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The Tragic Tale of Floyd Collins · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Dude, doo doo doo. I just told Josh's trumpet bit
0:04
Speaker 1: announced that we are continuing our twenty twenty three tour
0:08
Speaker 1: this spring by going to DC, the Boston area and Toronto,
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Speaker 1: Canada yep, in that same order, May fourth, fifth, and sixth,
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Speaker 1: and you can get tickets at Link Tree Slash sy
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Speaker 1: sk Live for all three shows. We'll see you guys soon.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
0:35
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck
0:38
Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, and that makes this Stuff you
0:40
Speaker 1: should Know part of our continuing sad Kentucky tragic history
0:46
Speaker 1: era that we seem to be in right now. Are
0:49
Speaker 1: we going to point out where this is fifteen times? No,
0:52
Speaker 1: this is this is in the Kentucky that you'd expect
0:55
Speaker 1: it to be in. Okay, we had some funny Instagram
0:57
Speaker 1: comments on that. I know what you're talking about about.
1:01
Speaker 1: Half the people when the supper club fire thing went
1:04
Speaker 1: to Instagram said where was this again? Jodsh No, I know,
1:08
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. Okay, I'm just kidding. I'm aware of
1:11
Speaker 1: what goes on on Instagram. Who knows, I don't know
1:14
Speaker 1: you're one of those lurkers. Yeah, totally, I totally am
1:18
Speaker 1: so m speaking of lurking, Chuck Es, if you go
1:23
Speaker 1: to Barron County, Kentucky, okay, one of the things that
1:27
Speaker 1: you might do is a pastime is lurk in a cave. Hey,
1:30
Speaker 1: look at that transition. It was okay. But the reason
1:33
Speaker 1: why you might do that is because Barron County and
1:36
Speaker 1: neighboring I think Edmonton or Edmondson County our home to
1:41
Speaker 1: the largest cave system in the world, Mammoth Caves. Yeah,
1:46
Speaker 1: we talked about Mammoth and I guess it had to
1:48
Speaker 1: be our caving episode. Certainly, there's no way you can.
1:51
Speaker 1: I mean again, it's enormous, Like, as far as we know,
1:54
Speaker 1: I think something like four hundred miles have been mapped. Yeah,
1:59
Speaker 1: and I was reading we have a lot. We have
2:00
Speaker 1: an enslaved man back in the eighteen twenties up to
2:04
Speaker 1: the forties to thank for a lot of that, because
2:07
Speaker 1: he was the only one brave enough to crawl over
2:09
Speaker 1: the bottomless pit and keep exploring. So that definitely extended it.
2:13
Speaker 1: But they think also that there's another six hundred miles.
2:15
Speaker 1: By the way, his name is Stephen Bishop. Sorry I
2:17
Speaker 1: meant to say, but they think there's another six hundred
2:20
Speaker 1: miles left to be mapped. So that's a giant old
2:23
Speaker 1: cave system. Yeah, potentially a thousand miles of gave system stuff. Yes,
2:29
Speaker 1: Now I have a desire to go in almost none
2:31
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, I know, you know, but I have
2:34
Speaker 1: to say, like Ruby Falls is definitely worth the visit
2:37
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. I mean my deal is I did
2:39
Speaker 1: it once and it was really cool. I would go back,
2:43
Speaker 1: but I'm not, you know, dying too. I'm kind of like,
2:45
Speaker 1: you know, I know what it's like now, and that's
2:46
Speaker 1: all I really wanted to know. Yes, I was looking
2:49
Speaker 1: for a new hobby. The thing is, though, is if
2:51
Speaker 1: you're into caves caving, even if you're not like a caver,
2:54
Speaker 1: but you're, you know, into touring caves, you know that
2:57
Speaker 1: you can stand up in and there's walkways in every
2:59
Speaker 1: short Mammoth cave is an absolute must. It's just like
3:02
Speaker 1: Geological Wonder. After Geological Wonder, it's pretty neat. Yeah, you
3:06
Speaker 1: like your caves to have an energy drink fridge at
3:09
Speaker 1: the bottom of it, that's right, and a moving side one.
3:13
Speaker 1: It is a National park now since nineteen I think
3:16
Speaker 1: forty one Mammoth is and it was a big like
3:20
Speaker 1: and remains a big tourist attraction, but all the way
3:23
Speaker 1: dating back to the Civil War, and as a result,
3:26
Speaker 1: that whole area became cave central, not just because Mammoth Caves,
3:31
Speaker 1: but there's so many other cave systems around there, and
3:34
Speaker 1: it became like a legitimate sort of roadside not only stop,
3:38
Speaker 1: but destination for people. And the people that you know
3:43
Speaker 1: was like, Hey, i'll pay me a dollar or fifty
3:45
Speaker 1: cents or whatever and I'll take you down in these caves.
3:48
Speaker 1: They started battling each other more and more of these
3:50
Speaker 1: locals trying to drum up business for caves they had
3:53
Speaker 1: the rights to explore, and that was known as the
3:56
Speaker 1: Kentucky Cave Wars. Yes, and it was basically just entrepreneurs
4:02
Speaker 1: run amuck in Kentucky. They would burn one another's cars,
4:07
Speaker 1: They would put bowlders on the road to keep tourists
4:10
Speaker 1: from being able to make it to the other cave locations.
4:14
Speaker 1: They would pose as tourists and talk about how terrible
4:16
Speaker 1: one cave was. It was free yelped, so that was
4:19
Speaker 1: their live, live yelping. And then another thing they would
4:23
Speaker 1: do is tell the tourists that they were all the
4:25
Speaker 1: same caves. They were just different entrances. So it's all
4:27
Speaker 1: the same. Just come to mind, wow, which is sort
4:29
Speaker 1: of true in a way kind of, but I think
4:32
Speaker 1: not really. Yeah, I mean that doesn't mean they're all connected,
4:35
Speaker 1: but oh they are. Well, what I mean is that
4:38
Speaker 1: you can access It's like you can't get there from
4:40
Speaker 1: here kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And also I think
4:43
Speaker 1: each entrance is like, this is for all intents and purposes,
4:47
Speaker 1: it is a completely separate cave system. Right, This is
4:49
Speaker 1: my whole which I told you that there's something I
4:55
Speaker 1: thought you were using hole as an adjective now that
4:58
Speaker 1: that was the weirdest thing about when I went caving,
5:00
Speaker 1: and I'll just quickly say it again, is that I
5:03
Speaker 1: expected some big cartoon like thing that you just walk
5:07
Speaker 1: into and start exploring. I did not realize you could
5:12
Speaker 1: literally walk by a cave entrance in the woods and
5:15
Speaker 1: not notice it because it's a two by two foot
5:17
Speaker 1: hole in the ground, and that makes caves exponentially scarier
5:21
Speaker 1: more sure, you know. Oh yeah, when I saw that thing,
5:24
Speaker 1: I was like, that's where we're going, because that means
5:26
Speaker 1: the people coming to help you could walk right past
5:28
Speaker 1: it too, and it's just I mean, it's just tampering
5:31
Speaker 1: with the pits of Hell. I don't I don't agree
5:33
Speaker 1: with that. So our story moves on now to one
5:36
Speaker 1: of the great cavers of the region. There were a
5:39
Speaker 1: lot of great cavers, but one was a gentleman named
5:41
Speaker 1: Floyd Collins, who if you look him up, he looks
5:44
Speaker 1: a bit like Crispin Glover and sort of the same
5:48
Speaker 1: way that almost all rural white men in Kentucky in
5:51
Speaker 1: their early nineteen hundreds look like Crispin Glover. Yeah, he
5:55
Speaker 1: just sort of had that generic Kentucky guy look. Well,
5:59
Speaker 1: the cut hairdo, the shemp he had definitely helps a
6:03
Speaker 1: lot too. So he was born in eighteen eighty seven,
6:06
Speaker 1: had a bunch of brothers and sisters from his mom
6:10
Speaker 1: and then a previous marriage that his father had lee. Yeah,
6:14
Speaker 1: and they were really close to the Mammoth Caves about
6:16
Speaker 1: four years old. So from the time he was a
6:19
Speaker 1: little kid, like six years old, he was out there
6:22
Speaker 1: caving and doing his thing like you would when you're
6:25
Speaker 1: six in nineteen o seven or whatever. Yeah, Plus there
6:29
Speaker 1: was not a lot else to do, Like if you
6:31
Speaker 1: were a farmer, you were eking out a really hard
6:34
Speaker 1: living in this area. Apparently the soil wasn't very helpful
6:37
Speaker 1: because again because astone cave system, right, so it's kind
6:41
Speaker 1: of tough to grow things on bare limestone. And so
6:45
Speaker 1: what Floyd Collins figured out very quickly is that there
6:48
Speaker 1: were a lot of Native American indigenous artifacts, including remains,
6:54
Speaker 1: in these caves, and that he could take these things
6:57
Speaker 1: out of the caves and go to the Mammoth Cave Hotel,
7:00
Speaker 1: this huge hotel that was built expressly for the tourists,
7:04
Speaker 1: and sell them to those tourists. And he was so
7:07
Speaker 1: profitable that he dropped out of school at age ten
7:09
Speaker 1: to pursue his looting activities full time. Yeah, which, you know, um,
7:15
Speaker 1: I'm not going to judge the guy from here in
7:16
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three for being a ten year old trying
7:20
Speaker 1: to make a living. Yeah neither. Yeah. Ye, surprising word, no,
7:25
Speaker 1: of course, it's surprised to keep everybody on their toes um.
7:28
Speaker 1: So fast forward a bit. It's nineteen seventeen now and
7:33
Speaker 1: Floyd Collins is still doing his his caving. He's still
7:36
Speaker 1: one of the foremost experts in the region, and he
7:39
Speaker 1: found a new system or at least, no one had
7:42
Speaker 1: discovered this system as far as he knew, and it
7:45
Speaker 1: was really beautiful. It had these almost marble like walls,
7:50
Speaker 1: is how Dave Ruce put it. Dave helped us with this,
7:52
Speaker 1: and it was just one of the more gorgeous caves
7:55
Speaker 1: on the inside, and so he named it the Great
7:57
Speaker 1: Crystal Cave and told his he said, hey, we need
8:01
Speaker 1: to scrape together what money we have so we can
8:04
Speaker 1: lease this land, because this thing is going to be
8:07
Speaker 1: our meal tickets. It's prettier than any of the other
8:09
Speaker 1: caves around. Yeah. He went in halfers with his dad,
8:12
Speaker 1: Lee and another man by the last name of Gerard,
8:16
Speaker 1: and they basically developed this Great Crystal Cave, which was
8:19
Speaker 1: a wonderful fine. He was incredibly lucky to have come
8:23
Speaker 1: upon this cave and be able to get the rights
8:25
Speaker 1: to it. There was a huge problem with it though,
8:28
Speaker 1: it never became really financially successful because it was at
8:33
Speaker 1: the other end of the cave system, so by that
8:36
Speaker 1: you really had to know that it was there and
8:39
Speaker 1: want to go there. If you were just a tourist
8:41
Speaker 1: wandering around visiting caves, there was very little chance you're
8:44
Speaker 1: going to end up there accidentally. And then what with
8:46
Speaker 1: this being the Cave Wars and everybody who was a
8:49
Speaker 1: competitor of his, but also we're probably neighbors and second cousins.
8:52
Speaker 1: By the way, they were doing everything they could to
8:56
Speaker 1: keep those tourists from making their way back to Great
8:58
Speaker 1: Crystal Cave. So it's great a cave as it was,
9:00
Speaker 1: it just wasn't viable. Yeah, the big city guy came
9:04
Speaker 1: in and said, son, you'd never learned the first rule
9:07
Speaker 1: of business, location, location, location, And Floyd went, why are
9:11
Speaker 1: you saying location three times? Yeah, yeah, it's sad, but true.
9:15
Speaker 1: That's a direct quote everybody, it really is. So now
9:19
Speaker 1: they're in a situation where Floyd says, all right, that
9:23
Speaker 1: this didn't quite work out, But now they're in a
9:25
Speaker 1: situation where they're kind of even more desperate than before
9:28
Speaker 1: to find some means of revenue. So he set out
9:32
Speaker 1: to find another amazing cave and a better location, and
9:35
Speaker 1: he found one that wasn't quite so amazing as far
9:40
Speaker 1: as is aesthetics go, but it was on Cave City
9:44
Speaker 1: Road before you even got to Mammoth. So that was like,
9:47
Speaker 1: that's the location, location, location that he didn't understand that
9:51
Speaker 1: he needed, but right got it. That's how that's how
9:54
Speaker 1: important it was that you could have a so so cave.
9:58
Speaker 1: But if the entrance was on the weight of the
10:00
Speaker 1: bigger caves than you had, you had a gym mine
10:03
Speaker 1: even if there were no gems in the cave, because
10:05
Speaker 1: you could lie and say there are right, Say it's
10:09
Speaker 1: the same entrance or the different entrance to the same thing. Right.
10:11
Speaker 1: So yeah, he went into business with a different guy,
10:15
Speaker 1: a man named B. Doyle Beasley Doyle and another man
10:18
Speaker 1: named ed Estes, and Doyle and Stes went half on
10:24
Speaker 1: their half, and they said that they would give Floyd
10:27
Speaker 1: the other half if he would explore and develop this
10:30
Speaker 1: cave so that they could start taking tourists down in it.
10:34
Speaker 1: And so Floyd Collins is being I haven't seen it
10:37
Speaker 1: expressly written out, but he spent so much time in
10:41
Speaker 1: caves from such a young age, and he had been
10:46
Speaker 1: at it for so long and had become such a
10:48
Speaker 1: respected caver that I suspect this is the one. Like
10:52
Speaker 1: when he woke up, the one thing he wanted to
10:54
Speaker 1: do was go into caves, like he just loved what
10:56
Speaker 1: he was doing. So this is probably like a dream
10:58
Speaker 1: gig for him too. Yeah, But he started exploring this
11:02
Speaker 1: cave and started to develop it. But he ran into
11:04
Speaker 1: a problem very early. You mentioned that this cave was
11:08
Speaker 1: not so great as far as caves go, right, Yeah,
11:11
Speaker 1: and we didn't mention it was called sand cave. And
11:14
Speaker 1: it was called sand cave for a reason because it
11:17
Speaker 1: was not solid limestone like you know, most of the
11:20
Speaker 1: rest of these caves, which made it, you know, pretty
11:24
Speaker 1: tourist friendly to walk around, kind of like you would
11:27
Speaker 1: have a ruby falls, let's say, the smooth limestone. Yeah,
11:30
Speaker 1: the good stuff. This is actually loose rock and muddy sand.
11:35
Speaker 1: So sand Cave is is an apt name. And Floyd
11:40
Speaker 1: was like, I've got to make this work, though, Like
11:42
Speaker 1: I'm even more desperate than I was before because now
11:44
Speaker 1: signed onto this thing, and so I'm gonna, like, there's
11:48
Speaker 1: good stuff down there that's deeper. I just have to
11:51
Speaker 1: carve out a passageway that's safe enough to get tourists
11:55
Speaker 1: in here. And so he did that for weeks and
11:58
Speaker 1: weeks and weeks, working all our days clearing out and
12:02
Speaker 1: it was you know, it was really cold at the time,
12:04
Speaker 1: clearing out this mud and ice and water and rock
12:08
Speaker 1: and trying to build what looked like a legitimate entrance way. Yeah,
12:13
Speaker 1: which I mean I think his premise was that he
12:15
Speaker 1: would if he if he dug enough of this stuff out,
12:18
Speaker 1: he would reach those smooth limestone walls. Eventually. It was
12:21
Speaker 1: just going to take some extra work, right, Yeah, And
12:23
Speaker 1: he was down to work. He was dtw and you
12:27
Speaker 1: keep making mention like he really needed this. Um. I
12:30
Speaker 1: mean he was able to like make ends meet here
12:32
Speaker 1: or there. I think he and his brother like chopped
12:34
Speaker 1: timber for the railroad ties to the local lines that
12:38
Speaker 1: were built. Like again, Mammoth Caves was such an enormous attraction.
12:41
Speaker 1: There was a special railroad line that was established and
12:44
Speaker 1: built just to take people to this, Right, so there
12:46
Speaker 1: was some money to be made. But to say that
12:50
Speaker 1: Floyd Collins and his eight siblings were poor as an understatement.
12:55
Speaker 1: I saw a picture of the house that the siblings
12:59
Speaker 1: all lived in with their parents, and the ticket booth
13:02
Speaker 1: for Great Crystal Cave, and the ticket booth is slightly
13:04
Speaker 1: bigger than the house, Like it is like they were
13:08
Speaker 1: they were. Yeah, they live basically hand to mouth to
13:11
Speaker 1: say the least. Yeah, so this needed to work. That's
13:14
Speaker 1: why you put in all this work painstakingly digging this
13:17
Speaker 1: passage and eventually on January thirty, nineteen twenty five, he said,
13:25
Speaker 1: all right, I've got an opening here, and I believe
13:28
Speaker 1: I can get down to the depths that I so desire.
13:31
Speaker 1: And he did. He got down about fifty feet deep
13:36
Speaker 1: and then came to a ten foot drop that's shaped
13:41
Speaker 1: like a chimney, So it's a ten foot shoot that
13:44
Speaker 1: he can go down. And at the bottom of this shoot,
13:46
Speaker 1: it kind of makes not the hardest L, but it
13:49
Speaker 1: would like a soft L shape to where it goes horizontal.
13:53
Speaker 1: But that horizontal opening was not very big. It was
13:56
Speaker 1: just enough for Floyd to like get down there on
14:00
Speaker 1: his back, go in kind of feet first, with the
14:04
Speaker 1: top of the the shoot like inches above his face. Yeah,
14:10
Speaker 1: he was in this crack. So the chimney itself was
14:14
Speaker 1: not like exactly like a drop. He had to kind
14:16
Speaker 1: of shimmy down it, but with that crack was like
14:19
Speaker 1: a whole other thing altogether. He couldn't take a full
14:21
Speaker 1: breath in there. We shoko a warning a trigger warning
14:25
Speaker 1: for people that suffer from claustrophobia, because yeah, I don't
14:29
Speaker 1: even and a lot of this felt like I was
14:31
Speaker 1: about to have a panic attack. Yeah, I have a
14:33
Speaker 1: vague sense of claustrophobia. It takes a lot to trigger it,
14:37
Speaker 1: Like just hearing about the stuff, I'm like, oh my gosh,
14:39
Speaker 1: but I can handle it. But I'll bet there's people
14:41
Speaker 1: out there who sure couldn't even hear this, So way
14:43
Speaker 1: to go chalk. Yeah, So that CoA and another one,
14:46
Speaker 1: which is when you're dealing with old stories like this,
14:49
Speaker 1: we found that there are a lot of facts that
14:51
Speaker 1: get mixed up depending on what sorts you're using. So yeah,
14:55
Speaker 1: we're doing our best moving forward. Well, also, like we're
15:00
Speaker 1: in the age where we've really just woken up to
15:02
Speaker 1: the fact that back in the twenties, say, newspapers would
15:06
Speaker 1: print whatever, and we've long been like, well it was
15:09
Speaker 1: in the newspaper, so it's probably well researched, not true, necessarily,
15:13
Speaker 1: not at all. So he's sliding through this crack and
15:18
Speaker 1: you're probably getting pretty nervous, but hold on to that
15:21
Speaker 1: because he makes it through the crack and on the
15:22
Speaker 1: other side he finds a big I think like fifty
15:24
Speaker 1: foot deep room, a big chamber, and this is what
15:27
Speaker 1: he's been looking for. This is the kind of stuff
15:29
Speaker 1: tourists want to see. And he starts exploring it. He's
15:33
Speaker 1: repelling down and I think it's I don't even know
15:36
Speaker 1: if he made it to the bottom or not, but
15:37
Speaker 1: his lantern started flickering, and that is a sign if
15:41
Speaker 1: you are exploring a cave for the first time, to
15:44
Speaker 1: go to get out of the cave. So that's what
15:47
Speaker 1: he did. He was a smart guy. He wasn't dumb.
15:49
Speaker 1: He was he was very gutsy, but he didn't like
15:52
Speaker 1: just you know, he wasn't. He didn't gamble with his
15:54
Speaker 1: life for no reason. Yeah, he knew what he was doing. Yes,
15:58
Speaker 1: So he crawled back up the rope, took his lamp
16:01
Speaker 1: with him, and started to make his way back through
16:04
Speaker 1: the crack. He was oriented the same way that he
16:08
Speaker 1: was going in, so he went in feet first. This
16:11
Speaker 1: time he went in head first. Yeah, and he made it.
16:14
Speaker 1: I believe his head made it out when he kind
16:17
Speaker 1: of kicked into the ground to kind of give himself
16:20
Speaker 1: purchase to push himself the rest of the way through
16:21
Speaker 1: the crack. When he did that, he moved some some dirt,
16:25
Speaker 1: some sand, and I've seen up to a seven ton boulder,
16:29
Speaker 1: came down from the ceiling and lodged his foot in
16:34
Speaker 1: place firmly. It was not. He was not moving anymore,
16:37
Speaker 1: and he was stuck in this crack hopelessly. Yeah, and
16:41
Speaker 1: that's one great example. I saw seven ton, and then
16:45
Speaker 1: everywhere else I saw twenty six pounds. Big. I mean,
16:50
Speaker 1: could you really not like shimmy a twenty seven pound
16:54
Speaker 1: Maybe not in a crack like that, I mean twenty
16:56
Speaker 1: six pounds on a foot in a crack. And we
16:59
Speaker 1: should mention too, that his lamp went out while he
17:02
Speaker 1: was in there, and again I saw various things from that.
17:06
Speaker 1: It finally flickered out to he accidentally kicked it out,
17:10
Speaker 1: kicked it over and made it go out. So now
17:13
Speaker 1: he is laying there with his arms by his side,
17:17
Speaker 1: stuck in this crevice, in the complete blackness. And Dave
17:22
Speaker 1: pointed out and I can verify, and if you've ever
17:24
Speaker 1: been caving, it is a blackness like you've never understood
17:28
Speaker 1: before in your life. I don't want to understand that.
17:31
Speaker 1: It is the blackest of black. You literally cannot see
17:35
Speaker 1: your hand in front of your face. So he's, you know,
17:39
Speaker 1: literally laying there in pitch blackness, which he's sort of
17:42
Speaker 1: used to because he's I'm sure he's been without a
17:45
Speaker 1: light before in a cave and gotten out of it,
17:47
Speaker 1: but he was in a bad way. He was, and
17:50
Speaker 1: he wasn't panicking because he knew that he was right
17:53
Speaker 1: almost at the base of that chimney and that if
17:55
Speaker 1: he could get to the chimney, not only could he
17:57
Speaker 1: relight his lamp, he could shimmy up the chimney easily.
18:00
Speaker 1: So he was almost there. But the problem was again
18:04
Speaker 1: that rock, whether it was twenty seven pounds or seven tons,
18:07
Speaker 1: wasn't letting him go. And so Floyd Collins was alone
18:10
Speaker 1: in the dark traps in a crack, and no one
18:13
Speaker 1: knew he was down there. Yeah, and before we go
18:16
Speaker 1: to break, because I know this where we're headed. The
18:18
Speaker 1: final little cherry on top of danger danger cherry is
18:22
Speaker 1: it's sixteen degrees. Very nice, Chuck, all right, we'll be
18:26
Speaker 1: right back, so Chuck, before we get started again, I
18:51
Speaker 1: want to shout out a source. There's an article from
18:55
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six in American Heritage magazine, a great history
19:00
Speaker 1: source by Michael Leasy L. S Y. And he actually
19:04
Speaker 1: was the guy who wrote or compiled Wisconsin Death Trip
19:08
Speaker 1: a few years before he wrote that article, and it's
19:12
Speaker 1: called Dark Carnival, and it is really worth a read.
19:15
Speaker 1: But he got all of his sources directly from newspapers,
19:18
Speaker 1: so basically every word he wrote had been reported in
19:21
Speaker 1: the newspaper somehow or some way. So that is probably
19:26
Speaker 1: why that's the only source for the seven ton. It
19:29
Speaker 1: was probably misreported, but he's still a pretty good source
19:33
Speaker 1: for facts. He's a professional historian, so he knew what
19:36
Speaker 1: he was doing. But he was also really fascinating too.
19:39
Speaker 1: All Right, so he's down there, no one knows he's
19:41
Speaker 1: there for a while. He was known to disappear for
19:44
Speaker 1: you know, many hours and days exploring these caves, so
19:47
Speaker 1: it's not like the people got too concerned at first.
19:52
Speaker 1: It would be twenty five hours before anyone even knew
19:55
Speaker 1: anything was going on with him, and that was when
19:59
Speaker 1: the Sun of Sts his name was Jewel, pretty cool name,
20:04
Speaker 1: seventeen year old went to go check. He'd kind of
20:07
Speaker 1: been hanging out with Floyd and caving with him, and
20:09
Speaker 1: I think Floyd even said like, you know, I could
20:13
Speaker 1: die in here to the guy the day or two before.
20:16
Speaker 1: And he's the one who went down there called out
20:19
Speaker 1: for Floyd and heard Floyd call back that he was
20:23
Speaker 1: hung up and needed help. Right, So this is good,
20:26
Speaker 1: I mean it's been a full day, but at least
20:28
Speaker 1: now somebody knows he's down there. So juel Estes runs
20:32
Speaker 1: back and starts getting help, and I think in very
20:33
Speaker 1: short order, word got to his brother, Homer, who I
20:38
Speaker 1: guess younger brother because I think Floyd was thirty at
20:40
Speaker 1: the time, and I think Homer was twenty two or fourteen,
20:43
Speaker 1: depending on where he can I hadn't seen fourteen, so Homer,
20:47
Speaker 1: either way, he rushed. I get the impression that he
20:49
Speaker 1: was a man by then, so I'm gonna say twenty two, okay.
20:52
Speaker 1: But he rushed to the site and basically became the
20:57
Speaker 1: first person who was willing to actually go in and
21:01
Speaker 1: try to rescue Floyd. There are other people who had
21:05
Speaker 1: given it a shot before Homer arrived, but they apparently
21:09
Speaker 1: that chimney scared every single one of them off. They
21:11
Speaker 1: were like, I'm sorry, I'm I like Floyd a lot,
21:14
Speaker 1: but that's I'm not going through that chimney. Yeah. So
21:17
Speaker 1: he shows up, says, Floyd's like, can I get some
21:21
Speaker 1: food first and foremost, so his brother said, sure, here's
21:25
Speaker 1: the worst thing possible you could eat when you're pinned
21:28
Speaker 1: in a cave. Here's some sausage and coffee. Yeah, so
21:32
Speaker 1: let's get that heart rate up ensure that you're gonna
21:35
Speaker 1: have to urinate, and then just the sausage is just
21:38
Speaker 1: a bonus, yeah, just to fill you up. Yeah, and
21:42
Speaker 1: to make that really flow. But he had food. I'm
21:46
Speaker 1: kind of kidding around here. This is what people ate
21:48
Speaker 1: back then. So he just needed some some calories in
21:52
Speaker 1: his body. And Homer was down there working hard, trying
21:56
Speaker 1: everything he could do to get him loose. Every time
21:59
Speaker 1: he dug rubble out, more rubble would fall down where
22:03
Speaker 1: that rubble was. He brought a crowbar back to try
22:06
Speaker 1: and dislodge some bigger stones. Nothing was working. He's exhausted
22:11
Speaker 1: and cold. At this point, he's offering up like advice
22:14
Speaker 1: is coming in from around the country by this point,
22:17
Speaker 1: like word had gotten out of like how to do it.
22:20
Speaker 1: He's offering to pay surgeons five hundred dollars to go
22:23
Speaker 1: down there and cut his foot off. And I think
22:25
Speaker 1: one surgeon was actually debating whether or not to do it. Yeah.
22:29
Speaker 1: I think he was sent by the heiress to the
22:32
Speaker 1: International Harvester Fortune. He got sent to the scene. She
22:36
Speaker 1: paid for him to go there. It's nice, yeah, it was.
22:39
Speaker 1: It was very nice. I mean, she was very concerned,
22:41
Speaker 1: and apparently he was one of the best surgeons in
22:43
Speaker 1: America and he ended up becoming one of the medical
22:45
Speaker 1: advisors during this time. But he did not go down
22:48
Speaker 1: and cut his foot off because he couldn't reach his
22:49
Speaker 1: foot anyway, there's no way. But they were saying, well,
22:52
Speaker 1: we could also put ropes around him and pull him
22:54
Speaker 1: out and just cut his foot off like that. Yeah,
22:57
Speaker 1: not a good idea, and they didn't actually do it,
23:00
Speaker 1: but that was definitely on the table for a while. Yeah,
23:03
Speaker 1: And they were also you know, this is a really
23:06
Speaker 1: sort of sad part of this is there were people
23:08
Speaker 1: that were volunteering to go down and bring him blankets
23:11
Speaker 1: and food and stuff, and they would go down and
23:14
Speaker 1: come back and say, his season, good spirits, he's got
23:16
Speaker 1: the food and blankets. And then later when other people
23:19
Speaker 1: would go down to check things out, they would find
23:22
Speaker 1: that food and blankets to sort of cast aside and
23:25
Speaker 1: stuffed and cracks, and that people were too scared to
23:28
Speaker 1: go down there, and I guess too scared to admit it. Yeah,
23:32
Speaker 1: so there you go. There's there's a couple of things
23:35
Speaker 1: that we've just hit upon. I think bear pointing out
23:38
Speaker 1: one is that people are taking blankets down and then
23:41
Speaker 1: not actually doing it, so we don't actually have any
23:43
Speaker 1: like professional rescuers right now. And then secondly, like his
23:47
Speaker 1: brother is the first person who's willing to get down
23:50
Speaker 1: there and give him some food. And if you take
23:53
Speaker 1: a step back, you realize, like this is a it's
23:55
Speaker 1: a big problem for Floyd Collins. But at this point,
23:58
Speaker 1: and for a really shockingly long time, it was basically
24:01
Speaker 1: a local problem. The people who were in charge of
24:05
Speaker 1: rescuing Floyd were the same people who were um his
24:08
Speaker 1: competitors in the cave tourism business. It was just locals
24:12
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what to do. Yeah, and didn't
24:15
Speaker 1: the I'm sorry, the son of one of the former
24:19
Speaker 1: partners who was a good trusted friend he got involved
24:21
Speaker 1: as well, right, Juel Estes was the son, not Jules
24:26
Speaker 1: the Burnette. I didn't see him. Yeah, Johnny Burnette put
24:33
Speaker 1: heat factored in pretty heavily as far as because he
24:36
Speaker 1: was a trusted person to Floyd. So Floyd told him like,
24:40
Speaker 1: you're the only person I like trust to get me
24:42
Speaker 1: out of here. Oh okay, wow, so so um yeah.
24:46
Speaker 1: So so there were people who were like really trying
24:50
Speaker 1: to do this. They had the best intentions, they just
24:52
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily know what to do. And the upshot of
24:56
Speaker 1: it is there was a distinct lack of expertise. He's
25:00
Speaker 1: in that kind of thing for a very long time,
25:03
Speaker 1: for the first several days of Floyd's encounter, Right, and
25:07
Speaker 1: I guess we should introduce Skeets Huh. Yes, Now this
25:10
Speaker 1: is the first time somebody comes outside with no expertise
25:13
Speaker 1: but has the guts to be like, this man needs
25:16
Speaker 1: to get out of there, and I'm gonna do what
25:17
Speaker 1: I can. Right, Yeah, this is Skeets Miller. This is
25:20
Speaker 1: three days into this debacle. He was a young kid.
25:24
Speaker 1: He was well, he was twenty young to me, that
25:27
Speaker 1: was like sixty back then, I guess probably so. He
25:30
Speaker 1: was a reporter came down to Cave City on assignment
25:34
Speaker 1: from the Louisville Courier Journal to cover this story. He
25:37
Speaker 1: was a little guy. The joke was that he'd looked
25:40
Speaker 1: like a mosquito. He was five five, weighed barely over
25:44
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten pounds. So he was a little guy,
25:47
Speaker 1: like you said, that had a lot of guts and also,
25:50
Speaker 1: which is key, small enough to get into some of
25:53
Speaker 1: these places that some of the larger dudes could not
25:55
Speaker 1: get into. But he was a reporter and he was
25:58
Speaker 1: going after the story, at least as at first. So
26:00
Speaker 1: when he first went down there, he was going down
26:03
Speaker 1: there to interview Floyd. And the reason why he decided
26:06
Speaker 1: to do that was because he had tried to interview Homer,
26:09
Speaker 1: who said something like, if you want information, there's the
26:11
Speaker 1: hole right over there. You can go down and find
26:13
Speaker 1: out for yourself. And so Skeet said, I'll take that
26:16
Speaker 1: as permission, and he went down and interviewed Floyd Collins himself,
26:21
Speaker 1: and in very short order, over the course of the
26:24
Speaker 1: time Floyd was in this hole or in this cave,
26:27
Speaker 1: Skeet just kept writing more and more stories, interviewing him
26:30
Speaker 1: multiple times, and ended up winning a Pulitzer for his reporting.
26:35
Speaker 1: He became as much a star as Floyd Collins did
26:38
Speaker 1: in this saga because of his writing and because he
26:41
Speaker 1: was basically doing gonzo journalism with a trapped man in
26:44
Speaker 1: a cave. Yeah, and he also was the one saying
26:49
Speaker 1: like he's in bad shape down there, right, Like these
26:52
Speaker 1: reports of him being in good spirits aren't super accurate
26:56
Speaker 1: because he's he looks like a guy that's been trapped
26:59
Speaker 1: in a cave for three days. Right, That's what I
27:02
Speaker 1: wanted to say. Like he started out going after the story,
27:05
Speaker 1: but once he encountered Floyd in real life, he became
27:09
Speaker 1: an actual rescuer as well. Yeah, he wanted to get
27:11
Speaker 1: him out of there. He did things like developed a
27:15
Speaker 1: bucket brigade system to get stuff out of there. He
27:19
Speaker 1: brought a light down, well, he lit a lot of
27:21
Speaker 1: the cave just so they could see better, but he
27:24
Speaker 1: brought a light down to Floyd to keep him warm,
27:26
Speaker 1: like a lightbulb, like legit electricity, to help keep him
27:30
Speaker 1: on a little bit. Because remember it's freezing cold down there. Man,
27:33
Speaker 1: I can't imagine sixteen degrees. Yeah, and this it was
27:36
Speaker 1: over now a couple of weeks, like seventeen days. Little
27:40
Speaker 1: Skeets Miller is getting down in that cave and trying
27:45
Speaker 1: to rescue along with Homer and along with some other people,
27:48
Speaker 1: like really dedicated to getting him out of there. Right.
27:51
Speaker 1: So the thing is is Skeets writing these dispatches for
27:55
Speaker 1: the Louisville Courier Journal, and it's starting to get picked
27:59
Speaker 1: up by the Associated Press and the Associated presses sending
28:04
Speaker 1: these out to newspapers all over the country, and all
28:06
Speaker 1: of a sudden, Floyd Collins went from, as Dave puts it,
28:10
Speaker 1: like this poor schmuck who was like trapped in a
28:12
Speaker 1: cave to a national interests or human interest story that
28:18
Speaker 1: just gripped the nation. And one of the reasons why
28:21
Speaker 1: it was able to grip the nation was not just
28:24
Speaker 1: because of the ap picking up skeets writing, but also
28:28
Speaker 1: because radio was becoming a thing at the time. Not
28:31
Speaker 1: everybody had a radio this early on, but enough people
28:35
Speaker 1: did that there were like radio broadcasts done from the
28:38
Speaker 1: cave site that were reaching people's homes all over the country.
28:42
Speaker 1: So between the newspapers and the radio, it was just
28:45
Speaker 1: the whole nation was enthralled with Floyd collins plight. Yeah,
28:49
Speaker 1: it became it became a not only a media sensation,
28:54
Speaker 1: but a local sort of carnival atmosphere. Like there were
28:58
Speaker 1: thousands of people there that came to through the town
29:01
Speaker 1: at least to see what was going on. I think
29:04
Speaker 1: there were at least two thousand people at the cave site.
29:08
Speaker 1: There's this website, this guy that had pictures of, you know,
29:13
Speaker 1: of the scene at the cave entrance of the grounds
29:16
Speaker 1: of the people in the cars, of people selling hot
29:19
Speaker 1: dogs and hamburgers and balloons that said sand cave. And
29:24
Speaker 1: it's it's crazy to see these black, old, black and
29:26
Speaker 1: white photos of just how like, um, how crowded it
29:31
Speaker 1: got in rural Kentucky by this cave entrance. Yeah, by
29:34
Speaker 1: by all estimates, tens of thousands of people ended up
29:37
Speaker 1: showing up over the course of this these couple weeks
29:40
Speaker 1: that Floyd Collins ended up being stuck in the in
29:43
Speaker 1: the ground. I saw ten thousand, I saw sixty thousand.
29:47
Speaker 1: There was just a ton of people, and they came
29:49
Speaker 1: from all over at a time when it wasn't that
29:51
Speaker 1: easy to travel, but they were coming from out of state.
29:55
Speaker 1: And I say, Chuck, we take a little break and
29:58
Speaker 1: come back to this carn well that's growing up around
30:01
Speaker 1: Floyd's hapless situation. Let's do it all right. So Floyd
30:29
Speaker 1: is still trapped, They're getting some food down to him.
30:32
Speaker 1: He is not doing well. There's a carnival atmosphere, like
30:36
Speaker 1: we mentioned, kind of all over the place. And eventually
30:41
Speaker 1: they did make a little bit of progress in the
30:44
Speaker 1: with his buge bucket brigade, and that they cleared out
30:48
Speaker 1: enough for him to be able to to move a
30:51
Speaker 1: little bit for the first time. It cleared his arms,
30:53
Speaker 1: it cleared his legs because stuff had collapsed beyond just
30:57
Speaker 1: that either twenty six pound or seven ton boulder that
31:01
Speaker 1: was on his foot. So he was, you know, fully
31:03
Speaker 1: trapped for a long time, and then finally he was
31:06
Speaker 1: able to move around a little bit. They he said
31:09
Speaker 1: that he was freed at one point like that his
31:12
Speaker 1: foot was even I guess he was delirious or miscommunicating,
31:16
Speaker 1: because that foot was definitely not free. And the last
31:20
Speaker 1: guy to bring him food was a minor named Maddox,
31:25
Speaker 1: who brought him food that he ate. And he was
31:27
Speaker 1: Floyd's delirious at this point and said, Maddox, get me out.
31:31
Speaker 1: Why don't you take me out? Kiss me goodbye. I'm
31:34
Speaker 1: going And apparently Maddox kissed him goodbye, which was a
31:38
Speaker 1: very empathetic, sweet thing to do. And you know, heat
31:43
Speaker 1: from all this work had thawed this frozen mud that
31:47
Speaker 1: basically was acting like a mortar, and he just he
31:50
Speaker 1: got more entangled and trapped than he was before. And
31:54
Speaker 1: Maddox came out saying like he's dying, like very very soon.
31:58
Speaker 1: Imagine being Maddox waking up in the middle of the
32:01
Speaker 1: night for the next fifty years to Floyd Collins's voice saying, Maddox,
32:06
Speaker 1: why don't you get me out? Yeah, that's awful, man,
32:10
Speaker 1: especially to somebody that empathetic too, you know, sure so
32:15
Speaker 1: right so, um as as after Maddox makes it out,
32:19
Speaker 1: I don't believe anybody was any anywhere near the inside
32:22
Speaker 1: of Saint Cave with Floyd at the time. But the
32:24
Speaker 1: cave finally just collapsed in the way to get to
32:29
Speaker 1: Floyd was now cut off hopelessly, and they had no
32:33
Speaker 1: idea what had happened to Floyd. Was he covered up
32:36
Speaker 1: in the cave in was it just cutting off their
32:39
Speaker 1: their you know, their passage between them and him. They
32:43
Speaker 1: just didn't know. And now finally, this is about day
32:47
Speaker 1: five of poor Floyd Collins, already being a national American
32:52
Speaker 1: media sensation. Um, finally, the governor of Kentucky's like, maybe
32:57
Speaker 1: we should do something. And now the experts start to
33:00
Speaker 1: show up. But they show up like just hopelessly too late.
33:05
Speaker 1: Despite that, despite him being in there for five days
33:08
Speaker 1: and him being totally cut off now with no access
33:11
Speaker 1: to food or water or anything, they decided that they
33:15
Speaker 1: were still going to do everything they could to get
33:17
Speaker 1: him out, and the idea that was put forth that
33:20
Speaker 1: everybody agreed on was to construct a shaft directly down
33:27
Speaker 1: to him, I think, to his feet, and to get
33:29
Speaker 1: him out that way, to get the bowlder off of
33:31
Speaker 1: his foot, and to pull him back through the crack
33:33
Speaker 1: one way or another. But the problem was chucked. This
33:37
Speaker 1: was solid limestone and they couldn't use dynamite, right, Yeah,
33:40
Speaker 1: they couldn't use dynamite. Dave said they couldn't use heavy
33:44
Speaker 1: machinery at all. But I saw something that said that
33:46
Speaker 1: they brought in to steam shovels, like ten thousand dollars
33:52
Speaker 1: steam shovels. And at one point someone said, I think,
33:55
Speaker 1: in a not too happy way, it's going to cost
33:57
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars to dig out a dead body,
34:01
Speaker 1: because I think the writing was on the wall at
34:04
Speaker 1: that point. But at any rate, they did dig. A
34:07
Speaker 1: team of seventy five experts this time, built a five
34:12
Speaker 1: story shaft into the ground. And you know, these guys
34:16
Speaker 1: weren't in great shape either doing this hard work, right,
34:19
Speaker 1: But they eventually get down there and what they find
34:22
Speaker 1: is a dead Voyd Collins. Yeah, sadly, this was I
34:28
Speaker 1: think day fifteen, maybe when they finally reached him. I
34:31
Speaker 1: think eighteen days later is what it says, okay, And
34:35
Speaker 1: he had gotten caved in on day four or five.
34:38
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of people out there who
34:41
Speaker 1: were like, yes, he's he's already dead, but we should
34:43
Speaker 1: get him anyway, and some people were like, there's a chance,
34:46
Speaker 1: you know, but there there wasn't. Just there weren't high
34:49
Speaker 1: hopes for reaching him, and those hopes were not fulfilled anyway.
34:52
Speaker 1: When they found him the corner I believe said that
34:56
Speaker 1: he had he had died just three days before they
34:59
Speaker 1: reached him, but that esteemed doctor that the heiress to
35:02
Speaker 1: the International Harvester Fortune sent calculated more like five based
35:07
Speaker 1: on the condition of Floyd's body. Yeah, but they had
35:11
Speaker 1: the same problem that they had before, even in death.
35:16
Speaker 1: They couldn't get that boulder off of his leg, and
35:18
Speaker 1: they apparently it was enough of a problem to get
35:22
Speaker 1: him out that they all agreed that they should basically
35:24
Speaker 1: leave him down there, that this shaft or this this
35:28
Speaker 1: crevice that he was stuck in was now his grave.
35:32
Speaker 1: We bury people in the ground anyway. This was the
35:34
Speaker 1: ground burying him prematurely. Essentially, is I guess what the
35:38
Speaker 1: Kentucky reasoning was so um they everybody basically left. The
35:43
Speaker 1: media circus was over, the news reports kind of moved
35:49
Speaker 1: on to some other stuff, and the world just kind
35:53
Speaker 1: of they didn't forget about Floyd Collins, but they had
35:56
Speaker 1: other things that suddenly grabbed their immediate interest. Yeah, and
36:01
Speaker 1: you know, as a sort of a sidebar, before they
36:04
Speaker 1: found his dead body, there were rumors that started to
36:07
Speaker 1: circulate because again people were printing things that weren't quite accurate,
36:12
Speaker 1: and rumors started to circulate that that why am I
36:15
Speaker 1: saying circulate? Weird? That's so weird? Circulate I'll saying circulate.
36:20
Speaker 1: I like it. That's a new way to say it.
36:22
Speaker 1: I think you're just evolving the English language. Anyway, the
36:27
Speaker 1: rumors were that this was all a stunt to get
36:30
Speaker 1: people there to go to his cave. That Floyd was
36:33
Speaker 1: not trapped at all was sort of the main rumor,
36:36
Speaker 1: and that he was orchestrating a hoax to drive people
36:40
Speaker 1: there to pay money to go into the caves. There
36:44
Speaker 1: were other rumors that abounded that maybe people blocked access
36:47
Speaker 1: to the tunnel to delay the rescue, to kill him
36:51
Speaker 1: so that they could get that real estate for the
36:53
Speaker 1: cave because these cave wars were still going on, and
36:57
Speaker 1: this all culmanated and eventually a a court, a military
37:01
Speaker 1: tribunal even convene to see if this was in fact
37:05
Speaker 1: a hoax. And I think this is all going on
37:07
Speaker 1: before they finished the rescue. Yeah, I think this was
37:11
Speaker 1: happening while they were digging that limestone shaft by hand,
37:15
Speaker 1: essentially so, and they had plenty of time to do
37:19
Speaker 1: it and no new news. Right, there was nobody talking
37:21
Speaker 1: to Floyd anymore. So the newspapers were just printing whatever
37:24
Speaker 1: they could get their hands on that had anything to
37:26
Speaker 1: do with it, whether it was factual or not, which
37:28
Speaker 1: has made our efforts that much harder. Thank you, old
37:33
Speaker 1: timing newspapers. Right. Yeah, So B Doyle, who was the
37:38
Speaker 1: guy that he went into business with, put up a
37:40
Speaker 1: roadside sign that said, you know, two hundred yards away
37:44
Speaker 1: is the body of Floyd Collins, imprisoned in Sand Cave.
37:48
Speaker 1: And he would charge people fifty cents just to go
37:50
Speaker 1: down and stand at the mouth of the cave above
37:53
Speaker 1: the tomb. And I guess either pay their respects or
37:56
Speaker 1: just gaulk or whatever draw a picture of it. Whatever
37:58
Speaker 1: you did back then, as a tourist, right, Homer, And
38:02
Speaker 1: this was admirable and sad. He hit the road on
38:06
Speaker 1: the vaudeville stage to tell this story. And before like,
38:10
Speaker 1: when I first saw that, I was like, it didn't
38:11
Speaker 1: sound like a Homer Collins move right, seems like that's
38:15
Speaker 1: not the Homer I know. Yeah, he seems like a
38:17
Speaker 1: stand up either fourteen or twenty two year old. And
38:21
Speaker 1: he was doing it to raise money to get him
38:23
Speaker 1: out of there. He was like, I don't think that
38:24
Speaker 1: should be his final resting place, so I'm gonna do
38:27
Speaker 1: whatever I can to make enough money to fund a dig. Yeah.
38:31
Speaker 1: The way I thought was that he had vowed to
38:33
Speaker 1: Floyd that he would get him out of there, and
38:34
Speaker 1: even though Floyd died, that didn't that didn't release him
38:38
Speaker 1: from that vow in his mind. So that is pretty neat,
38:41
Speaker 1: you know, especially because I think that the public idea,
38:44
Speaker 1: or the later idea of him was that he had
38:46
Speaker 1: been doing it for just money and fame or whatever.
38:49
Speaker 1: But it worked, right, it did work. A couple months later,
38:52
Speaker 1: he was able to pay for his brother to be
38:55
Speaker 1: removed from that crevice, and so, as people do, they
39:00
Speaker 1: put Floyd back in the ground. But at this time,
39:02
Speaker 1: they put Floyd back in the ground in a much
39:04
Speaker 1: more appropriate place, the family cemetery, and they actually used
39:09
Speaker 1: to stalag tight or Mike, I can't remember as a
39:12
Speaker 1: headstone form, which is super neat and appropriate for a
39:16
Speaker 1: Floyd Collins headstone. I couldn't figure that out because I
39:18
Speaker 1: saw the headstone. Did they just crush it and make
39:22
Speaker 1: it into a headstone? I don't think that's the original
39:25
Speaker 1: headstone that you saw. If it was, if it was
39:28
Speaker 1: a color photo, I think that was the one that
39:31
Speaker 1: came later, Okay, But how would they make a headstone
39:34
Speaker 1: out of a stalactite anyway? Hey, those Kentucky people are industrious.
39:37
Speaker 1: They can do anything they put their minds to, except
39:40
Speaker 1: for get Floyd Collins out of the ground. Oh boy.
39:42
Speaker 1: So tourists kind of stopped coming around because a lot
39:47
Speaker 1: of the reason was because of this story. They were
39:49
Speaker 1: like this champion caver or died down there, Like, maybe
39:53
Speaker 1: we shouldn't spend our spring break caving in Kentucky anymore.
39:58
Speaker 1: And so they sold the Great His family sold the
40:01
Speaker 1: Great Crystal Cave, that initial cave that was gorgeous to
40:04
Speaker 1: a dentist named Harry Thomas, who said throwing an extra
40:08
Speaker 1: ten grand and that's a that's a lot of money
40:11
Speaker 1: back then, Yeah, especially if like you, Yeah, your ticket
40:14
Speaker 1: booth is bigger than your house. Yeah, so just keep
40:17
Speaker 1: that in mind before you prejudge the family for what
40:19
Speaker 1: they agreed to. He said, for an extra ten grand,
40:23
Speaker 1: if you'll let me exume his body and put it
40:25
Speaker 1: on display in a glass coffin in that cave in
40:29
Speaker 1: a you know, respectful way, then we got a deal.
40:35
Speaker 1: And they needed the money and they said yes. Yeah.
40:38
Speaker 1: So for more than sixty years Floyd Collins was in
40:44
Speaker 1: a glass coffin in the Great Crystal Cave. Beneath I
40:48
Speaker 1: believe that salagtite or slagmite headstone with the engraving greatest
40:53
Speaker 1: cave explorer ever known. And for the first at least
40:58
Speaker 1: fifteen year. I think if you're a tourist and you
41:02
Speaker 1: went to the Mammoth Caves, you probably made an extra
41:05
Speaker 1: trip to the Great Crystal Cave to go see Floyd
41:08
Speaker 1: collins super embalmed corpse through the glass window in his
41:14
Speaker 1: in his um casket right just playing there in the
41:18
Speaker 1: in the I think a chamber of the Great Crystal
41:20
Speaker 1: Cave and actually slight in show correction. The body did
41:25
Speaker 1: not stay there for that long uninterrupted. Okay. In March
41:30
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty nine, his body was stolen by grave robbers.
41:35
Speaker 1: Apparently their intent was to toss it in the East River,
41:38
Speaker 1: or I'm sorry, the Green River. They're gonna drive to
41:41
Speaker 1: New York, toss it in the East River. Yeah, they're
41:43
Speaker 1: gonna hit Cramer swimming. But it got caught in some
41:47
Speaker 1: underbrush and they couldn't get the body out. Doctor Thomas
41:50
Speaker 1: recovered the body in a field. Sal's leg so the
41:54
Speaker 1: leg that was trapped was no longer there and I
41:57
Speaker 1: don't think anyone knows where that leg ended up. But
42:00
Speaker 1: then he doctor Thomas reinterred it, this time in a
42:03
Speaker 1: chain locked up casket back in the cave. Yeah, and
42:07
Speaker 1: that's where he stayed for decades. The thing is, the
42:11
Speaker 1: National Park Service came in and bought the place in
42:13
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one. So yeah, for about thirty years you
42:18
Speaker 1: could go visit Floyd Collins body in the Great Crystal Cave.
42:21
Speaker 1: But once the MPs took over, they honored the family's
42:25
Speaker 1: wishes not by removing him from the cave, but by
42:29
Speaker 1: closing off public access to the cave. So for all
42:32
Speaker 1: intentsive purposes. He was no longer something for tourists to
42:36
Speaker 1: gawk at, even though he was still down in this cave,
42:39
Speaker 1: and the family didn't want him in there anymore. So
42:42
Speaker 1: it wasn't until nineteen eighty nine that I believe a
42:45
Speaker 1: court ordered his body to be removed and finally interred
42:50
Speaker 1: once again in the ground top side, and that's where
42:55
Speaker 1: he remains today. And I believe, Chuck that they put
42:59
Speaker 1: him in the ground on March twenty fourth, nineteen eighty nine,
43:02
Speaker 1: which is right around the anniversary of that internment, when
43:07
Speaker 1: this episode's coming out, I think, and right after my
43:10
Speaker 1: eighteenth birthday senior year of high school. Awesome, man, I'm
43:14
Speaker 1: surprised I didn't hear the news. Oh yeah, your birthday
43:17
Speaker 1: is coming up, isn't it IDEs of March it is.
43:23
Speaker 1: I'll never forget Chuck. So that's the story they ended up.
43:28
Speaker 1: Billy Wilder, famous film director and writer. I made a
43:32
Speaker 1: film called Ace in the Whole that basically was an
43:35
Speaker 1: indictment on the media surrounding this event, starring a youngish
43:41
Speaker 1: Kirk Douglas as the as not skeeter as as a
43:46
Speaker 1: bad newspaper reporter. Two things have you ever seen Witness
43:51
Speaker 1: for the Prosecution, written by Billy Wilder. I think I have,
43:55
Speaker 1: but it's been a long time. I just saw it
43:57
Speaker 1: for the first time the other day. It's one of
43:58
Speaker 1: the best movies I've ever seen. He's I mean, he's
44:01
Speaker 1: one of the best. You ever seen The Apartment, I haven't.
44:04
Speaker 1: I have seen Sunset Bolivard plenty of times. It's a
44:06
Speaker 1: great movie. To the Apartment's amazing. And that was Scott
44:09
Speaker 1: Ackerman's movie Crush Pick Oh, okay. And then the second thing, Chuck,
44:14
Speaker 1: is that there was actually a musical that was made.
44:16
Speaker 1: I think it first was put on in nineteen ninety six.
44:19
Speaker 1: It's called Floyd Collins. I'm surprised to see that. I
44:22
Speaker 1: have an impression it was in the same vein as
44:25
Speaker 1: that musical that the um how the South Park creators
44:30
Speaker 1: came up with about the cannibal in Colorado. Oh, the
44:34
Speaker 1: Book of Mormon, No, this was a different one. It
44:38
Speaker 1: was before Book of Mormon. I thought this was like
44:40
Speaker 1: a respectful thing. I didn't know it was a communic
44:42
Speaker 1: it was. It was, That's what I was gonna say.
44:44
Speaker 1: It was much more respectful, but it was. There was
44:47
Speaker 1: a lot of I think the basis of it was
44:48
Speaker 1: a comedy musical. Oh interesting, what's funny about this? I
44:52
Speaker 1: don't know. But the cool thing is is the guy
44:54
Speaker 1: who wrote them, the words and lyrics, I think the
44:58
Speaker 1: whole thing basically he got an hour in the cave.
45:03
Speaker 1: It was. It was opened up for him specially, and
45:06
Speaker 1: he did a lot of research and actually an analysis
45:09
Speaker 1: of the play by Scott Miller informed some of this episode.
45:14
Speaker 1: It was one of the sources we used. He did
45:16
Speaker 1: that much research on it. I think they were the
45:18
Speaker 1: ones that said his brother was fourteen. So I take
45:22
Speaker 1: a show. Really, you know, I'm conflicted. Who knows? I mean?
45:26
Speaker 1: But back then the difference between fourteen and twenty two is, well,
45:28
Speaker 1: it's half your life. Actually, I guess you got anything else?
45:33
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? R I p Floyd Collins. We're
45:35
Speaker 1: sorry that that happened to you, Floyd. And since Chuck
45:39
Speaker 1: says he's got nothing else, it means his time for
45:41
Speaker 1: listener mail. I'm gonna call this great naming convention. Hey guys,
45:48
Speaker 1: a longtime listener to the show. I'm finishing my masters
45:50
Speaker 1: in a couple of months, and I want to say
45:52
Speaker 1: thank you for keeping me entertained. Through a move to
45:55
Speaker 1: a new state, long hours of tedious work in my
45:57
Speaker 1: community campus. Every day. I had to stop listening in
46:00
Speaker 1: the library because I laughed out loud every episode. I
46:04
Speaker 1: really enjoyed your nap episode. My brother has been an
46:06
Speaker 1: advocate for coffee naps for years and coined a term
46:10
Speaker 1: that I think is pretty great. Did you see this?
46:12
Speaker 1: You're ready for this? No, I haven't seen that one yet.
46:14
Speaker 1: I'm not ready. No, the nappaccino, Oh that is good?
46:19
Speaker 1: How great is that? Not a napper myself, but I
46:22
Speaker 1: think everyone should use this term. That is from Madison Madison.
46:27
Speaker 1: Whoever your brother is, need to name your brother, but
46:30
Speaker 1: just tell him that that's pretty great. A pretty great
46:33
Speaker 1: title it is. It definitely beats the two I was
46:35
Speaker 1: working on, the flat nap yeah or the napata. Neither
46:42
Speaker 1: one of those is nearly as good as nappuccino. I'll
46:44
Speaker 1: tell you that the No. Number one. You know, what
46:48
Speaker 1: would happened? What would happen, Chuck? If Alpaccino took a nappuccino,
46:54
Speaker 1: you would say that was a great nap. Okay, If
46:59
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us like who
47:02
Speaker 1: Madison Madison did with some great information about your sibling.
47:07
Speaker 1: We want to hear it. You can email to us
47:10
Speaker 1: at stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should
47:17
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47:20
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47:24
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.