When you hear about Nutty Putty Cave, there’s one name which comes to mind: John Edward Jones.
26-year-old John was a spelunking (which is just a fancy way of saying cave explorer) enthusiast who attempted to locate the cave’s infamous ‘Birth Canal’ passage alongside his brother Josh during Thanksgiving that year.
The entrance to Nutty Putty Cave (YouTube/Fascinating Horror)
John would remain in the tiny hole for around 27 to 28 hours before he eventually passed away, suffering a cardiac arrest from the pressure of being upside down in a tight space for so long.
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HARROWING LAST WORDS OF EXPLORER WHO SUFFERED ‘WORST DEATH IMAGINABLE’ INSIDE NUTTY PUTTY CAVE
Essentially crawling into his own grave, John suffered one of the ‘worst deaths imaginable’ in the tight space.
The cave would later be closed off and sealed for good in order to deter morbid tourists from making the same fatal trip.
The size of some of the passageways in Nutty Putty Cave (YouTube/unlox775)
John’s story would also be adapted into 2016 biographical drama film The Last Descent.
While most of us nowadays will hear about Nutty Putty Cave and shudder at the thought of spending your final moments wedged in a tiny opening in-between rocks, the location was actually pretty popular in the spelunking community.
Alongside the more technically difficult passages, Nutty Putty also featured routes which were beginner-friendly.
“It was a crawly little cave,” Richard Downey, of Utah’s Timpanogos Grotto, told howstuffworks.
“There were also some larger passages. It was believed to be really easy and that’s why all of your Boy Scouts and locals went in with flashlights and sandals and things. You had to work hard to get in trouble.”
In the video, Buchanan can be seen venturing into the cave alongside his brother-in-law and their respective children, who appear to be quite young in age.
Throughout the video – which clocks in just shy of 10 minutes – you can see the group squeezing through a series of tight passageways, with one of the children in the group referring to a passage near the Birth Canal as the place ‘where people get stuck’.