Her Year-Plus in a Cave Was More Harrowing Than Thought

She emerged from the cave joking with reporters and singing. But as the New Yorker explains in a story about the incredible feat of Spain's Beatriz Flamini, the true story of her self-imposed isolation of 508 days was much darker. Flamini entered the cave in the mountains near Motril, Spain, in November 2021 and returned to the world in April 2023. During her stay, she had no direct human contact, though she received assistance from spelunkers who would drop off supplies on a shelf of the cave. She also had a panic button and a one-way computer that didn't allow her to receive return messages. Flamini, who turned 49 and 50 during her stay, made recordings on a GoPro—her "Wilson," writes DT Max, a reference to Tom Hanks' volleyball in the movie Castaway. (Flamini "can't stand" to watch the raw footage now.) But she spent all that time alone in the dark save for what her camping lamps illuminated.

"I didn't exactly lose consciousness, but the darkness saps you of life," she says. "The solitude, the social uprooting, it consumes you. Or, to put it a better way, you eat—you down nutrients—but you consume yourself." The story describes her auditory hallucinations; the times she became "severely depressed"; the damage (temporary, it's hoped) to her peripheral vision and her gait; the times she would convey messages of distress in her monitored videos, though they were soundless; her PTSD-like symptoms after her exit; her split with the scientists she invited to study her; and much more. Flamini had hoped to break the world record of 463 days in a cave, but the story reveals that at about the 300-day point, she brought her tent up to the cave exit and stayed for eight days, which will likely disqualify her. The full story is worth the time. (Or check out other Longforms.)