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You're listening to an Airwave Media

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Podcast. Are

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Historical Blindness, I delve into

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conspiracy theories, and misremembered

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it comes to famous conspiracy theories,

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Blindness on most podcast players

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and platforms.

1:02

The Past and the Curious is perfect for families

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looking for a history-focused podcast

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everyone can enjoy together. I'm professional

1:10

museum educator, author, and musician

1:12

Mick Sullivan, and I have been creating The

1:14

Past and the Curious for six years.

1:17

There's humor, rich context, and surprises

1:19

in every episode. There's dozens

1:21

of stories about survivors and heroes

1:24

and villains and a lot of underwear.

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Find us in all of the usual podcast

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places. The Past and the Curious with

1:31

Mick Sullivan.

1:34

There's a decent argument to be made that Art Bell

1:37

was the most influential media figure of

1:39

the modern era. In

1:43

the late 1970s, the AM radio

1:45

station KDWN out of Las

1:47

Vegas had a long dead spot to

1:49

fill the middle of the night, and Bell,

1:52

who was originally hired on as a disc jockey,

1:54

board op, and engineer, leapt at

1:56

the opportunity. The show was called

1:59

West Coast.

1:59

AM, and it began as a garden

2:02

variety local political call-in show,

2:04

but went through a decades-long metamorphosis

2:07

into something entirely different.

2:09

In 1988, West

2:12

Coast AM went national, and was

2:14

fittingly renamed Coast to Coast

2:17

AM. It had grown mainly

2:19

based on its Anything Goes approach. Anybody

2:22

could call into the show, and there was no one at

2:24

the switchboard to screen the calls. People

2:27

put them on the air randomly and blindly,

2:29

and he interviewed guests who could include

2:32

almost anyone you could think of. He

2:35

liked country and folk singers, so

2:37

he had a lot of them, Willie Nelson, Merle

2:39

Haggart, Gordon Lightfoot. He had on

2:42

actors like Leonard Nimoy and Jane Seymour,

2:44

fellow broadcasters and hosts like Regis

2:47

Philbin, Casey Kasem, and Robert Stack.

2:49

He interviewed scientists, one of his biggest

2:51

gets was Michio Kaku. But

2:57

mainly, he interviewed, uh, crackpots.

3:01

When I say that Art Bell may have been the most influential

3:03

media figure of the modern era, it is because

3:05

the particular stew that was and

3:08

is Coast to Coast AM is one that

3:10

now surrounds us all the time.

3:13

The show was a place for conspiracy theories

3:15

and pseudoscience to hold court. And

3:18

because the show was so loosely structured, so

3:21

catch as catch can, that meant that basically

3:23

anything could and did go into that

3:25

stew and melded in disquieting

3:29

ways. Ghosts, aliens,

3:32

healing crystals, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster,

3:35

secret government plots to do just about

3:37

anything you could imagine unless it was good.

3:40

On Coast to Coast AM, JFK

3:42

was killed by the CIA, or the FBI,

3:45

or the Mafia, or the Russians, or the Cubans,

3:48

or he wasn't killed at all. Anybody

3:50

could have done it. Aside from Lee

3:52

Harvey Oswald. In the late night

3:54

hours of Coast to Coast AM, the

3:57

only thing unbelievable was what most people

3:59

believed in. the daylight. And

4:02

along with the potpourri of paranormal

4:04

angles came the explicitly political ones.

4:07

In 1996, Bell interviewed

4:09

white nationalist William Luther Pierce,

4:11

whose neo-Nazi guide to race war dressed

4:14

up as a novel, The Turner Diaries, had

4:16

inspired Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Murrah

4:18

Federal Building in Oklahoma City just a little

4:20

over a year before. He interviewed

4:22

literal Luftwaffe officers, former

4:25

soccer player turned protocols of the elder

4:27

of Zion promoter David Icke, and

4:29

Jerome Corsi, who is not only a 9-11

4:32

truther and one of the main figures behind the

4:34

Obama birther bullshit, but also a key

4:36

figure in the WikiLeaks dump of hacked Clinton

4:39

emails in 2016. Altogether,

4:42

it is fair to say that Coast Coast AM presaged

4:44

or even fomented a lot of what makes

4:47

today's media ecosystem look like

4:49

today's media ecosystem. It

4:52

was like Facebook before Facebook, where

4:54

anybody could mouth off about whatever they wanted

4:57

and be taken unduly seriously, if

4:59

only for a few minutes. It arguably

5:01

encouraged the process of codifying conspiracy

5:03

theorists into the American right wing,

5:06

and it created a certain tone that

5:08

pretty much everyone is familiar with today.

5:11

Art Bell played a particular

5:13

kind of character on Coast to Coast who

5:16

was simultaneously the skeptic and

5:18

the believer. He took a stance of keeping

5:20

an open mind, asking some questions here

5:23

and there, expressing some small modicum of

5:25

doubt now and again, but ultimately encouraging

5:27

basically any idea that came his way, as

5:30

long as it was unlikely. You

5:33

can see this just asking question

5:35

tone in all corners of the discourse

5:37

today. It's the sort of thing that makes Joe Rogan

5:39

so popular, and you'd better believe that Rogan

5:41

has cited Coast to Coast as an influence on

5:44

his own podcast, and that

5:46

he was an interviewee of Art Bell's

5:48

before that. From creepy

5:50

past to internet ghost stories to New

5:52

World Order spooks orchestrating global events

5:55

behind the scenes, you can find the DNA

5:57

of Coast to Coast everywhere. But,

6:01

we're not here to talk about any of that. It

6:05

is, so far as I'm concerned, still

6:07

the Halloween season, so I want to focus

6:09

on the best story to ever come out

6:11

of Coast to Coast AM. You

6:14

might have heard about this one before, because it's

6:16

gone on to do the rounds of so many of

6:18

the spooky podcasts and YouTube

6:21

videos and such that Coast to Coast directly

6:24

inspired. You may also

6:26

have heard it debunks before, which I'm

6:28

barely going to bother doing, because it is

6:30

not a story you are at risk of believing.

6:34

But it is a truly great story,

6:36

and the way it was told was so interesting

6:40

that out of all of the thousands of episodes

6:42

and tens of thousands of hours of the most

6:44

popular late night radio program of the

6:46

last half century, it is, for

6:48

many, the first thing they think of, even

6:51

the only thing they think of, when

6:53

they hear the words Coast to Coast AM.

6:58

Today, I'm going to do my best

7:00

to give you the experience those millions

7:02

of listeners got almost 30 years ago

7:05

and revel in just what makes this story so

7:08

absurdly seductive. This

7:13

is The Constant, a history of getting things

7:15

wrong. I'm Mark Crinklin. This

7:18

week's episode, Rock Bottomless,

7:21

Part One. It's

7:34

late on the night of Friday, February 21, 1997, and

7:36

you can't sleep. Maybe

7:41

you're on a long drive or working a graveyard

7:43

shift job, or maybe you, like me,

7:45

just don't sleep very well in 1997,

7:48

and you need some sound, a voice or

7:50

two to keep you comfortable, help you settle down,

7:53

and finally nod off. If

7:55

that's the case, though, you're in trouble

7:57

because

7:58

Art Ball has just received

7:59

a fact that's going to set off the story

8:02

that will definitely keep you awake and

8:04

listening until his 5 a.m. sign

8:06

off. There will be no flipping the dial,

8:09

no channel, sir. There will be

8:11

no sleeping tonight.

8:18

I received the following

8:20

facts last week. Dear,

8:23

I'm writing to you to

8:25

see if I can get some help from you or your

8:27

vast listening audience. I

8:29

live in rural eastern Washington near

8:31

the Manastosh Ridge. I think

8:34

I'm pronouncing that correctly now. On

8:37

our property there is a hole.

8:39

Like the previous owners and the owners

8:41

before them, we've been throwing our trash

8:44

into the hole. Apparently,

8:46

the hole has been there as

8:48

long as anyone can remember.

8:50

At first

8:51

I thought it was an ancient well. Anyway,

8:54

the hole is 9 feet, 9

8:56

inches in diameter.

8:58

There is a stone retaining wall

9:00

around it and we've put a steel

9:03

door on top to keep anyone from falling

9:05

into it. As I said

9:07

earlier,

9:08

people have been throwing their trash into the well,

9:10

as in quotes here, for decades. Furniture,

9:13

household trash, dead cows,

9:15

building debris, you name it. The

9:18

thing is, I noticed the hole

9:21

never filled up, so I got curious,

9:23

actually obsessed, began trying to measure

9:26

the depth of the hole. I

9:28

emptied three fishing reels of

9:31

about 1,500 yards of

9:33

monofilament trying to determine the depth.

9:36

Soon I was buying fishing line in bulk.

9:39

So far I've sunk about 80,000 feet

9:43

of line into the hole without reaching bottom.

9:46

My wife works at a local university with a geology

9:49

department. We hope to get some professional scholarly

9:51

help in determining the depth of the

9:53

hole, as far as I can tell. There's

9:55

nothing else particularly strange about it except

9:57

for two other things. Those

10:00

dogs refuse to get within a hundred

10:02

feet of the hole. Birds won't sit

10:04

on the retaining wall or metal door. Another

10:07

strange thing is there is no echo

10:09

when you yell into the hole. Indeed,

10:12

I've never heard anything hit bottom when

10:14

tossed in. We once tossed

10:16

in an old refrigerator, and

10:19

we never heard it hit bottom,

10:22

no crash, splash, or crunch. I

10:25

hope your listeners can help with possible

10:27

explanations. I'm wondering if

10:30

this, based on my measurements, thus

10:32

far might be the deepest hole

10:34

on Earth. Signed, Mel

10:36

Waters.

10:44

What's great about this fax, what I'm sure attracted

10:47

Art Bell to it? Two things. First

10:49

of all, this was something different. Art

10:52

Bell took dozens of calls every

10:54

week, people wanting to talk about secret government

10:56

laboratories, subterranean mutants,

10:59

close encounters of the first, second, third,

11:01

and even fourth kinds, where the fourth

11:03

means bathing suit area stuff. It

11:06

was a wild world of weird, and a

11:08

strange thing to get used to. But

11:11

in 1997, Bell had been at this stuff

11:13

for almost twenty years. Five

11:16

nights a week, four hours a night, all

11:18

of it must have blended together at some point, variations

11:21

on a theme. The

11:24

hole was something totally different.

11:27

It wasn't cryptids with a but, or

11:29

aliens with an if, it was irreducible,

11:32

novel. It was also, especially

11:35

compared to his regular material, insidiously

11:38

subtle. Sure, if you thought

11:40

about it a bit, there was plenty to quibble with, but

11:42

on its face, the hole is just the right

11:44

level of fantastical. It's

11:47

enigmatic, but not absurd. Unlike

11:49

all the pat-paranormal material out there, it

11:52

doesn't inspire a knee-jerk response, affirmation,

11:55

or rejection. It just makes you lean in.

11:58

You want to know more, right? to

12:00

get the information to make that judgment. I

12:03

sure do. And lucky for us, a few

12:05

hours later, Art Bell managed to

12:07

get Mel on the line.

12:13

Well, all right. Now to Eastern

12:16

Washington. I guess this is Eastern Washington.

12:18

Mel, are you there? Yes, I am. First

12:21

of all, Mel, thank you for answering. What are you doing

12:23

up at this time of the morning? Well, after

12:26

I sent the fax, I'm living

12:29

in town here now because... For the next hour,

12:31

Art Bell interviewed Mel Waters

12:33

about the hole. In that

12:35

time, Mel doesn't give a whole lot

12:38

of new information. He mostly rehashes

12:40

what he wrote in the fax. Well, the

12:42

hole has always been there. We've been out there for a couple of

12:44

years now. And, you

12:46

know, the hole has been there since we've been there.

12:48

It's been there since the previous owner was there.

12:50

And the previous owner there was quite elderly.

12:54

And I'd say he was

12:56

there for a good 30, 40 years before we

12:58

moved in. We get a lot more detail,

13:00

of course, about throwing stuff down the hole.

13:03

You know, we just take all, you know, we take all

13:05

of our trash rubbish, you know, anything

13:07

we have that we have to get rid of. We take it, throw it in the

13:09

hole, everyone's throwing their stuff in the hole. About

13:11

the way animals avoid the hole. As

13:15

usual, I brought the dogs with me. They

13:18

wouldn't go anywhere near the damn thing. And

13:21

I went back to the Suburban and hung

13:23

out over there. So it

13:26

was kind of a, I can't,

13:28

you know, if I try to bring them there on a leash, they'll just dig

13:30

their feet in. They do not want to go anywhere

13:33

near the hole. And a lot more about Mel's

13:35

process trying to measure its depth. I

13:37

would say pretty close to a professional shark fisherman.

13:40

So I had a couple of huge fishing

13:43

reels, went out there and started letting

13:46

the line down, I figure, after one. Did

13:48

you weight the line? Oh yeah, there

13:51

is, in fact, the original line is still down

13:53

there. I have just been adding to the line and

13:55

keeping track of how much line I have used.

13:58

So I've not reeled it. How

14:01

much weight is on it? There is a one pound

14:03

weight at the bottom of it. And

14:07

occasionally I try to move the line there but

14:09

when you are moving that much line you really can't do

14:11

a whole lot with it. But it seems

14:14

to be, it's not resting against

14:17

anything at this point here and it continues to go down

14:19

freely. And so when

14:21

I was out there earlier I let out a little bit more

14:23

line. So

14:26

you actually went out there tonight after I read that

14:28

one? Oh man. Well

14:31

you know it's not too bad. But mostly

14:33

what Mel offers is a wildly

14:36

believable account of a wildly

14:39

unbelievable thing. Wonderful water. Mel,

14:42

you wouldn't be pulling my leg. No

14:44

I'm not.

14:46

Mel knows stuff he should know and doesn't

14:48

know stuff he shouldn't. He's detailed,

14:50

he's knowledgeable, but not omniscient.

14:53

There's plenty he doesn't understand about the whole. And

14:55

unlike so many of the guests calling in to Coast

14:57

to Coast AM over the years, he doesn't pretend

15:00

he does.

15:01

He doesn't have some grand conspiracy

15:03

theory. He's not selling a ready set

15:05

narrative. He's just a guy with

15:07

a weird hole who wants to know what it

15:09

is and maybe if he can get Guinness

15:11

to come out to give it a world record. You

15:14

know I think I've let you know

15:16

as much as I know

15:19

about it I certainly want to find out

15:21

more. I'm mostly curious, I was mostly

15:23

curious about the depth of it. I mean how deep

15:25

is the deepest hole anyone has ever found? Well

15:28

I've never heard of anything deeper than this. You know

15:30

I thought maybe this would be like Guinness World

15:32

Book of Records type hole here.

15:36

When asked whether it's supernatural, Mel

15:38

doesn't seem to think so. Yeah

15:42

this could be an apocryphal story but one guy

15:44

claims that he threw his departed

15:47

canine down into the hole. Oh

15:49

really? Well

15:52

the story is the guy that did it swears the

15:55

dog actually came back to him. And

15:58

he was a... Really? The

16:01

story is that he was a hunter and

16:03

he was out there hunting and he saw the same

16:05

dog, he

16:06

had the same collar, he had the same little

16:09

metal thing on his collar there.

16:12

He said it was the same dog and

16:14

he says he knew he threw the dog into the hole. That's

16:19

not my dog. It's not your

16:21

story but it's a story

16:23

of a resurrected dog. He even

16:25

understands that the dog part is the biggest

16:27

reach and he doesn't try to sell

16:30

it. It's just a story he's heard which he's

16:32

retelling the same way you would in his situation.

16:34

He doesn't necessarily believe it. Although

16:38

when Belle asks him if he'd ever go

16:40

down the hole, Belle does give

16:42

an interesting answer.

16:44

If you had a fatal disease, Mel,

16:47

would you jump in the hole? I would. You

16:50

would? It's based on the dog story. It

16:52

is in my will.

16:53

Why? Because I meet my demise that

16:56

you would be thrown into the hole. I'm

16:59

not sure the health department would allow that. Art Belle,

17:01

by the way, plays his part perfectly.

17:04

He's curious, he's just a teensy

17:06

bit skeptical, he keeps things moving

17:08

and introduces new ideas without pushing them

17:10

too hard. He's yes-anding like

17:12

a second city veteran. His one

17:15

hang up is his repeated suggestion

17:17

that they get someone to go down the hole.

17:20

Not once they're dead like Mel plans, but

17:22

with some kind of equipment so they can get a good

17:25

look.

17:25

What we need here is a volunteer. Real,

17:29

I'm serious. Somebody who would be willing to be

17:31

lowered into

17:34

this hole. Well,

17:36

to be honest, I don't even know if there's any air down

17:39

that far. Finally, it comes time to

17:41

start taking calls, which is where

17:43

you see the genius of not screening

17:45

callers.

17:46

Let's let some of the audience ask

17:48

you questions. The first few people Art picks

17:51

up have nothing to say about Mel's hole.

17:53

The first one doesn't have anything to say at all.

17:56

Hello? Hello? Do

17:58

you have any questions for Mel? Hello? Hello?

18:02

And

18:04

the next few aren't much better.

18:06

Okay, well, I guess that

18:08

guy gave up. Are you used to the Rockies? You're on the

18:10

air with Mel. Hello? Hello? Oh,

18:13

you got a guest now? I did well, I mean sort

18:15

of. Well, I was

18:17

calling about something else. Alright, well thank you.

18:19

First time caller in line, you're on the air with Mel. Hello?

18:23

Mel? Yes, Mel.

18:25

Oh, oh, Mel, Mel, Mel. I wanted to talk to Art. I'm on

18:27

the wrong line. Yeah, you are. I

18:29

find this hysterical.

18:31

But aside from the Saturday Night Live Public

18:34

Access television sketch quality of all these misfires,

18:37

I think there's something really important going on here. If

18:39

you were listening to Coast to Coast on February 21, 1997, listening

18:41

to Mel explain his

18:44

whole, you might be skeptical.

18:47

If you're listening to The Constant in late 2023,

18:50

you're almost certainly skeptical. And

18:53

the straightest line for that skepticism to take

18:55

is that this whole thing is a hoax,

18:58

right? I expect hoaxes to be smooth, well

19:00

organized, slick. The

19:02

rinky-dink feel of having random hang-ups

19:05

and wrong numbers and such cuts against

19:07

that. They display a lack of polish,

19:10

which makes the whole thing sound all the more

19:12

real, even though logically they

19:14

don't do any such thing. Eventually,

19:17

Mel manages to find some on-topic

19:19

callers, and they too help

19:21

further establish credibility. The

19:24

first is just a guy with a set of Encyclopedia

19:26

Britannica's or something doing the Lord's work

19:29

searching through the index for technical specs

19:31

on holes.

19:32

I just wanted to let you know, I looked up an encyclopedia

19:35

and the Mariana's Trent, which is the deepest

19:38

hole we know about. That's in the ocean,

19:40

right? Right, it's 36,000 feet deep.

19:42

So this is, well,

19:45

it's certainly over double that already. Right.

19:48

And it also says, under mining,

19:50

that with current technology we can only go

19:52

down about 1600 feet. Wow.

19:55

Wow. Which leads Art

19:57

Bell back to his North Star, sending

19:59

someone

19:59

down the hole. I, inquiring

20:02

minds, want to know, I would think even

20:05

if we just had somebody lowered past

20:07

the 1600 foot mark

20:10

to see what's down there. Wouldn't you know it, he

20:12

gets a volunteer.

20:14

Yeah, you mentioned earlier that

20:17

you would like somebody

20:19

to be lowered down into the hole. That's

20:22

right. I would be willing to do that. See, there you go, sir, a volunteer.

20:25

We've moved out of all of that. Yeah, I mean, obviously under certain conditions. Like what? Just

20:27

a cage, for one. A

20:31

cage? Yeah, just in the event that

20:33

there's some kind of

20:36

weird subterranean thing

20:38

eating all of this garbage down there. Obviously,

20:41

I would want to be in some kind of a cage. Well,

20:44

what makes you think, though, that anything that could

20:46

gobble up, say, a refrigerator. Wouldn't

20:49

get the cage? Well, I would have obviously

20:51

a very powerful light and I'd be able to see it

20:53

at some point before it's too

20:56

late. So we'd have radio contact

20:58

with you and we could hear you scream at least. Yeah,

21:00

yeah. The other major questions tackled are,

21:03

what the hell is this thing? You know, when I was

21:06

out there this evening, it's kind

21:08

of a full moon out there. One

21:12

of the things that occurred to me is maybe this has

21:14

some sort of astronomical

21:17

type thing. What

21:19

do you mean, though? It's like the

21:23

various pyramids and things in Egypt

21:26

are supposed to be lined up on various star

21:28

systems or whatever. Well, was it

21:31

a thing like where the moonlight was shining into

21:33

the hole? Well, no, but I

21:35

just happened to notice there was a

21:37

full moon and all of a sudden I just sort

21:39

of put two and two together

21:41

there. You've never felt drawn

21:44

to the hole personally,

21:47

have you? You mean

21:51

in terms of some sort of spiritual involvement?

21:54

No, suicide. Oh, no. The...

21:57

And? What

22:00

the hell can you do with it? Wildcard

22:02

line, you're on the air with Mel. Hello. This

22:05

is pretty funny. Good

22:08

evening Mel. Hi. Before

22:10

I get serious, I just wanted to kind

22:12

of lighten things up here and ask if you'd consider

22:15

making a contract with the

22:17

refuse collection department from Yakima

22:19

County. You can probably make a ceiling on that. You

22:22

know, I read an article in the paper

22:24

how they wanted to close down our local

22:27

dump out here

22:30

and I almost

22:32

seriously suggest that. Listen,

22:34

here's another possibility for you. Do you know that

22:37

I live near an area where there's supposed to be a high

22:39

level nuclear

22:41

dump?

22:43

Now if this is really in effect a

22:45

bottomless pit,

22:47

you may have something

22:49

that the US government wants. So

22:52

I could like rent this thing out. You're damn right.

22:54

But if Mel won't lease it out to your local

22:56

streets and sanitation department or the IAEA,

22:59

then he should at least be able to get some media

23:01

attention out of the deal. Mel, would you

23:03

be willing to talk to

23:05

like newspaper people or television

23:08

people? They're crazy.

23:11

They'd send someone down there. By the time the Collins section of

23:13

the show begins, there's very little doubt

23:15

left hanging around Art Bell. After

23:18

a couple of perfunctory, you're not lying to me,

23:20

questions, Art Bell is willing to go

23:23

fully along with Mel Waters and never

23:25

again entertains any degree of dubiousness

23:27

until the very end. But

23:30

there were a couple of callers who raised

23:32

some issues with the story. Only if we were

23:34

all lucky. West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Mel.

23:37

Hello.

23:37

Yeah, this is Terry from Bremerton. Hello,

23:40

Terry. Oh, you up in Washington again. Yeah.

23:43

You're right. Well, I

23:45

was

23:46

wondering about how much does 15

23:48

miles of fishing line weigh?

23:51

I have no idea. I'm

23:53

just letting that sucker go down. I have not really.

23:56

You've already hit the bottom and you've got a

23:59

pound of fishing line. on it. That's

24:01

right. You're letting it down. Yeah,

24:04

I should weigh one of those spools

24:07

because I'm getting them in 5,000 yard spools. I

24:11

should weigh a spool and sort of deduct

24:14

the cost of the spool

24:16

itself and see what that would add up to in terms

24:18

of how much that weighs. So

24:22

in other words, it could have hit bottom

24:24

some time ago and simply the pure

24:27

weight of the line. Right.

24:29

So this is Conrad in Grass Valley

24:31

and I've got some thoughts about this whole well problem.

24:35

Sure. First of all, if he started out with

24:37

a one pound weight and he starts

24:39

adding fish line to

24:42

it, then the amount

24:44

of weight down the hole increases.

24:47

All right, now if he

24:49

knows the weight of the line on a per

24:51

foot basis, as he puts

24:53

more weight down the hole, if he

24:56

could measure the total strain

24:59

on the top or load on the top

25:01

of the line,

25:02

he would know if any of that line

25:04

was draped on anything. See,

25:06

the thing is, once he gets a fair amount of

25:08

line down there... No, that's a good point. The

25:11

one pound weight on the end is insignificant.

25:13

We've got two important logistical issues

25:16

here. For one, the line melds lowering

25:18

into the hole can only hold 20 pounds

25:21

of weight before it snaps. There's

25:23

a one pound weight at the end, so

25:25

that leaves 19 pounds. But

25:27

how much does the line itself

25:29

weigh? He supposedly got 80,000 feet

25:32

of the stuff, right? If that weighs more than 20

25:35

pounds, then the line should have snapped, meaning

25:37

that the whole whole story is bullshit.

25:41

But there's a bigger problem here too. The one

25:43

pound weight is what's keeping the line taut.

25:46

So Mel should know when he's hit bottom

25:49

because once that weight is on the floor, the

25:51

line should go slack. But if there's

25:53

even one pound of line down there, that

25:56

doesn't matter anymore. The weight

25:58

of the line itself...

26:00

would serve the same purpose. Hmm.

26:02

And he wouldn't even... It could be hung up

26:04

on something and... Or laying

26:06

on the bottom or something and... And he would never know

26:09

it. By now, Art

26:11

isn't just sympathetic to Mel. He's working

26:13

defense. Yeah, but

26:16

he put lifesavers down 4,500 feet. So

26:18

even if what you're saying is true, this is still,

26:21

by a long shot, the deepest hole ever...

26:24

Ever.

26:25

And he quickly moves off that topic

26:27

and starts wrapping things up, giving Mel the

26:29

chance to end on strength, swearing

26:31

up and down once more that what he has said

26:33

is true. Alright, and

26:36

you would swear on all that is sacred to you that

26:38

what you have told us

26:40

is the absolute, unadulterated... ...hiss.

26:43

That this is my hole and that this is the truth about

26:45

it. And that's it.

26:48

The sun is rising and it's time for Art Bell

26:50

to go smoke himself to sleep. It

26:52

was a good show. Mel's Hole may never

26:54

fill up, but the story of Mel's Hole filled

26:56

three hours of late-night radio programming beautifully.

26:59

It was time to tie it up with a bow and

27:01

move on to the regularly scheduled program

27:04

of lunatics, grifters, and civil

27:06

war-stoking militiamen. Except,

27:09

the next week, Art Bell received

27:12

a second fax from Mel Waters with

27:14

some frightening new developments. The

27:17

bottomless hole was about to get

27:19

deeper. The

27:25

end.

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30:55

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Things used to be so much

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If you find...

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had happened upon coast to coast AM

32:02

on Friday, February 21st, 1997. And

32:05

then never listened in again. And

32:08

considering that the Nielsen ratings put the regular audience

32:10

at the time in the millions, there were certainly a whole

32:12

bunch of people who had that experience. What

32:14

would you have thought about Mel's Hole? I'd

32:18

say it would have been an interesting little

32:20

nugget you might have mentioned later, perhaps

32:22

when the awkward silence descended on a first

32:24

date, or if you had a few minutes to kill

32:27

at the water cooler on Monday morning. You'd

32:29

say you heard about this guy on the radio, who

32:31

found a hole on his property that went down... Well,

32:35

who knew how far? The guy dropped

32:37

like 15 miles of line down and not

32:39

hit bottom. And your date slash

32:41

coworker might ask, is it real?

32:44

And you'd say, well, I don't

32:46

know. I don't think the part about the dog

32:48

being resurrected was true, but maybe

32:51

dogs avoided the hole. That could be true.

32:53

You know how dogs are. Maybe

32:56

it wasn't bottomless. It probably wasn't

32:58

bottomless. But a

33:01

really deep hole? A really deep,

33:03

really weird, pretty nearly

33:05

inexplicable hole? Why

33:08

not? And yeah, for you

33:10

engineers and geologists out there who can

33:12

think of a bunch of answers to why not, good

33:14

for you. But for the rest of us, this story

33:16

appears to live right on the knife's edge

33:19

of plausibility. You can push it over,

33:21

one way or the other. It's a good, subtle,

33:24

slow-rolling fiction. But

33:27

on Monday night, February 24th, 1997, once

33:31

the water cooler was emptied, Mel came

33:33

back for a second go. This

33:36

time, things were going to get faster.

33:38

I'm louder. Here

33:43

is from the state of Washington.

33:46

Here's Mel. Mel.

33:47

Hello, Art Bell and listeners. Hi.

33:50

You, when I got this

33:52

second batch from you, I called you up and

33:55

you were totally, totally freaked

33:57

out. Oh my God, I was, I tell

33:59

you.

34:00

I

34:02

feel a lot better now, let me tell you. You

34:05

were just a pile of nerves when I talked to you now. Before

34:08

we get into the meat of the second call, I

34:11

just want to let you know that Mel addressed the

34:13

skepticism over the weight of his line.

34:15

On the weekend, I was able to actually

34:17

measure or weigh the line

34:20

that's in the hole. And basically,

34:22

I tied it onto one of these little fisherman's

34:25

scales, okay? It's

34:29

a little spring-operated thing there, but

34:31

I had a weight on that, including the

34:35

one-pound sinker on there. It looks like it weighs about 17,

34:37

18 pounds. Okay,

34:40

so 17 or 18 pounds, it's

34:42

20-pound test line, right? And you've

34:44

got one pound down at the end of it tied

34:47

on the end of it, right? That's right. Truly

34:49

very convenient that it came in just

34:51

underweight.

34:52

But forget about that. Let's get into the latest

34:54

developments. On Friday night,

34:56

it went out there in

35:02

the evening and

35:04

noticed there was some helicopter

35:08

activity around the property.

35:12

There was further helicopter activity

35:14

the next day, and

35:17

so I figured that clearly

35:19

somebody out there listens to

35:21

your program. Oh, yes. I'm

35:26

really sorry I brought this on for you. It certainly

35:28

wasn't intentional. Well,

35:32

anyway, there was

35:34

a lot of activity around there, and

35:37

I've had some thoughts about this. And

35:40

they stopped you, right? In other words, there was a barrier

35:42

there? Well, there was.

35:44

I'll tell you, I'm

35:47

getting a little confused about days. I

35:49

guess this is now Tuesday morning. Yeah,

35:52

that's right. But since

35:57

what they had originally there

35:59

was- a barrier, not a barrier,

36:01

but just armed soldiers basically.

36:04

Armed soldiers. Armed soldiers. Since

36:07

then they have erected some further

36:10

down the road. I mean

36:13

basically there's the road, there's

36:15

the access road, and then finally kind of meander

36:17

into the property. They now have

36:19

Jersey barriers at the road. What

36:22

are those? Jersey barriers. Those

36:25

are kind of like big chunks of concrete. Oh,

36:28

like the bomb barriers they have at the White House. More

36:31

or less. You could squeeze maybe one

36:34

vehicle through there, but it's definitely

36:36

being controlled over there. Now this is

36:39

your property, right? You've got the deed to this

36:41

property. This is well, mine and the bank's.

36:43

Well, you're in the bank, you know, it all seems situation.

36:48

So they will let you on your own property, and they're claiming there

36:50

was a plane that crashed. Yeah, that

36:52

was the thing. I said, where's the smoke? I've seen plane crashes

36:54

before. There's got to be smoke. And, you

36:57

know, again, I had talked to the officer

36:59

in charge there, and I figured, you know, when these

37:02

military types had come up, and I

37:04

don't know, maybe he was just dressed in civilian clothes

37:06

because of, you know, the nature of what happened there. But,

37:09

you

37:11

know, he told me that I won't be able to go

37:13

out there until the accident's been investigated.

37:16

Yeah, man, we are through the looking glass

37:18

now, firmly in X-Files

37:20

territory, the creator of which, Chris Carter,

37:22

was a big fan of Coast to Coast, by the way. Robert

37:25

Bell interviewed him on the show in 1999. Coincidence?

37:29

There's

37:29

no such thing as coincidence, Scully.

37:35

For some people, adding a shadowy

37:38

government cover-up to a story must

37:40

improve its veracity. I'm not

37:42

one of those people, but I'm willing to bet that they're

37:44

somewhat concentrated among the Coast to Coast

37:47

audience. And come to think of it,

37:49

perhaps they're concentrated around 1997, too.

37:54

Even if you're one of those people, there are a lot of things

37:56

about Melwater's second call to raise

37:58

your eyebrows. Like, for instance,

38:01

Mel says that when he tried to get back on his property,

38:04

one of the men in black obliquely threatened

38:06

him, saying that it would be all too easy to

38:08

find a drug lab on his land if he weren't

38:10

careful. And I was insistent

38:13

about my property rights, and he seemed to

38:15

indicate that this might not

38:17

necessarily be my property in regards

38:20

to the drug lab, so... But

38:22

there's an easy defense against that sort of thing, Art

38:24

Bell points out, because Mel doesn't

38:26

have a drug lab on his land.

38:30

Right?

38:31

But the problem is, I do have

38:33

a sort of a lab on the property, but... Oh

38:37

no, no, wait a minute. Ooh. You

38:40

have a sort of lab? What kind of lab?

38:43

Well, I work

38:46

in the alternative health field here

38:49

on the property, and that's one of the reasons, and this

38:51

can all come out now. I

38:53

imported some plant

38:57

life from northern Nevada. There were

39:00

Native American plants that the Indians

39:02

used there for

39:04

treatment of various illnesses, mostly cold

39:06

and flu. Yeah. Anyway,

39:09

so we, because of the nature of the

39:13

climate, and it's very similar to northern Nevada,

39:15

we thought we would cultivate these plants and then

39:19

use it as cure. It's a very effective cure.

39:22

It's not a narcotic, is it? No, it's not

39:24

narcotics. Well, then what the hell are they talking about?

39:26

Drug lab. Well, there is a lab there,

39:28

though. He returns

39:30

to this a number of times.

39:33

That's not a drug lab you've got out there, is it? No,

39:36

no, no. We are working with Native

39:38

American plants, the plants that Native Americans

39:41

used in making what

39:43

they... This

39:46

was a northern Nevada doctor back

39:48

in World War I time who found

39:50

a cure for the flu. He

39:52

gave this stuff to his... He

39:55

was a military doctor, gave it to the people under his

39:57

command. Okay, okay. So...

39:59

not exactly a drug lab maybe,

40:02

but something a little cozy with drug labs

40:04

and pretty scammy sounding.

40:07

On the second call, Mel also retrofits

40:09

a new supernatural element into the story.

40:12

Oh, I talked to one of my neighbors earlier today

40:14

and he told me something very interesting.

40:16

He said that some time ago he was driving

40:19

up to the hole at night and thought

40:21

he saw the most bizarre thing. He

40:24

said he saw a beam of solid

40:26

black

40:28

coming out of the then uncovered hole. I

40:31

said, what do you mean? He said he saw something

40:33

blacker than black

40:36

coming out of the hole like a searchlight reaching

40:38

into the sky as far as he could see. If

40:40

Mel's first call was relatively grounded,

40:43

the second is starting to snap a

40:45

lot of its tethers. Mel vaguely

40:47

conjectures about HARP, a conspiracy

40:49

theory magnet of a research lab in Fairbanks,

40:52

Alaska. Project HARP. Now

40:54

HARP is supposed to look for

40:57

underground tunnels

40:59

and such. He makes some

41:01

confusingly directionless comments

41:04

about geology. One of the things I

41:06

found out is the crust on

41:08

average on the Earth is about 20 miles deep.

41:11

Okay. Now underneath the crust,

41:13

and this is something that a lot of people don't know about,

41:16

there's something known as the Moho

41:18

discontinuity. The

41:21

what? The Moho discontinuity. What

41:24

is that? But I don't know much about seismology,

41:26

but I'll tell you what I know about this discontinuity.

41:30

P waves, and I guess those are seismic waves.

41:34

Through this discontinuity, move

41:36

faster than

41:38

they do

41:39

through the rest of the Earth. They like speed up. Okay.

41:42

Not to mention, of course, that the whole premise of the

41:44

second call, that the military or some

41:47

military-ish people have come

41:49

in to take his land, is pretty

41:51

wild. Arts listeners

41:54

also get a little zanier in part two.

41:57

Here's a vax for you. The following is

41:59

a theory regarding...

41:59

regarding Mel's property. There is a tremendous

42:02

amount of naturally generated high voltage electricity

42:05

deep in the earth. What if the

42:07

bottom of the hole on Mel's property is

42:10

a naturally occurring focal point, a

42:12

lot like the device that Mr. Markham built. The earth

42:14

could have its own, in effect,

42:16

time machine over the centuries

42:19

through various quakes and so forth. All

42:21

of the soil above the portal would have

42:23

fallen into the bottom and been launched

42:25

into some other time. This explains

42:27

the lack of echoes in the apparent depth of

42:30

the hole. Tell Mel to lower

42:32

a clock down there. They

42:35

talk a bit elliptically about hollow

42:37

earth theory. And I'll guarantee you that

42:39

will open your eyes because the earth is hollow. They've

42:41

never proved the earth is solid. And it's

42:43

opposed, it's totally a hole

42:45

and it's about 1,400 miles wide. And

42:48

people can't see across it and they don't realize they're going

42:51

into the earth. But Admiral Byrd

42:53

flew 1,700 miles into the earth and they

42:55

shut it up. So the government

42:57

has dumped it here. That is

42:59

what it sounds like. West

43:02

of the Rockies, you're on the air with Mel. Hello. Hi,

43:04

how are you doing? Well, I've read

43:07

two scriptures in the Bible which I won't quote because

43:09

I know you don't like to talk about that. That's right. But

43:11

there's one that talks

43:14

about making graven images

43:16

of things. And that would be even things that

43:19

are under the earth. And then there's a... Well,

43:21

what are you driving at though?

43:23

Well, there are

43:24

scriptures in the Bible that also allude

43:26

to a hollow earth theory.

43:28

Oh, oh, oh. They suggest that Mel

43:30

could have a literal hole to hell on

43:32

his hands. Hi, my name is Brad.

43:35

I'm calling from Lexington, Kentucky. Hi,

43:37

Brad. Hi.

43:39

When I heard about this hole, it kind of reminded

43:41

me of the story with

43:44

the hole they dug. I think it was

43:46

in Europe or Scandinavia. Scandinavia.

43:49

Scandinavia. They lowered a microphone.

43:51

Yeah, I'll tell you what. That was an associated press story.

43:53

And they lowered a microphone in and they heard the

43:55

screaming, agonized sounds

43:58

of Mel. thousands

44:01

of people in agony, they

44:03

said. That was an actual AP story. Now,

44:05

it may have turned out to

44:06

have been not true, but AP

44:09

ran that story. Art is all the way wrong

44:11

about this story, in case you were wondering. The

44:13

story of the Well from Hell began

44:16

in a Finnish newspaper published by a group

44:18

of Pentecostal Christians and tracked back

44:20

through a telephone game of fringe Christians and

44:22

Messianic Jews. The gist was

44:24

that the Soviets had dug a nine

44:27

mile deep hole in Siberia and

44:29

lowered a microscope phone into it, which picked up the

44:31

sounds of people screaming in agony.

44:37

That is, purportedly, the

44:40

actual tape taken from the hole. It

44:42

was first aired a couple of years after Mel's phone

44:44

calls, on Coast to

44:46

Coast AM. Although Art

44:49

Bell relayed the audio as genuine, it

44:51

has since been tracked back to a couple of B-movie

44:53

background audio files overlaid and

44:55

looped on top of one another.

44:58

The story was never, from what I've found, run

45:00

through the AP Wire. It was published

45:02

by a number of tabloids, and particularly

45:06

Trinity Broadcasting Network, which, if

45:08

you're not familiar with TBN, is

45:10

exactly as credible a source as you're imagining.

45:13

But I digress. My favorite

45:15

theory, for sure, comes from

45:18

this unnamed caller. Uh,

45:20

yeah, about that hole? Yes, sir.

45:22

There was a Rod Sterling

45:24

thing I saw in the TNT,

45:27

I think, about four years ago. He was

45:30

hosting it. It was like, it must have been early 80s,

45:32

late 70s. And there were

45:34

reenactments of like these true occurrences. Yeah.

45:38

And there was a whole story about

45:40

a boy, it looked like it took place

45:42

when they still wrote horses

45:45

or something. And a

45:47

boy woke up with his dog missing or something.

45:50

And he went looking

45:52

for his dog and

45:54

fell into a hole, except, you know, he didn't fall

45:57

in. He hung onto the edge and crawled out and went.

46:00

told his dad and his dad went out there and they heard noises

46:02

coming out of it. Oh,

46:08

God. He went to town and got a bunch of guys who

46:10

go out there with him and I guess a bunch of

46:12

guys went out there and they thought,

46:14

well, let's lower a rope and somebody's going

46:16

to have to go down on it. Sure. So

46:19

the dad said, well, I'll do it since you're

46:21

looking for your dog and stuff. They lowered

46:23

him down and he made

46:25

this

46:28

scream, deadly

46:31

scream, and so they brought him up and I

46:33

guess after that, after they brought him up, he

46:36

went clinically insane for the rest

46:38

of his life. That

46:41

is an episode of The Twilight Zone,

46:43

a very famous episode of The

46:45

Twilight Zone. The reason Rod Serling

46:48

was hosting a documentary was that

46:50

the documentary was his television

46:52

show The Twilight Zone.

46:54

Aside from fevered theorizing, many

46:57

of the callers that night were focused on advice.

47:00

What should Mel do about the whole and

47:02

the shadowy men who have kicked him off his land?

47:04

We've got a local

47:05

group of citizens and press and militia

47:08

and that's a good reason why we need the

47:11

militias in this country is

47:13

to prevent this type of situation

47:15

from

47:16

happening. The government coming in, taking

47:18

over your property, threatening your

47:21

life.

47:22

You know, I would call their bluff.

47:24

I don't see how they can... Well, that's

47:26

easy to say, you

47:28

know, from a distance. I'm not sure I'd call

47:30

their bluff. I've got to be honest.

47:32

Look, if you had a property, sir, and

47:35

you're trying to get on it and they had it all roped off

47:37

and they said, go away, you

47:38

know, we could... I would come back with a gun. I didn't

47:40

say they gave good advice. Compared

47:43

to where we're going to eventually end up, though, everybody's

47:45

still pretty level-headed. Faint praise

47:48

or foreshadowing? You decide.

47:50

The power they've got, you

47:51

know, they can just wrap him up and we might

47:53

never hear from him again. Yeah,

47:55

that's right. I guess I'm going

47:57

to have to stay in touch with you, Mel, to be sure that you... you

48:00

don't need some uh... well well you know they're

48:02

they're working even both sides here as far as

48:04

i can tell what it sounds like you know yeah

48:06

i mean it looks like uh... there

48:09

i guess it's like the godfather they want to make me an

48:11

offer i can't refuse uh... all

48:13

he wanted with someone who could tell him whether his

48:16

whole was special and now not

48:18

only does he have some mysterious stormtroopers

48:21

blocking his gate but even some of art

48:23

bells listeners are accusing him of being

48:25

full of shit art

48:27

i'm

48:27

sorry but i just feel like you've got

48:30

somebody there that's uh... uh...

48:32

got quite an imagination well

48:35

you're talking to him so i mean it's i i

48:37

i've just said the same thing to him uh... some

48:39

of the faxes that i've been receiving are saying that obviously

48:42

people don't believe i

48:43

i i i just hope that you don't get

48:46

all wound up in this

48:47

well i look like it wound up in all

48:49

kinds of things dear i'm not going to stop that's what

48:51

i do it's enough that he's thinking about giving

48:53

in maybe moving to australia if

48:56

if i get to be all fine actually get the pocket

48:59

somebody in a position of authority want to sit

49:01

down and talk turkey and i'm not talking

49:03

about my uh... real estate agent

49:06

i'm gonna on the policy on the house for like

49:08

that relocation to another country's

49:10

what i'm gonna do you want you want to be sent

49:12

out of the country the art i'd like to be sent

49:14

to like australia for instance you know

49:17

uh...

49:17

uh... the close of the second call

49:19

art identifies the crisis

49:21

the plane crash story was obviously a cover

49:24

and the story about the lab was obviously

49:26

a threat uh... plain

49:29

and simple so my friend i don't know

49:31

what you're going to do now and

49:33

i don't think about it and offers

49:36

us some words of wisdom yeah everybody

49:38

out there on a water consider you know

49:40

something like this could happen to anybody in

49:42

what sense could this happen to anyone

49:44

art what in

49:47

this context could that possibly

49:49

mean uh... now we're out of time stay

49:51

in touch my friend are held all

49:53

people touch all right take care that's mel

49:56

and the story of mel's whole and

49:58

that's the latest when there's more

49:59

you'll hear about it right here, this is

50:03

CBC. But you wouldn't

50:05

hear about it. If you'd listened

50:07

to part one and part two, and then eagerly

50:10

awaited a third appearance to conclude things with

50:12

baited breath, I hope you didn't bait

50:14

it too hard, because Mel just disappeared.

50:17

He was gone. Or maybe

50:20

not quite. It seems like art was

50:22

in sporadic contact with Mel, sharing

50:25

letters or emails or faxes, and

50:27

if you were a religious listener to Coast

50:29

to Coast, you may have noticed a handful of updates.

50:33

I'm not sure that those updates happened, if

50:35

they did they weren't archived, but some

50:37

of art's later comments suggest he

50:39

read something about Mel's position on

50:42

air sometime in the following years. Aside

50:45

from whatever that might have been, there was no

50:47

firmer word on or from Mel and his

50:50

whole. But the story was so

50:52

delicious that it picked up more

50:54

and more steam as the nascent urban

50:56

legend leaked out. If you were

50:58

looking for your Mel's whole fix for the rest

51:01

of the 90s, you had to turn to newspaper

51:03

articles, local television programs.

51:06

Deep in the heart of central Washington state

51:09

is a mystery.

51:10

A strange pit claimed to be as deep

51:12

as 80,000 feet has piqued

51:15

the curiosity of people from around the nation.

51:17

It has reportedly been seen by only a handful

51:20

of people. It grabbed national attention

51:22

in 1997 when a man calling himself

51:24

Mel Waters contacted radio talk

51:26

show host, Art Bell, on his national

51:29

talk show, Coast to Coast. The

51:31

mysterious pit has become known

51:33

as Mel's Whole.

51:36

And

51:36

an incredibly suspicious half-breed

51:40

Cherokee shaman, his

51:42

words, named Red Elk, who

51:47

probably the less said about Red Elk

51:49

the better.

51:49

Mel's Whole is a

51:52

complex, very interesting

51:54

mystery. Within 24 hours,

51:57

his land was more or less seized.

51:59

speculate it may have a connection to

52:02

the close proximity of the U.S.

52:04

Army's Yakima Training Center. There

52:06

are a couple aspects of Mel's hole,

52:09

paranormal aspects that make it intriguing.

52:12

One of them is this supposed black beam that

52:14

emits from the

52:14

hole. That particular hole was

52:17

expelling me. It's like

52:19

flashing the toilet, but it blows

52:21

it up into the sky. All of a sudden it looks

52:23

like a black flashlight in the day.

52:25

Why are you hearing these stories? I

52:29

have never heard that. I have never

52:32

heard that

52:32

story. There's nothing better than a deep hole.

52:35

I mean, it's

52:37

just one of those neat

52:39

things that just perks the imagination of bottomless

52:41

hole. I

52:44

know actually quite a bit about Mel's hole. He's

52:47

our producer of a local TV show, Ellensburg

52:49

Stream, and we're aiming to do

52:51

a spot actually on Mel's hole, trying to find it

52:53

ourselves.

52:54

And everybody's theorizing just really

52:57

quite bizarre things from the beam of

52:59

light to a weird lamb guarding

53:01

the hole. People are just

53:05

making a cult of it, really. And if you were

53:07

around Washington, you might be able to

53:09

catch an expeditionary tour of the area

53:12

looking to find the hole. In Seattle,

53:14

Washington,

53:15

Philip Lipson

53:16

and Charlotte Lefever

53:18

are co-directors of the Seattle Museum

53:20

of the Mysteries, which has sponsored expeditions

53:22

to search for the hole.

53:24

We only seriously really

53:26

started going out on expeditions and searching

53:28

for this hole about three years

53:31

ago. And that's when Red Elk

53:33

came to us and said, I

53:35

saw this hole 40 years ago. My father

53:37

showed it to me. It's real.

53:40

I kind of call it the Moby Dick

53:43

of the Northwest because it's like, you

53:47

know, like this Moby Dick was about a whale. This is about

53:49

a hole.

53:55

If all of that wasn't enough, there was also a

53:57

good deal of art and fiction produced

53:59

about it. Mel's Hole. And

54:01

there still is! Just a couple years ago,

54:04

Amazon produced a streaming series entitled

54:07

Open Range, starring Josh Brolin,

54:09

which was both clearly and loosely

54:12

inspired by Mel's Hole. There

54:15

was a fairly high-profile modern art

54:17

exhibition in LA made up of pieces

54:19

inspired by the hole. The

54:21

story was a hit. On its way to full

54:24

pop culture assimilation, Mel's

54:26

Hole might have been the next, I don't know,

54:28

Roswell or pre-Skinwalker

54:31

Ranch, Skinwalker Ranch. If only

54:33

Mel had known the first rule of showbiz,

54:36

when to get off.

54:38

Which, for a while it seemed he did. He

54:41

disappeared, leaving a perfect

54:43

conspiratorial mystery behind. Did

54:45

the government buy Mel off? Kidnap

54:48

him? Kill him? Did they throw Mel down

54:50

the hole? Three

54:53

years later, Coast to Coast listeners

54:55

found out.

55:02

Whereas you, dear listener, need

55:04

only wait two weeks for

55:06

Rock Bottomless to start too.

55:22

Music for today's episode provided by

55:25

Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. If

55:27

you're itching to find out what happens to

55:30

Mel and his hole, or should I say

55:32

his holes, plural, how's

55:34

that for a tease? Don't go looking

55:36

for yourself! Wikipedia will not

55:39

give you the answers you crave. Instead,

55:41

navigate on over to patreon.com

55:44

slash the constant and sign up to support

55:46

the making of this show. If you do, not

55:49

only will you be filled with the warm light

55:51

of knowing you're keeping the constant going,

55:53

you'll also get early and ad-free

55:55

access to part two, days ahead

55:58

of everybody else. You'll be able to hear Where every

56:00

new episode early and ad-free, in fact,

56:03

as well as monthly bonus episodes just

56:05

for you. Maybe you'd like to gift

56:07

that access to a fan you know for the upcoming

56:10

holidays. Or keep it all to yourself-ish

56:12

self. I won't judge. Go check it out.

56:15

Until next time, from Chicago, Illinois,

56:18

where deep underneath my very feet,

56:21

hundreds of miles of

56:23

gaping gigantic holes

56:26

sit. Part of the deep tunnel system,

56:28

one of the largest civil projects ever constructed

56:30

by human hands,

56:31

this has been...