Speaker 1: Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
Speaker 1: we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
Speaker 1: be a part of Crime Wave at Sea this November,
Speaker 1: joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the
Speaker 1: world of true crime and the paranormal four nights in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean, with amazing podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left,
Speaker 1: Scared to Death and many more live shows, Meet and greets,
Speaker 1: Creepy Stories under the Stars and you can be there too,
Speaker 1: but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to
Speaker 1: Crimewavetsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your fan
Speaker 1: coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to see
Speaker 1: you on board. For as long as we've been cognizant
Speaker 1: of our place within the universe, humans have been attracted
Speaker 1: to the notion of an afterlife. We see it every
Speaker 1: time we pass a church or graveyard. We hear about
Speaker 1: it every time someone makes reference to the dead. Passing
Speaker 1: on from the ancient Egyptian belief that our body and
Speaker 1: soul duplicate themselves in the Kingdom of the Dead to
Speaker 1: the more modern iterations of heaven and hell represented by
Speaker 1: the Abrahamic religions. Our relationship with mortality, and indeed religion,
Speaker 1: is largely informed by our unwillingness to accept death as
Speaker 1: the end. Understandably, believing in an after life offers great comfort,
Speaker 1: yet simply believing the dead continue to exist somewhere else
Speaker 1: isn't enough. Throughout history, we've desperately sought ways to pierce
Speaker 1: the veil between life and death, to receive guidance from
Speaker 1: those who have gone before us, or glimpse what awaits us.
Speaker 1: This is why so many cultures have produced oracles than visionaries.
Speaker 1: In the Greco Roman era, these people were often revered
Speaker 1: priestesses known as sibyls, who would invite pollucinogenic cocktails to
Speaker 1: produce prophecies and dream visions. In Roman poet Virgil's epic
Speaker 1: The Aeneid, for example, when Trojan hero a Eneas makes
Speaker 1: the brave decision to try and visit his dead father
Speaker 1: in the underworld, it is to the famous Cumean Sybil,
Speaker 1: who he turns to for advice on how to make
Speaker 1: it out alive. Since moving from the Renaissance, through the
Speaker 1: Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, at least in the secular West,
Speaker 1: we increasingly outsource our anxieties about death to empirical strategies
Speaker 1: focusing more on sustaining life or at least providing the
Speaker 1: illusion of eternal life through technology, cosmetics, and the intervention
Speaker 1: of modern medicine. But our animal hard wiring has proved
Speaker 1: stubbornly persistent that little part of us that remains so
Speaker 1: terrified of the idea of death being the complete and
Speaker 1: utter end, we just can't face up to it, So
Speaker 1: that even when numerous studies show belief in gaud falling
Speaker 1: steadily throughout the West over the last forty years, the
Speaker 1: number of people who believe in an after life has
Speaker 1: remained more or less consistent throughout the same period, despite
Speaker 1: both ideas broadly going hand in hand. Perhaps one reason
Speaker 1: for this has been the ever growing fascination with near
Speaker 1: death experiences or endase, which, thanks to modern technology, has
Speaker 1: never been more thoroughly studied than it is to day.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, in one large scale study
Speaker 1: published by the University of Southampton, over two thousand patients
Speaker 1: from fifteen different hospitals were interviewed about what they encountered
Speaker 1: during their near death experiences. It found that over forty
Speaker 1: percent of those who survived cardiac events had an acute
Speaker 1: sense of awareness during the time that they were supposedly
Speaker 1: clinically dead. At least one patient had reportedly verified out
Speaker 1: of body experience, while many more reported what were described
Speaker 1: as hallucinatory events. One group of scientists from the Charite
Speaker 1: University of Medicine in Berlin surmised during a study in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven that near death experiences are most likely due
Speaker 1: to an explosion of serotonin released into the bloodstream when
Speaker 1: the brain senses the body shutting down. In this way,
Speaker 1: an NDE is little more than consciousness giving itself one
Speaker 1: last hurrah to ease the transition from being into non being.
Speaker 1: The release of d MT from the pineal gland at
Speaker 1: the moment of death has also been suggested as a
Speaker 1: material explanation for the event. But even if this were
Speaker 1: to prove categorically correct, we wouldn't be human if we
Speaker 1: didn't at least think, hope or pray for a moment.
Speaker 1: Just what if? Since the brain is relatively poorly understood
Speaker 1: when compared with other organs, and since Newtonian physics does
Speaker 1: not allow for the destruction of energy, only its transfer,
Speaker 1: numerous hopeful theories have been proposed regarding the possibility of
Speaker 1: consciousness surviving death, So it should come as no surprise
Speaker 1: that visions experienced in the face of death still hold
Speaker 1: a great fascination for us. In James One's twenty ten
Speaker 1: horror blockbuster Insidious, a demonic entity known as the Long
Speaker 1: Haired Fiend attaches itself to a young boy after he
Speaker 1: falls from a ladder and slips into a prolonged coma.
Speaker 1: To date, the Insidious franchise has made almost a billion
Speaker 1: US dollars at the box office, clear evidence that the
Speaker 1: very idea of another site still has the enduring power
Speaker 1: to both titillate and terrify to such an extent that
Speaker 1: we will turn out in droves just to get a
Speaker 1: peak at what we imagine might be behind the curtain. But
Speaker 1: how should we approach near death experiences when the visions
Speaker 1: don't come from a hospital bed or a laboratory setting.
Speaker 1: What happens when they emerge from the bowels of the
Speaker 1: earth itself? From men trapped in absolute darkness, facing certain death,
Speaker 1: with no medical equipment to monitor their brain activity and
Speaker 1: no scientists to explain away what they're seeing, these were
Speaker 1: exactly the questions that would haunt investigators in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of one tragic event in the small town of Shepton, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: in the summer of nineteen sixty three. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Unexplained and I'm Richard mc lean smith. Tuesday morning of
Speaker 1: August thirteenth, nineteen sixty three was unseasonably cold, even more
Speaker 1: so down in the depths of the single entry Anthrokite
Speaker 1: coal mine near the small town of Shepton, Pennsylvania. Fifty
Speaker 1: eight year old David Felon was the mine's co owner.
Speaker 1: Despite his authority, David was well respected and liked by
Speaker 1: his men because, unlike many other mine owners, he wasn't
Speaker 1: afraid to get his hands dirty. He cared about his
Speaker 1: co workers and was always quick with a kind word
Speaker 1: about their families or asking after their welfare. That morning,
Speaker 1: David was at the head of a skeleton crew with
Speaker 1: two of his most trusted employees, fifty four year old
Speaker 1: Lewis Bova and twenty eight year old Henry Throne. Though
Speaker 1: fairly new to the wrong, Henry was energetic and curious
Speaker 1: about the intricacies of his work, and usefully strong when
Speaker 1: it came to moving heavy loads. Though David was loath
Speaker 1: to admit it. He was fast approaching the end of
Speaker 1: his own tenure physically, and was pleased to have the
Speaker 1: eager young worker by his side. The coal mine was
Speaker 1: small scale and cramped, but the men didn't mind. They
Speaker 1: saw themselves as working within a tradition that went all
Speaker 1: the way back to the days of the American Frontier.
Speaker 1: They didn't need excavators or bulldozers, industrial drills, or fancy
Speaker 1: lighting ricks. Felen and his men relied solely on their
Speaker 1: wits and the tried and tested method of extracting coal
Speaker 1: with pickaxes and handcarts. They were three hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: feet underground, separated from the outside world by countless tons
Speaker 1: of rock and soil above them, with only a low
Speaker 1: hanging narrow mine shaft held up by wooden support beams
Speaker 1: for a way out. The men pummeled at the seam
Speaker 1: under the flickering light of their gas lamps, their faces
Speaker 1: black from the coal dust. After an hour or so,
Speaker 1: they loaded up a cart with the spoils and sent
Speaker 1: it back up to the surface. As the heavily laden
Speaker 1: cart inched its way ever closer to the outside world,
Speaker 1: pulled by an aging piece of corroded steel, cable. The
Speaker 1: men got back to work chipping away at the coal.
Speaker 1: They rarely thought of the perilousness of what they were doing,
Speaker 1: preferring instead to focus on getting the job done so
Speaker 1: they could get back to their families and loved ones.
Speaker 1: So maybe it was just sheer luck that they'd gotten
Speaker 1: away with working under such dangerous conditions for so long,
Speaker 1: But that luck was about to change. As the cart
Speaker 1: continued its way, inching up the tunnel toward the daylight,
Speaker 1: that corroded steel cable slowly began to unravel, one strand
Speaker 1: at a time, each loosening for a moment before suddenly
Speaker 1: pinging off. Then, with one loud crack, the entire cable snapped.
Speaker 1: Hearing a strange sound, at first, David Felon thought he'd
Speaker 1: pierced through the seam and exposed a natural gas bubble,
Speaker 1: something that was common in that line of work, and
Speaker 1: that would have left all three men with no hope
Speaker 1: of survival. Then he heard an ominous, distant rumbling sound,
Speaker 1: the sound of the coal cart thundering back down the
Speaker 1: mine shaft toward them, taking out every support beam in
Speaker 1: it path. David had just enough time to scream for
Speaker 1: his team to take cover before their entire world collapsed
Speaker 1: on their heads as countless tons of rock rained down
Speaker 1: on them. Both David and the younger man, Henry Throne,
Speaker 1: managed to dive out of the way just in time,
Speaker 1: taking refuge in an air pocket at one end of
Speaker 1: the mine track. Lewis Bova was not so lucky. He'd
Speaker 1: been working further up the track when the collapse happened,
Speaker 1: and was now separated from his colleagues by a meter's
Speaker 1: thick wall of crushed stone, wooden beams, buckled railway sleepers,
Speaker 1: and smashed metal. For a moment, David and Henry heard
Speaker 1: him shouting from the other side of the rubble, something
Speaker 1: about his hip being backd hurt. Then he went quiet.
Speaker 1: They tried knocking and calling his name. They rattled the
Speaker 1: wire on the light fixtures, hoping he would rattle back,
Speaker 1: but there was no response. David and Henry, it seemed,
Speaker 1: were now on their own, with only the flame of
Speaker 1: a flickering gaslight to illuminate the cramped space, and not
Speaker 1: long after the light flickered out, plunging them into unfathomable darkness.
Speaker 1: The older David did his best to keep Henry calm.
Speaker 1: The main thing was they were alive and uninjured, and
Speaker 1: their colleagues would soon be coming for them, he insisted.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, they just had to hold on. But
Speaker 1: David knew only too well that in order to do that,
Speaker 1: they were likely going to have to push the boundaries
Speaker 1: of human endurance far beyond what either men had imagined
Speaker 1: they would ever have to do. Listening in the darkness,
Speaker 1: they followed the sound of droplets and discovered puddles of brackish,
Speaker 1: sulfurous water. It was vile, like drinking liquid coal, but
Speaker 1: it would keep them alive. As for food, all they
Speaker 1: had between them was the half eaten cheese and pickle
Speaker 1: sandwich in David's top pocket. When that ran out, they
Speaker 1: chewed on the damp bark of a broken support beam
Speaker 1: to stave off the pangs of hunger. But worst of
Speaker 1: all was the cold. It seemed to pulse through the
Speaker 1: walls like a nuclear winter, and so they endured minute
Speaker 1: after minute, hour after hour in the pitch black, clinging
Speaker 1: to each other to preserve body heat and for comfort.
Speaker 1: It had been two days, maybe even three by their
Speaker 1: rough estimation, when David and Henry began to scent something strange,
Speaker 1: though they knew it made no logical sense. Both men
Speaker 1: were becoming increasingly convinced that they weren't alone in the mind.
Speaker 1: It was David who saw it first, the faint light
Speaker 1: in the distance, getting closer and closer. It seemed to
Speaker 1: be coming from a flashlight. Then what appeared to be
Speaker 1: two shapes seemed to emerge from out of the gloom.
Speaker 1: Then Henry apparently saw it too, Hey, show me some
Speaker 1: light over here, he shouted, annoyed at how long the
Speaker 1: figures seemed to be taking to get to them. As
Speaker 1: they came closer, David realized suddenly they were wearing spacesuits
Speaker 1: and didn't seem to hear Henry's cry. David watched as
Speaker 1: the figures drew closer, feeling as though he were spinning
Speaker 1: through a hall of mirrors. Panicking suddenly, he tried to
Speaker 1: move toward them, only for the two figures to suddenly
Speaker 1: head off in the opposite direction, getting smaller and smaller
Speaker 1: until they disappeared completely. It was some time later, as
Speaker 1: the two men drifted in and out of consciousness, that
Speaker 1: Henry suddenly stirred, Awake, Do you see it? He said?
Speaker 1: See what, replied David? The light said Henry, But this
Speaker 1: time it wasn't a flashlight, but something else entirely, an
Speaker 1: eerie blue glow radiating from out of what appeared to
Speaker 1: be a doorway located some way off in the darkness.
Speaker 1: Henry was certain he could see a marble staircase in
Speaker 1: the space behind leading up into the light. The young
Speaker 1: man stumbled to his feet, stooping low to avoid the ceiling. Davy,
Speaker 1: I'm going home, and I'll go alone if you don't
Speaker 1: want to come, he said, as he tried to stagger away.
Speaker 1: Feeling a sudden surge of dread, David grabbed for Henry
Speaker 1: and held on to him for dear life. Don't go
Speaker 1: to it, he urged, as though he knew if he
Speaker 1: went for it, Henry's life would be over in time.
Speaker 1: As they would later tell it, David also came to
Speaker 1: see the doorway. It was perhaps a day later when
Speaker 1: Henry saw the strain celestial light again, this time seemingly
Speaker 1: shining out of a huge fissure in the mine wall.
Speaker 1: Henry couldn't take his eyes off it and what was
Speaker 1: supposedly contained within it. Beyond the crack, as he later claimed,
Speaker 1: he saw a vast, golden city with bizarre cherub like
Speaker 1: creatures flying in the air playing harps. There was a
Speaker 1: face too, of a man Henry didn't recognize. Then the
Speaker 1: crack closed up and the light disappeared. Throughout their ordeal,
Speaker 1: a large glowing crucifix was also said to have appeared
Speaker 1: to them. Neither man was quite sure how much time
Speaker 1: had passed when they heard a faint rumbling sound above them,
Speaker 1: followed by the unmistakable vibration of a drill moving closer overhead,
Speaker 1: until finally it pushed through the rock and sent a
Speaker 1: shower of rubble cascading from above. When all was still,
Speaker 1: the men realized with startled relief that they had been found.
Speaker 1: Unknown to David and Henry, from the moment the mind collapsed,
Speaker 1: an extraordinary rescue effort had been put in motion to
Speaker 1: try and get to the Five days had passed before
Speaker 1: that first borehole pushed through into where they were sheltering.
Speaker 1: As soon as they realized what had happened, the men
Speaker 1: screamed out to whoever might be listening that they were alive.
Speaker 1: In time, food, water, flashlights, and medication were passed down
Speaker 1: into their chamber. A microphone was also dropped into the
Speaker 1: hole so the men could communicate with their families. Here
Speaker 1: we come, they shouted into it, delighted at the prospect
Speaker 1: that their ordeal was finally coming to an end. Sadly, however,
Speaker 1: there was still some way to go. It soon became
Speaker 1: obvious the borehole had not been made wide enough for
Speaker 1: the men to fit through. Having heard about the calamity,
Speaker 1: eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes offered to help with the rescue effort.
Speaker 1: With his support, a state of the art industrial drill
Speaker 1: was flown in by the Navy, before being transported on
Speaker 1: a flatbed trailer by a convoy of Pennsylvania State troopers.
Speaker 1: The massive rig was set up and ready to begin
Speaker 1: drilling on August twentieth, seven days after the initial collapse.
Speaker 1: By then, family and friends had been joined at the
Speaker 1: digging site by over two hundred media personnel, along with U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy physicians who had been drafted in to tend to
Speaker 1: the men as soon as they could be brought out.
Speaker 1: All watched on in agonizing disbelief as every turn of
Speaker 1: the huge drill increased the danger of further collapse into
Speaker 1: the mine. What if the pickaxe hewn air pocket, which
Speaker 1: held both David and Henry gave way. What if the
Speaker 1: smaller borehole that had already taken five days to drill
Speaker 1: suddenly collapsed too. Finally, after seven straight days of digging,
Speaker 1: howd Hughes's drill pushed through into the mine shaft. Even still,
Speaker 1: the new borehole was only seventeen and a half inches
Speaker 1: in diameter, and though the two men had lost considerable
Speaker 1: weight during their entrapment, their exit proved a little more
Speaker 1: difficult than anticipated. The men were given cover alls to
Speaker 1: where to protect them from the three hundred feet of
Speaker 1: jagged rock they were to be pulled through, and axel
Speaker 1: grease to cover themselves with to help ease the journey.
Speaker 1: And so it was that on August twenty seventh, at
Speaker 1: David's behest, Henry was the first to be clipped onto
Speaker 1: the rescue cable. Then, as he held on for dear life,
Speaker 1: he was steadily winched through the tiny hole and ascended
Speaker 1: up into the light. At the first sight of him
Speaker 1: above ground, a huge cheer and wave of relief washed
Speaker 1: over the crowd as Henry blinked furiously and winced at
Speaker 1: the brightness of it all. It wasn't the after life,
Speaker 1: but it was heaven to be back on the surface.
Speaker 1: A short time later, David followed, singing deliriously as he went,
Speaker 1: She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes, until
Speaker 1: finally he too was pulled up into the light. Immediately
Speaker 1: after both men were extracted from the cave, they were
Speaker 1: rushed to the nearest hospital, where, incredibly, they were found
Speaker 1: to be in relatively good health. Perhaps even more incredibly,
Speaker 1: when Henry was brought into hospital, with his eyes slowly
Speaker 1: adjusting to the daylight, he caught sight of an image
Speaker 1: behind one of the nursing stations, a picture of the
Speaker 1: same face he'd apparently seen in the vision he'd had
Speaker 1: of the Golden City while trapped underground. When he asked
Speaker 1: who the man was, a nurse replied that it was
Speaker 1: Pope John the twenty third, who had only recently died.
Speaker 1: Henry had apparently never seen him before, and so steadily
Speaker 1: reports of the strange visions the men had seen while
Speaker 1: trapped in the darkness began to emerge. Both men were
Speaker 1: interviewed separately by Fate magazine, where the author of the
Speaker 1: piece was amazed to find that not only had both
Speaker 1: men apparently experienced the visions, but They claimed also to
Speaker 1: have experienced the same ones, as David Felon himself told
Speaker 1: the magazine. Pope John and a cross were there all
Speaker 1: the time, but these other things kept jumping across. First,
Speaker 1: there were these men with lights, and after a while
Speaker 1: the steps would come. It was real. Both of us
Speaker 1: were seeing it, and we knew they were live people.
Speaker 1: We know that both men are said to have become
Speaker 1: convinced that the golden city they saw was in fact
Speaker 1: a vision of heaven. Though David had been raised Catholic
Speaker 1: and was familiar with the Pope and heavenly imagery, Henry
Speaker 1: was not a fact that many who believed the men's
Speaker 1: claims say proves the veracity of their account. Skeptics, however,
Speaker 1: point out that the stories of supposed heavenly visions only
Speaker 1: conveniently started to appear after the men began fielding criticism
Speaker 1: about their mining venture. Though glad to be alive, David
Speaker 1: Felon was quick to complain that he and Henry Throne
Speaker 1: could have been saved in five days instead of fourteen,
Speaker 1: had the rescuers come equipped with the proper drilling equipment
Speaker 1: in the first place. In response, Pennsylvania's Deputy Secretary of
Speaker 1: Mines Gordon Smith, who directed the rescue operation, blamed David,
Speaker 1: as co owner of the mine, for the collapse. As
Speaker 1: it turned out, the mine had already been worked out
Speaker 1: by another mining company, and David's team were effectively removing
Speaker 1: coal that had been deliberately left in place to keep
Speaker 1: the mind from collapsing. Despite the men's claim that their
Speaker 1: visions were identical, others have pointed out discrepancies in their
Speaker 1: account as evidence that they concocted their story. For example,
Speaker 1: the cross they apparently saw was said by David to
Speaker 1: have had square ends, while Henry described them as round.
Speaker 1: David also described the marble staircase he apparently saw as
Speaker 1: being ten to twelve feet wide and ascending upwards out
Speaker 1: of sight, while Henry described it instead as being three
Speaker 1: to four feet wide and leading to another doorway higher up.
Speaker 1: In February nineteen seventy, almost seven years after the shit
Speaker 1: Shepton incident, the band The Buoys from the nearby city
Speaker 1: of Scranton released a song called Timothy. The song was
Speaker 1: a minor success, spending eight weeks in the Billboard Top forty,
Speaker 1: peaking at number seventeen. In it, the Buoy's chief songwriter
Speaker 1: and frontman Rupert Holmes recounts a dark tale of three
Speaker 1: miners who descended into the earth, only to get trapped
Speaker 1: by a cave in. When one of the men dies,
Speaker 1: the eponymous Timothy, the other two are forced to eat
Speaker 1: him in order to survive. The strange blurring of the
Speaker 1: stories has left some wandering about what really happened to
Speaker 1: David and Henry's partner Lewis Bova, and whether the tale
Speaker 1: of their strange visions was in fact some way of
Speaker 1: distracting themselves from a far darker truth. For his part,
Speaker 1: songwriter Rupert Holmes has flatly denied any connection to the
Speaker 1: Shepton minace this ordeal, stating that if I had known
Speaker 1: about Shepton at the time, I probably never would have
Speaker 1: written the song because I don't want to make fun
Speaker 1: of something that's tragic. I sadly found out there was
Speaker 1: a parallel in reality, but only after the fact. It
Speaker 1: never occurred to me that there could be anything quite
Speaker 1: like that. Either way, there is no doubt that David
Speaker 1: and Henry's survival was a miracle of sorts. As for
Speaker 1: whether they experienced the true miracle of seeing heaven, however,
Speaker 1: if indeed they truly had those visions at all. That
Speaker 1: remains to this day unexplained. But there is one thing
Speaker 1: for sure. If there is such a thing as an afterlife,
Speaker 1: both David Felen and Henry Throne, who died in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety and ninety eight, respectively, or know all about it.
Speaker 1: As for the rest of us, I guess we'll just
Speaker 1: have to wait and see. This episode was written by
Speaker 1: James Connor Patterson and Richard McLain Smith. James is a
Speaker 1: brilliant writer and poet. His debut collection of poems, titled
Speaker 1: Bandit Country, Exploring the Hintland between the North of Ireland
Speaker 1: and Republic, was shortlisted for the twenty twenty two T. S.
Speaker 1: Eliot Prize and is out now to buy, so do
Speaker 1: check it out. Thank you as ever for listening Unexplained
Speaker 1: as an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith.
Speaker 1: All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
Speaker 1: also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained. The book
Speaker 1: and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can
Speaker 1: purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Quarterstones and other bookstores.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with
Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the story you've heard on
Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story
Speaker 1: of your own you'd like to share. You can find
Speaker 1: out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and reaches online
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