History Main / CreepyCave

* ''Music/{{Koronba}}'': In "Yatsume Ana", the first singer (Koronba 4gou) goes into a cave and has their finger cut off by putting it into a hole, and they later melt after falling inside that hole.

* ''Film/{{Cave}}'' is a 2016 Norwegian PsychologicalHorror film where three ex-military friends explore a freezing uncharted cave together and the hostile environment brings their interpersonal difficulties to the forefront.

-->-- '''Jacob Geller''', [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MOKTU9tCbw "Fear of Depths"]]

* ''ComicBook/Robin1993'': Tim wakes up in a cave whose only entrance leads directly into the sea and is the obvious nest of a monster that his abducting humans as food.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'': The Cave of Wonders, [[NonIndicativeName despite the title]]. It doesn't get any creepier than [[CaveMouth a cave shaped like a lion's head that can talk]]. The cavern will only allow entrance to a ChosenOne, automatically killing anyone else. For the one that it does let in, there is one rule: only touch [[GenieInABottle the lamp]], nothing else. Aladdin does adhere to this, but his pet monkey, Abu, grabs a [[ForbiddenFruit sparkly jewel]]. This angers the cave, and the whole place turns into a lava deathtrap that Aladdin and Abu barely escape. When they get out, Jafar betrays them and knocks them back down into the cave, which is now less lava-filled and more dark and gloomy.

* Wiki/SCPFoundation: SCP-2935 is a space-time anomaly existing within a limestone cave leading to a parallel universe where all life, including both biological and non-biological, as well as any sentient entities, machines, computers and other "life-like" phenomena, ended. [[spoiler:The final log from the alternate Agent Keller implies that ''something'' in the cave itself caused the apocalyptic event. The alternate Keller went through an alternate version of the cave to a ''third'' parallel universe where the life-ending event happened earlier -- only to return to his own universe (the one described in the bulk of the SCP article) and find that the mass dying also happened there soon after he returned. Both he and the "prime" Keller encourage the Foundation to seal the cave up to prevent this from happening to our universe as well.]]

* Jacob Geller [[DiscussedTrope discusses]] this trope at great length in his Website/YouTube video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MOKTU9tCbw "Fear of Depths'']], beginning with the RealLife example of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Collins Floyd Collins]], an American spelunker whose death after becoming trapped in a narrow passage of Mammoth Cave became a media sensation in 1925, igniting a public fervor for macabre caving stories.

* WebVideo/InternetHistorian's "Man in Hole", which went into full detail on the Floyd Collins story. Opening with a "Dim the screen for atmospheric effect" notice at the start, the video emphasizes the claustrophobia of Sand Cave and Floyd's entrapment, features a surreal nightmare interlude, and has a theme of the cave itself refusing to let Floyd go, even in death when his body was exhumed and displayed in a glass coffin in the cave as a tourist attraction when the cave and family farm was sold.

* ''Literature/{{Kane}}'': In "Two Suns Setting" Kane and Dwassllir, the last king of giants, enter a cave that is the the burial place of an ancient giant king Brotemllain. It turns out to be dangerously unstable, as well as inhabited by strange underground creatures including huge blind cockroaches and a sabretooth tiger. Kane barely gets out alive. [[spoiler: Dwassllir doesn't, and the cave becomes also his burial place]].

* In ''Manga/{{Yaiba}}'', the titular hero and his gang must wander across a series of dark, forebonding caverns beneath Mount Fuji to pass the trials of Ryuujin, each challenge costing the life ([[DisneyDeath apparently]]) of a member of Yaiba's group, making it one of the darkest moments in the story.

* Large caverns in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' are excellent sources of metals, jewels, and magma for fuel. They also contain large "evil-aligned" beasts like Voracious Cave Crawlers (even underneath "good-aligned" regions), web-spewing [[GiantSpider Giant Cave Spiders,]] randomly-generated Forgotten Beasts, and magma pools dwarves can be flung in to or accidentally dodge in to. Unless the player picked a nasty location to embark in, the creatures in the caves typically cause the most trouble when there isn't a seige going on. [[spoiler:Getting too greedy with Adamantine will result in digging in to Hell/the Underworld itself, which will cause a mob of demons to rush at the fortress.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'' has a number of caves, with two standing out as particularly creepy. One is the underground swamp that connects the [[LostWoods Forbidden Woods]] to [[MadScientistLaboratory Iosefka's Clinic]] and contains a lake of poison and enough dead bodies to conclude that this is where Iosefka dumped her less fortunate patients for years. The other is the Altar of Despair, the well-hidden holy of holies of the [[PathOfInspiration Healing Church]], where the Choir hosts Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos -- the KeeperOfForbiddenKnowledge and a minor EldritchAbomination in her own right.

Many works of fiction will take these already present dangers UpToEleven, often while adding in the threat of some sort of [[AnimalisticAbomination blind subterranean predator]] or [[GiantSpider other creepy creature]]. And possibly a connected AncientTomb full of [[CorpseLand skeletons]] and {{curse}}s. Maybe the cave is [[BewareTheSkullBase the monstrous skull of a giant beast that is occupied by villains or other monsters]]. Perhaps the cave in question was once occupied by such horrors but now lies empty and devoid of life, only for travelers to get the creepy sensation of BeingWatched. Oh, and did we mention the possibility of slumbering [[DragonHoard dragons]]? Expect any character foolish enough to enter a cave who doesn't encounter one of these nasties to end up {{buried alive}}, [[StalactiteSpite skewered by a falling stalactite]], [[LavaPit burned by lava]], or driven mad by the [[NothingIsScarier darkness]], [[GoMadFromTheIsolation isolation]], [[TheMaze getting lost in a labyrinth]] and [[EnclosedSpace impossibility of escape]]. The lucky ones who do see daylight again will be shaken and possibly scarred for life by the experience.

* ''VideoGame/Rayman2'' has The Cave of Bad Dreams, where Polokus's nightmares are imprisoned. It is full of bones, rivers of brambles or pink liquid, arms that come out of walls and will grab and kill Rayman, one-eyed fire-breathing monsters that try to eat Rayman and respawning black caterpillars that leap around all over the place.