Graphic by Gabriel Currie
Lewis hall residents have long wondered about the long, liminal corridor of locked doors in the building’s basement. The doors offer little hint as to what lies behind them, and rarely do students dare to try and find out. Most erroneously claim they simply lead to storage closets and boiler rooms. Determined to prove them wrong, freshman Lewis resident Franklin Turner jimmied the lock on one of the doors one night in March only to discover what seems to be a massive natural cave complex.
“There was this huge cave mouth leading down way deep into the hill,” said Turner. “And I just had to go check it out, you know? Spelunking’s in my blood.”
Turner, who hails from West Virginia, says he grew up exploring caves near his hometown, often skipping school to ogle at stalactites and stalagmites and crawl through claustrophobic tunnels. Turner’s childhood cave exploration experience got him into environmental science and geology, but not onto Tufts’ Climbing Team. He had hoped that his discovery of the cave complex would guarantee him a place on the team in the future, but he quickly realized he was in over his head.
“I’d never met a cave I couldn’t spelunk,” he bragged, “at least, not until this one.”
After retrieving his trusty headlamp, Turner made his way through several hundred feet of winding, damp passages, encountering no sign of human presence other than his own. The further into the cave he went, the warmer and more humid it became; Turner, however, was unphased (“the mines,” he remarked with a shrug, “I’m used to it.”). But the tunnel’s sharp turns became sharper, and the width of the passage narrowed more and more as Turner continued.
“Before I knew it, I’d slipped on a patch of wet gravel and fallen headfirst into a narrow crevasse. It was every spelunker’s worst nightmare. I’d never been stuck before, not like this. But now I was, and my arms were pinned to my sides so I couldn’t move,” a wide-eyed Turner recounted with a shiver. “Once I figured out I wasn’t hurt, I thought, ‘I can get out of this,’ but then my headlamp battery died and I realized I was in too deep. I was never going to get out of there, and Tufts Mountain Club would never find out about Turner Cave. Part of me felt like this was meant to be; after all, I’m pretty sure my great-grand uncle Floyd died in a spelunking accident, too. I think it’s genetic.”
Resigning himself to an untimely, yet somewhat romantic demise, Turner began to sing John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” a personal favorite which he’d sung when he unsuccessfully auditioned for multiple acapella groups.
“I guess the cave must have really great acoustics, ‘cause after a while, I heard a bunch of people yelling way above me. I was saved, I thought, and started singing the song all over again so my siren’s song would guide my rescuers to me,” Turner smiled proudly.
Turner’s roommate, Michael Friedsam, was among the four bewildered students in the Lewis laundry room who followed the sound of Turner’s voice through the opened door and into the cave, and discovered him lodged upside down in the crevasse, feet just barely sticking out.
“I was just going to put my clothes in the dryer, but we could hear his… his god-awful voice from the laundry room,” he recalled. “No one else I know sings like that. It’s terrible, really. Please don’t tell him I said that.”
Friedsam and the other students, using their phone flashlights,nsuccessfully dragged then still-singing, unscathed Turner out of the cavity and guided him to student health services. Though he appears physically unharmed, it is unclear just how much Turner’s mental state was impacted by an estimated five hours upside down in complete darkness, though his roommate says he has taken to wandering the Lewis corridors late at night whistling “Country Roads,” since his rescue.
The cave complex is now under investigation by local and federal environmental authorities. It still remains uncertain why the university chose to build a massive dorm on top of it, or what remains behind the building’s other locked doors.
