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Bottomless Pits & Holes (On Land)

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Anonymous

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Where is Mels Hole?

anyone heard of this before?

http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=1447

John Zebrowski of the Seattle Times reports on Mel’s Hole, which is said to be a bottomless pit. The hole supposedly exists outside of Ellensburg, Washington on land once owned by Mel Waters, who says it was used for years as the neighborhood dump for trash, old appliances and even dead cattle. Dogs and birds avoided it. When the hole never filled up, Waters measured its depth by lowering weighted fishing line into it. After 80,000 feet, he gave up.
 
I think it might be somewhere up in Washington State, and have you heard that any hole over ten thousand feet is confiscated by the US gov., thats what I've heard.
 
I see the website is owned by Whitley Strieber.

The same guy who spoke of seeing 10-foot locusts in the Egyptian desert some years back.

Well, if I were a turgid horror novelist for ten years, I'd find a new slant, too.
 
It's not at the top of Mel's legs where it should be?

I'm sorry, alright, but someone had to...
 
Re: Where is Mels Hole?

After 80,000 feet, he gave up.

80, 000 feet is about 15 miles (there are 5,280 feet to a mile). Where did he get 15 miles of fishing line from?
 
That's also what I was thinking. The weight of the line must have been enough to cause problems.
 
I wouldn't trust Mel. He was on Art Bell and seemed very suspicious to me. That photo is from Microsoft terrorseve satalight photots. They were claiming that someone had blocked off the area where it was but when I checked on it again a bit later the hole had been filled in again. Mel went on to say that he found another bottomless hole and that it cured his cancer. He then claimed they lowerd a sheep in and when they took it out they said this little creature with human eyes came out of the sheep.

I wouldn't be surpirsed if it turned out that Mel worked for Art Bell.
 
he found another bottomless hole and that it cured his cancer. He then claimed they lowerd a sheep in and when they took it out they said this little creature with human eyes came out of the sheep.

Uh huh.
 
Probably just the sheep-driver. How did you think those things worked...?
 
Bottomless wells

There's a great little piece on a bottomless well (pretty much debunked) in FT164 (p26). For those infidels who don't get Fortean Times...

The story of a bottomless pit outside Ellensburg, Washington State, has circulated for decades. Jay Nickell, 34, who grew up in Ellensberg, remembers one about seven miles (11km) from Manastash Ridge, where, as a teenager, he and his friend rode dirt bikes. Rocks thrown down it made no sound. The local legend was turned into a national paranormal mystery when a man calling himself Mel Waters rang Art Bell's light night radio show in 1997. Ever since, listeners have followed the story closely, posting each new clue on their chat page, melshole.com.

Waters claimed the hole was on land he once owned, and for years it was used as a dump for rubbish, old appliances and even dead cattle. Dogs and birds avoided it. He said a neighbour claimed to have thrown a dead dog in the hole, only to see it later frolicking in the woods. There were also stories of a black beam emanating from the hole and transistor radios brought to the hole playing programmes from the past.

When the hole never filled up, Waters measured its depth by lowering weighted fishing line into it. After 80,000ft (15 miles or 24km), he gave up. The hole is now lost. He sold the property and refused to say where the hole is, although investigators believe it is about 10 miles (16km) west of town on Manastash Ridge.

Some think the hole could be a massive lava tube or a Mount Rainier blowhole; but Pat Pringle, an geologist with the state Department of Natural Resources, says a hole of such depth in the area's brittle volcanic rock is unlikely. In any case, the heat of the Earth would snap a fishing line before it reached 15 miles. No one makes line that long, and in any case it would fall apart from its own lack of tensile strength, let alone from a plumb-weight tied at the lower end.

Obviously this plumbs new depths of hoaxery (sorry for pun!), but how common is the myth of the bottomless pit?
 
The practical difference between very deep and bottomless is relatively small so I think there are always local landmarks- wells, ponds, holes and so on that end up being bottomless in local tradition. It's even true of the village pond where my parents live. Mostly, I don't think people really made a fuss about it- it was just one of those things.
 
I dunno if this is quite in the same line (and if not, sorry for going OT) but the Donner Party reportedly found a well in the Sierras that was perfectly circular and brimfull. Another odd thing, no matter how much water they dipped out, in seconds it was brim full again, but never overflowed.
 
Bottomless sense

Quite dependant on what you mean by 'bottomless.' Obviously, in a planet that is about twelve thousand miles thick (or radius 6000miles), there can be no conceivable pit that is more than 12000miles.

Then again, pending confirmation of extra-dimensional portals, et al, who knows.

One of those things that, either it's real, or it's not.

Perhaps one day we will get to the bottom of this mystery (arf arf)
 
In another sense, couldn't the pit only be 6,000 miles. I have been trying to get my head around what would happen with gravity if an object were dropped down a theoretical pit which opened out at the opposite end of the earth. I am guessing that the gravitational pull would drag it into the centre of the earth - where the pull of gravity would be equal either way and so it would just sit there? Surely it can't come flying out the other side? Would the gravity pull decrease as the centre of the earth approached thus slowing down the rate of acceleration such that it would gradually slow to a halt as it approached the centre. Or would the speed reached as it fell lower carry it on past the gravitational pull going in the opposite way as it moved past the centre - thus ending in a kind of gradually decreasing swing backwards and forewards ventring on the centre?

Sorry, all came out in a stream of conciousness there. Any physicists who could clarify? - my A level doesn't seem to have helped me there.
 
Someone asked that question else where. If I remember correctly and I often don't the object would go straight through to the other side slowing down till it came out at a height slightly less than it was dropped from on the other side assuming a perfect sphere. The object would continue to oscilate in this manner with a decrease in distance travelled each trip until it came to rest in the centre of the Earth.
Thank you, you've been wunnerful.*mwah*
 
Such a question has been asked before? And there was I thinking I could be the only person sad enough to wonder. I bet they didn't put is as eloquently as me though:D

Many thanks.
 
They just asked 'wot wud appen if thur wer a ole rite thru an u dropped summat?'
 
What would happen if you dropped an object down a hole that goes right through the Earth?

OK, the object would start accelerating at the appropriate value of g (~9.8 m/s/s) at the top of the hole. It would continue to accelerate towards the centre, but as it progresses through the hole, the gravitational attraction towards the centre gets smaller and the attraction to the mass "behind" it gets bigger. These two cancel eachother out at the centre, so the object is under no acceleration but it's moving quite fast. So, it starts to head up the other side, being decelerated by the mass behind it (which is now greater than the mass in front of it).

In a perfectly frictionless environment (and a perfectly symmetrical Earth) it would reach the same altitude that it was originally dropped from before stopping and reversing direction back down the hole. Of course, in the real world, it doesn't quite make it that far, and loses a little height each pass, until it eventually comes to rest in the centre.
 
American mathematician, Paul Cooper, calculated that tunnels could be
built to connect any two places on the earth. According to his formula,
the journey time would be a constant: 42.2 minutes. The kinetic energy
produced by the first half of the journey would enable the vehicle to
coast the rest of the way against the pull of gravity.

One or two problems get in the way of such pure maths: the tunnels
would need to be airless and frictionless. Secondly, even a tunnel
connecting London with Edinburgh would at its mid point be some five miles
under the surface where the temperature might be as high as 260 degrees
Fahrenheit. A tunnel connecting Washington with Moscow would need to be
some 716 miles below the surface at its mid point! :eek!!!!:

(information from Patrick Beaver: A History of Tunnels, 1972)
 
... I've spent most of the summer in the desert of southwestern Oklahoma, living with and studying the Kiowa, Apache, and Comanches tribes (and a couple of Otoe, too). ...

Second, I wanted to let everyone in on some fortean tidbits that I picked up from the locals during my time there. These are things that probably wouldn't come to light under normal situations. I was staying in an area commonly called "Redstone," due to it's rock formations, outside of Anadarko, OK. To begin with, this is supposed to be the most haunted place in all the reservation areas. ...

On the "Earth Mysteries" end, a local historian who had previously taught at Oklahoma University informed me there was a "bottomless pit" at the top of a place called Longhorn Mt. I did find this mountain, which is more like a chain of three connected hills, but I didn't have an opportunity to climb them. The hole is supposed to be at the "first" hill, but I'm still not sure which is first and which is third ...

Excerpted from: https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/fortean-oklahoma.17308/
 
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The early stages of a local urban legend in the making? A nifty piece if marketing? Or... even, TRUE?! :shock: :D

Upon the fringes of the Somerset Downs, in the paddock of a retired arable farmer, between a collapsed outhouse and a chickenless coop still encrusted with droppings, under a sheet of corrugated iron, there is, in the ground, a hole. An unremarkable hole, perhaps; shapeless, ragged, about the size of a tractor wheel. It is, however, one of four so-called "bottomless" holes worldwide. Its depth and dimensions are literally unmeasurable. Although nothing can be seen within, either with the naked eye or with specialist equipment (all photographic experiments have recorded nothing other than a suffocating gloom), locals claim to have heard strange disturbances emanating from the opening. Some say they have heard unearthly melodies, some the mutterings of an unknown language, one even claimed to have heard his own voice as a child.

On hearing these rumours former PJ Harvey guitarist Tim Farthing and his sibling Roo came to the Downs in an effort to capture these phenomena. Equipped with a mile of flex, a microphone and a recorder the brothers made their tape on a cold November morning in 2003. Each track was made at ever increasing depths until they ran out of cable.

Using a new process of noise reduction technology, designed by the brothers themselves, they were able to strip away the layers of static and interference on the raw recordings to reveal the versions that appear on their debut album "We Lowered A Microphone Into The Ground". The results astonished and unnerved them to such a great extent that the brothers tried to destroy the tapes in a frenzy of drunken superstition. Despite considerable fire damage, the treated recordings were salvaged and restored by a local entrepreneur to something approaching their former glory. The original tapes and their unpatented noise filtration apparatus were, however, completely incinerated.

Although this recording is perfectly safe, we do not advise playing the tracks out of sequence. For reasons yet to be ascertained, this practice has lead to equipment failure and, in some instances, physical side effects in the listener including disorientation, mild nausea and prolonged auditory hallucination.


From: http://www.reigns.net/


(Edit; A friend tells me there's no such place as the Somerset Downs! Hmmm!)
 
That last part really sounds like a load of bollocks, but why would these musicians put their careers at stake to be involved with nonsense?

Intriguing . . .

-Fitz
 
Fitz said:
That last part really sounds like a load of bollocks, but why would these musicians put their careers at stake to be involved with nonsense?

Intriguing . . .

-Fitz

Yeah. I read it with a growing sense of disbelievement.
I like the story though!


(You should check out the 'Portal' section on the website. It tells of an encrypted manuscript that has been rescued. It shows where wormholes 'in time and space' can be found, within the walls and grounds of a burnt-out house in a place called Tup's Fold.)
 
Here's a diagram of how to build a "bottomless pit":

bottomless_well.jpg


I'm surprised these aren't all over the coast in the islands.
Dunno how to make it look like it's got water in it, though.



[edit:]
I just realized how to make it look like it has water in it!
Just lower the tunnel to water level, and you can row your smugglers' boat right into it! Any junk dropped down the hole eventually floats out to the river, "disappearing", never to be seen again.
 
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