Dead Mans Cave

The Cave:

Dead Man’s Cave has long been considered one of Connecticut’s more compelling caves.  Located in Hamden, the cave is considerably large, as it descends twenty-five feet from the entrance.  Besides the cavernous setting of Dead Man’s Cave, this hollow is reputed to have acquired more mysteries and local myths than any other cave in the New England area. What truly sets this cave apart from the others is the antique graffiti that derives from the 1920s; that and the supposed tragic death of P.T. Barnum’s nephew, Edward, who is rumored to have met his end inside the cave in the 1870s.

How to get to the cave:

Dead Man’s Cave is located within Sleeping Giant Park, 200 Mt. Carmel Ave., Hamden, CT. This address will lead you to a parking lot located on the south side of the park.  At this entrance you can find a placard which contains maps detailing an assortment of trailheads.  While there are many ways to get to Dead Man’s Cave, the yellow blazed trail can be seen as a more preferable route to get to the green-yellow blazed trail.  This is because while none of the trails at the start of your journey will directly lead to the cave, the yellow blazed trail will lead you to an intersection containing the green trail which is a mere fifty feet from the entrance to the cave.  This means it would be just a short boulder scramble up to the cave itself.  The mile hike on the yellow trail does have a challenging elevation gain of six hundred feet, yet it is much more rewarding than alternately taking the paved path located at the same starting point.  The paved path while still in close relation to the cave is an alternate route going a little farther away that will direct you to a tower previously known to be a building belonging to the Works Progress Association in the 1930s. 

Exploring the cave:

The entrance to the cave is a low hanging triangular opening that runs parallel to the mountain side.  Because of the shape of this entrance you may be forced to crouch upon entering.  The entrance to Dead Man’s Cave is 1 foot 8 inches wide by 9 feet 8 inches high, yet despite this you will notice that the ceiling quickly descends to a 5 foot 8 inch height.  After the slope in the ceiling, you will come across the cave’s first drop. This initial drop has a sloping adjacent wall which you may find easy to do a crab walk across and then lower your body down into the second chamber.  This compartment is 13 feet 2 inches long and is at times is as narrow as 1 foot 2 inches and as low as 2 feet 10 inches.  It is a short tubular level and roughly four to five people could fit inside it, but those people would find it nearly impossible to move around each other freely.

 

The second drop in Dead Man’s Cave is a much more challenging drop with no convenient walls to assist you on the descent.  The drop itself is only 6 feet 11 inches, but at the bottom there lays a precariously placed rock that could easily twist an ankle or otherwise disrupt your way down.  However, this drop does lead to a second chamber that is more spacious than the first and comes with the option to either go left or right.  To choose the left side would require some more boulder scrambling which leads to what appears to be a dead end. This is not in fact a dead end; rather it contains a small, hidden opening that connects to another part of the cave.  Alternatively, to choose the right side you would come across a fallen rock that appears to block the path into the next room.  The rock is a little more than 4 feet long and can easily be passed by going underneath it even though it only has a 1 foot clearance.  To pass this fallen boulder the best option would be to shimmy past on your stomach or back to continue into the next room.  While the broken glass may persuade you to try to go over the fallen rock, it is in fact much easier to go underneath it because you are much more likely to become stuck over the top.

 

The third and seemingly last room is much smaller than the second, but despite its size this chamber is home to some of the most impressive graffiti—as depicted in the pictures below.  While it is nearly impossible for one to actually age these markings, one could make an educated guess based on the dates upon the wall, written in candle wax, indicating years in the 1920s as the date(s) of origin.  At the top of this chamber there is a small opening that is roughly a foot in diameter.  This, as you will discover, shows that this is not in fact the last chamber; but leads you through about 20 feet of small twists and turns that ends in the same room of the left choice of the second chamber.  While this is not necessarily a new room, it is a new path that leads to the left option which is not the way you would have chosen to come across this path.  Therefore, the left seems like a new room because you would not have previously been here. This extra path that loops back is on the smaller side and some may find that it is difficult or even impossible to travel.

 

A last but noteworthy observation in Dead Man’s Cave is the small crucifix that is covered in graffiti located in that small tunnel that connect the left option with the last chamber.   It is shocking to see the effort someone else went through to put something of this significance in a place that is so complicated to get to.

Myth of the cave:

“Essentially, on Good Friday in 1873, a pair of boys went up to the mountain to look for what was then called Abraham’s Cave — an impressive hollow on the “left hip” of the giant, large enough to hold a dozen men. When the boys got to the cave, however, rather than find old Abraham, they found … well, a dead man. The badly decomposed corpse’s identity was a mystery for a time before authorities were finally able to determine that the dead man was Edward Barnum, a nephew of the legendary P.T. Barnum”.

Campbell, Susan, et al. Connecticut Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other    Offbeat Stuff. Curiosities Series, third ed., Globe Pequot Press, 2010.