It's definitely possible to cross an event horizon.What SillyCow is saying is that a local observer free-falling into a blackhole won't be able to notice themselves crossing any particular horizon at all. An apparent horizon (indicated as a region of blackness) always remains ahead of them.
I guess I'm trying to get his to stop splitting hairs. There is an inside to the horizon. Forget reference frames and relative to the observer. If you are falling towards the black hole, at some point you will cross the horizon. The question is, what is inside the horizon? The word "inside" is explicit. Clearly, we are talking about an observer viewing from the outside. If I am looking at the black hole through a telescope, what is on the other side of the horizon? There IS a "other side of the horizon".This splitting hairs just dances around the question.
I didn't see it as splitting hairs to avoid the question; it was an attempt to improve the question.
i.e. Different observers see the horizon at different places, so their view of what counts as "inside" is different, so the question isn't rigorous enough.
Also, it actually does partially answer it. If A thinks that B&C have crossed the horizon, but B thinks that only C has crossed the horizon... Then we know something about the inside. B's description is a description of a view from inside the horizon!
Earth right now could be about to cross the horizon of an ubermassive intergalactic black hole, and we wouldn't notice anything, because theres nothing really special about it.
Usually, the horizon is located at a distance where the gravitational rate of change would spaghettify you, but, a big enough black hole can have the horizon far out in a fairly smooth/safe region of spacetime.
That's according to the theory anyway. Other competing theories have matter crossing the horizon destroyed in a "firewall", but a near identical clone of it "falling into" the hole (or actually becoming a holographic imprint on the surface, which acts like it's falling in, unaware of the dimensional collapse...)