Haunted Cosmos - The Dusty Tome: Mel's Hole

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

We are on vacation! Please enjoy this midseason break where we give you a special look at our patron-exclusive show, The Dusty Tome. This one is about Mel's hole ... trust me, you're going to want to listen!Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!Want to keep nefarious fairy Bigfoots away and also avoid icky seed oils, preservatives, artificial colorants, and other nasties in your daily shower routine? Then check out the vast array of homemade soaps from our friends at Indigo Sundries Soap Co.! Go to indigosundriessoap.com to learn more—and as our gift to you, use code HAUNTEDCOSMOS for 10% off your whole order!This episode is sponsored by New Dominion Design Co. Visit their website here and learn more!This episode is sponsored by Backwards Planning Financial. Visit Joe's website here or give him a call (615-767-2555).Finally, this episode is sponsored by Gray Toad Tallow. Visit their website here and use COSMOS15 at checkout for 15% off your order. Support the show

This episode of Haunted Cosmos is brought to you by Indigo Sundries, backwards planning financial, Dominion Design Co, Gray Toad Tallow, and our supporters at patreon.com. Did you know that our top two patrons get early access to all of our main shows, and all of our patrons get our main shows ad-free? Patrons also get access to our exclusive weekly show, The Dusty Tome, only available on patreon.com. So, if you like the show, consider becoming a...

patron today to get access to all these benefits and more. And now on with the show. Hello everyone and welcome to this special mid-season break episode of Haunted Cosmos. Since we had our conference this past week and both Brian and myself are on a family vacation this week, we figured we'd take the opportunity to showcase one of our recent episodes of our Patreon exclusive show, The Dusty Tome. This episode is on a topic that we have both found very interesting in the past. I hope that you guys enjoy it. And hey, if you do like what you hear, you should think about becoming a patron of the show. We try to keep our patrons well entertained and give them the value that they deserve and even go above and beyond that every time that we get

an opportunity. So I hope that y'all enjoy this mid-season break show. We'll be back in two weeks with another main episode of Haunted Cosmos, and then we'll be eventually wrapping up season three. It's crazy to think that we're almost at the end of a third season of the show. Thank you all for listening and we'll look forward to seeing you back on our normally scheduled program in two weeks. With that, I'd encourage you all to sit back, relax, crack open a nice lemon-locroi, and enjoy the show. In the later chapters of 1st Samuel, the First King of Israel, Saul, greets us after having completed his descent into evil mania. Though he had outlawed the witchcraft and necromancy that had characterized God's people during the time of the judges, no doubt a fruit of Samuel's own judgment and counsel to the king.

Some of these dark practitioners still existed within the promised land. Apparently they acted as sort of black market sleeper cell magicians who are ready to engage in the demonic practice at any moment for any legitimate buyer. And we see just how far Saul has fallen when we read of him going to one of these magicians, a witch in Indoor, ensuing for her services and calling up the recently fallen prophet who had always offered the king wisdom and righteous rebuke. It is a strange episode in the scriptures that betrays the complexity of a fallen ruler, operating in a land meant to be permeated and indeed was permeated by the law of God.

In some sense, Saul is trying to do something right in seeking out the word of Samuel. Who else, apart from David and Jonathan and presumably Abner, was there who was always willing to tell the king what he needed to hear as opposed to what he wanted to hear. But of course, he's going about this in a most evil way. He has no plausible deniability left. He cannot plead ignorance of the law of God. After all, the law of Moses prescribes exactly what a king of Israel is supposed to do

in his free time. And what is that? Well, he is supposed to study the law to the utmost. He should know it backwards. And so Saul knew what he was doing, and he knew that it was wrong. God said that his people ought not suffer a witch to live. While Saul did well in outlawing the practice, he should have gone all the way in his obedience. Maybe then his condemnation would not have been amplified so much.

For while we know that what Saul is doing is wrong, what comes of his actions should never cease to amaze us. Because you see, when Saul asks the witch to conjure up the prophet Samuel, it works. The servant of Satan performs her ritual and sacrilegious rite, expecting all the while for her demonic familiar to pose itself as Samuel, to fool and deceive yet another unwitting customer. But then we are told the real ghost of the real Samuel comes up out of the ground to meet the nefarious party.

His presence sends the witch into a wild stupor of accusation against her king. She was not expecting the real spirit of Samuel to come, and so his coming signaled the power of God working behind her sin, a powerful act of the most high, that only made sense if her customer was the actual king of Israel. As she swoons in the shock and hellish incense of the scene, the late prophet continues along the grain of God's puzzling providence and does the unthinkable. He speaks to Saul. He gives Saul the word he was so desperate for. Of course, this word served to fully anathematize the king, but it is a word nonetheless. It's a wild biblical episode to be sure, and it is one I've dealt with at great length in my

Strange Bible Stories series that is posted for you all here on Patreon. So why am I bringing it up now? Well, I want to focus on just one part of it, a part that often goes overlooked. I'll read for you now from 1 Samuel 28, 12 through 14. When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice. And the woman said to Saul, why have you deceived me? You are Saul. The king said to her, do not be afraid.

What do you see? And the woman said to Saul, I see a God coming up out of the earth. He said to her, what is his appearance? And she said, an old man is coming up, and he is wrapped in a robe. And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground and paid homage. Why does Samuel come up? He was a saint, a prophet of God no less. He didn't he have come down from heaven?

Well, no. And now we find a breadcrumb half covered in dark and cold dirt of time far gone, whose cohorts will eventually lead us into today's stories. We imagine that when we die, we go to heaven. This is right and proper in our aeon of creation. After all, Christ has done his work. He is reconciled God and man in his atoning blood, and so we are made fit, when washed in the purifying blood of the Savior,

to stand boldly before the throne of God. The apostle is therefore not lying to us when he says that to be separate from the body is to be alive with Christ. In the Christian age, the church age, we really do go to heaven when we die. But it wasn't always like this. We read in Genesis 37 that the patriarch Jacob's soul was in Sheeol upon his death.

Sheal, it will be noticed, is not heaven. Far from it, sheal is the belly of the earth. It is this place deep within the bosom of the world that for all of time before Christ housed every soul that had been sundered from its body on the surface. We know that wicked souls are there too because of passages like the one found in Psalm 31 that make this much clear.

Before Christ came, all the dead souls went to the same place, this shiel, a literal place in the earth that somehow contains spirits, and it still exists today too. Though Christ led the souls of the saints' faiths, from Adam to himself, up to heaven, after his death. We know that the souls of the damned are still in Sheal

into the day of final judgment, wherein Sheel will be tossed into the lake of fire. It is not symbolic. It is not metaphor. It is not mere poetic or prophetic language. It is a geographical place, somewhere far under the reaches of our feeble drills and diggers, that make the little scratches in the dirt we call holes. Oh no, the earth is full of deep.

and dark places, and these places are full of great mystery for us. So why didn't Samuel's spirit come down from heaven? Well, because Christ had not come to lead him there yet. So Samuel came up from Sheal. Once, during the long sojourn of Israel in the wilderness around Sinai, some of the clan of Levi and Rubin rose up in opposition to the prophet Moses. Their names were Cora, Dathan, and Abiram. These men felt that Moses had grown arrogant, and had set himself up above the rest of the host of God's people against God's own will. The men in all their households and clans called Moses out on the accusation, and Moses called their bluff. He told them to take care lest they incur God's wrath. They did not listen.

Thus, God ordered the men to form themselves in opposition to Moses, whereupon Moses said that if the men opposed to him die as all men die, then they were right, and God has not sent him to be first among them. But he went on to say, if the usurpers perish in this other way, then the rest of the assembly will know that Moses is from God. And what is this other method of perishing from the midst of the congregation? Moses tells Israel that if Cora, Dathan, and Abiram are swallowed up by the earth with their households, it will be proof of Moses's ordination for his office's leader and profit of the people. We read in number 16

that right after Moses finishes telling the people of these parameters the ground opened up and quote, swallowed them up so they and all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol and the earth closed over them and they perished from the midst of the assembly

end quote. You see how weird this is. Sheal is a place, a real place inside the earth where not only souls, but also human bodies can go into alive, albeit by this powerful display of God. Oh yes, this world we live on is a strange place for many reasons, not the least of which, is that there seems to be places within it, that many people have gone and continue to go to, but that are complete puzzles to us on the surface.

We humans seem to be very interested in the idea of journeying deep into the cracks and fissures of the world. We enammer ourselves with fictional stories of heroes descending into Guy's belly in order to win glory for themselves by vanquishing some unforeseen foe that dwells there already. To us, it just makes sense that that which is evil, darkened and weighed down by the impurity of sin and the curse would stay as far down as possible. Think of Ransom's journey into the center of Peralandra in the second book of the trilogy bearing his name. He does not find merely fire and cavernous waste there. He also finds life, life that is particularly enigmatic to him.

It seems off, otherworldly, other in general, and unfit for the dignity of creatureliness. Think of Orwell's journey into the center of the world until we have faces. Think of the medieval understanding of the earth, being in the center of the universe, not only because it is the recipient of God's attention and indeed his own self, but also because it's heavy, weighed down with sin and stain, and unfit to be flying in the higher spheres of heaven's heritage. Think of how this idea is most brilliantly emphasized by Dante in his divine comedy, where he and Virgil begin their ascent to love by a descent into the hell of Sheal within the earth, at whose center they find none other than the devil himself.

What else could be there but the devil? What else could be at the fiery center of the cursed dwelling of man than the fiery fallen serpent who sowed the seeds of curse in the first place? We have always been drawn in by the strange attraction of depth in the world, but even as we are strangely attracted to it, we are repulsed by the imaginings of what we might find there. Perhaps this is wise. In Yemen, there is a whole about 750 feet deep and 100 feet deep,

and 100 feet wide. The geologists say it is a sinkhole naturally formed in the dry and rocky desert by ancient soft deposits beneath it. According to the locals, though, it is far from natural. The old wives say that it was originally a prison built by the ancient people to house the demons that continued to find a path through the earthen fractures around it to the surface. One must reckon with the conviction, the pure pathos surrounding the story. At any rate, people connect these deep, dark places with malice and sinister intelligence. Part of the question lies in the fact that no human being has ever been to the bottom of this hole, at least none that we know of.

And this isn't for lack of trying. Numerous expeditions have sought to land a man down at the bottom, a bottom whose depth admittedly does not seem entirely impressive at first glance. But all of them have failed, due to the horrible ventilation and lack of oxygen that greets descendants at a certain point. They have made it some of the way down, though, and what they have seen has left them hungry for answers. Explores tell of strange things on the walls of the hole.

Markings and formations and objects that seem out of place. Locals claim that while exploring the boar, they have been pulled towards it, like a moon falling around and around a giant star, growing ever closer to the deadly surface. Another story, an urban legend out of the labyrinthine regions of Siberia, Siberia near the Arctic line, reinforces this association, and readies our minds for the real

brunt of today's humble episode. Lore says that sometime during the Soviet era of Russia, a team of mining experts led by a man under the pseudonym Mr. Azakov began digging a hole in the utumnic forests of the cold north with the stated goal of, well, nobody knows what the stated goal of the dig actually was. What is claimed is that the team dug the hole down about nine miles into the crust before supposedly breaking through the last feet of rock and into a wide open cavern. The team lowered sensory and measurement equipment down into the hole, heat-tolerant probes and even microphones,

which signaled back to them that something strange had been found. The temperature in the hole was said to be upwards of 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, height, and the speakers connected to the lowered mic, played back the sound of tormented screams echoing through the chamber. The team had drilled right into hell, or so they claimed. Unfortunately, we never did learn who they really were. Though the Soviets did dig a seven-and-a-half-mile deep hole in a different part of the country, they never broke through to a fiery furnace filled with screams. They found some geological oddities in the rocks, sure, but they never did. They never, never claimed to have encountered any devils during their dig.

Later, after the story of the well to hell had gained more widespread popularity, it was discovered that the recordings of the screams of the damned were actually looped together sound effects from a popular 1972 German horror movie called Barren Blood. The well to hell never existed. It was all a hoax. But it was a good hoax, and that it played upon this shared fascination man has

with the unknown things that may be crawling or swimming or flying beneath his feet. And the focus of today's episode is another such story. It is one like unto the well to hell, and that it's full of intrigue and suggestions for fantastical conclusions. But could it also be a hoax? Ladies and gentlemen, the breadcrumbs have finally come to their end. Welcome to the cobwebbed and squeaky doorway leading into the world's basement. This is the story of Mel's Hole.

Brian, I got bad news. The other day, I was using one of the big box soap products to wash myself, and I got this weird urge to go buy a Stanley cup and fill it with iced coffee. And it started to feel a little cold in the house. I just wanted to wrap myself up in like a heavy wool blanket. And then also, I started Googling ticket prices to Taylor Swift concerts. Ben, what are you doing? Don't you know that these big box soap companies just jam all their soaps full of hormone disrupting chemicals? they're probably turning you into a girl. Well, I know that now, but what am I supposed to do about it? Ben, you ignorant normie. All you've needed to do is go to indigo sundry soap.com

and support a great Christian family business that's making all sorts of soaps that are completely free of hormone disrupting chemicals and other nasties. Okay, I am literally going to indigo sundry soap.com right now. Tell me what to buy. Ben, what I would recommend doing is clicking on bundles and then selecting the best one for you. You could get the men six-pack.

you could get my favorite, the clay bundle. Ooh, I like the pipe and jug bundle. That seems cool. Or a men six pack, because that'll make me feel like I have something that I actually don't. So true, King. And you know what else I heard? Because they're such good friends of the show, Indigo Sundry's Soap Company is offering 10% off your order if you just use all caps,

discount code, Haunted Cosmos, no spaces. Wait, Brian, you're going way too fast. I didn't get all that. Is that information in the show description? Ben, you ignorant normie. It's always in the show. description. Okay, so I'm going to go to indigo sundry soap.com. I'm going to pick the men's six-pack bundle, and I'm going to use code haunted cosmos at checkout, all caps, no spaces. And if I forgot all that,

it's in the description of the show. Of course, Ben. And if you just do that, then you will stop wanting to do all of those girly things and maybe you'll, I don't know, maybe want to buy a classic car to restore or something dignified. We are living in the beginning of a new reformation. Christian content is being produced at a rapid rate. Art, businesses, publications, ministries, and a thousand other mediums are acting as agents to get us out of our current anti-Christian world. And all of these mediums are going to need marketing to help them get more eyes and ears on them. New Dominion Design Co is ready to provide that help. Unashamedly Christian, New Dominion Design Co exists to labor alongside fellow members of the body of

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Enter code Cosmos 15. That's COSMOS 15, all caps, for 15% off your order. In 1977, administrators working with Art Bell on the hit late night radio show, coast to coast, received an unexpected fax. The admin's eyes grew wide with excitement, as he read sentence after sentence whose signatory was a man claiming to be called Mel Waters. Mel claimed that he was the owner of a large chunk of property in eastern Washington State. He said that the property was mostly normal apart from one glaring outlier, a deep hole.

One Mel had never found before recently, and one that seemed to tow the line between natural and artificial, with effortless and uncanny ease. Mel said that the hole was at least 80,000 feet deep. He had never reached the bottom, so could not be sure. And that gruesome and unsettling things tended to happen around it. After reading the facts for himself, Art Bell, the host of Coast to Coast, booked Mel Waters to call in a few days later. Mel wasted little time in sharing the lurid details of his situation with Mr. Bell.

He claimed that he had lived on a property for two years. The previous owner had been there for about 35 years. And far as he could tell, all of his neighbors could never remember a time where the hole didn't exist. Though he had only just found it, everyone else had known of it long beforehand. The hole sat at an unassuming part of the land, with nothing else special to show for why this would be the spot providentially chosen for such an anomaly. A thick stone retaining wall surrounded a steeply sloped, inverted cone of dirt that circled to the actual hole about 15 feet down from the surface of the ground. From there, it was black and seemingly bottomless. Mel and neighbors would frequently throw trash or other random objects into the hole.

They'd excitedly sit by the hole in perfect silence after tossing something in, but they never heard any splashes, crashes, or echoes of the same, indicating the unlucky object had struck the bottom of this vein. Mel took quick and obsessive interest in the hole. He spent hours beside it, lowering spool after spool of high test-testif. fishing line into the abyss, only for it always to come back up dry, clean, and taught the whole way. After using 15 miles of line with a weight on its end, no bottom was ever found. Mel told Art and the listeners about one particularly supernatural story surrounding the hole. According to one of

his neighbors, a hunting dog of theirs had suddenly passed away some years prior to Mel's purchase of the property, driven by morbid curiosity more than anything else. The neighbor got permission from the previous owner before throwing the dog's corpse into the mysterious hole. He claimed that he was hunting through the adjacent land some days later, when he saw the dog running after some birds in a nearby meadow. The same dog that he had thrown into the hole, it was his dog, same fur, same gait, same collar, same bark. He couldn't believe his eyes. But the vision was gone after a moment when the undead dog ran into a thicket and didn't respond to his calls. He never saw the dog again and never understood the true nature

of what he encountered that day. That was the first animal that Mel or his neighbors knew of ever going into the hole. He said that every live animal on his property refused to ever go near it. Anytime they would be dragged or herded into its vicinity, they would react with aggression and fear trying to pull themselves away as much as they could. The animals hated the hole, clearly sensing some dark power within. Not long after that live phone interview, the studio at Coast to Coast received another fax

from the man claiming to be Mel Waters. Mel said that he had driven into the town of Yakima the morning after the radio show in order to do some grocery shopping at the local Costco. He was gone for a couple of hours, but no more than that. As he approached the driveway to his property, he saw guardrails blocking his entrance. Vehicles that seemed to belong to some unnamed three-letter agency peppered the area. Men walked around in and out of vans and hazmat suits. Mel approached the

property and was told by a man guarding the entrance that a plane had crashed on the land and his team was there to investigate. Mel looked up to the sky behind the trees. There was no smoke. He mentioned this and asked to speak to the man in charge, whereupon a man in a civilian suit approached his car. Mel repeated that this was his property, that he didn't understand why some hazmat workers would need to be there, and that he didn't see any smoke or other signs indicating a plane crash. The man calmly, but with an air of authority, replied that it wasn't necessarily his property. The man told Mel how easy it would be for he and his team to find a drug lab or something on his land if they really wanted to. Mel knew where the man was going and beat him to it. He asked if he could

leave, and the man told him not to come back until they contacted him. They didn't need his phone number. They already knew how to reach him. And so Mel drove away, perplexed. Could there have actually been a plane crash? Could it have been drug-related? Maybe it was all a coincidence, but why the hazmat team? Why such high security? No. This wasn't just happenstance, and Mel knew. it. This fax also included an account of a story Mel had forgotten to tell art during their call. Years back, one of his neighbors had driven up to the hole later in the night to dump some trash. As his car's lights shone upon the spot where he knew the hole would be, he slammed on his brakes in shock. Instead of the normal scene one would expect in the empty forest, this neighbor

saw a solid black beam, blacker than black, shooting up into the sky from out of the hole, blocking the vision of whatever pieces of forest or star should lie behind it. After this development, Art and his team wasted no time in scheduling another live phone interview with Mel. It happened three days later. Overall, this call did little more than elaborate on the details contained in the facts he had sent in the days prior. However, some new information did come to light. After the first call in the events of the following day, Mel had made it out to the hole to take some measurements of the diameter of the opening. While these measurements got somehow lost between the side trails of conversation,

Mel did say that he saw multiple black military-style helicopters flying overhead while he inspected the hole, something that he had never noticed happening before. Soon thereafter, Mel's realtor had been contacted by an anonymous buyer, offering an absurd sum to Mel in the hopes of buying the property in cash, no questions asked, no banks, no closing period. Seeing the strangeness of all that was happening, Mel refused the offer. The final oddity spoken of was one that involved yet another neighbor. This man was far older than the hunter with the undead dog, or the late-night garbage

disposer who had seen the black beam propagating from the hole. This man recounted to Mel how many years ago, at least 45, he remembers the hole on his property being surrounded by stone-hinged-type pillars of stone that seemed to be to mark the whole as sacred or powerful in some ancient pagan way. While all of this brought a weight of incredulity down on the situation for some listeners, others wrote in, noting how such a storied past might mean that Mel couldn't be making it up at all. Maybe he was just a man who stumbled on something he wasn't ready for and who now didn't

know what to really do about it. The call ended rather abruptly and nobody could expect what would happen next. Nobody heard from Mel again for the next three years. There's a quaint but incredibly charming craftsman-style house in Ellensburg, Washington at 603 East 4th Avenue. Today it boasts a revitalized curve appeal with dark green craftsman fascia accenting the more muted and light green siding that hugs the home. The wooden front door sits off to the right of the home's center line and is surrounded by

a partial front porch in Gable. The left side of the home's face contains one tall window that betrays a laundry area inside. The center of the home, however, shows off four tall and mirrored windows, two on the first floor and two on the upper, that serve as a kind of party piece. Or at least they were probably meant to. Usually though, people's attention is drawn right away to the majestic maple tree that stands tall and proud in the midmost of the home's humble front yard. And as one's eyes traced down from the crown of branches and leaves towards the trunk that

feeds them, they're met with something very bizarre. Near the tree's base, there is something akin to a kickstand, jutting out randomly from the tree and digging partially into the soft earth of the grass. For years, the late 1990s owner of the house, a teacher named Otto, dug through local news archives to find an answer for what this weird thing was. Surely others had noticed it before and done some more digging into it. Eventually, he found an article from 1909, which was already long after the home's original construction that answered his questions. This weird structure sticking out of the front lawn's tree, this thing that the tree had grown around and made into part of itself,

was the jawbone of a whale, hundreds of miles and mountain ranges away from the ocean. The jawbone of a whale was baked into this tree. Unfortunately, now that he got this answered, he came up short on answering other questions like, when did it get there and how? These are mysteries beyond the pay grade of anyone today. It has simply been too long. All anyone knows is that for as long as people have been in and around Ellensburg, the whalebone has been stuck into the old maple tree.

According to Mel Waters, the same can be said of the strange well of darkness on his rural property. According to him, neighbors, old folk, seasoned locals, and lore masters of Washington, the whole has just always been there. The stonework around it has always been there. Indeed, there used to be more. And nobody has ever known where it ends or what sort of liminal horrors may or may not lie deep within it. It was at this point of the third call on coast to coast that the story truly began to break.

Mel started by recounting his original story for arts audience so listeners could see whether or no his version of events still lined up. They did well enough and callers into the show seemed to indicate that this made Mel more credible. But then he said something else. He said that when he had faxed in three years earlier, he was actually married to a woman who was the actual named owner of the property. He said that they finalized their divorce almost immediately after. after the facts, and the settlement included his ex-wife leasing the property to him as long as Mel desired it. He said that though he claimed to have refused the generous offer from the strange men in black to buy the property, he had only said that because his contract with them demanded it. He had in fact sold the property,

and he was more than happy to keep quiet about it, as it meant that he would be raking in $250,000 a month in perpetuity. Mel, again in line with his contractual obligations, moved to the Sydney area of Australia and carried on in his non-disclosure commitment between he and the whole. But as if to save his word from sinking into the realm of totally unbelievable, Art Bell assured his listeners that he had stayed in constant communication with Mel the whole time and could personally confirm that he was telling the truth about the property sale, the divorce, and the well-financed move to Australia, where he still lived. In fact, just before this move, Art had intended to have Mel on for an update show, but Mel never called in when the time came.

Art took this live and unscripted opportunity to ask Mel why he had done this, why he had bailed, to which Mel replied, one of the craziest twists one can imagine in this story. He had traveled back to Washington in order to help a family member, of his move a few cities over. On one of his final days before going back to Australia, he and his kin were riding on the bus back to his old place when an altercation broke out. Mel didn't remember much about how the argument started, what exactly it was over, and who exactly it involved, but he remembered that it somehow involved him. The next thing he remembered was waking up in a random alleyway in San Francisco 12 days later. He had been knocked out,

and had no memory for the past 12 days. But he did know one thing. He knew that his mouth was insanely sore. Immediately he went to the dentist only to discover that in that 12-day knockout, all four of his molars had been removed. In addition to this, he quickly learned that his ex-wife

was initiating legal proceedings against him for not abiding by the terms of the lease of the property containing the whole. Mel was confused. He didn't know where to turn. He forgot completely about his commitment to appear on Art's show and spent the following years trying to dig himself out of the potential legal mess his wife was levying against him. Art, shocked at the revelations, ultimately seemed content with Mel's answers.

Another two years passed before the final interview occurred. And we'll conclude this episode with the details that came to light in this last public correspondence between art and Mel. You have to be the judge of Mel's story. Is it easy to believe? No, and it doesn't get any easier. Is it merely a fable that's easy for us to believe and love because we feel some weird draw to deep things

and mysteries hidden in the earth? Perhaps. Perhaps it's akin to the feeling one gets when standing on the edge of a canyon or fissure and red desert rock under big and blue desert sky. You know what I'm talking about. That weird feeling of beautiful. being pulled or pushed over the sheer cliff that you're precariously looking over.

You know you shouldn't, but there's a draw to it anyways. But is it impossible? Is any of Mel's story impossible? Well, I guess the true answer is that we don't know. But if we don't know, then for all intents and purposes, our answer has to be, no, it's not impossible. Not even a little bit. But after the last story from Mel, it might be. Two years later, Mel called in to coast to coast for a fourth time.

His life had taken a dramatic downturn. His muddy was gone, and the absurdly massive monthly payments had ceased. His wife had ruined him with her legal proceedings. She had won, and he had lost everything. His humanitarian efforts that he had began in Australia were dismantled by the government. His staff was fired and he was left to clean up a mess he didn't know was there. What's more, he no longer had a lot. any claim whatsoever to the property in Washington State. Mel's hole was Mel's hole no longer.

Despite this, he took nothing back from his story. It had all been real. He swore by it. He even swore on a Bible without flinching or having any second thought. Lord have mercy. Art confirmed by the work of some of his listeners that Google Earth showed a blacked and blurred out section of the map over the area where Mel had claimed to the whole to be. Now, I couldn't find it, but I also didn't look for it for too long, and the diameter is only nine feet, so I'm happy to be charitable and just believe Art. As the conversation moved, Art claimed that a television crew had gone to the ridge where Mel said the hole resided, and they had found clear signs of military presence blocking their way. But listeners really perked up when Mel dropped a bomb that nobody was expecting.

He had found another hole. In 2001, Mel Waters was contacted by residents of a Basque Indian reservation somewhere in Nevada. Through the grapevine, they had heard tell of his work and natural healing via plants, scavenged from the land. They also heard whispers of an odd hole he was associated with. They invited Mel out to join them in forging parties to try and glean insights from Mel on how they could better perform their healing services for the tribe. But right away, as Mel stepped out of the car for his arrival,

they instead took him to a hole. This hole, much like the one on Mel's old land, was about nine feet in diameter. Nobody had ever found its bottom. Animals acted strange around it. In all respects, it was very much like the weird and almost portal-like thing Mel had escaped from. But one thing made it very different. Around the rim of the hole, instead of a stone retaining wall, was a highly advanced metal collar. This collar put off some strange force that seemed to damp in the sound and refract the light of whatever was across from it.

So if a person was standing on either pole of the hole, their voices would be muffled and their figures hazy to one another. The Basques said that the hole had been there for as long as their history had a tradition, which was for at least 200 years. Mel dropped a metal wrench into the hole haphazardly, knowing it would bounce around the metal collar and lining that stretched down. down as far as the eye could see, but he heard nothing in response. Mel watched as one of the basks brought a sheep close to the hole. The man had to force the sheep closer and closer as she reared and kicked her feeble legs away from the spot. She didn't want to go to it.

They put her into a cage that was hoisted directly above the whole center by a crane. They had 1,500 feet of steel cable to work with. They began to lower the cage, with the screaming sheep. into the heart of the world. As the cage descended past the level of the ground, the sheep's screams immediately ceased to be audible. They could see that she was trying to scream and she was shaking, but they could only see it. That helped people reclaim their stomachs. They reached the halfway point of the cable and noticed it was no longer being jolted by the jerking movements of the sheep. They kept going. Finally they reached the 1500 foot mark and brought

the machine to a stop. They let the cage sit there, silent and still, for a full 30 minutes before beginning to bring it slowly back up to them. As the cage and sheep crested the shadow that sat a few feet into the hole, everyone was unsurprised to find that the sheep was still and appeared to be dead. The Basque healer, who had been standing by, asked for help and quickly carried the sheep from the cage to a rudimentary autopsy table he had carted out with him. The Sheep was not breathing, had no pulse, and showed absolutely no signs of life. The healer began to cut the sheep open and peel back the layers of fur and skin that stopped him from seeing the organs inside. And once this was done, everyone stepped back in despair. The sheep had been cooked from the

inside and was fried to black. But one thing remained that had not been there before. A tumorous growth, protected by a thick mucus, lay pulsating in the cooked cavity of the sheep. The healer carefully removed the growth. He pushed his blade through the viscous protective coating and into the thin membrane of strange skin. He cut down half the circumference of the globule with ease and reeled back quickly to miss being splashed by the monstrosity that rolled out to meet him. He, Mel, and all the others started to shake. and gag and ask questions clearly motivated by sincere horror. On the table lay the fetus of some chimeric abomination that looked like a seal merged with a human.

Its appearance was mostly that of a seal, but the eyes, the eyes were a man's. Those eyes were unmistakable, filled with something that the rest of them could not shake the haunting gaze of. The thing was still connected to its cocoon, via something akin to an umbilical, record. Mel Waters ended the call with the news that he had been diagnosed with cancer before his trip to Nevada, but had been declared completely healed upon his return. Want more Haunted Cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon, where you can get early access to our content, as well as exclusive content, in regular dusty tomes and monthly live streams with Brian and myself. So go to patreon.com slash haunted cosmos and sign up now.