Transcript
Mr. Ballin (0:00)
Today's stories are about how sometimes doing what you think is the right thing can actually be the most dangerous choice you can make. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place. Because that's all we do. And we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, the next time you're walking into a building and the follow button is right behind you, obviously following you into the building as well, make sure the second you go in, you turn around, make eye contact, and then you pull the door shut. Don't hold the door for them. Okay, let's get into our first story, which is called Tangled and Frozen.
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Mr. Ballin (1:49)
Learn more@adobe.com do that with Acrobat On a Saturday afternoon In February of 2011, 18 year old Michael Peary was 1000ft underground, crouched inside of a dark cave in Lafayette, Georgia along with four of his friends. As Michael looked around, his headlamp beam bounced off all the low hanging rocks and underground waterfalls and deep crevices and it all just kind of felt like some kind of dark and otherworldly planet down here. So this cave that they were in was a famous cave called Ellison. And Michael and his friends had driven over 400 miles from their college town in Gainesville to see it. Ellison was almost 12 miles of tunnels and shafts and crevices and thousands of cavers went through it every year. It was very popular. Now to be clear, caving as an activity was not really Michael's thing. He was a marketing major at the University of Florida and he mostly considered himself to be a pretty quiet person and liked studying or playing in his school band or volunteering with his church youth group. And so crawling through a tiny, pitch black, very claustrophobic hole hundreds of feet underground was not really his first choice for fun. But Michael was not there today for fun. He was there because his close friend, a guy named Grant Lockenbach, had suggested it. So he had said, okay, I'll go with you. Just now, Michael looked over to where Grant was sitting with his girlfriend, whose name was Carrie. And also they were sitting with two of their other friends. And the group of them were all looking through a backpack and sort of taking stock of the various pieces of gear that they had brought along with them. Now, they'd only entered Ellison just a few minutes ago, but already the group had stopped because there was something in this area that Grant really wanted to see. And when Grant wanted to do something, it usually happened. Hence why Michael capitulated and wound up in this cave because Grant wanted him to. And so, you know, like normal, he went along with it. So Grant, he was the president of their school's Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which Michael Kerry and the other two friends were also members of. And when Michael had joined the Fellowship, Grant had sort of taken him under his wing and told Michael that he had tons of potential. In fact, he said Michael had enough potential to be the next president of the Fellowship. And this had given Michael a ton of confidence because he really looked up to Grant. I mean, a lot of people did. Grant was just cool. He was a few years older than Michael and was basically like a six foot tall ball of positive energy who was always looking for some adventure to go off and do. Grant had been exploring caves as a hobby for the last three years. And he was actually really the only member of their group with any real caving experience. And it was actually this lack of experience amongst the other people that were with Grant, you know, including Michael, that was the reason they were going through an easier tunnel within Ellison that was basically a straight shot through the mountain and did not require much gear like rope or climbing equipment. It was like very beginner. But despite that, despite the low level of difficulty of the caving route they had chosen, they'd brought that stuff anyway, all that extra equipment. Because along this easier route, at the place where they were now stopped, was the entrance to a vertical shaft that Grant specifically wanted to climb down, even if he went alone. This shaft was 125ft deep. So think of like a 10 story building. That is how deep this pit went. But it was actually called the warm up pit because compared to the other, you know, deep pits in Ellison, it was nothing. Some were way deeper, like over 500ft. So this was definitely not beginner. This was an advanced thing to be doing, so Grant was gonna do it. But again, it's sort of a novice level, more advanced thing to be doing in this cave. Now, Michael watched Grant take the backpack with all the equipment in it over to this pit's entrance, which was basically just a very large hole in the ground that was over near this waterfall. And it was only about a few feet away from Michael. And so Michael walked over to Grant to help set him up, which involved attaching a climbing rope to the rocks that Grant could then use to lower himself into this pit. With this process is called rigging. And it took them a while since, really, Michael had to wait for Grant to instruct him on every step, Because Michael, again, is. Is not an experienced caver at all. But as Michael worked with Grant to get him all rigged up, he found himself peering into the pitch black hole. And as he looked down into what just felt like this bottomless abyss, he felt his stomach kind of flip. He was glad he had not promised Grant that he would go into the pit, too, because, you know, seeing it now up close in person, I mean, this was terrifying. He did not want to go into this thing, but Grant clearly did. He was excited. And so Michael and Grant continued to get Grant all set up. And then eventually, finally, when Grant was rigged, Michael heard the sound of something pretty heavy sliding off of a rock. And then moments later, there was this loud, echoing thud from deep inside of this hole, the warmup pit. For a moment, Michael was just confused. He didn't know what the sound was. You know, maybe it was a rock falling into the pit. But he looked over at Grant, and Grant had a very unhappy expression. And he was looking at the ground right next to the pit hole. And that was where their backpack had been with all the equipment inside of it, at least the equipment that they weren't using. And the backpack was not there anymore. The backpack had just fallen 125ft down into this pit. Now, obviously, this was not good. They did not want their backpack in this hole. But it was actually worse than just losing their equipment, potentially, because in that bag was their only cell phone that they had brought with them. And it was also where they had put all their ropes and other climbing gear. They'd taken some stuff out, you know, to get Grant rigged up here. But still, losing this bag felt really bad. Without its contents, they could easily get stranded or trapped inside of this cave. And they wouldn't be able to call or text anybody. They'd be stuck. And so Michael could actually feel himself starting to panic. But then Grant cut in and played it cool as always, and he said, look, it's no big deal. He would just go down there and he would get it. I mean, he was going into the hole anyway, and he was rigged up after all. So he would just go down and retrieve the bag. It would be fine. And then before Michael or, you know, Grant's girlfriend or the other friends could say anything, Grant just, you know, strapped on his harness and a pair of ascenders, which were climbing tools that would help him move down the rope in a controlled way. And he began sort of positioning himself to go down into this pit. And Michael just watched Grant in complete awe. I mean, Grant was so confident that he was able to basically make everybody else around him feel calm, too. And, I mean, Michael felt himself calming down just watching Grant. And this was not the only time that Grant had projected calm in the face of danger. During Grant's freshman year, he'd casually climbed up the exterior of one of their school's dormitories just to see if he could do it. And he did do it. And he also had joined the school's rotc, which is a military reserve training program, and learned how to jump out of planes. So he had skydived, you know, sort of a thrill seeking activity. And so this moment in the cave seemed like yet another example of why Grant was really such an incredible leader. And Michael found himself hoping that by the time he potentially took over as president of the fellowship, that he could be just as fearless as Grant. But for now, Michael watched as Grant very calmly lowered himself into the hole and then disappeared into the abyss below. And for the next few minutes, it was very quiet, and all Michael could hear was the sound of the waterfall. So he and Cary and the others just sort of talked amongst themselves and waited for Grant to call back up that he was down there and had successfully grabbed the backpack. And finally they did hear Grant and he did call out from somewhere down in the hole. But Michael couldn't really understand what Grant was saying because the waterfall that was kind of blasting nearby was really loud. And also Grant's voice echoed around the cave, which made it hard to tell what he was saying. So at this point, Michael and Kerry and the others were not worried. They figured that this was just an acoustics problem, not a safety problem. So Michael just walked over to the edge of this pit and kind of leaned over and just looked down. But you know, he couldn't see Grant. He was too far down and it was too dark. And so Michael called out asking Grant to repeat himself cause they couldn't understand what he was saying. And Grant did yell back. He clearly replied to Michael, but Michael still couldn't really make out what he was saying. However, this time there was something really different about the way Grant sounded. Again, even though he doesn't know what Grant's saying, one thing was definitely clear. Grant no longer sounded like the calm, cool and collected fearless leader that he normally was. He was talking really fast. He was repeating himself. He was saying something really, really quickly, very urgently. And even though again, it wasn't clear what it was, the tone was very clear. Grant was scared there was a problem. It's tax time. But for a lot of us, the old way of doing taxes is a lot Trying to book an appointment that's not the most convenient sitting in a waiting room with a stack of papers, emailing back and forth, wondering if they really get your situation. But this year, you're getting a major upgrade. Intuit TurboTax now has in person locations nationwide. You can meet face to face with a real tax expert and your documents get uploaded straight to your TurboTax app on the spot. And just like that, you're done. Your TurboTax expert works to get you every dollar you deserve, while you get real time notifications as you go about your day. 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