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This episode of Haunted Cosmos is brought

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to you by Indigo Sundries, Backwards

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Did you know that our top two patrons

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the show, consider becoming a patron today

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to get access to all these benefits

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and more. And now, on with the

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show. Well

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hello everyone and welcome to

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this special mid-season break episode

0:58

of Haunted Cosmos. Since

1:00

we had our conference this past week and

1:03

both Brian and myself are on a

1:05

family vacation this week, we figured

1:07

we'd take the opportunity to showcase one

1:09

of our recent episodes of our

1:11

Patreon exclusive show, The Dusty Tome. This

1:14

episode is on a topic that we have both found

1:16

very interesting in the past. I hope that you guys

1:19

enjoy it. And hey, if you do like what you

1:21

hear, you should think about becoming a patron of the

1:23

show. We try to keep

1:25

our patrons well entertained and give them the

1:27

value that they deserve and even

1:29

go above and beyond that every time that

1:31

we get an opportunity. So I hope that

1:34

you all enjoy this mid-season break show. We'll

1:36

be back in two weeks with another main

1:38

episode of Haunted Cosmos and then we'll be

1:40

eventually wrapping up season three. It's crazy to

1:43

think that we're almost at the end of

1:45

a third season of the show. Thank

1:47

you all for listening and we'll look forward

1:49

to seeing you back on our normally scheduled

1:51

program in two weeks. With

1:53

that, I'd encourage you all to sit back,

1:56

relax, crack open a nice

1:58

lemon LaCroix and enjoy. of

2:00

the show. In

2:13

the later chapters of 1 Samuel, the

2:15

first king of Israel, Saul, greets us

2:18

after having completed his descent into

2:20

evil mania. Though

2:22

he had outlawed the witchcraft and necromancy

2:25

that had characterized God's people during the

2:27

time of the judges, no

2:29

doubt a fruit of Samuel's own judgment and counsel

2:31

to the king. Some

2:33

of these dark practitioners still existed within

2:35

the promised land. Apparently,

2:37

they acted as sort of black market

2:39

sleeper cell magicians who were ready to

2:42

engage in the demonic practice at any

2:44

moment for any legitimate buyer. And

2:47

we see just how far Saul has fallen

2:49

when we read of him going to one

2:51

of these magicians, a witch in Endor, ensuing

2:54

for her services and calling up the

2:56

recently fallen prophet who had always offered

2:58

the king wisdom and righteous rebuke. It

3:01

is a strange episode in the scriptures that

3:04

betrays the complexity of a fallen ruler operating

3:07

in a land meant to be

3:09

permeated, and indeed was permeated, by

3:11

the law of God. In

3:13

some sense, Saul is trying to do something right

3:15

in seeking out the word of Samuel. Who

3:18

else, apart from David and Jonathan and presumably

3:20

Abner, was there who was always willing to

3:22

tell the king what he needed to hear,

3:24

as opposed to what he wanted to hear.

3:27

But of course, he is going about this in a

3:29

most evil way. He has

3:32

no plausible deniability left. He

3:34

cannot plead ignorance of the law of God.

3:37

After all, the law of Moses prescribes exactly what

3:40

a king of Israel is supposed to do in

3:42

his free time. And what is that? Well,

3:45

he is supposed to study the law

3:47

to the utmost. He should know it

3:50

backwards. And so Saul knew what

3:52

he was doing, and he knew that it was wrong.

3:55

God said that his people ought not suffer a witch

3:58

to live. did

4:00

well in outlawing the practice, he

4:02

should have gone all the way in his obedience. Maybe

4:05

then his condemnation would not have been amplified

4:07

so much. For a while

4:09

we know that what Saul is doing is wrong.

4:12

What comes of his actions should never cease

4:14

to amaze us. Because

4:16

you see, when Saul asks the witch to conjure

4:18

up the prophet Samuel, it works. The

4:22

servant of Satan performs her ritual

4:25

and sacrilegious right, expecting

4:27

all the while for her demonic

4:29

familiar to pose itself as Samuel,

4:31

to fool and deceive yet another

4:33

unwitting customer. But then

4:35

we are told the real ghost of

4:37

the real Samuel comes up out of

4:39

the ground to meet the nefarious party.

4:42

His presence sends the witch into a

4:45

wild stupor of accusation against her king.

4:48

She was not expecting the real spirit of Samuel

4:50

to come, and so his coming signaled

4:52

the power of God working behind her

4:54

sin, a powerful act of the

4:56

Most High that only made sense if

4:59

her customer was the actual king of Israel.

5:02

As she swoons in the shock and

5:04

hellish incense of the scene, the late

5:07

prophet continues along the grain of God's

5:09

puzzling providence and does the unthinkable. He

5:11

speaks to Saul. He

5:13

gives Saul the word he was so desperate

5:15

for. Of course, this

5:18

word served to fully anathematize the

5:20

king, but it is a word

5:22

nonetheless. It's a

5:24

wild biblical episode to be sure, and

5:26

it is one I've dealt with at great length

5:28

in my Strange Bible Stories series that is posted

5:30

for you all here on Patreon, so

5:33

why am I bringing it up now? Well,

5:35

I want to focus on just one part of it, a

5:38

part that often goes overlooked. I'll

5:41

read for you now from 1 Samuel 28, 12-14. When

5:46

the woman saw Samuel, she cried out

5:48

with a loud voice, and the

5:50

woman said to Saul, Why have you deceived

5:52

me? Your Saul. The king

5:54

said to her, Do not be afraid. What do

5:56

you see? And the woman said

5:58

to Saul, I see a God. coming up out of

6:00

the earth. He said to her, what

6:02

is his appearance? And she said, an

6:05

old man is coming up and he is wrapped in

6:07

a robe. And Saul knew that it

6:09

was Samuel, and he bowed with his

6:11

face to the ground and paid homage. Why

6:14

does Samuel come up? He was

6:16

a saint, a prophet of God no less. Shouldn't

6:19

he have come down from heaven? Well,

6:23

no. And now we find

6:25

a breadcrumb, half covered in dark and cold

6:27

dirt of time far gone, whose

6:29

cohorts will eventually lead us into

6:31

today's stories. We imagine

6:34

that when we die, we go to heaven. This

6:36

is right and proper in our Aeon of creation.

6:39

After all, Christ has done his work.

6:41

He has reconciled God and man in

6:43

his atoning blood. And so we are

6:45

made fit when washed in the purifying

6:47

blood of the Savior to stand boldly

6:49

before the throne of God. The

6:52

apostle is therefore not lying to us when he

6:54

says that to be separate from the

6:56

body is to be alive with Christ. In

6:58

the Christian age, the church age, we

7:01

really do go to heaven when we die. But

7:03

it wasn't always like this. We

7:06

read in Genesis 37 that the patriarch

7:08

Jacob's soul was in Sheol upon his

7:11

death. Sheol, it will be

7:13

noticed, is not heaven. Far from

7:15

it, Sheol is the belly of the earth. It

7:18

is this place deep within the bosom of

7:20

the world that for all of time before

7:22

Christ housed every soul that had been sundered

7:24

from its body on the surface. We

7:26

know that wicked souls are there too because of

7:29

passages like the one found in Psalm 31 that

7:31

make this much clear. Before

7:33

Christ came, all the dead souls

7:35

went to the same place, this

7:37

Sheol, a literal place

7:39

in the earth that somehow contains

7:41

spirits, and it still exists today

7:43

too. Though Christ led

7:45

the souls of the saints from Adam

7:48

to himself up to heaven after his

7:50

death, we know that the souls

7:52

of the damned are still in Sheol into the

7:54

day of final judgment, wherein Sheol

7:56

will be tossed into the lake of fire.

7:59

It is not symbolic. It is not metallic, it

8:01

is not metaphor, it is not mere poetic

8:03

or prophetic language, it is

8:05

a geographical place somewhere far

8:07

under the reaches of our feeble drills

8:10

and diggers that make the

8:12

little scratches in the dirt we call holes.

8:15

Oh no, the earth is full of deep

8:17

and dark places, and these

8:19

places are full of great mystery for us. So

8:22

why didn't Samuel's spirit come down from heaven? Well,

8:25

because Christ had not come to lead him there yet.

8:29

So Samuel came up from Sheol. Once,

8:33

during the long sojourn of Israel

8:35

and the wilderness around Sinai, some

8:37

of the clan of Levi and Reuben rose

8:39

up in opposition to the prophet Moses. Their

8:42

names were Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. These

8:45

men felt that Moses had grown arrogant and

8:47

had set himself up above the rest of

8:50

the host of God's people against God's own

8:52

will. The men in

8:54

all their households and clans called Moses

8:56

out on the accusation, and

8:58

Moses called their bluff. He

9:01

told them to take care lest they incur

9:03

God's wrath. They did not listen. Thus,

9:06

God ordered the men to form themselves

9:08

in opposition to Moses, whereupon

9:10

Moses said that if the men opposed to

9:12

him die as all men die, then

9:14

they were right, and God has not sent him to

9:16

be first among them. But he

9:18

went on to say, if the usurpers

9:21

perish in this other way, then

9:23

the rest of the men of the assembly will know that

9:25

Moses is from God. And

9:27

what is this other method of perishing from the

9:29

midst of the congregation? Moses

9:32

tells Israel that if Korah,

9:34

Dathan, and Abiram are swallowed up

9:36

by the earth with their households,

9:39

it will be proof of Moses' ordination for

9:41

his office as leader and prophet of the

9:44

people. We read

9:46

in Numbers 16 that right after

9:48

Moses finishes telling the people of

9:50

these parameters, the ground

9:52

opened up and quote, swallowed

9:54

them up, so they and

9:56

all that belonged to them went

9:58

down alive into Sheba. Sheol, and

10:01

the earth closed over them, and they perished from

10:03

the midst of the assembly." You

10:06

see how weird this is. Sheol

10:08

is a place, a real place inside

10:11

the earth, where not only

10:13

souls but also human bodies can go

10:15

into alive, albeit by this powerful display

10:17

of God. Oh yes, this

10:20

world we live on is a strange place

10:22

for many reasons, not the least of

10:24

which is that there seems to be

10:26

places within it, that many people

10:28

have gone and continue to go to, but

10:31

that are complete puzzles to us on the surface.

10:35

We humans seem to be very interested in

10:37

the idea of journeying deep into the cracks

10:39

and fissures of the world. We

10:42

enamour ourselves with fictional stories of

10:44

heroes descending into Guy's belly in

10:46

order to win glory for themselves

10:48

by vanquishing some unforeseen foe that

10:51

dwells there already. To

10:53

us, it just makes sense that that

10:55

which is evil, darkened, and

10:57

weighed down by the impurity of sin

10:59

and the curse would stay as far

11:02

down as possible. Think

11:04

of Ransom's journey into the center of Paralandra

11:06

in the second book of the trilogy bearing

11:08

his name. He does

11:11

not find merely fire and cavernous waste

11:13

there. He also finds life. Life

11:16

that is particularly enigmatic to him. It

11:20

seems off, otherworldly, other in

11:22

general, and unfit for the

11:24

dignity of creatureliness. Think

11:27

of Orwell's journey into the center of

11:29

the world until we have faces. Think

11:32

of the medieval understanding of the earth being in

11:34

the center of the universe, not

11:36

only because it is the recipient of God's

11:38

attention and indeed his own self, but

11:41

also because it is heavy, weighed

11:43

down with sin and stain, and unfit

11:46

to be flying in the higher spheres

11:48

of heaven's heritage. Think

11:50

of how this idea is most brilliantly

11:52

emphasized by Dante in his Divine Comedy,

11:55

where he and Virgil begin their ascent to

11:57

love by a descent into the Hell of

11:59

Sheol. within the earth, at whose

12:01

center they find none other than the devil

12:03

himself. What else could be

12:06

there but the devil? What else

12:08

could be at the fiery center of the

12:10

cursed dwelling of man than the fiery fallen

12:12

serpent who sowed the seeds of curse in

12:14

the first place? We

12:16

have always been drawn in by the

12:18

strange attraction of depth in the world,

12:21

but even as we are strangely attracted to it,

12:24

we are repulsed by the imaginings of what

12:26

we might find there. Perhaps

12:28

this is wise. In

12:41

Yemen there is a hole about 750 feet deep and 100

12:43

feet wide. The

12:47

geologists say it is a sinkhole naturally formed

12:49

in the dry and rocky desert by

12:51

ancient soft deposits beneath it. According

12:54

to the locals though, it is far from

12:56

natural. The old wives say

12:58

that it was originally a prison built

13:01

by the ancient people to house the

13:03

demons that continued to find a path

13:05

through the earthen fractures around it to

13:07

the surface. One must

13:09

reckon with the conviction, the

13:11

pure pathos surrounding the story. At

13:15

any rate, people connect these deep,

13:17

dark places with malice and sinister

13:19

intelligence. Part

13:21

of the question lies in the fact that no

13:23

human being has ever been to the bottom of this

13:25

hole, at least none that we know of.

13:28

And this isn't for lack of trying. Numerous

13:30

expeditions have sought to land a man down

13:32

at the bottom, a bottom whose

13:35

depth admittedly does not seem entirely impressive

13:37

at first glance. But all

13:39

of them have failed due to the

13:41

horrible ventilation and lack of oxygen that

13:43

greets descenders at a certain point. They

13:46

have made it some of the way down though, and

13:48

what they have seen has left them hungry for

13:50

answers. Locals tell of

13:52

strange things on the walls of the hole, markings

13:55

and formations and objects that seem out

13:57

of place. While

14:00

exploring the boar, they have been pulled

14:02

towards it, like a moon falling around

14:04

and around a giant star, growing

14:07

ever closer to the deadly surface. Another

14:11

story, an urban legend out of

14:13

the labyrinthine regions of Siberia near

14:15

the Arctic line reinforces this association

14:18

and readies our minds for the real

14:20

brunt of today's humble episode. Lore

14:23

says that sometime during the Soviet era

14:25

of Russia, a team of

14:27

mining experts led by a man

14:29

under the pseudonym Mr. Azakov began

14:32

digging a hole in the utumnic forests

14:34

of the cold north with the stated

14:36

goal of, well, nobody

14:38

knows what the stated goal of the dig actually

14:40

was. What is claimed is

14:43

that the team dug the hole down

14:45

about nine miles into the crust before

14:47

supposedly breaking through the last feet of

14:50

rock and into a wide

14:52

open cavern. The team

14:54

lowered sensory and measurement equipment down into

14:56

the hole, heat tolerant

14:58

probes and even microphones, which

15:01

signaled back to them that something strange had been

15:03

found. The temperature in the hole

15:05

was said to be upwards of 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, and the speakers

15:09

connected to the lowered mic played

15:11

back the sound of tormented screams

15:13

echoing through the chamber. The

15:16

team had drilled right into hell, or

15:19

so they claimed. Unfortunately,

15:22

we never did learn who they really were. Though

15:25

the Soviets did dig a seven and a

15:27

half mile deep hole in a different part

15:30

of the country, they never broke through to

15:32

a fiery furnace filled with screams. They

15:35

found some geological oddities in the rocks,

15:37

sure, but they never claimed to

15:39

have encountered any devils during their dig. Later,

15:43

after the story of the well to

15:45

hell had gained more widespread popularity, it

15:47

was discovered that the recordings of the screams

15:50

of the damned were actually looped together sound

15:52

effects from a popular 1972 German horror movie

15:54

called Baron Blood. The

15:58

well to hell never existed. It

16:00

was all a hoax, but it

16:02

was a good hoax, in that

16:05

it played upon the shared fascination man

16:07

has with the unknown things that

16:09

may be crawling or swimming or flying beneath his

16:11

feet. And the focus of

16:13

today's episode is another such story. It

16:16

is one like unto the well to hell,

16:19

in that it is full of intrigue and

16:21

suggestions for fantastical conclusions. But

16:23

could it also be a hoax? Ladies

16:26

and gentlemen, the breadcrumbs have finally come

16:28

to their end. Welcome to

16:30

the cobwebbed and squeaky doorway leading into

16:33

the world's basement. This

16:35

is the story of Mel's Hole. Brian

16:41

I got bad news. The other day I

16:43

was using one of the big box soap

16:45

products to wash myself, and I

16:47

got this weird urge to go buy a

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Stanley cup and fill it with iced coffee.

16:51

And it started to feel a little cold

16:53

in the house. I just wanted to wrap

16:55

myself up in like a heavy wool blanket.

16:57

And then also I started googling ticket

17:00

prices to Taylor Swift concerts. Ben, what

17:02

are you doing? Don't you know that

17:04

these big box soap companies just jam

17:06

all their soaps full of hormone disrupting

17:08

chemicals? They're probably turning you into a

17:10

girl. Well I know that now, but

17:13

what am I supposed to do about

17:15

it? Ben, you ignorant normie. All you've

17:17

needed to do is go to indigosundriessoap.com

17:19

and support a great Christian family business

17:21

that's making all sorts of soaps that

17:23

are completely free of hormone disrupting chemicals

17:25

and other nasties. Okay, I am literally

17:28

going to indigosundriessoap.com right now. Tell me

17:30

what to buy. Ben, what I would

17:32

recommend doing is clicking on bundles and

17:34

then selecting the best one for you.

17:37

You could get the men's six pack. You could

17:39

get my favorite, the clay bundle. Ooh, I like

17:41

the pipe and jug bundle. That seems cool. Or

17:43

a men's six pack because that'll make me feel

17:45

like I have something that I actually don't. So

17:48

true, King. You know what else I

17:50

heard? Because they're such good friends of

17:52

the show, indigosundriessoapcompany is offering 10% off

17:55

your order if you just use

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all caps, discount code hauntedcosmos, no

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space. Wait, Brian, you're going

18:01

way too fast. I didn't get all that.

18:03

Is that information in the show description? Ben,

18:06

you ignorant normie. It's always in the show

18:08

description. Okay, so I'm gonna go to indigosundriesoap.com.

18:10

I'm gonna pick the men's six pack bundle,

18:12

and I'm gonna use code hauntedcosmos at checkout,

18:14

all caps, no spaces. And if I forgot

18:16

all that, it's in the description of the

18:19

show. Of course, Ben. And if you just

18:21

do that, then you will stop wanting to

18:23

do all of those girly things. And maybe

18:25

you'll, I don't know, maybe wanna buy a

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20:57

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and also not super flowery or feminine in

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21:49

What? In

22:02

1977, administrators working with

22:05

Art Bell on the hit late-night

22:07

radio show Coast to Coast received

22:09

an unexpected fax. The

22:12

admin's eyes grew wide with excitement

22:14

as he read sentence after sentence

22:16

whose signatory was a man claiming

22:18

to be called Mel Waters. Mel

22:21

claimed that he was the owner of a

22:23

large chunk of property in eastern Washington state.

22:26

He said that the property was mostly normal

22:28

apart from one glaring outlier, a

22:31

deep hole. One Mel

22:33

had never found before recently and

22:35

one that seemed to tow the line

22:37

between natural and artificial with effortless and

22:39

uncanny ease. Mel said that

22:42

the hole was at least 80,000 feet deep. He

22:45

had never reached the bottom so could not be sure. And

22:48

that gruesome and unsettling things tended to

22:50

happen around it. After

22:52

reading the fax for himself, Art Bell, the host

22:54

of Coast to Coast, booked

22:56

Mel Waters to call in a few days later. Mel

23:05

wasted little time in sharing the lurid

23:07

details of his situation with Mr. Bell.

23:10

He claimed that he had lived on the property for

23:12

two years. The previous owner had been there

23:14

for about 35 years. And

23:17

far as he could tell, all of his neighbors

23:19

could never remember a time where the hole didn't

23:21

exist. Though he had only

23:23

just found it, everyone else had known of it

23:25

long beforehand. The hole sat

23:27

at an unassuming part of the land

23:29

with nothing else special to show for

23:31

why this would be the spot providentially

23:33

chosen for such an anomaly. A

23:36

thick stone retaining wall surrounded a

23:38

steeply sloped inverted cone of dirt

23:41

that circled the actual hole about 15

23:43

feet down from the surface of the ground.

23:46

From there it was black and seemingly

23:48

bottomless. Mel and neighbors

23:51

would frequently throw trash or other random

23:53

objects into the hole. They'd

23:55

excitedly sit by the hole in perfect silence

23:57

after tossing something in, but but

24:00

they never heard any splashes, crashes,

24:02

or echoes of the same, indicating

24:04

the unlucky object had struck the

24:06

bottom of this vein. Mel

24:09

took quick and obsessive interest in the hole.

24:12

He spent hours beside it, lowering spool

24:14

after spool of high test fishing line

24:16

into the abyss, only for

24:18

it always to come back up dry, clean,

24:20

and taut the whole way. Fusing

24:23

15 miles of line with a

24:25

weight on its end, no bottom

24:27

was ever found. Mel

24:30

told art and the listeners about

24:32

one particularly supernatural story surrounding the

24:34

hole. According to one of his

24:36

neighbors, a hunting dog of theirs

24:38

had suddenly passed away some years prior to

24:41

Mel's purchase of the property. Driven

24:43

by morbid curiosity more than anything else,

24:46

the neighbor got permission from the previous

24:48

owner before throwing the dog's corpse into

24:50

the mysterious hole. He

24:53

claimed that he was hunting through the adjacent

24:55

land some days later, when he

24:57

saw the dog running after some birds

24:59

in a nearby meadow. The

25:01

same dog that he had thrown into the hole

25:03

was his dog, same fur,

25:05

same gate, same collar, same bark.

25:08

He couldn't believe his eyes. But

25:11

the vision was gone after a moment, when the

25:13

undead dog ran into a thicket and didn't respond

25:15

to his calls. He never

25:17

saw the dog again, and never understood

25:19

the true nature of what he encountered that

25:22

day. That

25:24

was the first animal that Mel or his neighbors

25:26

knew of ever going into the hole. He

25:29

said that every live animal on his property refused

25:31

to ever go near it. Any

25:33

time they would be dragged or herded into

25:36

its vicinity, they would react with aggression and

25:38

fear, trying to pull themselves away as much

25:40

as they could. The animals

25:42

hated the hole, clearly sensing

25:44

some dark power within. Not

25:47

long after that live phone interview, the studio

25:49

at Coast to Coast received another fax from

25:51

the man claiming to be Mel Waters. Mel

25:55

said that he had driven into the town of

25:57

Yakima the morning after the radio show, in order to

25:59

do some groceries. shopping at the local Costco.

26:02

He was gone for a couple of hours, but no more than

26:04

that. As he approached

26:06

the driveway to his property, he saw

26:08

guardrails blocking his entrance. Vehicles

26:11

that seemed to belong to some

26:13

unnamed three-letter agency peppered the area.

26:16

Men walked around in and out of

26:18

vans and hazmat suits. Mel

26:20

approached the property and was told by a

26:23

man guarding the entrance that a plane had

26:25

crashed on the land and his team was

26:27

there to investigate. Mel

26:29

looked up to the sky behind the trees. There

26:31

was no smoke. He mentioned this

26:34

and asked to speak to the man in charge,

26:36

whereupon a man in a civilian suit approached

26:38

his car. Mel repeated

26:40

that this was his property, that he didn't understand

26:43

why some hazmat workers would need to be there,

26:46

and that he didn't see any smoke or other signs

26:48

indicating a plane crash. The

26:50

man calmly, but with an air of authority,

26:53

replied that it wasn't necessarily his

26:55

property. The man told

26:57

Mel how easy it would be for

26:59

he and his team to find a

27:01

drug lab or something on his land if

27:04

they really wanted to. Mel

27:06

knew where the man was going and beat him to it.

27:09

He asked if he could leave, and

27:11

the man told him not to come back until they

27:13

contacted him. They didn't need his phone

27:15

number. They already knew how to reach him, and

27:18

so Mel drove away perplexed. Could there

27:20

have actually been a plane crash? Could

27:23

it have been drug related? Maybe it

27:25

was all a coincidence, but why the hazmat team?

27:28

Why such high security? No,

27:31

this wasn't just happenstance, and Mel knew

27:33

it. This fax

27:35

also included an account of a story

27:37

Mel had forgotten to tell Art during their call.

27:40

Years back, one of his neighbors had driven

27:42

up to the hole later in the night to dump some trash.

27:45

As his car's lights shone upon the spot where he

27:48

knew the hole would be, he slammed

27:50

on his brakes in shock. Instead

27:52

of the normal scene one would expect in

27:54

the empty forest, this neighbor

27:56

saw a solid black beam, blacker

27:58

than black. the

32:00

jawbone of a whale was

32:02

baked into this tree. Unfortunately,

32:05

now that he got this answered, he

32:07

came up short on answering other questions

32:09

like, when did it get

32:11

there and how? These are mysteries beyond

32:14

the pay grade of anyone today. It

32:16

has simply been too long. All anyone

32:18

knows is that for as long as people

32:20

have been in and around Ellensburg, the whalebone

32:22

has been stuck into the old maple tree.

32:25

According to Mel Waters, the same can

32:28

be said of the strange well of

32:30

darkness on his rural property. According

32:32

to him, neighbors, old folk, seasoned

32:35

locals, and lore masters of Washington,

32:38

the whole has just always been there. The

32:40

stonework around it has always been there. Indeed, there

32:43

used to be more. And

32:45

nobody has ever known where it ends or

32:47

what sort of liminal horrors may or may

32:49

not lie deep within it. The

32:53

Third Call It

32:56

was at this point of the third call on

32:58

coast to coast that the story truly began to

33:00

break. Mel started by

33:02

recounting his original story for art's

33:05

audience so listeners could see whether

33:07

or no his version of events

33:09

still lined up. They

33:11

did well enough and callers into the show

33:13

seemed to indicate that this made Mel more

33:15

credible. But then he said

33:17

something else. He said

33:19

that when he had faxed in three years

33:21

earlier, he was actually married to a woman

33:24

who was the actual named owner of the

33:26

property. He said that

33:28

they finalized their divorce almost immediately after

33:30

the fax and the settlement included his

33:33

ex-wife leasing the property to him as

33:35

long as Mel desired it. He

33:38

said that though he claimed to have refused the generous

33:40

offer from the strange men in black to

33:42

buy the property, he had only

33:45

said that because his contract with them demanded

33:47

it. He had in fact sold

33:49

the property. And he was more than

33:51

happy to keep quiet about it, as it meant that he

33:53

would be raking in $250,000 a month in perpetuity. Mel,

34:00

again in line with his contractual

34:03

obligations, moved to the

34:05

Sydney area of Australia and

34:07

carried on in his non-disclosure commitment between

34:09

he and the whole. But

34:12

as if to save his word from sinking into

34:14

the realm of totally unbelievable, Art

34:16

Bell assured his listeners that he had

34:18

stayed in constant communication with Mel the

34:20

whole time and could personally

34:22

confirm that he was telling the truth about

34:25

the property sale, the divorce, and

34:27

the well-financed move to Australia where he

34:29

still lived. In

34:31

fact, just before this move, Art

34:34

had intended to have Mel on for an update

34:36

show, but Mel never called in

34:38

when the time came. Art

34:40

took this live and unscripted opportunity to ask

34:42

Mel why he had done this, why he

34:44

had bailed, to which Mel

34:47

replied one of the craziest twists one

34:49

can imagine in this story. He

34:52

had traveled back to Washington in order to help

34:54

a family member of his move a few cities

34:56

over. On one of

34:58

his final days before going back to Australia,

35:01

he and his kin were riding on the

35:03

bus back to his old place when an

35:05

altercation broke out. Mel didn't

35:07

remember much about how the argument started,

35:10

what exactly it was over, and who exactly

35:12

it involved, but he remembered that

35:14

it somehow involved him. The

35:16

next thing he remembered was waking up

35:19

in a random alleyway in San Francisco

35:21

12 days later.

35:24

He had been knocked out and had no memory

35:26

for the past 12 days,

35:29

but he did know one thing, he knew

35:31

that his mouth was insanely sore. Immediately

35:35

he went to the dentist only to discover

35:37

that in that 12 day knockout, all four

35:39

of his molars had been removed. In

35:42

addition to this, he quickly learned that

35:44

his ex-wife was initiating legal proceedings against

35:47

him for not abiding by the terms

35:49

of the lease of the property containing

35:51

the whole. Mel

35:53

was confused. He didn't know

35:55

where to turn, he forgot completely about his commitment

35:57

to appear on Art's show and spent