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The Great Big Yarn of Mel's Hole · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is a well, yeah,
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: an episode of Stuff You Should.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: Be I have to say I'm fairly excited about this one.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Oh good, I'm so glad. I couldn't tell because sometimes
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: you're just like, this is so stupid when it's oh,
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: it is okay, but I'm well, yeah, but you're not
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: excited about how stupid it is. So I'm glad. I'm
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: really glad to hear that, because I am too.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: No, I mean, I'm excited in that it is completely
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: preposterous and silly, but in the fun tinfoil hat paranormal
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: sort of way that those are fun.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: So I maybe we should start over again, because I
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: feel like we've really like released a spoiler here that
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: this is probably just a story a yarn. I was
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: gonna save that for that. Well, we're talking about actually,
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: the way that we're approaching it is one of the
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: most interesting stories legends modern urban legends to come out
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: of a show, a radio show that was well known
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: for producing all sorts of urban legends and amazing Stories
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Coast to Coast AM.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: That's right. Its host was Art Bell. He himself, along
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: with his wife, claimed that they had their own UFO
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: encounter in the mid nineties. And the show started out
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: in the eighties, was syndicated ninety three and it was
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: not you know, it sounds like sort of a very
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: niche thing, but it actually became very popular and Art
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: Bell became a very famous radio host.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was in ratings for a while there. I'm
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: guessing the early to mid nineties. He was just behind
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Rush Limbaugh and doctor Loris Schlessinger. That is up there
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: as far as radio hosts go. And he started to
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: retire in two thousand. He finally did host his last
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: episode in twenty ten, but the show continues on. Host
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: George Newery took over full time in two thousand and two.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: He's still doing it. And the whole premise of the
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: show was that you would fax Art Bell or now
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: George Newry. I don't know if he still has the facts,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: but definitely Art Bud. You would send him a fax
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: and basically say, hey, I've got this crazy story. And
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: if it was, you know, interesting to Himry thought he
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: wanted to know more about it or his audience would
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: he would give you a call and you, guys, would
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: have a conversation. He would interview you on the phone
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: live on air, and then eventually people could call in
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: and ask you questions. That was pretty much the format
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: of the show.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and in this case of Mel Mel Waters and
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: his hole and don't worry, it's not going to be
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: anything like that.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: No. Jerry was like, Oh, this can go so many
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: different ways, guys.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: This was five conversations on this show over the span
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: of five years. Again, the guy's name was Mel Waters
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: and he lived in Ellensburg, Washington, kind of right smack
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: dab in the middle of Washington State. And he said,
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: I have a hole on my property. This property I
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: don't live at right now because there's some snow damage
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: to the house there. So I live in town in
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: an apartment or something. But on this property that I own,
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: which is nine miles outside of Ellensburg, which is also
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: a rural you know, in and of itself, he said,
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: it's up on the Manitash Ridge and it's a very
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: strange hole.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not your average hole for sure, and we're
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: talking about on the ground we should Yes, thank you,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: for saying that, because there's some people out there who
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: are so twisted they still didn't understand what kind of
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: hole we're talking about. We're talking about a hole in
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: the ground. It's like a well, sure, but way more
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: different than a well. But yes, you could like in
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: it to a well, because it's about nine feet in diameter.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: The first fifteen or so feet down it was stone, right,
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: so it was lined with stone. That's very well like.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Then there was soil then to turn into rock, and
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: it had about a three and a half foot barrier
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: wall around it to keep people from just walking right
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: into it.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, very welly.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Mel hadn't built that wall. The previous owner had.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: But one of the things that makes the story so
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: interesting it caught the attention and imagination of so many people.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: It's super out there. But if you listen to Mel,
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: he comes off as essentially as perplexed as you do.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: You know, He's like, this hole has been here since
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: the dawn of time apparently, and he's you know, just
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: kind of learned about it since he bought the property,
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: and he has lots of questions about it. He's just
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: reporting the stuff that he's learned.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. He doesn't come across as the usual sort
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: of tinfoil hat type, not at all.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: And I'm sure you know you listen to the stuff
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: as well, so we can both verify that he comes
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: across this credible even to our sort of skeptical ears
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: for sure. But like you said, he said it had
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: been there a long time. The previous owners said it
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: was there when he got there. Supposedly it had been
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: around since maybe the dawn of time. The European settlers
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: apparently knew about it. The local indigenous people avoided it.
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: They said it was cursed. Locals called it the devil's hole.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: And that's all well and good, well and good. But
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: here's where it gets interesting, in that the properties of
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: the hole and the things that surround the hole are
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: really interesting according to this story. First of which is
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: he's like, hey, people have been dumping stuff in this
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: hole for as long as I know. There's probably like
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: twenty people that come around. They dump in dead livestock,
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: they dump in appliances that don't work. There's a weekly
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: truckload of old tires that get dumped in there. And
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: this thing has never ever filled up. And when you
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: drop stuff in it, you can't hear anything.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, it's pretty strange. I mean, but you could
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: also chalk it up to just an exceptionally deep hole
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: in the ground. Agreed. The thing is, there's even stranger
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: properties to this hole. One of them is actually kind
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: of hard to wrap your head around. A neighbor saw
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: a black beam shooting out of the hole skyward, and
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: I think it might have even been at night, but
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: it was so black and absorbed so much of the
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: light around it that it stood out at night A
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: beam of blackness, not a beam of light, A beam
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: of a basically avoid shooting out of the hole. And
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you ask your average hole expert, they're
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: going to tell you that is unusual behavior for any hole.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, as spinal tap would say, it was none more black.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: I pictured the smoke monster from Lost.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Personally, I hadn't started Lost, But thanks for that. You
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: were going to get around to it any day now.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: I'll be on the lookout for the smoke Monster.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: We also meant it should have mentioned that apparently nothing
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: echoed when you screamed into it. But those previous things
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: you could explain, I guess by it just being so deep,
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: you know, because an echo's created by hitting a bottom
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: and bouncing back. So I don't really know if every deep,
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: deep hole will echo back, but all that can kind
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: of be explained. That the black beam coming out is
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: very very strange and cannot be explained, and that's where
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: it starts to go kind of truly weird.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So he also he was reporting information that he
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: gathered from neighbors, you know, as this hole started to
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: pique his interest, he wanted to learn more about it.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: And one neighbor said that there used to be stones
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: lined up around the edge of it, and I guess
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: that reminded Mel of Stonehenge, and he showed his neighbor
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: a picture of Stone Hedge. He said, Yep, it was
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: exactly like that, except it didn't have the stones, the
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: lintels going across the top laid down on top. And
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: it's exactly that kind of detail that added credibility to
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Mel's story. None of it was whole hog like. Yes,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: it looked exactly like stonehets chew on that it didn't
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: have the stones at top like just little alterations like
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: that that he would concede were just just kept it
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: from from just being totally unbelievable and eye rolly, I think,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: is what I'm trying to say.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, unless you just attached this to it, said his
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: elderly neighbor.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, right, or his nephew comes up later he mentions
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: his nephew, but his nephew never gains a name. It
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: is very much like that, for sure.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: I think I would have been much more intrigued if
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: there had been a photograph of any of this, but anyway,
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: there wasn't. There was. Also, it gets a little stranger.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: There was a gun, oh, a World War Two era
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: Walter P thirty eight, which was a German gun intended
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: to replace the German Luger pistol. And he, as we'll learn,
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: Mel was a gardener and worked in like medicinal herbs.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: And so while he was digging around, he found this
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: gun buried and when he went to shoot it, and
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: this is where I have a few questions. Apparently the
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: gun shot silently. I wonder what that means. I wonder
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: if it didn't make any sound at all, or if
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: it just sounded like it was had a suppressor on it,
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: or if it just you know, the actual movement of
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: the physical movement of the gun didn't even make a noise.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: As I took it. It didn't make any noise whatsoever.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: But as bizarre as that sounds, it had even stranger
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: properties too.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: That's right. If you put this gun down by radio,
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: it becomes a time travel machine, because the radio would
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden start playing just random radio broadcasts
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: from different places in different times. Apparently, if you moved
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: your hand away from the gun, the station would change,
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: and you had to hold very still to stay on
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: the station. And if you stayed still for long enough
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: and stayed on a station long enough, it would produce
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: a sound that was quote out of time.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, now let's just bear this in mind too. If
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: you haven't listened to Mel's fall, I encourage you to
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: go listen. There's like it's all it's five hours long,
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: all like all of this unfolded over five years with
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: across five calls. Like Mel is not aware of what
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: questions he's going to be asked by Art Bell. He's
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: not aware of what questions the callers are going to
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: ask him, as far as we know. And if you
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: listen to him like this does not sound rehearsed or
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: scripted or anything like that. So even setting aside like
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: the idea that this is possibly real and just taking
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: it like a story. This guy was one of the
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: best storytellers in the history of the world. If he's
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: just making all this up as he goes along, basically.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which made me think it was perhaps set up
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: in shady art.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: No, ur Bell wouldn't have been involved in that. Now,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: how do you know he does?
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: Art Bell?
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: He he was a credible host, Okay for sure. Okay,
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: I think that's why people loved him so much, Like
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: he wasn't gonna get caught up in something like that.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: People might call up and pull his leg even asked
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Smell once, like are you pulling my leg? I I
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: really don't think he was the kind of person who
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: would who would set something like that up. He didn't
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: need to. People would call in and he could just
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: be the credible guy asking questions and they like, he
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: didn't need to set it up. People would just do
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: it anyway.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: No, I know. I'm just saying, if it was unearthed,
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: like the greatest hoax, art Bell ever pulled this this
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: funny trick, like you would say like, well, that's not possible,
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: because Art Bell would never do something like, no.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: I mean if there were irrefutable evidence that he had
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: done and or he admitted to doing it, of course,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: I mean I'm not insane, Okay, That's.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: What I'm saying. Is that just you just never know.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: You never know whether I'm insane or not.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: I always know that you're you're not. Thanks, man, I'm
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: just catching casting a skeptics eye on this, I understand.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't mean to berat you for that. I
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: was just arguing in favor of.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: Right now, Arbe would never do.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: I had no idea. I felt this passionately about Art
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Bell and his intention.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: All right, So moving on the whole apparently, and these
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: were stories that even Mel said could be apocryphal, but
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: he said a neighbor said that they threw their dead
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: dog into the hole, and that same dog, with the
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: same collar and tags was alive in the woods later on.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: So it brought this dog back to life.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, very pet cemetery ish.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but other dogs wouldn't go near the hole. Yeah,
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: he's scared of it.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: He said his own dogs wouldn't go anywhere near the
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: damn thing. Was his quote. Yeah, and Art Bell jumped
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: on this, He's like, well, wait a minute. If this
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: thing is able to resurrect things, have you ever considered,
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: you know, being thrown in there? Or I think he said,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: if you're ever diagnosed with a terminal disease, would you
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: jump in yourself? And already ten steps ahead of a
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Mel said, it's actually in my will that I'd be
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: thrown into the hole after I'd die.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Of good why not give it a shot? You know?
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Chuck, I say, we take a break here
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: and we'll come back and talk about some of the
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: tests that Mel applied to the whole to try to
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: get to the bottom of it.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: Ah. Nice pun, Thank you, We'll be right back. Stucks stuck,
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: you know it. Stucks.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: It's a great name.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: That's the name of it.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: It's a great name. All right, stucks net with with
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: an X.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: Did you mean that pun?
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah I did. Can I feel ashamed?
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: You shouldn't? That was a good that's quality pun. And
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: neither one of them are super into pun. But that
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: was a really good one. Oh, very clever.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Well. I actually did the whole like arching point too,
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: as I said it, which really punctuates upun.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: It sure does, it punctuates it.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: That was good too, Thanks, So I think I said
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: before the break that Mel started figuring out ways to
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: investigate this. First of all, he wanted to know how
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: deep it was. Yeah, And it turns out that Mel
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: was what he calls pretty close to a professional shark fisherman,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: or at least he used to be.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: So that means that he had on the property a
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: lot of really heavy, sturdy shark fishing reels. Anyone who's
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: seen Jaws knows that those are sturdy reels.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: He also had a ton of line, like a lot
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: of wine. And so he tied a one pound triangular
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: or pyramidal weight to the end of a line. Uh,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: and he started slowly paying it out, And we should
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: we should back up a little bit because he used
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: the line differently the first time. He tied a roll
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: of life savers to the end of it once and
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: then paid it out fifteen hundred yards and when he
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: brought it back up, the lifesavers were intact, indicating to
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: him that even fifteen hundred yards down, he hadn't hit
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: the water table.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I would have used a sponge, but that's just me.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Oh that's a good one. That's a great one.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: Thanks.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: So back to the line, he's after the Lifesavers thing.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: He started just paying out line using his shark reel.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: Right, yes, and he goes down over fifteen miles about
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: eighty thousand feet into the hole, allegedly not hitting the bottom,
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: and art Bell noted trusted radio hosts said yeah, you know,
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: you might want to call a university or something like
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: they would probably want to look into this and research this.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: And Mel was like, hey, that's funny. My wife works
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: for a local university here what he don't think? He
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: said the school, but didn't. People surmise online it was
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: probably what would it have been, Central Washington? Is that
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: a university?
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Central Washington.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And so anyway, he said, I've been talking to
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: my wife and she's been talking to the university and
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: apparently they're pretty interested. And then callers started calling in
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: saying things like, hey, you should use a sponge. Well
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: they didn't say that, but they should have, but they said, hey,
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: we have ideas on how to find out how deep
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: this is. And also, if this is as deep as
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: you say, it's like twice as deep as the Marianas Trench.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: And even though this wasn't in the show, it's also
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: twice as deep as the deepest hole, which is Russia's
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: Cola super deep borehole, which is just a little over
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: forty thousand feet, so this is double that.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was cute. So we're talking. I don't know
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: if we even said this or not. This whole thing
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: started in nineteen ninety seven. So when that caller calls
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: up with the information about the Marianna's trench, she says
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: that he went and consulted his encyclopedia.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: Very cute.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is super cute. So, yes, this is a
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: This would very like far and away be the world's
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: deepest hole, and it's an impossible hole in that sense.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: We'll get a little more into that, but that essentially
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: was the first call, and we've peppered in some stuff
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: from other calls, but that's the basics of the hole
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: and what Mel said he had done so far. Some
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: of the listeners that called in were like, you should
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: put temperature sensors and lower those down and maybe a
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: video camera. Yeah, sure, radar can come into this somehow,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: and radar was like, leave me out of this. And essentially,
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: like I was saying, that's the first call. So the
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: first call happens, and then a week later, Mel Waters
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: appears again on Coast to Coast am and he has
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: like very distressing news this time.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: That's right, he said, all right, I went back to
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: the property and I couldn't get back on. It was
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: blocked off by military personnel and they said you can't
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: come on your own property. He said, there was a
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: plane crash and you can't come on. And Mel was like,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: there wasn't any plane crash. Like I would have known
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: about this. I don't live too far away. It would
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: have made noise, I would have seen smoke. There was
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: nothing indicating that there was a plane crash. Give me
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: the person in charge. And they trotted out somebody not
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: in military fatigues, which is very X filesy. Anytime there's
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: somebody in charge wearing a suit with the military, it's
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: very X files. He had very bad news.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Mel turned into a bit of a care in there.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: So this person whoever it was that wasn't in military
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: guard was in an X file suit smoking a cigarette
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: bro probably, He says, So what's the problem. And Mel says,
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: this is my property. I want to get onto my properties.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: The guy in the suit, So that's not going to happen,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: and this isn't necessarily your property, and if you want
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: to go ahead, that's fine. But I'll bet we could
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: very easily find a drug lab on your land and
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: then there'd be a whole bunch of problems for you
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: that you don't need if you'll just turn around and leave. Yeah,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: that really got to mel for sure. He was spooked,
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: to say the least.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, as he should have been, because he did have
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: a lab on the property. He was not cooking drugs,
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: but like I mentioned earlier, he was into medicinal herbs
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: and plants and things like that that he would source
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: from northern Nevada that, you know, traditional herbs and things
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: that have been used by Native Americans for you know, eons.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: And he said, I do have a lab here, and
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: they could probably frame me pretty easily, so I'm not
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: sure what to do. He also learned around the same
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: time that the predecessor to I guess Google Earth was
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: something called Terra Server, where they had just satellite aerial
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: satellite images of the Earth. He was like, my property's
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: blocked out on that thing. Now.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Art Bell he did his research because he's
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: very reliable and trustworthy, and he found a server a
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Terra server image and found like this is yeah, you
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: can't see his property. I think it's on Google MAMPs today.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Laura doctor Claw helps us out with us, and she
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: points out that there's a nearby military installation. It's called
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: the Yakama Training Center. It's an army training center, but
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: it also includes a NSA listening station. And that's not
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theory. That's the Seattle Post intelligence are reporting that
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: there's an NSA listening station there that in and of
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: itself could block out a large segment of the central
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Washington I think on Terror Server. Yeah.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: I also saw and this is Unreddit and since this
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: is all bunk anyway, we might as well just mention
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: stuff like this. But there were dudes on Reddit that
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: were like, you can see where Google Earth has cloned
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: images and overlaid them over the spot where the hole
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: should be.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's not the most incredible part of
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: all this, is it?
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Oh no, that's coming through. Yeah, I mean, I hope
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: we are in agreement on the most incredible part. And
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: it's not a silent gun or a silent hole.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: We'll see. I'm not exactly what you're talking about.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: I'm so I'm on. You know, all right, we'll get there, okay.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: So there's a couple other things that Mels had happened
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: since he was first on and had caught the attention
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: to the government who had now taken over his land.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: He had a buddy who was a trucker, and his
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: buddy told him that he delivered a huge quantity of
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: fiber optic cable to a warehouse in Ellensburg. And in
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: the late nineties, fiber optic cable had no business whatsoever
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: being anywhere near Ellensburg, Washington. Another friend told him he
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: delivered a truckload of instruments from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: one of the national labs. In and of itself is spooky,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: especially pre millennium when everything the government did was super spooky,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: and that those were delivered to that same warehouse in Ellenburg, Ellensburg.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: So fiber optic cables and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory instruments suddenly
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: amassing in Ellensburg a little coincidental with the government taking
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: over his land.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: That's right. And you know how he found this out.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: His trucker buddy told him so, right. A couple of
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: other details there apparently the workers at the warehouse were
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: all of them were Israeli. According to this trucker unnamed
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: trucker And if you're just wondering, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: responsible basic generally responsible for the safety and security of
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: America's nuclear arsenal.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: Okay, yep, great, that's what they did. Sure, so there
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: was a bit of like an upside to all this.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: And like again, Mel was really distressed that he wasn't
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: allowed on his land and that he had been threatened
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: and intimidated, But he also was like, you know, this
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: is my private property. My rights are being trampled on.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: So he was quite happy to find that shortly after
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: the government took over his land they did write by him,
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: and then some his real estate agent contacted him apparently
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: used the type to have a real estate agent and retainer. Yeah,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: and they said, Mel, I've got great news for you.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: You have an anonymou us offer to lease your land
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: indefinitely for a quarter of a million dollars a month.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: How do you feel about that?
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: I mean that's incredible. Uh, he said, you know this
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: is on the third call by now. He was like, yeah,
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: I took the deal because I'm in Australia right now, buddy,
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: and I'm getting rich here off the US government or
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: you know whatever unnamed le c or Lis or which
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: one would that be.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: So he would be the less or they would be
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: the least. See, let's see, they would be the leasing
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: as far as car commercials have taught me.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so Art Bell and we believe everything he says.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: He said that, hey, Mel is definitely in Australia. I've
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: gotten emails. I guess that we're dot au or something,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: but he was somehow he was able to verify that
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: Mel was from in Australia. Yeah, and Mel also is
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: like and here's the other thing is like the government
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: took care of all this. They did all the paperwork.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: They got my dogs over here. The Australian government was
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: cooperating and they were in on it. And I'm in
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: Australia now and I'm doing my medicinal herb growing here
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: to great effect.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And we should say also, we've been to Australia
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: for tour and it is not an easy country to
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: come into. They make you jump through lots of hoops.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: So it's another suspicious thing too. I just want to
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: point out but.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: We didn't have the government doing all the legwork.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Well exactly, that's what I'm saying. Like he did, like
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: so that's not Australia's normal, mo is what I'm trying
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: to say.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not nothing, as they say.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: One other thing that he tossed out there is that
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: so he was using his medicinal herbs secure people. He
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: also did some gratifying work rescuing wombats. Just through that
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: out there as an aside. I thought that was a
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: nice touch. And then there's one other thing too. Remember
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: the magical gun that made no sound and then played
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: radio broadcasts from other times and erows I do he
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: took that to Australia with him, probably also another hard
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: thing to do for the average person, and he used
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: it as a security deposit for his place that he rented.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: He gave it to his landlord his security deposit. I
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: don't know why he would have needed to do that
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: if he was getting maybe he hadn't gotten the first
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: least payment yet.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's the weird all. That's not the weirdest part obviously,
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: but that's the part that makes the least just logical sense.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: Was what would he'd be like uh here, just you
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: like old World War two guns. Maybe the guy did,
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: maybe that was it.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Well supposedly, whether he did or not, the man's son
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: got in touch with Mel and was like, I don't
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: know where my father is. He disappeared, and he took
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: that weird gun with him, and before they disappeared, he
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: had become obsessed with the thing.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they never heard from him again as.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Far as I know. And also the man's son was
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: never named, nor was the man the landlord.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: The story right, all right, So Mel goes back to
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: the States to visit some family. He did not show
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: for a appearance on Coast to Coast in late nineteen
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: ninety nine, and he was like, yeah, you know why,
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: Buddy Art, He said, because I was questioned after an
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: altercation on a bus and I was transported back to Olympia, Washington,
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: or I was told I was going to be transported
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: back to Olympia, Washington, but instead I woke up almost
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: two weeks later, twelve days later. I just awoke with
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: no memory of anything that happened in a rough part
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: of San Francisco.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: And no, I just call that San Francisco.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: No wallet, no ID. I had adhesive on my arm
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: like residue from like where I clearly probably had an
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: iv U and brother, my back teeth are gone.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: That would be so distressing to be like, I'm missing
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: teeth and I have no recollection of them being taken out.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: It's distressing when you know it's coming and it happens.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good, I can voucher for that. Oh yeah, well,
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: I mean did you get knocked out? I guess when
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: you had yours room.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: Oh sure, that's the best part.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay, yeah, but I can imagine knowing it's coming
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: would be more distressing that Usually, as they say, anticipation
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: is the worst part of just about any experience, right.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: I don't know, that's what I heard.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, So what Regardless, male's now missing a couple of teeth.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: He's also down, in addition to missing his ID and wallet,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: his belt buckle, which sounds kind of what's the word
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: I'm looking for, innocuous, Yes, Chuck, that's exactly the word
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: I was looking for. Sounds innocuous as far as details go.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: But this belt buckle was a special belt buckle that
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: he had made himself. He's also craftsman in addition to
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: a grower and maker of medicinal herbal tinctures, and this
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: belt buckle contained a dime, a very special dime, a
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: nineteen forty three dime with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's bust on
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: the side, just like the dimes we had today. The
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: problem is that dime should have existed.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the Roosevelt dimes that didn't start till nineteen forty six,
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: after FDR died. He was still alive in nineteen forty three,
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: so those don't exist. They even did some searching on
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: the internet. The only thing I could find was apparently
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: they're nineteen forty nine dimes that people have sort of
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: etched the nine to look like a three. Because I
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: saw a picture of one. I was like, that looks
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: like a nineteen forty three Roosevelt to me, But other
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: people said, like, no, that's been made. It was a
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: nine made to look like a three. But at any rate,
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: those dimes don't exist. I mean, I guess it's possible
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: that it could have been some kind of a counterfeit thing.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: But he said that a couple more things about this
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: dime that it could not be photographed, so it clearly
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: wasn't the dime I saw on the internet. And also
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: if you walk fifteen feet away, it goes invisible, and
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: it's not just my eyesight because I know what you're thinking.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So he also took one of those dimes to
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: a coin dealer, and I guess while I was in
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: the coin dealer's possession, the Treasury Department showed up and confiscated.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: It just like that they were there.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was using these dimes like pretty innocently.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: I saw the belt buckles were World War Two themes,
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: so one was a like he had three coins. One
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: had a bust of Churchill, one had a bust of FDR,
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: and I think the other one was a bust of
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: Stalin and he's like, oh, this FDR dime will work perfectly.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Like apparently he hadn't realized that they were special dimes.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: He just dug them up on his property, which I
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: think should have raised the red flag right away that
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: they were special dimes if they were something he dug
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: up on his property.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he said he found him in a red envelope
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: on his property, these impossible coins. So I say we
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: take another break, because when we come back, we are
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: definitely going to get to the craziest part of this
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: whole story.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Stuck Stucks.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: I don't know that you know what stuck stuck that.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: It's a great name, that's the name of it.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: It's a great name. All right, Stucks met with with
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: an X.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: All Right, So we're back. Uh, and this is when
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: we start to talk about a second hole. Yeah. Because uh.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: And on a subsequent call into AM Coast to Coast,
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Mel said, because I've been on your radio show and
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: people are like familiar with with me in this whole
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: this hole, now, this whole hole, he said, I've now
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: been made aware of a second hole thanks to the
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: native people there in Nevada. They got in touch with
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: members of the Basque community there, and apparently there is
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: still a robust Basque community because she heard hers from
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: the peer moved there in the late nineteenth century and
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: they're still there today, so which is great. But this
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: bass hole, as it's called, was very similar to Mel's hole.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: It was nine feet diameter. This one had an actual
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: metal collar around it, starting a couple of feet off
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: the ground and had a metal lining the hole as
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: far as you could see down into it. And local
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: Basque people was like, yeah, that hole has been around
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: since the nineteenth century, and dogs won't go near it.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: They're scared of it. And we've seen a black beam
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: come out of this thing.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: He's like another black beam. That's nuts.
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's not the craziest part. We're getting there.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Just what Yeah, No, I know what you're talking about.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: The I mean, come on, so I think it's what
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: I'm about to say. That that metal collar around around
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: the hole somehow was never hot to the touch, but
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: the local basks had figured out that if you put
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: your tent against it, it would heat your tent in
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: the winter. Okay, is that what the weirdest part was
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: that you were talking about?
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: Are you being coy? Okay? I can't tell if you
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: just are are blanking or if you're just messing around
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: with No.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: I really couldn't think of it earlier, But I know
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: just what you mean.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: The closer we get to it, I love this. We
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: never have this kind of true suspense on this show.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: I feel like I feel like I should be doing
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: like a finger drum roll for the next minute.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: So it's keeping your sleeping bag warm, it's keeping your
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: tent warm. Melt. He did a few things. He dropped
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: a wrench in it or I guess he dropped it
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: on the metal. It didn't make any sound like the
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: last one. Then they got some ice because they were like,
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: this thing has weird heat properties, so let's drop some
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: ice done in there in a pot and see what happens,
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: because if it gets hotter or something, then we'll know
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: it has some weird or some I guess legitimate heat properties.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: And the ice came back it was unmelted. And when
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: they put this potted ice over a fire to melt it,
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: that ice eventually caught on fire.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, put out its own heat too.
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, via the fire.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: Right. So one of the basque people who was involved
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: in all this is like, hey, this eternal hot ice
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: is probably a pretty good idea. I'm going to take
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: it home and put it in my wood stove.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, good idea.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great idea. The problem is, one of
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: the strange properties of this eternal heat ice was that
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: it dried everything around it so much so it sucked
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: all the moisture out of everything that this poor basque
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: man's cabin crumbled into basically dust because the eternal ice
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: just being in his wood stove had sucked all of
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: the moisture out of the wood so that it just
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: couldn't stand up as wood any longer.
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that stove collapsed along with the rest of the cabin.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: So that's not the weirdest part.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Well, the stove actually kept it basically burned a hole
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: and now it's like five feet into the ground. That's
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: made it that far. Yeah, pretty nuts.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: But that's not the craziest part. You ready, Yeah, dear listener.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: So this part is also a little awful because it
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: involves killing an animal. We should mention that people at
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: some point suggested, like, why don't you throw a cat
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: down that hole, Mel's hole, Bengalie, see if you can
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: hear it crying and stand up. Guy art Bell was like, no,
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: we're not doing anything like that.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: I know, that's why exactly. So they did have a
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: sheep though, at the bass hole, and they try to
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: bring the sheep around it. The sheep freaked out, so
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: they said, all right, you're getting in the crate and
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: we're doing this a hard way. They lowered the sheep
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: down fifteen hundred feet. They had stopped making any sounds.
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: They brought the sheep up and it was dead. So
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: they dissected it and it was cooked from the inside
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: out evidently, so they had a nice button dinner and
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: gained immortality.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: No, I'm going to let you take this, buddy. Oh
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: really the craziest part here we go.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: So while they're dissecting it, they quickly found out that
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: the sheep was missing its internal organs. They just weren't
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: there anymore. But in the internal organs place was a
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: giant tumor. They're like, well, we've already come this far
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: with dissecting, we might as well dissect the tumor. And
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: when they cut the tumor open, they found that there
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: was what looked to be what you could describe closest
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: would be a fetal seal, but the fetal seal had
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: human eyes. And even crazier than that, the fetal seal
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: like opened its eyes and started looking around at all
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: of the Basque people and mel who were there standing
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: over it agog and amazement.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So this thing was eighteen inches long. It was
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: connected by an umbilical cord. And we should also say
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: that stuff you find on the internet now, some of
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: that stuff maybe has been added since nineteen ninety seven,
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: because there's a lot of you know, bunk out there.
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: But I saw it was connected by an umbilical cord,
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: detached itself, and like you said, just kind of walking
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: around hanging out with people. Apparently they thought this thing
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: was like, I want to go back into the hole.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: So they put it on the metal collar. It looked
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: at them, gave him a nod and took the dive. Yeah,
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: the fetle seal with humanlike eyes.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so later on Mel's here witnessing all this stuff,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: and he's in contact obviously with his basque friends from
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: that point on, and he said that later on they
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: told him like the fetal seal had come back up
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: several times and they'd learned that if a boom box
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: was near, they could communicate with the fetal seal. When
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: somebody grabbed an old two Live Crew cassette and tried
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: to record over it, nothing was recorded.
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: Okay, they better had some basking taper over those square holes.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: You know, I forgot about that part. Yeah, absolutely, But
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: what about Mel's cancer?
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: It went away, buddy, thanks to the BASQ hole. I guess.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: He had apparently pretty aggressive terminal esphageal cancer and it
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: was just gone. And so they started started calling this
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: thing the tumor seal because of that.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is a horrible name for any organism, but yeah,
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: there you go. So that's if you if you come
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: across something called the tomor seal on the Internet, that's
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: what they're talking about, this strange seal like creature with
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: human eyes that healed Mel's esophageal cancer.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: That's right. So since the beginning of the Internet, and
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: this was I mean seemingly coincidentally kind of around the
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: birth of the Internet, the story grew and grew and grew.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: Of course, just like a little fetal seal will one
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: day become a sea lion.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: Oh is that right? Seals and sea lions aren't aren't different,
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: are small.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: But this is a magical story. So that's oh god,
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: that's what happens in this case. Okay, especially as human
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: like eyes. So mel Waters apparently doesn't exist. They have
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: looked there, apparently, or they're no records of the mel
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: Waters in the county of which he supposedly resided. There
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: was no wife that worked at Central Washington University. Go Wildcats,
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: by the way, Go Wildcats. It was obviously somebody from
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: around there, because they had a lot of knowledge of
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: the area. So whoever was pulling off this hoax was
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: clearly a local. But there was no Mel Waters as
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: far as anyone can tell.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: No. But one of the interesting things is that in
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: the real world, in the Ellensburg area, apparently there is
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: a local rumor superstition about a bottomless hole somewhere in
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: the area.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that's was the leaping point
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: for this story had to be.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: But Mel really took it and Ranwick and so I
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: mean this caught coast to coast am listener's attention and
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: enough that they went out and actually looked for the hole.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: There was an expedition that was mounted in two thousand
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: and two thirty people makes it an official expedition. Yeah,
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: it was led or it included a guy named Gerald Osbourne.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: Gerald Osbourne went by red Elk. He didn't he very
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: wisely didn't claim ancestry or heritage to any particular indigenous
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: tribe in the area. Instead, he said he was an
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: intertribal shaman, which means he was white. Yeah, and he's
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: not to be confused. He's not to be confused with
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Gerald red Elk, who's a legitimate Navajo who was a
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: Navajo code talker in World War Two from.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: Thanks for stealing that name exactly.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: So he was the reason he was on this expedition
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: is he said, I've been to this whole numerous times.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: My father took me there for the first time, all
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: the way back in nineteen sixty one. I'm a huge
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: asset to your group. As a matter of fact, why
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: don't you guys just carry me around? I'm that much
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: of an asset to this expedition. Did he really say that, No,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: but I could kind of see it.
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: Nothing in this story would surprise me, So you can
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: literally doup me with anything at this point.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: And by the way, Rip Gerald Osborne aka Red Elk,
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: he did pass and I think twenty seventeen maybe.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, all right. P He claimed that a huge
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: base craft would appear and hover over that hole, and
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: that the government had a very small underground base there
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: obviously underground. There's legit geologist named Jack Powell from Washington
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: State Department of Natural Resources who seems like the Loan
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: or maybe one of the Loan skeptics aside for me,
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: apparently saying like, hey, this hole is not possible. Josh
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: Clark is even going to say this one day on
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: a very popular podcast, This wole would collapse on itself
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: because of all the pressure and heat from the area
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: around it. It's just you just can't have a hole
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: that deep. It's impossible. Yeah.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: They were like, stop saying impossible. He's like, fine, but
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: you get my point, right, he.
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: Said, And that fishing line wouldn't have made it, or
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: your life savers or anything else wouldn't have survived that depth.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: No, And he did concede, like, this is this area
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: was carved out by volcanic activity eons ago, so it
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: is possible that there are like a lot of really
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: really deep holes that may even be, for all intents
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: and purposes, as far as human scale is concerned, bottomless. Yeah,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: but what this guy's describing could not possibly exists. And
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: this area is also just riddled with gold mine shafts.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: In fact, I think I might know the particular gold
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: mine shaft outside of Ellensburg that inspired this guy this
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: mel waters.
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, not you. You're playing the role of Jack Powell.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was me doing my Jack Powell impression. He
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: and I sound just like just like me and Mark Ruffalo.
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, people said that, Yeah, I get that. A lot.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: Oh, I've ever thought about that. I think it's said
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: you talk like someone the other day Mike Berbiglia.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I get that a little. They might
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: be the first person to say that I've heard that. Yeah,
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: and then I think, yeah, I think that's it for
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: voice lookalikes or sound.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: Alikes, same Muppet, each inner.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: I love that. I will never ever forget that. I
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: hold that do it in my heart.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: You should, all right, so Powell said, as Josh play acted,
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: Let's go to this gold mine shaft that I know about, Like,
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: I bet this is it. It's near the Manustache Ridge.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: I think it said Manitash earlier. It's Manustache.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: I think it's Monastash.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Oh, well, I mean it depends on which side do
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: you live on.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Nevada, Nevada, Yeah, exactly, Tomato, Tamata.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: But he took them there, the group of whole you know,
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: Mel'shole enthusiasts, and they were like, nah, there, you duped this. This.
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: There's no way this is Mel's Hole. It's too normal. Basically,
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: it's not doing anything weird.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: You lying geologists.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, that's funny.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: So these people, they were undeterred, they were like we are,
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: so we're gonna balk so hard at your suggestion that
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: this pitting thing is Mel's Hole that just despite you,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: we're going to go on and form the Seattle Paranormal Society.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: So there.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like we're all here together, right, we should call
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: ourselves something.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: So they did. Yeah, and here's another just little addendum
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: in twenty twelve, apparently like local library historians said, you know,
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: the files on Mel's Hole are not in my library anymore.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: They disappeared and there's no way some crackpot stole.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: Them, right, They're definitely not under a placement at my
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: house where I forgot them.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: So there were again like there are people out in
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: the real world who are trying to track down Mel's
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Hole for one reason or another. And Mel, yes, exactly.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: And one of the places that became like a clearinghouse
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: online for continued information about Mel's Hole was the Northwest
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Museum of Legends and Lore. They actually claimed to still
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: be getting email updates from Mel and Mel's nephew, so
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: you know that they were like that was an arcane
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: reference right there, Mel's nephew. I think it legitimized everything.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: And they actually may have been receiving information from somebody
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: claiming to be Mel's nephew. Eventually, though, even they the
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: Northwest Museum of Legends and lower were like nuts to this,
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: and based on the date of their last posts, they
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: seem to have given up the ghost in two thousand
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: and three.
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it may have had something to do with they said, Hey,
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: Mel's nephew, he's coming to our hang. He's coming to
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: the Northwest UFO conference on Memorial Day. And then they said, oh, well,
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: it turns out he didn't make it. He got in
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: a car.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: Wreck, but he'll keep us posted about whether he's going
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: to make it to the conference after exactly. So, you
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: said that there's so much croud on the Internet now
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: about this that it's just kind of to me. It
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: took like a really interesting, cool, self contained thing that
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: didn't need to be expounded upon it. Yeah, just twenty
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: twenties Internet eyed it, which means it just got dumb.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: And so there's tons of Like I read one article
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: where somebody was like, this may be a Lazarus pit,
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: and I looked up Lazaru's Pit and it only exists
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: in the DC Comic universe. Yeah, so that probably is
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: not a very credible website. And then also there's this
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: YouTube video from just this March, and this is what's
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: amazing about the Internet. Somebody made a YouTube video that
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: claimed that Elon Musk, because he's like the head of
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: technology in the world, apparently sent a special drone, a
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: special high tech drone made for tough places. They said,
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: down into Mel's hole and we'll get to to what
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: he came up within a second. But if you go
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: and search that, there are offshoot videos videos about that
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: that are treating it like news. So there's tons of
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: YouTube videos talking about this drone footage that Elon Musk
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: found and essentially he found what was at the bottom
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: of it, and he did not like what he found.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: According to this YouTube video.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, legend has it it was a cave painting
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: of a cybertruck.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: I think he would have been gratified with that, or
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: he would have been like, wow, those things really are ugly. Yeah.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: So no, they quoted him in this video there's something
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: down there, something we don't get, we aren't ready for
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: what's at the bottom.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: And that tracks so, I.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: Mean, it still just keeps going on and on. Some
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: people of a twenty seventeen video went to a location
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: that someone on read it said was Mel's Hole. They're like,
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: it's not really Mel's hole. So there are people still
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: looking for Mel's Hole out there. But to me, you
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: don't really need to go much beyond the actual original story.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: It's it's perfect as is.
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fun radio theater. Yep.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: Uh yeah, and that's our assessment that it is theater. Chuck,
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: I think that's where we both land, right.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's where I am. I hope you're there.
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: If not, we got to end the show.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: I'm solidly right there with you. Okay, good, Well, since
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: we're standing right next to another shoulders shoulder, cheek to
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: jowl and all that stuff, I think that means it's
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: time for a listener. Mayw.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: I thought so relieved. I thought you're about to say
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: we have to jump into that hole together.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: No, never, never, We like our lives.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: That's true. But maybe it would be like Joe versus
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: Volcano and it would just spit us right back out
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: like Tom and Meg.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: That was such a good movie.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: Loved it all right. Here is a follow up to
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: Project one hundred thousand. Hey, guys, just listened to the
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: episode was impressed with your coverage like always and the
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: topic of the lack of men for Vietnam. For the
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: Vietnam War, my mind is flooded with thoughts of the
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: secret war. My people, the Mong people, were recruited as
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: gorilla troops to assist the US and the Jungles of Laos,
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: Thailand and Vietnam. Many of the troops were children, including
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: my great uncle Lord. Very few spoke English and agreed
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: to participate on the premise that they would be brought
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: to live the American dream after the war was over,
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: but very few made it over. Most were stranded and
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: then hunted as traders to their countries. In fact, my
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: mom was born in a concentration camp in Laus and
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: she's only forty two years old right now.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: Coo On.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: Most of us live in Minnesota, California, and Wisconsin now,
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: but many of us still have family living back home,
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: where the conflict is seemingly fizzled out. I've always wondered
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: what happened overseas to the ones who didn't make it
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: out of the camps, and how or if my people
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: have restored their villages, but the topic is still raw.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: I think it'd be a great topic to look into
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: for an episode, a short stuff or just for your
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: brain bank. And that is warmly from Melody, who apparently
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: listens to us from the long drives between Chicago and Minneapolis.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: Nice. Thanks a lot, Melody. I definitely not heard about that,
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: and I think that's a great corollary to Project one
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: hundred thousand huh toats. Yeah. I think that might even
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: deserve its own episode too. We'll have to dig into
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: it if you want to be like Melody and blow
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: our minds and depress us simultaneously. We love that kind
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: of thing in a weird way. You can send it
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: via email to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: E