true, but you can take it how you like: I was 12 years old and sitting in my living room watching television in the small city of Carpinteria next to the beach. I suddenly felt this intense presence staring at me through my sliding glass door, a feeling so strong it sent chills down my spine. I slowly turned my head and saw this creature in a climbing stance on the tree outside (it looked to me like a three-toed sloth from the zoo and about the same size too - maybe a baby sasquosh?). When my eyes met its eyes, I felt paralyzed with pure and utter fear, not because I feared this creature (the sliding glass door was locked and all the windows in the house were closed), but because the creature projected so much hatred and rage towards me, my natural instinct was to run away but I just couldn't move. The creature slowly started to ascend the tree and I got the courage to avert my gaze for only maybe two or three seconds. When I looked back, the creature was gone. I've never seen anything like that again in my life, but I have the feeling these creatures dislike us because they feel we are encroaching on their habitat. I don't know how it disappeared and to clarify, I was twelve and was NOT using any drugs, legal or illegal, nor was I sleep deprived or emotionally unstable. This really happend to me as described.

[Trucidation]

but it's well worth the read.

Indeed. It's well written -- the pictures are a nice touch -- and kept me 'flipping' those pages til the end. However, it's most certainly fictional as others have pointed out: Too many red flags get raised when the story is read with a bit of skepticism.

-Trucidation

[cheezz]

I don't know about enlightenment, but I can offer this. If there was air movement denoting another entrance, then perhaps that entrance was being used by a bear. Last I checked, bears can make a lot of racket, move rocks, paw at a rope, and even smell like death, since many predators love to roll in a rotten corpse to disguise their scent. The guy may be a good storyteller, but he's a better construction worker, as in building mountains out of molehills.

[Nystul]

If something like this doesn't make chills run down your spine, I don't think any explanation will help.

[Obi2Kenobi]

But the problem with it being a bear is the ability to get through that narrow crawlspace, and then pull down a rope.

[LochnarITB]

The scary thing for me was the imagery of the tight spaces - the description of tons of rock above and the rest of the earth below in a space you have to squeeze through. The suspense of the STORY and the frustration of the final link were very well crafted. However, as long as people are picking apart inconsistencies, there is one that really struck me - the sound. He hit his head and screamed but his partner could not hear it and yet the sounds associated with the boogie man were heard? Oops.

[Taem]

The scary thing for me was the imagery of the tight spaces -

Her her! Thats funny you mentioned that because after I read that story, I was wrestling with my kids and they placed a very T-I-G-H-T box about the length of my body over my head and pulled it down to my knees. At first, it was funny, but then, I couldn't move my arms and couldn't get my hands under the box to lift it off of me. The air started to get stuffy as I started to panic and I ended up ripping the box in half by outstreaching my arms. Funny thing was during my moment of panic, my first thougth was about being stuck in that cave!