On August 18th, 2010, Ben McDaniel was diving in Vortex Spring Cave
when something went horrifyingly wrong, and this event would go on to be the
greatest mystery in diving history. This is his story. [music] This video is brought to you by Babbel -
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so there's no risk in giving it a try with the link onscreen now or in the description below. With that said, let's get into today's video. On Wednesday, August 18th, Ben McDaniel returned
to a beach house owned by his parents in Santa Rosa, after having spent the last few weeks with them
where they were living at the time in Tennessee. At around midday, he went to a local diving spot
known as Vortex Spring, just north of Ponce de Leon, and completed one dive. During this first trip, other divers in the water
noticed him looking closely at the entrance to a cave deep inside the spring. It looked as though he was studying it
like he was planning something. Then, a little while later,
he surfaced and exited the water, and then went into the dive shop
near the spring and refilled his tanks. This was caught on the security cameras
inside of the shop. Ben then spent the rest of the afternoon
hanging around the shore of the spring, testing out his equipment and writing notes
in what looked to be his dive logs. That evening, after a sweltering day of
32 Celsius or 90 Fahrenheit, Ben looked as though he was preparing for another dive. At 7:30 PM, he called his mom and had a
completely normal conversation with her, and then when he got off the phone,
he finished putting on all of his equipment, and then entered the spring once again. Little did his mom know that this would be
the last time she ever spoke to her son. As Ben swam through the 20-Celsius
or 68-Fahrenheit water, he ran into two of the dive shop's employees
who were also on their way back from a dive and noticed that Ben was wearing lights and a helmet. This suggested that he planned to enter the cave, despite the fact that the cave in Vortex Spring
has a rebar gate that is padlock-closed, and the only people to have keys to this gate
are the employees of the dive shop. Divers who want to explore it have to have
explicit permission to enter, and permission is only granted to individuals
who hold a valid cave diving certificate. The dive shop employees knew that Ben
didn't have either of these, but suspected for some time that he'd been
forcing the gate open anyway. In fact, oftentimes, they'd wait onshore
when Ben went on these late-night dives until they saw bubbles on the surface of the spring. This indicated to them that Ben
was doing decompression stops and then knowing he was safe,
they'd go home for the day. On this occasion, one of the dive shop employees
just decided to swim down with Ben and open the gate for him. The two of them then swam into the large cavern
at the bottom of the spring and then passed this infamous sign. This might be the single most
ecognizable sign in all of diving. It is a picture of the grim reaper
with the word "stop" in big, bold letters. Below the "stop" are some true stats about the
number of divers who have died in caves, just like the one past the sign. But obviously, this was no concern for Ben,
so the two of them continued on. Following that sign, they reached the rebar gate,
which the employee opened, and then he watched as Ben squeezed his way under
the narrow overhanging limestone and out of view. As far as anyone knows, this is the last time
Ben was ever seen. Ben McDaniel was born on April 15th,
1980 in Memphis, Tennessee, and was the oldest of three kids. By the time he was in his 20s, his parents had done well
for themselves and had become quite wealthy, but Ben was having the exact opposite experience. The late 2000s were a really rough time in his life. First, he lost his 22-year-old younger brother to a stroke,
which was obviously devastating. Not only was he extremely young,
but the two of them were close and regularly saw each other and hung out
despite the age difference. Tragically, Ben was also the one to find him
unconscious at their home and tried desperately to revive him, but he was
pronounced dead when paramedics arrived. Their parents later set up a foundation to help
other individuals with similar conditions, which Ben was involved in,
but then, even more tragically, it was later revealed that it wasn't a stroke after all. It was a drug overdose for drugs
he hadn't been prescribed. At the same time all of this was happening, Ben was
simultaneously going through a hard divorce, and his construction business was failing in the wake of
the economic downturn in the late 2000s. Things got so bad that he had become
$50,000 in debt to the IRS and was forced to move back in with his parents. It was just an incredibly challenging
couple of years from Ben and his parents noticed how it had impacted him
and changed his personality. With them being in a fortunate enough situation, they suggested to him that he take a sabbatical
and go live at their beach house in Florida. They more or less said,
"Take your dog and go relax. We'll support you in the meantime until
you get back on your feet." Ben accepted this offer and then moved to the
beach house in Santa Rosa in April 2010. This ended up being a great decision
and within a couple of weeks of living there, both his parents and his girlfriend noticed that
he seemed to be more and more like his old self. He was starting to think about the future again, and was less focused on how rough things had been
in the past little while. Part of what motivated this change was that
he was able to pursue one of his passions which was scuba diving. He had already loved scuba diving since
he started going in his teenage years, but since he was in the perfect area
and had the time to do it, he became obsessed with it while living
at the beach house. In particular, he loved going to a local spot
known as the Vortex Spring, because even though he was right in the coast,
he preferred diving in freshwater. Freshwater springs like the Vortex Spring
are abundant in this area of Florida, but even among all these other springs,
Vortex Spring is sort of unique. It's home to the largest diving facility in the state, and it's perfect for divers of all levels
because the water is super clear, and the temperature of the water is warm enough that
divers only need wetsuits when diving. For newer divers, there's lots of wildlife
to see and room to practice, and for more experienced and more technical divers,
there is a massive cave at the bottom of the spring. If you've got the certifications, you're free
to explore both of these areas, but the real traction is obviously the cave. From the water's surface, the spring extends down
to a depth of 60 feet or 18 meters. This is where a large cavern starts. The opening to this cavern is 9x12 feet
and has a handrail mounted along the wall. This cavern extends 300 feet (91.4 m) further all the way
to a depth of 115 feet or 35 meters, eventually coming to the cave's entrance,
which is blocked off by the steel rebar gate. And again, to get the key to access
this deeper section, you have to show the dive shop that you are
cave-certified. The difference between open water diving
and cave diving can't be overstated and requires that divers get an additional
two months of training, along with 125 additional dives with
a certified partner or instructor. The whole reason the gate was installed
in the first place was that in the '90s, there were over a dozen deaths
in the Vortex Spring in the cave. This then got the attention of the state who
threatened to ban diving in the spring altogether, unless something was done to prevent
divers from entering. And from a cave diver's perspective,
even from a diver's perspective, it's easy to see why it would be such an attraction. The cave has over 1,600 feet (488 m) of limestone passages
mapped to a depth of 310 feet (95 m), and it goes even deeper than this,
but it's inaccessible, simply because the passages become
too narrow to continue. Some of these are just 10 inches (25.4 cm) across where
divers actually have to take their gas tanks off and then twist and contort to get through. In the weeks leading up to August 18th, Ben had become
well-known to the dive shop employees and to other divers who frequented the area. They'd see his truck sitting in the parking lot with Ben
either by the waterside or in the water diving. On the night that he was let through
the gate by the employees, instead of waiting around like they sometimes did,
they left for the night right away. After all, they had no obligation to wait for him. That was just something that they
did out of courtesy. Sometimes, they waited and sometimes,
they didn't. But the following morning, Ben's truck
was still parked in the parking lot. That day, no one really noticed because they had other
stuff to tend to, and the lot was pretty full anyway. Then on Friday, they did notice
that his truck was parked there and no one had seen Ben in the shop
or around the spring. It was at this point that they called police
to investigate his disappearance. Here's where things also start to get weird. Right away, police sealed off the spring
to make sure no one else entered and started searching the immediate area and Ben's truck
to see if they could find any of his stuff. In the search of the area, they didn't find any
of his tanks, his wetsuit, or any other dive equipment that belonged to him. But inside his truck, they found his wallet
with $1,100 in cash, his cell phone, and his dive logs. In these logs, they found that he had been
exploring the cave for some time and had made a map of the areas he'd gone. After that, they went to his parents' beach house
and found his dog inside and hungry. It looked as though the dog
hadn't been fed in at least two days, so right around the time Ben was
thought to have disappeared. Based on this information, both police
and employees of the dive shop were pretty convinced that he was still in the cave
and it was likely that he drowned. Cadaver dogs were then brought in to search the area
and kept leading police right to the water's surface. This seemed to confirm the idea that Ben
had entered the water and never left. As the search continued, news spread quickly
through the dive community and cave divers of all levels volunteered to help search
the spring in the cave to find Ben's body. At least, the assumption was that
it would be a body recovery. Initially, the police thought that this
outpouring of support was great and that this would definitely speed up
any search efforts. But as more experienced divers got involved, they warned police how difficult
of an operation this was. They were just a few dozen people on the planet who had the experience recovering
a body in these conditions. The combination of depth, narrow tunnels,
and silty conditions meant that if something went wrong, it could easily
be two body recoveries instead of one. Eventually, the most experienced divers
began searching the cave, often with Ben's parents and girlfriend
sitting by the side of the spring, watching and hoping they'd find Ben. Over the first few days, they searched
large tunnels and small tunnels, and then they turned their attention to
tiny crevices and fissures. An unfortunately all-too-common phenomenon
in cave diving on a diver's panic is that they'll swim randomly, trying to find a way out
and wedge themself deep into a tiny crevice. Because they're panicked, this causes them to
get much further into these narrow tunnels than they otherwise would want to. But obviously,
this only makes things worse, and usually shortly after that, they drown. Even the search itself is risky. In fact, within just the first few days, one diver
almost died while navigating through the cave. He just narrowly made it out before he himself panicked,
ended up stuck and drowned. But incredibly, despite all of these efforts, the only thing they found were some tanks
believed to belong to Ben. Three tanks in total were found -
all of which contained regular air. Two of the tanks were found
in the outer cavern area, and one was found about 200 feet (61 m)
into the cave. This was also weird. At least one of these tanks should have
contained a gas mixture different than regular air
because of the depth he was diving to. With regular air at that depth, a diver would be
susceptible to nitrogen narcosis. This is something that Ben would have,
or at the very least, should have known, and it's likely that he did know this
because his dive log showed that he had already entered the cave
on several occasions. It's unlikely that he would've survived previous dives if he had the wrong gas mixture
like was found during the search. This only further confused the rescue efforts. By Sunday, so now four days after
Ben had gone missing and two days after it was realized he was missing, someone from the search party got in contact
with diving legend, Edd Sorenson. Not only is Edd one of the world's premier cave divers,
but he's also a recovery specialist with over 2,500 dives during his long career. When he was contacted, he was actually
on an expedition in The Bahamas, but basically, right after receiving the text message, he dropped everything and arrived in
Florida the following day. When he arrived, the other experienced divers
who had already searched told him that going in any further than they had
already gone was too dangerous. Edd disagreed with their assessment and then
went on to make three separate dives. In total, he covered 1,700 feet (518 m) of the cave and
at least 200 more than what Ben had mapped. He even used a dive propulsion vehicle to
travel faster and carried smaller tanks to squeeze through narrower openings.
But in the end, he found absolutely nothing. No body, no equipment, and even no signs
of increased fish activity from fish that might have been feeding on something
decaying somewhere in the cave. In fact, there weren't even any markings to suggest that someone might have squeezed their way
through some of the tighter tunnels. If someone had squeezed through some of these, they would've dragged and disturbed the silt
and marked the walls enough that it would've been noticeable to anyone else. And even weirder than this, Ben was 6'1" (1.86 m)
and 210 pounds (95.3 kg). This is both taller than Edd and
20 pounds heavier. Edd himself found it very unlikely that Ben, who was not trained and not nearly as experienced,
could have made it any further than he had. With each subsequent lead coming to a dead end,
Ben's parents got more and more desperate. They were willing to try anything and everything
for answers about what might have happened. First, they hired the man who originally mapped
the cave to try to find him, but seven dives later, all he was able to offer them
was an apology for finding nothing. Next, they put up $50,000 as a deposit for the cost for replacing a remotely-operated
underwater vehicle. This ROV was then used to search the cave, but unfortunately wasn't able to go any further
than what the human cave divers had gone. When the search was finally winding down
from the initial frenzy, 16 divers had spent 36 days straight scouring the cave
and turned up with nothing. Oftentimes, Ben's parents and girlfriends stood by
the waterside, hoping for any sign of him. Beyond this initial search, volunteer divers
continued for months afterward, while police turned their attention to the area
surrounding the spring. With how thorough the search of the cave
had been, it started to seem less likely that he
was in there after all. This is also when some alternative theories
start to be put forward. Like, for example, maybe his body was removed
before searching began. It's possible he did drown, but fearing the
spring might get shut down, some other divers pulled him out
before anyone found him. The two divers who saw him the night
he disappeared were questioned, but their stories stayed consistent. Police even had them take a lie detector test,
but they passed these and sort of derailed this idea as well. It was also suggested that Ben was washed out
through one of the spring's outlets. But then, when police scoured the swamps which were
the spring's outflows, they again found nothing. They went on to search the nearby Blue Creek,
Sandy Creek, and Choctawhatchee River and tested them 30 separate times
over the following months. All of these tests found no indication of any bacteria that would be elevated in the presence
of a decomposing body. Further searches with cadaver dogs also came up with
nothing from the woods surrounding the spring or the nearby area. This just end up being another dead end. Another theory suggested by several people was that
maybe he had faked his own disappearance. Maybe with all the stress of the last few years,
he needed to start fresh, so he staged his own disappearance
to get away from his old life. Although this was technically possible, this didn't
seem to make sense either, though. He had seemed so positive in the weeks
leading up to it. He had talked to his girlfriend about
starting a dive-related business, and even left his parents a letter
before leaving their house, promising to take care of them in their old age because of how much he appreciated their support
in the last couple of years. Even more than that, he knew how hard
his brother's death was on them. It just wouldn't make sense for him to do that
to them, knowing what they went through. At least this was the opinion of
Ben's parents and girlfriend. By 2011, there wasn't much hope
from the dive community that Ben would be found anywhere in Vortex Spring because the search had been ongoing for months
and scoured by some of the world's best cave divers. It just seemed impossible that he could actually be in there
with all the resources poured into the search. Ben's parents, on the other hand, weren't giving up
hope of finding their son. Increasingly frustrated by the lack of answers, they put up a $10,000 reward for
"anyone brave enough to find him". Whether intentional or not, though, the insinuation
that the divers were scared to search for him was kind of an insult to everyone who had spent
the last several months volunteering. These individuals were basically risking their lives
for someone who technically shouldn't have been entering the cave at all. The fear was also that by offering money, it might attract divers who weren't really
qualified to be doing recoveries. But despite the criticism they received for this decision, they went on to increase the amount of the reward twice,
eventually to a total of $30,000. And just like the dive community warned, eventually,
this fear was realized in March of 2012. That month, a diver went into the cave
one day and never exited. The following day, his body was found and then
eventually recovered by Edd Sorenson. It looked as though he had gotten lost or panicked and
couldn't find his way back and eventually drowned. Although there was no explicit evidence
that he was searching for Ben, Edd thought that this was the case because
he was found near a shovel left near a restriction that was impossibly small. And to reach this restriction, Edd had to pass through
four other tight restrictions. This was far beyond the normal range of cave divers
who frequented the spring. This death only prompted more criticism from the
dive community, and especially Edd. As the one who had done the recovery,
he knew intimately how the reward resulted in people
risking their lives searching, and the lives of rescuers who ended up
having to recover these bodies afterward. Following this, Ben's parents finally
rescinded the offer. They now firmly believe that if Ben wasn't in the cave,
he was likely the victim of foul play. While all of this was going on,
they had hired a private investigator to look into the dive shop and its employees. This investigator ended up finding out that several
of the employees had criminal records, and that the owner was currently facing
serious criminal charges. Some time before the disappearance, the owner hired a temporary employee who later
ended up owing him money. Allegedly, the owner then took this employee
out into the woods and assaulted him with a baseball bat,
trying to get him to pay the money he owed. Thankfully, this employee ended up
escaping and running off, and eventually, the dive shop owner was charged with
assault and kidnapping as a result. In 2011, so one year after the disappearance, he pled no contest to these charges and was given
a fine and seven years of probation. Then, the owner died a year later
in sort of a freak accident. There was a cookout held in December of that year
by the dive shop, and during the cookout, the owner fell down
a set of stairs and badly injured his head. He was taken home and placed in a bathtub
with a blanket over him, but then when people returned to his home
the following day, he was in way worse shape. This person then called 911 and
brought him to the hospital, but the dive shop owner then fell into a coma
and died a month later. The weird part about all of this and how it
relates to Ben's disappearance is that the police refused to release information
about the incident, claiming it was part of an ongoing investigation. There is some speculation that maybe there
was some link between the two cases or something had occurred between Ben
and the dive shop owner, but again, there's no solid evidence for any of this. As a final note, Ben's disappearance was also
investigated by diving legend, Jill Heinerth. You might remember her from the
Iceberg Cave Dive video. She ended up hearing about this incident and wanted
to make a short film to show Ben's parents. Her hope was that by showing them
the cave and conditions, it might give them the closure that
they desperately needed. Prior to doing this documentary, she was of the
opinion that Ben wasn't in the cave, based on everything she knew. But as she went through all the details
and explored the cave herself, her opinion actually changed and realized
through looking at his maps that he had gotten really far into the Vortex Spring. In the end, the short film was turned into
a full-length documentary and Jill now firmly believes that Ben is
somewhere inside the cave after all. She thinks that the most likely scenario
is that in a panic, Ben burrowed deep inside of a crevice, which is
otherwise inaccessible and out of view. So in the end, this sort of leaves us with
more questions than answers. The last verifiable sighting of Ben
is on August 18th, 2010 when he filled up his tanks inside the dive shop. Beyond that, any reported sighting of him
is by other people at the spring or finally, by the two employees who saw them
on their way out of the spring. Although there isn't really any evidence
or reason to discredit them, there is still the possibility that the version
of the events they told police is inaccurate. And although the simplest explanation is that Ben did
enter the cave and did drown somewhere inside, it just seems impossible that there would be no trace of
him despite how thoroughly it was searched. The fact that there were no markings or bacteria
or fish or any other indication that there was a decaying body inside
seems to further support the idea that he wasn't inside the cave after all. But if Ben wasn't inside the cave, where is he? Was his body removed before officials
could find it? Was there a coverup to prevent the cave
from being closed permanently? Or did Ben fake his own disappearance? Were the events in his life too much and he
eventually decided to simply abandon it at all? If this was the case, why would all the other signs
indicate the opposite? Why would he tell his parents that he would take care
of them and seem hopeful for the future? So if Ben hadn't faked his disappearance either,
was this then the result of foul play? Supposedly, the dive shop employees knew that Ben
was forcing his way through the gate. Maybe this led to an altercation
with the dive shop owner. But without any leads, these are all
just unfounded theories. It's for this reason that the disappearance of Ben McDaniel
is one of the greatest mysteries in diving history. There are so many different possibilities and
so little evidence to support any of them. It might always remain a mystery. Thank you all so much for watching. If you're like me and you desperately want to know
what happened in the final story, I'd love to hear your theories down in the comments. As a reminder, there is a Scary Interesting Subreddit
for story suggestions. I'm also accepting subscriber-submitted stories. If you've had something happen to you
that you think might fit the channel, feel free to submit those directly to the email
found in the description. If you wanna support the channel,
give this video a like. And once again, thank you so much for watching,
and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.
