Imagine standing at the entrance of a dark, mysterious cave, its passages twisting deep underground. While the thought of sliding into the unknown might spook most, for thrill-seekers, it’s just another day of exploration. The @ActionAdventureTwins, a duo of cave explorers on YouTube, captured this eerie experience by dropping a GoPro into one of the deepest pits in the US. The video, now a viral hit, has left many viewers with chills.
The video, posted by James and Edward, the @ActionAdventureTwins, has racked up 362,000 views and nearly a thousand comments. It also features guests Nate and Ben, identical twins from Pennsylvania who run their own adventure channel, @DeepFreedom.
“We took a GoPro down into the deepest pit in the U.S, and are the first people to drop it down to the bottom of this cave,” the team claimed in the caption but it should be noted that the cave has been explored and mapped by several speleologists for decades before this team. The spot in question here is the Fantastic Pit in Ellison’s Cave, located in Walker County on Pigeon Mountain in the Appalachian Plateaus of Northwest Georgia. It is the deepest unobstructed underground pit in the country at 586 feet. Ellison’s Cave is 12 miles long and 1,063 feet deep, making it the 12th deepest cave in the United States.
At the start of the footage, one of the twins explains, “We’re gonna rappel down like, 128 feet, and we’re gonna see the deepest cave in America, and we’re gonna drop a GoPro down it.” The duo stand at the rocky mouth of the pit, smeared with soil, tangled vines, thick bushes, and dried leaf mold.
The explorers drop the GoPro camera down the opening, sending it deep into the dark belly of the pit. The first drop is about 125 feet down. Then the GoPro is dropped down another pit with a depth of about 586 feet. The footage first depicts scenery of flying dust motes with the sounds of dripping water. The rope attached to the camera descends, cascading between the jagged rocky structures and craggy walls.
In a moment, the team sees a waterfall. “That’s cool,” they exclaim. As the camera goes deeper into the pit, the audio becomes muffled. The camera rotates in circular motion revealing the precipitous cave walls with monstrous accumulation of limestone formations and fractured gypsum rocks. The camera then flashes the bedrock of the cave mounded with stones and pebbles. At this time, the GoPro is 714 feet below the Earth’s surface.
Finally, they pull the rope upwards from the black abyss. While pulling it back, they almost seem to lose the camera as it gets entangled in the axle of the drill. One of the twins says at the end of the footage, “I don’t know what this footage looks like but I am just surprised we got the GoPro back.”
The footage of the shadowy chasm gave eerie vibes to several people. “I’m not going to lie, when it got to the bottom I was anxious for a second. I saw one of those white rocks and was like… omg is that a ghost,” commented @bombud1. @trilfiger448 added, “The muffled descending sound was terrifying! And the spinning…I was just waiting for something to jump-scare me.”
@waya420 said, “Honestly surprised, the bottom wasn’t full of water. It must drain out somewhere even deeper. It would be fun to explore it with a drone if you could.”
The footage was also shared on Instagram where it has 371k views and over 10k likes.
If this wasn’t enough scary an experience, the pair of cavers twins descended the pit a second time in November 2023, this time going all the way down themselves. They spent 12 hours inside this cave, and narrated their experience in the caption, “We can’t believe we finally managed to drop down the pit after planning this for a long time. We will be back to this cave to see where it goes down there!”
Correction: The article originally stated that the Ellison’s Cave was the deepest pit in America but it is the deepest unobstructed pit in the country. The same has been updated. The error is regretted.
This article originally appeared last year.
