Season 08 Episode 39: A Trembling Distant Voice

but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to Crimewavetsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to see you on board. For as long as we've been cognizant of our place within the universe, humans have been attracted to the notion of an afterlife. We see it every time we pass a church or graveyard. We hear about

it every time someone makes reference to the dead. Passing on from the ancient Egyptian belief that our body and soul duplicate themselves in the Kingdom of the Dead to the more modern iterations of heaven and hell represented by the Abrahamic religions. Our relationship with mortality, and indeed religion, is largely informed by our unwillingness to accept death as

the end. Understandably, believing in an after life offers great comfort, yet simply believing the dead continue to exist somewhere else isn't enough. Throughout history, we've desperately sought ways to pierce the veil between life and death, to receive guidance from those who have gone before us, or glimpse what awaits us. This is why so many cultures have produced oracles than visionaries.

In the Greco Roman era, these people were often revered priestesses known as sibyls, who would invite pollucinogenic cocktails to produce prophecies and dream visions. In Roman poet Virgil's epic The Aeneid, for example, when Trojan hero a Eneas makes the brave decision to try and visit his dead father in the underworld, it is to the famous Cumean Sybil, who he turns to for advice on how to make

it out alive. Since moving from the Renaissance, through the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, at least in the secular West, we increasingly outsource our anxieties about death to empirical strategies focusing more on sustaining life or at least providing the illusion of eternal life through technology, cosmetics, and the intervention

of modern medicine. But our animal hard wiring has proved stubbornly persistent that little part of us that remains so terrified of the idea of death being the complete and utter end, we just can't face up to it, So that even when numerous studies show belief in gaud falling steadily throughout the West over the last forty years, the number of people who believe in an after life has remained more or less consistent throughout the same period, despite

both ideas broadly going hand in hand. Perhaps one reason for this has been the ever growing fascination with near death experiences or endase, which, thanks to modern technology, has never been more thoroughly studied than it is to day. In two thousand and eight, in one large scale study published by the University of Southampton, over two thousand patients from fifteen different hospitals were interviewed about what they encountered

during their near death experiences. It found that over forty percent of those who survived cardiac events had an acute sense of awareness during the time that they were supposedly clinically dead. At least one patient had reportedly verified out of body experience, while many more reported what were described

as hallucinatory events. One group of scientists from the Charite University of Medicine in Berlin surmised during a study in twenty eleven that near death experiences are most likely due to an explosion of serotonin released into the bloodstream when the brain senses the body shutting down. In this way, an NDE is little more than consciousness giving itself one last hurrah to ease the transition from being into non being.

The release of d MT from the pineal gland at the moment of death has also been suggested as a material explanation for the event. But even if this were to prove categorically correct, we wouldn't be human if we didn't at least think, hope or pray for a moment.

Just what if? Since the brain is relatively poorly understood when compared with other organs, and since Newtonian physics does not allow for the destruction of energy, only its transfer, numerous hopeful theories have been proposed regarding the possibility of consciousness surviving death, So it should come as no surprise that visions experienced in the face of death still hold

a great fascination for us. In James One's twenty ten horror blockbuster Insidious, a demonic entity known as the Long Haired Fiend attaches itself to a young boy after he falls from a ladder and slips into a prolonged coma. To date, the Insidious franchise has made almost a billion US dollars at the box office, clear evidence that the very idea of another site still has the enduring power to both titillate and terrify to such an extent that we will turn out in droves just to get a

peak at what we imagine might be behind the curtain. But how should we approach near death experiences when the visions don't come from a hospital bed or a laboratory setting. What happens when they emerge from the bowels of the

earth itself? From men trapped in absolute darkness, facing certain death, with no medical equipment to monitor their brain activity and no scientists to explain away what they're seeing, these were exactly the questions that would haunt investigators in the aftermath of one tragic event in the small town of Shepton, Pennsylvania, in the summer of nineteen sixty three. You're listening to

Unexplained and I'm Richard mc lean smith. Tuesday morning of August thirteenth, nineteen sixty three was unseasonably cold, even more so down in the depths of the single entry Anthrokite coal mine near the small town of Shepton, Pennsylvania. Fifty eight year old David Felon was the mine's co owner. Despite his authority, David was well respected and liked by his men because, unlike many other mine owners, he wasn't

afraid to get his hands dirty. He cared about his co workers and was always quick with a kind word about their families or asking after their welfare. That morning, David was at the head of a skeleton crew with two of his most trusted employees, fifty four year old Lewis Bova and twenty eight year old Henry Throne. Though fairly new to the wrong, Henry was energetic and curious about the intricacies of his work, and usefully strong when it came to moving heavy loads. Though David was loath

to admit it. He was fast approaching the end of his own tenure physically, and was pleased to have the eager young worker by his side. The coal mine was small scale and cramped, but the men didn't mind. They saw themselves as working within a tradition that went all the way back to the days of the American Frontier. They didn't need excavators or bulldozers, industrial drills, or fancy

lighting ricks. Felen and his men relied solely on their wits and the tried and tested method of extracting coal with pickaxes and handcarts. They were three hundred and thirty feet underground, separated from the outside world by countless tons of rock and soil above them, with only a low hanging narrow mine shaft held up by wooden support beams for a way out. The men pummeled at the seam under the flickering light of their gas lamps, their faces

black from the coal dust. After an hour or so, they loaded up a cart with the spoils and sent it back up to the surface. As the heavily laden cart inched its way ever closer to the outside world, pulled by an aging piece of corroded steel, cable. The men got back to work chipping away at the coal. They rarely thought of the perilousness of what they were doing, preferring instead to focus on getting the job done so they could get back to their families and loved ones.

So maybe it was just sheer luck that they'd gotten away with working under such dangerous conditions for so long, But that luck was about to change. As the cart continued its way, inching up the tunnel toward the daylight, that corroded steel cable slowly began to unravel, one strand at a time, each loosening for a moment before suddenly pinging off. Then, with one loud crack, the entire cable snapped.

Hearing a strange sound, at first, David Felon thought he'd pierced through the seam and exposed a natural gas bubble, something that was common in that line of work, and that would have left all three men with no hope of survival. Then he heard an ominous, distant rumbling sound, the sound of the coal cart thundering back down the mine shaft toward them, taking out every support beam in

it path. David had just enough time to scream for his team to take cover before their entire world collapsed on their heads as countless tons of rock rained down on them. Both David and the younger man, Henry Throne, managed to dive out of the way just in time, taking refuge in an air pocket at one end of

the mine track. Lewis Bova was not so lucky. He'd been working further up the track when the collapse happened, and was now separated from his colleagues by a meter's thick wall of crushed stone, wooden beams, buckled railway sleepers, and smashed metal. For a moment, David and Henry heard him shouting from the other side of the rubble, something about his hip being backd hurt. Then he went quiet.

They tried knocking and calling his name. They rattled the wire on the light fixtures, hoping he would rattle back, but there was no response. David and Henry, it seemed, were now on their own, with only the flame of a flickering gaslight to illuminate the cramped space, and not long after the light flickered out, plunging them into unfathomable darkness. The older David did his best to keep Henry calm.

The main thing was they were alive and uninjured, and their colleagues would soon be coming for them, he insisted. In the meantime, they just had to hold on. But David knew only too well that in order to do that, they were likely going to have to push the boundaries of human endurance far beyond what either men had imagined they would ever have to do. Listening in the darkness, they followed the sound of droplets and discovered puddles of brackish,

sulfurous water. It was vile, like drinking liquid coal, but it would keep them alive. As for food, all they had between them was the half eaten cheese and pickle sandwich in David's top pocket. When that ran out, they chewed on the damp bark of a broken support beam to stave off the pangs of hunger. But worst of

all was the cold. It seemed to pulse through the walls like a nuclear winter, and so they endured minute after minute, hour after hour in the pitch black, clinging to each other to preserve body heat and for comfort. It had been two days, maybe even three by their rough estimation, when David and Henry began to scent something strange, though they knew it made no logical sense. Both men were becoming increasingly convinced that they weren't alone in the mind.

It was David who saw it first, the faint light in the distance, getting closer and closer. It seemed to be coming from a flashlight. Then what appeared to be two shapes seemed to emerge from out of the gloom. Then Henry apparently saw it too, Hey, show me some light over here, he shouted, annoyed at how long the figures seemed to be taking to get to them. As they came closer, David realized suddenly they were wearing spacesuits

and didn't seem to hear Henry's cry. David watched as the figures drew closer, feeling as though he were spinning through a hall of mirrors. Panicking suddenly, he tried to move toward them, only for the two figures to suddenly head off in the opposite direction, getting smaller and smaller until they disappeared completely. It was some time later, as the two men drifted in and out of consciousness, that Henry suddenly stirred, Awake, Do you see it? He said?

See what, replied David? The light said Henry, But this time it wasn't a flashlight, but something else entirely, an eerie blue glow radiating from out of what appeared to be a doorway located some way off in the darkness. Henry was certain he could see a marble staircase in the space behind leading up into the light. The young man stumbled to his feet, stooping low to avoid the ceiling. Davy, I'm going home, and I'll go alone if you don't want to come, he said, as he tried to stagger away.

Feeling a sudden surge of dread, David grabbed for Henry and held on to him for dear life. Don't go to it, he urged, as though he knew if he went for it, Henry's life would be over in time. As they would later tell it, David also came to see the doorway. It was perhaps a day later when Henry saw the strain celestial light again, this time seemingly shining out of a huge fissure in the mine wall. Henry couldn't take his eyes off it and what was

supposedly contained within it. Beyond the crack, as he later claimed, he saw a vast, golden city with bizarre cherub like creatures flying in the air playing harps. There was a face too, of a man Henry didn't recognize. Then the crack closed up and the light disappeared. Throughout their ordeal, a large glowing crucifix was also said to have appeared

to them. Neither man was quite sure how much time had passed when they heard a faint rumbling sound above them, followed by the unmistakable vibration of a drill moving closer overhead, until finally it pushed through the rock and sent a shower of rubble cascading from above. When all was still, the men realized with startled relief that they had been found.

Unknown to David and Henry, from the moment the mind collapsed, an extraordinary rescue effort had been put in motion to try and get to the Five days had passed before that first borehole pushed through into where they were sheltering. As soon as they realized what had happened, the men screamed out to whoever might be listening that they were alive. In time, food, water, flashlights, and medication were passed down into their chamber. A microphone was also dropped into the

hole so the men could communicate with their families. Here we come, they shouted into it, delighted at the prospect that their ordeal was finally coming to an end. Sadly, however, there was still some way to go. It soon became obvious the borehole had not been made wide enough for the men to fit through. Having heard about the calamity, eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes offered to help with the rescue effort.

With his support, a state of the art industrial drill was flown in by the Navy, before being transported on a flatbed trailer by a convoy of Pennsylvania State troopers. The massive rig was set up and ready to begin drilling on August twentieth, seven days after the initial collapse. By then, family and friends had been joined at the digging site by over two hundred media personnel, along with U. S. Navy physicians who had been drafted in to tend to the men as soon as they could be brought out.

All watched on in agonizing disbelief as every turn of the huge drill increased the danger of further collapse into the mine. What if the pickaxe hewn air pocket, which held both David and Henry gave way. What if the smaller borehole that had already taken five days to drill suddenly collapsed too. Finally, after seven straight days of digging,

howd Hughes's drill pushed through into the mine shaft. Even still, the new borehole was only seventeen and a half inches in diameter, and though the two men had lost considerable weight during their entrapment, their exit proved a little more difficult than anticipated. The men were given cover alls to where to protect them from the three hundred feet of jagged rock they were to be pulled through, and axel grease to cover themselves with to help ease the journey.

And so it was that on August twenty seventh, at David's behest, Henry was the first to be clipped onto the rescue cable. Then, as he held on for dear life, he was steadily winched through the tiny hole and ascended up into the light. At the first sight of him above ground, a huge cheer and wave of relief washed over the crowd as Henry blinked furiously and winced at the brightness of it all. It wasn't the after life, but it was heaven to be back on the surface.

A short time later, David followed, singing deliriously as he went, She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes, until finally he too was pulled up into the light. Immediately after both men were extracted from the cave, they were rushed to the nearest hospital, where, incredibly, they were found

to be in relatively good health. Perhaps even more incredibly, when Henry was brought into hospital, with his eyes slowly adjusting to the daylight, he caught sight of an image behind one of the nursing stations, a picture of the same face he'd apparently seen in the vision he'd had of the Golden City while trapped underground. When he asked who the man was, a nurse replied that it was Pope John the twenty third, who had only recently died.

Henry had apparently never seen him before, and so steadily reports of the strange visions the men had seen while trapped in the darkness began to emerge. Both men were interviewed separately by Fate magazine, where the author of the piece was amazed to find that not only had both men apparently experienced the visions, but They claimed also to have experienced the same ones, as David Felon himself told the magazine. Pope John and a cross were there all

the time, but these other things kept jumping across. First, there were these men with lights, and after a while the steps would come. It was real. Both of us were seeing it, and we knew they were live people. We know that both men are said to have become convinced that the golden city they saw was in fact a vision of heaven. Though David had been raised Catholic and was familiar with the Pope and heavenly imagery, Henry was not a fact that many who believed the men's

claims say proves the veracity of their account. Skeptics, however, point out that the stories of supposed heavenly visions only conveniently started to appear after the men began fielding criticism about their mining venture. Though glad to be alive, David Felon was quick to complain that he and Henry Throne could have been saved in five days instead of fourteen, had the rescuers come equipped with the proper drilling equipment

in the first place. In response, Pennsylvania's Deputy Secretary of Mines Gordon Smith, who directed the rescue operation, blamed David, as co owner of the mine, for the collapse. As it turned out, the mine had already been worked out by another mining company, and David's team were effectively removing coal that had been deliberately left in place to keep the mind from collapsing. Despite the men's claim that their visions were identical, others have pointed out discrepancies in their

account as evidence that they concocted their story. For example, the cross they apparently saw was said by David to have had square ends, while Henry described them as round. David also described the marble staircase he apparently saw as being ten to twelve feet wide and ascending upwards out of sight, while Henry described it instead as being three to four feet wide and leading to another doorway higher up.

In February nineteen seventy, almost seven years after the shit Shepton incident, the band The Buoys from the nearby city of Scranton released a song called Timothy. The song was a minor success, spending eight weeks in the Billboard Top forty, peaking at number seventeen. In it, the Buoy's chief songwriter and frontman Rupert Holmes recounts a dark tale of three miners who descended into the earth, only to get trapped

by a cave in. When one of the men dies, the eponymous Timothy, the other two are forced to eat him in order to survive. The strange blurring of the stories has left some wandering about what really happened to David and Henry's partner Lewis Bova, and whether the tale of their strange visions was in fact some way of

distracting themselves from a far darker truth. For his part, songwriter Rupert Holmes has flatly denied any connection to the Shepton minace this ordeal, stating that if I had known about Shepton at the time, I probably never would have written the song because I don't want to make fun of something that's tragic. I sadly found out there was a parallel in reality, but only after the fact. It never occurred to me that there could be anything quite

like that. Either way, there is no doubt that David and Henry's survival was a miracle of sorts. As for whether they experienced the true miracle of seeing heaven, however, if indeed they truly had those visions at all. That remains to this day unexplained. But there is one thing for sure. If there is such a thing as an afterlife, both David Felen and Henry Throne, who died in nineteen ninety and ninety eight, respectively, or know all about it. As for the rest of us, I guess we'll just

have to wait and see. This episode was written by James Connor Patterson and Richard McLain Smith. James is a brilliant writer and poet. His debut collection of poems, titled Bandit Country, Exploring the Hintland between the North of Ireland and Republic, was shortlisted for the twenty twenty two T. S. Eliot Prize and is out now to buy, so do check it out. Thank you as ever for listening Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith.

All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Quarterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the story you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story

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