Mel’s Hole: Why Art Bell Took the Story Seriously

In February 1997, Mel Waters told Art Bell about a hole on his property near Ellensburg, Washington. People had thrown things into it for years without filling it. He said he had lowered 80,000 feet of fishing line without reaching the bottom: more than fifteen miles.

Then came a detail small enough to picture. Mel described threading Life Savers candy onto the line as part of his test. Art followed the practical reasoning. The story had become something listeners could imagine trying for themselves.

A caller later challenged the depth claim. The amount of line paid out did not, by itself, establish a vertical distance. That distinction matters throughout the story. The broadcast preserves Mel’s claimed measurement and the questions it attracted; it supplies no independent measurement of the hole.

The January 2002 return began with old radio. The January 21 program record identifies a Mel’s Hole replay compilation. The following night, Art discussed the response to the rerun and said he had no new information. By January 23, that had changed: Art announced that Mel had contacted the network after hearing himself on the air.

The sequence is easy to miss when looking only for episodes with Mel’s name in the title. The January 23 announcement sits inside a broadcast cataloged around the Romanek UFO sighting. The archive’s program titles identify the main subjects, but the opening remarks preserve a story moving between nights.

On January 29, Art asked Mel to put his hand on a Bible and swear to the truth of his account. Even that exchange became a joke about the whole truth and the absolute truth. Art was asking for a serious assurance while still enjoying the conversation.

Mel’s account now included a second hole in Nevada and a seal-like creature with human eyes. The description made the story stranger, but an oath did not add independent evidence for it. What survives is the exchange: Art’s request, Mel’s assurance, and the remarkable things Mel said had happened.

During the same broadcast, Art recruited listeners to search TerraServer for the area Mel described. Someone found an image. Art reported a large white block in the landscape near Manastash Ridge, southwest of Ellensburg, and posted it to his website. At first, he explicitly withheld judgment about whether it was the right place.

Mel then said the image showed roughly the right area. He described the blank patch as about four miles by eight miles. Art treated that exchange as progress toward locating the hole.

The preserved January 29 listing on Art’s website still contains the TerraServer link. The image shown in this briefing survives as a later repost, with its white patch retained as it appears in that copy.

These are useful pieces of the broadcast’s history. They connect an on-air search to something listeners could see. A broad blank area, however, does not locate a particular hole or establish why imagery was absent. The excitement came partly from participation: people at home could help, and a story told over the phone had acquired a picture.

On January 30, before his interview with science writer Eugene Linden, Art returned to Mel’s story. This is where he rated its wildness at eleven on a scale of ten. It is also where he explained why he still took Mel seriously.

Art considered whether a science-fiction writer might have supplied the story. He doubted that Mel could have acted the performance he had heard. Looking back over the conversation, he thought the delivery had been too natural.

He also invoked his own experience. Interviewing people was his work, and he trusted the quick sense of a caller that came with it. He did not think Mel was reading. Then he returned to the blocked TerraServer photograph, still there as something the account could point toward.

These are the reasons Art put on the air: natural delivery, confidence in his own ear, and a missing picture. They explain his stated judgment. They do not measure the hole or independently establish the creature.

The pleasure of these recordings is in hearing Art work through the story: his questions, his laughter, the listeners searching at home, and his willingness to explain himself after Mel was off the phone.

Art had spent years hearing extraordinary things from ordinary voices. Here, he trusted what he thought he could hear in Mel’s. The surviving broadcasts let us examine that decision without pretending to settle everything Mel described. A story had earned a hearing, even after it became stranger than Art could comfortably rate on a scale of ten.