Case file · High strangeness
Kitum Cave and the Marburg cases
Kitum Cave on Mount Elgon, where elephants come at night to mine salt from the walls, became notorious after two visitors who had been inside fell ill with Marburg-type viruses, in 1980 and 1987.
1980 CE · 1.05, 34.58 · status: explained
The account
In January 1980 a French engineer working nearby died in Nairobi after a visit; a doctor who treated him was also infected and survived. In 1987 a Danish teenager died of a related virus (later named Ravn virus) after visiting the cave. Richard Preston's 1994 book 'The Hot Zone' made the cave a symbol of hidden danger.
The sceptical view
Not a curse: the cave is home to Egyptian fruit bats, now known as the natural reservoir of Marburg virus.