Animals feared the hole.

April 27, 2014 7:23 PM

In 1997, Art Bell, of "Coast to Coast AM," the popular syndicated late night radio talk show, received a fax from a man named Mel Waters.
posted by AtoBtoA (72 comments total)

"Medicinal herbs".
posted by bobloblaw at 7:31 PM on April 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

The story of Mel, a real radio programmer.
posted by thelonius at 7:37 PM on April 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

Dogs flew spaceships! The Aztecs invented the vacation! Men and women are the same sex! Our forefathers took drugs! Your brain is not the boss! Yes! That's right! Everything you know is wrong!
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:41 PM on April 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

o shit somebody tell davebug
posted by echo target at 7:42 PM on April 27, 2014 [6 favorites]

I wonder if Art Bell ever had an attack of conscience, that he was actively feeding the delusional, that providing an outlet for them to indulge in their fantasies encouraged them to do so.
posted by fatbird at 7:49 PM on April 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

I liked how there was a 2nd mysterious, bottomless hole that could restructure ice into a form that remains frozen at room temperature and could also catch fire and burn for months and that all of this happened before things got weird. I also liked how it got weirder after that.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 7:52 PM on April 27, 2014 [11 favorites]

I wonder if Art Bell ever had an attack of conscience

I don't know. I love Mel and his hole. And I'm glad Art gave him the opportunity to talk about it.
posted by AtoBtoA at 7:54 PM on April 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

A former shark fisherman, he knew that he could determine whether or not there was water in the pit, provided he had enough fishing line to extend to the water.

I enjoy the implications of this sentence.
posted by Iridic at 7:58 PM on April 27, 2014 [6 favorites]

Do we really have to link to the Wikipedia article that debunks the whole thing?
posted by clvrmnky at 8:02 PM on April 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

As a kid, I got in the habit of listening to talk radio every night as I feel asleep. That habit continues to this day, and more often than not, it's Coast to Coast, despite George Noory's frustrating incompetence. I miss Art so much.
posted by davebush at 8:03 PM on April 27, 2014 [5 favorites]

Be sure you make it to the "Features" chart and the fan art at the bottom.
posted by wemayfreeze at 8:17 PM on April 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

I wonder if Art Bell ever had an attack of conscience, that he was actively feeding the delusional, that providing an outlet for them to indulge in their fantasies encouraged them to do so.

I'm pretty sure that Art Bell was a true believer in the way O'Reilly or Limbaugh aren't; he's not cynically exploiting people, he genuinely believes this shit. I think.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:18 PM on April 27, 2014

"...no such person was listed as residing in that area, and no credible evidence that the hole exists"
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:18 PM on April 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oh thank god someone came rushing in to tell us poor rubes it was fake.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 8:19 PM on April 27, 2014 [13 favorites]

Late at night on Sundays, I am always happy to be reassured.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:23 PM on April 27, 2014

Late at night on Sundays

Technically "old man late", I suppose, but still.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:23 PM on April 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

One day I'm going to call into that show with some epic bullshitting. Hopefully get a series of calls to do the story.
posted by humanfont at 8:25 PM on April 27, 2014

Dogs never approach the hole, and resist when guided toward it.

Did anyone check is there is a veterinary office in there?
posted by maryr at 8:25 PM on April 27, 2014 [14 favorites]

Oh thank god someone came rushing in to tell us poor rubes it was fake.

Well of course it's fake but it's nice that someone saved me the bother or tracking down the debunking.
posted by scalefree at 8:28 PM on April 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

I've always thought stories like these could be used as some sort of Rorschach test for gullibility. If you could pinpoint the exact line where people's mindsets go from "this is totally fake but amusing" to "oh COME ON this is SUCH bullshit" you could probably draw some interesting inferences.
posted by Guernsey Halleck at 8:40 PM on April 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

A few years ago a good friend of mine took a film class on a whim and ended up making an 11 minute documentary about a guy who searches for Mel's Hole. He asked me to contribute some music for the credits -- it was cool and disorienting to sit in a dark theater and listen to my music play over this strange and humorous story.
posted by vverse23 at 8:43 PM on April 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

Christ, what a hole.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:48 PM on April 27, 2014 [13 favorites]

For your listening pleasure while reading: The Handsome Family - The Bottomless Hole.
posted by borkencode at 8:50 PM on April 27, 2014 [7 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that Art Bell was a true believer in the way O'Reilly or Limbaugh aren't; he's not cynically exploiting people, he genuinely believes this shit. I think.

No. Bell is interested in stories. Kooky, weird stories, to be sure, but stories. He has come out and said that he doesn't believe it all, just offers a forum for the strange and unusual. You could hear it especially during open lines when random people called in and he would help them tell their goofy abduction tale, or the one about grandpa haunting the Elks Club (or a hole!). But you could also hear the amusement in his voice. It was like sitting around the campfire late at night. No one really believes it but it's fun in the moment.

For about eight years, coinciding with high school and college, I listened just about every night... Then Bell's several retirements and my adult life conspired to break the habit.

Those other guys are up to something else.
posted by the christopher hundreds at 9:03 PM on April 27, 2014 [17 favorites]

ActingTheGoat: "I liked how there was a 2nd mysterious, bottomless hole that could restructure ice into a form that remains frozen at room temperature and could also catch fire and burn for months and that all of this happened before things got weird. I also liked how it got weirder after that."

You were not fucking around.

Also. Eponysterical.
posted by symbioid at 9:07 PM on April 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, Art Bell was really good at what he did... He'd at least bother to get caught up on the background of whatever ridiculous thing it was, and he'd even ask probing questions that would evince some skepticism.

That tool George Noory is too stupid to be a believer in anything but his opportunity to monetize the credulous.

Okay. Now I'm off to learn about a hole.
posted by notyou at 9:37 PM on April 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Bell is interested in stories. Kooky, weird stories, to be sure, but stories.

It was never my bag, but this is why I've never made fun of people for liking that sort of thing, because there's a difference between the sort of things we know to be fact in such a way that, like, we'd trust our lives to the science of how airplane wings work... versus the sort of things that are generally perfectly safe to regard as "true" just because they're never getting outside the realm of entertainment or personal motivation or art or whatever.

Most people are perfectly capable of realizing that, like, stories like this aren't something they should invest their life savings in. And, let's be honest, the sort of people who can't make that distinction have a hard time with all sorts of things, and Art Bell was probably the least of their problems. Harold Camping and that ilk have done a lot more damage than Bell ever did to the credulous.
posted by Sequence at 10:04 PM on April 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

For a split second I thought this was an obit post and my heart sank. I listened to Bell pretty much every night when I was in high school and I think it reinforced my skepticism. CtC was nonstop crankery, and interesting for it. Beyond the lulz, I mean.

Also, I just realized that John Noble needs to play the lead in THE ART BELL STORY.
posted by brundlefly at 10:53 PM on April 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

-After lowering a sheep into the hole for half an hour, the sheep had died.

-The dead sheep had developed a tumorous growth in its body, which contained a strange fleshy creature that was shaped like a seal, but had human-like eyes.

Well, I'm creeped the heck out.
posted by Our Ship Of The Imagination! at 11:06 PM on April 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

FETAL SEAL
posted by Our Ship Of The Imagination! at 11:08 PM on April 27, 2014

I think I know what the hole is.
posted by weston at 11:19 PM on April 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

A friend of a friend was an engineer for Art Bell once, long ago. She said that one time she was getting something ready at his home studio, and saw him watching the scene in Independence Day where the White House gets blowed up real good. Just watching it on VHS, rewinding, watching again, rewinding, watching again, making occasional comments of the "oh yeah!" and "you show 'em" type variety.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 11:23 PM on April 27, 2014 [7 favorites]

Although stuffed to the gills with bullshit, Mel Waters remains to this day the best storyteller alive.
posted by Camofrog at 11:26 PM on April 27, 2014

Winnipeg. The hole is Winnipeg, right?
posted by five fresh fish at 11:30 PM on April 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

I like that Bell got Richard C. Hoagland to comment on the remarkable dime and offer a wonderful conjecture on its nature, but then the photo caption hedges that saying it is "probably" faked...
posted by Abinadab at 11:31 PM on April 27, 2014

Art's latest comeback was with Sirius last year, but naturally it was short-lived. It looks like he plans on running a show on his own, but has to resolve the non-compete clause.

The first episode of the Sirius show was with Michio Kaku. Nthing that I listened to him during high school and college, so it's kinda nice to hear his voice again here.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 11:34 PM on April 27, 2014

I remember listening to the first installment of this on CtC. It was great. Although the idea that multiple people could quickly check Terraserver on their home internet connections in 1997 is more unbelievable than a Fetus Seal Christ
posted by fshgrl at 11:53 PM on April 27, 2014 [5 favorites]

Frankly, I think Mel's true aim here was to get people talking about his hole.
posted by Foam Pants at 12:02 AM on April 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

I love this kind of stuff. It obviously isn't true, but they're great stories.

I'm curious, though, is there any fishing line that would support its own weight when extended to 80 thousand feet with a 1-pound weight on the end? And if there isn't, does that debunk the story, or just prove how weird the hole is?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:47 AM on April 28, 2014

Great read. Ridiculous, of course, but a great read nonetheless.
posted by zardoz at 1:31 AM on April 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

This might explain why all the dogs in my neighborhood come to pee on the 80,000 foot tall pillar of stone in my backyard. The universe being all yingy-yangy and shit.
posted by CincyBlues at 3:28 AM on April 28, 2014 [10 favorites]

Art Bell related story: A few years back I was headed to a conduct a training in Los Alamos (birthplace of the Atomic Bomb) it was my first time in New Mexico and I had rented a car in Albuquerque and drove late at night into Los Alamos.

Los Alamos is a good 90 minutes away from Albuquerque and at midnight, the road into the city is about the eeriest drive you can imagine: no cars heading into the city, with a dark and winding single-lane path heading upwards, forcing you to drive at a snail's pace.

In the last 20 minutes or so, it began to snow: strange white flakes that didn't quite seem the same as my familiar New England snowflakes back home (I was convinced I was heading into a nuclear winter situation). The backdrop to all of this, of course, was Art Bell, I wasn't super-familiar with his oeuvre, and I wish I could remember what he had been talking about that night. Whatever it was, his vibe was the perfect counterpoint to my drive.

So I was thoroughly spooked out when I arrived into the city itself: tall office buildings and not a single person or car on the streets, all signs of life were absent. I pulled up to my hotel, got my bags and walked into the lobby. Said lobby was deserted at first, and then a small old woman appeared from the back room and spoke in a unknown, foreign accent: "Mr (Jeremias), we've been expecting you."

Yep, truth is stranger than fiction from time to time.
posted by jeremias at 4:03 AM on April 28, 2014 [24 favorites]

There was a whale bone stuck in a tree in Ellensburg.

What a fine first line for a Stephen King story...
posted by Iosephus at 4:45 AM on April 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

Apparently the home page of hideousmonster.com is hosted somewhere deep in Mel's Hole.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:05 AM on April 28, 2014

The hole is fake? Didn't you guys see the picture?? what happened to pics or GTFO? There actually is a hole!
posted by marienbad at 5:20 AM on April 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Thank you for this. The "weird hole" trope is one I hadn't heard of before. I just took a class on writing bizarro fiction, and nothing we students produced comes close to the weirdness of Mel's story. The seal-fetus creature? Christ, that's some nightmare fuel. I bet Cronenberg is kicking himself that he didn't come up with that.

These sorts of USian paranormal stories have to have some Native American connection. Mostly it's just hand-wavey exoticizing of an oppressed Other, but I think it reveals a sense of collective guilt. Like we can't stand that we aren't haunted more. I wonder how that trope got started.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 5:25 AM on April 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

Maybe, but it's something humans have been doing the world over since forever - almost everywhere's folklore is rife with references to people long displaced, and the artifacts and magics they left behind. There's a bit of guilt there, as if these dangers could be controlled if the original people were still here, or that the strange effects are a delayed vengeance.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:43 AM on April 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm curious, though, is there any fishing line that would support its own weight when extended to 80 thousand feet with a 1-pound weight on the end?

It's actually plausible. It's a bit of a guess, I can't find any weight / foot, but here it says that a 500' reel of 50# test weighs 1-2 lbs for shipping. Now, 50# test isn't enough, as 80,000ft would weigh 160#. But you can get this stuff in up to 250# test. If it weighs less than 3 lbs/1000 ft, you can do it. Also, you only need 250# test at the top, you can decrease strength (hence weight of the line) the further you do down the line. So yes, maybe with a bit of work, but I think you should* be able to do it.

*In the absence of real data. If somebody has accurate weight / foot of this stuff, we can verify.

Listening to Art Bell late at night was awesome back in high school.
posted by defcom1 at 5:54 AM on April 28, 2014

"occassional black, anti-light beam shooting into the sky near the hole."

That's my favorite part. Once you've got an anti-light beam, the math gets tricky.
posted by surplus at 6:01 AM on April 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

Getting to the Bottom of Mel's Hole, a local story, is the top non-Wiki hit that I get on Google. Includes an actual geologist.
posted by gimonca at 6:32 AM on April 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

I found on Google Maps the area that was missing in the terraserver imagery. There's some interesting checkerboarding going on with the satellite imagery right around the part that was removed from the terraserver image...Almost as if some inter-dimensional beings are using our world to play some kind of sick, twisted chess game.
posted by doctornecessiter at 6:35 AM on April 28, 2014 [5 favorites]

Makes me think of this Glen Phillips song.
posted by anthom at 7:10 AM on April 28, 2014

As a road musician in the 90s Art Bell literally kept me awake and alive (and sometimes freaked out) on many a late night rural highway. Man was a genius at broadcasting in his prime. Later, as a radio DJ, I found many things I learned about the theater of the mind from Bell to be very useful. And yes, a great storyteller and story elicitor.

The pretense that any of the stories you hear in the mass media are simply "true" was never more boldly exposed as a comforting delusion.

Weird, but I miss the 90s. Strange times indeed.
posted by spitbull at 7:22 AM on April 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

Be respectful taking about the giant mystery hole, that's someone's mom your talking about. Not yo mama of course, no mysteries left from that hole.*snap*
posted by humanfont at 8:00 AM on April 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

Kitty Stardust: These sorts of USian paranormal stories have to have some Native American connection. Mostly it's just hand-wavey exoticizing of an oppressed Other, but I think it reveals a sense of collective guilt. Like we can't stand that we aren't haunted more. I wonder how that trope got started.

Yeah, I think the idea that "hauntedness" has something to do with settler guilt is a really good one. Judith Richardson talks about this a little in her amazing book, Possessions: The History and Uses of Haunting in the Hudson Valley, and I once had a stab at saying* something myself about it.

*Blatant self-link, obviously.
posted by Sonny Jim at 8:13 AM on April 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

These sorts of USian paranormal stories have to have some Native American connection.

You might be on the right track generally, but the mystery inherent in a dynamic between current residents and a displaced Other is certainly not unique to the US / Native American dynamic.

There are weird stories everywhere, and nearly everywhere in the world a poorly-understood "Other" group were resident in that locale before the more recent ethnic or political group moved in and forced them out, absorbed and diluted their culture, or killed them off. In many Old World locations, the ethnographic strata of past Others goes many layers deep, and many tens of thousands of years into the past. On some deep level, we're probably all spooked out by residual guilt of what happened to Neanderthals and other hominid groups that have gone away.
posted by aught at 8:22 AM on April 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Precursor to creepypasta.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:43 AM on April 28, 2014

Makes me think of this Glen Phillips song.

Or for a slightly more ominous and dread-laden take, The Handsome Family's "The Bottomless Hole".
posted by FatherDagon at 8:59 AM on April 28, 2014

Mel is told that when the burning ice is discovered in the universe, it's almost always improperly used.

Wait, I thought the burning ice was made by lowering a bucket of 7-11 ice down the well and letting it sit there. Art Bell stories might be believable, but they're surely not consistent.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:59 AM on April 28, 2014

Awesome tale.

Reminds me a little of this classic bit of radio theater, The Thing on the Fourble Board.
posted by doctornemo at 10:04 AM on April 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

Late-night AM radio was like pre-internet internet for me. (Heck, I can even remember when Larry King was kind of a cool radio host who smacked down racists.)

I think it also was on Coast to Coast that someone told a brief eerie anecdote that I still want to turn into a story. This person was walking along a college campus and noticed a couple of people who had this weird aura about them. The kicker was one of them turned to the storyteller and looked as if they knew what he was seeing. That was the scary part for me - not just seeing some alien/mutant/time-traveler, but that they would KNOW you knew.
posted by NorthernLite at 10:21 AM on April 28, 2014

Man, this is crazy for me to read-- I went to Central Washington University in the '90s, and I lived on and off in Ellensburg until '98 or so. And I had friends who listened to Coast to Coast AM. I'm amazed I've never heard of Mel's Hole before.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 10:26 AM on April 28, 2014

That was the scary part for me - not just seeing some alien/mutant/time-traveler, but that they would KNOW you knew.

They weren't alien time travelers, they were just on acid. "Hey, that guy looking at us TOTALLY KNOWS man, we gotta get real small as soon as we can. Maybe he'll stop looking if we hold still.. wait no he won't hold still so isn't it still like, relativistic motion, or something? Wait, maybe he's the professor, we should ask him. Hey guy, come here!"
posted by FatherDagon at 10:54 AM on April 28, 2014

Makes me think of this Glen Phillips song.

The Dead Milkmen had a relevant song, too.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:21 AM on April 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

I want to believe.
posted by mudpuppie at 11:24 AM on April 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

PS: If I make up a crazy story about the, uh, the light-emitting boulder out in my backyard, will the government ship me off to Australia so I can do wombat research?

Pretty please?
posted by mudpuppie at 11:27 AM on April 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

I found on Google Maps the area that was missing in the terraserver imagery.

The Mulder in me discovered that area blocked out in the terraserver image is also blocked out on Google Maps by the only cloud for miles.

The Scully in me checked Google Earth's "look at older imagery" function and was able to see the blocked-out area. Found nothing out of the ordinary. Looked like the other foothills around it. Dammit, Scully, you're such a wet blanket! All Mulder wants is an alien creature to burst from a sheep's carcass and be his best friend.

However, I was able to locate the hole northwest of Ellensburg from a blurry satellite shot I found on GIS. I can pretend that's the mystery hole! Look at it! All ominous and hole-like.
posted by Spatch at 11:31 AM on April 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

It was producing the sort of blood-curdling lamb scream that you couldn't tell Hannibal Lecter about.

My eyes can't stop rolling. Help!
posted by Splunge at 12:05 PM on April 28, 2014

The Basques say that they have found a way to communicate with the creature. It speaks to them through one of their boomboxes.

May I nominate this for Sentence of the Week?
posted by edheil at 1:17 PM on April 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

From the debunking posted by gimonca above:

Geologically and physically, it’s not possible for a hole to be that deep, Powell said; it would collapse into itself under the tremendous pressure and heat from the surrounding strata.

What if the hole has a dimensional portal 1000ft down? WHAT THEN SMART GUY?!?!
posted by pashdown at 3:19 PM on April 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

Well that was creepy.
posted by jaguar at 6:02 PM on April 28, 2014

Having grown up in the area I was always surprised that no one mentions that the majority of Manastash ridge is inside the Yakima Training Center (an Army base) or that there's an NSA facility on the base. Seems like that information could be worked into the story.
posted by the_artificer at 5:18 AM on April 29, 2014 [1 favorite]