Mystery of The Mel's Hole

On Feb. 21, 1997, a man identifying himself as Mel Waters of the Ellensburg area appeared on “Coast to Coast with Art Bell,” a nationally syndicated AM talk show. Bell’s late-night show featured quirky and alien- and conspiracy-filled stories. At that time, Waters talked about a mysterious hole in the ground on his rural property about nine miles west of Ellensburg by phone. Federal government agents seized the land with no explanation as to whether the hole was a dangerous threat or important to national security or both. Waters said the cover story the government gave was that it was the old site of a downed aircraft.

Waters claimed federal agents forced him to lease the land to the government. The lease payments allowed him to move to Australia. The hole apparently had paranormal properties, despite the fact locals dumped their garbage there for years. He said a resident had once disposed of a dog that had passed away by depositing the remains in the pit; however, the resident later reported seeing the dog, identifiable by its collar, running through the woods later, alive and well.

He also began performing some experiments to see what he could learn about subject. First, Waters tied a roll of Lifesaver candies to the end of a 1,500-foot length of fishing line in order to determine whether there was any water present in subject. Upon reeling up the fishing line, Waters found the candies still attached, with no sign of any dissolution that might indicate the presence of water.

For his second experiment, Waters said he attached a 1 lb. lead weight to the end of his fishing line; however, when he reached the end of the spool, he tied on a new spool and continued lowering the line into the pit. The goal was to determine how far down subject extended; however, after Waters had lowered 80,000 feet, or approximately 15 miles’ worth of fishing line, he had still not located subject’s bottom.

As the story became more elaborate, Mel's Hole captivated listeners, many of whom were eager to verify the hole's existence. But Mel refused to tell people where the hole was, just that it was near his property on the Manastash Ridge near Ellensburg. He was featured on the show a number of times, until 2002, when a local paper reported that no man named Mel Waters existed in the area.

The finding just about put the story to rest, until it was resurrected by a intertribal medicine man named Red Elk.

Red Elk appeared out of nowhere in 2008, claiming he was well-aquainted with the hole and that it had many bizarre properties. Red Elk didn't start slow and build up, but instead immediately claimed that the hole set fire to ice, cooked a sheep live and implanted a seal fetus inside the cooked sheep. Even for those suspending every ounce of their disbelief, the story had become too bizarre, and too crazy to entertain.

Sources:

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mel-s-hole

https://theghostinmymachine.wordpress.com/2016/02/01/encyclopaedia-of-the-impossible-mels-hole/

http://www.dailyrecordnews.com/news/getting-to-the-bottom-of-mel-s-hole/article_d72b6a68-7ac2-11e1-b3ce-001a4bcf887a.html

Pic Source:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ellensburg,+WA,+USA/@47.002537,-120.6218832,13z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x5499f232b23a8e31:0xf8b0db614cc00917