June 11, 2025 • 29 mins
Join host Robert Barber as he explores one of the strangest paranormal stories in American folklore.
In the forests of Washington State lies a tale of a bottomless pit—Mel’s Hole—where reality seems to unravel.
A man finds a hole that swallows objects, light, even time itself… and then he vanishes.
From late-night radio to whispered rumors, this mystery refuses to be buried.
Is it a hoax, a government secret, or something far stranger?
Step to the edge—and listen.
Special Thanks:
We’d like to than Bob from Mondo Freako podcast for stopping by. Join Bob and Rob as they delve into the unknown with laughter, curiosity, and a healthy dose of skepticism. Check out their show here
State of the Unknown is a documentary-style podcast tracing the haunted highways, forgotten folklore, and unexplained phenomena across America’s 50 states.
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Some stories don’t stay buried.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:03):
There are places that disappear from the map, and
then there are places that werenever on it to begin with.
In the hills of centralWashington, where pine trees
stretch like needles towards agray sky, there's a stretch of
land where nothing grows quiteright.
The animals avoid it.
(00:23):
The birds fall silent.
And somewhere in the middle is ahole.
No fence, no warning, Just ayawning pit in the ground, dark,
endless, and waiting.
They say you can drop anythinginside and never hear it hit the
bottom.
(00:44):
Rope, rocks, radio equipment, itall vanishes.
And then the stories start.
They say animals lured into thepit come back changed.
That ice pulled from the depthsburned instead of melted.
that the government tried toseal it off because even they
(01:05):
didn't understand it.
But the strangest thing of all?
The man who told the world aboutthis place vanished too.
This is a story about soundwaves and silence.
About belief, paranoia, and thepower of a voice in the dark.
It starts with a phone call andends with a question that's
(01:28):
never been answered.
This is the story of Mel's Hole.
Legends don't need centuries togrow.
Sometimes, all it takes is amicrophone and one story strange
enough to echo.
In 1997, a man named Mel Waterscalled into a national late
(01:49):
night radio show and said he'dfound a hole that defied logic.
It wasn't just deep, it wasbottomless.
It wasn't just strange, It wasdangerous.
And if he was telling the truth,it was the kind of secret
someone might want buried.
(02:29):
I'm your host, Robert Barber,and today we travel to the high
desert of Washington, to a pitthat no one can find, reported
by a man no one can verify, on ashow that millions of night owls
tuned into hoping, just maybe,the weird was real.
(02:49):
This is the story of Mel's Hole,and this is State of the
Unknown.
(03:14):
February 21st, 1997.
Coast to Coast AM is on the air.
It's just past 10 p.m.
when a man named Mel Waterscalls in.
He's calm, measured, almost toocasual.
And he says there's something onhis property near Ellensburg,
Washington.
(03:34):
Something he thinks the worldneeds to hear about.
A hole, nine feet across,perfectly round.
lined with stone and older thanany fence or foundation nearby.
He's lived near it for years, hesays, used to lower garbage into
it, until he noticed somethingstrange.
(03:58):
It never filled.
Mel tells host Art Bell that hestarted lowering fishing line
with weights into the hole,spools and spools of it, over
80,000 feet.
More than 15 miles and still nobottom.
He describes it like someonetalking about their backyard
(04:19):
pond.
Except this pond, he says,doesn't echo.
Doesn't reflect sound.
Doesn't seem normal.
Art Bell presses him fordetails.
Listeners start calling in.
And just like that, a legend isborn.
Mel continues his story.
(04:41):
He says animals avoid the area,that electronics act strange
near the hole, that a neighboronce lowered a dead dog's body
inside, only to see it dayslater walking through the woods,
alive, changed, but different.
He describes a bucket of icepulled from the pit that refused
(05:04):
to melt, that caught fire whenexposed to air.
He talks about hearing strangenoises near the hole at night.
Hum-like.
Mechanical.
Distant.
The details are wild.
But Mel doesn't sound unhinged.
He sounds believable.
Or at least he sounds convinced.
(05:26):
And that's the thing about greatradio.
You don't need proof.
You just need a voice.
And a story you can't stopthinking about.
As Mel's story spread acrosslate-night airwaves and early
internet forums, one questionkept rising above the rest.
(05:48):
Who was he?
He called himself Mel Waters.
But when reporters and amateursleuths dug into Kittitas County
property records, they foundnothing.
No deeds, no tax filings, notrace of a man named Mel Waters
owning land on or near MonastishRidge.
(06:09):
Some people speculated he wasusing a fake name to protect
himself.
Others believed he never existedat all.
In the months after the firstbroadcast, Coast to Coast became
the center of a growing fringeinvestigation.
Mel called into the show threemore times over the next few
years, each time with newupdates and each time less
(06:34):
grounded in reality.
In April of 2000, During whatwould be his final appearance,
Mel's claims escalated.
He said he had been abducted byshadowy government agents, that
he'd spent time in Australiaonly to return and find his
property completelyinaccessible.
(06:55):
He described seeing black beamweapons, strange animal-human
hybrids, and militaryexperiments conducted near the
site.
He told Art Bell that he wasstill being watched.
that his phone might be tapped,and that he feared he had said
too much.
After that, he was never heardfrom again.
(07:17):
Despite, or maybe because of,the lack of follow-up, the
legend grew.
Researchers contacted locallibraries, historical societies,
and land management offices inEllensburg and the surrounding
areas.
They found mentions ofsinkholes, mine shafts, and old
(07:38):
wells, but nothing matchingMel's description.
A few landowners even invitedjournalists to explore their
property, hoping to find thehole, but none did.
In 2002, investigativejournalist Richard M.
Cohen tried to track down theorigin of the broadcast.
(07:59):
He found tapes of the originalcall confirmed Mel had called
from a real phone number andverified that the conversation
had not been scripted.
But Cohen's deeper investigationended in the same place as
everyone else's.
No land, no records, no MelWaters.
(08:20):
Still, believers pointed outthat the absence of evidence
didn't mean the story was false.
In fact, to many, it made thetale feel more plausible.
If Mel had stumbled uponsomething truly sensitive,
something the government didn'twant exposed, wouldn't they
erase his paper trail?
(08:42):
Some listeners even claim toreceive strange phone calls
after publicly discussing thehole online.
One user in an early messageboard thread described an
anonymous warning to, quote,stop asking questions about
Mel's hole.
No proof, no recording, just amessage.
(09:02):
and silence.
As the 2000s rolled on, interestin Mel's Hole faded from the
mainstream.
Art Bell retired.
Coast to Coast changed hosts,and newer legends pushed the
story to the back burner.
But among paranormalenthusiasts, Mel Waters became
(09:22):
something of a mythic figure,the last great radio era mystery
man.
No one knew his face, no oneknew his fate, And yet, his
voice still echoed.
And then in 2008, somethingstrange happened.
Artist Matthew Southworth, bestknown for his work with DC and
(09:45):
Image Comics, posted a blogentry detailing his encounter
with a man in Seattle whointroduced himself as Mel
Waters.
Southworth said the man matchedthe voice from the Coast to
Coast tapes perfectly.
He was articulate, intense, andconvinced of what he'd
experienced.
(10:06):
According to Southworth, thisman claimed that Mel's hole was
still active, that governmentsurveillance continued, and that
his life had been irrevocablychanged by what he'd seen.
No one ever confirmed the man'sidentity, no photos were taken,
and the alleged sighting wasnever repeated.
(10:29):
Just another page in a storythat seemed to fold in on
itself, fact and fiction merginguntil they were
indistinguishable.
Mel Waters, the man, the voice,the mystery, was gone.
But the hole?
That was still out there.
Or at least, people believed itwas.
(10:49):
And they kept looking.
As the story of Mel's hole madeits rounds on radio and early
internet forums, one questionechoed louder than any other.
Where is it?
Mel had never given precisecoordinates.
He'd only said it was locatedsomewhere on Monastish Ridge, a
(11:11):
rugged forested area in KittitasCounty, just outside Ellensburg,
Washington.
That was enough for people tostart looking.
paranormal investigators,amateur geologists, and
coast-to-coast superfans begancombing the area.
Some drove in from out of statewith nothing more than a compass
and a printout of a forumthread.
(11:34):
Others were locals, curioushikers and ranchers who'd grown
up with stories of strangethings in the hills.
They expected to find...
something.
A collapsed shaft.
An old well.
even just a depression in theearth.
But over and over again, theycame up empty.
(11:56):
Part of the challenge was theland itself.
Monastish Ridge is a tough placeto search.
It's steep, heavily wooded, andremote in a way that defies GPS.
The area is dotted with privateproperty, forming mining sites
and abandoned logging roads,many of them gated or overgrown.
(12:17):
If the hole existed, it couldeasily be hidden in a ravine or
behind an unmarked boundary.
And yet, there were rumors.
Some explorers claimed theyfound military-style fencing
deep in the woods.
Others reported blocked forestservice roads or no trespassing
(12:38):
signs where none had existedbefore.
One man said he encountered twoindividuals in dark uniforms
while hiking near an old miningsite They told him to turn back
for his own safety.
He asked why.
They said the area was unstable.
He never went back.
(13:00):
Another theory emerged that thehole might have been a natural
geological formation, possiblyrelated to the region's volcanic
history.
Eastern Washington is known forits lava tubes, basalt flows,
and occasional subsidence pitscirculating Natural collapses
where the ground caves in overtime.
(13:21):
But even local geologists werepuzzled.
There were no known pitsmatching Mel's description,
especially one with no echo, nobottom, and no surrounding
erosion.
Some turned to satellite maps.
Zooming in on Monastish Ridge,they marked anything that looked
like a shadow or a crater.
(13:42):
But dense tree cover made aerialspotting nearly impossible.
and Mel's own refusal to shareexact coordinates left them
guessing.
In 2002, the mystery got a newtwist.
A man named Gerald R.
Osborne, who went by the nameRed Elk, came forward claiming
(14:04):
he knew the location of Mel'shole.
Red Elk described himself as ahalf Lakota medicine man and
self-styled shaman with ties tounderground knowledge.
He said the hole was real,located on tribal land,
protected by both spiritualforces and government interest.
(14:26):
He even led a small group ofjournalists and paranormal
researchers on an expedition tofind it.
They hiked for hours, mappedtree lines, scanned the ridges,
and once again found nothing.
Red Elk said the hole wascloaked by a force not meant to
be uncovered, that only thosewith the right intent or
(14:50):
spiritual readiness could findit.
Skeptics were quick to point outthat Red Elk had made other
questionable claims in the past.
Encounters with reptilianaliens, underground cities, and
Bigfoot civilizations hiddenbeneath Mount Rainier.
Still, for some, his words rangtrue.
(15:11):
He spoke with conviction, andconviction, as Mel had already
proved, goes a long way.
Years passed.
Expeditions dwindled.
The coast-to-coast audiencemoved on to new mysteries, and
Mel's hole remained,frustratingly, out of reach.
(15:32):
To this day, no one has providedverifiable evidence of the
hole's location.
No photographs, no geologicalsurveys, no maps, just stories,
shared, repeated, and twistedlike rope into legend.
But maybe that's the point.
Maybe the hole was never meantto be found.
(15:54):
Maybe it's not a place on themap, but a reflection of what we
fear might be beneath our feet,just out of sight.
Even without proof, maybebecause of it, Mel's Hole became
a legend.
And legends, once they takeroot, don't fade quietly, they
(16:17):
echo.
Since 1997, Mel's Hole hasinspired a steady drip of
references across paranormalmedia, forums, and internet
culture.
In some corners, it's spoken oflike a lost artifact.
In others, it's becomememe-worthy.
a symbol of bottomlessweirdness, often whispered with
(16:40):
a wink.
There's a 2008 episode ofX-Files-style podcast lore that
references it obliquely.
TV specials on the TravelChannel and Histories
Unexplained have covered thelegend.
And paranormal YouTubers haveracked up millions of views with
titles like I Went Looking forMel's Hole and This Is What
(17:01):
Happened.
The hole even inspired originalfiction.
In 2014, experimental artistMatthew Barney referenced Mel's
Hole in an underground filmexhibit in New York.
And in a 2020 short storycollection titled Bottomless,
the closing tale involves ahiker who finds a seemingly
(17:23):
infinite void in what it takesfor him to leave.
It also has been spoofed.
A 2017 episode of the comedyhorror podcast Hello from the
Magic Tavern features abottomless pit that starts
talking back.
Even animated shows like GravityFalls have included background
(17:44):
Easter eggs, a reference onlythe most obsessed would catch.
But pop culture didn't createthis story.
It adopted it.
Because Mel's Hole offerssomething timeless, a mystery
with no resolution.
A question without an answer.
And just enough detail to soundlike it could be real.
(18:07):
It's become a kind of Rorschachtest in the paranormal
community.
What you believe about Mel'shole says more about you than it
does about geology or radiosignals.
Are you the kind of person whotrusts voices in the dark?
Or the kind who demandscoordinates?
Either way, the hole keepspulling people in.
(18:29):
Not just hikers and theorists,but artists, writers,
storytellers.
Anyone drawn to the idea thatsomewhere out there, beneath the
trees and rock and silence, is aplace that was never meant to be
found.
And maybe that's why Mel's Holehas lasted.
Because we all have a version ofit.
(18:51):
A fear we can't name.
A question we don't wantanswered.
A place in the dark we know weshouldn't look, but can't quite
resist.
If Mel Waters had posted hisstory on a message board, it
(19:12):
might have vanished.
If he'd written a blog, it mighthave been ignored.
But he didn't.
He picked up the phone andcalled Art Bell, and that made
all the difference.
Coast to Coast AM wasn't just ashow.
It was a community.
A lifeline for night shiftworkers, truckers, insomniacs,
(19:34):
and seekers.
It aired in the quiet hours whenthe world felt thinner and
belief came easier.
Art Bell had a rare gift.
He never mocked.
He asked questions.
He listened.
And in doing so, he builtsomething between entertainment
and ritual.
(19:55):
A place where people could bringtheir strangest truths and not
be laughed off the air.
When Mel called in on February21st, 1997, he didn't yell.
He didn't dramatize.
He just told the story.
Like it had been weighing on himfor years.
And Art, as always, let thestrangeness breathe.
(20:19):
That's part of what made itbelievable.
Not because it was scientific,not because it was proven, but
because it was delivered overradio waves, that old trusted
medium that has always had moreto do with feeling than fact.
There's something about AM radioat night.
It hums with loneliness, withpossibility.
(20:43):
And when a story comes through,static and all, it bypasses
skepticism and goes straight tothe imagination.
In the days after Mel's call,Listeners flooded phone lines,
online forums, and bulletinboards.
Everyone wanted to know more, tofind the whole, to hear Mel
(21:03):
again.
It wasn't just a good segment.
It was modern folklore in realtime.
A legend made not in ancientruins or dusty scrolls, but over
a late-night signal.
Broadcast over thousands ofempty highways, to a country
full of people ready to believe,or just desperate to feel like
(21:26):
the world was still just alittle bit strange.
It's easy to forget that storiesdon't just live in words, they
live in land.
In the land around Ellensburg,Washington, the supposed home of
Mills Hole, is exactly the kindof place a story like this
(21:48):
needs.
Monastish Ridge is part of theCascade Foothills, where dense
pine meets sharp ridgelines inriver-cut valleys.
It's quiet, dry, remote.
A place where cell signalsvanish, and compasses sometimes
misbehave.
This area has a long history ofunexplained phenomena.
(22:11):
In the 1960s, UFO sightings nearthe Yakima Indian Reservation
were so frequent that governmentresearchers investigated.
Locals reported glowing orbs,silent craft, and lights that
pulsed in the sky over triballands.
Dig a little deeper and thehistory thickens.
(22:32):
This is land with spiritualweight, used by the Yakima
Nation for centuries beforesettlers arrived.
Ceremonial spaces, burialgrounds, Places meant to be
protected, not penetrated.
It's also mining territory.
From the 1800s through the 20thcentury, prospectors dug up all
(22:55):
through the hills looking forcoal, gold, and copper.
Shafts were left behind, manyunrecorded, some now buried by
time and trees.
So when Mel described a deep,perfectly round hole in the
ground...
It didn't seem impossible.
Outlandish, yes.
(23:16):
But out of place?
Not at all.
Even today, hikers in theMenestash area report finding
metal stakes, sealed entrances,and paths that vanish into
brush.
Clues or maybe coincidences.
If there were a hole like Mel's,this would be the place it could
(23:36):
hide.
The forest doesn't just mufflesound.
It eats memory.
And if there's one thingEllensburg and its surrounding
ridges do better than almostanywhere else, it's keeping
secrets.
Urban legends don't needcampfires anymore.
(23:58):
They travel by signal, byscreenshot, and by thread.
And Mel's Hole was one of thefirst modern myths to fully
evolve in public.
When Mel first called in, Theinternet was still young.
Message boards, IRC chats, emaillists.
The moment the call aired, thestory took on a second life.
(24:21):
Re-shared, retold, and reframed.
Every retelling added something.
A new theory, a new sighting.
An old memory someone thoughtthey'd forgotten.
And unlike legends of old, Mel'sHole was interactive.
You could search maps.
(24:42):
You could drive to Ellensburg.
You could lower your own fishingline into the earth, just in
case.
In that way, it's part of alineage that includes things
like Skinwalker Ranch, The BackRooms, Creepypasta, and ARGs,
which stand for AlternateReality Games.
Legends that live half in thereal world and half in
(25:04):
imagination.
Just enough evidence to beplausible...
just enough ambiguity to keepthem alive.
Psychologists call this theZeigarnik effect, the tendency
of the brain to fixate onunfinished things.
We want closure, but a mysterywithout answers?
That sticks with us.
(25:26):
Mel's hole sticks.
Because it asks questions wecan't answer.
Because it lives in a place wecould visit, but might not want
to.
In a world that's been mapped,measured and geotagged, the idea
of something that still can't befound, that still resists
documentation, feels almostsacred.
(25:49):
And maybe that's what makes itfolklore.
Not a story about the past, buta story we're still telling
because we want it to be true.
There are places that feelwrong, even if there's no sign
(26:10):
to tell you so.
Places where the silence is tooquiet.
Where the air feels too still.
Mel said he found one of thoseplaces.
He didn't ask us to believe him.
He just asked us to listen.
And somehow, that made it morebelievable.
He never gave exact coordinates.
(26:32):
Never sold a book.
Never even came back to the showafter a certain point.
But he left something behind.
A space.
A shape.
A shadow in the landscape of ourminds.
Because Mel's hole isn't justabout what was there.
It's about what might be.
It's about the idea that even ina world mapped down to the inch,
(26:57):
some things still can't befound.
Some holes go deeper than anymeasuring tape can reach.
Maybe it was just a story.
Maybe it was a hoax.
Or maybe it was somethingstranger.
A real place that was buried notby nature, but by design.
(27:19):
If it is true, someone doesn'twant us to find it.
And if it's not, we still keeplooking anyway.
Because part of us needs storieslike this.
We need the unknown.
the unsolved, the idea thatthere's more under our feet than
just dirt and stone.
(27:39):
And if you ever find yourselfnear Ellensburg, driving through
the hills at dusk with the pinesdarkening at the edges of the
road, you might feel it, thattug, that pull, the sense that
something's waiting out there,still open, still hungry.
And if you hear your fishingline keep on spooling, foot
(28:00):
after foot, mile after mile intothe dark, you might wonder, just
for a moment, how deep does itgo?
And what happens if somethingpulls back?
This has been State of theUnknown.
(28:21):
Every other week, we explore theshadowy corners of American
folklore.
Stories buried in the woods,fields, deserts, and basements.
Stories we can't let go of,because they never really let go
of us.
If you enjoyed this episode,follow the show wherever you
listen.
Leave a review or share it withsomeone who loves a mystery that
(28:42):
doesn't end clean.
You can join the community onInstagram and Facebook at State
of the Unknown Podcast.
We post photos, behind thescenes notes, and talk about the
stories between the stories.
And if you've got a strange taleof your own, something you
heard, saw, or lived, send us amessage.
We're collecting listenerstories for future episodes.
(29:04):
Until next time, keep your eyeson the shadows.
And if you ever hear a voicecalling from deep below, don't
lean too far over the edge.
There are places that disappear from the map, and
then there are places that werenever on it to begin with.
In the hills of centralWashington, where pine trees
stretch like needles towards agray sky, there's a stretch of
land where nothing grows quiteright.
The animals avoid it.
(00:23):
The birds fall silent.
And somewhere in the middle is ahole.
No fence, no warning, Just ayawning pit in the ground, dark,
endless, and waiting.
They say you can drop anythinginside and never hear it hit the
bottom.
(00:44):
Rope, rocks, radio equipment, itall vanishes.
And then the stories start.
They say animals lured into thepit come back changed.
That ice pulled from the depthsburned instead of melted.
that the government tried toseal it off because even they
(01:05):
didn't understand it.
But the strangest thing of all?
The man who told the world aboutthis place vanished too.
This is a story about soundwaves and silence.
About belief, paranoia, and thepower of a voice in the dark.
It starts with a phone call andends with a question that's
(01:28):
never been answered.
This is the story of Mel's Hole.
Legends don't need centuries togrow.
Sometimes, all it takes is amicrophone and one story strange
enough to echo.
In 1997, a man named Mel Waterscalled into a national late
(01:49):
night radio show and said he'dfound a hole that defied logic.
It wasn't just deep, it wasbottomless.
It wasn't just strange, It wasdangerous.
And if he was telling the truth,it was the kind of secret
someone might want buried.
(02:29):
I'm your host, Robert Barber,and today we travel to the high
desert of Washington, to a pitthat no one can find, reported
by a man no one can verify, on ashow that millions of night owls
tuned into hoping, just maybe,the weird was real.
(02:49):
This is the story of Mel's Hole,and this is State of the
Unknown.
(03:14):
February 21st, 1997.
Coast to Coast AM is on the air.
It's just past 10 p.m.
when a man named Mel Waterscalls in.
He's calm, measured, almost toocasual.
And he says there's something onhis property near Ellensburg,
Washington.
(03:34):
Something he thinks the worldneeds to hear about.
A hole, nine feet across,perfectly round.
lined with stone and older thanany fence or foundation nearby.
He's lived near it for years, hesays, used to lower garbage into
it, until he noticed somethingstrange.
(03:58):
It never filled.
Mel tells host Art Bell that hestarted lowering fishing line
with weights into the hole,spools and spools of it, over
80,000 feet.
More than 15 miles and still nobottom.
He describes it like someonetalking about their backyard
(04:19):
pond.
Except this pond, he says,doesn't echo.
Doesn't reflect sound.
Doesn't seem normal.
Art Bell presses him fordetails.
Listeners start calling in.
And just like that, a legend isborn.
Mel continues his story.
(04:41):
He says animals avoid the area,that electronics act strange
near the hole, that a neighboronce lowered a dead dog's body
inside, only to see it dayslater walking through the woods,
alive, changed, but different.
He describes a bucket of icepulled from the pit that refused
(05:04):
to melt, that caught fire whenexposed to air.
He talks about hearing strangenoises near the hole at night.
Hum-like.
Mechanical.
Distant.
The details are wild.
But Mel doesn't sound unhinged.
He sounds believable.
Or at least he sounds convinced.
(05:26):
And that's the thing about greatradio.
You don't need proof.
You just need a voice.
And a story you can't stopthinking about.
As Mel's story spread acrosslate-night airwaves and early
internet forums, one questionkept rising above the rest.
(05:48):
Who was he?
He called himself Mel Waters.
But when reporters and amateursleuths dug into Kittitas County
property records, they foundnothing.
No deeds, no tax filings, notrace of a man named Mel Waters
owning land on or near MonastishRidge.
(06:09):
Some people speculated he wasusing a fake name to protect
himself.
Others believed he never existedat all.
In the months after the firstbroadcast, Coast to Coast became
the center of a growing fringeinvestigation.
Mel called into the show threemore times over the next few
years, each time with newupdates and each time less
(06:34):
grounded in reality.
In April of 2000, During whatwould be his final appearance,
Mel's claims escalated.
He said he had been abducted byshadowy government agents, that
he'd spent time in Australiaonly to return and find his
property completelyinaccessible.
(06:55):
He described seeing black beamweapons, strange animal-human
hybrids, and militaryexperiments conducted near the
site.
He told Art Bell that he wasstill being watched.
that his phone might be tapped,and that he feared he had said
too much.
After that, he was never heardfrom again.
(07:17):
Despite, or maybe because of,the lack of follow-up, the
legend grew.
Researchers contacted locallibraries, historical societies,
and land management offices inEllensburg and the surrounding
areas.
They found mentions ofsinkholes, mine shafts, and old
(07:38):
wells, but nothing matchingMel's description.
A few landowners even invitedjournalists to explore their
property, hoping to find thehole, but none did.
In 2002, investigativejournalist Richard M.
Cohen tried to track down theorigin of the broadcast.
(07:59):
He found tapes of the originalcall confirmed Mel had called
from a real phone number andverified that the conversation
had not been scripted.
But Cohen's deeper investigationended in the same place as
everyone else's.
No land, no records, no MelWaters.
(08:20):
Still, believers pointed outthat the absence of evidence
didn't mean the story was false.
In fact, to many, it made thetale feel more plausible.
If Mel had stumbled uponsomething truly sensitive,
something the government didn'twant exposed, wouldn't they
erase his paper trail?
(08:42):
Some listeners even claim toreceive strange phone calls
after publicly discussing thehole online.
One user in an early messageboard thread described an
anonymous warning to, quote,stop asking questions about
Mel's hole.
No proof, no recording, just amessage.
(09:02):
and silence.
As the 2000s rolled on, interestin Mel's Hole faded from the
mainstream.
Art Bell retired.
Coast to Coast changed hosts,and newer legends pushed the
story to the back burner.
But among paranormalenthusiasts, Mel Waters became
(09:22):
something of a mythic figure,the last great radio era mystery
man.
No one knew his face, no oneknew his fate, And yet, his
voice still echoed.
And then in 2008, somethingstrange happened.
Artist Matthew Southworth, bestknown for his work with DC and
(09:45):
Image Comics, posted a blogentry detailing his encounter
with a man in Seattle whointroduced himself as Mel
Waters.
Southworth said the man matchedthe voice from the Coast to
Coast tapes perfectly.
He was articulate, intense, andconvinced of what he'd
experienced.
(10:06):
According to Southworth, thisman claimed that Mel's hole was
still active, that governmentsurveillance continued, and that
his life had been irrevocablychanged by what he'd seen.
No one ever confirmed the man'sidentity, no photos were taken,
and the alleged sighting wasnever repeated.
(10:29):
Just another page in a storythat seemed to fold in on
itself, fact and fiction merginguntil they were
indistinguishable.
Mel Waters, the man, the voice,the mystery, was gone.
But the hole?
That was still out there.
Or at least, people believed itwas.
(10:49):
And they kept looking.
As the story of Mel's hole madeits rounds on radio and early
internet forums, one questionechoed louder than any other.
Where is it?
Mel had never given precisecoordinates.
He'd only said it was locatedsomewhere on Monastish Ridge, a
(11:11):
rugged forested area in KittitasCounty, just outside Ellensburg,
Washington.
That was enough for people tostart looking.
paranormal investigators,amateur geologists, and
coast-to-coast superfans begancombing the area.
Some drove in from out of statewith nothing more than a compass
and a printout of a forumthread.
(11:34):
Others were locals, curioushikers and ranchers who'd grown
up with stories of strangethings in the hills.
They expected to find...
something.
A collapsed shaft.
An old well.
even just a depression in theearth.
But over and over again, theycame up empty.
(11:56):
Part of the challenge was theland itself.
Monastish Ridge is a tough placeto search.
It's steep, heavily wooded, andremote in a way that defies GPS.
The area is dotted with privateproperty, forming mining sites
and abandoned logging roads,many of them gated or overgrown.
(12:17):
If the hole existed, it couldeasily be hidden in a ravine or
behind an unmarked boundary.
And yet, there were rumors.
Some explorers claimed theyfound military-style fencing
deep in the woods.
Others reported blocked forestservice roads or no trespassing
(12:38):
signs where none had existedbefore.
One man said he encountered twoindividuals in dark uniforms
while hiking near an old miningsite They told him to turn back
for his own safety.
He asked why.
They said the area was unstable.
He never went back.
(13:00):
Another theory emerged that thehole might have been a natural
geological formation, possiblyrelated to the region's volcanic
history.
Eastern Washington is known forits lava tubes, basalt flows,
and occasional subsidence pitscirculating Natural collapses
where the ground caves in overtime.
(13:21):
But even local geologists werepuzzled.
There were no known pitsmatching Mel's description,
especially one with no echo, nobottom, and no surrounding
erosion.
Some turned to satellite maps.
Zooming in on Monastish Ridge,they marked anything that looked
like a shadow or a crater.
(13:42):
But dense tree cover made aerialspotting nearly impossible.
and Mel's own refusal to shareexact coordinates left them
guessing.
In 2002, the mystery got a newtwist.
A man named Gerald R.
Osborne, who went by the nameRed Elk, came forward claiming
(14:04):
he knew the location of Mel'shole.
Red Elk described himself as ahalf Lakota medicine man and
self-styled shaman with ties tounderground knowledge.
He said the hole was real,located on tribal land,
protected by both spiritualforces and government interest.
(14:26):
He even led a small group ofjournalists and paranormal
researchers on an expedition tofind it.
They hiked for hours, mappedtree lines, scanned the ridges,
and once again found nothing.
Red Elk said the hole wascloaked by a force not meant to
be uncovered, that only thosewith the right intent or
(14:50):
spiritual readiness could findit.
Skeptics were quick to point outthat Red Elk had made other
questionable claims in the past.
Encounters with reptilianaliens, underground cities, and
Bigfoot civilizations hiddenbeneath Mount Rainier.
Still, for some, his words rangtrue.
(15:11):
He spoke with conviction, andconviction, as Mel had already
proved, goes a long way.
Years passed.
Expeditions dwindled.
The coast-to-coast audiencemoved on to new mysteries, and
Mel's hole remained,frustratingly, out of reach.
(15:32):
To this day, no one has providedverifiable evidence of the
hole's location.
No photographs, no geologicalsurveys, no maps, just stories,
shared, repeated, and twistedlike rope into legend.
But maybe that's the point.
Maybe the hole was never meantto be found.
(15:54):
Maybe it's not a place on themap, but a reflection of what we
fear might be beneath our feet,just out of sight.
Even without proof, maybebecause of it, Mel's Hole became
a legend.
And legends, once they takeroot, don't fade quietly, they
(16:17):
echo.
Since 1997, Mel's Hole hasinspired a steady drip of
references across paranormalmedia, forums, and internet
culture.
In some corners, it's spoken oflike a lost artifact.
In others, it's becomememe-worthy.
a symbol of bottomlessweirdness, often whispered with
(16:40):
a wink.
There's a 2008 episode ofX-Files-style podcast lore that
references it obliquely.
TV specials on the TravelChannel and Histories
Unexplained have covered thelegend.
And paranormal YouTubers haveracked up millions of views with
titles like I Went Looking forMel's Hole and This Is What
(17:01):
Happened.
The hole even inspired originalfiction.
In 2014, experimental artistMatthew Barney referenced Mel's
Hole in an underground filmexhibit in New York.
And in a 2020 short storycollection titled Bottomless,
the closing tale involves ahiker who finds a seemingly
(17:23):
infinite void in what it takesfor him to leave.
It also has been spoofed.
A 2017 episode of the comedyhorror podcast Hello from the
Magic Tavern features abottomless pit that starts
talking back.
Even animated shows like GravityFalls have included background
(17:44):
Easter eggs, a reference onlythe most obsessed would catch.
But pop culture didn't createthis story.
It adopted it.
Because Mel's Hole offerssomething timeless, a mystery
with no resolution.
A question without an answer.
And just enough detail to soundlike it could be real.
(18:07):
It's become a kind of Rorschachtest in the paranormal
community.
What you believe about Mel'shole says more about you than it
does about geology or radiosignals.
Are you the kind of person whotrusts voices in the dark?
Or the kind who demandscoordinates?
Either way, the hole keepspulling people in.
(18:29):
Not just hikers and theorists,but artists, writers,
storytellers.
Anyone drawn to the idea thatsomewhere out there, beneath the
trees and rock and silence, is aplace that was never meant to be
found.
And maybe that's why Mel's Holehas lasted.
Because we all have a version ofit.
(18:51):
A fear we can't name.
A question we don't wantanswered.
A place in the dark we know weshouldn't look, but can't quite
resist.
If Mel Waters had posted hisstory on a message board, it
(19:12):
might have vanished.
If he'd written a blog, it mighthave been ignored.
But he didn't.
He picked up the phone andcalled Art Bell, and that made
all the difference.
Coast to Coast AM wasn't just ashow.
It was a community.
A lifeline for night shiftworkers, truckers, insomniacs,
(19:34):
and seekers.
It aired in the quiet hours whenthe world felt thinner and
belief came easier.
Art Bell had a rare gift.
He never mocked.
He asked questions.
He listened.
And in doing so, he builtsomething between entertainment
and ritual.
(19:55):
A place where people could bringtheir strangest truths and not
be laughed off the air.
When Mel called in on February21st, 1997, he didn't yell.
He didn't dramatize.
He just told the story.
Like it had been weighing on himfor years.
And Art, as always, let thestrangeness breathe.
(20:19):
That's part of what made itbelievable.
Not because it was scientific,not because it was proven, but
because it was delivered overradio waves, that old trusted
medium that has always had moreto do with feeling than fact.
There's something about AM radioat night.
It hums with loneliness, withpossibility.
(20:43):
And when a story comes through,static and all, it bypasses
skepticism and goes straight tothe imagination.
In the days after Mel's call,Listeners flooded phone lines,
online forums, and bulletinboards.
Everyone wanted to know more, tofind the whole, to hear Mel
(21:03):
again.
It wasn't just a good segment.
It was modern folklore in realtime.
A legend made not in ancientruins or dusty scrolls, but over
a late-night signal.
Broadcast over thousands ofempty highways, to a country
full of people ready to believe,or just desperate to feel like
(21:26):
the world was still just alittle bit strange.
It's easy to forget that storiesdon't just live in words, they
live in land.
In the land around Ellensburg,Washington, the supposed home of
Mills Hole, is exactly the kindof place a story like this
(21:48):
needs.
Monastish Ridge is part of theCascade Foothills, where dense
pine meets sharp ridgelines inriver-cut valleys.
It's quiet, dry, remote.
A place where cell signalsvanish, and compasses sometimes
misbehave.
This area has a long history ofunexplained phenomena.
(22:11):
In the 1960s, UFO sightings nearthe Yakima Indian Reservation
were so frequent that governmentresearchers investigated.
Locals reported glowing orbs,silent craft, and lights that
pulsed in the sky over triballands.
Dig a little deeper and thehistory thickens.
(22:32):
This is land with spiritualweight, used by the Yakima
Nation for centuries beforesettlers arrived.
Ceremonial spaces, burialgrounds, Places meant to be
protected, not penetrated.
It's also mining territory.
From the 1800s through the 20thcentury, prospectors dug up all
(22:55):
through the hills looking forcoal, gold, and copper.
Shafts were left behind, manyunrecorded, some now buried by
time and trees.
So when Mel described a deep,perfectly round hole in the
ground...
It didn't seem impossible.
Outlandish, yes.
(23:16):
But out of place?
Not at all.
Even today, hikers in theMenestash area report finding
metal stakes, sealed entrances,and paths that vanish into
brush.
Clues or maybe coincidences.
If there were a hole like Mel's,this would be the place it could
(23:36):
hide.
The forest doesn't just mufflesound.
It eats memory.
And if there's one thingEllensburg and its surrounding
ridges do better than almostanywhere else, it's keeping
secrets.
Urban legends don't needcampfires anymore.
(23:58):
They travel by signal, byscreenshot, and by thread.
And Mel's Hole was one of thefirst modern myths to fully
evolve in public.
When Mel first called in, Theinternet was still young.
Message boards, IRC chats, emaillists.
The moment the call aired, thestory took on a second life.
(24:21):
Re-shared, retold, and reframed.
Every retelling added something.
A new theory, a new sighting.
An old memory someone thoughtthey'd forgotten.
And unlike legends of old, Mel'sHole was interactive.
You could search maps.
(24:42):
You could drive to Ellensburg.
You could lower your own fishingline into the earth, just in
case.
In that way, it's part of alineage that includes things
like Skinwalker Ranch, The BackRooms, Creepypasta, and ARGs,
which stand for AlternateReality Games.
Legends that live half in thereal world and half in
(25:04):
imagination.
Just enough evidence to beplausible...
just enough ambiguity to keepthem alive.
Psychologists call this theZeigarnik effect, the tendency
of the brain to fixate onunfinished things.
We want closure, but a mysterywithout answers?
That sticks with us.
(25:26):
Mel's hole sticks.
Because it asks questions wecan't answer.
Because it lives in a place wecould visit, but might not want
to.
In a world that's been mapped,measured and geotagged, the idea
of something that still can't befound, that still resists
documentation, feels almostsacred.
(25:49):
And maybe that's what makes itfolklore.
Not a story about the past, buta story we're still telling
because we want it to be true.
There are places that feelwrong, even if there's no sign
(26:10):
to tell you so.
Places where the silence is tooquiet.
Where the air feels too still.
Mel said he found one of thoseplaces.
He didn't ask us to believe him.
He just asked us to listen.
And somehow, that made it morebelievable.
He never gave exact coordinates.
(26:32):
Never sold a book.
Never even came back to the showafter a certain point.
But he left something behind.
A space.
A shape.
A shadow in the landscape of ourminds.
Because Mel's hole isn't justabout what was there.
It's about what might be.
It's about the idea that even ina world mapped down to the inch,
(26:57):
some things still can't befound.
Some holes go deeper than anymeasuring tape can reach.
Maybe it was just a story.
Maybe it was a hoax.
Or maybe it was somethingstranger.
A real place that was buried notby nature, but by design.
(27:19):
If it is true, someone doesn'twant us to find it.
And if it's not, we still keeplooking anyway.
Because part of us needs storieslike this.
We need the unknown.
the unsolved, the idea thatthere's more under our feet than
just dirt and stone.
(27:39):
And if you ever find yourselfnear Ellensburg, driving through
the hills at dusk with the pinesdarkening at the edges of the
road, you might feel it, thattug, that pull, the sense that
something's waiting out there,still open, still hungry.
And if you hear your fishingline keep on spooling, foot
(28:00):
after foot, mile after mile intothe dark, you might wonder, just
for a moment, how deep does itgo?
And what happens if somethingpulls back?
This has been State of theUnknown.
(28:21):
Every other week, we explore theshadowy corners of American
folklore.
Stories buried in the woods,fields, deserts, and basements.
Stories we can't let go of,because they never really let go
of us.
If you enjoyed this episode,follow the show wherever you
listen.
Leave a review or share it withsomeone who loves a mystery that
(28:42):
doesn't end clean.
You can join the community onInstagram and Facebook at State
of the Unknown Podcast.
We post photos, behind thescenes notes, and talk about the
stories between the stories.
And if you've got a strange taleof your own, something you
heard, saw, or lived, send us amessage.
We're collecting listenerstories for future episodes.
(29:04):
Until next time, keep your eyeson the shadows.
And if you ever hear a voicecalling from deep below, don't
lean too far over the edge.
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