Mel’s Hole | Unraveling the Paranormal Mystery of Washington State's Bottomless Pit

Dive into one of America’s strangest legends—Mel’s Hole, the bottomless pit buried in Washington State folklore.

In this episode of State of the Unknown, host Robert Barber explores chilling eyewitness accounts, government conspiracies, and the eerie phenomena tied to this infamous site.

Was it a hoax, a portal, or something else entirely?

Join us as we investigate the paranormal mystery that still echoes through the Cascades—and refuses to stay buried.

Special Thanks:
We’d like to than Bob from Mondo Freako podcast for stopping by. Join Bob and Rob as they delve into the unknown with laughter, curiosity, and a healthy dose of skepticism. Check out their show here

State of the Unknown is a documentary-style podcast tracing the haunted highways, forgotten folklore, and unexplained phenomena across America’s 50 states.

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Some stories don’t stay buried.
We go looking anyway.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 3:01 The Call That Opened the Hole
• 5:38 Who Was Mel? Where Did He Go?
• 10:55 The Search for the Hole
• 16:16 Mel’s Hole in Pop Culture & Legacy
• 19:17 The Power of the Signal – Coast to Coast AM and the Rise of the Story
• 21:41 The Land That Hides – Ellensburg, Manastash, and Forgotten Terrain
• 24:03 Why Mel’s Hole Endures – Modern Myth in the Digital Age
• 26:16 Final Thoughts & Outro

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

There are places that disappear from the map, and then there are places that were never on it to begin with. In the hills of central Washington, where pine trees stretch like needles towards a gray sky, there's a stretch of land where nothing grows quite right. The animals avoid it. The birds fall silent. And somewhere in the middle is a hole. No fence, no warning, Just a yawning pit in the ground, dark, endless, and waiting. They say you can drop anything inside and never hear it hit the bottom. Rope, rocks, radio equipment, it all vanishes. And then the stories start. They say animals lured into the pit come back changed. That ice pulled from the depths burned instead of melted. that the government tried to seal it off because even they didn't understand it. But the strangest thing of all? The man who told the world about this place vanished too. This is a story about sound waves and silence. About belief, paranoia, and the power of a voice in the dark. It starts with a phone call and ends with a question that's never been answered. This is the story of Mel's Hole. Legends don't need centuries to grow. Sometimes, all it takes is a microphone and one story strange enough to echo. In 1997, a man named Mel Waters called into a national late night radio show and said he'd found a hole that defied logic. It wasn't just deep, it was bottomless. It wasn't just strange, It was dangerous. And if he was telling the truth, it was the kind of secret someone might want buried. I'm your host, Robert Barber, and today we travel to the high desert of Washington, to a pit that no one can find, reported by a man no one can verify, on a show that millions of night owls tuned into hoping, just maybe, the weird was real. This is the story of Mel's Hole, and this is State of the Unknown. February 21st, 1997. Coast to Coast AM is on the air. It's just past 10 p.m. when a man named Mel Waters calls in. He's calm, measured, almost too casual. And he says there's something on his property near Ellensburg, Washington. Something he thinks the world needs to hear about. A hole, nine feet across, perfectly round. lined with stone and older than any fence or foundation nearby. He's lived near it for years, he says, used to lower garbage into it, until he noticed something strange. It never filled. Mel tells host Art Bell that he started lowering fishing line with weights into the hole, spools and spools of it, over 80,000 feet. More than 15 miles and still no bottom. He describes it like someone talking about their backyard pond. Except this pond, he says, doesn't echo. Doesn't reflect sound. Doesn't seem normal. Art Bell presses him for details. Listeners start calling in. And just like that, a legend is born. Mel continues his story. He says animals avoid the area, that electronics act strange near the hole, that a neighbor once lowered a dead dog's body inside, only to see it days later walking through the woods, alive, changed, but different. He describes a bucket of ice pulled from the pit that refused to melt, that caught fire when exposed to air. He talks about hearing strange noises near the hole at night. Hum-like. Mechanical. Distant. The details are wild. But Mel doesn't sound unhinged. He sounds believable. Or at least he sounds convinced. And that's the thing about great radio. You don't need proof. You just need a voice. And a story you can't stop thinking about. As Mel's story spread across late-night airwaves and early internet forums, one question kept rising above the rest. Who was he? He called himself Mel Waters. But when reporters and amateur sleuths dug into Kittitas County property records, they found nothing. No deeds, no tax filings, no trace of a man named Mel Waters owning land on or near Monastish Ridge. Some people speculated he was using a fake name to protect himself. Others believed he never existed at all. In the months after the first broadcast, Coast to Coast became the center of a growing fringe investigation. Mel called into the show three more times over the next few years, each time with new updates and each time less grounded in reality. In April of 2000, During what would be his final appearance, Mel's claims escalated. He said he had been abducted by shadowy government agents, that he'd spent time in Australia only to return and find his property completely inaccessible. He described seeing black beam weapons, strange animal-human hybrids, and military experiments conducted near the site. He told Art Bell that he was still being watched. that his phone might be tapped, and that he feared he had said too much. After that, he was never heard from again. Despite, or maybe because of, the lack of follow-up, the legend grew. Researchers contacted local libraries, historical societies, and land management offices in Ellensburg and the surrounding areas. They found mentions of sinkholes, mine shafts, and old wells, but nothing matching Mel's description. A few landowners even invited journalists to explore their property, hoping to find the hole, but none did. In 2002, investigative journalist Richard M. Cohen tried to track down the origin of the broadcast. He found tapes of the original call confirmed Mel had called from a real phone number and verified that the conversation had not been scripted. But Cohen's deeper investigation ended in the same place as everyone else's. No land, no records, no Mel Waters. Still, believers pointed out that the absence of evidence didn't mean the story was false. In fact, to many, it made the tale feel more plausible. If Mel had stumbled upon something truly sensitive, something the government didn't want exposed, wouldn't they erase his paper trail? Some listeners even claim to receive strange phone calls after publicly discussing the hole online. One user in an early message board thread described an anonymous warning to, quote, stop asking questions about Mel's hole. No proof, no recording, just a message. and silence. As the 2000s rolled on, interest in Mel's Hole faded from the mainstream. Art Bell retired. Coast to Coast changed hosts, and newer legends pushed the story to the back burner. But among paranormal enthusiasts, Mel Waters became something of a mythic figure, the last great radio era mystery man. No one knew his face, no one knew his fate, And yet, his voice still echoed. And then in 2008, something strange happened. Artist Matthew Southworth, best known for his work with DC and Image Comics, posted a blog entry detailing his encounter with a man in Seattle who introduced himself as Mel Waters. Southworth said the man matched the voice from the Coast to Coast tapes perfectly. He was articulate, intense, and convinced of what he'd experienced. According to Southworth, this man claimed that Mel's hole was still active, that government surveillance continued, and that his life had been irrevocably changed by what he'd seen. No one ever confirmed the man's identity, no photos were taken, and the alleged sighting was never repeated. Just another page in a story that seemed to fold in on itself, fact and fiction merging until they were indistinguishable. Mel Waters, the man, the voice, the mystery, was gone. But the hole? That was still out there. Or at least, people believed it was. And they kept looking. As the story of Mel's hole made its rounds on radio and early internet forums, one question echoed louder than any other. Where is it? Mel had never given precise coordinates. He'd only said it was located somewhere on Monastish Ridge, a rugged forested area in Kittitas County, just outside Ellensburg, Washington. That was enough for people to start looking. paranormal investigators, amateur geologists, and coast-to-coast superfans began combing the area. Some drove in from out of state with nothing more than a compass and a printout of a forum thread. Others were locals, curious hikers and ranchers who'd grown up with stories of strange things in the hills. They expected to find... something. A collapsed shaft. An old well. even just a depression in the earth. But over and over again, they came up empty. Part of the challenge was the land itself. Monastish Ridge is a tough place to search. It's steep, heavily wooded, and remote in a way that defies GPS. The area is dotted with private property, forming mining sites and abandoned logging roads, many of them gated or overgrown. If the hole existed, it could easily be hidden in a ravine or behind an unmarked boundary. And yet, there were rumors. Some explorers claimed they found military-style fencing deep in the woods. Others reported blocked forest service roads or no trespassing signs where none had existed before. One man said he encountered two individuals in dark uniforms while hiking near an old mining site They told him to turn back for his own safety. He asked why. They said the area was unstable. He never went back. Another theory emerged that the hole might have been a natural geological formation, possibly related to the region's volcanic history. Eastern Washington is known for its lava tubes, basalt flows, and occasional subsidence pits circulating Natural collapses where the ground caves in over time. But even local geologists were puzzled. There were no known pits matching Mel's description, especially one with no echo, no bottom, and no surrounding erosion. Some turned to satellite maps. Zooming in on Monastish Ridge, they marked anything that looked like a shadow or a crater. But dense tree cover made aerial spotting nearly impossible. and Mel's own refusal to share exact coordinates left them guessing. In 2002, the mystery got a new twist. A man named Gerald R. Osborne, who went by the name Red Elk, came forward claiming he knew the location of Mel's hole. Red Elk described himself as a half Lakota medicine man and self-styled shaman with ties to underground knowledge. He said the hole was real, located on tribal land, protected by both spiritual forces and government interest. He even led a small group of journalists and paranormal researchers on an expedition to find it. They hiked for hours, mapped tree lines, scanned the ridges, and once again found nothing. Red Elk said the hole was cloaked by a force not meant to be uncovered, that only those with the right intent or spiritual readiness could find it. Skeptics were quick to point out that Red Elk had made other questionable claims in the past. Encounters with reptilian aliens, underground cities, and Bigfoot civilizations hidden beneath Mount Rainier. Still, for some, his words rang true. He spoke with conviction, and conviction, as Mel had already proved, goes a long way. Years passed. Expeditions dwindled. The coast-to-coast audience moved on to new mysteries, and Mel's hole remained, frustratingly, out of reach. To this day, no one has provided verifiable evidence of the hole's location. No photographs, no geological surveys, no maps, just stories, shared, repeated, and twisted like rope into legend. But maybe that's the point. Maybe the hole was never meant to be found. Maybe it's not a place on the map, but a reflection of what we fear might be beneath our feet, just out of sight. Even without proof, maybe because of it, Mel's Hole became a legend. And legends, once they take root, don't fade quietly, they echo. Since 1997, Mel's Hole has inspired a steady drip of references across paranormal media, forums, and internet culture. In some corners, it's spoken of like a lost artifact. In others, it's become meme-worthy. a symbol of bottomless weirdness, often whispered with a wink. There's a 2008 episode of X-Files-style podcast lore that references it obliquely. TV specials on the Travel Channel and Histories Unexplained have covered the legend. And paranormal YouTubers have racked up millions of views with titles like I Went Looking for Mel's Hole and This Is What Happened. The hole even inspired original fiction. In 2014, experimental artist Matthew Barney referenced Mel's Hole in an underground film exhibit in New York. And in a 2020 short story collection titled Bottomless, the closing tale involves a hiker who finds a seemingly infinite void in what it takes for him to leave. It also has been spoofed. A 2017 episode of the comedy horror podcast Hello from the Magic Tavern features a bottomless pit that starts talking back. Even animated shows like Gravity Falls have included background Easter eggs, a reference only the most obsessed would catch. But pop culture didn't create this story. It adopted it. Because Mel's Hole offers something timeless, a mystery with no resolution. A question without an answer. And just enough detail to sound like it could be real. It's become a kind of Rorschach test in the paranormal community. What you believe about Mel's hole says more about you than it does about geology or radio signals. Are you the kind of person who trusts voices in the dark? Or the kind who demands coordinates? Either way, the hole keeps pulling people in. Not just hikers and theorists, but artists, writers, storytellers. Anyone drawn to the idea that somewhere out there, beneath the trees and rock and silence, is a place that was never meant to be found. And maybe that's why Mel's Hole has lasted. Because we all have a version of it. A fear we can't name. A question we don't want answered. A place in the dark we know we shouldn't look, but can't quite resist. If Mel Waters had posted his story on a message board, it might have vanished. If he'd written a blog, it might have been ignored. But he didn't. He picked up the phone and called Art Bell, and that made all the difference. Coast to Coast AM wasn't just a show. It was a community. A lifeline for night shift workers, truckers, insomniacs, and seekers. It aired in the quiet hours when the world felt thinner and belief came easier. Art Bell had a rare gift. He never mocked. He asked questions. He listened. And in doing so, he built something between entertainment and ritual. A place where people could bring their strangest truths and not be laughed off the air. When Mel called in on February 21st, 1997, he didn't yell. He didn't dramatize. He just told the story. Like it had been weighing on him for years. And Art, as always, let the strangeness breathe. That's part of what made it believable. Not because it was scientific, not because it was proven, but because it was delivered over radio waves, that old trusted medium that has always had more to do with feeling than fact. There's something about AM radio at night. It hums with loneliness, with possibility. And when a story comes through, static and all, it bypasses skepticism and goes straight to the imagination. In the days after Mel's call, Listeners flooded phone lines, online forums, and bulletin boards. Everyone wanted to know more, to find the whole, to hear Mel again. It wasn't just a good segment. It was modern folklore in real time. A legend made not in ancient ruins or dusty scrolls, but over a late-night signal. Broadcast over thousands of empty highways, to a country full of people ready to believe, or just desperate to feel like the world was still just a little bit strange. It's easy to forget that stories don't just live in words, they live in land. In the land around Ellensburg, Washington, the supposed home of Mills Hole, is exactly the kind of place a story like this needs. Monastish Ridge is part of the Cascade Foothills, where dense pine meets sharp ridgelines in river-cut valleys. It's quiet, dry, remote. A place where cell signals vanish, and compasses sometimes misbehave. This area has a long history of unexplained phenomena. In the 1960s, UFO sightings near the Yakima Indian Reservation were so frequent that government researchers investigated. Locals reported glowing orbs, silent craft, and lights that pulsed in the sky over tribal lands. Dig a little deeper and the history thickens. This is land with spiritual weight, used by the Yakima Nation for centuries before settlers arrived. Ceremonial spaces, burial grounds, Places meant to be protected, not penetrated. It's also mining territory. From the 1800s through the 20th century, prospectors dug up all through the hills looking for coal, gold, and copper. Shafts were left behind, many unrecorded, some now buried by time and trees. So when Mel described a deep, perfectly round hole in the ground... It didn't seem impossible. Outlandish, yes. But out of place? Not at all. Even today, hikers in the Menestash area report finding metal stakes, sealed entrances, and paths that vanish into brush. Clues or maybe coincidences. If there were a hole like Mel's, this would be the place it could hide. The forest doesn't just muffle sound. It eats memory. And if there's one thing Ellensburg and its surrounding ridges do better than almost anywhere else, it's keeping secrets. Urban legends don't need campfires anymore. They travel by signal, by screenshot, and by thread. And Mel's Hole was one of the first modern myths to fully evolve in public. When Mel first called in, The internet was still young. Message boards, IRC chats, email lists. The moment the call aired, the story took on a second life. Re-shared, retold, and reframed. Every retelling added something. A new theory, a new sighting. An old memory someone thought they'd forgotten. And unlike legends of old, Mel's Hole was interactive. You could search maps. You could drive to Ellensburg. You could lower your own fishing line into the earth, just in case. In that way, it's part of a lineage that includes things like Skinwalker Ranch, The Back Rooms, Creepypasta, and ARGs, which stand for Alternate Reality Games. Legends that live half in the real world and half in imagination. Just enough evidence to be plausible... just enough ambiguity to keep them alive. Psychologists call this the Zeigarnik effect, the tendency of the brain to fixate on unfinished things. We want closure, but a mystery without answers? That sticks with us. Mel's hole sticks. Because it asks questions we can't answer. Because it lives in a place we could visit, but might not want to. In a world that's been mapped, measured and geotagged, the idea of something that still can't be found, that still resists documentation, feels almost sacred. And maybe that's what makes it folklore. Not a story about the past, but a story we're still telling because we want it to be true. There are places that feel wrong, even if there's no sign to tell you so. Places where the silence is too quiet. Where the air feels too still. Mel said he found one of those places. He didn't ask us to believe him. He just asked us to listen. And somehow, that made it more believable. He never gave exact coordinates. Never sold a book. Never even came back to the show after a certain point. But he left something behind. A space. A shape. A shadow in the landscape of our minds. Because Mel's hole isn't just about what was there. It's about what might be. It's about the idea that even in a world mapped down to the inch, some things still can't be found. Some holes go deeper than any measuring tape can reach. Maybe it was just a story. Maybe it was a hoax. Or maybe it was something stranger. A real place that was buried not by nature, but by design. If it is true, someone doesn't want us to find it. And if it's not, we still keep looking anyway. Because part of us needs stories like this. We need the unknown. the unsolved, the idea that there's more under our feet than just dirt and stone. And if you ever find yourself near Ellensburg, driving through the hills at dusk with the pines darkening at the edges of the road, you might feel it, that tug, that pull, the sense that something's waiting out there, still open, still hungry. And if you hear your fishing line keep on spooling, foot after foot, mile after mile into the dark, you might wonder, just for a moment, how deep does it go? And what happens if something pulls back? This has been State of the Unknown. Every other week, we explore the shadowy corners of American folklore. Stories buried in the woods, fields, deserts, and basements. Stories we can't let go of, because they never really let go of us. If you enjoyed this episode, follow the show wherever you listen. Leave a review or share it with someone who loves a mystery that doesn't end clean. You can join the community on Instagram and Facebook at State of the Unknown Podcast. We post photos, behind the scenes notes, and talk about the stories between the stories. And if you've got a strange tale of your own, something you heard, saw, or lived, send us a message. We're collecting listener stories for future episodes. Until next time, keep your eyes on the shadows. And if you ever hear a voice calling from deep below, don't lean too far over the edge.