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Transcript

Urban Legend: Mel's Hole · Eerily Beloved

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the podcast.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Thursday.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: And early beloved, we are gathered here today with trying to think of a name.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Different one for every episode.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Who can I be this week?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, your characters so far have been Mommy's Little Meatball and the Pizzler.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the jester.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the Jester.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: And Gedwards.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I can be the Pizzler again.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: So recently I asked what people's favorite local legend or lore was, and what we're talking about today came up multiple times as people's favorite.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And after going down a literal rabbit hole, and you'll understand why I say that, if you've seen the episode title, um, I can understand why people find this so fascinating.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Between the conspiracy theory's potential government cover-up and overall mystery surrounding this, it is certainly intriguing and of course, worth an episode.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: So today we're going to talk about Mel's Hole.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh have you ever heard of Mel's Hole?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, this is only a slightly better start than just boys wrestling around a campfire after eating s'mores.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's talk let's talk about Mel and his hole.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So Coast to Coast AM, a radio show hosted by Art Bell, had its fair share of interesting callers over the years.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: The radio show often told stories of urban myths and legends that were in the area, letting callers share their tales or theories about aliens and such.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Of these calls, one stands out over 20 years later.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's still a segment that they revisit pretty often, and you can go in in the archives, and I think we listened to it.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone saw about Mel's Hole.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So on February 21st, 1997, Art received a call from a man named Mel Waters.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Mel claimed that on his property on the Manitash Ridge, about nine miles outside of Ellensburg, Washington, there was a bottomless pit.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: When he bought the property, it was well known to locals and they often use it to dispose of large trash.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Old mattresses, tires, refrigerators, just the local the local dump site.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was unsettling and had a weird vibe and was referred to as quote unquote the devil's hole by early settlers, but it never seemed strange enough to give it any more thought.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Until Mel noticed that it never filled up, even with the 20 or so locals that were regularly lose using it as a dump site.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: He described the hole as looking like a standard well, about nine feet across and with a stone wall about three feet high around the opening.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Inside, the stones were lining it for about 15 feet down until it just turned to dirt, and then nothingness, because it was so dark.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Once he realized this, he began to test how deep this hole was.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it had to have a bottom, even if it was deeper than the standard well.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: His plan was to unspool thousands of feet of fishing line and attach a small weight to the end so he would know how deep it was.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: When he attempted this, the weight failed to hit the bottom after 80,000 feet.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Mel's got a long, big, long, big hole.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Which would be about 15 miles straight down.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Dang Mel.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And no one has ever been able to reach the bottom if it even exists.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So this is he's calling into this radio show and he's telling the host this.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Three days later, on February 24th, 1997, Mel Waters called into Art Bell Show again.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: After the discovery of the endlessness of the pit, Waters realized this might be a beast of a different, less natural sort.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: He intended to conduct other tests and take notice of the general happenings around the spot.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: In one instance, he yelled into the pit, expecting an echo to go on for some time given the depth that he had discovered previously.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, he was met with pure silence.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Radios brought near the hole started playing voices that no one recognized.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Compasses spun endlessly.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Some claimed that they would hear voices or cries of distress as if someone or something was stuck and needed help.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Similar to the phenomenon we discussed in episode two when we covered the organ vortex, animals are said to avoid the area completely.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Those who claim they have been to it say birds don't fly over it, and Mel said that his dog, when he tried to force him, refused to go near it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Mel also noticed that metals left near the hole would transform into other metals.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Steel turned into copper, brass turned into silver.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: This prompted more experiments.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well turned into gold.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't say.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: They do an alchemy?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: This hole is doing alchemy.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Mel's hole is doing alchemy.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Mel's got a interesting hole.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: At one point, a bucket of ice was lowered 1,500 feet into the hole and left for hours.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: When it was brought up, the ice hadn't melted, but was warm to the touch and almost seemed to burn.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: But not melt.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, things got even crazier when he said a neighbor disposed of their dead dog into the pit, because it was used as a common dump site.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And days later the man saw his dog, same exact dog, and he knew it because it had the same collar, roaming around town, but it refused to answer to him.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, nah, we're not playing with that.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Another neighbor said that they saw black beams shooting out of the pit on multiple occasions.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Between the original call in February of 1997 and 2002, Mel called into the show five times, each time providing more details and stories about the endless hole on his property.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And each time garnering more interest that made the local weird spot into a national paranormal mystery, closely followed by both skeptics and believers.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, they did not.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: They paid him$250,000 a year to hand over the land, leave the country, and never discuss the hole again.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: $250,000 a year?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take that annuity payment.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: That was their reasoning for taking over the area.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: He was refused entry into the property.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: After this happened, any record of the hole existing in the media at the time, local reports, or the potential historical events that could have maybe happened here supporting what the federal agents had said were erased by the quote unquote government.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's like an X-Files episode.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Except they weren't getting paid$250k a year to be quiet.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: They were just getting killed off.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So a website titled Mel'sHole.com was set up to track any and all information that could help find Mel and the hole.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Good Lord, bro.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Who's finding that website?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Over 8,000 posts were made on the site with theories about where it could be exactly and other clues about the mysterious abyss that was now infamous in central Washington.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: In 2002, an expedition of about 30 people set out in the general area that was described by Waters because he would never give specifics.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: He was just kind of vague on purpose.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like that was kind of allegedly that's what the government told him that he had to do.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: He couldn't give specifics about where this thing was.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, but he had like the local news people showing up and it wasn't local news people, it was just neighbors who knew of the hole before he had moved there.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it was just kind of a local known thing, and geologically, if it was on any land surveying thing, it was removed.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: There was no record of it.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: So among these people on this expedition were a psychiatrist, a father and a son from Seattle, three LA amateur filmmakers, members of a Vancouver-based paranormal investigation team, and a shaman were reported as being part of this party.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Leading this group was a shaman with no known native heritage named Red Elk.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: His government name was Gerald Osborne.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: As he claimed he had seen the hole in 1961.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: He claimed that he had been there to visit multiple times when he was young with his dad.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: However, reports of the expedition make it clear that he had little to no idea where the hole was, and instead used his opportunity with a captive audience to preach about the world of inner earth and the giant lizards that ruled it.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: See, man, like how many people are talking about a hole in the ground here?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: The radio show had over 10 million listeners.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Nah, but it was like a nationally syndicated radio show.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Red Elk on the scene.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Boots on the ground journalism that we need from Mr.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Red Elk, the medicinal shaman.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: What's his name?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: George?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Gerald.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Mel Waters at this point, which is much was as much of an enigma to listeners as his hole was.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Many started looking into if Mel even existed at all, because if you find where he lived, you would be able to find the hole, in theory.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: During one of his calls, he mentioned being affiliated with Central Washington University, as that's where his wife worked, which is also in Ellensburg, Washington.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: However, no one with the name Mel Waters worked at or had a partner who worked at CWU, and no one with that name lived in Catetis County, which was fine.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: That didn't necessarily mean that he didn't exist.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe Mel Waters was a pseudonym to protect his identity after the stuff with the government and the federal agents.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hole's too crazy.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: He's got a witness protection.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So listeners kept looking and they discovered that no local property transfer records in the area during the time Mel claimed he bought the property, or when federal agents retook it from him, none of it existed at all either.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: This kind of reached the attention of many geologists, many scientists, who obviously, due to the geology of the area, kind of questioned if this was like there's no way.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the Department Department of Natural Resources geologist Jack Powell was from Ellensburg, and he had heard Melwater's story on Coast to Coast AM when it aired.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Growing up and working in the valley, he thought he knew what he was talking about.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: As a boy, Jack Powell had played around an old gold mineshaft that had similar character characteristics as the pit Mella described on his calls.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: In quotes, he said, geologically and physically, it's not possible for a hold to be that deep.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It would collapse into itself under the tremendous pressure and heat from the surrounding strata.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hold collapsing on itself.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So in the mid-1800s, the area that we know today is Ellensburg, Washington was a popular resting point for ranchers and cowboys moving over the Cascade Mountains or further north.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: The first establishment in this area was called Roberts Roost, and it was like the proper Wild West, and later became a popular central hub for farmers in the surrounding valley due to its proximity to the Yakima River.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when the gold rush hit the area in the 1870s, an influx on workers and growth of the area led to the addition of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which also relied heavily on coal mines.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: The Northwest Improvement Company operated 10 coal mines in the valley, and though now on inoperable, underground tunnels and open shafts like the one that Jack Powell played around still exist.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Which is kind of a potential reasonable explanation for the hole.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Not one that's like miles deep.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: I know, but because no one knows where the hole is.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And straight down.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: They can't confirm or disprove that this an article from the Seattle Times in 2002 quoted Pat Pringle, a geologist with the State Department of Natural Resources, as saying the area's landscape formed more than 12 million years ago by a volcanic Lahar, makes a hole of such depth unlikely.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: He admitted that odd things exist in nature, but doubts a hole like Mel's is possible in the brittle volcanic rock near the area.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Even if it is, he's sure the heat of the earth would snap a fishing line long before it reached 80,000 feet.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's pretty deep.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: While now it's considered an urban legend and more or less has been debunked by geologists and the USGS.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Questions about this entire saga keep many searching for answers decades later.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So is Mel's whole a geological anomaly?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is there no record because it's a government cover-up?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely government cover-up.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And will we ever know the true identity of Mel Waters?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: USGS is on it.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: These experts they bring in is like the pawn shop guy's expert, like, hey, let me phone an expert.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's five bucks.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Nah, yeah, this is cover-up for sure.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: That guy was definitely going down miles with some fishing line.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then you also have to wonder, yeah, fishing line is pretty light, you know, if you only have a little bit of it.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: But anything in such a large capacity would be heavy.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Not only that, what was it?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: It could turn copper to silver.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even think 250k a year would be worth it, though.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they weren't giving they weren't giving him money because of the the alkal, whatever properties.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were another thing that there was a report that he tranquilized a sheep and lowered a sheep into the hole.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And when the sheep came out, the inside of it was cooked, but something was moving around in there, and he cut it open and this thing came out and it like lived in the hole.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, see now we're getting into like the the realm of just not believable.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in most of these articles or sources or accounts, and even Melwaters himself would say locals knew about this, neighbors knew about this.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where are the neighbors?
• 14:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: I want to know what the neighbors maybe they're getting 250k a year too.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Just buy up the whole nation.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Also, it was 250k a year, and if you don't agree, we'll find a drug lab on your property.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like they threatened him.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like if you don't agree, then we're gonna make it so you Oh no, 250k a year and I'm not working.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: What am I gonna do?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: You had to move to Australia.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: 250k year, I had to move to Peru, and where my money just goes super far.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: What am I gonna do?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: What do you what do you think?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Believability, creepy?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of it's a lot of people, you know.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: I just told you that I'd posted that thread.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: So many people said Mel's hole was like their favorite urban legend.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Mel's that guy.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: I guess.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone knows the hole.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And people are still like trying to find where it could be.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Trying to find Mel or Mel's hole.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Mel's hole.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: So like whether it's a mine shaft or whether it's something, I don't know, a sinkhole.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: But interesting that it did have similar things as the Oregon Vortex.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a little bit.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Except this guy's not making a business off it.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So true.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: He was just getting So true.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: He hadn't he hadn't gotten that far.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: He hadn't gotten that far.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Publicity, but who's benefiting from this?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's not Maybe you just wanted attention.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I guess.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, are you that bored that you want to call into a radio show and make up a story?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh yeah, there's definitely people out there.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: In in one of the reports it said that in his later phone calls when he talked about uh when he talked about like the federal agents being involved, it said he sounded terrified.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then in one of his last calls in 2002, because they were very sporadic, he sounded broken, paranoid, and afraid.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: It could just be a guy having a schizophrenic episode, they're just calling into a radio show.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I but it's the sp the sporadicness, like the the lack of consistency between the calls.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like he's calling every week, every other week.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: He called twice in 1997, once in 2000, once in 2002, and then he must have called another time in between then as well.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe he just missed dialed like his psychiatrist, ended up on a radio show.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but when you dial a radio show, it's like, okay, and you're live on air with so-and-so from Coast to Coast AM.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: The new quirky thing at the office.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, this show was known for I don't know.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just spooky.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: It must they must have had a segment that I don't know.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, believability.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty low.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna have to go like two.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've got geologists coming out, like, yeah, it's not really possible.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: The government, yeah, not really possible.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean not even not really, like very improbable.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: But not like this could never happen.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it's nature.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: It could like anything could happen.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: 15 miles straight down.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: I agree would be very unlikely.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Also, where are you getting that much that much fishing line?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy to me too.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it's I want to know where are the friends, where are the family?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because the feds didn't pay them off.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: They might have.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Where are the neighbors?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be more believable if it had said like, oh yeah, like one kid from every generation has jumped in.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't think anyone's jumping in.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, it's like, is there a bottom?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Is there am I gonna flow back up?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Am I going to China?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Who's not jumping in?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you risk jumping in?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Me personally, I wouldn't jump in, but right, right.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Homie might want to.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Homie might want to.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Free will?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Creepiness, I'll give it a if I was staring in a male's hole, then you just wanted to say that.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: You just wanted to say that, dude.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: If if I was looking over the edge, staring in a male's hole, it'd probably be like a like an eight.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine if something was staring back at you.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Creepy?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Don't even need that.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: That would be less creepy.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be more creepy if it's just a bottomless black pit.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: No end inside.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it I would just be like vertigo.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even think it needs to be that deep for the bottom to be black, you know?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or to like it be without light at a certain point.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, yeah, it wouldn't have to be that deep.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it it could be eight feet deep, but it could look really deep because I don't know about eight feet.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um if it pr it's pretty wide.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Nine feet across.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Which means more light would be in.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's true.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And also in the guy that talked about a mine shaft that he played in when he he was a kid.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't go straight down.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was Well, yeah, it's a mine shaft for people.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, but there are Who's mining straight down?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, I know, but there are, you know, like when they collapse, then that is more of a straight up situation.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: But this, it was more like a gradual decline because it was in the same area around where he was talking about.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's where he that's what he thought.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Do we have any updates on uh on red elk?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: No updates on red elk.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: He called in he so he called into the radio show in 2008.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because he This was after the expedition?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yes.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm unsure if he did multiple expeditions that like he considered himself an expert, but was the next to call into Coast to Coast and to discuss Mel's Hole in September of 2008.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: He carries a piece of what he believes to be an alien spacecraft on a necklace and lectures about impending apocalypse and reptoids who live beneath the surface of the earth.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, middle earth.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: So he claims Red Elk states that the hole is between 24 and 28 miles deep.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: But he refuses to But he's never seen it?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well he allegedly he has seen it.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: How it's that deep, how he determined it is that deep is unclear.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: But came to me in a dream.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: So in 2008 was like kind of when the last not even update, but Yeah, signed an update.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: I bet this red elk dude inside of like a tribal hat, he's got like a tinfoil hat.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, probably.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, full full kit.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, the site, Mel'shole.com, generated more than 8,000 posts, but the moderator said that because no progress had been made in 10 years since the phone calls to the show, that the site was basically gonna be archived because they were just purely speculating for 10 years.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: So Mel needed to come forward and like confirm, clarify.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Mel'shole.com.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Are you looking?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, actually, don't look it up.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Don't, Garrett, don't look it up.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Does it lead you to anything?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't find the actual site, it's just stuff about it.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I did remember there's a there's a Gravity Falls episode where um the the two main characters fall into a hole and they're just falling forever, like they're just falling in pitch black.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like a Tartarus type?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Dang, Tartarus is in Central Washington.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, Gravity Falls organ.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, I know, but I was thinking.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, a male's hole?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Could be, yeah.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go find Kronos.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let's leave whatever's in that hole wherever the hole is alone.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not try to find the hole.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the thing that was in the sheep crawled out, got in a male.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Made him go schizo and then leave.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, I don't like that.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the government's protecting it.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like that at all.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: My question is there was never an explanation as to why these other people, besides curiosity, would want to find the location of this hole.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Mel's hole's famous, bro.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: One lady, she on this expedition, she had migraines, and she was hoping that the hole would be the cure to her migraines.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if she jumps in.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I love that like the pre-internet, this is very early internet days, and they still managed to set up Mel's Hole's Hole.com.com between 1997 and 2002.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a little confused by the motivation behind people besides just pure curiosity.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Cause I don't know.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's like PKX finding.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: You find a hole.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then what?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: What's your what are you gonna do?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: If bronze or copper or whatever gets turned into silver, I'm there.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it's for financial or monetary gain?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Probably.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be down.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Probably.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know about the migraines, but.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when I was writing this, this might not be creepy normally, but when I was writing this and I was reading the stuff about the feds coming after him, I was like, they're kidding.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and honestly, the feds after you sounds worse than the squatch after you.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Bat squatch.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, any of the squatches.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: We don't need to be.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Not just the one, the one named one.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Only one that's unseen.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Also, it should be noted that the hole does not exist on Google Maps.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: The well.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously protected by trees.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or the government.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Google, don't just go ahead and copy and paste another area over this one.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: So is it a government conspiracy?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Allegedly, when he tried to go back once, there were helicopters over the area and vans surrounded the property.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: They had active helicopters flying around.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I guess.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Just transformers, bro?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Active threat, like years after.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: All the transform all the Transformers landed in one spot?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: And went miles in the middle of the year.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: What's like the most reasonable explanation for say the hole was real?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Say Mel was real.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: What's the most reasonable explanation for federal agents to be involved?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: Schizophrenia.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Any all of that aside.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Monetary gain.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Monetary gain?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: From federal agents?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, they're trying to exploit something for sure.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: For money, I don't know.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, if I can turn copper into silver.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Or bronze into silver or whatever.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is that crazy?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: If you can turn bronze into silver, you can turn silver into gold.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then they can fill back up the US gold standard Fort Knox.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Fill that back up.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Dang, for real.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hasn't been an external audit, and who knows how long we should make an episode about that.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Does that happen in Northern California, Oregon, Washington, or Canada?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: No, but.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Might have to be a personal project for you.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: We got fake paper in our wallets.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have any paper in my wallet.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Me neither.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Numbers on the screen though.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Monopoly money.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well that was that was Mel's Hole.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Aren't you glad we covered that?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Aren't you glad we dove into Mel's Hole?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, really dove in.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Head first.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Bruh.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, thank you for listening.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: Again, happy Thursday or Friday or Saturday or Sunday.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever you're listening to this.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any stories, cases, urban legends, or paranormal experiences, anything like that, please email yearlybelovedpodcast at gmail.com and follow us on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, Early Beloved Podcast.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Follow us, give us five stars, give us a review.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: New episodes every Thursday.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we will see you next week.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Subscribe if you smiled.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Dude.