Well that's where our living nightmares live I meant the creatures for example when it completely black underwater then you saw such a light that it's not looking like a flashlight it meant there's a creature I forgot what's its name but it has a light that can tricked people and bite that person 😖😖😖😖
I just never understand why those dudes risked their lives and died for a damn skeleton.. he's gone. I understand the sentiment, but there's a reason the bodies on Everest stay there..it's not worth risking living people for a corpse. The parents should have told those guys it isn't worth it..i don't remotely understand why you would do that
Or you could teach them to approach things rationally and intelligently so they can create and live their version of a fulfilled life. Instilling fear in people for whatever reason is plain wrong and doing that to children is crippling for them in more ways than you would think.
Ugh seriously. I have thalassophobia, fear of open ocean/deep water, so practically anything you could add water to freaks me out so bad. Caving is also freaky, not phobia levels, but still very uncomfortable to think about, so cave diving stories makes my anxiety skyrocket, I'll even start feeling like something is about to grab my feet even tho I'm on nice, solid and dry land. Yuck.
Ive kind cave dived it was without scuba gear so freediving 7 meters down a cave. It was the most peacfull ive ever felt. Ut was in a hotspring crystal clear water everything was deathly silent and so calm
@@Robert_H_Diver I like hearing that. You’re right. We “see though a glass, darkly” after watching too much of this stuff. Good to balance it out with comedy or something. Saying that though, I’ve never felt like that’s a fun thing to do for me. I’m fascinated by caves and hidden underground tunnels etc. so thanks to all the people who let me see inside places I’m never going to go to, you’re all bonkers, but you do you (and I’ll watch, lol, not in a creepy way!)
Facts. I'd also like to add the caveat that if you need to strap on 50+ pounds of gear to survive in an environment you should probably _REALLY_ think about your life choices thus far. Just sayin' 😁👍
@G Robinson if you don’t know something or where something in the ocean thousands of people could die so technically there saving a lot of people lives discovering these places
I went scuba diving in a cave once. Never ever again. I did about 4 years of regular scuba diving in shallow waters for pleasure, where you can see corals and fish and things. I enjoyed it, so I decided to try cave diving. My instructor took us to a beginner cave that you could pay to get taken out to, for tourists. I was never in any danger. At any moment I could have just come to the top in a hurry, it was shallow waters, short caves. But, the whole time I was aware of all the ways I could die in there. Not fun.
Yeah, cave diving is terrifying and while i'm curious, i'd never feel comfortable despite doing it despite being decent at navigation knowing that there's pretty much a random chance even in the safest caves, that no matter how skilled you are, there's always a chance that you could end up trapped beyond help or drown. And it's clearly a very terrifying way to die. Getting stuck, randomly feeling ill, water pressure, cavings, equipement malfunctions, decompression sickness, getting caught on something, getting lost, hell i'm sure some caves have some dangerous animals or whatever in them. And that's not even all of it.
@@Dice-Z just watching the film The Descent which is about ordinary caving is enough to put me off doing anything more dangerous than climbing the stairs in my house.
Yeah. Seems like anyone who does caving or underwater caving should make it a point to train their mind to not panic and to think logically in stressful situations.
@@katatat2030 I would imagine so, and in such situations you should never deviate from the plan especially, if you are someone else's lifeline. Shane should never have followed Mike, as was the plan; he put Mike's life in more danger by doing so. It was a selfish move which cost him his life and luckily his recklessness did not cost others theirs.
Speaking from experience, panic breathing during SCUBA dives is and can be fatal. Try running a half mile and when you’re done, immediately only breathe in and out of a straw. That’s what it feels like when your panicked underwater, even with a rebreather. It’s just not the same feeling as grabbing a breathe of fresh air on land. Hard to explain.
YES. I was trying to do my „fully flooded mask“ skill to get my scuba diver license and started hyperventilating. I was completely safe only 12m underwater with my instructor right there and still managed to panic. Yeah so much for my Diving career 🤣😅
I panic just swimming. Once when my daughter was in her teens ( last year) I went under water a little bit in deep water , and panicked in Folsom lake and we were really far out. She and one of my sons claimed me and had to float me on my back all the way to shore. I couldn’t do anything I was frozen. I would have died if they weren’t there. Especially my daughter.
The cave stories are my favorite because it’s something I’ll NEVER do, so it’s not stressful to me. The hiking stories, home invasion, and weird occurrences while driving; terrifying!
Right! I know for a fact I will never ever ever do that, but for some reason dying in a tiny underwater cave is one of my biggest fears. I'll never put myself in that situation, but I'm still mortified that it's going to happen to me somehow
@@hotfishfromsharktaleVSauce has a video here on UA-cam called “What is the scariest thing” where he analyzes common fears to find out which is the worst….it’s suffocation.
aimreyne I think if the person who has died, even a young person, could be asked, they would not want anyone else to die looking for their body. They aren’t there anymore. Depending on one’s beliefs, they are in heaven, or resting in peace. To lose another life seems a terrible waste to me, and causes the sorrow of terrible loss to ripple out to another family.
@@chandlerthoma9173 hell nah. I have enough fun watching these videos that I do not need to go get in my fat ass stuck in something because I thought it would be fun.
Dave Shaw was truly a hero, His fighting spirit made sure to complete what he had set out to do. Bring Dion home. I wish that story was more known. A man vs nature, man's soul persisit story. God bless them all. Glad Dion's parents got to finally have a proper burial.
Honestly I don’t get it. I think it’s dumb-why take such a risk just to retrieve a dead body. Why is having possession of a dead corpse so important to some people? He’s dead, bringing his body back won’t bring him back, and I can only imagine the state of the body after being underwater for so long. It’s sure as hell nothing you’d want to see. I never understood and never will understand why people place so much value in a “proper” burial. Now he’s dead too, his family grieving, and all for what? To try to retrieve an already dead body? Fucking stupid. Honestly a lot of “heroic” actions are stupid af, but this takes the cake. Why glorify this shit? How about just leave bodies where they are in situations like this?
@@katamine11 This comment says a lot about you as a person. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a family to suddenly lose a child and not even be able to grieve and give their final goodbyes to him? Regardless of religious reliefs, funerals exist to give people one last chance to say their goodbyes and be able to come to peace that their loved ones are gone forever. What Shaw did may not have been the most logical and rational decision to make but it doesn't matter because what he did to bring Dion's body back must have meant a lot to Dion's family. Besides, I would rather be a dumb hero than be a rational dickhead. If you die as a dumb hero, at least you'll have people who will honor you for your bravery and the sacrifice you made. If you die as a rational dickhead, people will probably celebrate that you're gone and they'll remember you for being a dickhead and not for being rational lol.
The other thing is that Dion’s body was just that: his body - the head fell off and was left behind. I do think Dave Shaw was brilliant and pushed the limits, but I wished he hadn’t pretended that this rescue was only for Dion’s parents. Maybe he felt he was their only option, but unfortunately he thought he was invincible.
@katamine11 // I couldn’t have said it better myself, not sure how you don’t have more likes. I guess people just think that throwing your life away for sentimentality is somehow a good or noble thing
As a diver, the disorientation that occurs of just being under water is unreal. Throw panic on top of that, it can be a disaster. Breaks my heart to think of the terror these divers felt.
When I was 17 I was at a house party in the woodish area where I have grown up and lived my entire life u till that point. Someone yells cops and my stupid ass runs even though I didn't drink (I didnt like it) It was a GIANT bust considering it was mid southern NH northern MA area. I was holding my friends hand but behind the house was a small river with steep banks. There were 2 apartments in a T sort of shape and the gentleman who lived in the back apartment turned off his lights in an attempt to give us all a chance. This was right as Dozens if not more kids were hitting the embankments of the small river. I was in flip flops as it was May but the nights got cold. Stumbling I let my friends hand go and tell her to run. I hit a patch of really dense pine saplings. It was pitch black, I mean no moon, dense clouds and it had rained earlier. No houses, cities or lights. I pull myself blindly through this patch of pine saplings in an army crawl and blindly start to sneak my way through the woods alone just seeing cops flashlights here and there, and I follow what I know is a porch light. I thought I had went back and right from where I was putting me on road A. But I had actually gone back and left and then back again! I had to climb a tree to see the shape of the mountain to get my bearings. And this was on land in a place I grew up my whole life. It still blows my mind to this day how I got so disoriented. So I can imagine it can be all too w6asy to have this happen under water.
@@Aw-ns1qx You are a very good writer! Your story had me on the edge of my seat. It's crazy how things happen to us and as time passes and we look back and it seems almost surreal. I agree with you 100%, it can be just as disorienting on land when you have to make quick decisions under stress. Thank you for sharing your story. 😊
and this right here, is the reason i dont go in water that i cant see the bottom or pull my ass out by walking up those beautiful stone steps at the 3 foot end lmao. im TERRIFIED of bodies of water. ill go jetsking, on a 3 seater that i cant fall off of or tip over, because im so scared of falling in and being eaten by the lake sharks i KNOW EXIST! you cant tell me otherwise, lol. but for real... bodies of water scares me like nothing else on earth, and knives, not a fan of that either
@@hollyshaw-elliemae SAME! I almost drowned when I was about 5 in the ocean at Ocean City Maryland because my dad always took me out but there was a huge wave that crashed over me and him even though he tried holding me above it and obviously I didn't understand to hold my breath so I screamed as the wave hit. Bodies of water, knives, and people in costumes are my BIGGEST fears.
Parker and Bills story horrified me because unlike most people in these cave diving videos, they werent being stupid. They took so many precautions and were fully prepared, even with spare air tanks. Heartbreaking
I knowwwww 😩 theirs might be the worst.. nothing you can do to prevent that.. nothing. Maybe a second exit?! But what if two cave in at once 🤣 SCREWED!
As dorky as it sounds, the "bonding over the underwear" is something I relate to. I used to do my mom's hair, and I would put a little butterfly clip in her hair after I'd brushed and braided it. After she passed away, the crematorium and funeral home sent us her urn, and attached to it was the butterfly clip. Completely blew me away and for just that brief moment of seeing it for the first time since she'd died, it felt like things were normal again.
@@Cognitoman My dad past away last year, it is painful yes. But, my dad is looking at me from the beyond, I have to stay strong. God bless you bro, you will have a bright future
“Cave diving” two words that forever will be a hard nope for me. Dark, deep, claustrophobic water…nah…I don’t even sneak into the hotel pool at night. 😂
You're right even a pool alone at night...I'm flipped if a piece of seaweed touches my leg ,when I 'm only waist deep, in full view on a glorious day...
What if it’s an endless cycle like one person goes after a body, dies then someone else goes after their body, dies then some goes to get that body, dies and it’s just an endless cycle
My favorite thing about Mr. Ballen is how good he is about describing the story in the layout and I can so vividly see and imagine these things in my brain.
True but sadly just shows he a really good liar watch dive talk they interview the guy who was actually down there and this guy is actually making up lies just to get views what a fake 😂😂😂 look up dive talk react to Mr. Ballon’s claustrophobic horror
MrBallen: If you have claustrophobia you should probably not watch this Me who have extreme claustrophobia and a very irrational fear of the ocean: meh I'm sure it's fine
@@MrBallen “It’s not just the story, it’s he who tells it” -Stephen King You got me on this one, I’ve been binging for 3 days now. This last story was gut wrenching, there were tears running down my face before I even knew I was crying.
a couple REALLY interesting details I learned yesterday about your first story of the divers if anyone is interested: Shane got stuck in the cave because he had a completely different set of gear, his tanks were all on his back, while Mike had some kind of super nice set of tanks that were mounted on his side. they can somehow turn the carbon dioxide you exhale back into oxygen for you to inhale, meaning he was able to fit into smaller holes and also didn't have to worry about running out of oxygen. He actually took off Shane's Gear off of his body when he found him even though he didnt take the gear or the body, but he was an absolute pro. He knew that it was his gear that got him stuck, so he took it off because he knew it was unmapped and that the people who rescued him would be able to just grab the body and get the hell out of there. He had such faith in this technology that he was able to unhook Shane's equipment, even though he knew he would have to spent a couple more hours underwater even after he got out to prevent decompression sickness (the bends). and he was successful. I saw clips of an interview he did and I truly believe he is a hero. Shane had a shit ton of experience too, it's such a sad story.
Yeah, I saw Mike Young give an interview on Dive Talk - another UA-cam channel - where they were reacting to this exact video, and while I'm sure mrballen is just recounting someone else's incorrect account of events, it's still sad how far off from what really happened it is. I'm going to link the correction of the story by Mike Young, Shane's dive partner, here: ua-cam.com/video/1Pq9tBQDUe8/v-deo.html A summary of Mike's statement for those who don't want to watch an hour-long video on another channel(but I do recommend watching, it's fascinating): Shane and Mike were both planned to be in the water that day(which was several days into their exploration, so they were already somewhat familiar with the cave that they'd explored so far), so Shane diving was him doing nothing less than what had been planned in advance. There was a restriction - a place so tight divers have to pull themselves through it - at 160~ feet deep that only Mike had been able to wiggle through so far; Shane was planning to accompany him that far. There were no real tunnels down there; rather, it was more of a vertical shaft full of fallen boulders from a cave-in that had gaps between the rocks big enough for the divers to wiggle through. (Mike compared it to squeezing through the spaces around tightly packed cars.) Mike was leading the way, not Shane. When they reached the restriction at 160~ feet where Shane was supposed to stop, Mike told him to wait there via hand signals (confirmed by GoPro footage, even) and then headed through. For some reason - Mike theorizes it was because they'd reached the end of the cave and Mike was down there to pull the line they were following, meaning Shane wouldn't get another chance to be down there, and he wanted to see the final parts of the cave - Shane followed Mike through the restriction, something Mike didn't realize at the time since it was happening behind him. The problem was that after that 160~ restriction, it was just an endless series of MORE restrictions after it every few feet. And Mike was wearing side-mounted tanks, making it easier for him to squeeze through these restrictions, while Shane was wearing back-mounted tanks that would make it harder to squeeze through narrow spaces. (Shane was only expected to have to go through one restriction at 140 feet, which he'd cleared the previous day with his back-mounted tanks, so he wasn't really ideally equipped for taking on a whole bunch of them.) Mike turned back before he cut the line (which he says saved his life) because he decided he wanted a picture of the end of the cave with Shane's GoPro. But when he headed back, he ran into Shane almost immediately, who'd passed numerous restrictions (Mike guessed 5) but eventually gotten wedged. Mike actually managed to get him unwedged and turned around, even though Shane was panicking, and sent him back up. While Mike was following Shane up the line, he suddenly lost the line when it was jerked out of his hands(at which point he panicked himself and had to calm down for a bit), and he had to find his way up by feel (there was no visibility due to silt) until he finally found the line again. At that point Mike felt Shane's hand frantically grasping around, coming through a hole about the size of a volleyball; he'd reached a hole he couldn't fit through and was panicking. Mike felt around and found a larger hole to the side that Shane would be able to get through, and reached through that hole to grab Shane's shoulder and guide him to the larger hole. (One can assume Shane was suffering tunnel vision in his panic, and was freaking out about the one hole he found to the surface not being big enough for him; he didn't have the presence of mind to find the larger one on his own.) Once Mike managed to show Shane the hole, Shane - still in full blown panic - starts crawling out of that hole, going underneath Mike to do it - but in his rush to get out, without letting Mike get out of the way, Shane wedges the both of them, head to feet. Shane obviously just panics harder at this and starts kicking hard as he tries to move forward and free himself, but since his feet are at Mike's head, Mike gets kicked a lot. (Shane actually kicks Mike's arm hard enough against the ceiling that he breaks a piece of Mike's equipment that keeps his dry suit from flooding, so Mike's suit is now filling with 52 degree F water.) Eventually Mike managed to clear enough space for Shane to get through, although Shane pulled off one of Mike's fins on his way. Mike basically falls into the hole Shane was just in halfway, then decides it's more feasible to just go into the hole fully, turn around, and pull himself out. He does this, but he's lost the line again because he went off to the side to help Shane. Mike has to take a moment to calm himself again, because by this point everything is definitely a mess. But he climbs out of the hole, and he finds his lost fin, and that little victory reassures him that he's definitely going to make it because at that point ANY victory would feel major. He starts working his way up by feel again, until he reaches a place where there's some visibility, which lets him visually find the line again. He could feel the line moving, because Shane was holding onto the line himself at some point on it. He's at a tie-off point in the line, where two lines are tied together. But he goes past the tie-off to follow the line up, and realizes the line's no longer moving - meaning Shane is on the lower line, BELOW Mike. Mike, finding random ways back up through the rocks without the guidance of the line, passed Shane at some point, so he's now ahead of him. Mike immediately turns around and goes back down for Shane. But then suddenly the line stopped moving, and Mike knew at that moment that Shane hadn't just let go of the line - that Shane had died. The GoPro footage apparently showed that what happened is that Shane, in his panic, was hyperventilating and overworking his rebreather(which functionally provides infinite air, but if you breathe too fast on it you build up CO2 faster than it can recycle it into oxygen, which is what was happening with Shane). So Shane switched to his backup tanks of air, which are finite, and when he ran out of air on those he was too panicked to think to switch back to the rebreather and drowned. Mike did go back for him and confirmed he was gone, then took off his gear to make body retrieval easier and tried to pull him up right then and there - but he quickly realized that with a flooded suit and tons of decompression time already on the clock, fighting to get Shane's body back right at that time was a poor choice, so he left him there for later retrieval. It's kind of incredible how the real story is even more dramatic and fraught with danger and drama than the misinformed retelling. If watching Dive Talk has taught me anything, it's that when it comes to professional, experienced cave divers, everything they do is INCREDIBLY deliberate and carefully planned. Most diving horror stories you hear are either 1) inexperienced divers biting off way more than they can chew and dying as a result, 2) experienced divers making poor decisions(because even the best can make bad calls sometimes), or 3) accidents that can't really be foreseen or planned for even by the most experienced divers, such as serious equipment failure(it has to be serious because they almost always carry spares and redundancies for everything they can). Obviously, Shane's death was caused by #2 - he deviated from the dive plan with equipment that wasn't right for what he was trying to do(because no one had planned for him trying to do it), and once things really started going wrong he wasn't able to control his panic as well as Mike could. (Lord knows Mike had almost as many things go wrong for him as Shane, but Mike was able to ground himself each time he panicked and that clearly seemed to make all the difference.) Anyway, I know this is a massive wall of text, but I just wanted to put the more accurate version here in the comments for people to potentially see if they're interested. No shame on mrballen for getting hold of an incorrect version of events, I'm sure there's dozens of mistold versions of stories out there and I know he always tries to get his facts correct. But it's probably a lot harder for mrballen to go right to the eyewitness in this case than it was for Dive Talk to do so.
Shane was trying to fake it till he made it while he made it all right onto UA-cam as a casualty edit: I probably shouldn’t of wrote that then again Shane could probably stay home that day so I like John what do you guys think about inverted Johnny
@@lymmea thank you for that. I've found this channel gets things wrong A LOT. I'm going to be generous and assume it's just poor research rather than being intentionally misleading. Either way, I wish he would work on it bc he really is a great storyteller. But I guess there's more incentive for YTers to pump out content quickly than having fewer, but more accurate videos.
@@anonmouse6337 For what it's worth, I've actually found mrballen to care more about accuracy than most UA-camrs - he announces when he's not sure of a story's veracity or source, he corrects himself on mistakes he's made, and he seems to go out of his way to do a lot of research on his stories. I think the problem isn't a lack of diligence or effort on his part, so much as that sensational stories are likely to have multiple versions of greater or lesser accuracy out there, and it's not always easy to know what *really* happened unless you can actually talk to someone directly connected to the case. In Dive Talk's case, they know Mike Young and share a hobby with him, and they were able to reach out to him and get the story straight from his own mouth - mrballen didn't really have that opportunity. (And, to be fair, until the incorrect version came out, there may not have been much call for Mike to comment publicly on a distressing experience he'd been through.) A thing I have observed is that mrballen tends to cite already existing accounts, though - sometimes quoting direct phrases from articles, even. (Which is...maybe a little dubious, I'd prefer he stick to telling stories wholly in his own words rather than taking other people's without credit, but I digress. I've binged his channel extensively, so that might be old behavior he's already stopped doing; I'm not trying to drag him for it here.) So I can almost guarantee that this inaccurate account didn't come from mrballen himself, but is him recounting a *pre-existing* inaccurate account that exists somewhere - and I'm sure he had no idea it got a lot of details wrong. I think Mike mentioned that he and his crew only talked to the local authorities, and who knows who they talked to; what I take from that is that before Mike's interview on Dive Talk, there was probably only very fragmented factual information floating around, and they coalesced - either via lying, rumor, exaggeration, or guesswork - into a very false account over time. And without a true account to counteract it, that started getting circulated as the only account of the incident there was for people to find...and mrballen found it. Without any contradicting stories, how could he know it wasn't true? Obviously, misinformation is misinformation, and I do wish every now and then mrballen would do an extra little video on the channel where he clears up misunderstandings or inaccuracies about stories like this when more information comes to light after his videos come out. Just so he can reach his audience with any necessary corrections or retractions and show his commitment to telling the real stories. I know he's friendly with the Dive Talk guys, so I imagine he knows about that Mike Young interview. Just because I think he did as much due diligence as possible when researching his stories doesn't mean it's not important to go back and clear things up if mistakes managed to creep in anyway. But I have to acknowledge the difficulty of being able to sort out What Really Happened when researching stories like this, and I do respect the effort I'm sure he puts in. I just think the occasional retrospective video would be a good answer to the fact that mistakes will happen.
@@lymmea I guess it's a flaw in the way he presents these stories. The POV accounts are really engaging, but he can't say stuff like "some reports claim blah blah while others report xyz". I get that it's difficult to find the truth among so many different versions of the story, but I think Mrballen should step up his research game as his channel grows, and especially as he starts making decent money from it (and can therefore afford to hire a research assistant).
As a cave diver, I know some of the divers and have dove with them. I was once stuck in a cave after a Boulder got dislodged and fell on my back pinning me. I remember it taking everything inside me not to panic. One thing a cave diver always brings with them is a reel of line so you always have a line to the surface to follow. I have been in zero vis and agree you can get confused if you doubt your gear! Thanks for covering these stories
I have zero experience with cave diving. But from what I've read, panicking is the worst thing you can do underwater because it clouds your judgement, and more often than not your judgement is the only thing that keeps you from drowning.
@@as7river Well panicking in any dangerous situation is bad. Say you’re in a packed nightclub to see a band play. They decide to use pyrotechnics in their show and it ignites a part of the polyurethane (highly flammable) sound insulation. Most of us will think a sprinkler system will kick on and take care of it, but there isn’t. After 30-40 seconds, the fire begins to spread a lot faster on the stage and smoke is starting to bank down from the ceiling. By now, Most of the crowd is going to panic and head for the door they came in from instead of looking for another door to get out, and a stampede results and blocks the main exit, while the stage area approaches flashover and the smoke layer rapidly descends to head level... ok I’ll stop now, but if you don’t panic, and assess the situation, you’ll realize there’s a fire exit across the room.
@@Anthonybrother Shaw did fulfill his mission. Did you not listen to the video? Or are you partially paying attention because you're so distracted & anxious to display your a s s h ò l i s h n è s š online?
@@morten8586 I've become entangled in fast moving water and that type of panic comes on fast. It happened to me in 15 feet of water. You have to be able to control your fear in all situations. In an emergency situation if you loose you shit all is lost. Stay Safe.
@@srccde well, not really completely conscious. If you go far down enough you run out of oxygen which makes you feel like drunk. So, your whole perception is pretty much distorted.
For the fact that most of these divers know what they are doing and are well prepared, yet tragedies happen. That really shows how dangerous the unknown is. RIP those who lost their lives.
@@meghanmisaliar that was said about all the people that ventured off into the sea to search for the Americas. We know of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci because they were successful in their voyages. But there were thousands of sailors that tried the same and failed. That's not a death wish, that's a passion for the unknown. Same can be said for the discovery of Australia, Antarctica, Greenland, the Moon, etc. It's that curiosity that set us apart from the Naenderthals, and the Naenderthals died precisely because of that; they didn't explore.
@@as7river I definitely don't think explorers can be compared to divers. Diving has such a small margin of error. Explorers had a lot more leeway in case things went wrong.
The majority of accidents happen from mistakes plain and simple. Pushing their limits, or ignoring safety protocol. Very few of these tragedies happen when everything is done right.
@@riptaway he basically did retrieve it because both of their bodies floated up to the ceiling of the cave and were able to be taken out by divers at a shallower depth. He still accomplished his task. He died doing what he loved and I'm sure would do it again if he could.
Things I’ve learned with Mr. Ballen: don’t go scuba diving on caves, don’t go camping alone, don’t go hiking alone and if you think your house is haunted, it probably is.
I am a big Claustrophobia patient...like I can't even hug someone for more than 5 minutes...at night...even my blacket chokes me...like I will fall asleep and suddenly I can't move a signal muscle and my breathing get less and less..until i make the courage to swing my hand really hard and take my blacket out..i won't be able to breath..this is why I am scared to sleep..and now I am an night owl..I don't sleep at night alone..my parents are scared..I might die by my sleep struggling without air...tbh...I really hate this...but we should always be positive 💜💙🧡
A few things that no one should do: - Tell your significant other to calm down in an argument - do not knifehand unsuspecting civilians as you attempt to help them - do not go cave diving. Ever.
Gigglesnort. Funny cause it's true! Whenever someone tells me to calm down, I ask if they wanna put the shovel away or keep digging?! (it takes a lot to get me riled, so once I'm to that point I've already stayed calm as long as I could... and 98% of time my frustrations are completely justified) 🤣✌️
Two of the most dangerous forms of diving, are cave diving, and ship wreck diving. In his panic, Shaw could've easily and quickly breathed all of his air down to zero. It is an effect of panicking.
it’s always comforting when he talks about what the people were thinking when the events happened because then we know that they’re going to survive 🧍♂️
I was wondering how he had all of those details on the second story. It did not seem like anyone was going to survive. I kept expecting him to say he held up his sign and said what are we going to do and the other responded we're going to die.
So Dave made a promise to Dion’s family that he would retrieve his body and still managed to do that even though he lost his own life. That is so damn sad! Dave was a legit hero!
"If you suffer from claustrophobia, this is probably not the video for you." Me, who has crippling claustrophobia and panic disorder: "I live on the edge, proceeeed😈"
A fact about the dive that shaw performed to retrieve dion that blows my mind is one minute at that depth meant 1 hour of decompression. Which is absolutely insane.
The diver in the second story ended up saving his buddy even though he didn't make it... if he hadnt dug his way out so recklessly, the other guy mightve drowned too. It really sucks that he was so close, though.. I wonder how much air he had left before he was desperate enough to try it
This is probably a small detail, but i love the fact that you didn't add any "creepy" music as so many of these channels do. Just telling the story without adding stuff for cheap emotional shock makes it much more humane and real.
I’ve seen several versions of this story before, but Mr. Ballen tells it the best. The others made the parents sound selfish cuz they said the parents asked Dave to retrieve their son. In reality, Dave was the one who told them he was going to bring their son back to them since he had already found him. I love how Ballen talks about the victims & provides their background. It makes the story feel more personal.
dude the fact that you can read these stories and describe them in such intricate detail (even with your own flair) is such an amazing ride that you take us all on, cheers
Because of UA-cam: No cave diving.. Never online date. Cautious of National Parks. Always carry bear spray. Don’t let anyone take a life insurance policy out on me. 😬
I discovered your channel 4 days ago. Brilliant is the word for your storytelling. I enjoy every single episode. In this episode with Shaw saving Dion, again my jaw dropped open. I have shed several tears from some of your episodes, I also am glad how vigilant I am with my safety and surroundings. Thank you so much for occupying my time with great info. I loved how the story ended with Shaw and Dion coming to the surface together, I was astonished. Incredible. Well done MrBallen.
Uh mine is definitely burning to death! I'll take water over fire any day!! Obviously they're 𝘢𝘭𝘭 horrifying but idk, imo claustrophobic drowning doesn't seem 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦 as gruesome.
Really odd but I feel an insane need to come up for air while watching these videos, they're that immersive. Mr Ballen, you are an incredible story-teller.
Contrary to the general tone of media these days, there are so many stories of heroism and sacrifice by human beings for other people. It's a really good thing to read about those. Restores one's faith in humanity
And yesterday, I watched Mr Ballen video about friends went to NY to party night, and killed one of their friend, and this one died for some one he have never met before. That's Good and evil, Love vs hate!!!😥💔
My late husband was certified as a SCUBA diver at the Blue Hole. He collected stories about it over the years. He went on to train as a Rescue Diver. We went out some amazing dive trips during our years together. He taught me so much 💗
@@bigmonkeyman45 not really sign language but some handsigns for the most important things. For complex conversations we carry wetnotes. Wetnotes are just little waterproof notebook with a pencil.
I really appreciate you establishing mrballen foundation for abuse victims I'm a surviver of extreme abusive violent marriage several of them n it truly touches my heart how concerned n caring u r for them u r so amazing mrballen ❤
Shane was a Navy Dive Instructor and a Advanced Scuba Instructor with over 20 years experience, and yet even something like that can happen to some of the best. Wow!
Honestly his ego got the best of him. At 250 meters you find a corpse you document it and leave it there. There is no reason to risk a living breathing soul over a corpse
My buddy Greg Moondog Mooney won an Oscar for “The Cove”, but his main job is mixing the proper amounts of gas for deep dives and body retrieval. We go fossil hunting, and we were near a nice ridge once that would have a lot of recent erosion, meaning many Meg teeth would have fallen loose. Before I could proceed, Greg grabbed my wrist, stopping me and later telling me “That erosion is not from weather, it’s current. Another five meters and you would have been sucked into the same cavern I recovered a father and son from.” The only way to exit is by having a line anchored outside, and once inside it is hand to face black, you’re going from murky to black water. Scary stuff bro
I seriously hope this makes it to a video... not for any bad reason, but simply because for reasons unknown to me I’m fascinated by this kind of stuff...
Christina Burke not cave diving particularly but hell I’ll try anything once so long as it’s within reason BUT... I’m talking more of having a fascination with the stories MrBallen talks about not actually trying something he talks about. Also I highly recommend never trying to discouraging people from doing things they are fascinated by or highly interested in... regardless of how dangerous, there is always an er of danger with virtually anything, sure some mite be much higher than others but regardless people still do it, so instead is discouraging people why not advocate for them to be as safe as possible when doing something potentially life threatening? Hell in the boat racing world when an accident happens we don’t go “OH NO! We are never going to race again!” No in fact we go “is the driver ok? 👌🏻. Ok then let’s review the footage frame by frame and see what we can do to make this less of a risk/possibly!” And simultaneously if it weren’t for those whom take the time to do said things than we wouldn’t have half of the incredible things we do in this world!
@@makinwaves8147 yep, you can definitely do some intermediate cave diving with no issues and it’s absolutely breathtaking. There are risks with every outdoor activity. Hunting, hiking, fishing, cycling, running, diving, skydiving, you name it, someone has died doing it. So the guy discouraging prior, don’t listen to him. But if a sign does say “Experienced only” in a cave, they’re usually talking about literal weeks of planning, serious knowledge, etc. I won’t even go black water diving again, there is no difference. You are swimming down between dead trees and more, no different than a cavern and you can’t see a thing in front of you. The only purpose was to well preserved Meg teeth, and I found better in the shallows.
When I was 10 years older I watched Inner Sanctum and decided “huh I’m never ever gonna go diving” Now I’m 20 and after watching almost all of your videos and 80% of them being diving horror stories, I stand firm with my decision I made when I was 10
It didn't even take me watching inner sanctum. I'm an excellent swimmer and I wanted to take scuba diving in college so I did but the very first time down in the pool I couldn't even be seen by the other divers because of the multitude of bubbles from my panicked over breathing...😆 Last dive for me. I'm claustrophobic and the mask in addition to the other equipment made me feel trapped under the water
Good on those divers forcing themselves through the blocked entrance. I think if it were me I probably would have just wrote on my whiteboard "I guess this is it. It was nice knowing you."
Ugh my heart broke watching those video, literally crying right now. My son dives and he’s certified to use nitrox, and i pray that he never dives this far down. I pray for both these families. 🥺
Most all of these diving tragedies could have been avoided. Usually due to someone pushing beyond their training. Chance of some freak accident is very low.
Me too. Really feel for the people that passed. The risk of cave diving is obvious. I'm not that high risk to explore these places. Y'all have fun with that.
A billion dollars you going in that hole. You may be ah hell no now but I guarantee if you knew that money was guaranteed in your bank account you going in.
Mrballen is very instrumental in saving lives by these cautionary, true life stories. I humbly thank you. You're more than just a veteran. You are a saver of people and preventing torture.
@@MrGermor81 Some do enjoy it. I think most of it should be done by robots, or perhaps we can invent robot guides that come along with us and have extra air and emergency services contact ability + GPS.
I'm so claustrophobic that I literally had chills when you're talking about ppl bein stuck hundreds of feet under water in some random cave....helllll NO.
Me too! I was super uncomfortable and I became full of anxiety just from listening to the stories, especially the 1st one. Hearing that the diver panicked before he died terrified me because that's exactly what I would've done. I actually had to pause the video for a few minutes during the 1st story to calm my nerves down a little which may seem ridiculous to some, but that is how claustrophobic I really am.
Shaw did exactly what he told Dion’s parents he’d do. Wish things would of ended differently for him but he kept his word even after death. Such a sad tragedy
Every 1 minute shaw spent messing w Dion's body equals 1 hour of decompression time on the way up. He gave himself 5 minutes to do it but spent 15 down there then got narcd.
I have ADHD so it's hard for me to stay focus or interested when someone is talking but you had me intrigued and interested the whole time, awesome narrating my dude. Very well spoken
I am the same way. I usually can’t watch UA-cam videos over 5 minutes because my attention span is shit. I can watch Mr. Ballen videos and when they end want to watch more.
Same here. If it isn't something that really piques my interest, I'm out. I can't stop watching this dude. If I click a video, I mentally prepare for 1-2 hours minimum
Thanks for delivering these tragic stories with the compassion and respect they deserve. These hit close to my heart, as I lost my uncle to a scuba diving accident. Was very seasoned, lived in fl for decades scuba diving and was a teacher... So very knowledgeable. Took his son out... Very similar to your story, they were coming up..my cousin leading, kept looking back, my uncle was behind him... Till all of a sudden he wasn't. Body recovered, but took forever for them to grant and perform an inquest, which yielded no definitive results. My uncle had beaten a very fatal and rare form of leukemia, after a decade battle and experimental treatments. Left him with stints and blood disease, but he was alive which was a miracle. He took full advantage of his extra years.. His funeral had past students and coworkers from his entire career, spilling out to fill the lawn of the funeral home! My 4yo reminds me a lot of him. Thanks again, for being the best storyteller of this style content!
@@MrBallen thanks! He really was an inspiration, especially considering what an oddball he was. Definitely think he would be diagnosed with Asperger's\autism now adays... He was unafraid to be completely genuine, bolo ties, trains, science and nature but etc he was a great guy! You're so welcome! Thanks for your kind words, as well. Just another reason why you are also an inspiration and so we'll loved!
@@MrBallen And um yeah..gee. sorry uncle brad, but I just got a bit giddy when i got a heart, and reply, from the mr ballen! Apologies that it piggy backed your untimely demise... I know you probably appreciate the tales in your honor, though... still teaching, huh...Love ya lots! Now that that's out of the way.... "whimper-Squeal🤗🥰" you're the best, Mr ballen! Gigglesnort. Welcome to my freshly medicated noggin.
Cave divers want to do the exploring they want to see and discover for themselves. The adventuress spirit of human kind. I'm certified myself but have no interest in caves. The risk worth reward isn't worth it to me.
Way too much suffering in this life. Like I've typed before, THANK GOD for Mr. B. Allen's stories because they all give readers warnings of what not to do so we don't have torturous experiences. He's done so much with his research, he speaks well and offers immense detail. 😊❤
What you just said was the most retarted thing I’ve ever heard😂I’ve been scuba diving and caving for about 4 years and one thing I’ve learned is that there is no such thing as getting stuck...but really if you get stuck there is a very small chance you will survive
@@discgolfboy644 first off dont use the r slur its offensive to those who are disabled and second off good for you for not getting stuck but not everyone gets to be safe all the time. sometimes things can't always go as planned and that's why we shouldn't be sending people down where to many things can get out of hand
@@discgolfboy644 there’s no such thing as getting stuck but if you do you probably won’t survive...so your argument about not exploring is CLEARLY valid. If you do these activities and something goes wrong you die, so you the best way not to die doing these things is by not doing them.
@@tiatokkesdal1745 I am also kind of doubtful. He didn't even tell the other guy that he was gonna go; he just left. I don't mean any disrespect, but he was most likely stressing out and following his instincts.
I have been binge watching like many people here. Dude, you have an entire universe of content. Just wow. My favorite are the like button stories. That has become a little treat for me every video.
Indeed though there are some cynical bastards would would say otherwise and there have been some examples. In all fairness though, I wouldn't have done it and would recommend against as such as well.
The two replies and some too other comments shows how selfish people are these days and why no one but immediate family will remember them millions of people know Shaw there just random comments and people to be forgotten
@@williammclaughlin8205 Should you really blame us for having some concerns for self-preservation? Granted I don't disagree with your sentiment however.
@@iamhungey12345 he went down there knowing it was a possibility but made a promise and by keeping it he will be remembered far long than if he didn’t and died at 80
Hats off to Parker!!! I know he died, but in the process, he saved his friends life (I like to think he left those tanks there to show his friend that he could make it though the portal to keep it stable from further collapse.) AND swam over 70 freaking meters on one gulp of air!!! True hero in my mind!!!
Absolutely. Not that I would have put a toe in an underwater cave to begin with but I wouldn't have hade it half that distance on one lonely breath of air.
I thought the same thing, what a freaking hero… I couldn’t imagine how scared one would be, but the heroism he showed was just amazing. May he Rest in Peace ❤️
Nobody leaves there tanks unless forced to do so he was concerned only for himself and very well could have blocked the exit. It was luck and cowardice not heroism
@@jasonwolfe3639 yeah I dont get how people think it was some kind of act of valour when he obviously panicked and tried to get out alone having no thought about his friend.
The first one, Shane, is my cousin. I watch all of the MrBallen videos and enjoyed them because I am a fan of the strange dark and.... But I don't think I ever stopped to think about how it felt to know the person in the story. I am not sure how I missed this video for so long, but have just seen it... I am crushed. I loved him so much and so does his mum, sister and son. This is a man who was a master diver with years of naval and salvage experience. He had operated at every level and was a rebreather specialist. To say he just panicked was not quite accurate. The cave was pitch, there were no cables because there was no room. The silt made it impossible to see when the light shines in. It was dangerous, it was stupid, but it was what he loved and what he was good at. It broke me to hear, again, how he drowned. And I can imagine how his sister and mum would feel... But there were so many amazing things that Shane did before that... Finding lost ships at crazy depths and diving for Cirque DU Soleil. If you want to hear about the amazing things he did before his death let me know... The family would be happy to oblige. In the meantime, we just miss him so very much....
Im so sorry for your family's loss. Shane sounds like a someone who lived a life with the utmost zeal. Most of us would never have the guts to do any of the things Shane accomplished. Til you get to see him again, my condolences.
I just scratched scuba diving off my bucket list.
Its not scuba diving. It's cave diving
Honestly try it. Cave diving is a specialty and as a scuba diver i can tell you i would never do some crazy shit like that...
@@samisoniosborne5288 same.
Im inly 14 but i have my dive licence and i love it but i will never go cave diving
agreed.
Might be THE BUCKET
I dont understand the attraction to cave diving. It sounds like a living nightmare.
@@electrifyinglightningbolt You could just send a device instead of a human?
Well that's where our living nightmares live I meant the creatures for example when it completely black underwater then you saw such a light that it's not looking like a flashlight it meant there's a creature I forgot what's its name but it has a light that can tricked people and bite that person 😖😖😖😖
@@Annie_nnn a angler fish?
Same reason people skydive or dont use condoms or......
@@aClownBaby- Wait yeah, why the hell are real people going into places like that.
Can we just take a second to appreciate Mr.Ballen does not clickbait.
Izayah Rush Hey little brother
When you're the best, you don't need to clickbait.
yes, yes we can. Everyone please a moment of silence for Mr.Ballen not clickbaiting
Lily Kane walker *shits pants*
CHET ! You realize you just fell for this clickbait right?
If I ever have a child who decides cave diving could be fun, I'm going to play every single one of your stories to them
Same girl--- or boy
good luck with that
I just never understand why those dudes risked their lives and died for a damn skeleton.. he's gone. I understand the sentiment, but there's a reason the bodies on Everest stay there..it's not worth risking living people for a corpse.
The parents should have told those guys it isn't worth it..i don't remotely understand why you would do that
@@Im_a_Furina-stan or man - or woman
Or you could teach them to approach things rationally and intelligently so they can create and live their version of a fulfilled life. Instilling fear in people for whatever reason is plain wrong and doing that to children is crippling for them in more ways than you would think.
Regular caving is scary enough. Which sociopath went: "You know what would make this better? NO AIR!"
it's literally crazy
Ugh seriously. I have thalassophobia, fear of open ocean/deep water, so practically anything you could add water to freaks me out so bad. Caving is also freaky, not phobia levels, but still very uncomfortable to think about, so cave diving stories makes my anxiety skyrocket, I'll even start feeling like something is about to grab my feet even tho I'm on nice, solid and dry land. Yuck.
@@Britishhick what about lemonade 😏
God did
Ive kind cave dived it was without scuba gear so freediving 7 meters down a cave. It was the most peacfull ive ever felt. Ut was in a hotspring crystal clear water everything was deathly silent and so calm
No one knows how they're gonna die but I know I will never die like this
someone could kill you like this in a very sick and twisted way..
Right???
I gave a thumbs up to your comment simply because of your avatar and name. Jigglypuff is my all-time favorite.
No way in hell am I gonna do any of this.
@Andy Jonnson is this a wild guess? Or premonition? Scary comment my dude
I’m obsessed with these cave diving disaster videos. I cannot understand why anyone would do this.
Just watch videos of successful cave dives, even the recreational ones, and you'll see
Because people only focus on the disasters….there are hundreds of successful caves dives that happen everyday all over the world.
@@Robert_H_Diver I like hearing that. You’re right. We “see though a glass, darkly” after watching too much of this stuff. Good to balance it out with comedy or something. Saying that though, I’ve never felt like that’s a fun thing to do for me. I’m fascinated by caves and hidden underground tunnels etc. so thanks to all the people who let me see inside places I’m never going to go to, you’re all bonkers, but you do you (and I’ll watch, lol, not in a creepy way!)
@@BeeLZBeeb 👍🏼
To each his own. I love what my husband says. "There is no way in heck am I going to jump out of a perfectly good plane".
PSA: if you have to SQUEEZE through a hole to move forward into an unmapped cave system, JUST DON'T. No good will EVER come from this.
+Mephisto1991 - Unless you're Ant-Man, in which case, knock yourself out! 😁
Yep
Does make for a hell of a story though
Common sense but I guess diver's think "I'ma gonna be the first one" pushing too far
Facts. I'd also like to add the caveat that if you need to strap on 50+ pounds of gear to survive in an environment you should probably _REALLY_ think about your life choices thus far. Just sayin' 😁👍
moral of the stories: DONT SQUEEZE YOURSELF INTO PLACES YOU CLEARLY DONT FIT INTO
@G Robinson if you don’t know something or where something in the ocean thousands of people could die so technically there saving a lot of people lives discovering these places
Yeah basically
Hmm smart!
Wise words.... and oh, that's what she said.
Omg so true but I'm skinny 😶
The only thing I'm "wriggling through'" is the door to my blanket fort
LoOL right?
I mean maybe a really good hiding spot for hide and seek I might wriggle through
Still a nope for me playa
😂😂😂
Good reason
"Instead of mapping it out, let's just seal it off."
*end of story in a perfect world*
Gay
And then: “may we map your forbidden section?”
The owners: “no.”
"let's just have a robot map it out instead of sending people"
- just as good of an ending
@@NikkiTheViolist agreed
Yeah but in that timeline it didnt get mapped till 2067, and I die in 2065 so wtf was the point?
I went scuba diving in a cave once. Never ever again. I did about 4 years of regular scuba diving in shallow waters for pleasure, where you can see corals and fish and things. I enjoyed it, so I decided to try cave diving. My instructor took us to a beginner cave that you could pay to get taken out to, for tourists. I was never in any danger. At any moment I could have just come to the top in a hurry, it was shallow waters, short caves. But, the whole time I was aware of all the ways I could die in there. Not fun.
Yeah, cave diving is terrifying and while i'm curious, i'd never feel comfortable despite doing it despite being decent at navigation knowing that there's pretty much a random chance even in the safest caves, that no matter how skilled you are, there's always a chance that you could end up trapped beyond help or drown. And it's clearly a very terrifying way to die. Getting stuck, randomly feeling ill, water pressure, cavings, equipement malfunctions, decompression sickness, getting caught on something, getting lost, hell i'm sure some caves have some dangerous animals or whatever in them. And that's not even all of it.
@@Dice-Z just watching the film The Descent which is about ordinary caving is enough to put me off doing anything more dangerous than climbing the stairs in my house.
@@WakeyWakeyEggsandBakey lmaooo
@@WakeyWakeyEggsandBakey VALID
Sounds horrible
Can we just give props to Mike. This dudes a beast, never went through those tunnels, found his friend and made it back out to tell the story
Yeah. Seems like anyone who does caving or underwater caving should make it a point to train their mind to not panic and to think logically in stressful situations.
@@katatat2030 I would imagine so, and in such situations you should never deviate from the plan especially, if you are someone else's lifeline. Shane should never have followed Mike, as was the plan; he put Mike's life in more danger by doing so. It was a selfish move which cost him his life and luckily his recklessness did not cost others theirs.
@@ginglebret i still feel bad for him though. what a horrible way to die
Respect to mike
Yeah 👏👏👏
“Never been mapped, never explored, underwater...”
I’ll pass
Thank you.
You pass? But don't you understand you have to squeeze through 2 tiny holes to get in or out? How can you pass that up? ;)
Oh u deffinetly been mapped and explored hahahsha wink wink
And your right how can u pass that. Up lol
i have a fear of the ocean or lakes and stuff like that so its even worse with a mix of small spaces and huge mazes in the water
@@Samantha-kz9vq same
Speaking from experience, panic breathing during SCUBA dives is and can be fatal. Try running a half mile and when you’re done, immediately only breathe in and out of a straw. That’s what it feels like when your panicked underwater, even with a rebreather. It’s just not the same feeling as grabbing a breathe of fresh air on land. Hard to explain.
That makes perfect sense actually.
Does it feel like a panic attack? I'd think running half a mile and breathing through a straw might replicate the inhale rate?
@@random6579 I’m no diver but it’s essentially like air weighing a ton
YES. I was trying to do my „fully flooded mask“ skill to get my scuba diver license and started hyperventilating. I was completely safe only 12m underwater with my instructor right there and still managed to panic. Yeah so much for my Diving career 🤣😅
I panic just swimming. Once when my daughter was in her teens ( last year) I went under water a little bit in deep water , and panicked in Folsom lake and we were really far out. She and one of my sons claimed me and had to float me on my back all the way to shore. I couldn’t do anything I was frozen. I would have died if they weren’t there. Especially my daughter.
The cave stories are my favorite because it’s something I’ll NEVER do, so it’s not stressful to me. The hiking stories, home invasion, and weird occurrences while driving; terrifying!
I would never cave dive either. But that sh!t is still terrifying
I only scuba dived a few times and it’s chilling to the bones to me to think about dying down there.
Right! I know for a fact I will never ever ever do that, but for some reason dying in a tiny underwater cave is one of my biggest fears. I'll never put myself in that situation, but I'm still mortified that it's going to happen to me somehow
@@hotfishfromsharktaleVSauce has a video here on UA-cam called “What is the scariest thing” where he analyzes common fears to find out which is the worst….it’s suffocation.
Wanna go hiking with me?
Poor Shaw. He was just trying to do as much as he could to try to give closure to the family and gave the ultimate sacrifice for it.
but even in the end, he still held up to the promise he made to the family.
This might sound cold but sometimes I think people take sentimentality too far.
But he was succesful. That's the most touching part for me.
aimreyne I think if the person who has died, even a young person, could be asked, they would not want anyone else to die looking for their body. They aren’t there anymore. Depending on one’s beliefs, they are in heaven, or resting in peace. To lose another life seems a terrible waste to me, and causes the sorrow of terrible loss to ripple out to another family.
He is remedial. Why risk your life for a corpse🤦
if its "Just big enough to wriggle through" don't go through it.
Especially if it's underwater! 🤦🏻
@@WeRNthisToGetHer lol
Unless u dont have a choice
@@chandlerthoma9173 hell nah. I have enough fun watching these videos that I do not need to go get in my fat ass stuck in something because I thought it would be fun.
@@santiagocasier6436 hell nah, you always have a choice. Fuck that job
"Hey we'd be happy to map out your forbidden section"
What a dope pickup line.
Hell yeah I’m using that it would be hey I would be happy to map out your forbidden section
what do u mean "we", any girl would be freaked out if a random person said that out of no were
@@ahmedharun1023 omfg shut up
@@ahmedharun1023 we, meaning, of course, me and the science team. You’re not fucking alone, are you?
@@mannofwar4455 🤣🤣
Dave Shaw was truly a hero, His fighting spirit made sure to complete what he had set out to do. Bring Dion home. I wish that story was more known. A man vs nature, man's soul persisit story. God bless them all. Glad Dion's parents got to finally have a proper burial.
Honestly I don’t get it. I think it’s dumb-why take such a risk just to retrieve a dead body. Why is having possession of a dead corpse so important to some people? He’s dead, bringing his body back won’t bring him back, and I can only imagine the state of the body after being underwater for so long. It’s sure as hell nothing you’d want to see. I never understood and never will understand why people place so much value in a “proper” burial. Now he’s dead too, his family grieving, and all for what? To try to retrieve an already dead body? Fucking stupid. Honestly a lot of “heroic” actions are stupid af, but this takes the cake. Why glorify this shit? How about just leave bodies where they are in situations like this?
@@katamine11 Exactly, they left John Jones in putty cave so why was this different. RIP
@@katamine11 This comment says a lot about you as a person. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a family to suddenly lose a child and not even be able to grieve and give their final goodbyes to him? Regardless of religious reliefs, funerals exist to give people one last chance to say their goodbyes and be able to come to peace that their loved ones are gone forever. What Shaw did may not have been the most logical and rational decision to make but it doesn't matter because what he did to bring Dion's body back must have meant a lot to Dion's family. Besides, I would rather be a dumb hero than be a rational dickhead. If you die as a dumb hero, at least you'll have people who will honor you for your bravery and the sacrifice you made. If you die as a rational dickhead, people will probably celebrate that you're gone and they'll remember you for being a dickhead and not for being rational lol.
The other thing is that Dion’s body was just that: his body - the head fell off and was left behind.
I do think Dave Shaw was brilliant and pushed the limits, but I wished he hadn’t pretended that this rescue was only for Dion’s parents. Maybe he felt he was their only option, but unfortunately he thought he was invincible.
@katamine11 // I couldn’t have said it better myself, not sure how you don’t have more likes. I guess people just think that throwing your life away for sentimentality is somehow a good or noble thing
As a diver, the disorientation that occurs of just being under water is unreal. Throw panic on top of that, it can be a disaster. Breaks my heart to think of the terror these divers felt.
When I was 17 I was at a house party in the woodish area where I have grown up and lived my entire life u till that point.
Someone yells cops and my stupid ass runs even though I didn't drink (I didnt like it)
It was a GIANT bust considering it was mid southern NH northern MA area.
I was holding my friends hand but behind the house was a small river with steep banks. There were 2 apartments in a T sort of shape and the gentleman who lived in the back apartment turned off his lights in an attempt to give us all a chance.
This was right as Dozens if not more kids were hitting the embankments of the small river.
I was in flip flops as it was May but the nights got cold. Stumbling I let my friends hand go and tell her to run.
I hit a patch of really dense pine saplings. It was pitch black, I mean no moon, dense clouds and it had rained earlier. No houses, cities or lights.
I pull myself blindly through this patch of pine saplings in an army crawl and blindly start to sneak my way through the woods alone just seeing cops flashlights here and there, and I follow what I know is a porch light.
I thought I had went back and right from where I was putting me on road A. But I had actually gone back and left and then back again!
I had to climb a tree to see the shape of the mountain to get my bearings.
And this was on land in a place I grew up my whole life.
It still blows my mind to this day how I got so disoriented.
So I can imagine it can be all too w6asy to have this happen under water.
@@Aw-ns1qx You are a very good writer! Your story had me on the edge of my seat. It's crazy how things happen to us and as time passes and we look back and it seems almost surreal. I agree with you 100%, it can be just as disorienting on land when you have to make quick decisions under stress. Thank you for sharing your story. 😊
and this right here, is the reason i dont go in water that i cant see the bottom or pull my ass out by walking up those beautiful stone steps at the 3 foot end lmao. im TERRIFIED of bodies of water. ill go jetsking, on a 3 seater that i cant fall off of or tip over, because im so scared of falling in and being eaten by the lake sharks i KNOW EXIST! you cant tell me otherwise, lol. but for real... bodies of water scares me like nothing else on earth, and knives, not a fan of that either
@@hollyshaw-elliemae SAME! I almost drowned when I was about 5 in the ocean at Ocean City Maryland because my dad always took me out but there was a huge wave that crashed over me and him even though he tried holding me above it and obviously I didn't understand to hold my breath so I screamed as the wave hit. Bodies of water, knives, and people in costumes are my BIGGEST fears.
@@brayaunnaklimas8129 I feel you my friend, I feel you
I'll start cave diving when I get my gills otherwise I'm a land walker
😂😂 facts
Yep as I cannot even free dive to 10 feet
seriously? cave diving is risky asf but its also rlly cool
I won’t even do land caves if I can’t see the way out the entire time.
Facts
Parker and Bills story horrified me because unlike most people in these cave diving videos, they werent being stupid. They took so many precautions and were fully prepared, even with spare air tanks. Heartbreaking
I knowwwww 😩 theirs might be the worst.. nothing you can do to prevent that.. nothing. Maybe a second exit?! But what if two cave in at once 🤣 SCREWED!
Yes, true that
Are we assuming that Bill died?
@@gge9824 nah, he made it to the spare tanks that saved his crazy ass, thankfully. Lucky guy.
@@shaybarfield1122 totally!
As dorky as it sounds, the "bonding over the underwear" is something I relate to. I used to do my mom's hair, and I would put a little butterfly clip in her hair after I'd brushed and braided it. After she passed away, the crematorium and funeral home sent us her urn, and attached to it was the butterfly clip. Completely blew me away and for just that brief moment of seeing it for the first time since she'd died, it felt like things were normal again.
My dad just died 6 weeks ago and my best friend died from heroin overdosed 2-3 months ago... pretty shitty
@@Cognitoman my condolences my man.
@@starseed_Wanderer thank yeah it sucks, haven't even cried yet. I know eventually it will come.
@@Cognitoman My dad past away last year, it is painful yes. But, my dad is looking at me from the beyond, I have to stay strong. God bless you bro, you will have a bright future
@@Cognitoman You’re all right sorry for the loss stay up
Only thing getting us through 2020 is the strange, dark and mysterious in story format
Lol nbs I wanna see him do a video on the North Pole
@@asantana617 Yeah that would be nice
Today I was walking on the street and tripped, I swear to god it was the like button looking for revenge.
This comment tho 🤣🤣👏👏
And the torture of the like button and it's livelyhood
“Cave diving” two words that forever will be a hard nope for me.
Dark, deep, claustrophobic water…nah…I don’t even sneak into the hotel pool at night. 😂
You and me both. No thank you!
You're right even a pool alone at night...I'm flipped if a piece of seaweed touches my leg ,when I 'm only waist deep, in full view on a glorious day...
I gag in the shower... I couldn't do diving even to save my life.
I'll stick to open water diving
Right?!
I, of sound mind, do herby declare: I don't want anyone risking their life to recover my dead body.
That's a horrible way to die. Top 3
Same
What if it’s an endless cycle like one person goes after a body, dies then someone else goes after their body, dies then some goes to get that body, dies and it’s just an endless cycle
@@s0up_1223 which is terrifying but yet,this is why they do not take up bodies from caves or the highest mountains in the world. It is wild to think.
@@s0up_1223 yu
My favorite thing about Mr. Ballen is how good he is about describing the story in the layout and I can so vividly see and imagine these things in my brain.
Your surname is unfortunate lmao
@@gunsmokegaloreyt6840 oh hell nah 😭😭
Exactly 💯
And then having those vivid images keep you up at night.
True but sadly just shows he a really good liar watch dive talk they interview the guy who was actually down there and this guy is actually making up lies just to get views what a fake 😂😂😂 look up dive talk react to Mr. Ballon’s claustrophobic horror
MrBallen: If you have claustrophobia you should probably not watch this
Me who have extreme claustrophobia and a very irrational fear of the ocean: meh I'm sure it's fine
Bro same hah this video is way more scary than any ghost story f that shiz
This really scared me
@@N0TH3R3. bruh same lol
omg I'm exactly the same
Same
Let’s take a moment to appreciate this guy has a NEWBORN at home and is still cranking out daily amazing videos.... thank you!!!
Yep he's chillin & grillin like a villian !
@@jennyconner6047 The like button says only a villain
Donnie V. Right we all do it.....some not in the comfort of our own homes either
WORD!!!
@Donnie V. shut up
Three totally gripping stories - felt like l was actually there. Narrated extremely well. Sensational.
thank you!!
@@MrBallen #ballensquad
@Brandon Martin it’s at 202 now lol
@@MrBallen “It’s not just the story,
it’s he who tells it” -Stephen King
You got me on this one, I’ve been binging for 3 days now. This last story was gut wrenching, there were tears running down my face before I even knew I was crying.
Same!!
a couple REALLY interesting details I learned yesterday about your first story of the divers if anyone is interested: Shane got stuck in the cave because he had a completely different set of gear, his tanks were all on his back, while Mike had some kind of super nice set of tanks that were mounted on his side. they can somehow turn the carbon dioxide you exhale back into oxygen for you to inhale, meaning he was able to fit into smaller holes and also didn't have to worry about running out of oxygen. He actually took off Shane's Gear off of his body when he found him even though he didnt take the gear or the body, but he was an absolute pro. He knew that it was his gear that got him stuck, so he took it off because he knew it was unmapped and that the people who rescued him would be able to just grab the body and get the hell out of there. He had such faith in this technology that he was able to unhook Shane's equipment, even though he knew he would have to spent a couple more hours underwater even after he got out to prevent decompression sickness (the bends). and he was successful. I saw clips of an interview he did and I truly believe he is a hero. Shane had a shit ton of experience too, it's such a sad story.
Yeah, I saw Mike Young give an interview on Dive Talk - another UA-cam channel - where they were reacting to this exact video, and while I'm sure mrballen is just recounting someone else's incorrect account of events, it's still sad how far off from what really happened it is.
I'm going to link the correction of the story by Mike Young, Shane's dive partner, here: ua-cam.com/video/1Pq9tBQDUe8/v-deo.html
A summary of Mike's statement for those who don't want to watch an hour-long video on another channel(but I do recommend watching, it's fascinating): Shane and Mike were both planned to be in the water that day(which was several days into their exploration, so they were already somewhat familiar with the cave that they'd explored so far), so Shane diving was him doing nothing less than what had been planned in advance. There was a restriction - a place so tight divers have to pull themselves through it - at 160~ feet deep that only Mike had been able to wiggle through so far; Shane was planning to accompany him that far. There were no real tunnels down there; rather, it was more of a vertical shaft full of fallen boulders from a cave-in that had gaps between the rocks big enough for the divers to wiggle through. (Mike compared it to squeezing through the spaces around tightly packed cars.) Mike was leading the way, not Shane.
When they reached the restriction at 160~ feet where Shane was supposed to stop, Mike told him to wait there via hand signals (confirmed by GoPro footage, even) and then headed through. For some reason - Mike theorizes it was because they'd reached the end of the cave and Mike was down there to pull the line they were following, meaning Shane wouldn't get another chance to be down there, and he wanted to see the final parts of the cave - Shane followed Mike through the restriction, something Mike didn't realize at the time since it was happening behind him. The problem was that after that 160~ restriction, it was just an endless series of MORE restrictions after it every few feet. And Mike was wearing side-mounted tanks, making it easier for him to squeeze through these restrictions, while Shane was wearing back-mounted tanks that would make it harder to squeeze through narrow spaces. (Shane was only expected to have to go through one restriction at 140 feet, which he'd cleared the previous day with his back-mounted tanks, so he wasn't really ideally equipped for taking on a whole bunch of them.)
Mike turned back before he cut the line (which he says saved his life) because he decided he wanted a picture of the end of the cave with Shane's GoPro. But when he headed back, he ran into Shane almost immediately, who'd passed numerous restrictions (Mike guessed 5) but eventually gotten wedged. Mike actually managed to get him unwedged and turned around, even though Shane was panicking, and sent him back up. While Mike was following Shane up the line, he suddenly lost the line when it was jerked out of his hands(at which point he panicked himself and had to calm down for a bit), and he had to find his way up by feel (there was no visibility due to silt) until he finally found the line again.
At that point Mike felt Shane's hand frantically grasping around, coming through a hole about the size of a volleyball; he'd reached a hole he couldn't fit through and was panicking. Mike felt around and found a larger hole to the side that Shane would be able to get through, and reached through that hole to grab Shane's shoulder and guide him to the larger hole. (One can assume Shane was suffering tunnel vision in his panic, and was freaking out about the one hole he found to the surface not being big enough for him; he didn't have the presence of mind to find the larger one on his own.) Once Mike managed to show Shane the hole, Shane - still in full blown panic - starts crawling out of that hole, going underneath Mike to do it - but in his rush to get out, without letting Mike get out of the way, Shane wedges the both of them, head to feet.
Shane obviously just panics harder at this and starts kicking hard as he tries to move forward and free himself, but since his feet are at Mike's head, Mike gets kicked a lot. (Shane actually kicks Mike's arm hard enough against the ceiling that he breaks a piece of Mike's equipment that keeps his dry suit from flooding, so Mike's suit is now filling with 52 degree F water.) Eventually Mike managed to clear enough space for Shane to get through, although Shane pulled off one of Mike's fins on his way. Mike basically falls into the hole Shane was just in halfway, then decides it's more feasible to just go into the hole fully, turn around, and pull himself out. He does this, but he's lost the line again because he went off to the side to help Shane. Mike has to take a moment to calm himself again, because by this point everything is definitely a mess. But he climbs out of the hole, and he finds his lost fin, and that little victory reassures him that he's definitely going to make it because at that point ANY victory would feel major.
He starts working his way up by feel again, until he reaches a place where there's some visibility, which lets him visually find the line again. He could feel the line moving, because Shane was holding onto the line himself at some point on it. He's at a tie-off point in the line, where two lines are tied together. But he goes past the tie-off to follow the line up, and realizes the line's no longer moving - meaning Shane is on the lower line, BELOW Mike. Mike, finding random ways back up through the rocks without the guidance of the line, passed Shane at some point, so he's now ahead of him. Mike immediately turns around and goes back down for Shane. But then suddenly the line stopped moving, and Mike knew at that moment that Shane hadn't just let go of the line - that Shane had died.
The GoPro footage apparently showed that what happened is that Shane, in his panic, was hyperventilating and overworking his rebreather(which functionally provides infinite air, but if you breathe too fast on it you build up CO2 faster than it can recycle it into oxygen, which is what was happening with Shane). So Shane switched to his backup tanks of air, which are finite, and when he ran out of air on those he was too panicked to think to switch back to the rebreather and drowned. Mike did go back for him and confirmed he was gone, then took off his gear to make body retrieval easier and tried to pull him up right then and there - but he quickly realized that with a flooded suit and tons of decompression time already on the clock, fighting to get Shane's body back right at that time was a poor choice, so he left him there for later retrieval.
It's kind of incredible how the real story is even more dramatic and fraught with danger and drama than the misinformed retelling.
If watching Dive Talk has taught me anything, it's that when it comes to professional, experienced cave divers, everything they do is INCREDIBLY deliberate and carefully planned. Most diving horror stories you hear are either 1) inexperienced divers biting off way more than they can chew and dying as a result, 2) experienced divers making poor decisions(because even the best can make bad calls sometimes), or 3) accidents that can't really be foreseen or planned for even by the most experienced divers, such as serious equipment failure(it has to be serious because they almost always carry spares and redundancies for everything they can). Obviously, Shane's death was caused by #2 - he deviated from the dive plan with equipment that wasn't right for what he was trying to do(because no one had planned for him trying to do it), and once things really started going wrong he wasn't able to control his panic as well as Mike could. (Lord knows Mike had almost as many things go wrong for him as Shane, but Mike was able to ground himself each time he panicked and that clearly seemed to make all the difference.)
Anyway, I know this is a massive wall of text, but I just wanted to put the more accurate version here in the comments for people to potentially see if they're interested. No shame on mrballen for getting hold of an incorrect version of events, I'm sure there's dozens of mistold versions of stories out there and I know he always tries to get his facts correct. But it's probably a lot harder for mrballen to go right to the eyewitness in this case than it was for Dive Talk to do so.
Shane was trying to fake it till he made it while he made it all right onto UA-cam as a casualty edit: I probably shouldn’t of wrote that then again Shane could probably stay home that day so I like John what do you guys think about inverted Johnny
@@lymmea thank you for that. I've found this channel gets things wrong A LOT.
I'm going to be generous and assume it's just poor research rather than being intentionally misleading. Either way, I wish he would work on it bc he really is a great storyteller.
But I guess there's more incentive for YTers to pump out content quickly than having fewer, but more accurate videos.
@@anonmouse6337 For what it's worth, I've actually found mrballen to care more about accuracy than most UA-camrs - he announces when he's not sure of a story's veracity or source, he corrects himself on mistakes he's made, and he seems to go out of his way to do a lot of research on his stories. I think the problem isn't a lack of diligence or effort on his part, so much as that sensational stories are likely to have multiple versions of greater or lesser accuracy out there, and it's not always easy to know what *really* happened unless you can actually talk to someone directly connected to the case.
In Dive Talk's case, they know Mike Young and share a hobby with him, and they were able to reach out to him and get the story straight from his own mouth - mrballen didn't really have that opportunity. (And, to be fair, until the incorrect version came out, there may not have been much call for Mike to comment publicly on a distressing experience he'd been through.)
A thing I have observed is that mrballen tends to cite already existing accounts, though - sometimes quoting direct phrases from articles, even. (Which is...maybe a little dubious, I'd prefer he stick to telling stories wholly in his own words rather than taking other people's without credit, but I digress. I've binged his channel extensively, so that might be old behavior he's already stopped doing; I'm not trying to drag him for it here.) So I can almost guarantee that this inaccurate account didn't come from mrballen himself, but is him recounting a *pre-existing* inaccurate account that exists somewhere - and I'm sure he had no idea it got a lot of details wrong.
I think Mike mentioned that he and his crew only talked to the local authorities, and who knows who they talked to; what I take from that is that before Mike's interview on Dive Talk, there was probably only very fragmented factual information floating around, and they coalesced - either via lying, rumor, exaggeration, or guesswork - into a very false account over time. And without a true account to counteract it, that started getting circulated as the only account of the incident there was for people to find...and mrballen found it. Without any contradicting stories, how could he know it wasn't true?
Obviously, misinformation is misinformation, and I do wish every now and then mrballen would do an extra little video on the channel where he clears up misunderstandings or inaccuracies about stories like this when more information comes to light after his videos come out. Just so he can reach his audience with any necessary corrections or retractions and show his commitment to telling the real stories. I know he's friendly with the Dive Talk guys, so I imagine he knows about that Mike Young interview. Just because I think he did as much due diligence as possible when researching his stories doesn't mean it's not important to go back and clear things up if mistakes managed to creep in anyway. But I have to acknowledge the difficulty of being able to sort out What Really Happened when researching stories like this, and I do respect the effort I'm sure he puts in. I just think the occasional retrospective video would be a good answer to the fact that mistakes will happen.
@@lymmea I guess it's a flaw in the way he presents these stories. The POV accounts are really engaging, but he can't say stuff like "some reports claim blah blah while others report xyz".
I get that it's difficult to find the truth among so many different versions of the story, but I think Mrballen should step up his research game as his channel grows, and especially as he starts making decent money from it (and can therefore afford to hire a research assistant).
As a cave diver, I know some of the divers and have dove with them. I was once stuck in a cave after a Boulder got dislodged and fell on my back pinning me. I remember it taking everything inside me not to panic. One thing a cave diver always brings with them is a reel of line so you always have a line to the surface to follow. I have been in zero vis and agree you can get confused if you doubt your gear! Thanks for covering these stories
Hey that's cool 👍
I have zero experience with cave diving. But from what I've read, panicking is the worst thing you can do underwater because it clouds your judgement, and more often than not your judgement is the only thing that keeps you from drowning.
@@as7river panicing is always what gets you killed
If the first guy didn’t panic they would’ve both died
@@as7river Well panicking in any dangerous situation is bad. Say you’re in a packed nightclub to see a band play. They decide to use pyrotechnics in their show and it ignites a part of the polyurethane (highly flammable) sound insulation. Most of us will think a sprinkler system will kick on and take care of it, but there isn’t. After 30-40 seconds, the fire begins to spread a lot faster on the stage and smoke is starting to bank down from the ceiling. By now, Most of the crowd is going to panic and head for the door they came in from instead of looking for another door to get out, and a stampede results and blocks the main exit, while the stage area approaches flashover and the smoke layer rapidly descends to head level... ok I’ll stop now, but if you don’t panic, and assess the situation, you’ll realize there’s a fire exit across the room.
Shaw was a warrior in the truest sense...he fulfilled his mission and brought Deion home.
He sure did! His story really caught my heart for some reason! So very sad. My deepest sympathies to his wife and family!
He didn't fulfill his mission, he just got in there and drowned there. Congratulations to him.
@@Anthonybrother bads
@@Anthonybrother Shaw did fulfill his mission. Did you not listen to the video? Or are you partially paying attention because you're so distracted & anxious to display your a s s h ò l i s h n è s š online?
@@TopSecretInformations nah he's just trying to be edgy because he's insecure mate.
It's pretty scary that even experienced divers freak out, make simple mistakes and end up dying while on these planned dives.
Well there is no expirience for beeing about to die, everyone would freak out underwater knowing he is about to die
@@morten8586 Especially when you know you're gonna drown while being fully conscious.
@@morten8586 I've become entangled in fast moving water and that type of panic comes on fast. It happened to me in 15 feet of water. You have to be able to control your fear in all situations. In an emergency situation if you loose you shit all is lost. Stay Safe.
I can only imagine bc just listening to these stories causes panic
@@srccde well, not really completely conscious. If you go far down enough you run out of oxygen which makes you feel like drunk. So, your whole perception is pretty much distorted.
For the fact that most of these divers know what they are doing and are well prepared, yet tragedies happen. That really shows how dangerous the unknown is. RIP those who lost their lives.
I truly believe some of these ppl have a death wish.
@@meghanmisaliar that was said about all the people that ventured off into the sea to search for the Americas. We know of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci because they were successful in their voyages. But there were thousands of sailors that tried the same and failed. That's not a death wish, that's a passion for the unknown. Same can be said for the discovery of Australia, Antarctica, Greenland, the Moon, etc. It's that curiosity that set us apart from the Naenderthals, and the Naenderthals died precisely because of that; they didn't explore.
@@as7river I definitely don't think explorers can be compared to divers. Diving has such a small margin of error. Explorers had a lot more leeway in case things went wrong.
The majority of accidents happen from mistakes plain and simple. Pushing their limits, or ignoring safety protocol. Very few of these tragedies happen when everything is done right.
I have this thing if a expert in a certain activity dies..I ain't ever doing that
God bless Mr Shaw for his attempt at retrieving Dions body , Heavenly Father please comfort both families !!!
He didn’t attempt he did retrieve it but it got him killed as well
The embodiment of a hero.
@@chukob5 He didn't retrieve it. The definition of retrieving something means bringing it back. He got to the body but he did not retrieve it
riptaway how did they get it off the floor that many feet down you braindead
@@riptaway he basically did retrieve it because both of their bodies floated up to the ceiling of the cave and were able to be taken out by divers at a shallower depth. He still accomplished his task. He died doing what he loved and I'm sure would do it again if he could.
Telling someone you’d like to “map their forbidden section” is wild
Especially if it's tight
I’ve told this to a couple girls
You’re all disgusting.
My wife just slapped me when I told her this😟
@@alexshaw8167 Often jokes are pretty disgusting.
This is 10x scarier than any ghost story.
never ever doing it
that's because ghosts aren't fucking real
Yes for real like no f-ing way am I gonna dive in a cave with even a 1% chance of death Frick that crap
Shit i used my inhaler watching this
Ghost stories are wack.
You know what’s harder than Cave Diving? Cave Diving and recording a UA-cam video. Wow true talent Mr. Ballen
Seriously?
You're living cringe. Stop.
Things I’ve learned with Mr. Ballen: don’t go scuba diving on caves, don’t go camping alone, don’t go hiking alone and if you think your house is haunted, it probably is.
Specially don't dive, they all die.
Do you know how to get to bell’s canyon?
I'd say that's accurate
This is the best summary lol
don't try to climb down a chimney
Me: has an extreme fear of drowning and tight spaces.
Watches this video.
Same
I didnt until I watched this
Every human has a fear of drowning of some sort, even if you don’t know. It’s a painful very painful slow death..
I am a big Claustrophobia patient...like I can't even hug someone for more than 5 minutes...at night...even my blacket chokes me...like I will fall asleep and suddenly I can't move a signal muscle and my breathing get less and less..until i make the courage to swing my hand really hard and take my blacket out..i won't be able to breath..this is why I am scared to sleep..and now I am an night owl..I don't sleep at night alone..my parents are scared..I might die by my sleep struggling without air...tbh...I really hate this...but we should always be positive 💜💙🧡
How do you feel?
A few things that no one should do:
- Tell your significant other to calm down in an argument
- do not knifehand unsuspecting civilians as you attempt to help them
- do not go cave diving. Ever.
😆
I scuba dive and I’d totally cavern dive but NEVER cave dive
Knifehands sounds cool to me lol
Perhaps, you may live to tell a few more tales by never telling your significant other to calm down in an argument.....mwuahaha ;)
Gigglesnort. Funny cause it's true! Whenever someone tells me to calm down, I ask if they wanna put the shovel away or keep digging?! (it takes a lot to get me riled, so once I'm to that point I've already stayed calm as long as I could... and 98% of time my frustrations are completely justified) 🤣✌️
Two of the most dangerous forms of diving, are cave diving, and ship wreck diving.
In his panic, Shaw could've easily and quickly breathed all of his air down to zero. It is an effect of panicking.
it’s always comforting when he talks about what the people were thinking when the events happened because then we know that they’re going to survive 🧍♂️
I was wondering how he had all of those details on the second story. It did not seem like anyone was going to survive. I kept expecting him to say he held up his sign and said what are we going to do and the other responded we're going to die.
yeah I do the same. Its stressful sometimes because I don't know if its thoughts or just a description.
YOUR PROFILE PICTURE
IM DYING
I was thinking the same thing
So Dave made a promise to Dion’s family that he would retrieve his body and still managed to do that even though he lost his own life. That is so damn sad! Dave was a legit hero!
Dave
Yeah he is.... but also stupid he died for a corpse , thats never a good trade.
@@aaronsmith4940 o mean he'd lived his life.
@@aaronsmith4940 well I would wish my body was found so there's closure, but I would definitely feel guilty that someone died finding my body.
Shane was from the first story.(correct me if im wrong)
"If you suffer from claustrophobia, this is probably not the video for you."
Me, who has crippling claustrophobia and panic disorder: "I live on the edge, proceeeed😈"
I know girl 🤣🤣🤣 SAAAAAME!!
Same!!!
i literally like tight places
Me too lol
“I am the danger.”
-Breaking Bad
A fact about the dive that shaw performed to retrieve dion that blows my mind is one minute at that depth meant 1 hour of decompression. Which is absolutely insane.
The diver in the second story ended up saving his buddy even though he didn't make it... if he hadnt dug his way out so recklessly, the other guy mightve drowned too. It really sucks that he was so close, though.. I wonder how much air he had left before he was desperate enough to try it
This is probably a small detail, but i love the fact that you didn't add any "creepy" music as so many of these channels do. Just telling the story without adding stuff for cheap emotional shock makes it much more humane and real.
Amen to that, guy does it perfect
but he.. does have creepy music playing? lol
There is music playing, it's just ambience and a repeating deep note
@@minilabyrinth
He does it tastefully tho
@@SavvyMuhon *shrriiiieeeeekkk*
The cave stories are the scariest I swear.
Also I love how Mr ballen holds a pretend flashlight
I like the way he holds pretend rifles too lol
Saaaaaame 🤣
His pretend steering wheel is 😂
Agreed. For me, the cave stories just ensures me that I'll never do cave diving.
Ohh what!! iv just noticed he's doing that all this time I never took notice. I guess all them flannos he got in he's collection 😂
I’ve seen several versions of this story before, but Mr. Ballen tells it the best. The others made the parents sound selfish cuz they said the parents asked Dave to retrieve their son. In reality, Dave was the one who told them he was going to bring their son back to them since he had already found him. I love how Ballen talks about the victims & provides their background. It makes the story feel more personal.
dude the fact that you can read these stories and describe them in such intricate detail (even with your own flair) is such an amazing ride that you take us all on, cheers
Thinking the same thing!
It’s terrifying how people squeeze through caves above ground. I can imagine how scary it must be underwater!
You took my thoughts and wrote them down for sure! Cheers!
I feel like it's way worse without water for some reason
@@bowserhoudini5588 nah water u only have some air and have all these events that can happen to ur body
@@bowserhoudini5588 Really?! I think with water is worse because it already puts you at a disadvantage, you know?
Exactly!!!
Because of UA-cam:
No cave diving..
Never online date.
Cautious of National Parks.
Always carry bear spray.
Don’t let anyone take a life insurance policy out on me.
😬
Summer Dare damn, right?!?
Bhahaha! Ur obviously smart,and u win best comment..😂 lol
👍🏻😂😂😂
It seems you are on the same UA-cam path as I am today.
100%
I discovered your channel 4 days ago. Brilliant is the word for your storytelling. I enjoy every single episode. In this episode with Shaw saving Dion, again my jaw dropped open. I have shed several tears from some of your episodes, I also am glad how vigilant I am with my safety and surroundings. Thank you so much for occupying my time with great info. I loved how the story ended with Shaw and Dion coming to the surface together, I was astonished. Incredible. Well done MrBallen.
I wouldn’t shower in the dark,never mind diving into it....
LOL. THAT WAS FUNNY
Shower in the dark with lit candle. Not totally dark but steam from shower makes it look like a fire without the fire
Showers with a couple nice smelling candles is nice, treat yourself sometime
That’s good! Lol
Do not join Seals or Marines then.
Operator: "Hello, Suicide Prevention Hotline."
L.B. "Um, I'm Mr. Ballen's Like Button."
Operator: "You poor bastard."
Goodbye 😢
LOL
😂🤣😂🤣
It's cringe as fuck sorry he doesn't need to pander to kids with this content. Anyway some is great.
@@alldayidreamaboutsteak551 his channel isn't for kids Karen
My worst fear would be getting stuck in an underwater cave.
I think a normal cave is worse, I'd rather drown than be stuck and take days to die
@@youtubeyt5694 you sir definitely make bad desicions in life ....
@@sammysosa4124 I would never go in any cave, ever
Uh mine is definitely burning to death! I'll take water over fire any day!! Obviously they're 𝘢𝘭𝘭 horrifying but idk, imo claustrophobic drowning doesn't seem 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦 as gruesome.
Same, especially one underwater.
Really odd but I feel an insane need to come up for air while watching these videos, they're that immersive. Mr Ballen, you are an incredible story-teller.
Same lol
The level of selflessness in Dave is so admirable. It definitely leave a glimmer of hope for humanity.
Contrary to the general tone of media these days, there are so many stories of heroism and sacrifice by human beings for other people. It's a really good thing to read about those. Restores one's faith in humanity
And yesterday, I watched Mr Ballen video about friends went to NY to party night, and killed one of their friend, and this one died for some one he have never met before.
That's Good and evil, Love vs hate!!!😥💔
"dwindle of hope"
Seriously do you even know the words that you're using. Lol
@@therealist4186 I meant glimmer but is your job to attack people on the internet? Cuz I'm not stupid but that's what you were insinuating
@@vonhodges105 don’t worry, there is no more than a dwindle of intelligence in him
My late husband was certified as a SCUBA diver at the Blue Hole. He collected stories about it over the years. He went on to train as a Rescue Diver. We went out some amazing dive trips during our years together. He taught me so much 💗
What happened to him? If u don't mind....
Sorry for your loss Lindsey.
@@AndreaStote died
RIP
@@CEOofSleep lol
It seems learning sign language sounds useful when you’re scuba diving
as might be hard with equipment, signing is fast if your fluent and the panic would set in i would imagine their vision would get blurry.
@@frankieverona5353 yeaaa but still would be rlly useful
When you take lessons, you get teached how to use sign language to properly communicate
@@bigmonkeyman45 not really sign language but some handsigns for the most important things. For complex conversations we carry wetnotes. Wetnotes are just little waterproof notebook with a pencil.
When you are receive your SCUBA certifications you are taught signs to help you communicate underwater.
I really appreciate you establishing mrballen foundation for abuse victims I'm a surviver of extreme abusive violent marriage several of them n it truly touches my heart how concerned n caring u r for them u r so amazing mrballen ❤
Shane was a Navy Dive Instructor and a Advanced Scuba Instructor with over 20 years experience, and yet even something like that can happen to some of the best. Wow!
No visibility, no map, easy to
Get disorientated ! Major stupid RISK
But we wasn't a fish nor a mermaid,
@@Boss-si3zz true
Honestly his ego got the best of him.
At 250 meters you find a corpse you document it and leave it there.
There is no reason to risk a living breathing soul over a corpse
@@ROrneli I think the original comment is referring to Shane; you're referring to Dave Shaw.
My buddy Greg Moondog Mooney won an Oscar for “The Cove”, but his main job is mixing the proper amounts of gas for deep dives and body retrieval. We go fossil hunting, and we were near a nice ridge once that would have a lot of recent erosion, meaning many Meg teeth would have fallen loose. Before I could proceed, Greg grabbed my wrist, stopping me and later telling me “That erosion is not from weather, it’s current. Another five meters and you would have been sucked into the same cavern I recovered a father and son from.” The only way to exit is by having a line anchored outside, and once inside it is hand to face black, you’re going from murky to black water. Scary stuff bro
Ok that’s horrifying and I’d love to hear more about this cave. Can you send any links or further information??? john@operatorsassociation.com
@@MrBallen absolutely! I’ve messaged you on Instagram before but I don’t use it often. Emailing now.
I seriously hope this makes it to a video... not for any bad reason, but simply because for reasons unknown to me I’m fascinated by this kind of stuff...
Christina Burke not cave diving particularly but hell I’ll try anything once so long as it’s within reason BUT... I’m talking more of having a fascination with the stories MrBallen talks about not actually trying something he talks about. Also I highly recommend never trying to discouraging people from doing things they are fascinated by or highly interested in... regardless of how dangerous, there is always an er of danger with virtually anything, sure some mite be much higher than others but regardless people still do it, so instead is discouraging people why not advocate for them to be as safe as possible when doing something potentially life threatening? Hell in the boat racing world when an accident happens we don’t go “OH NO! We are never going to race again!” No in fact we go “is the driver ok? 👌🏻. Ok then let’s review the footage frame by frame and see what we can do to make this less of a risk/possibly!” And simultaneously if it weren’t for those whom take the time to do said things than we wouldn’t have half of the incredible things we do in this world!
@@makinwaves8147 yep, you can definitely do some intermediate cave diving with no issues and it’s absolutely breathtaking. There are risks with every outdoor activity. Hunting, hiking, fishing, cycling, running, diving, skydiving, you name it, someone has died doing it. So the guy discouraging prior, don’t listen to him. But if a sign does say “Experienced only” in a cave, they’re usually talking about literal weeks of planning, serious knowledge, etc. I won’t even go black water diving again, there is no difference. You are swimming down between dead trees and more, no different than a cavern and you can’t see a thing in front of you. The only purpose was to well preserved Meg teeth, and I found better in the shallows.
*A professional diving team is going to map out a new cave.*
Me: "Cool! I hope this goes well."
*Remembers Mr. Ballen is telling their story*
Me: 👁👄👁
I like this comment
@@RizzyTizzyLando thanks
I also like this comment
I cant lol
@@Issamadting thank you
Mr Ballen is one best UA-camrs ever!!! Love all your videos!!!!
When I was 10 years older I watched Inner Sanctum and decided “huh I’m never ever gonna go diving”
Now I’m 20 and after watching almost all of your videos and 80% of them being diving horror stories, I stand firm with my decision I made when I was 10
It didn't even take me watching inner sanctum. I'm an excellent swimmer and I wanted to take scuba diving in college so I did but the very first time down in the pool I couldn't even be seen by the other divers because of the multitude of bubbles from my panicked over breathing...😆
Last dive for me. I'm claustrophobic and the mask in addition to the other equipment made me feel trapped under the water
@@Justicia007 "Claustrophobic ". So am I. I don't really like getting on packed Buses and Trains for crying out loud.
@@Stephan5916 Agreed!!
Yeah, it’s like so many of the ultimate fears in one. Darkness, tight spaces, underground, underwater, inability to speak. Like… NO!!!!!
Is it weird watching these videos have made me want to get into diving
"As he was making his way down"
My brain: *making my way downtown, walking fast, faces pass, and I'm homebound*
I just sang that in my head as I read it 1st time 😂
@@MrBallen it'll happen till the day I die😂
MrBallen Same
I’m currently “wriggling through” a bag of Ruffles Sour Cream and Onion.
It’s dangerous but I think I’m up to the task.
@rat no reply... expecting the worst...😩
well... in America, you are way more likely to die from an unhealthy diet than cave diving so... I'd consider what you're doing a higher risk lmao.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Bah hahahahahaha love it Man!!
Hahaha 😝
Good on those divers forcing themselves through the blocked entrance. I think if it were me I probably would have just wrote on my whiteboard "I guess this is it. It was nice knowing you."
Ugh my heart broke watching those video, literally crying right now. My son dives and he’s certified to use nitrox, and i pray that he never dives this far down. I pray for both these families. 🥺
I'm not religious but for what it's worth I pray for him too👍
@@dpatmessiessi938 I panic when i know he’s diving in shallow waters too. Ya just never know 😔
Most all of these diving tragedies could have been avoided. Usually due to someone pushing beyond their training. Chance of some freak accident is very low.
@@jodilynn9514 I mean how far does he normally dive?
@@l.t1330 I believe the furthest he’s ever gone was a little over 200 feet.
I struggled to breathe listening to these stories.
I struggle to breathe regularly idk y
@@hollowayz8772 you should contact your doctor. You might have asthma
Same here
Me too. Really feel for the people that passed. The risk of cave diving is obvious. I'm not that high risk to explore these places. Y'all have fun with that.
I can only imagine being in a tiny tight water filled something-that's scary enough on its own😳
someone could literally say “i’ll pay you a billion dollars to do this” and my response would be
“no not gonna happen, i like living”
Me either. Can't spend it if you're not alive. I'd probably die from fear.
i literally just had this thought to myself. im claustrophobic and have anxiety, no way i could do this. idc how much money is being offered
@@jarradlavoie I have no anxiety or claustrophobia but I still wouldn't do it!
A billion dollars you going in that hole. You may be ah hell no now but I guarantee if you knew that money was guaranteed in your bank account you going in.
@@alysgrant6732 If they have a billion dollars to just give away, they most certainly would be able trace you to make sure u do it
Mrballen is very instrumental in saving lives by these cautionary, true life stories. I humbly thank you. You're more than just a veteran. You are a saver of people and preventing torture.
That 2nd story must’ve been slowly mind deteriorating
YOO ITS DERRICK & DERRION, How y’all been?
How did the second guy get out
@@homelackin2234 he located a spare tank of air, which the first guy couldn't find
@@homelackin2234 and the other person’s air tanks made a gap
Definitely
Cave mapping and body recovery should be done by robots when in hazardous environments.
Absolutely. The technology is available now and the cost is reasonable. Why risk human life.
Best comment:) WHO would enjoy underwater cave diving? I get short-winded just imagining it (claustrophobia)
OMG!! How have we never thought of this!? Now I feel like we look stupid.
@@godlessfornicater we are, humans are.
@@MrGermor81 Some do enjoy it. I think most of it should be done by robots, or perhaps we can invent robot guides that come along with us and have extra air and emergency services contact ability + GPS.
I'm so claustrophobic that I literally had chills when you're talking about ppl bein stuck hundreds of feet under water in some random cave....helllll NO.
HELL YEAH!! Get yo ass in there
Same 😵💫
Whenever I watch stuff like this I forget to breathe sometimes🥲
Me too! I was super uncomfortable and I became full of anxiety just from listening to the stories, especially the 1st one. Hearing that the diver panicked before he died terrified me because that's exactly what I would've done. I actually had to pause the video for a few minutes during the 1st story to calm my nerves down a little which may seem ridiculous to some, but that is how claustrophobic I really am.
@@melaniebaker2012 I get it
Mrballen is my favorite podcaster, story teller, youtuber ever period. Please dont ever quit this. It's your gift/talent to this world. Xoxoxo
Moment of silence for the people that lost their lives 🙏
“If you suffer from claustrophobia, this video might not be for you.” Me continuing to watch 😩
I enjoy teasing my phobias lmfao
@@ghoste_girll haha..same lol
Same
Me to! It makes me cringe thinking about that tiny cave
@@ghoste_girll lol same
Shaw did exactly what he told Dion’s parents he’d do. Wish things would of ended differently for him but he kept his word even after death. Such a sad tragedy
ua-cam.com/users/shortsWsUwJGBV7kM?feature=share
Hes definitely a beast. Even at 800 meters, may he rest In peace
Every 1 minute shaw spent messing w Dion's body equals 1 hour of decompression time on the way up. He gave himself 5 minutes to do it but spent 15 down there then got narcd.
@@markouellette6868 800ft
It's a vicarious masochistic pleasure listening to these stories that give me rampant claustrophobia without being killed
I have ADHD so it's hard for me to stay focus or interested when someone is talking but you had me intrigued and interested the whole time, awesome narrating my dude. Very well spoken
I also have ADHD and this is so interesting
Same here its amazing
I am the same way. I usually can’t watch UA-cam videos over 5 minutes because my attention span is shit. I can watch Mr. Ballen videos and when they end want to watch more.
Same here. If it isn't something that really piques my interest, I'm out. I can't stop watching this dude. If I click a video, I mentally prepare for 1-2 hours minimum
Same!!!!
Who else randomly found his channel and now can’t stop watching it?!?!
Me too
Who else is tired of seeing this same comment on every video 🤣🤣
Isnt that just how you find youtubers
Yes me too but it's usually how u find new ppl to watch lol.
Not me cuz some of the vid are 18+
Thanks for delivering these tragic stories with the compassion and respect they deserve.
These hit close to my heart, as I lost my uncle to a scuba diving accident. Was very seasoned, lived in fl for decades scuba diving and was a teacher... So very knowledgeable.
Took his son out... Very similar to your story, they were coming up..my cousin leading, kept looking back, my uncle was behind him... Till all of a sudden he wasn't. Body recovered, but took forever for them to grant and perform an inquest, which yielded no definitive results.
My uncle had beaten a very fatal and rare form of leukemia, after a decade battle and experimental treatments. Left him with stints and blood disease, but he was alive which was a miracle. He took full advantage of his extra years..
His funeral had past students and coworkers from his entire career, spilling out to fill the lawn of the funeral home! My 4yo reminds me a lot of him.
Thanks again, for being the best storyteller of this style content!
I’m really sorry to hear about your uncle, but wow, he sounds like such an inspiration. Thank you for the kind words as well!
@@MrBallen thanks! He really was an inspiration, especially considering what an oddball he was. Definitely think he would be diagnosed with Asperger's\autism now adays...
He was unafraid to be completely genuine, bolo ties, trains, science and nature but etc he was a great guy!
You're so welcome! Thanks for your kind words, as well.
Just another reason why you are also an inspiration and so we'll loved!
@@MrBallen
And um yeah..gee. sorry uncle brad, but I just got a bit giddy when i got a heart, and reply, from the mr ballen!
Apologies that it piggy backed your untimely demise... I know you probably appreciate the tales in your honor, though... still teaching, huh...Love ya lots!
Now that that's out of the way....
"whimper-Squeal🤗🥰" you're the best, Mr ballen!
Gigglesnort. Welcome to my freshly medicated noggin.
"if you suffer from claustrophobia this is probably not a good video for you" youre absolutely right but thats not gonna stop me :')
Just learned my dad used to work with David Shaw and went to his funeral after telling him about this video. I am pretty speechless tbh.
Why don’t people send underwater drones to figure the system out
maybe because SUV's need tethered usually.
Literally was thinking the same thing, why not use ROV rover to explore sketchy tunnels and shiz.
Cuz in 2016 they didn't have that modern stuff
@@unknownexploration6587 But they did....
Cave divers want to do the exploring they want to see and discover for themselves. The adventuress spirit of human kind. I'm certified myself but have no interest in caves. The risk worth reward isn't worth it to me.
I'm beginning to think that the adjectives "expert", "skilled", "seasoned" really just means "soon to be on MrBallen"
I'm beginning to think that too
It’s funny how being one of those thins backfires sometimes when the people who would have probably gotten help sooner, don’t because of it.
@@BrownEyedVampy r
The most skilled people know when to turn around. Just because you know how to do something, doesn’t mean now is the time to do it.
Way too much suffering in this life. Like I've typed before, THANK GOD for Mr. B. Allen's stories because they all give readers warnings of what not to do so we don't have torturous experiences. He's done so much with his research, he speaks well and offers immense detail. 😊❤
This is why we should just leave certain things undiscovered
That's why we have the expression, "curiosity killed the cat.".
Humans are probably more curious. At least the good ones, I say.
@@ashkebora7262 u not human? 🧐
What you just said was the most retarted thing I’ve ever heard😂I’ve been scuba diving and caving for about 4 years and one thing I’ve learned is that there is no such thing as getting stuck...but really if you get stuck there is a very small chance you will survive
@@discgolfboy644 first off dont use the r slur its offensive to those who are disabled and second off good for you for not getting stuck but not everyone gets to be safe all the time. sometimes things can't always go as planned and that's why we shouldn't be sending people down where to many things can get out of hand
@@discgolfboy644 there’s no such thing as getting stuck but if you do you probably won’t survive...so your argument about not exploring is CLEARLY valid. If you do these activities and something goes wrong you die, so you the best way not to die doing these things is by not doing them.
Parker left his tanks that way on purpose to leave an opening for his friend, he's a hero.
rip Parker
Ehhh... I don’t know.
@@tiatokkesdal1745 I am also kind of doubtful. He didn't even tell the other guy that he was gonna go; he just left. I don't mean any disrespect, but he was most likely stressing out and following his instincts.
@@epicXtrollface exactly my thoughts. You don’t leave someone in that predicament. He meant to leave his friend and got hurt doing it.
damn are u serious if thats true hes a champ 100 percent a hero
When he shows a (real photo) of someone you know they’re going to die
yes
😓
But then how did they get the photo?? Because they are alive!!!
@@jj_soda4473 I think you focused on comments rather than video...
@@jj_soda4473 you are not the brightest person
I have been binge watching like many people here. Dude, you have an entire universe of content. Just wow.
My favorite are the like button stories. That has become a little treat for me every video.
My man Shane Dawe still managed to get Dion’s body out just like he promised. What a hero
Dave Shaw. Not Shane Dawe
@@tofuna1319 lol 😂
This confused me through the entire story lol
i thought it said shane daw
Hell nooooooooooooooooooo
I feel nothing but extreme respect for David Shaw, truly inspiring. Rest in peace you brave soul.
how is that inspiring? to die for a corpse? i dont know what he was thinking.. a grown man
Indeed though there are some cynical bastards would would say otherwise and there have been some examples. In all fairness though, I wouldn't have done it and would recommend against as such as well.
The two replies and some too other comments shows how selfish people are these days and why no one but immediate family will remember them millions of people know Shaw there just random comments and people to be forgotten
@@williammclaughlin8205 Should you really blame us for having some concerns for self-preservation? Granted I don't disagree with your sentiment however.
@@iamhungey12345 he went down there knowing it was a possibility but made a promise and by keeping it he will be remembered far long than if he didn’t and died at 80
Hats off to Parker!!! I know he died, but in the process, he saved his friends life (I like to think he left those tanks there to show his friend that he could make it though the portal to keep it stable from further collapse.) AND swam over 70 freaking meters on one gulp of air!!! True hero in my mind!!!
Yes
Absolutely. Not that I would have put a toe in an underwater cave to begin with but I wouldn't have hade it half that distance on one lonely breath of air.
I thought the same thing, what a freaking hero… I couldn’t imagine how scared one would be, but the heroism he showed was just amazing. May he Rest in Peace ❤️
Nobody leaves there tanks unless forced to do so he was concerned only for himself and very well could have blocked the exit. It was luck and cowardice not heroism
@@jasonwolfe3639 yeah I dont get how people think it was some kind of act of valour when he obviously panicked and tried to get out alone having no thought about his friend.
The first one, Shane, is my cousin. I watch all of the MrBallen videos and enjoyed them because I am a fan of the strange dark and.... But I don't think I ever stopped to think about how it felt to know the person in the story. I am not sure how I missed this video for so long, but have just seen it... I am crushed. I loved him so much and so does his mum, sister and son. This is a man who was a master diver with years of naval and salvage experience. He had operated at every level and was a rebreather specialist. To say he just panicked was not quite accurate. The cave was pitch, there were no cables because there was no room. The silt made it impossible to see when the light shines in. It was dangerous, it was stupid, but it was what he loved and what he was good at. It broke me to hear, again, how he drowned. And I can imagine how his sister and mum would feel... But there were so many amazing things that Shane did before that... Finding lost ships at crazy depths and diving for Cirque DU Soleil. If you want to hear about the amazing things he did before his death let me know... The family would be happy to oblige. In the meantime, we just miss him so very much....
Im so sorry for your family's loss. Shane sounds like a someone who lived a life with the utmost zeal. Most of us would never have the guts to do any of the things Shane accomplished. Til you get to see him again, my condolences.