Mel's Hole: Why was this hoax so captivating?

Lets take a trip into the Paranormal and talk about Mel’s Hole.

I first remember hearing about Mel’s Hole on Coast To Coast AM around 2002. Years later, I listened to them all in their entirety on youtube. Back then the story seemed completely plausible, especially when you factored in the area that Mel’s hole was reported to be located in was blacked out on Terra Server (the google maps of it’s day). But what seemed completely believable and plausible when I was 12, seems almost as ridiculous as the Easter Bunny, at 28. I know when I’ve recited the story to friends who have never listened to Art Bell or Coast To Coast AM, that the story sounds utterly insane,yet when presented on the radio it comes across far less so. Let’s re-examine the story of Mel Waters and his hole.

In 1997 a listener of Coast To Coast AM, going by the name of Mel Waters, sent Art Bell faxes about this bottomless pit/hole on his property near Ellensburg, WA. Art Bell had the individual on his show, who told this tale of a hole on his property that had been there as long as anyone in the area could remember. The hole had seemingly no end and never filled up even though it was used by locals as a landfill to dump everything from old furniture to dead cows. Someone even supposedly threw their dead dog into the hole, only for the dog to return to them complete with the same collar and tag. The military had also supposedly recently seized the land from him and given him a yearly stipend to relocate to Australia.

The original story of Mel’s hole, though implausible, wasn’t as outlandish as it went on to become. Over the course of five phone calls from 1997 to 2002, the story became more incredible with claims ranging of dematerializing 1943 coins he found on the property, black beams of light coming from the hole, to even the discovery of a second hole. Yes, Mel Waters somehow managed to find a second bottomless pit.

This second hole was located in the “bask country” of Nevada. According to Mel when ice was lowered into the second hole, the ice would catch fire. He also told, what is probably his most bizarre story, of a live sheep being lowered into this second hole. When the sheep was removed from the hole, the sheep was dead; cooked alive (what does one expect from a hole that can catch ice on fire?). The sheep was apparently cut into (because why not?), only to reveal a large cancer like tumor inside of the sheep. The tumor was then also cut open, to reveal a seal like creature with human eyes. The creature then hopped back into the hole that it came from.

If the story of the second hole wasn’t enough to convince you that this whole tale is made up, then one must got to other factors:

1. Mel Waters doesn’t exist. Many researchers into the Mel’s hole sage,have concluded that there is no one by the name of Mel Waters that ever lived in Ellensburg Washington. In one of the interviews Mel claimed his wife worked in the geology department of the local college; thus he & his wife should have been pretty easy to track down, yet nothing. No one in the area seems to have ever heard of him or the hole. There are also no tax records or land transactions under that name either.
2. No one has ever been able to find Mel’s hole, despite many on he ground search endeavors and the utilization of modern satellite imagery.
3. With the exception of the blacked out Terra Server image (which apparently Terra Server launched 8 months AFTER his interview on Coast To Coast), there has never been any proof of Mel’s hole, other than the testimony of Mel Waters.

Why this story has existed for over 20 years and still captivates people today, is one of life’s mysteries. Maybe it’s our undying need to search for a higher power, which is verified by a endless hole in the ground, or a seal with human eyes coming out of a tumor inside of a cooked sheep. Or maybe it’s due to the way the story was told and how Art Bell could make you believe almost anything. Or maybe it was a product of it’s time. Prior to wikipedia and the internet becoming what it is today, strange tales of the paranormal were a lot easier to believe, where as now a quick google search can quickly answer any question you may have.

It seems to me that Mel’s Hole was a big hoax, and not a very elaborate one at that. Or maybe Mel Waters was in fact real and the government has erased his identity, such as the unrelated claims made by other frequent Art Bell guest Dr Jonathan Reed.