Spooky or Not: Kenny Veach's Mystery Cave

I swear this story is better than the title makes it sound.

Back in 2014, a Youtube comment on a hiking video caused a minor hubbub. The commenter, “snakebitmgee” (later identified as a man named Kenny Veach), claimed to have discovered a strange cave with an opening shaped like the letter M while hiking through remote wilderness in the Nevada desert. According to Veach, upon approaching the cave his body began to vibrate and he was overwhelmed by an intense feeling of fear and dread, which forced him to retreat. He didn’t know the cave’s exact location because he didn’t bring a map or a compass with him (keep that in mind for later), but he intended to find it again, this time bringing a gun and a camera.

Naturally, this was met with ridicule from other commenters. Veach, incensed, swore he was telling the truth and vowed to go looking for the cave again, this time with a gun and a camera. His attempt failed, but he uploaded a vlog to the snakebitmgee channel where he promised to try again, and this time he’d find the cave, come hell or high water. He was going out into the wilderness, alone, on a multi-day odyssey, and by god he was going to get to the cave.

Horror aficionados will recognize this as the point in the story where the protagonist vanishes mysteriously and is never seen again.

Then Kenny Veach vanished mysteriously, and was never seen again.

A large-scale search found Kenny’s phone on the edge of a deep mine shaft; cameras lowered into the shaft found no body and no sign that the shaft had been disturbed any time recently. No other evidence has been located since. Several hikers have ventured out to the approximate region where Kenny claimed to have spotted the M cave, but all have been unsuccessful.

So. What happened?

The most enticing answer is that Kenny found the M cave again, at which point something spooky happened to him. But if we take all the facts into consideration, several more mundane explanations present themselves.

The first and most obvious possibility is that Kenny was injured or got lost in the desert and died. The Mojave desert is vast, hot and dry, and Kenny was embarking on a multi-day hike over dangerous terrain, alone. And if some of his earlier comments were indicative of his hiking practices, he was in the habit of heading out into the wilderness with no navigation aids.

“Spooky The Ghost’s Life Advice Column 👻

Throughout our Spooky Or Not posts, Spooky The Friendly Ghost will be stopping by to give you helpful life advice on how to avoid meeting a spooky fate! Heed his warnings, or you’ll definitely die!

Never go out hiking without a map and compass (only rely on your phone for these functions if you’re absolutely certain you’ll be able to get a signal at all times)

Plan your route beforehand and leave a copy of it with someone, as well as a time you expect to be back and instructions to call the police if you don’t make contact by that time

Stick to designated trails and paths unless you’re an experienced wilderness hiker

Follow these tips to avoid showing up in someone’s unsolved mystery blog! WoooOOOoooo! 👻”

A similar possibility is that Kenny may have taken his own life. Looking at some of the other videos on the snakebitmgee channel, it appears he may have been in financial distress; he uploaded a rather desperate (and unsuccessful) audition for the TV show Shark Tank, as well a strange attempt to sell his house while being allowed to keep living in it as a groundskeeper and handyman. According to his girlfriend, he had struggled with depression and suicidal ideation before, and had stated that if he ever took his own life he’d do it by walking out into the desert so that his body was never found.

This raises a sad possibility: was the story of the M cave part of some elaborate suicide plot? Many people have opined that the phone found conspicuously on the edge of a mine shaft feels like a deliberate red herring intended to stop searchers from looking too hard for him. Did he concoct the cave story so his friends and family would assume he’d met some paranormal fate?

It’s a good theory, but I’m not entirely sold on it for one reason: if his intention was to never be found, why would he draw lots of attention to himself by publicly boasting about the strange experience he had and his desire to bring back hard evidence? Without the M cave story, Kenny Veach would be an unremarked-upon name in the annals of people who go missing in America’s extensive wilderness. If he did kill himself, I think it’s more likely that it was a spur of the moment decision, or at least something he had only planned for a short time beforehand. 

So, let’s say suicide or accidental death are the most likely explanations for Kenny’s disappearance. Where does that leave us in regards to the cave? Was it a hoax? An attempt to somehow make money? Just a weird lie?

My gut feeling is that Kenny wasn’t lying. I think he believed that he did experience something inexplicable in the desert, and at least initially he was genuinely trying to find it again. The story itself is what leads me in this direction: it’s strange enough that it doesn’t feel like the sort of thing someone would invent just for the lulz, but at the same time it’s not so out-there that it could serve as the basis for fame and fortune. “I found a weird cave and it was scary” isn’t going to get you a place on the talk-show circuit alongside alien abductees.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that there is actually a scary mystery cave somewhere in the Mojave desert. I think what probably happened is that Kenny, having spent several days alone in the wilderness and likely suffering exhaustion and dehydration (he bragged several times about how physically demanding his hikes were), and possibly prone to bouts of anxiety and disordered thinking, found an odd-looking cave entrance, got hit with the effects of physical and mental stress, and then unconsciously embellished the event in his mind when it came time to tell the story to his fellow hikers. 

...of course, all that said: But what if the cave was real, though? What then?

There are a lot of air force bases and other military installations in Nevada, including the infamous Area 51. It’s not a stretch to assume that not all of these locations are known to the public, or that they’re all sign-posted. Is it possible that the M cave was the entrance to one such base, and that someone decided to stop Kenny’s attempts to draw attention to it...permanently?

I mean, no, probably not.

...But what if, though?

Spooky or Not?

On the balance of the available evidence, I have to conclude that Kenny Veach likely either died in an accident or took his own life. While the story of the M cave is strange, there’s nothing to suggest that it has anything to do with his fate.

People still go out looking for the cave. Frankly, I think their efforts would be better spent searching for his remains and bringing closure to his friends and family. 

Office photo by Nastuh Abootalebi on Unsplash (office)