A man gets lost on a road and stumbles upon an unexpected hole in the middle of the night: “I was thrilled”

The surprise was anything but small for 28-year-old hiker George Wear, from Dallas, when he stumbled across a small cave in a rural part of Tennessee. At first it looked like nothing more than a hole dug by an animal, but once inside, he realized it was something far bigger.

When Wear noticed the opening in the ground and assumed it was animal-made, he decided to climb down and explore. So confident was he in the adventure ahead that he went prepared, carrying both a flashlight and a headlamp in case night fell and visibility became an issue.

“When I passed the initial cave entrance, I got excited to see that there was a huge cavern to start exploring and the sound of running water,” the young explorer told Newsweek. “I was excited because it seemed like this could be one of those caves that very few people had been in, and I was excited to see something rare.”

Wear later shared the experience in a video posted on his Instagram account, @wears_george. In it, he shows the small opening he found and used to enter. Once inside, he discovered an underground landscape filled with stalagmites and stalactites, along with an underground river and a waterfall.

After walking deeper inside, Wear came across a vast chamber echoing with the sound of water flowing through the cave. He said he was “blown away” as he explored the site for around 90 minutes.

“I imagine it must be connected to a well-mapped cave system with other entrances, just based on its size,” he concluded. “Either way, it was an incredible adventure to find it from a hole about 3.9 feet wide in the ground next to a tree.”

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