SHOW / EPISODE

Harrison County, Indiana: The Rock Slide and the Z-Bend

Season 1 | Episode 9
4m | Oct 3, 2026

Two short cases from the caves of Harrison County, Indiana, both from the National Speleological Society's accident reports. Near Ramsey, around 1975, a rock slide at a cave entrance shuts two teenagers inside, and a whole community turns out to open it. In Parker's Pit Cave, on 25 January 1986, a caver sticks in a passage called the Z-Bend. Nobody dies in this episode.

The case: Harrison County, Indiana: a cave near Ramsey, 1975(?), and Parker's Pit Cave, 25 January 1986.

Near Ramsey, Indiana: the rock slide at the entrance
Three teenagers entered a cave near Ramsey, Indiana, at about 4:30 p.m. About two and a half hours later, as they were leaving, a rock slide trapped two of them in the entrance. By 10 p.m. rescue workers had pierced the wall and the boys crawled to safety unharmed. The NSS report dates it "1975(?)".

Parker's Pit Cave, Indiana: the Z-Bend
On 25 January 1986, four cavers were in Parker's Pit Cave. One came down a 22-foot pit with his rappel device only half rigged and was not injured; on the same trip a caver became stuck in the Z-Bend and was helped through by the cavers ahead and behind.

Chapters
0:00 Two sides of a wall
0:37 Half past four
1:10 The slide
1:28 Everyone who came
1:56 Not enough care
2:30 Parker's Pit
2:52 Whoosh
3:15 The Z-Bend
3:41 What the record says

Sources
NSS, American Caving Accidents 1975, pp. 31–32: "Indiana, unidentified cave, 1975(?)"
NSS, American Caving Accidents 1986 (NSS News, November 1987, p. 394): "Parker's Pit Cave, Indiana, 1-25-86"

Full transcript:
https://pub-413c1fc5107e439dbec7a1f1c322ed45.r2.dev/transcripts/ep09.vtt

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Produced by Caving Stories. Narrated with a synthetic voice (Microsoft en-US-AndrewNeural).

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