Utah Man Trapped Upside Down In Cave Forever Is Pure Nightmare Fuel

If you need a reason to stay above ground, this is it. On November 24, 2009, what started as a fun family outing turned into a literal living tomb for John Edward Jones.

The 26 year old medical student entered the infamous Nutty Putty Cave in Utah for a pre-Thanksgiving adventure, only to become the center of the most horrifying rescue mission in modern history.

While searching for a narrow passage called the "Birth Canal", Jones accidentally slid into an unmapped fissure that was barely 10 inches wide.

He went in head-first, sliding down a 70-degree angle until he was completely inverted.

Once he exhaled to squeeze through a tight spot, his chest expanded upon his next breath, pinning him like a human cork in a stone bottle.

For 27 hours, over 100 rescuers worked in a race against gravity. Because he was upside down, his heart was working overtime to pump blood out of his brain, a physical stress that the human body simply cannot survive for long.

Rescuers actually managed to lift him a few feet using a complex pulley system, and for a brief moment, they were even able to see his face.

Then, disaster struck. An anchor point in the soft cave wall failed, the pulley snapped, and Jones plummeted right back into the crevice, becoming wedged even deeper than before.

After more than a day of fighting, his body finally gave out, and he was pronounced dead of cardiac arrest.

The tragedy was so absolute that officials decided the cave was too dangerous to ever re-enter.

They couldn't even retrieve his body. On December 3, 2009, the cave was sealed shut with a concrete plug, turning the entire mountain into a permanent tomb for the man the earth refused to give back.