Ellensburg and its surrounding valleys and Manastash Ridge are beautiful in any season. Some believe what lies beneath is a deep, dark hole with supernatural powers. A man named Red Elk is one of the only people alive known to have ever seen the mysterious hole. A Native American Shaman, or medicine man, Red Elk said his dad first showed him the hole in 1961. "He said 'This is an endless hole,'" Red Elk said. Red Elk's been back many times and said strange things happen every time he goes near it. "People get it confused with what I call the devil's hole," he said.
Many locals claim to know about the hole, but it didn't become phenomena until 1997, when Mel Waters went on the Coast to Coast radio show with Art Bell. "I brought the dogs with me." Waters said on the show. "They wouldn't go anywhere near the damn thing." Waters said the hole had a three-foot stone wall around it. It seemed bottomless to him, so he used an old shark fisherman's trick -- sending thousands of feet of fishing line down. "What I did, was I sent down a roll of lifesavers," he said. "So when it hit water the lifesavers would dissolve." But the lifesavers came back up whole -- no water -- so how deep was this hole? Waters said he believed it descended miles into the earth and he heard strange stories about its powers. "One guy claims that he threw his departed canine down into the hole," he said. "He swears the dog actually came back to him."
Red Elk said it was when Waters went public that the trouble began. "Now I'm going public on this. And that could land me in a pile of junk," he said. Red Elk claims the government has a secret base there. "An underground base, a very small, underground base," he said. That's how Red Elk explains the white boxes covering the area on some satellite images. He also said he's seen "alien activity" in the area. "A huge space craft, one, will appear and hover over the hole," he said. That's what he said happens during Summer Solstice, when space men load and unload things at the hole before flying away.
At the Northwest Museum of Legends and Lore, Phil Lipson said he's heard the stories. "Well, I believe there is a hole," Lipson said. But Lipson's never seen the hole, even though he's led expeditions to find it. "I think it's actually a true event just something that's never been totally uncovered," he said. And to this day, no one's been able to find it, since that famous radio conversation.
Ellensburg Public Library Historian Milton Wagy said the story became a sensation after Waters went on the radio. He said the phone rang off the hook with all kinds of stories about the hole -- some explainable -- some not. He's still trying to solve the mystery of what happened to the library's file on Mel's Hole. "Well it just disappeared, which lends itself to the mysteriousness of Mel's Hole," Wagy said. "Did Mel take it? Did it just kind of rise out of the locked file cabinet."You never know there might be a hole out there."
Now the question who, is anyone can find Mel's Hole and prove its existence?
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