Casefile Archives 10: Ben McDaniel
Casefile True Crime
Casefile Presents
4.7 • 42.9K Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2026
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Friday, August 20 2010, officers from the Holmes County Sheriff's Department were called to Vortex Spring, a commercially operated dive park just outside the Florida town of Ponce de Leon. A 30-year-old scuba diver from Tennessee by the name of Ben McDaniel had failed to resurface after diving into the narrow cave network under the basin of the spring two nights earlier, and nobody had seen or heard from him since.
When a recovery mission failed to find any sign of Ben, his loved ones and members of the cave diving community were left in shock. Was Ben stuck in an unexplored part of the cave somewhere, or was something else entirely at play?
---
Casefile Archives is a series of special bonus releases revisiting the earliest years of the show. The re-run episodes have been completely edited, polished, re-recorded and freshly produced from start to finish to match our current production standards. They are not complete rewrites - our goal wasn’t to alter the cases or reshape the writing, but to preserve the original storytelling while giving the production the refinement it didn’t have when we started the show back in 2016.
Where appropriate, updates have been added, but the core structure and storytelling remain faithful to the originals. Because of this, these re-releases may sound a little different to our recent episodes, but they allow us to bring some of the earliest episodes up to the technical quality listeners expect today.
---
Narration – Anonymous Host
Research & writing – Elsha McGill
Production & music – Mike Migas
Audio editing – Anthony Telfer
Sign up for Casefile Premium:
For all credits and sources, please visit https://casefilepodcast.com/casefile-archives-10-ben-mcdaniel
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | As Case File continues into its 10th year, we're currently taking a very short break from new episodes. |
| 0:07.5 | Brand new cases will be returning on May 23 for premium subscribers and May 30 for the regular feed. |
| 0:15.2 | But in the meantime, we're continuing our special bonus series Case File Archives, |
| 0:20.3 | a collection of releases revisiting |
| 0:22.7 | the earliest years of the show, along with previously unreleased premium episodes. |
| 0:28.7 | Rest assured that these are additional bonus releases and will not replace our standard schedule. |
| 0:34.6 | We will still be delivering the same number of new episodes this year as we did last |
| 0:39.3 | year. Case File Archives is simply a way to mark the 10th year, revisit some older episodes, and |
| 0:45.6 | share stories that newer listeners may not have heard before. Today's re-release is Ben McDaniel, |
| 0:52.2 | originally released as a premium subscriber episode in October last year, now available to all listeners as part of our Case File Archives series. Our episodes deal with serious and often distressing incidents. |
| 1:20.8 | If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local crisis centre. |
| 1:26.5 | For suggested phone numbers for confidential support |
| 1:29.3 | and for a more detailed list of content warnings, |
| 1:33.0 | please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website. |
| 1:51.0 | Ask any experienced scuba diver what they think about cave diving and you'll get a different response. For some, the very thought fills them with dread and fear. |
| 1:56.0 | For others, it's a source of great excitement, providing an opportunity to explore parts of the world that very few people have ever seen. |
| 2:06.6 | Cave diving is an extreme form of technical scuba diving that allows skilled divers to explore submerged caves that are beyond the reach of natural light. |
| 2:26.3 | It's been compared to swimming through the history of the planet, with some saying it is the closest environment to outer space. It is a highly challenging and dangerous activity, and as such, individuals must undergo rigorous training and tests before they can receive their |
| 2:35.5 | cave diving certification. Experienced cave divers often speak about how addictive the sport can be. |
| 2:44.1 | In addition to the sense of exploration and adventure that cave diving brings, many also find |
| 2:49.6 | it to have a meditative quality. Down beneath the |
| 2:53.5 | dark depths of the water, there is no sense of time or the outside world. All that matters is what's |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 9 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Casefile Presents, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Casefile Presents and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.