Fictitious Caves

Caves of fiction, caves of literature, are simply caves made up to be part of a story. Many books take place partly or completely inside a cave. Some are describing existing caves, and we are happy to list them on our cave pages. But some use invented caves, which may be realistic or even fantastic.

If you ask, what we mean: think about the caves of Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Center of the Earth. We found actually the best examples in the book The Lord of the Rings. They are not simply used as the location for the story, they are elaborately described. Other caves are well known but actually never really described, for example the bat cave of Batman. Such a cave is actually a kind of stereotype, more than a fictitious place.

There is another category of such invented caves we called virtual caves, and there is a basic difference between those two. Fictitious caves are part of a fictional story, and as such they are not intended to be recognized as being real. They are not a hoax or bluff, they are simply an important part of a story and actually as fictious as the rest of the story. Virtual caves on the other side are definitely a hoax, they are made up to look as real as possible and are not easily detected as being a hoax.

Some Fictitious Caves:

Homer, The Odyssey: the cave of the cyclops Polyphemus, sealed by a giant rock.
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: McDougal’s Cave, where Tom goes lost with Becky Thatcher on a picnic. Not completely fictitious as the description is based on Mark Twain Cave
Jules Verne, A Journey to the Center of the Earth: actually all the underground spaces are ficticious caves, just the start of the book describes typical caves of Iceland.
David Friedrich Weinland, Rulaman: a tale of the life of stone age man, the caves described in the novel actually exist on the grounds of the author.
E. M. Forster, A Passage to India: the Marabar Caves near Chandrapore, where Dr Aziz takes old Mrs Moore and young Miss Quested on a tour are based on the real Barabar Caves
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient: the not completely ficticious story of Almásy and the Cave of Swimmers
J Meade Faulkner, Moonfleet: John Trenchard is wounded and on the run from the excisemen. He hides in a sea cave invisible from the land.
Agatha Christie, Evil under the Sun: the Pixy’s Cave is located close to where the body of murdered Arlena is found and is the key to the killing.
Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen: has numerous caves beneath Alderley Edge in Cheshire, e.g. Fundindelve and Eardelving, and the Cave of the Sleepers where King Arthur and 140 knights are sleeping until the day they must fight the powers of darkness.
Jim Crace, Quarantine: Jesus spends 40 days and nights in the wilderness of the Judean desert and finds ascetics and religious zealots who live in caves.
John Keats, Endymion: the Cave of Quietude offers respite to Endymion.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene: Sir Guyon visits Mammon in his cave home.
Jeff Long, The Descent: caves all over the world, all connected to form a hollow earth populated by strange creatures.

We are listing numerous fictitious caves on showcaves.com.