Mel’s Hole (USA)

According to a man named Mel Waters, the hole lies on his property in Kittitas County, Washington, just west of the town of Ellensburg.

Waters described the anomaly as a perfectly round well about nine feet across. The top fifteen feet were neatly lined with stones; below that the walls were bare earth that vanished into pitch-black darkness. To measure its depth, Waters tied a lead weight and a packet of water-soluble candy to an industrial-strength fishing line. He lowered all eighteen spools—more than fifteen miles of line—and still never felt the weight touch bottom.

Locals quickly branded it “the Devil’s Hole” and for decades used it as an unofficial dump. They tossed in construction rubble, broken machinery—even dead livestock. The pit never filled. Whenever something heavy, like a refrigerator, was thrown in, no crash, splash, or echo ever came back up.

Stranger still, the area had a bizarre effect on animals. Waters’s dogs panicked if forced within a hundred feet of the rim, and birds refused to fly over it. The most chilling tale concerns a hunter who pitched his dog’s corpse into the hole. Weeks later he met the same dog alive in the woods, hunting beside another man. The animal was healthy—and had no idea who its previous owner was.

From 100 Cursed Places · Fern Flower Press