Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
When the lights go out and they speak. The vanished,
the cursed, the crueler. Their echoes live here. I'm raven Veil,
and you've just crossed the threshold. Welcome to Whispers from
the Dark. Welcome back, fans of the strange and the supernatural,
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to Whispers from the Dark. I am your guide, raven Veil,
And tonight we journey to a place where the very
earth seems to swallow secrets, hole, where geological marvels birth legends,
and where the abyss stares back with an unsettling, ancient gaze.
(00:54):
We travel to the stark, breath taking landscape of eastern
Washington State, to a place known by a name that
chills the blood and ignites the imagination, the bottomless pit.
To understand the legend, we must first understand the land.
Eastern Washington, particularly the region around the Grand COOLi, is
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a testament to cataclysmic forces. Imagine, if you can, a
time thousands of years ago when colossal ice dams ruptured,
unleashing floods of unimaginable scale, the Missoula floods. These were
not mere rivers overflowing, These were inland tsunamis carving out canyons,
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stripping away soil and leaving behind a scarred, desolate, yet
profoundly beautiful landscape of basalt cliffs, dry waterfalls, and immense
water filled potholes. One such feature, a geological anomaly, lies
nestled near Cooley City. It's a deep, dark pool, seemingly
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innocuous at first glance, but its depths hold a sinister reputation.
Scientists call it a plunge pool, scoured out by the
sheer force of ancient torrents. But the locals, the pioneers
who first settled this rugged, isolated territory, and the indigenous
peoples who walked this land for millennia before them, knew
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it by another name. They called it the Bottomless Pit.
The very name evokes a primal fear, a shudder at
the thought of infinite descent. And it is this fhear,
this deep seated human dread of the unknown void, that
has allowed the legends of the Bottomless Pit to fester
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and grow, intertwining with the harsh realities of frontier life
and the ancient wisdom of the land's first inhabitants. For
the Native American tribes of the region, the Coalville, the Spokane,
the Nez perse This land was alive, imbued with spirits
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and power. Deep dark water features like the bottomless Pit
were often regarded with a mixture of reverence and trepidation.
They were not merely holes in the ground. They were
places of immense spiritual significance, sometimes gateways to the underworld,
sometimes dwelling places of powerful, unpredictable spirits. Tales would have
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been passed down through generations, warnings against disturbing such places,
against venturing too close lest the spirits of the deep
claim you. Perhaps they spoke of a great serpent, or
a water elemental lurking in its sunless depths, guarding ancient secrets,
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or waiting for an unwary soul to pull into its
cold embrace. The very stillness of the water, its dark,
unreflective surface, would hinted at something unnatural, something that defied
the usual flow of the world. Then came the settlers,
drawn by the promise of land. The pioneers arrived in
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the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bringing with them
their own fears and superstitions. They were hardy, pragmatic folk,
but they were also isolated, surrounded by a vast untamed
wilderness that could be both beautiful and terrifying. In such
an environment where the forces of nature were overwhelming and inexplicable,
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the legends of the bottomless pit took on a new,
more tangible form. The most persistent, and perhaps most chilling
aspect of the law is the claim that nothing, absolutely nothing,
ever reaches the bottom. Stories abound of curious or perhaps
foolish individuals attempting to make measure its depth. Farmers desperate
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to know would lower miles of rope weighted with stones,
only for the line to run out, the weight never
hitting anything solid. Loggers with their heavy chains would try
to plummets depths, only to find the chain disappearing link
by link into the inky blackness, never to return. The
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sheer impossibility of it, the defiance of gravity and logic,
cemented its reputation. It wasn't just deep, it was infinite,
a void that consumed all. And if objects never returned,
what about living things? The stories grew darker. Live stock
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straying too close would vanish without a trace. Dogs chasing
rabbits would disappear over the edge, their barks abruptly silenced,
never to be seen again. These were not just accidents
in the mine of the settlers. These were acts of consumption.
The pit was hungry. But the most haunting tales, the
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ones whispered around camp fires and in hushed tones in
lonely farmhouses, were of people of prospectors who vanished in
the area. Their last known location near the pit of
lonely travelers who were never seen again after passing through
the desolate coolie, of desperate souls, perhaps driven to the
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brink by the harshness of frontier life, who sought oblivion
in its depths, only for their bodies to never surface,
never to offer the solace of a final resting place.
The pit, they said, didn't just take lives, It erased them.
It was a perfect, silent tomb, a place where even
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the dead found no peace, no return. As the twentieth
century progressed and the automobile became commonplace, the legend of
the bottomless pit adapted, taking on a new, distinctly modern
and equally terrifying form. The most famous, and perhaps most
enduring of these urban myths involves a car. The story
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varies in its specifics, but the core remains the same.
A vehicle, perhaps stolen, perhaps accidentally driven too close, perhaps
even deliberately pushed plunges into the pit, and despite extensive
search efforts, despite the use of chains, cables, and even
early diving equipment, the car is never found. It simply disappears,
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swallowed by the abyss. Imagine the scene, the frantic search,
the heavy machinery, the divers descending into the frigid, lightless water,
their powerful lights swallowed by the gloom, and then the
baffled reports nothing, no wreckage, no debris, no sign that
anything ever entered those waters. It's a story that defies
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common sense, a narrative that suggests the pit isn't just deep,
but that it leads somewhere else, entirely a portal, a
tear in the fabric of reality. Modern science, of course,
offers logical explanations. The pit, while deep, is not truly bottomless.
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Its depths are likely filled with silt, debris, and perhaps
an intricate network of underwater caves or fissures, making recovery
efforts incredibly difficult, if not impossible. The currents within such
a pool, fed by underground springs, could easily pull objects
into unseen crevices. Divers face extreme conditions, crushing pressure, zero
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visibility and freezing temperatures. It's a dangerous environment where objects
could simply be lost, not consumed. Yet these rational explanations
do little to diminish the chilling power of the legend.
The human mind craves certainty, closure. When faced with an
unyielding void, with things that simply vanish, the imagination fills
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the gap with something far more terrifying than silt and currents.
It fills it with the unknown, with the idea of
a hungry entity, with the chilling possibility that some places
on Earth are not meant to be understood, but merely feared.
But stand at its edge long enough, gaze into the
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obsidian mirror of its surface, and you may feel it,
a subtle, almost imperceptible tug, as if the very air
around you is thinning, drawing you closer. It's a silent invitation,
a siren song from the depths that promises not only oblivion,
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but a strange, terrifying freedom from the constraints of us world.
The law, like the water itself, seems to shimmer with
an arcane energy, weaving a spell that binds the curious
and the fearful alike, drawing them into its unending mystery.
The allure of the bottomless Pit lies precisely in its
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defiance of logic. It represents the ultimate unknown, a tangible
manifestation of the abyss that lurks in our collective consciousness.
It is a place where the rules we understand seem
to break down, where the familiar world gives way to
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something ancient and consuming. It reminds us that even in
a world meticulously mapped and catalogued, there are still places
that whisper secrets, places that hold on to their mysteries
with a cold, unyielding grip. So, if you ever find
yourself traversing the stark, bel beautiful landscape of eastern Washington
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and you come across that dark still pool near Cooley City, pause,
Listen to the wind, feel the profound silence that hangs
heavy in the air, And as you gaze into its
unreflective surface, remember the stories, Remember the ropes that ran out,
the chains that disappeared, the cars that vanished without a trace,
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And ask yourself what truly lies beneath, What ancient hunger
stirs in the depths of the bottomless pit, and what
might it whisper back if you listen closely enough, the