The Camera of a Doomed Cave Diver Reveals Chilling Last Moments _ True Scary Stories

What is up, EWU crew? Today, we're covering the true scary story of Dave Shaw. The human body naturally feels fear of the dark. It's coded into us from the beginning of time. Our evolution, our species survival has relied on fearing the creatures out there in the dark. Most children go through a phase of fearing the dark in their own rooms. Their brains, remembering this programming, conjure up monsters in their closet or lurking under their bed. We can look back with objectivity and know that there were no monsters. There was no danger. But what if there was? What if there was really something sitting and waiting out there in the darkness? In adulthood, most of us no longer feel that innate fear of the darkness, but maybe we should. If Dave Shaw, an Australian man who died trying to recover the body of a fellow diver had feared the dark, he might still be alive today. The first dive. October in South Africa is springtime. The waters of Bushman's Hole in the Northern Cape Province are warm this time of year, at least at the surface. This incredibly deep sinkhole has turned into a freshwater cave over the millennia, becoming one of the most popular diving spots for those who don't value their own life. Because it's more than 1,500 meters above sea level, it is twice as difficult to dive 100 meters into Bushman's Hole than it is to dive 1,000 meters into the ocean. This is what attracted Dave Shaw to the dive, the challenge. If he could break the previous dive depth record, he would be famous. It took Shaw just over 10 minutes to reach the bottom of Bushman's Hole. He was using a rebreather, which recycled his own breath instead of pumping new air into his system. To both provide him with enough oxygen and help weigh him down, he dove with six extra cylinders of oxygen. Because he was using a rebreather, he didn't even create bubbles as he worked his way down the line towards the bottom of the cave. As he touched it down in the sticky mud, he became the first person in the world to dive that deep wearing a rebreather. Having achieved what he came down here to do, he attached a new line to himself and to the shot line and decided it was time to explore the bottom of the cave. He wanted to take his time, even though he knew that at dives this deep, every minute he spent underwater meant it would take him longer and longer to decompress as he rose to the surface. But still, when you've just broken a world record, it makes sense that you would want to bask in it for a moment. He let out his line, spooling out across the sloped bottom of the cave. He wasn't looking for anything in particular, except he knew that there was a body of another diver down there somewhere. It wasn't the purpose of his dive, but it was understood among the diving community that if you were going to dive Bushman's Hole, you would keep your eyes out for DeAndre'er's body. They knew it had been floating somewhere in the depths for more than a decade. If someone happened to spot it, it would be nice to return him to the surface. And Dave did spot it. As he swept the depths with his light, he spotted a body floating on its back about 50 feet from where he had touched down. It was a haunting sight. Out there in the dark, his hands and head had been exposed to the water. His skin and flesh was long gone, leaving just his skull. It was still wearing his diver's mask. Dre'er's wetsuit encased his body, but Shaw assumed that it too was nothing but bones. Shaw approached Dre'er's body carefully, still towing his gear behind him. He pulled on the corpse, trying to free it from where it stuck to the bottom of the cave, but it was no use. The battery pack for the deceased diver's light and man's useless air tank were encased in mud. Shaw had already been under for too long and he needed to start his ascent. If Shaw was going to return the man to the surface, he was going to need to return and he was going to need to return with help. He tied off the cave line to DeAndre'er and then worked his way back to the shot line. It took Shaw over eight hours to completely decompress from his dive. When he reached the surface, having prevented himself from getting the bends, he and his support diver, Don Shirley, began working on a plan to retrieve the dead body. Shirley recalls, Dave felt very connected with DeAndre'. He had found him, so it was like a personal thing that he should bring him back. The second dive. DeAndre'er's story is an unfortunate one. Even at the young age of 20, he had already completed over 200 dives by the time he attempted Bushman's Hole. Because he dove alone, no one knows exactly what happened to him, but the other divers in his community could guess at what happened. He stayed under for too long. Carbon dioxide built up in his system and he blacked out. No longer able to struggle for the surface, he essentially suffocated down there in the pressing deep. Shaw had no such worries as he and Don Shirley began planning the recovery of DeAndre'er's body. Not only was Shaw even more experienced than DeAndre'er had been at the time of his deadly dive, he had already successfully made the dive once before. They planned for over two months, consulting forensic experts and other divers to make sure their plan was rock solid. The condition of DeAndre'er's body was the big question. Would it actually be mostly bone? Or would the dive suit have preserved most of his body? In the end, Shaw decided not to take the chance that it would be mostly bone and have the body fall apart as he tried to bring it to the surface. He and his wife sewed a custom body bag out of silk that would be large enough to encase the body, including the fins DeAndre'er was still wearing. Shirley and Shaw practiced with the body bag. They gathered a team of seven other elite divers familiar with rebreathers. They met at Cape Town, escorted by a team of police who were already briefed on the situation and were prepared to receive the body when Shaw made it back to shore. They had 35 extra cylinders of gas just in case someone's rebreather failed, in case all of the rebreathers failed. As Shaw prepared to go into the water, he told the team that this was going to be an attempted body recovery. If they failed this time, they would just try again. Shaw said if he died trying to recover Dre'er, that they should leave them both in the water. It would be a sign that the darkness won and they should leave the bodies in the darkness. The dive started just after 6 a.m. on January 8th, 2005. He would make the first descent on his own. The seven other divers would wait and then would begin to descend the shot line after him, scheduling their descents so they could meet up with him at specific points on the line to provide support and help guide the body up to the surface. Shaw's descent was faster than his first dive as he remembered exactly where Dre'er's body was. When Shirley dropped into the water just 13 minutes after Shaw, he saw Shaw's light exactly where he expected it to be, except Shaw wasn't moving. His friend, the man he had been diving with for years, should have been on his way back up the shot line, but he wasn't even moving. Shirley made a split second decision and broke from protocol. He continued descending, knowing that if Shaw wasn't moving, he was almost definitely in trouble. Just as he began to reach the bottom, the piece of equipment that monitored his oxygen levels failed and shattered, meaning on top of everything else, Shirley would have to monitor his own oxygen levels at a depth he had never dove before. In that moment, looking down at Shaw, he knew that if he tried to join Shaw, he would die too. As the members of the team took their places on the line, each of them discovered in succession that Shaw was not ascending. They knew something was wrong immediately, but they knew they had to stick to the plan or risk even more death. As each of them peered down in the depths of Bushman's Hole, all they saw was a crushing darkness. They knew that it had taken Shaw a decade after it took Dreyer. Over the next few days, the dive team tried to decide what to do. Finally, a few of the divers volunteered to descend and attach boys to the line in an attempt to get the bodies to float back to the surface. But as they headed again down the shot line, they discovered that the bodies were floating, waiting for them only 20 meters below the surface. They were pulled up to dry land. It was clear that before Shaw died, he had managed to get Dreyer inside the custom-made body bag, but it was still not clear what had happened to Shaw. Luckily, he had been wearing a special helmet equipped with a deep water camera. In just a few hours time, they would know exactly what happened to Dave Shaw down there in the dark. Don Shirley reviewed the tape. What he found was a full video of one of his best friends dying. Here's what he saw. They will be able to see Dion now, as Dion's legs. All right, we're still on plan. Everything is going good. We're working hard. Undo the bag and put it over the legs. Everything's good. Checking everything's right. Breathing heavily, still jogging. Still jogging. Bit of silt, I'd expect that. Undoing the bag and trying to slide it up the legs. When Shaw got down to Dreyer the second time and attempted to put him in the body bag, Dreyer's body finally came unstuck from the muddy bottom of the cave. This made it much more difficult to get the bag around him. Shirley could hear his friend's breath beginning to quicken. As the body begins to drift, Shaw tries to get control over it. In his attempts, he gets tangled in the line, connecting him back to the surface. As more time passes, far more time than it should have taken to get Dreyer into the body bag, Shaw's condition continues to worsen. Every little action is a huge effort. His body is succumbing to the pressure of more than a billion gallons of water, but he's still moving forward until his light gets snagged on the line. He knows he's caught on something, but he's too exhausted and too disorientated to figure out what it is. He's towing the weight of another person with him. He pulls out a pair of shears to free himself from whatever is holding him back, but he never even gets the chance to figure out what it is. His breath is coming in short, harrowing gasps. His lungs are full on only carbon dioxide and his body is shutting down. He knows he is dying and is starting to panic, but there's nothing to do. He slides into darkness and dies, alone at the bottom of Bushman's Hole. In the end, Dave Shaw's death was a noble one. He was trying to help a fellow diver, but the effort took too long. He refused to deviate from the plan, even when Dreyer's body came loose and could likely have floated back to the surface on its own. But the darkness was beating in around him. The pressure of the water, the quiet, the fear, each took their toll. And in the end, it was too much for even an experienced diver like Shaw to handle.