Black Cave, Arizona, April 1995: Thomas Edward Benning goes into a cave he knows, alone, with one electric lamp. Search teams go in several times and do not find him. Twenty months later, three cavers follow a trail of his things down a passage hidden behind a rock. Told from the National Speleological Society's accident report. Content note: this story ends in a death.

The case: Black Cave, Arizona, April 1995 (found 14 December 1996).

In April 1995, Thomas Edward Benning entered Black Cave, Arizona, on a solo trip, with no helmet and one electric miner's lamp. His wife reported him missing the next day. Search teams went into the cave several times. He was found on 14 December 1996 by three cavers: Bill Graff, Elizabeth Robb and Dale Green.

Chapters

0:00 A book of matches

0:37 Alone

1:07 Behind the rock

1:36 Light failure

2:09 The search

2:50 Twenty months later

3:49 Three more trips

4:12 What the record says

4:44 With their map

Sources

NSS, American Caving Accidents 1994–1995 (NSS News, December 1997, pp. 428–429): "April, Black Cave, Arizona: solo caving, lost, light failure, fatality"

Full transcript:

https://pub-413c1fc5107e439dbec7a1f1c322ed45.r2.dev/transcripts/ep07.vtt

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