The Diver Who Died in Zacatón

Astonishing Legends Network. It's Flashback Friday, and you know what that means. A classic episode of Scared All the time's fan favorite bonus show, New Fear Unlocked is out of the vault and on the main feed. This episode originally aired on Patreon June nineteenth, twenty twenty five, but is being played by you right now. Disclaimer. This episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here, but in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me. You can't take a week. So it's the truck with something flightycent. That which is. Wait, decent? So when do it? And the show? Did you read the post? You know? And now. Hey, everybody, welcome back to New Fear Unlocked, New Fearing. It was already a song. We don't need to do that, that's right, we don't, Thank god, we don't need to sing the song. This is the No Ums podcast, so that will be the last um you hear for the next thirty to forty minutes or so. Ed, we'll make sure that that's the case. Now, I'm not gonna cut it out, man, I'll get the time, dude. All right, So we are we are policing ourselves. We are monitoring our own usage, and we will not use it. So this week for New Fear Unlocked, we are going to tackle an article that has haunted me for quite some time. This specific article hasn't but the death that the article covers has ed. Well, this is an unfair question because we've already discussed the article. I was gonna ask if you wanted to guess what this death is. Now, I guess you already know. Now. We went for a walk to get beers because it's so fucking hot we were recording this, we wanted to run the window unit a CEA a little bit. Yeah, and I forgot to put on deodorant today. So Ed and I are sitting in. The stink blanket, the stink. Blanket for it that we record out of until we get our own studio at fucking barstool Sports or whoever will have us. Get hit us up Portnoy, We'll bring you pizza, dude. So this article has the eye catching title of man suffered quote most brutal, silent death in history while attempting to reach bottom of sinkhole. I hope that below it it's like for most brutal loud death, please see this link. They well not on not I don't see a link to the most brutal loud death. I imagine it probably involves maybe a lion, sure or bear, something we covered on our Eating the Live episode. This is more of a mystery. There's some there's some theories that's what went on here. I do think there's also probably some very brutal, silent deaths that in history that would be maybe more brutal than this. Okay, I do feel like this is a very lonely death, sure, I mean, I guess all death is lonely. People stand with you sometimes they do you die alone? Brother? Yeah? No, they they then sweep you into a cumatorium or a box. Yeah, but you know this is this is this one. This one's about those who do the kool aid. They drink the kool aid. They don't die alone. Well no, but I mean at the very end, like when you I guess, sure, they didn't die alone because there were people around them dying. So by that metric, everyone in World War two didn't die alone either. But you must be nice you eventually, that's why they got the free houses. Can you imagine sitting there the living ones in on the beach of Normandy, being like, well, at least have got these people around me. Yeah, the cacophony of screams of good pals. All right, Pa, God bless but greater generation. All right, p God bless prayers up. Shack Xley. Sorry, great name. That's oh thought true. I only I thought you were gonna say Shack because you had a long pause, and I was like, oh, what Shack do. He died alone at the bottom of a sinkhole? He died alone in the on the hill of capitalism. Because I went to fucking office Max the other day and there's like a cardboard cutout of Shack holding a fucking printer being like Shack Prince. With this I gave that. I gave that cardboard cutout a fist bump last summer. Yeah, it's still there on the Instagram. I'm still thinking about it. So anyway, this is a different Shack. Well, it's Shack Shack Exley. Okay, I take it back. I didn't know. I may have mispronounced it. He pronounced it like he was a famous beast well player. I see how you could have heard it. Shack Exley was one of the most experienced and popular divers of his time, but Zacatone was a step two far for him. What is zacatone. It's the name of the sinkhole. Oh no, this involves both deep sea death and sinkholes, which a ready two topics that we've covered in the past. We had a deep sea mystery on. Triangle. I think Forrina Triangle it could have been anything else too, though. There was an episode where we talked about a guy who was found with like knife wounds or something below the surface. Yeah, I don't recall what episode that was similar, but almost even more mysterious because that guy they know died from the multiple stab wounds that he or someone else gave him. If he wasn't underwater, it would be a lot louder. Yeah, this is a little different. So the article says a man suffered one of the most brutal, silent deaths ever when he made a daring attempt to reach the bottom of a famous sinkhole. Zakatone is technically known as a ce note essentially a sinkhole, and is located in the northeast of Mexico, an area that has become popular for divers to explore since the landowner granted permission for diving in nineteen ninety, he. Put up a fucking at your own risk, diving at your own risk. I hope he did, because. That's he got a fucking sinkhole that someone's named down there. I have a question. It only took four years for someone to mysteriously die at the bottom of the sinkholes, so that sign wasn't big enough. That's a quattro quatro anios? Now. Is it named because it's persistent? Like? Is it named because it's always there? Because they had the sinkholl is a name, yes, Zach a tone. I'm saying, like you don't name something we don't name the chickens were about to fucking eat. Well, see you name shit that doesn't hang around. Sea notes Yeah, sea notes are you've probably seen pictures of them before. There. They look like holes in the ocean's. Little bubbles coming out of it. They're they're us. They look like a deeper blue or darker green than the surrounding water. It'll be like a big if you see it from the air, you'll see kind of like a big hole. Actually pretty nice water, like a Florida, Keys water to see something like that. Yeah, and sometimes I don't know exactly what this, you know, look like. Sometimes they do just look kind of like ponds if they're more inlands. Sometimes they're in the middle of the ocean. Sometimes they're a little bit more inland. So this one may have looked more like a pond. It's a famous I'm sure it's a very pretty ce note that has been named such as to attract tourists or god tors or divers to their doom. I just don't see myself a diving and b being like, I just don't see myself going into a hole in a hole. Absolutely not. Yeah, No, we'd never. Yes, it was caves. That's the episode because it was an underwater cave where that guy died. Sure. I remember that episode. I remember it very well. I remember thinking this is people are going to hate this and why were they going to hate? Thought it was kind of boring. And then I was driving with my friend Ray on the East Coast and I was trying to Q see it, which, by the way, for people who don't make podcasts, your friends do not want to sit in a car while you Q see your own podcast. I think most people understand that. Yeah. Yeah, So I'm checking the quality control of the of the episode and he was like, well, this is what the fuck is this is I'm dying over here, and I'm like, well, I guess it's not going to be good. But then it ended up being good and people liked it. So nobody knows anything. That's what I'm saying. Nobody knows anything. This article continues. Jim Bowden and Gary Walton, whose names are not as cool as Sheck Xley No, but they're understandable, were the first inside the See Note, and they thought they found its depth after dropping a plumb line and seeing it stop at two hundred and fifty feet. That's what I'm saying, drop that line, don't just cruise in. They dropped a line it stopped, though what it stopped at was just a platform. The real depth of the Sea Note was a terrifying one one hundred and twelve feet deep. So so if. We're ever doing that in the future, we're gonna want to do it again. You want to shake it, Yeah, shake the line a little bit, see if it goes down further. Yeah. I don't know when they figured that out. Maybe they just they said, oh, it's two hundred and fifty, that's no problem, and they took a little cannonball and then and went oh fuck. Well, when, as you said it, in my mind, what flat like intrusive thought that blasted into my mind was just like a Hannah Barbera style cartoon octopus head that like it blopped onto and so it's just like, oh, what the fuck it mean? Yeah, but like they think it's us start as deep as it goes. But it just hit like a huge creature. Yeah, there may be a huge creature. Well we don't know. I don't think a huge creature killed shek actually, because they recovered his body, and a huge creature I'm sure would have devoured it. But this see note zacatone is the deepest see note in the world. Now we know that now that guy before this, did they know that guy was dropping plumb line? I think the first I think the first plumb line they thought, this one's not that deep, and then when they dropped the second, they said, we have a record. Well that's what I'm saying. I think these guys who were dropping plumb lines couldn't have known it was the deepest when they were doing it. No. Yeah, Shek was a well regarded name, as he should be just on name alone, regarded name, as he's a well known person. Oh I thought, just saying like SHK, I mean I feel like Shrek is more well regarded. They made at least two of those films. They made four Shreks, and then multiple Puss in Boots spin offs, and then the news Shreks come. Really good, and the second one has some of my favorite jokes. But I've never followed anything beyond that in the Shrek of verse. I don't know if I ever even saw the second one. Second one has some really funny new characters. Okay, I'll check it out after I go cave diving. Oh No, Shack was a well regarded name in the cave diving community and is known as the first director of the Cave Diving Division of the National Spileological Society. Okay, so this is. The first I assume that is, I'm using my English brain here. I assume spileological is something to do with spolun. King belung king, which we all know from Batman begins. So he went. He was in charge with the cave diving division. He probably maybe he helped investigate the death of that other guy if he died before him. I don't remember when that guy died. No one knows, but we do know it was Knife Based. The legendary diver who started diving at just sixteen years old. Late. Honestly, mate, who starts diving before well, I guess if you kind of like gymnastics. Yeah, if you were a professional soccer player who started at sixteen or seventeen, you'd be like, this is really interesting. It's surprising. Mm hmm. May his way to Zacotone with Boden and Walton previously mentioned in nineteen ninety three, and found out after diving themselves that the secene out was much deeper than initially thought. They soon found out that it was over one thousand feet deep and were shocked as extually managed to dive to seven hundred and twenty one feet while Bodin pussed out and reached five hundred and four feet, with both of them making the deepest ever dives into zacatone. So that sentence is very poorly structured, because Boden clearly would have gone first, making his five hundred and four the deepest ever dive, and then actually would have gone second for the seven hundred and twenty one. That is correct, But I also, what do you think they're in those like big metal? No, this is free diving. I'm pretty sure this is just. Really to go that deep, you don't have to be in some sort of like don't crush my bones as I've tried to, like get a penny at the bottom of a pool, and I'm like, I'm out, Like it's too much pressure, you know what I mean, Like I couldn't do it. If you guys don't want to hide anything from Ed, you put it at the bottom, put it in the deep end of the public pool. He'll never go find it, no way. Yeah, I mean I don't that's a good question. I don't know at what point you need all the pictures of Shek who has a killer mustache. Okay, Yeah, don't show him in any kind of special diving gear other than you know, like air tank and hoses. Yeah, he actually kind of looks like Steve's On. Steve's On could play this guy in a in a movie. Okay. The warm water and weather conditions made it a favorable diving spot with the pair the pair being bowed in and Shek the pair were set with plants to return and reach the bottom once and for all. After their five hundred and four foot and seven hundred and twenty one foot dives in April nineteen ninety four, they returned to zacatone and wanted to conquer the task of reaching the bottom again. Not something ED and I would ever think. We would never drop a plumb line down one one hundred and twelve feet and say, you know what we need to do is get down there. Yeah, now we got to see what's up. Yeah. No, we've never, nor would we ever. They wanted to reach the bottom, and so they took two days to prepare the required decompression bottles. That's what I'm getting at. Individual descent lines and routes required to make the bottom, which is interesting. It's a route. A diving route isn't something you necessarily think about. But clearly in this case, if you dropped your first line and it only went two hundred and fifty feet, there's stuff in the way, there's shelves, there's ledges, there's octopuses. I've truly never thought of a diving route. You're right, but. Also timing you think, oh yeah, you gotta go the right way. Yeah, But I also in my mind it's just what was that movie with Robert tu Niro and he's like two racist to let Cuba Gooding Junior be a diver men of Honor, Men of Honor, which is not the worst movie, no, but that's what I'm thinking of that like nineteen forty style weird diving sci fi suit metal suit. Yeah, and that's what I imagine these guys are doing too, being like push me baby, push me off, and I'll just drop three hundred four hundred, five hundred feet. But maybe not. It seems like now they don't do the hose thing anymore. I don't think they were in fancy suits. I don't think it can't be that mention of preparing suits. There's the decompression bottles, yeah, for the going up and down and not getting the bends. But maybe I just feel like, why are we doing away with suits? I have a decompression bottle. It's called vodka. That's a bottle of annex. Well, we should do a bonus episode at some point about some of the most interesting stories I've heard or about ship rep ship wreck surveyors, you like, go down and how they're all afraid of metal boats, because like a wooden boat you can, like I guess, punch your way out of if necessary, like you exactly, but like a metal boat. They're like, yeah, I'm gonna go into a hotel underground that I'd already forgotten the format of when it starts adjusting and falling off a sea cliff. So we'll definitely talk about that at some point. Yeah, not for me. How are you enjoy this old episode of New Fear Unlocked? If so, don't forget that you can stay up to date with brand new, commercial free episodes of it every week the main shows off. Now here's one of those ad breaks you could be avoiding. So these two on April sixth, nineteen ninety four, they made their way down with Bowden's wife who has the extremely unfortunate name Karen Hole No No, Exley's ex wife, Mary Ellen Ekoff, and Anne Kristovich, all of them qualified divers on hand for support, while the landowner and media were present too. You know what I want on support a fucking winch with a rope attached to you that we can just pull you up if some shit goes around. That's what I'm saying. Shouldn't have gone away from the hose and armor. Yeah. Well, when your support in the hole is named Karen Hole, you've doubled down on the whole problem. Yeah. She was born to do this, so she's must to be pissed. She's not going. Making their way into Zach a tone. They focused up and began their descent on their own lines, though Bowden started to slow down at seven hundred and fifty feet. After reaching nine hundred feet, he realized he used more air than he had planned and had to stop, which, I feel like that math should be pretty straightforward. Also, in two days they spent planning this, Yeah, with three other people on hand. I'm sure someone's listening to this, being like, you dumb motherfuckers. I know more I've been diving. You don't know anything about it, and you're right, I don't. But it does seem like you could pretty quickly be like, this is how much air I use per foot or whatever. Yeah, but also, if you go down there and you see a fucking spooky octopus, you start hyper ventilating your breathing more than you expected. You don't know what you're gonna see that you shouldn't be such a pussy. No, I think I think I would. I would be like, I need a decompression to say, because as. The guy who never wanted to join a swim team because he would have had to get in cold water before six am. That's you, that's me. I wouldn't do it as I won't take my shirt off, but back then I was in shape. But still I would request it decompression bottle and also a handgun so I can end my own life if so I saw something scary, because I'm not coming back up. After a slight panic with his cylinder valve on the regulator, he managed to see light through the darkness. He being Bowden, and he spotted Exley's line. Though he and the team had a feeling something wasn't right. Fifteen minutes after they made the dive, only one set of bubbles remained. Exley's ex wife, Mary knew something was wrong. Was X two Yeah, Mary Ellen Eckoff actually an ecof. I guess it's just you know, you probably got married because you're into the same shit. You realize the relationship is not going to work, but you're still into the same minit and so like, there's not a lot of people doing this, so you're like, I guess I'm gonna see my ex all the time. Yeah, yeah, yep, and uh so Sheck died. Very Randy Newman song of You. Mary knew something was wrong and she made her way down her diving gear but couldn't find Sheck anywhere. Boden was told the news at sixty feet that actually was gone and knew there was no recovering him at that depth. Three days later, the team pulled up the remaining line and found Exley's body attached to it. Oh thank god, Wait, that's the guy that died. That's the guy that died. Well, thank god, they have to go recover. They can just scoop him up. That's why you have lines. They did recover it. I guess. Yeah. If Jeff Bezos can fucking recover from the bottom of the fucking ocean that abandoned space Shuttle thing, then we can find Exley's body. Well here's the big mystery, though, is no one knows what happened. You didn't get that far sixty feet of a thousand. No, no, no, no no. So sixty feet was when Boden was told. So Boden was coming back up and it's sixty feet to the surface, they told him, I guess. Via and they had already gone all the way down. Or as far as they were gonna go. Yeah, I don't know that actually ever quite reached the bottom. I actually was probably like, my best chance of doing this as being dead, So I will I'll just die and then I'll get all the way to the bottom. So the big question is what happened, And no one's entirely sure. It said that in his final moments, Shck knew he wasn't going to make it and didn't want anyone risking their lives coming for his body, so he tied himself to the line so that his body could be recovered safely. Which the logic there is a little funky because. These lines were never attached the line. I guess something completely said when. You dive, you hold out of the line or something. Yeah, I don't know. We should have done any amount of research. I well, i'm, I'm, I'm. What drew me to this article is the mystery of this man dives to the bottom of a sinkhole and seemingly just expires. Why is it excruciating? What the headline was probably most. Probably because there was some version of running out of air, knowing you're not going to make it to the surface. Being in the complete I assume the utter darkness the bottom of zakatone and just expiring with your lungs on fire, being like, well, I'm the best diver in the world and I'm drowning in a hole. I think he was drowning in a hole before that. That was his wife's name. That was bodenst shit, I don't know. They're as of small community. The diving community. That small community was shocked that the man who created many of the safety rules that divers follow today fell victim to the activity he loved most. But Scheck made huge shrides for the diving community, setting foundations for many to explore sinkholes, seas and oceans for decades to come. The article leaves unset is how many people are going to die following in his footsteps to the bottom of those sinkhole seas. And it was also left on set is what happened to this guy? No one really knows there there's. I want more mystery. I want them to be like when when we brought him up to the surface, his hair was shocked white. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like did it what did he see? Or it was a it was an eel. On his he was missing leg. Yeah, there's not like a lot of mystery other than I think that's why we need to send people down with like uh in space movies where they're always you can see the the the vitals of people like on a screen and be like Johnson. Johnson is like Sarah died. Yeah, but like we but then that gives you the data they've been seeing that whole time, Like right before he died, there was a spike. Did you ever see that movie with Kristen Stewart Underwater? No? I liked that. I wasn't invited to the wedding either, though, so. Probably friends were. I know a lot of our friends were. I saw the pictures. Yeah, uh no, it's a good it's a it's a very very expensive Roger Corman movie, and it's kind of good. I'll watch it tonight. I kind of like it. Actually, I haven't watching something else tonight, but maybe later this week. Go in knowing nothing if you can. I still currently know nothing. Here's here's an underwater related a movie underwater related story. Doug Lyman. Okay, that's how you pronounce it Leave Lyman. Doug Lyman, Doug Lion direct. Swingers, director of Swingers, but more well known, probably as the director of the porn Identity, as the director of Edge of Tomorrow. It's one of my all time favorite movies by any name, By any name you call it here. Working on the next Tom Cruise movie, of course. He is Deeper written in Space written No. I thought he was going to space once Tom Cruise going to space. He is supposed to be going to space. And I thought with Doug Limons, maybe I'm confusing two movies. But Tom Cruise is starting to train with Anna de Armas. Yeah, they seem to like each other. For Deeper written by Max Landis, He's a jail Max Landis comeback. Maybe not that I'm in favor of that, but I'm sure remember Chris kicking around for a long time. I remember the I remember the title page. That script was a good title page. What's on the title page? It was just like interesting? Oh it was a way down. Yeah, it was just like interest. It was a fun way to do the cover. If he wasn't such a fucking monster of a human being, he was talented. Tom Cruise is making his movie. I can't. Maybe the line is directing it. I might be wrong. Maybe it's one of his other chosen. People who don't know. This is a person who was very more I would say, rightly canceled extremely rightly. Yeah. Not not a well human being, yeah, not father, none too well respected either. What the hell was it? And this is I might have to cut this or a bleep apart, but it was one of my all time favorite moments. And I'll say and I'll cut that too, depending on what Chris says is appropriate. We were looking at this great poster for uh were Wolf in London that was called It's called American Americ Werewolf in London, directed by John Landis, and this was a great poster and I was like, fuck, that's a great poster in a good movie. I remember he just goes, yeah, it's too bad. Uh, too bad. He's a murder and his son's a rapist. Huh. I was like, fuck that is so true. Yep, but yeah, yeah, sou bad he's. A murder and his son's a rapist. He meant three good movie. So yes it is Doug Lineman, Tom Cruise and Inada Armis to start in two hundred million dollar plus deeper. You know what, when I work out of that job, dude, I bet because Tom Cruise is all about people who put the work in, and so he probably saw those John Wick Ballerina behind the scenes and was like, she put the work in, the can come work here. I guess he gets real mad at people. You ever watch the footage on Edge of Tomorrow of Emily Blunt not being that into it and I'm not being that into her not being that into it? Yep, Yeah, you. Need to put the work in with him. Hilariously, Google, Welcome to the wonderful world of just ai bullshit that everything serves you now. So I looked up. I searched here to see Tom Cruise deeper to see who directed this. On the right hand side of my Google page is the Wikipedia entry for Tom Cruise. The third photo is not Tom Cruise. It's some other guy who kind of looks a little like Tom Cruise. Is it Thomas mappother It. Is Tom Cruise. He just looks really weird. Yeah, because Wikipedia is really pretty decent about not letting things be wrong too long. It just looks weird, or maybe I'm so used to old Tom Cruise. He's like younger. I don't know. It doesn't really matter. The point is, if you scroll further down, there's suggested topics to explore if you're interested in Tom Cruise deeper. The first is Tom Cruise AI with two AI photos of Tom Cruise. The second is Tom Cruise Mono. Tooth, which he does have that one tooth down the front. It seems to be I never put it to a name, but yeah, that's what it is. Kinda yeah. Then Tom Cruise I seven Tom Cruise Fitness, and then Tom Cruise looking up hitch. I don't know if he's well known for looking up. I know he's well known for running. Yeah, I don't know what he's looking up at photo he looks like a swollen Norm McDonald, But I. Do know what his age comes for all of us. But the uh I saw he'd made the headlines recently for eating popcorn weird. So you just can't win, you. Know, if you're Tom Cruise, you definitely can't win. We've all if you've been in LA more than a few years, you've heard stories of Tom Cruise trying to win, trying to fit in with normal people, and they're all fucking crazy. Well, that's interesting, I think because the people I know who have worked with them personally have nothing but amazing things to say about him. Amazing things to say. I think he's probably very intense and very good person to work for, at least in the sense of crazy intense, but also when you hear stories of him trying to fit in with like the crew, or do things that a normal person would do. If you know what, at least if you used to get a cake. It's true. I know one person on the fucking cake list who gets a cake every year from him. I think I do too, And because you're on it for life on the cake and so if you can't win in small talk, win with shipping amazing. Cakes, I will say, I guess I can tell this story. Who gives a fuck? I heard a story I won't say from who that Tom Cruise on some movie that was shooting over a super Bowl found out that the crew was having a Super Bowl party, was upset that he wasn't invited, and apparently not in like a dickway, but just sort of a like, oh maybe they don't like me, not thinking, well, the fucking grips might not want to walk up to Tom Cruise and be like, Hey, do you want to go to a super Bowl party? Yeah? So he found out he wasn't invited. He got sad about it. Someone on his team got him invited to the super Bowl party. He showed up with a football and thought that the super Bowl party was going to be people hanging out and throwing a football around. I mean, it isn't that, but it's just such a wide eyed child. It's like what I would do in fifth grade if I couldn't make friends and be deserrable party, I would have brought a football. Be like different the football. The difference between you and Tim Cruise is I bet you he spent a day and a half. He flew in the best football instructors in the world and learned manning for this like backyard day. Yeah. Fuck. I mean look at scientology aside the all the Brooks shield stuff and his own personal madness during that time period in the two thousands, aside, there's still nobody I'd show up for. Wait, Brooke Shields or Brooks Shields is the person he was saying like she was just therapy and took antidepressants and it was just like very publicly. And that was when he loved Katie Holmes, when. He loved jumping on couches. It was that whole like year or two where scientology was the forefront of his whole shit. But there's nobody I would show up for more to like go to the theater. I'm saying like, like, there's nobody I'm going to the theater faster and more like reliantly for than that. A Time Cruise movie, I'm always there. I'm gonna see it in the bigest screen possible. Puts the working. I'll fucking watch Cocktail on the biggest screen possible. He fucking flipping those slipping all those goddamn the bottles. That's the hardest shit. It is really hard. Bottles would be broken on set if it was me on take forty. Yeah, yeah, that one long tooth hanging out. He's flipping all these beautiful bottles. You couldn't do it. I would love it. Let's all go this. Next meetup is that the next Time Cruise movie, we'll all go to deeper. We're not going to the PREMIERU. I don't want to spend a minute with Max Landis, but we'll go somehow. And support there's no way that he's someone's rewriting that he's gonna get a story about. That script has been openly available on the internet for so long that yeah, it's someone was like, this was a good idea. We should pay him a little bit of money to option it or something, and yeah. All right, Well that's New Fear Unlocked for this week. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Chris Calari and I've been canceled from Hollywood until next week. Stay scared. The theme song may say this show has no name, but as you know, it actually has a name, New Fear Unlocked. The thing you guys always say that's the name. The name is New Fear Unlocked. But now it's over so you can turn it off. There's nothing more after this. Thanks for coming, see you next time for not necessarily fears more than likely for sure not fears