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| Marian McConnell, pictured at the bottom of Daylight Cave, wants to separate fact from fiction in a book she is writing about the Murder Hole, a huge expanse under the ground on her property near Catawba. |
Tales about the cave are sprinkled with truth, and the property owner wants to set the record straight.
Out near Catawba, a good ways off the beaten path, there's a yawning gap in the earth that's darkened in early morning shadows cast by the craggy ridge to McAfee Knob.
Its ominous-sounding name is "Catawba Murder Hole." To the naked eye, it's 100 feet wide and another 120 feet deep. But that part, named "Daylight Cave," is merely the visible section of a larger cave system that stretches beneath Dan and Marian McConnell's 34-acre wooded spread.
Two unseen lower levels take its depth down to 234 feet. One of the underground chambers has a 75-foot-tall ceiling.
Talk to Marian and you'll hear stories - some are fact and others are legend. There's the one about the Virginia Tech student who fell and died there when his climbing rope snapped during a caving expedition in 1958.
That one's a fact. Tragically, fibers in the rope had weakened because some toilet bowl cleanser stored with the line had leaked onto it.
There's another story about a Civil War deserter angrily thrown into the pit for his cowardly transgressions. And another about a heartbroken young woman who despondently jumped into the cave because her parents disapproved of her beau.
And yet another tale about a traveling salesman whose horse-drawn wagon mysteriously disappeared in the Catawba area in the early 1900s. Word is, a local farmer stole his goods, killed the tinkerer and disposed of his horse and wagon in Murder Hole.
Those are legends, so far unconfirmed.
Is the famed Beale treasure hidden there? McConnell doubts it, though she's heard that one, too.
Murder Hole has been featured in nonfiction books, such as "Caves of Virginia" and "Underground in the Appalachians," and in fictional stories such as "Twilight at the Murder Hole" by Richard Raymond of Roanoke.
Now the cave is getting its own book, a coffee table-style hardcover volume. McConnell is writing it; she hopes to have it published by June. And she wants to hear your stories about it and see your pictures from Murder Hole, too.
"This cave wants to tell its story," McConnell said Friday when I dropped by for a gander at it. She's particularly interested in tales and photos that predate 1994, when she and her husband bought the property and built their house there.
McConnell, spokeswoman for the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem, already has collected reams of material. Those are carefully arranged in loose-leaf binders stacked on a table in her home office.
Among her recent scores was an interview with Alma Kromer Bailey, 90, who lives in Roanoke. She's the daughter of George von Kromer, one of the earliest documented explorers of Murder Hole.
The German native had moved to New York when he was a lad of 12. He later married a 13-year-old girl and in the early 1900s moved her to the Catawba sanitarium after she was diagnosed with tuberculosis (it turned out she didn't have it, and she recovered). Alma Kromer Bailey is their daughter.
Out near Catawba, a good ways off the beaten path, there's a yawning gap in the earth that's darkened in early morning shadows cast by the craggy ridge to McAfee Knob.
Its ominous-sounding name is "Catawba Murder Hole." To the naked eye, it's 100 feet wide and another 120 feet deep. But that part, named "Daylight Cave," is merely the visible section of a larger cave system that stretches beneath Dan and Marian McConnell's 34-acre wooded spread.
Two unseen lower levels take its depth down to 234 feet. One of the underground chambers has a 75-foot-tall ceiling.
Talk to Marian and you'll hear stories - some are fact and others are legend. There's the one about the Virginia Tech student who fell and died there when his climbing rope snapped during a caving expedition in 1958.
That one's a fact. Tragically, fibers in the rope had weakened because some toilet bowl cleanser stored with the line had leaked onto it.
There's another story about a Civil War deserter angrily thrown into the pit for his cowardly transgressions. And another about a heartbroken young woman who despondently jumped into the cave because her parents disapproved of her beau.
And yet another tale about a traveling salesman whose horse-drawn wagon mysteriously disappeared in the Catawba area in the early 1900s. Word is, a local farmer stole his goods, killed the tinkerer and disposed of his horse and wagon in Murder Hole.
Those are legends, so far unconfirmed.
Is the famed Beale treasure hidden there? McConnell doubts it, though she's heard that one, too.
Murder Hole has been featured in nonfiction books, such as "Caves of Virginia" and "Underground in the Appalachians," and in fictional stories such as "Twilight at the Murder Hole" by Richard Raymond of Roanoke.
Now the cave is getting its own book, a coffee table-style hardcover volume. McConnell is writing it; she hopes to have it published by June. And she wants to hear your stories about it and see your pictures from Murder Hole, too.
"This cave wants to tell its story," McConnell said Friday when I dropped by for a gander at it. She's particularly interested in tales and photos that predate 1994, when she and her husband bought the property and built their house there.
McConnell, spokeswoman for the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem, already has collected reams of material. Those are carefully arranged in loose-leaf binders stacked on a table in her home office.
Among her recent scores was an interview with Alma Kromer Bailey, 90, who lives in Roanoke. She's the daughter of George von Kromer, one of the earliest documented explorers of Murder Hole.
The German native had moved to New York when he was a lad of 12. He later married a 13-year-old girl and in the early 1900s moved her to the Catawba sanitarium after she was diagnosed with tuberculosis (it turned out she didn't have it, and she recovered). Alma Kromer Bailey is their daughter.
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| Marian McConnell reviews news clippings and old photos she is collecting for a book she is writing on Murder Hole, a cave near Catawba with a rich history. |
The name "Murder Hole" is much more foreboding and exciting, of course. Oddly, it has nothing to do with any killing, real or imagined.
Instead, the name refers to a hidden vertical hole partway down one of the cave's slanted subterranean passageways known as "Ski Slope."
The hidden hole drops 75 vertical (and potentially deadly) feet into the cave's third and deepest chamber.
It's similar to a defensive feature found in the ceilings of English, Scottish and Irish castles, called "murder holes," which occupants could climb up into during a castle siege.
Through such holes, defenders would throw rocks, shoot arrows or pour boiling oil down upon the attackers.
McConnell, 56, and her husband Dan, 60, have been defenders and caretakers of the cave since they bought the property in 1994.
They've hauled countless amounts of trash out of it and taken countless cavers inside it, some from as far away as Poland and Russia.
They've also rescued errant trespassers who have gotten into trouble by exploring the cavern with barely a flashlight and a clothesline.
"But we won't live forever," Marian McConnell said. "So before I pass on and they sprinkle my ashes into the cave, I want to share what I've learned in a book."
If you have stories or photographs of the Catawba-area cave known as Murder Hole, Marian McConnell wants to hear from you. Call 540-309-4707 or email marian.mcconnell@gmail.com
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Many don’t make it out of Murder Hole as easily as they made it in. Here’s a partial list:
April 1958: David Spencer, a 26-year-old member of the VPI Cave Club, was 25 feet into a 120-foot rappel when his hemp rope broke, killing him instantly.
November 1958: Two Richmond Boy Scout leaders took 12 Scouts into the cave and tied them together for safety. After one slipped, they all fell down a slope, causing Chuck Harris, 13, to break his arm. It took rescue teams eight hours to get all the boys out. Harris later said, “I’ve never had so much fun in all my life.”
August 1964: Two Roanoke teens and one adult were rescued after being trapped for six hours.
February 1966: Five Virginia Tech cavers went into the cave but only two could climb out on the wet ropes. The remaining three were rescued.
Summer 1967: A 19-year old Roanoke County girl was standing near the edge of the 120-foot drop of Daylight Cave when she fell over the lip and broke her pelvis.
December 1969: Dallis Hollandsworth, Eric Fleshman and Adrian Parris, three Salem teenagers, descended into the cave on Christmas Eve. Fleshman and Hollandsworth got stuck about 230 feet below ground and were rescued.
November 1978: Three Roanoke teens were trapped when they couldn’t climb up the slippery inner walls of the cave.
Source: The Roanoke Times archives