March 21, 2025 • 31 mins
When seasoned hiker Kenny Veach claimed to have found a cave in the Nevadan wilderness that made his body vibrate with fear, few believed him. So he set out to find it again, only this time he never came back.
Some believe he made the whole thing up. Others that he had unwittingly stumbled on a secret government location that led right into the heart of Area 51...
This episode was written by Neil McRobert and produced by Richard MacLean Smith
Find us at youtube.com/@unexplainedpod, tiktok.com/@unexplainedpodcast, twitter @unexplainedpod, facebook.com/unexplainedpodcast or www.unexplainedpodcast.com for more info. Thank you for listening.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
In late December twenty thirteen, a video was uploaded to
the YouTube account of doctor Stephen Greer, a ufologist and
founder of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
titled Area fifty one Technician's Son Discloses Secret Alternative Energy.
(00:31):
The sixteen minute clip is an interview with Paul H.
Hut's about his father's involvement in a clandestine scientific project.
For most of Paul's childhood, Ute Senior worked at Nellis
Air Force Base in southern Nevada. Paul remembers him leaving
every morning from the Las Vegas Airport close to their
(00:52):
home and flying to Nellis, where he claimed to work
as an optical engineer. Paul describes his dad as a quiet,
conservative man, not prone to sharing details about his life.
But in nineteen ninety three, after Yute Senior retired, he
and the now adult Paul met at a bar. It
(01:15):
seemed the alcohol loosened something in the old man. It
seemed as though there was something he needed to get
off his chest, a truth he'd been withholding for years.
According to Paul, this was when his father confessed to
him that he hadn't simply worked at Nellis Air Force
base he'd worked at the infamous Area fifty one. This site,
(01:41):
which is indeed a remote part of the Nellis Base,
as many listeners will know, has been the center for
conspiracy theories for decades. Most famously, according to some, it
is thought to be the place where the remains of
the Roswell incident were studied, but other rumors have a
rude and persisted the development of exotic technologies, weather control,
(02:06):
time travel, and even face to face meetings with visiting extraterrestrials.
It's a site forever associated with shadowy, black ops and secret,
perhaps dangerous knowledge. Paul Utes his father is said to
have called it Dreamland. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm
(02:31):
Richard McLean Smith. It was at Dreamland that Paul Utes
claimed his father and his team specialized in reverse engineering
and adapting advanced technologies. The provenance of technologies is never questioned.
(02:55):
In Paul's YouTube interview, Paul says they were presented to
his father's dead team by government agencies and universities, but
where they got them is not discussed. One of the technologies, however,
was apparently a new and unknown energy source. Paul has
scant details to give, but he does say that his
(03:17):
father described the device as containing a large amount of
organic material and even potentially some degree of consciousness, though
he doesn't elaborate on what his father meant by this.
He does add, however, that when Yute Senior's team took
the device out into the desert to activate it, it exploded.
(03:41):
After these tantalizing hints of highly strange conspiracy, Paul's interview
trails off into a long lament for a childhood marred
by his father's career, how an atmosphere of secrecy suffocated
the family and impeded Paul's social development. The video does
not return to the nature of Eute Senia's work or
(04:05):
its mysterious implications. It's at best a half mystery, intriguing
for sure, with Paul's knowledge of military jargon and regional
geography giving some weight to his story, but it's never
more than an anecdotal contribution to the sweeping mythology of
Area fifty one, and that's probably where the video's impact
(04:28):
would have ended as a minor footnote in a grand conspiracy,
were it not for a single reply posted in the
comment section below the video. Nearly a year later, at
first glance, it reads like a typically cooky bread crumb
thrown at YouTube, either attention grabbing fiction or a paranoid
(04:51):
upping of the ante. But that comment turned out to
be the first digital link in a new chain of mystery,
one that has stumped both online sleuths and real world
investigators for over a decade, one that suggests there may
be far stranger things waiting in the Nevaden dream land
(05:13):
for those reckless enough to go looking. I am a
long distance hiker. The comment began one time during one
of my hikes out by Nellis Air Force Base. I
found a hidden cave. The entrance was shaped like a
perfect capital M. I always enter every cave I find,
(05:36):
but as I began to enter this particular cave, my
whole body began to vibrate. The closer I got to
the cave entrance, the worse it became. Suddenly I became
very scared and high tailed it out of there. That
was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me.
(05:57):
The poster went by the handle snake Bit McGee. Out
in the real world. He was Kenny Veach, a forty
seven year old outdoors enthusiast, and self proclaimed inventor from
Las Vegas. Kenny Veach frequently posted on other users' videos,
(06:21):
typically about his prowess as an outdoorsman in the Mohart
and Great Basin deserts. In one comment, he describes how
my hikes are brutal on the body. Sometimes my toenails
turn black and fall off. It takes me about three
days to recover from the abuse I put myself through.
(06:43):
He explains that his online monica was a reference to
his reckless habit of picking up snakes during his excursions.
In another post, he sets out his experience in the desert.
I have been doing this sort of thing for over
twenty years. I go where no one goes, and I
never take any one with me. I high cover mountaintop
(07:06):
after mountain top and sleep on peaks under the stars.
Sometimes I have to scale giant cliffs just to get
myself out of a jam, but I always make it back,
beat up and tie it. Though his remarks are strewn
across YouTube, Kenny's own footprint on the site is minimal.
(07:27):
The snake bit McGee profile hosts only five videos, three
of which demonstrate prototypes of his inventions. One is a
new and improved toilet roll holder. Another is a polar
bear figurine filled with luminescent beads that make it glow
in the dark. He calls it the Glolar Bear and
(07:50):
says he plans to submit it to the reality TV
show Shark Tank as an investment opportunity. There's a sense
of cheerful desperation to Kenny's videos. Another film documents an
attempt to sell his house whilst hoping to be allowed
to live on in the property as a caretaker of sorts.
(08:12):
Watching the videos and reading Kenny's comments, you get the
impression of an endearingly eccentric man, funny, energetic, and extremely
confident in his own abilities, though it's hard to tell
whether that confidence is hard earned and deserved, foolhardy, or
camouflaged for a deeper insecurity. There is only one video
(08:37):
that substantiates Kenny's claims of outdoor expertise. This is the
now infamous m Cave Hike, the video that sits at
the center of the mystery surrounding Kenny Veach. You made
it as a response to the backlash he received to
his comment on Paul Uts's video. After Kenny described the
(08:59):
strange cave that scared him so badly. A number of
YouTube users expressed doubts. Many were extremely skeptical, even hostile.
Others were fascinated and encouraged Kenny to retrace his route
and investigate further. One reply stands out, though, a user
(09:22):
named Lemmy kill Mister wrote, No, don't go back there.
If you find that cave entrance, don't go in. If
you do, you won't get out. What makes you say that,
Kenny asked, but he received no reply. Unmoved by the warning,
(09:45):
or perhaps feeling the need to back up his self
professed reputation, Kenny posted that he would make another trip
into the desert and he would film it. The video
he recorded would be the last footage the world. What
Ever saw of Kenny veach m Cave Hike was uploaded
(10:14):
to YouTube on October eighteenth, twenty fourteen. It is twenty
two minutes in length and opens without fanfare or tidal
cart on an unforgiving panorama. Far in the distance, a
mountain range looms hazy in the morning light. The mountains
roll down to a flat span of desert in the
(10:36):
middle distance, before the land rises again toward the camera.
In the immediate foreground, there is a scaffold, a crude
assembly of wood and steel over a small hole in
the ground, an old mine shaft, like a scene from
an old Western. After a few seconds, we hear the
(10:57):
crunch of approaching footsteps. Then a figure steps into the frame.
This is Kenny Veach. He's a lean, wiry man with
dark hair and sun blasted skin. He looks like someone
who spends a lot of time outdoors. His clothing is
(11:19):
a random assortment of technical and casual gear, all topped
off with a floppy fishing hat. At its waist is
a brown leather holster. He looks like someone experienced enough
in the outdoors to know what he needs, not what
looks good on camera. Kenny walks back and forth until
(11:42):
he settles in the center of the frame. Then he
turns to the camera with a smile.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Well, here I am on my hike up here in
the mountains north of Las Vegas.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
He turns to point at the view behind, tells us
his truck is parked somewhere way out there, on the
far side of what looked to be in possibly distant peaks.
He switches stance and points to the mountains to the
right side of the frame.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
On the other side of these mountains, I'll show you
in a second is the bombing range, the Nellis Air
Force Bombing Range. They do a lot of practice stuff
out there.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
These details and other geographical features seen in the video
have led experts to believe that Kenny was hiking in
the Sheep Range, a sixty mile stretch of mountains running
north to south in the Desert National Wildlife Refuge and
named for the bighorn sheep that make their home amids
the rock and rubble. Though it parallels Highway ninety three,
(12:49):
it is the largest roadless area in Nevada. Clearly, Kenny
is well oriented himself. He knows where he is and
where he has been, pointing to the nearby gas peak,
where he spent the night on his previous visit to
the area. But on this day, his mission is a
(13:10):
single day, ten hour hike looking for the cave that
had so spooked him. M cave.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
The last time I came up here, I didn't I
didn't have a side arm when I was here before, he.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Gestures casually to the weapon now holsted on his hip.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Something about that cave just spooked me. At all the
caves I've ever gone in. This one just made my
body vibrate. The closer I got to it, the crazier
my body felt. And I was like, all right, I'm
not gonna go in there right now, but I'm coming
back someday.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
The first section of Kenny's M Cave video lasts for
six minutes. He speaks to the camera casually, telling the
viewer that he has a big cooler of beer waiting
for him in his truck because he didn't bring a
lot of water with him and only a single candy bar.
He emphasizes the length of his hike and the harshness
(14:09):
of the terrain, establishing also that he's already at a
significant altitude, telling us that a nearby mountain is around
nine thousand feet that would put him somewhere close to
Hayford Peak, the highest part of the range. Kenny then
points out the next stage of his hike. He turns
(14:31):
the camera to reveal a low rise on the far side.
He tells us there is a canyon heading west towards
Mount Charleston, a canyon that gets ever narrower, and in
there somewhere is the M Cave. Seemingly reminded of his purpose.
Kenny references being called out on YouTube for his claims
(14:54):
of the cave's strange properties.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, I don't know if fault be freaked out like
I was last time. There might have been a mountain
lying in there, and it was just my sixth sense
talking to me, So.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
He grins at the camera.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
If I find the cave, I'm definitely gonna set up
my tripod over here, and uh, I'm gonna go check
it out. So you'll see me with my gun in
hand and my flashlight and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
The rest of the video continues in somewhat repetitive two
or three minute chunks. Each leaps forward to a new
stage of Kenny's hike. He discovers fresh pine nuts and
pops them in his mouth. Much later, he stops to
marvel at a large moha tortoise and tells us he
(15:38):
got a great photo of a tarantula. So Kenny is
looking for the cave. The video does not give the
impression of a man possessed by singular purpose. He is
enjoying his day in the desert. He's relaxed.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Oh perfect right stage, look at that perfect Wow. So
I'm a happy camper. I'm gonna collect these for a
while and then hopefully we'll find that cave.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Kenny doesn't have a compass with him, and he has
an odd approach to self discipline.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
I don't have any supplies, you know. I bring water
and I bring something to eat, but I kind of
try to pretend that I'm running out or I don't
have it, just so I can see how far I
can actually go before I feel like I'm in trouble.
That way, if I ever do get in trouble, I
know when I should start panicking.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Despite the stark, frightening beauty of the desert, there is
little in the video that appears strange or out of place,
but two details catch the eye. Around thirteen minutes, Kenny's
camera lens lingers on an unusual rock formation, a patch
of stone that looks different to the rock around it,
(17:02):
almost like brickwork set into the hillside. Beside it, there
is what looks in passing more like a ruined stone
structure than a natural outcrop. Kenny pauses for a moment,
gives a curious hum, then moves on. Towards the very
end of the video, he cuts to the lonely profile
(17:25):
of a ram standing on a cliff edge. It's an
animal native to the area, but it looks eerie none
the less. When it turns its horned head in Kenny's direction,
it's hard not to feel that the creature has sensed
the interloper from its distant perch. And then the adventure
(17:46):
is over. Suddenly, the film cuts to the canyon mouth,
where the tight wind opens up on to the hard
packed floor of the Great Basin.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Well, I did not find the cave. That is so.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Weird, Kenny sounds more surprised and disappointed here.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I mean, I thought for sure I was just going
to be able to find it. I remember it being
fairly easy. Who knows, But that's it. I'll talk to
you when I get back to my truck.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
My back, And with that it begins the remaining three
mile trek to his car, with its tantalizing promise of
cold beer. When Kenny uploaded his failed hike to m Cave,
it was met by an intense blast of skepticism and negativity.
Fellow YouTubers angrily insisted that he'd fabricated the entire story.
(18:49):
After several weeks of this, Kenny posted a reply, I'm
going again this weekend, he wrote, I'll be hiking solo
for three days and plan on covering about forty miles.
I will cross through the same canyon where I found
the cave. If I don't find it again, I'll just
continue hiking over mountain after mountain to the north of
(19:12):
the canyon. Kenny sounded incensed by his followers attitudes. He continued,
I dare any of the people that like to run
their mouths on here to join me. My hike's are
brutal on the body. There's no guarantee that I will
find the cave again. The region that I cover is vast.
There are many caves. I have been in hundreds of them.
(19:36):
The m Cave is the only cave I ever feared
going inside. I really want to find it again. It
was November tenth, twenty fourteen, when Kenny ventured out to
the Sheep Range for the third time. All we know
is that he set out in his truck that morning
with a cell phone and the necessary supplies for a
(19:57):
multi day hike. He told him his girlfriend, Sherrion Pilgrim,
that he would be gone for a few days. When
he didn't return after three, she raised the alarm. In
the days following Sheryon's report, the Las Vegas based Red
Rock Search and Rescue located Kenny's truck. Led by Commander
(20:20):
Dave Cummings. They followed Kenny's trail to that first mine
shaft featured in the m cave hike video. Lying on
the ground near the borded shaft entrance, they found Kenny's
cell phone. Efforts intensified to find Kenny. Other crews poured
in from surrounding areas, with over thirty rescuers conducting three
(20:44):
separate searches. A helicopter surveyed the scene but found no
sign of Kenny, his camp, or his trail. Commander Cummings
told reporters that there was no visible trail leading away
from the mine. It doesn't mean he went down the
(21:04):
mine shaft. He hedged, but we tracked him as far
as we can. In the days that followed Kenny's disappearance,
with comments and conspiracies already boiling up online, Kenny's girlfriend
(21:27):
Sherrion posted an unexpected note under the mkve hike video.
In it, she first acknowledges the interest and sadness of
other posters before confirming that Kenny has not been found,
and suggesting that he would likely not be found for many,
many months if ever. She then goes on to explain
(21:50):
that she and Kenny had hiked often together in the desert,
and though Kenny was more daring than her, they always
took appropriate precaution that led her to a sad conclusion.
I want you to know that I do not think
Kenny had an accident, Sheririon writes, I believe he committed suicide.
(22:12):
He battled depression for many years and would not take
medication or see a doctor. Sherrian suspected that Kenny left
his phone where he did so that he could not
be tracked by the GPS. She also points out that
this time he had left the video camera at home
because he had no intention of filming anything. She concluded
(22:35):
her message with a plea to those who may be
inspired to go looking for Kenny or the m Cave,
please please be careful, enjoy your adventures of life, and
thank you for the kind, loving comments sent my way.
For some, Sheririan's assumption of suicide is the most reasonable explanation.
(22:59):
Others suggest that Kenny simply had an accident, got lost, dehydrated,
or fell prey to the countless spiders, rattlesnakes, and scorpions
that routinely skitter across the desert floor. Some point out
that the area is a known hotspot for criminal activity
(23:19):
and that Kenny may have stumbled into something he shouldn't
and was murdered as a result, but some suggest there
are other lines that Kenny could have unknowingly crossed. Thousands
of comments on the mk video still fixate on nearby
Nellis Air Force Base and the infamous Area fifty one.
(23:43):
After all, in the video itself, Kenny points out that
the base and its test sites are located just over
and nearby Mountain One. Theory in particular relates to the
intense fear and physical vibration that Kenny said he experienced
near the m Cave. Commentators have pointed out that both
(24:05):
are symptoms theoretically ascribed to the effects of infrasound. Infrasound
is a term used to describe sound waves with a
frequency below the normal limits of human hearing, generally considered
(24:26):
to be twenty hurts or less. Though the vast majority
of humans fail to perceive such sounds, many feel the
waves as physical vibrations in their body. More surprisingly, exposure
to infrasound may prompt feelings of extreme fear or awe.
(24:46):
Several academics have tested this hypothesis, with the psychologist Richard
Wiseman going as far as to suggest that infrasound could
be an explanation for supposedly supernatural accounts, as especially the
perception of ghosts. In an experiment at the University of Hertfordshire,
(25:07):
a blind sample of participants was exposed to infrasound of
seventeen hertz. Twenty two percent reported feelings of unease, nervousness,
or outright terror among the more conspiratorially minded. Many think
that Kenny Veitch came under the influence of infrasound on
(25:28):
his first visit to the m Cave, sending him fleeing
in fear without cause or understanding. Even Kenny had no
rational explanation for his apparent reaction. But if there was
infrasound emanating from the m Cave, that is only half
an answer. It doesn't give any closure to the question
(25:51):
of Kenny's whereabouts, and a few strange details given extra
twist to the mystery. First, Kenny's comment under the Paul
Utes interview and the forbidding warning posted by Lemmy Kilmister
that Kenny should stay well away from the M Cave
have both since been deleted from YouTube. Indeed, a great
(26:15):
number of the more recent posts on the utes and
M Cave hike video are now exclusively about those deletions,
with many seeing it as a sign of a potential
cover up. Second since Kenny's disappearance, many have continued to
look for the cave. The Internet is littered with search videos, updates,
(26:36):
and claims to have discovered the site. In truth, there
was little to be gleaned from the vast majority of them.
That was until twenty nineteen, when a professional hiker and
YouTuber named Sean Neil Horlocker published a video retracing Kenny's
exact route. In it, Horlocker roams the canyons until he
(27:00):
comes across a strange looking rock formation, partially obscured behind
desert brush. Close to the ground. There is indeed a
sharply arched pattern to the dark rock that isn't unlike
a letter M, but where a cave mouth could potentially be,
there are layers of much lighter stone. To the naked eye,
(27:25):
it does look like a space that has been filled in,
as shorn All Lucar notes of the strange pattern in
the rock. Each of the rocks filling the hole seem
to stand separate. I don't even know how these are
(27:46):
sitting here right now, he says excitedly to the camera.
How are they holding themselves up? Upon closer inspection, the
stones seem unusually flat and well fitted together. Holuca also
points out what he regards as an artificial seam in
the base of the rock, complete with a white substance
(28:08):
that he says resembles a sealant. He then peers into
a gap between the rocks and finds what appears to
be the beginning of a cavity. Shortly after peering into
the obscured cave, Horlocer begins to cough. This quickly accelerates
to breathlessness and nausea. Within minutes, he is vomiting. He
(28:33):
only starts to recover when he leaves the scene. As
with any mystery pursued online, it's difficult to find any
certain foothold from which to start. We only ever have
the subjective, edited and curated videos of Kenny and those
like Sean Horlocker who follow in its footsteps and from
(28:56):
the prevailing comments. It's near impossible to if the fiction
and trolling from ernest hypothesis, but there is one substantial
link between Kenny's and Sean Hollocker's footage. At fifteen minutes
and forty seconds on Kenny Veach's m Cave hike video,
(29:17):
Kenny is becoming frustrated by his inability to find the cave.
The footage scans across a canyon wall, resting momentarily on
each opening in the rock. Just as he says, I
have to keep my eyes peeled, his camera flits across
a patch of lighter material nestled in a triangle of
(29:39):
darkly contrasting stone. Then the moment is gone and Kenny
doesn't stop or notice it. This strange formation in the
canyon is the exact spot that Sewn Hollaker discovers in
his exploration. Taken altogether, this has led some to believe
(30:01):
that Kenny's cave had in fact been filled in during
the time between his discovery and his failed attempt to
relocate it, and if Horlocker's supposition is true, this was
not the result of natural processes. This episode was written
(30:25):
by Neil McRobert and produced by me Richard McLain Smith.
Neil is the creator and host of his own brilliant
podcast called Talking Scat, in which he discusses the craft
of horror, writing with everyone from Tnanerieve Do to the
God of Horror himself, Stephen King. I can't recommend it
(30:46):
highly enough. Unexplained as an AV Club Productions podcast created
by Richard McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast,
including the music, were also produced by me. Richard McLain's
Smith Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to
buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
(31:09):
Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the
show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to
get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the
stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an
explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can
find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and reach
(31:29):
us online through Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at
Facebook dot com. Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast
In late December twenty thirteen, a video was uploaded to
the YouTube account of doctor Stephen Greer, a ufologist and
founder of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
titled Area fifty one Technician's Son Discloses Secret Alternative Energy.
(00:31):
The sixteen minute clip is an interview with Paul H.
Hut's about his father's involvement in a clandestine scientific project.
For most of Paul's childhood, Ute Senior worked at Nellis
Air Force Base in southern Nevada. Paul remembers him leaving
every morning from the Las Vegas Airport close to their
(00:52):
home and flying to Nellis, where he claimed to work
as an optical engineer. Paul describes his dad as a quiet,
conservative man, not prone to sharing details about his life.
But in nineteen ninety three, after Yute Senior retired, he
and the now adult Paul met at a bar. It
(01:15):
seemed the alcohol loosened something in the old man. It
seemed as though there was something he needed to get
off his chest, a truth he'd been withholding for years.
According to Paul, this was when his father confessed to
him that he hadn't simply worked at Nellis Air Force
base he'd worked at the infamous Area fifty one. This site,
(01:41):
which is indeed a remote part of the Nellis Base,
as many listeners will know, has been the center for
conspiracy theories for decades. Most famously, according to some, it
is thought to be the place where the remains of
the Roswell incident were studied, but other rumors have a
rude and persisted the development of exotic technologies, weather control,
(02:06):
time travel, and even face to face meetings with visiting extraterrestrials.
It's a site forever associated with shadowy, black ops and secret,
perhaps dangerous knowledge. Paul Utes his father is said to
have called it Dreamland. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm
(02:31):
Richard McLean Smith. It was at Dreamland that Paul Utes
claimed his father and his team specialized in reverse engineering
and adapting advanced technologies. The provenance of technologies is never questioned.
(02:55):
In Paul's YouTube interview, Paul says they were presented to
his father's dead team by government agencies and universities, but
where they got them is not discussed. One of the technologies, however,
was apparently a new and unknown energy source. Paul has
scant details to give, but he does say that his
(03:17):
father described the device as containing a large amount of
organic material and even potentially some degree of consciousness, though
he doesn't elaborate on what his father meant by this.
He does add, however, that when Yute Senior's team took
the device out into the desert to activate it, it exploded.
(03:41):
After these tantalizing hints of highly strange conspiracy, Paul's interview
trails off into a long lament for a childhood marred
by his father's career, how an atmosphere of secrecy suffocated
the family and impeded Paul's social development. The video does
not return to the nature of Eute Senia's work or
(04:05):
its mysterious implications. It's at best a half mystery, intriguing
for sure, with Paul's knowledge of military jargon and regional
geography giving some weight to his story, but it's never
more than an anecdotal contribution to the sweeping mythology of
Area fifty one, and that's probably where the video's impact
(04:28):
would have ended as a minor footnote in a grand conspiracy,
were it not for a single reply posted in the
comment section below the video. Nearly a year later, at
first glance, it reads like a typically cooky bread crumb
thrown at YouTube, either attention grabbing fiction or a paranoid
(04:51):
upping of the ante. But that comment turned out to
be the first digital link in a new chain of mystery,
one that has stumped both online sleuths and real world
investigators for over a decade, one that suggests there may
be far stranger things waiting in the Nevaden dream land
(05:13):
for those reckless enough to go looking. I am a
long distance hiker. The comment began one time during one
of my hikes out by Nellis Air Force Base. I
found a hidden cave. The entrance was shaped like a
perfect capital M. I always enter every cave I find,
(05:36):
but as I began to enter this particular cave, my
whole body began to vibrate. The closer I got to
the cave entrance, the worse it became. Suddenly I became
very scared and high tailed it out of there. That
was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me.
(05:57):
The poster went by the handle snake Bit McGee. Out
in the real world. He was Kenny Veach, a forty
seven year old outdoors enthusiast, and self proclaimed inventor from
Las Vegas. Kenny Veach frequently posted on other users' videos,
(06:21):
typically about his prowess as an outdoorsman in the Mohart
and Great Basin deserts. In one comment, he describes how
my hikes are brutal on the body. Sometimes my toenails
turn black and fall off. It takes me about three
days to recover from the abuse I put myself through.
(06:43):
He explains that his online monica was a reference to
his reckless habit of picking up snakes during his excursions.
In another post, he sets out his experience in the desert.
I have been doing this sort of thing for over
twenty years. I go where no one goes, and I
never take any one with me. I high cover mountaintop
(07:06):
after mountain top and sleep on peaks under the stars.
Sometimes I have to scale giant cliffs just to get
myself out of a jam, but I always make it back,
beat up and tie it. Though his remarks are strewn
across YouTube, Kenny's own footprint on the site is minimal.
(07:27):
The snake bit McGee profile hosts only five videos, three
of which demonstrate prototypes of his inventions. One is a
new and improved toilet roll holder. Another is a polar
bear figurine filled with luminescent beads that make it glow
in the dark. He calls it the Glolar Bear and
(07:50):
says he plans to submit it to the reality TV
show Shark Tank as an investment opportunity. There's a sense
of cheerful desperation to Kenny's videos. Another film documents an
attempt to sell his house whilst hoping to be allowed
to live on in the property as a caretaker of sorts.
(08:12):
Watching the videos and reading Kenny's comments, you get the
impression of an endearingly eccentric man, funny, energetic, and extremely
confident in his own abilities, though it's hard to tell
whether that confidence is hard earned and deserved, foolhardy, or
camouflaged for a deeper insecurity. There is only one video
(08:37):
that substantiates Kenny's claims of outdoor expertise. This is the
now infamous m Cave Hike, the video that sits at
the center of the mystery surrounding Kenny Veach. You made
it as a response to the backlash he received to
his comment on Paul Uts's video. After Kenny described the
(08:59):
strange cave that scared him so badly. A number of
YouTube users expressed doubts. Many were extremely skeptical, even hostile.
Others were fascinated and encouraged Kenny to retrace his route
and investigate further. One reply stands out, though, a user
(09:22):
named Lemmy kill Mister wrote, No, don't go back there.
If you find that cave entrance, don't go in. If
you do, you won't get out. What makes you say that,
Kenny asked, but he received no reply. Unmoved by the warning,
(09:45):
or perhaps feeling the need to back up his self
professed reputation, Kenny posted that he would make another trip
into the desert and he would film it. The video
he recorded would be the last footage the world. What
Ever saw of Kenny veach m Cave Hike was uploaded
(10:14):
to YouTube on October eighteenth, twenty fourteen. It is twenty
two minutes in length and opens without fanfare or tidal
cart on an unforgiving panorama. Far in the distance, a
mountain range looms hazy in the morning light. The mountains
roll down to a flat span of desert in the
(10:36):
middle distance, before the land rises again toward the camera.
In the immediate foreground, there is a scaffold, a crude
assembly of wood and steel over a small hole in
the ground, an old mine shaft, like a scene from
an old Western. After a few seconds, we hear the
(10:57):
crunch of approaching footsteps. Then a figure steps into the frame.
This is Kenny Veach. He's a lean, wiry man with
dark hair and sun blasted skin. He looks like someone
who spends a lot of time outdoors. His clothing is
(11:19):
a random assortment of technical and casual gear, all topped
off with a floppy fishing hat. At its waist is
a brown leather holster. He looks like someone experienced enough
in the outdoors to know what he needs, not what
looks good on camera. Kenny walks back and forth until
(11:42):
he settles in the center of the frame. Then he
turns to the camera with a smile.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Well, here I am on my hike up here in
the mountains north of Las Vegas.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
He turns to point at the view behind, tells us
his truck is parked somewhere way out there, on the
far side of what looked to be in possibly distant peaks.
He switches stance and points to the mountains to the
right side of the frame.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
On the other side of these mountains, I'll show you
in a second is the bombing range, the Nellis Air
Force Bombing Range. They do a lot of practice stuff
out there.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
These details and other geographical features seen in the video
have led experts to believe that Kenny was hiking in
the Sheep Range, a sixty mile stretch of mountains running
north to south in the Desert National Wildlife Refuge and
named for the bighorn sheep that make their home amids
the rock and rubble. Though it parallels Highway ninety three,
(12:49):
it is the largest roadless area in Nevada. Clearly, Kenny
is well oriented himself. He knows where he is and
where he has been, pointing to the nearby gas peak,
where he spent the night on his previous visit to
the area. But on this day, his mission is a
(13:10):
single day, ten hour hike looking for the cave that
had so spooked him. M cave.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
The last time I came up here, I didn't I
didn't have a side arm when I was here before, he.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Gestures casually to the weapon now holsted on his hip.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Something about that cave just spooked me. At all the
caves I've ever gone in. This one just made my
body vibrate. The closer I got to it, the crazier
my body felt. And I was like, all right, I'm
not gonna go in there right now, but I'm coming
back someday.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
The first section of Kenny's M Cave video lasts for
six minutes. He speaks to the camera casually, telling the
viewer that he has a big cooler of beer waiting
for him in his truck because he didn't bring a
lot of water with him and only a single candy bar.
He emphasizes the length of his hike and the harshness
(14:09):
of the terrain, establishing also that he's already at a
significant altitude, telling us that a nearby mountain is around
nine thousand feet that would put him somewhere close to
Hayford Peak, the highest part of the range. Kenny then
points out the next stage of his hike. He turns
(14:31):
the camera to reveal a low rise on the far side.
He tells us there is a canyon heading west towards
Mount Charleston, a canyon that gets ever narrower, and in
there somewhere is the M Cave. Seemingly reminded of his purpose.
Kenny references being called out on YouTube for his claims
(14:54):
of the cave's strange properties.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, I don't know if fault be freaked out like
I was last time. There might have been a mountain
lying in there, and it was just my sixth sense
talking to me, So.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
He grins at the camera.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
If I find the cave, I'm definitely gonna set up
my tripod over here, and uh, I'm gonna go check
it out. So you'll see me with my gun in
hand and my flashlight and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
The rest of the video continues in somewhat repetitive two
or three minute chunks. Each leaps forward to a new
stage of Kenny's hike. He discovers fresh pine nuts and
pops them in his mouth. Much later, he stops to
marvel at a large moha tortoise and tells us he
(15:38):
got a great photo of a tarantula. So Kenny is
looking for the cave. The video does not give the
impression of a man possessed by singular purpose. He is
enjoying his day in the desert. He's relaxed.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Oh perfect right stage, look at that perfect Wow. So
I'm a happy camper. I'm gonna collect these for a
while and then hopefully we'll find that cave.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Kenny doesn't have a compass with him, and he has
an odd approach to self discipline.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
I don't have any supplies, you know. I bring water
and I bring something to eat, but I kind of
try to pretend that I'm running out or I don't
have it, just so I can see how far I
can actually go before I feel like I'm in trouble.
That way, if I ever do get in trouble, I
know when I should start panicking.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Despite the stark, frightening beauty of the desert, there is
little in the video that appears strange or out of place,
but two details catch the eye. Around thirteen minutes, Kenny's
camera lens lingers on an unusual rock formation, a patch
of stone that looks different to the rock around it,
(17:02):
almost like brickwork set into the hillside. Beside it, there
is what looks in passing more like a ruined stone
structure than a natural outcrop. Kenny pauses for a moment,
gives a curious hum, then moves on. Towards the very
end of the video, he cuts to the lonely profile
(17:25):
of a ram standing on a cliff edge. It's an
animal native to the area, but it looks eerie none
the less. When it turns its horned head in Kenny's direction,
it's hard not to feel that the creature has sensed
the interloper from its distant perch. And then the adventure
(17:46):
is over. Suddenly, the film cuts to the canyon mouth,
where the tight wind opens up on to the hard
packed floor of the Great Basin.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Well, I did not find the cave. That is so.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Weird, Kenny sounds more surprised and disappointed here.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I mean, I thought for sure I was just going
to be able to find it. I remember it being
fairly easy. Who knows, But that's it. I'll talk to
you when I get back to my truck.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
My back, And with that it begins the remaining three
mile trek to his car, with its tantalizing promise of
cold beer. When Kenny uploaded his failed hike to m Cave,
it was met by an intense blast of skepticism and negativity.
Fellow YouTubers angrily insisted that he'd fabricated the entire story.
(18:49):
After several weeks of this, Kenny posted a reply, I'm
going again this weekend, he wrote, I'll be hiking solo
for three days and plan on covering about forty miles.
I will cross through the same canyon where I found
the cave. If I don't find it again, I'll just
continue hiking over mountain after mountain to the north of
(19:12):
the canyon. Kenny sounded incensed by his followers attitudes. He continued,
I dare any of the people that like to run
their mouths on here to join me. My hike's are
brutal on the body. There's no guarantee that I will
find the cave again. The region that I cover is vast.
There are many caves. I have been in hundreds of them.
(19:36):
The m Cave is the only cave I ever feared
going inside. I really want to find it again. It
was November tenth, twenty fourteen, when Kenny ventured out to
the Sheep Range for the third time. All we know
is that he set out in his truck that morning
with a cell phone and the necessary supplies for a
(19:57):
multi day hike. He told him his girlfriend, Sherrion Pilgrim,
that he would be gone for a few days. When
he didn't return after three, she raised the alarm. In
the days following Sheryon's report, the Las Vegas based Red
Rock Search and Rescue located Kenny's truck. Led by Commander
(20:20):
Dave Cummings. They followed Kenny's trail to that first mine
shaft featured in the m cave hike video. Lying on
the ground near the borded shaft entrance, they found Kenny's
cell phone. Efforts intensified to find Kenny. Other crews poured
in from surrounding areas, with over thirty rescuers conducting three
(20:44):
separate searches. A helicopter surveyed the scene but found no
sign of Kenny, his camp, or his trail. Commander Cummings
told reporters that there was no visible trail leading away
from the mine. It doesn't mean he went down the
(21:04):
mine shaft. He hedged, but we tracked him as far
as we can. In the days that followed Kenny's disappearance,
with comments and conspiracies already boiling up online, Kenny's girlfriend
(21:27):
Sherrion posted an unexpected note under the mkve hike video.
In it, she first acknowledges the interest and sadness of
other posters before confirming that Kenny has not been found,
and suggesting that he would likely not be found for many,
many months if ever. She then goes on to explain
(21:50):
that she and Kenny had hiked often together in the desert,
and though Kenny was more daring than her, they always
took appropriate precaution that led her to a sad conclusion.
I want you to know that I do not think
Kenny had an accident, Sheririon writes, I believe he committed suicide.
(22:12):
He battled depression for many years and would not take
medication or see a doctor. Sherrian suspected that Kenny left
his phone where he did so that he could not
be tracked by the GPS. She also points out that
this time he had left the video camera at home
because he had no intention of filming anything. She concluded
(22:35):
her message with a plea to those who may be
inspired to go looking for Kenny or the m Cave,
please please be careful, enjoy your adventures of life, and
thank you for the kind, loving comments sent my way.
For some, Sheririan's assumption of suicide is the most reasonable explanation.
(22:59):
Others suggest that Kenny simply had an accident, got lost, dehydrated,
or fell prey to the countless spiders, rattlesnakes, and scorpions
that routinely skitter across the desert floor. Some point out
that the area is a known hotspot for criminal activity
(23:19):
and that Kenny may have stumbled into something he shouldn't
and was murdered as a result, but some suggest there
are other lines that Kenny could have unknowingly crossed. Thousands
of comments on the mk video still fixate on nearby
Nellis Air Force Base and the infamous Area fifty one.
(23:43):
After all, in the video itself, Kenny points out that
the base and its test sites are located just over
and nearby Mountain One. Theory in particular relates to the
intense fear and physical vibration that Kenny said he experienced
near the m Cave. Commentators have pointed out that both
(24:05):
are symptoms theoretically ascribed to the effects of infrasound. Infrasound
is a term used to describe sound waves with a
frequency below the normal limits of human hearing, generally considered
(24:26):
to be twenty hurts or less. Though the vast majority
of humans fail to perceive such sounds, many feel the
waves as physical vibrations in their body. More surprisingly, exposure
to infrasound may prompt feelings of extreme fear or awe.
(24:46):
Several academics have tested this hypothesis, with the psychologist Richard
Wiseman going as far as to suggest that infrasound could
be an explanation for supposedly supernatural accounts, as especially the
perception of ghosts. In an experiment at the University of Hertfordshire,
(25:07):
a blind sample of participants was exposed to infrasound of
seventeen hertz. Twenty two percent reported feelings of unease, nervousness,
or outright terror among the more conspiratorially minded. Many think
that Kenny Veitch came under the influence of infrasound on
(25:28):
his first visit to the m Cave, sending him fleeing
in fear without cause or understanding. Even Kenny had no
rational explanation for his apparent reaction. But if there was
infrasound emanating from the m Cave, that is only half
an answer. It doesn't give any closure to the question
(25:51):
of Kenny's whereabouts, and a few strange details given extra
twist to the mystery. First, Kenny's comment under the Paul
Utes interview and the forbidding warning posted by Lemmy Kilmister
that Kenny should stay well away from the M Cave
have both since been deleted from YouTube. Indeed, a great
(26:15):
number of the more recent posts on the utes and
M Cave hike video are now exclusively about those deletions,
with many seeing it as a sign of a potential
cover up. Second since Kenny's disappearance, many have continued to
look for the cave. The Internet is littered with search videos, updates,
(26:36):
and claims to have discovered the site. In truth, there
was little to be gleaned from the vast majority of them.
That was until twenty nineteen, when a professional hiker and
YouTuber named Sean Neil Horlocker published a video retracing Kenny's
exact route. In it, Horlocker roams the canyons until he
(27:00):
comes across a strange looking rock formation, partially obscured behind
desert brush. Close to the ground. There is indeed a
sharply arched pattern to the dark rock that isn't unlike
a letter M, but where a cave mouth could potentially be,
there are layers of much lighter stone. To the naked eye,
(27:25):
it does look like a space that has been filled in,
as shorn All Lucar notes of the strange pattern in
the rock. Each of the rocks filling the hole seem
to stand separate. I don't even know how these are
(27:46):
sitting here right now, he says excitedly to the camera.
How are they holding themselves up? Upon closer inspection, the
stones seem unusually flat and well fitted together. Holuca also
points out what he regards as an artificial seam in
the base of the rock, complete with a white substance
(28:08):
that he says resembles a sealant. He then peers into
a gap between the rocks and finds what appears to
be the beginning of a cavity. Shortly after peering into
the obscured cave, Horlocer begins to cough. This quickly accelerates
to breathlessness and nausea. Within minutes, he is vomiting. He
(28:33):
only starts to recover when he leaves the scene. As
with any mystery pursued online, it's difficult to find any
certain foothold from which to start. We only ever have
the subjective, edited and curated videos of Kenny and those
like Sean Horlocker who follow in its footsteps and from
(28:56):
the prevailing comments. It's near impossible to if the fiction
and trolling from ernest hypothesis, but there is one substantial
link between Kenny's and Sean Hollocker's footage. At fifteen minutes
and forty seconds on Kenny Veach's m Cave hike video,
(29:17):
Kenny is becoming frustrated by his inability to find the cave.
The footage scans across a canyon wall, resting momentarily on
each opening in the rock. Just as he says, I
have to keep my eyes peeled, his camera flits across
a patch of lighter material nestled in a triangle of
(29:39):
darkly contrasting stone. Then the moment is gone and Kenny
doesn't stop or notice it. This strange formation in the
canyon is the exact spot that Sewn Hollaker discovers in
his exploration. Taken altogether, this has led some to believe
(30:01):
that Kenny's cave had in fact been filled in during
the time between his discovery and his failed attempt to
relocate it, and if Horlocker's supposition is true, this was
not the result of natural processes. This episode was written
(30:25):
by Neil McRobert and produced by me Richard McLain Smith.
Neil is the creator and host of his own brilliant
podcast called Talking Scat, in which he discusses the craft
of horror, writing with everyone from Tnanerieve Do to the
God of Horror himself, Stephen King. I can't recommend it
(30:46):
highly enough. Unexplained as an AV Club Productions podcast created
by Richard McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast,
including the music, were also produced by me. Richard McLain's
Smith Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to
buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
(31:09):
Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the
show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to
get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the
stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an
explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can
find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and reach
(31:29):
us online through Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at
Facebook dot com. Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast
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