Mel's Hole — Coast to Coast AM, February 1997
A caller identifying himself as Mel Waters told Art Bell that he had a bottomless pit on his land near Ellensburg, Washington. He said he had lowered 80,000 feet of fishing line into it without touching bottom — roughly fifteen miles of line, which is more than the deepest borehole humanity has ever drilled and would have required a spool the size of a car. Neighbors, he added, used it for garbage disposal.
Why it was classified
By his own account, the government seized the property using a staged plane crash as cover and paid him a stipend to relocate to Australia — a story that explains, in a single move, why the hole cannot be visited and why he cannot be found.
Why it matters
Kittitas County has no property record for a Mel Waters, and the hole has never been located despite decades of searching by listeners, geologists, and at least one documentary crew. It endures anyway, complete with the detail that the pit could resurrect dead animals — the founding text of late-night radio folklore, and proof that the format's only real requirement is that nobody can check.