The Midnight Terror Cave: The Story of a Maya Sacrifice Cave

The Midnight Terror Cave sounds like something that was made up to give you night terrors. But if you were aged between 4 to 14 years when the Maya’s were around, it was your living nightmare.

The grim discovery in the Belize’s appropriately named Midnight Terror Cave has shed more light on the long tradition of child sacrifices in the ancient Maya society. Out of the 9,566 human bones, bone fragments, and teeth found on the cave floor, a huge portion belonged to children no older than 14 years.

What’s more disturbing is that chemical analysis suggests they were not originally from the area where the cave is located. This indicates that they may have been brought to the area en masse, using the underworld network of caves in Belize to traffic Maya children. Because these bones are so fragmented, it’s difficult to give an estimate on how many individuals are in the cave.

The Midnight Terror Cave is in the west of the Central American nation of Belize. The cave is located to the south of Belmopan, the capital of Belize, and is not far from the Mennonite community of Springfield.

It was first discovered in 2006 when an antiquities looter lost his grip on the rope he was using, and fell 60 feet (18 meters) to the bottom of the pitch-black cave into the deep pile of human bones. So rather than stealing relics from the ancient Maya civilization, it seemed he was about to become one of its victims.

However, the looter was in luck, a Belizean Mennonite farmer had heard the looter’s blood-curdling screams and rescued him. The looter had suffered numerous injuries which included the loss of several teeth that had been dislodged by the impact of his jaw hitting the limestone floor.

While the farmer gathered up the bloodied criminal, he had noticed human skulls in the darkness, and the skeletal remains of a hand reaching for the entrance. Upon seeing what secrets the cave held, the farmer named the cave “Mitnacht Schreknis Heel,” which is Plautdietsch (the Dutch-German Mennonite dialect) for “Midnight Terror Cave.”

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