From Robert Macfarlane’s Underland:
Claustrophobia – much more so than vertigo – retains its disturbing power even when being experienced indirectly as narrative or description. Hearing stories of confinement below ground, people shift uneasily, step away, look to the light.
A few pages later, Macfarlane, with gentle sadism, retells the story of Neil Moss, who got trapped in Peak Cavern near Sheffield in 1959:
He could feel the boulders shifting beneath his feet, but there seemed no further possibility of descent. So he began to re-ascend. Just below the elbow-bend Moss lost his footing on the ladder, slipped down a little – and found himself wedged.
He could not bend his knees to regain purchase on the rungs of the ladder, which were anyway greasy with mud. His arms were pinned close to his body by the sides of the shaft, and his hands scrabbled vainly for grip on the slick limestone. The ladder seemed to have shifted across the space of the shaft, perhaps dragged by the movement of the boulders at the shaft’s base, further blocking upwards progress. The fissure had him fast – and with each movement he made, his entrapment tightened a fraction. […] Moss’s panic rose. Every twitch of his body caused him to slide very slightly deeper into the shaft. He was indeed stuck – and he was also suffocating. With each breath Moss slightly depleted the limited oxygen supply in the shaft, and slightly increased the carbon dioxide content.
Multiple rescue efforts were unsuccessful and Moss was officially declared dead two days later.
Nehaveigur 