Confusion, I thought my browser was screwing up. I clicked next 15 times and then tried changing the “page10″ to a “page11″ nothing worked. I googled and found this page and then was angry.

Rage, that was the end of the story, it was over, WHAT KIND OF ENDING IS THAT?

Sadness, such an enthralling tale over just like that, no closure.

Finally, joy, what a story. I realized it couldn’t have ended any other way. The mystery was the key to the readability of the story and the key to my remembering it for what is likely to be the rest of my life.

cave creature would be a little larger than a wolf/cougar
and light/sound sensitive ,, scary but killable so

Who carved the hieroglyphs?
others who probibly worshiped or hunted it

Meaning of the hieroglyphs: come here in groups with tourches,
screem right back at it & show no fear?

What was the origin of the sounds,
screems = echo-location/warning,
the truck noises would be wind buffiting the other entrances

breeze turning on and off was monster crawling through passage and interfearing with airflow and sound levels in prosess

the smell that scared the hell out of joe and ted
was its hiding place becoming part of this air flow

I agree that the scream might have come from an unfortunate caver, but I prefer to think that it was actually from the creature in the cave, trying to warn them or scare them away.

There’s a comment from a Metafilter discussion that pretty much sums up how I feel about the story:
“Fun fiction, especially for one who has done some caving and can really picture it as I read along.
But dammit, I want to go down that passage behind the round rock!”

I don’t have any experience with caving, and I guess I don’t actually want to go down the passage behind the round rock, but I *do* really want to know what’s down there!

If you want to know more about the Hodag he talks about, Wikipedia has an entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodag

Also, there’s a freaky picture of a cave being with an explanation here:
http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/CaveBeing.html

Some questions:
1. How intelligent is “It”?
2. What does it eat when it can’t get spelunkers?
3. How has it managed to stay alive underground during the (probably) thousands of years since the hieroglyphs were carved? Cthulu-like suspended animation? Maybe it just wakes up to feed when disturbed?
4. Who carved the hieroglyphs? If Indians visited the cave in centuries past, there must be another entrance as the Floyd’s Tomb route was inaccessible until enlarged.
5. Meaning of the hieroglyphs: my theory is that they mean “Beware Of The Monster. Get Out Of Here Now.”
6. What was the origin of the sounds and the reason for the breeze turning on and off? (Maybe the scream could be explained as another unfortunate caver who came in thru that other hypothetical opening and was devoured.)

Of course none of this really matters as the story is intended to be a mystery.

Btw, I didn’t write this story. I didn’t write any of the stories on this site. I just found them and posted them here because I thought they were interesting. This one might be an even better read on its original page:

http://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/index.html