And, while making the connection from an outlier into an unexplored main passage of The Mammoth Cave, literally miles from the entrance, bare foot prints were observed in the mud.
That event occurred within the last 50 years. The bare foot print was made unknown years and years ago.
Without additional context, who is to say the footprints were not made by someone who initially may have had a torch, or perhaps he had no torch but was fleeing from others who did. For whatever reason he became lost, disoriented and once the light went out wandered through the inky darkness to his death? But perhaps he eventually found his way out.