Now we're in the real cave.

Were crawling!

All this is totally off our regular tour.

Awesome.

Wow.

I'm Nebby Nick, and this is Nebbin Around Town.

Today, we're Nebbin around the Laurel Caverns here in Fayette County.

It's a little slippy down here.

Wow.

You know, maybe I'll just take a nap right here.

One thing that I've been scared of, even now as almost a 30 year old, is the darkness and tight spaces.

So I thought, why don't we come and do some cave crawling?

All right, well Nick, the first thing we want to do is get this helmet fitted on you, Nick.

Okay.

Oh, that's a pretty, pretty good fit.

Heres the thing.

All right.

You see, before I donated the cave, and I was the owner of the cave, I always had this fear that somebody would come in here and steal my cave.

I just worried about that.

Yes, it was terrible.

Because you never know, you know, you're not here all night.

You know, somebody come up with a really, really big truck comes out and steals your cave.

So what do I do?

I was going to hide the cave.

So what I did was I built this closet right here, and I hid the cave in this closet.

The cave is in this closet.

Okay?

Yeah.

So we have to go into the closet here.

It's where I keep it.

Okay.

So come on in here.

Let's go into the closet, and then we will see if we can't find the cave here.

Yes, here it is right here.

This is crazy.

Wow.

Wow.

This is the cave.

This is the cave.

Yes.

The Native Americans we don't believe really knew about the cave.

The discovery was made in 1794 by a local farmer named John Delaney, and he found his dogs were attracted to this particular area where it was a very deep depression in the ground And he clawed back the leaves to where he could look through the roots of these trees and see an opening through the roots.

So we went back to his home and got an ax, chopped his way through the roots crawled through and popped into the cave and into that passage.

So that opening right there is the opening, pretty much as it looked.

It wasn't all that visible originally, The deeper we went, the less my headlamp could show me.

And with only a few feet of visibility, my imagination had plenty of room to wander.

To understand what exactly might be going on in my head as I walk through the darkness, I talked with Doctor Siegle.

What our brain is doing is interpreting what our body is going through and adding story to it.

There's another thing that happens specifically when we're scared, which is that we get very sensitized to threat.

So we start looking for other threats in our environment, which is why we're scanning.

And, we're anticipating.

That anticipation, by the way, is engaging prediction mechanisms that says, “Whats next?” My imagination was definitely filling in some blanks, including one pretty big one: what exactly was keeping all of this rock above my head from caving in all around me?

David, I got to ask, what is the science behind these caverns?

Right.

How is it safe that we can be down here and not have to worry about anything happening?

Well, the answer is in these joint lines, if we look up here in the ceiling.

Do you see that crevice up there?

I do.

That's called a joint line.

The cave started forming along a hairline crack.

It just ran right down through here.

It's basically sand glued together by calcium carbonate.

So at one time that was floor to ceiling sand.

Well, as the cave dissolved out, it dissolved out in terms of its own natural structures.

So it's sort of reinforced itself by dissolving in such a way that it forms arches.

See?

So the rock is pretty solid.

We have areas where rocks can come down, and I'll show you that later.

That takes the fault line.

With David's explanation, I was feeling a little more comfortable about following him deeper into the cave.

Oof.

You okay?

Yup!

It gets a little low.

I have a hard hat on!

You gotta you gotta pay attention here.

Come on down here.

Yeah... Because this goes down into a lower section of cave too.

See, this keeps going!

So your goal is to get to right to that rope without starting to slide down the hill too much.

Yep.

You've got the right boots on for it.

I can see that with your tread.

Theyre Tims!

Oh, okay.

Im on it!

Now, there you are.

Now, in the proper method, the rope would be off to your side.

So put it on your other.

Yeah.

Don't have between your legs.

Okay.

That's good.

Then you just lower yourself down.

Down here.

And when you run out of rope, that's where we stop.

I'm a real cave explorer.

Its pure darkness up there.

Its wild.

This is the end of the rope.

Okay.

Yeah, it's end of the rope.

Wow.

After getting my chops as a real cave explorer, I finally felt like I had the confidence to tackle the thing I'd been worried about from the start... The dark.

Being out of control also is a big deal for brains.

When it's in control, you do not have to have such high arousal.

You can just execute programs.

When you don't know what's coming, then all of our reptilian brain is online saying, wow, I'm going to just jump when something happens.

So darkness is a good way of getting around our brains usual control mechanisms.

Yeah.

You're about to experience absolute darkness.

Yes.

We tend, as humans to have a fear of the darkness.

And maybe it has something to do with our Neanderthal ancestors and safety, but it's something that I've been trying to conquer for most of my teenage and early adult life.

And I think now is the time... We're here in this quiet, cool cave.

I'm sure there are a few bat friends around, but I think I'm ready.

Let's turn off the lights.

I can't even see my hand in front of my face.

You know, it's actually somewhat peaceful.

Yes.

Its not - It's not as I expected.

I'm not worried about any boogeyman popping out from behind a rock.

When we are afraid, we start encoding stuff a whole lot because your brain wants to know, what should I do different next time?

And if we triumph through that, we may store - “Yeah, I can - I faced this fear and I can do that again in different situations.

And I can afford to be brave.

So now you are going to enter Cale's Canyon.

Awesome.

So it's a good chance you're going to end up learning lessons like, “Oh, yeah, I can face my fears in the real world.” And after facing my fear of the dark, I started to see the beauty hiding within it and just how magical this cave really is.

A lot of people have that kind of an affinity with the cave.

Yeah.

Especially when you can be down here in the quiet by yourself.

Definitely.

It's very peaceful.