The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - The Horrifying Legend of Mel's Hole | Real or Hoax?

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

In 1997, radio presenter Art Bell had a phone conversation with a man named Mel. He had discovered something strange on his land, a seemingly bottomless hole. Over the course of 5 years, Mel and Art would have a number of conversations live on Coast to Coast AM, discussing the increasingly strange experiences Mel had with the hole. Join me as we delve into all of those conversations and try to get to the bottom of Mel's Hole. Government cover up? Hoax? Or a mixture of the two. Let's find out on this entry into The Tape Library. Do you have a supernatural story to share? Drop me an email at [e-mail] You can check out The Tape Library in video form at www.youtube.com/thetapelibrary   Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Tape-Library/100094332411836/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True scary stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime. Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio Additional footage and audio from Evanto, Singularity, Midjourney and Pexels. All other footage used under fair use.   CHAPTERS 00:00 Art Bell/Coast to Coast 02:14 Welcome to The Tape Library 04:15 The First Call - 1997 13:36 The 2nd Call 22:23 Mel Returns - 2000 33:03 Call 4 - 2002 41:55 Animal Cruelty Warning 43:45 The Autopsy 48:03 The Final Call 53:48 What Really Happened With Mel's Hole Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I got this thinking one day, how come this hole is not filling up? It must be an awfully deep hole. There were some helicopter activity around the property. There's nothing natural about this hole. Your best protection is to be public now. It was February 21, 1997. That Friday afternoon, famed radio personality, Art Bell, was busy working out his plan for that evening's show of coast-to-coast AM. late-night radio talk show in America that would cover a variety of topics but with a particular

interest in the paranormal in conspiracy theories. The popular radio show was listened to by millions, and you never quite knew what direction an episode would go in, as Art answered the phones to one of his many callers. But this night's show would go on to become something of a legend in its own right, potentially becoming one of Art Bell's strangest and most famous conversations. Art received a fax that afternoon, as the late winter's sun beamed in through his office windows. Art took a look at the message. It was from a man named Mel Waters and said, Dear Art, I'm writing to you to see if I can get some help from you or your vast listening audience. I live in rural eastern Washington, near the Manash Tasch Ridge.

On our property, there is a hole. Art continued to read the facts and was totally captivated by the story that was laid out before him. Mel, the man who sent it in, was thinking Art might read out a section of it on air and maybe see if his listeners could help him with this unusual situation. but Art went one step further than that. He got back in touch with Mel and told him he wanted to talk to him live on air that night to see if they could get to the bottom of Mel's Hole.

Welcome to the tape library. A few episodes back I covered the topic of Hoska Castle and the apparently bottomless pit that seems to expel the supernatural out of it into our world from deep underground. I often like to post little clues in the lead up to an episode being released about what that topic is going to be. So many people guessed it was Mel's Hole for that one and seemed a little disappointed when I told them it wasn't. So I thought, well, why not?

I was kind of familiar with Mel's Hole before starting this episode, but I pretty much only knew the first two parts of the story. A man named Mel had found a seemingly bottomless pit on this property that his neighbours claimed, mess unusual behaviour. But, wow, I did not know quite where this story would end up. Mel went on to make multiple appearances on coast to coast AM over the course of five years, keeping an increasingly captivated audience updated on his misadventures with the whole. In this episode, we will be going over each of Mel's appearances on art show, breaking down each of the phone calls one by one, as well as talking about.

about the various theories that surround Mel's whole, this tale has it all. A bottomless pit, a beloved figure in the paranormal world, local legends, government conspiracies, zombie dogs, and even a seal monster. Is there any truth to this story? Or was this simply a fascinating look at a modern urban legend being created before our very eyes? or ears in this case. I hope before you leave here tonight, you can leave me your thoughts and theories on this extremely unique case.

So get yourself a warm drink, dim the lights, and get comfortable. It's time we all get into, Mel's Hole. Call number one. February 21st, 1997. Later on that Friday evening, Art's bell introduced Mel Waters to his audience, and Mel began to tell his story.

Mel informs Art that he isn't calling from the property, where the whole is. A recent snowstorm has wreaked havoc in the area surrounding Ellensburg in Washington State. A number of the already run-down buildings on Mel's land had collapsed in on themselves from the sheer weight of the snow. The property has no phone lines or electricity running to it. In fact, living there doesn't seem to be the real purpose of Mel's property, which was made up of several acres, out in the middle of nowhere. In fact, what he was really up to out there, we will get into a little later. Instead, Mel is seemingly staying somewhere in Ellensburg, as he makes to call that night.

He explains that he has owned this land for a few years now, and that on the land, there is a hole, measuring nine feet and nine inches across. Around the outside is a three-foot-high retaining wall that almost gives off the appearance of this hole being a well, but it isn't. The retaining wall drops down into the hole around 15 feet, but the hole goes deeper than that.

Much deeper, in fact. After the brick of the wall ends, the sides of the hole become dirt and soil, before showing rock further down. Mel has only been able to see this by using powerful halogen lights. But while these lights have let him see far enough to tell what the sides of the hole are made of, they do not illuminate the bottom. Seemingly, this hole has been on the property for a long time.

Mel explains that the elderly man he and his wife purchased the land from, claimed that the hole had been there when he purchased it from the previous owners, around 40 years ago. and the wall built around the hole has been kept in near perfect condition. The previous owner informed Mel that while it was on his land, due to the sheer insane depth of the hole, the locals had been using it as a dump for as long as he had been there. This puzzled Mel little.

How could this hole have been having rubbish dumped into it for so many decades? Yet it seemingly wasn't full yet. Regardless, Mel didn't kick up a fuss when he discovered his neighbors, driving their rubbish up to his hole in the evening, and throwing it in. Who was he to stand in the way of local traditions? Instead, he too joined in, throwing anything and everything he didn't need anymore, into the hole. Initially, he worried about the impact all this rubbish could have if it was seeping into the ground down there, but regular tests have been done to the water in the area,

and it seemingly was perfect. Whatever was at the bottom of this hole, it seemed to be solid. After a little while, Mel became aware of something strange. Not only was the hole so deep it seemingly never filled up, but any time he dropped something down there, he never heard a sound. In fact, it never even made an echo if he shouted into it. When he dropped his rubbish inside, he would never hear any water splashing. no crashing. He threw an entire fridge down there at one point, and a television. No sound. Nothing. This set Mel's mind a whirl.

How deep would this hole have to be that you could never hear a sound of something landing in it? Mel was a self-described near professional shark fisher, so he had reels and reels of fishing line around his property. He added a one pound weight to the end of the line and let it drop into the hole. It dropped, only stopping once the 4,500 feet of line had run out, violently snapping to a halt as it did. Curious to see if he was potentially hitting water before reaching this depth, Mel added a pack of Lifesaver sweets to the end of his line and sent it back down, thinking that if there was any water, it would dissolve the candies.

But when he pulled it back up, they were per semen. perfectly intact. Over the following weeks, Mel would buy a rills of fishing line, in 5,000-yard spools, adding this line to his initial piece that he left dangling in the hole. He would often bring his dogs along with him. He began to notice they would never go near the hole. In fact, if he tried to walk them near it, they would dig their feet into the ground and refuse to budge, something that Mel's neighbours also claimed happened with their dogs if they walked too close to the hole, Mel would go on to notice it wasn't just the dogs. Birds wouldn't fly over the hole or perch on the walls either. Mel continued adding the lion, constructing a rig over the top of the hole to let the

line fall down the centre. After seven months of repeatedly returning to the hole and experimenting, he was baffled. A quick calculation from Mel saw him realize he had sent down 80,000 feet worth of line into the hole, and had still seemingly not hit the bottom, Mel asked Art and his listeners if they thought this could be some kind of record, which would be something of an understatement. If Mel is correct, the Meriana Trench, the deepest underwater trench in the world, goes down as far as 36,000 feet. This wouldn't just be record-breaking, it should be theoretically impossible. No one would have the ability to dig a hole this deep. Mel then explains a particularly strange story that has become an integral part of the legend, although he does point out he has no way of knowing if this story is

true or not. One of the people that lived close to Mel's property claimed that several years ago one of his hunting dogs had died. For some reason, rather than burying the dog, the man decided to drop it down the hole. Several weeks later, the man was out hunting. when he claimed he saw his dog walking around. Not just a dog that looked the same. It was identical, down to the same collar and tag hanging around its neck. The man tried to call out to his dog, but it seemingly ignored him before running off. This is apparently not the only animal that has been dropped down the world,

with another of Mel's neighbours claiming they had in the past dropped dead cows down there. although Mel isn't aware of any reports of the cattle being seen walking around after this fact. The conversation continues and Mel points out that this was Native American land and wonders if there is anything within their folklore about seemingly bottomless holes, something that is kind of important as Moore is revealed about Mel. Where exactly Mel's land is, is deliberately kept a secret by both Mel and art. It's on private property and this story is going out to millions. So the last thing Mel wants to wake up to is a bunch of people hunting around the various pieces of land in the area.

In fact, Mel has constructed a metal lid to sit on top of the hole, worried that kids might trespass on the land and potentially fall in. Art chillingly points out that if someone ever had, you would have no way of knowing. Mel goes on to say that as part of his will, If he were to die, he wants to be dropped into the hole, just to see what would happen. A number of callers into the show offered to be lowered into the hole, but Mel doesn't seem keen on this idea, as well as suggesting different ways the hole could be measured, using radar and other technology. Mel points out that he has never really gone public with this story.

This is the first time he has spoken about it, and didn't expect to be talking to such a vast audience at night. In fact, it appears, no one has. There is no history of any news reports about this apparently bottomless pit. They have tried to invite a few people to come and investigate. His wife works for a university. But when they spoke to the professors there about coming to visit the hole, they just laughed it off, not believing that such a thing were possible. Art speaks to Mel about getting other members of the media involved,

such as a television crew, but he seems hesitant to do so for some reason. One of the last points Art mentions is the idea that this could be of great interest to the US government. There's a potentially safe place to dispose of nuclear waste. Art would have no idea how close he may have been as they wrapped up the call that night. Call number two, a few days later. Art and Mel kept in touch over the following days. The very night that Mel was on art show, he noticed something strange, which he explained to Art off air in an apparently panicked state.

Things only got more complicated in the following days. And Art invited and audibly disturbed Mel back onto the show to give the audience an update. Mel explains that after hanging up the phone in the early hours of Saturday morning, he decided to drive up to the hole. when he noticed a helicopter flying around the area. Shining a spotlight down on the darkened fields. Weird, but not totally out of the ordinary. A large military reservation is only a few miles from Mel's property,

and there was also a small airport close by. However, Mel couldn't shake a weird feeling. What exactly was it doing out there? The next day while driving past the area, Mel noticed helicopters again. Multiple ones this time. Something was definitely up. The day after this, Mel decided to drive up to the hole again.

Only this time he was blocked as he approached his access road, a little over a mile from the hole. There, blocking the road were military personnel. Armed guards and trucks blocking him from entering his property. Mel asked the first guard what was going on. on. The guard simply claimed that there had been a plane crash and no one could proceed further up the road. Mel was suspicious. There was no smoke in the sky on this clear sunny day. He also instantly became aware of what appeared to be track marks of large heavy machinery on the road, leading past

the guards. He told the guard that this was his property and wanted to talk to whoever was in charge. The guard brought back another man. This one dressed in civil. civilian clothes. The man reiterates that Mel will not be able to return to his property until the crash has been fully investigated and cleaned up. Mel questions the lack of smoke and treadmarks but is brushed off. Mel, irritated, protest that this is his property and he shouldn't be stopped like this. The man then, in a blunt tone, informs Mel, that it is not necessarily his property, going on to state that it would be very easy to find a drug lab on his property. Mel was instantly shaken by the man's statement.

He knew very well what he was implying. Art immediately jumps on this aspect of the story, asking if Mel was up to something on the property. But Mel explains that he works in alternative medicine, and does in fact have a lab of sorts. in one of the trailers up there, but that he works with plants that have been traditionally used by Native American tribes to cure all sorts of illnesses. But Mel can see how easy it would be for them to paint this as something more illicit than it actually was. The non-uniformed man then tells Mel to leave, that they will be in touch when it's safe for him to return. Mel asks the man if he needs his contact details. The man responds that they already have to.

them. Mel then says, I assume you don't want me to tell anyone about this, to which the man responds. No one would believe you if you did. The following day, Mel was speaking to one of his neighbours about what happened, who then tells him something even more strange. The night after Mel's encounter with the military, his neighbour was outside, looking in the direction of Mel's property. When he saw something in the sky. It was hard to describe, but the way the neighbour explained it was like a beam of light was shooting up into the sky, coming from Mel's property. But it wasn't light exactly. It was black, blacker than the night's sky. At times throughout their various phone calls, art does seem a little skeptical of Mel's stories, but not in this instance. He seems genuinely

worried for Mel here. Something about their off-air conversation convinced him that this was to be taken seriously and that he blamed himself for what appeared to be the government taking an interest in Mel's hole. Between that conversation and this now on-air appearance though, Mel had received a message on his answer phone from a local estate agent. Mel's property wasn't listed for sale anywhere. But the agent claimed that someone had made an extremely generous offer to purchase the land from him, although at the time of the call he didn't know what that offer was. Mel saw this as these officials laying out two options for him. Either you take the money and leave, or we find a reason to take the land away from you. Art gets Mel to go over the whole story again, seemingly

to both catch up his audience who missed Friday show. but also possibly to see if he can catch out Mel on any of the details of his story that might point to this being a hoax. But it all matches up. In fact, after the Black Beam incident, Mel was spoken further to some of his other neighbours and made an interest in discovery. He spoke to a man who had been living there for around 50 years at this point, who also used to dump his rubbish in the hole back in the day. although he claimed that when he first used to do it, there was a series of large stones around the outside. After some further discussion, Mel shows the man a picture of Stonehenge.

The man confirms they looked exactly like that, only without the top section of the stone structure. These were just like stone pillars pointing upwards to the sky. Callers joined the conversation with one claiming that he used to know someone from the area, and they spoke about a large hole around there back in the 80s, lending some weight as to the idea that this is some sort of landmark, known by the locals. After various discussions about the Earth's crust, hollow Earth theories, and one cooler debating if the hole could be some sort of natural time machine

and that everything entering it is merely popping out somewhere else in history. Art brings the conversation back to the apparent government involvement. Mel points out that in this area if a kid throws a snowboard at a moving car, it makes the papers, but there is nothing about any plane crash. What's more, Mel's neighbours have seen trucks driving up into his land, carrying what appeared to be generators and temporary huts. Whatever they are doing up there, they appear to be settling in for a while. Art explains that Mel's best defence is to go as public as he can, again pleading with him to help him get others within the media involved, or even help through his political connections. Mel initially claims that he's worried that if he does

something like that, he might end up just being arrested. But over the course of the conversation, I am struck by the feeling that Mel doesn't want to cause too much of a fuss, because he is extremely tempted by whatever this monetary offer that is being made is, dreaming that if it was substantial enough that he could relocate to Australia, a long-held dream of his, and put all this behind him, and that talking about it with art is just him hedging his bets before he decides what way to go. The second phone call would end here, and Mel would not appear on the air again for several years. This was where my knowledge of the story of Mel's whole ended, and according to some theories that we can get into a little later. It actually is. But this is where things start to

get a little crazy. Buckle up. Things are going to get progressively more wild from this point on. All of my back teeth have been removed. What? I have no back teeth. You have no back teeth? None. You don't mean like... No molars, no wisdom teeth. You're not talking about wisdom teeth. You're What are you talking about? None. No back teeth. On top, not on the bottom. Why would they take your D-BAT? I have no idea, Art. Call number three.

Three years later. The year is now 2000. A new millennium has begun, but an old friend is back on coast to coast A.M. Art Bell is audibly so excited to welcome Mel back. It appears that Mel has been keeping in touch with Art throughout the years via email, that has seemingly been sent from Australia. It appears Mel got his wish, but he is now back in America and things have taken an extremely dark turn for Mel. Art begins by talking about how Mel's story has become something of a mini-cultural phenomenon.

Television crews went hunting for Mel's hole. Songs were written about it, even drinks were named after Mel's hole. And the lack of closure on this story seemed to drive people crazy. No one knew what happened to Mel after this apparent offer to buy his life. offer to buy his land. Art gets Mel to once again recap the entire story, but this time Mel adds some additional details that are worth covering. He explains he was living at the property prior to the snowstorm that started all of this, doing research into Native American herbal medicines and growing a number of plants on the land. He specifically singles out a Mexican

man who used to come and dump tires by the truckload into the hole while he lived there, estimating that he must have put thousands down there over the years. He then goes off on a seemingly random tangent about the area of Ellensburg, being a bit strange in general, highlighting one odd story from the area of a tree. This apparently has a whalebone sticking out of it. Why it's there, no one knows. I wasn't originally going to include this detail,

but it does have some relevance as we get to the end of our story. It also seems that the black beam being spotted wasn't a one-off. Others have reported seeing it now, but Mel has never witnessed it himself. He also adds one unusual detail about the military men that stopped him on that day three years ago. He tells Art that years ago he used to serve in the military. He was confident that the men he saw were from the army. However, they lacked any identifying information on their uniform. If he was asked, he couldn't tell you what army they represented. Mel then explains what happened to him. The offer from the estate agent was that the government wanted to

lease the property from Mel in perpetuity and were willing to pay a hefty sum to do it, a quarter of a million dollars a month in fact. After a series of conversations that Mel doesn't go into, he manages to secure himself quite an impressive deal. They arranged it so that Mel was able to move to Australia, taking both his dogs and various plants with him, without having to worry about any quarrys. Clearly this was the result of some sort of arrangement between both governments, but Mel was forced to sign an NDA that seemingly covered aspects of the case that he doesn't go into. Mel was told to leave his car and wait at a nearby rest stop. There he was taken in the car to the airport, where he went to San Francisco before flying on to Australia. In Australia he was able to continue his research, using the sudden wealth he had to build various facilities. out there, as well as becoming heavily involved in rescuing wombats.

But he claimed that the officials in Australia were very interested in his research into alternative medicines, particularly when it came to the plants that he had grown on the land surrounding the whole. In one unbelievable story, they apparently took the plants that he had grown to free men. Mel didn't know it at the time, but these three men were all in hospice care, all with HIV. Months later, all three that came into contact with the plants, made a miraculous recovery. Art is surprised that he would return to the US, but Mel claimed he missed his family and wanted to come back, which he did in late 1999, something that would be a huge mistake on his part. It appears the actual ownership of the land isn't as simple as Mel made out.

It actually belonged to his now ex-wife. Mel had been paying her 25 grand a month since he lived. a month since he leased out the land. But she had actually leased it out to him in perpetuity as well, as part of their at-the-time amicable divorce settlement. But upon returning to America, he was almost immediately served with papers, saying he was in breach of his lease terms. It claimed that fuel tanks, a septic system and paved roads had all been added to the property while Mel was away. These were large-scale changes that he wasn't allowed to make. and therefore his lease had been revoked.

This instantly also stopped the payments from the government, which were now potentially being made to his ex-wife instead, although he was never able to get in contact with her to confirm this. In fact, she seems to have completely disappeared off the face of the earth. When he checked his accounts or the money he had received over the past several years, had gone. His institutions in Australia were almost immediately closed down, and all staff would let go.

Mel was now back in the US without his land and without a penny to his name. Things would go from bad to worse though. When just a few weeks before this call, he arranged to go back on art show. The day he was due to go on, Mel had been helping his nephew move into a new apartment in Olympia. Mel needed to go drop off the hired truck and then would take a bus back to Olympia to help his nephew on pack before appearing on the art show that night to provide an update. But on this bus ride back, a fight broke out between two passengers. The bus was forced to stop at a park and ride. Various transit staff members boarded the bus, along with the police, and wanted to speak

to the passengers about what had happened. Mel stepped off the bus to talk to the officials, but was clear that he really needed to get back to Olympia as soon as possible. The officials told Mel that they had a transit van they could drive him in if he was happy to answer some questions along the way. Mel went to the van and then everything went black. Mel had no idea what happened, but the next thing he knew he was waking up in an alleyway, surrounded by homeless people, with the taste of blood in his mouth. He soon came to discover that he was in San Francisco and 12 days had passed. His ID wallet and keys were all missing. As was, strangely, his belt buckle that he had made himself.

His arm ached and when he rolled up his sleeve he found a needle mark with a piece of tapes to attach to his arm. As though an IV had been placed there, he felt around his mouth to try and figure out why he could taste blood, which was when he realized. All his back molars had been removed. He managed to get in contact with his nephew who had been frantically trying to find his uncle, who had now been missing for close to two weeks. Once he got back, Mel got in touch with Art and rearranged to come on the show. Mel didn't seem to think that whatever this incident was, it had anything to do with his upcoming appearance on coast to coast. But Art disagreed, believing at the very least this was some sort of threat for Mel to keep his mouth.

mouth shut. Mel states that he is now 68 years old. He has lost everything and at this point doesn't believe he has anything to fear. Although saying that he doesn't dare attempt to get on the land. He still wants answers. Specifically he wants to get in touch with a number of people he met while he was living and researching the hole in Washington. He claims there are people out there who have rocks or other items from the property that he would love to try and get tested. After his recent, with the plants, he seemingly believes there is something powerful in the ground that surrounds the whole itself. He then explains a wild story involving a gun. He claims that at some point

he was digging on the land and found what appeared to be an old German pistol. At one point, he apparently gave this gun to a landlord for a deposit on an apartment. Mel later spoke with the children of this man, who told him some interesting things, about what happened after the man took ownership of the gun. The first puzzling detail was that the gun didn't make a sound. It worked, it fired bullets, but not a single sound came out of it. If the man placed the gun down next to a radio, the signal would start to distort and change. The station suddenly playing oldies instead. If he moved the gun around, the radio would begin cycling through different stations. curiously, all these stations sounded like they were broadcasting old shows, including commentary

of a 1960s baseball game. The man seemingly became obsessed with the gun, never letting it out of his sight, until one day he just vanished. His children have no idea what's happened to him and have never found him. Before the call ends, Mel makes another odd claim. about how he believes his whole is somehow connected to the mass suicides at the Heaven's Gate incident that happened just shortly after his previous appearances on Art Show, although he doesn't elaborate on that, and that ends Art Bell was third call with Mel Waters. Mel would once again disappear,

before getting back in contact two years later. In these final two calls, things get even stranger, and it appears that Mel has found another hole. This thing separated from the tumor without our assistance be. Right there on the table. It's right there and it moved about a little on the table. Yeah. So we're all standing back at that point because this thing is loose, you know.

It'd be way back. Call number four, 2002. During the subsequent years, Mel had taken to hitchhiking with truckers, up and down the country. And as luck would have it, he was in a truck cab late one night when he heard his own voice on the radio. Art Bell was replaying his now famous original call with Mel. Mel decided it was time to give his old friend an update

and what was going on now. And my, what an update it is. Just go with me on this one, please. It's quite a ride. Art begins this call by asking Mel to swear. swear on a Bible that he isn't making all of this up, which he does. Once again the pair recap the entire story. All of Mel's points match up to his previous claims but he does fill in a few additional details here and there. This is actually in fact

where he explains what's happened all his money after Art presses him on it, although I did include that in the previous section for clarity. Mel keeps talking about his missing belt buckle from his strange blackout incident in San Francisco. The fact that perplexes his art, but Mel goes on to explain why it bothered him so much. Apparently at some point, much like the gun, Mel was digging on his land one day when he found what appeared to be a red Chinese money envelope. Inside it he found ten dimes. For a while Mel was creating his own belt buckles that he would sell at the local farmer's market, and he included one of the dimes in each one of these. He kept one for himself, but he kept one for himself

but sold the others. And that was the buckle that was stolen from him that day. As luck would have it, Mel actually recently bumped into one of the men that Mel had sold those buckles too. They proceeded to have a conversation that led to an odd discovery about the belt buckles. The dimes that Mel had used featured an image of Franklin Roosevelt on them. This wasn't immediately seen as an odd thing, but on closer inspection they noticed.

The coins were dated 1943, two years before Roosevelt's death, and three years before those dimes would have gone into circulation. A strange misprinting, perhaps. The man took the coin to a dealer who showed a great deal of interest in purchasing the dime, but the man declined, thinking he could have something that could potentially be worth a lot of money. However, the next day the man had a knock on his door. There stood two people he didn't recognise. who claimed to be from the treasury. They confiscated the dime,

which leads to one caller into the show posing the idea, that the hole is some sort of portal to alternative dimensions, and that these coins come from one where Roosevelt died an earlier death. Mel goes on to talk about how he believes the military still have control of the hole and the land surrounding it. He points out that if you look at Terra Server, satellite, imagery, a precursor to Google Earth. The area where Mel's land would be is blocked off with large white squares. A fact that Art does confirm. Art then talks about how recently a television crew went looking for Mel's hole while they were unable to find it. In the area where they

believed it could be they found a number of what appeared to be military bootprints and treadmarks from large machinery being willed in and out of the area. Mel talks about how even more people have come to him, talking about seeing the black beam in the sky, and that through his experience talking to truckers in the area, he has gathered information about multiple shipments being made to a nearby warehouse of massive amounts of fiber optic cables and supplies from a California laboratory. A strange detail made by one of the truckers claimed that all of the people at the warehouse were apparently from Israel. Then Mel gets a into the main reason why he has got back in touch with art. There is a second hole.

Due to his work with various Native American tribes, one tribe in Nevada apparently reached out to Mel to talk about his experiences with his hole. He visited them in September of 2001. They spoke at length about plants and then they revealed to Mel that they knew of another hole that sounded remarkably similar to what he had found in Washington. The plants that Mel was interested in were apparently only growing close to this hole. The area was being used by the Basque community, who were using the area as farmland for their sheep. Mel was introduced to the community by the Native Americans, and after confirming that he wasn't the press, a number of the Basque people took Mel to see the hole.

It was almost identical in size, but this time instead of a retaining wall, it had a sort of metal, collar around it. The collar was about two feet high and went down into the hole about two feet deep. Although the walls of the hole appeared to also be metal as it dipped down into the darkness. Mel claimed it had notches on it, as though a lid of some kind could have been attached but it wasn't anywhere to be seen. The whole thing looked very modern. Samel was baffled when the Basque people claimed that the hole had been there. as long as they had been shepherding the area, which was since the 1800s. At one point Mel dropped a wrench on the metal collar, just like his hole it didn't make a sound.

The metal was also producing some kind of heat. Not the metal itself as such, that was cool to the touch, but the air around it seemed to be warm, even at night. The Basque people would often camp next to it in the same. the winter to keep warm. They told Mel's stories of how animals were too scared to go near it, and that they would often see a black beam coming from it. Some of the elders saw this hole as some sort of spiritual sight. With the permission of the community, Mel was allowed to stay to conduct some experiments. He wanted to get an idea of what the temperature was like down in the hole, something that many of arts listeners had discussed in the past. They got two

large bags of ice. One they left on the surface and the other they placed into a bucket, that they lowered 1500 feet into the hole. They waited until the ice on the surface had half melted before pulling the bucket back up. What happened next is tricky to explain. Mel himself admits that this is hard to put into words. The ice hadn't melted. In fact it looked totally normal. But when Mel touched it, it wasn't cold, and it didn't melt in his hands. It was like the ice had fundamentally changed somehow. They placed a bucket over an open fire to see if it would melt. It didn't.

Instead, the ice cubes started to glow, almost as if they were on fire themselves. But they weren't. It was like the heat caused the ice to produce some kind of... energy. They pulled it off the fire and for months the ice continued to glow, giving off heat as it did. In fact, one Basque man took a handful of the ice home with him, putting it into his wooden stove to heat his hut, a detail that will become important in the final phone call. They tried to repeat the process. Sometimes it would be successful, other times it wouldn't, but they couldn't figure it.

out why it would happen sometimes and not others. Art asked Mel why not just lower a camera in, but Mel claims they didn't have the money for that. Instead, the idea of dropping something live down there came up. First one of the Basque men offered to go down, but Mel talks him out of it. Instead, the idea of sending a sheep down is decided on. Now I'm going to warn you, this next part features some pretty unpleasant animal cruelty. I will include a time code in the description if you want to skip ahead. I'll be trying to keep this as ungraphic as I can, though. I strongly recommend that if you can stomach it, to persevere, as this leads to the most insane part of Mel's entire story. As they brought the sheep towards the hole, it began freaking

out, as all animals seem to do when they come close to it. What happened here, Mel greatly regrets, but the Basque men stunned the sheep by hitting it on the head and placed it into a crate. As they slowly began to lower the crate, the sheep seemingly came to and started jumping around, shaking the crate violently, Mel describes the sound it makes as almost like screaming. But as the crate lowered beyond the metal collar, the sound stopped. They could see the crate bashing around from side to side as the sheep tried to escape, no sound could be heard from it. At around 700 feet down, the sheep seemingly stopped moving. As they hit the bottom of the line, a strange vibration was felt up through the line, followed by what Mel described as the

feeling of static electricity in the air. They left it down there for around half an hour, before pulling the crate back up. The box looked completely normal from the outside, but the sheep wasn't moving. It was dead. They pulled the sheep out of the box, and one of the Basque men took it over to a nearby table and proceeded to start to dissect it.

On the outside, it looked totally fine, but as soon as he cut into it, it was as if it had been cooked from the inside. still warm to the touch. Mel says again that this is hard to put into words, but inside they found what looked to be almost like a giant tumour, but the tumour filled up almost the entirety of the inside of the sheep and was covered in some sort of strange gel.

All its internal organs were nowhere to be seen. The man cut into the tumour, which proved to be difficult. But once they get it open, Inside they find what looks like a fetus of some kind, attached to the tumour-like object, with an umbilical cord. Mel said the only way he could describe it was that it looked like a baby seal, 18 inches long with flippers. Most disturbingly of all, he said its eyes didn't look like an animal's. They looked very, very human. Watching the men intently as they freed it from the tumour.

Before they could cut the umbilical cord, the creature freed itself. The men all froze. The creature just kept looking at them. Looking over them all one by one. At first one of the Basque men claimed they should kill it, but the others disagreed. Then the creature began to move to the edge of the table. Melsely doesn't know why but he somehow knew it needed help and wanted to be on the floor. So he picked it up and carefully placed it down. It was covered in the same gel the tumour was,

which Mel claimed smelled like ozone. For nearly two hours the creature sat on the floor, just looking at the men one at a time, with its human-like eyes. Mel claimed it had the most compassionate look he had ever seen from any human or animal. He claimed that none of them felt threatened by it. Its stare had a weirdly calming effect on the men. It then began to crawl towards the hole. Again, Mel felt like he should help it, so he picked it up and placed the creature on the metal collar. It sat there for a further hour, watching the men, before slowly crawling back into the hole and disappearing into the darkness. Mel was full of guilt for what they had done to the sheep. They spoke about burying it, but instead decided to return it and the tumour to the

hole. This is when Mel tells art an additional detail. Before going on this trip, Mel had been diagnosed with cancer and was told he only had months to live. Mel is now cancer-free. He believes that something to do with touching the creature, cured him, and much like he had seen with the HIV patients in Australia. He thinks that something about the ground surrounding the world. around in these holes, seeps into the plants there, and that these could be used to help so many people who are sick. Mel tells Art that he plans to continue researching there, but vows to never send another living thing down the hole.

Art really begins to push Mel to get evidence, and to start taking photographs, which he says he will talk to the Basque people about. He suggests that he feels like a visitor there, and that they are the ones in charge of a love. allowing him to do anything. Before ending the call, Mel tells Art a story about how he spent that evening with the Basque people,

specifically talking to one of the elders, who had been visiting the whole since he was a child. Just before the elder retired for the evening, he handed something to Mel and told him to put it away, which Mel did, placing the object in his pocket. Later, Mel looked, see what the man had gifted him. It was a dime, with Franklin Roosevelt on it, dated 1943. The man had apparently found it near the whole several years before, in a red envelope.

A change is its own weight in that manner has a great deal of power. Call number five, the last call. After several months of his audience spreading rumors that Melwood since died, he made a surprise and ultimately final return to coast to coast in the same year. He was once again calling from his nephew's place, but had spent a considerable amount of time out in Nevada researching the hole and spending time with the tribes there. Pretty much straight away after his last appearance on the show, the helicopters started appearing, flying overhead in the area around the second hole. Although strangely, at least up until the this point, they hadn't made any contact with Mel or anyone else involved, as if they were

just keeping an eye on things. That was until they seemingly stepped in for one specific incident. In the last phone call, Melwood mentioned one of the Basque men had taken some under burning ice, then was using it to heat his cabin. Interestingly, it appears the ice was somehow draining moisture out of everything it came into contact with. The man's skin became dry and flaky, and he claimed to be constantly thirsty when in the cabin. He would place a kettle on the stove above the ice, and as the steam came out of the kettle, it would move down instead of up, towards the ice. One day the man returned home to discover his wooden stove, had fallen through the floor of his cabin.

Now sticking out of the dirt below, but seemingly he couldn't pull it out of the hole it had created. so instead he simply extended the stovepipe to reach its new placement. Two weeks later he came home again to discover his entire cabin had collapsed in on itself. He said all the moisture in the wooden furniture and the cabin itself had been drawn out of the wood until it basically just collapsed into a dusty husk. At this point he decided to simply abandon the cabin. but a month later he returned with his brother to find the stove was now about five foot into the ground

as though it was slowly burrowing into the earth the edges of the hole that it had now created were smooth, almost glass-like when he went back to bring others to look they were shocked to discover a team of men already at the former site of the cabin the Basque men hid and watched intently as this large group of men attempted to pull the stove out of the hole,

deploying multiple large pieces of machinery, and only finally being successful when they used two large cranes to lift it up, before they hauled it away on a gigantic truck. Since this, Mel has not returned to the Nevada hole. His paranoia seems particularly high in this call, and he thinks that he's being followed. unsure if they know the exact location of the second hole, he doesn't want to lead anyone to it.

He has been discussing him with the Basque people about getting some university researchers to come down and investigate. But not much progress has been made on that front yet. The Basque people have told Mel that their people were present up in Washington at some point in the past, near the site of Mel's original hole. claiming to even be behind the strange whalebone tree in Ellensburg that was mentioned some time back during his conversations with them. They have apparently revealed to him that the seal-like creature has made numerous returns, and has even started to communicate with them.

It apparently seems to be able to manipulate speakers and radios and speak through them. The seal was apparently claimed that the ice they took back from the hole is. very dangerous and could destroy the whole world if not properly contained. It went on to inform them that there are beings from other realities, watching us, and that they have a desire to take over our world at some point as their own reality is too bleak. They think that once we are gone and our own world is destroyed, they will be able to move into our reality and take over. Mel claims that attempts to record these communications

have strangely just left recordings of bloops and bleeps, like the sounds from a shortwave radio. Art, clearly a little irate that Mel still has not provided any photographs, had asked Mel in their previous conversation to at least take a photograph of the dime. But he claims that any time he tries to take a photo, It's like it's not there. In fact, he says that if he stands 15 feet away from the dime,

the object becomes invisible to the naked eye. Something he says also appears to happen with the Nevada hole. If he steps too far away, it's like the metal collar becomes invisible. Art at this point really starts pushing for Mel to take photos of the hole, and he claims he will work with the Basque people to get this to him as well as to speak with some actual experts and we'll be back in touch with art. Once he has another update, Mel was never heard from again. So what really happened?

The story of Mel's whole is certainly an exciting and crazy one. It's hard not to see why this tale captivated so many fans of the show as they listened to Mel's experiences, late at night, driving along the highways. Even now, it's clear why this story has captured so many people. imaginations and continues to be a subject of genuine fascination for those interested in paranormal mysteries. But there are a lot of issues with Mel's story. The first being that seemingly no one by the name of Mel Waters has ever lived in the area where the hole is believed to be. A number of people over the years have claimed to have found Mel's hole and visited, including that of self-described

medicine man named Gerald Osborne, who claims to have been visiting the hole since the 1960s, and has apparently seen many UFOs in the area, claiming that this is the real reason for the government's interest in the area. In 2002, he led an expedition of 30 people to find the hole, but they were not able to locate it. Many people, including Mel himself, have claimed that they believe the military has covered up the hole, so that no one can find it. Some did however find a piece of land that seemed to match up with Mel's description, including a cabin that had been caved in by a snowstorm, which did in fact have a hole near it.

But that hole turned out to just be a well. Geologists have suggested that such a hole would be physically impossible to exist, and something that deep would simply collapse in on itself, as well as pointing out that if Mel really was sending fish in line down 80,000 feet, it would almost certainly melt. I also can't help but notice throughout Mel's conversations. Ideas get planted and then come into reality seemingly. Art suggests the government might be interested in the hole.

Then the next time Mel calls the government have taken his whole. Someone suggests time travel. Then Mel finds an old gun that transmits radio signals from the past and strange old coins. A caller mentions alternative realities. A seal creature talks about beings from other realities. Of course, we also have to discuss one of the other major theories about Mel's phone calls, and that is that there is, in fact, two males. Many claim that the real Mel only phoned out those two times in 1997,

and that if his story is in fact true, he either took the money and ran, or someone made him disembate. They then suggest that the man on call 3 to 5 is an imposter. These people are seemingly split on if the second Mel is someone just playing along and winding up Art Bell. Or someone deliberately trying to sow misinformation when the Mel's whole story refused to die after Mel vanished.

And there is some merit to this idea. The voice does sound different, but with the quality of the recording, and multiple years that are passed, it doesn't seem to be totally conclusive proof that this isn't the same person. If it is an actor of some kind, he has researched Mel's story well, and hits all the key details without thinking twice. He also exhibits many of Mel's turn of phrases and speech patterns. It's hard not to call into question the validity, though, when Mel's story gets progressively more elaborate and crazy, as calls three to five proceed. I kind of love how relevant this story has stayed throughout time.

People are still as fascinated by this case as they were in the early 2000s, and devote hours to trying to find out if there is any truth to Mills Hole. I think a big part of that is because, no matter how insane the story sounds, his interactions with Art Bell just feel so... genuine. There are so many little odd details and threads that don't really go anywhere, that just don't make it feel like a made-up story, despite how unbelievably ridiculous it is. So please, I really want to hear your theories. Is this entire thing made up? Is there some truth to it, but it's been twisted into an insane tale by a potentially fake male waters? Or do you believe Mel really did experience all of this? And if so, what happened to him?

Please, please drop me a comment below and let me know what you think. That's going to be all for this entry into the tape library. I had a lot of videos planned that required a lot of reading and research in the coming months. So I thought I'd pick Mel's hole, as it's so well covered, it should be a nice and easy and short episode to put together. As always, I was wrong. After listening to around about four hours of interviews with Mel, I was left with pages and pages and notes, and I am now fully on board as one of the many people who are obsessed with Mel's whole. I love this story so much, and I hope I've done it justice here. There's still likely elements I've missed, but I think we have gone over most of the relevant

information. I'm going to be grabbing my dog and boarding a flight to Washington in the moment. I will find Mel's Hole, but hopefully if I don't get attacked by seal people or kidnapped by the military, I will be back with a brand new episode of the tape library in a couple of weeks. Don't forget, I fill the weekly gaps between tape library episodes with my new show Night Drive Paranormal. So if you want more true paranormal tales, be sure to check that out. Thank you so much for sticking with me until the end of this crazy. journey. Until next time, pleasant dreams.