Mel’s Hole, Black Sabbath's Fifth Member and fishy Junkyard Fires

Your next car might not just drive you, it might watch you. We talk through the looming 2027 mandate tied to Section 24220 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and what “advanced impaired driving technology” could mean when it turns into passive, continuous driver surveillance. We wrestle with the promise of safer roads versus the ugly edge cases: false positives, engines that shut down at the wrong time, and a future where your behavior behind the wheel becomes another stream of data.

Then we bring it down to street level: junkyard fires making headlines, hundreds of auto parts stores closing, and the growing struggle to keep older vehicles on the road. When remanufactured parts disappear and prices spike, “just fix your car” stops being simple. We talk right to repair, why repair shops are feeling the squeeze, and how economics can herd people toward newer connected vehicles even without a direct ban.

After that, we take a wild but revealing detour into modern mythology. We explore Black Sabbath’s eerie “fifth member” lore and the tritone story that helped shape heavy metal’s reputation, then jump into Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM classic Mel’s Hole, a bottomless pit tale that still divides skeptics and believers. We close with Colton’s unbelievable three-year chase that plays out like real-life Grand Theft Auto and ends with a hard lesson about consequences.

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Transcript

Cold Open On Weird Connections

SPEAKER_09 0:09

New government mandates make sure that all the new cars in 2027 have surveillance equipment in them. What does that have to do with all the junkyard fires? Black Sabbath says they have a fifth member. Was it a dark entity? There's a guy named Mel, he's got a hole. There's a whole lot of trouble, is there?

Welcome And Quick Life Update

SPEAKER_09 1:30

What's up, everybody?

SPEAKER_10 1:31

What's going on, people? Welcome back. Welcome back to the thank you once again for joining us on the Anything and Everything High, man. Thank you, thank you, thank you. What's that, remember, brother? What's happening happening?

SPEAKER_09 1:48

Another week, another day in the hood.

SPEAKER_10 1:50

Yeah, man. How was your week, man? That was pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Not bad.

SPEAKER_09 1:54

Trying to heal up from the shoulder surgery. Yeah, man. How's that going? Good. Yeah. Making progress.

SPEAKER_10 2:00

That's a plus plus, man. You know, all we can do is do what we can to take care of ourselves and take care of each other.

SPEAKER_09 2:07

And yeah, so we got some good stuff

Junkyard Fires Raise Big Questions

SPEAKER_09 2:10

for you today. We're going to start out with the junkyard fires, and it's a little fishy, you know, with the government mandates that are all coming out for 2027, you know, especially with Ford pickups and all that. We covered that on one of our podcasts. Um just a little fishy that they're burning down all the old cars.

SPEAKER_10 2:27

And it's you know, there's a whole heck of a lot that seemed to be happening just in within the last couple months, a lot of recently. So what what what is behind this?

SPEAKER_09 2:36

Yeah, it's a little fishy, you know. I mean, if you can't buy a new motor or new transmission or stuff you you really need to make a car run, you know, and especially like people like me, we depend on old vehicles. I don't have a brand new car. I don't really want one. I like having a vehicle I can work on, you know, but that's pretty much being illegal too. Now you can't work on your own cars, and it's crazy, but check some of this stuff out and we'll talk about it when we get back.

The 2027 Driver Surveillance Mandate

SPEAKER_08 3:04

Do not buy a new car. Because starting 2027, every new car in the United States will be required by law to have tech that puts constant surveillance on the driver, not only watching you, but listening to your conversations as well.

SPEAKER_04 3:21

What's that? Oh, something strange is going on right now after the announcement of new vehicles and how they're going to be able to monitor you. All of a sudden, 12 different junkyards have mysteriously burnt to the ground. But they can't be connected, right? Tell me more! Things are getting a little strange after the announcement of the new vehicles and how they're gonna have AI, they'll be able to basically monitor everything you do, they can shut off any moment that they would like, they won't run if they don't want to because you don't look fit to drive. But now something strange is going on involving old vehicles in case you wanted to keep them. And what better way to get rid of old vehicles than getting rid of the parts you can get for those vehicles? But but they're not connected, right? Oh, and then of course, on top of that, over 700 advanced auto parts stores are closing as well.

SPEAKER_12 4:20

A new video shows a huge fire over in Miami. Look at this thick black smoke there. The fire apparently quickly spread from a junkyard to several other businesses nearby. More than a hundred buildings in the area that had to be evacuated.

SPEAKER_24 5:12

And I'm not talking about a conspiracy theory. No, I'm talking about section 24220 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Yeah, it mandates that by 2027 every new passenger vehicle must advance, have must advance in paired driving technology. Shit, it sounds great on paper. Stop drunk drivers. I'm all about that life. But the fine print tells me otherwise. It requires passive continuous surveillance of the mode of the driver. So monitoring your eyes, your head, your movements, and your behavior. And it gives the ACAR the authority to shut down the engine if the AI detects or decides you're not fit to drive. Even the National Highway Traffic Administration admitted to Congress that the tech is not ready. They said that 99.9% accuracy, it would still generate millions of false positives a year, meaning millions of people stranded on the side of the road because an algorithm algorithm made a mistake. But it gets worse. Where do you think that like surveillance goes to? Well, if you think it goes to a privacy expert confirmed in a cloud type like situation, you'd be correct. Experts have already made the fucking connection, realizing that automakers are already updating their terms of service to sell your behavioral data to insurance companies to generate you a fucking risk score. Some lawmakers try to stop it, actually. Representatives Thomas Massey introduced an amendment to defund the mandate. Reps John James co-sponsored a bill to kill it also. But in January of 2026, 57 Republicans joined 211 Democrats to vote it down. They voted to keep the kill switch mandate alive. The vote failed. 164 to 268. This is how the game is played. They flood the zone with noise while quietly building the architecture of control right in your fucking driveway. Stop looking at the smoke and start looking at the actual policy.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Off the top at seven, we continue to follow breaking news out of Opalaka. That's where crews are battling a fire that broke out at a junkyard. The flame sending thick plumes of black smoke into the air. Good evening. I'm Jim Barry. Our crews were first on the scene along Northwestern 131st Street in Cairo Lane. We've been monitoring the developments for just over the past hour. This fire, which began as a two alarm, quickly grew to a five-alarm fire. Let's get right out to CBC. Mummy is Anna McAllister live in Oklahoma Lacka with the latest. And Anna, I heard you say earlier that you heard some explosions there.

SPEAKER_19 7:46

Jim, as you were just tossing to me, I could hear even more explosions. I want to take a step out of the way so you could just get a better look at just how thick this smoke is, just billowing up to the sky. And the wind has really been picking it up and pushing it towards us. So there was a moment in time, Jim, that we had to go into the car and take a breather because it's just so thick. The air, the smoke really is just spreading rather quickly. And as we're going live, you may hear that popping sound in the background. That's because this is a junkyard, and there's likely a lot of combustibles in this junkyard. We know that there is at least two fires happening right now. There's one to the left, another to the right, possibly a third fire. We're still waiting to get confirmation from MDFR about what's happening here. I spoke to somebody with MDFR about 15 minutes ago. They said that it is very chaotic. They're still working to learn more information. Jim, like you said, it's now a five-alarm fire. We know that at least two dozen and MDFR crews are here on the scene trying to extinguish this blaze. But just being out here, Jim, smelling that smoke, just seeing how thick it is. And people, there was a crowd of people who were here about an hour ago. They all left rather quickly because of that smoke that's been pushing forward. I want to actually give you uh some sound from a man that we spoke to. He lives right around this area, and he says that he was frightened to see this large cloud of smoke. Take a listen.

SPEAKER_20 9:16

I live two blocks from here. I was seeing the fire. I was afraid because you know, fire. But they uh then I came here and I saw all the firefighters. I know that they know what they're doing, so I'm not that afraid now.

SPEAKER_19 9:32

I'm back out here alive, still so much smoke here on the scene. MDFR, they're going to speak to us very shortly to give us more details about what's happening here. But as you can see behind me, just massive, massive clouds of smoke coming from this junkyard. We're here on 135th Street and Cairo Lane here in Opalaka. As soon as we learn more from officials, we're going to bring it to you.

SPEAKER_06 9:53

Boys,

Parts Shortages Hit Old Vehicles

SPEAKER_06 9:54

we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble. Um, you know, we already knew the automotive industry was getting hit left and right. And um for us guys who run repair shops and do things, um, it's it's it's gonna get real hard. Let me explain to you what's going on. I had somebody call me today for a 2018, two 2018 Ford, I think it was. I didn't write all the information down. Need your power steering pump. I said, okay, we'll see what we can do. So called all the all the three that we have around here, the big parts companies. Don't have them. One said they can special order. Um a really cheap pump. Okay, they can special order. So um went down the rabbit hole and went to looking. Okay. And in 2023, a private equity group bought out some of the major remanu parts remanufacturers like Cardone, Trico, stuff like that. In January of 2026, they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. They're already starting to break up all the assets. Cardone started in Philly. Large, great big manufacturing outfit in Philly. And um, they had a lot of employees, and they were offering pump, you know, pump rebuild services. Uh um power steering box rebuild services. I mean, they had a lot, they did a lot of stuff. Half of this stuff that we brought out of that warehouse is Cardone stuff. And um, come to find out, you're not gonna get it anymore. Okay, Cardone, the factory has already been broken up, the employees have been laid off. Um, yeah, this is a this is a crazy rabbit hole. You know, we all love these older vehicles, but I got news for you. Now I see why everybody was uh on that 747. You got minimal stuff there to repair. You don't have to worry about Cardone that often. And um, now I see every, you know, I knew going out there and getting all these car parts. You know, for you guys that don't know, I just secured and brought back to Delaware 300,000 brand new car parts, all in boxes, brand new. And um stuff that was made in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. There's a lot of Cardone stuff in there. And uh now they're shutting these now they're shutting the factories down and we're not even gonna be able to get parts. They're gonna force us to buy new vehicles. Man, this is this is mind-blowing. We all knew it was kind of heading in this direction, but we all kind of hoped. You know, Cardone opened, they've been opened for 50 years. They're a family, they were a family-run business, and the money got to them. Either that or or the or you know, who knows what happened. But this is this is this is mind-blowing to me. You know, uh, Cardone was one of the go-to companies. And Cardone, Trico, and four other companies, um, they're gone. They're gone. Okay? Yep. Gonna have to gonna have to find new rebuilders. Yep, gonna have to find uh gonna have to train the young generation how to rebuild their stuff, or we're gonna be forced to their electric cars. We're gonna be forced to all electronic stuff. You know, this is why I got a carburetor on my car, not electronic ignition. A carburetor, I have a whole box full of carburetor gaskets. I can rebuild that carburetor, I can I can rebuild that distributor, I can I can fix what I need to fix. I'm not afraid to take a power steering pump apart and put new seals in it. Um yeah, it takes a lot of time compared to going up and buying a $200 new pump or a or a, you know, but the only pump we could find was a motorcraft pump for $600. $600 for a motorcraft uh uh power steering pump for that 2018 truck. That's pretty ridiculous. And that makes it hard for anybody to even have an older vehicle.

SPEAKER_09 13:52

Like you're bringing it up before the cash for clunkers and right.

SPEAKER_10 13:56

It's it's it's it's odd to me that you know all these um where a lot of us but go to buy, you know, parts for our cars because you know they are inexpensive and they do fit our cars, and it it's a whole heck of a lot cheaper to work on uh uh on our style of cars that you know they're older.

SPEAKER_09 14:20

Yeah, man. You know, it's it's different.

SPEAKER_10 14:22

It's that you know, and that's what it seems like they're pushing, you know, especially with the they they mandating, you know, all these two thousand uh twenty twenty-sevens to have all this face recognition stuff and kill switches. Yeah, and if you can't fix your old car, guess what? You're gonna have to go buy a newer car. It makes sense to me, not saying that that's what's happening. It could be coincidence.

SPEAKER_09 14:45

Well, it's like you gotta take it to some government agency for them to change your headlight. Well, right, yeah. You know, our make sure that all the implants are up and functioning correctly to calibrate all the GPS and all that.

SPEAKER_10 14:58

Exactly. That's or you know, and the cameras and all that stuff, make sure that it, you know, it and and watch what w what happens when one of those goes out, you know. I mean, it's just gonna be ins insane. So I I I know that we've had those fires here at a certain junkyard, and it it happened at the same one years ago. We had hot summers, uh, but it's not really I don't think it's been that hot to to start. That's not a common thing earlier. It's you know, it happens.

SPEAKER_09 15:24

People are messing with cars and it's gas and all that other stuff. So it'll happen, but at the same time, it's like it's it's a little fifty.

SPEAKER_10 15:33

Yeah, seems like a lot, you know, 12 within a month. Yeah. I've never heard of that. You know, I mean it's you know, big ones too. Right. Big fires. Dude, five alarm fires, they said at that one? Yeah. Wasn't it like a five alarm? Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 15:46

So I mean they closed seven hundred auto zones.

SPEAKER_10 15:50

Isn't that crazy? Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 15:52

I mean, that's a huge company. There's like if you if I think about it, there's three companies here in Colorado. There's O'Reilly's, Advance, and AutoZone. And it's like if you don't have those, then it's like you you yeah, you have the Napa, they're kind of like scattered about, they're hard to find. Those are the ones that usually have the hard to find parts that you can't find at the common places. But if you close down seven hundred of those stores, then you've already taken a huge chunk. And then like the guy said in the video, you know, they're overcharging for whatever they have left. Yeah. You know, you go buy an alternator, a normal alternator for a you know, a 2002 Honda cord would be eighty bucks, you know, and now there's you have to spend three hundred and twenty dollars on an alternator for a car that's twenty-four years old. Yeah, man. It's you know but they run. Well, yeah. I mean, it's still worth it in the long run to still pay three hundred bucks than to have to buy another car, but at the same time, just to know. It's all gouging, man. There's nothing that actually justifies having to pay three hundred dollars alone for uh any hunk of metal that's past the current.

SPEAKER_10 17:09

That's the other thing too, is like, you know, that the the manufacturers don't want to make them anymore because they're being pushed out by the government. So the governments want, you know, newer stuff too so that way they can just keep track of us, you know, terrible.

SPEAKER_09 17:20

Yeah, it's insane. I mean, it's all in my mind, government overreach. For

Cameras Everywhere And Data For Sale

SPEAKER_09 17:26

sure. You know, uh it's it's getting crazy how commonplace that is now and how easily people give up their security for, you know, like I was telling him the other day, so they can touch their phone, you know, and hey, look, it's got a camera on both sides, so it doesn't matter which way I'm pointing it.

SPEAKER_10 17:47

Yeah. They're listening.

SPEAKER_09 17:51

Well, I was telling him a little bit ago about how, you know, like DJI drones were getting banned to a certain degree. I didn't I didn't follow through the whole story, but I know that they were really trying to ban DJI drones because they were saying that they were full of Chinese spyware. Um I actually have a little DJI camera that straight up tells you it's recording ten seconds ahead at all times, no matter what. Whenever you hit the record button, it's actually got ten seconds ahead of where you hit the ten hit the record button, so it constantly is recording. That's crazy crazy, crazy, right? So that's insane if you think about it, that all this stuff is just constantly just looking at you, and we're just like don't even yeah, half the time you don't even realize it, you know. How come I got hacked? How come they knew my password?

SPEAKER_10 18:44

That that's how my got on the dirt. That I yeah, I didn't hit send.

SPEAKER_09 18:50

It's the fifty cameras you have in your house. Right.

SPEAKER_10 18:54

Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_09 18:55

And outside the house and on the street corner and on every freaking parking lot, uh grocery store, hardware store, wherever you want to go. There they are.

SPEAKER_10 19:06

There they are. You can't outrun the cameras. It it's hard to anymore.

SPEAKER_09 19:09

I mean, it's that dystopian state like you were talking about.

SPEAKER_10 19:13

Yeah. And it's it's getting there, you know, burning down all the cities now that you know all the data centers being built, and it's it's you know we're being pushed into this. And it's uh closer and closer. You know, they say what 70% of the working force is gonna be, you know, eliminated within like four years because it's all gonna be AI. I don't know.

SPEAKER_09 19:34

Hey man, if I didn't have to work and you still pay me, uh I'm alright with that. I guess as long as I got what I need, I don't even need money. You know what I mean? Like if if uh we're just like, hey man, I need to uh grab a loaf of bread, or like, go ahead. Well AI is paying for it. Like that would be okay. But that's not how it's gonna work. No. We all know that. They're still gonna want their money even though we can't work to make it.

SPEAKER_10 20:01

Right.

SPEAKER_09 20:02

I wonder what the It's like fathers on paying child support and get their license taken away because they can't pay their child support. Well, now they can't drive to a work.

SPEAKER_10 20:12

Well, that's we'll have a train. Uh a train that just have you ever seen that movie Logan's Run? Yes. That's what it's gonna be like. Right. It's seriously. I I I was insane.

SPEAKER_09 20:23

I mean, that's what it seems like.

SPEAKER_10 20:24

I seriously was like was thinking about it last night. I don't know, it just popped in my head because you know the uh but yeah, it we're just gonna be in a dome, and that's totally what it is. Right.

SPEAKER_09 20:34

You know, you're gonna have carts, cars, and all that stuff, and then you don't need a physical piece of glass to know that you're in a dome. That's what I was saying with the Starlink or whatever it's called. Yeah. They've already made a Skynet.

SPEAKER_10 20:47

They already have they already even calling it Skynet, which is funny and scary at the same time. But the the crazy thing about the whole Logan's run thing is that I think you know they uh eliminated people at the age of forty. Yeah, like once you get to a certain age, or that's a certain age you were uh you're you're eliminated. Termination mode. Termination mode and all that good stuff.

SPEAKER_09 21:10

That's what I want to live in.

SPEAKER_10 21:14

Weird. I don't know. That's crazy. Well, i i uh you know it goes along with you know how we find out a lot of this stuff, you know, that that are that is in movies. Right.

SPEAKER_09 21:24

Actually, so it's beating a dead horse, but they do. They tell us in the movies ahead of time what's it's like I was telling him, it's like a form of disclosure. You know, the government's gotta tell you what they're doing, and they just tell you through the movies, make it seem like it's so far fetched there's no way you'd believe it. You know, and it's like when my grandpa told me when I was a little kid there's some like vampire movie or something on the TV, and some vampire was floating outside the window, and I was just about to go to bed. I was like, What? What is that? That was probably like three or four.

SPEAKER_10 21:58

Was it like Salem's?

SPEAKER_09 22:01

I don't remember. It was something where the vampire was trying to get like his brother to let him in or something like that. I can't remember what it was, but my grandpa was like, It's a fake. Everything on the TV is just fake. You know what I mean? So that just told me right there. I was like, okay, it's all none of it's believable, but apparently Grandpa little truth in some stuff, you know. Well, that's the thing when you you figure out that Disney and all that stuff was the one that did all the propaganda stuff for us in World War Two. Yeah, I mean why would we consider that to have stopped?

SPEAKER_10 22:42

Exactly. Ever.

SPEAKER_09 22:44

Everything is propaganda. Rocky is propaganda. When we beat up the Russians in Rocky IV or whatever, that was propaganda. You know, I bet they didn't show that movie in Russia.

SPEAKER_10 23:03

Well, you know, well, they they might have that version.

SPEAKER_09 23:06

That was like the Ramagai episode where they find the chief Rocky IV DVD in the bin. It's got some kind of weird writing on it.

SPEAKER_10 23:19

It is when he kills Apollo. I don't remember this version.

SPEAKER_09 23:31

Right. That's what they were saying too. They're like, what do you mean? I thought Rocky won. Drag a little kick is ahead.

SPEAKER_10 23:40

And it was all sudden, too.

SPEAKER_09 23:41

It was like all of a sudden, it was like mostly the real movie, and then at the end it was like as soon as he threw a punch and got knocked, showed him on the ground, was like, I won, this is over. That's how it works, right? We got some guy in the CIA back there telling you, don't put that in there. Yeah, put that in there.

SPEAKER_10 24:02

Or maybe you think they could have made like two different versions of the American version of the Roman.

SPEAKER_09 24:07

They probably do that with everything.

SPEAKER_10 24:17

Well it's like how you were saying, you know, Russians do a lot better now, so you know, maybe maybe they would I can see how they would want, you know, that version of Rockies.

SPEAKER_09 24:27

Well that was back in like what, eighty eight eighty seven. So it was when it was like the war stuff and like gone. Well, right it wasn't Russians, it wasn't the North Korean.

SPEAKER_10 24:42

Has the wall even come down yet?

SPEAKER_09 24:46

No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_10 24:49

Fucking Rocky made the world come down here.

SPEAKER_09 24:57

Oh no, we had an actor in the White House.

SPEAKER_10 25:01

We did, huh? Yes, we do.

SPEAKER_09 25:04

And we have news anchors that are going to the police departments all over here in Denver.

SPEAKER_10 25:12

Yeah, that one's just so weird to do that. I don't know.

SPEAKER_09 25:15

Five people. Remember, I told you about that one. Yeah, and it just ever since and I'm like, they have to go on the news to be trained and then they get to go to the police department or something like that.

SPEAKER_10 25:28

And it's so like, why though? I mean, I don't understand. Or is it is it what's the purpose behind it? There's gotta be some kind of weird purpose about it.

SPEAKER_09 25:36

There's something to it, man. Yeah, we'll get to the bottom of it one of these days.

SPEAKER_10 25:40

Something's gonna happen, man.

SPEAKER_09 25:41

Is it I just think I think honestly that they're being trained. Yeah. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_10 25:48

Well, especially because what's her name? I mean that that's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_09 25:50

If you think about it like journalists and cops used to be like enemies. Yeah. Because journalists used to hold cops accountable. Now if you just hire the journalists, then they'll get it taken care of. They'll say what you want 'em to say.

SPEAKER_10 26:05

Well no, and I guess that kind of where I guess I was going with it because they know how to talk to the public. You know, how to kind of over how to word things correctly, I guess, to say to calm the calm the public down instead of getting all riled up. Right. Yeah, because well, because you know, you that's what the other thing is, like you figure, yeah, how how do they say, you know, keep your your friends close or your enemies closer? Well, they're hiring their enemy to uh talking about an epiphany. Oh Eric's man, Eric had an epiphany. Yeah, so you bring them in so that way they can talk to the public. Right. Instead of riling them up like how they normally do.

Black Sabbath And The Fifth Presence

SPEAKER_10 26:50

Dead ass. I hate that word.

SPEAKER_09 26:52

Speaking of dead asses, up next, we got some stuff about Black Sabbath being all interested in the occult until it got a little bit scary. Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

not practicing but reading a lot of spiritualism, black magic, white magic, and all that kind of stuff. And um somebody gave Ozzy this whole sixteenth century book of uh black magic, and it was all written in I think it was Latin. And I just got this really weird vibe off it.

SPEAKER_03 27:45

We've always within the band said there is a fifth member, a mystical member, yeah. We've always said there's something looking over us.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

I don't know what it is, the invisible I don't know what it binding keeps us uh together.

SPEAKER_21 28:00

That's what I like to call Black Sabbath a phenomena. Um rather than a band. Although it is a rock and roll band, uh there's a phenomena involved here where that stuff just comes from somewhere.

SPEAKER_18 28:52

Satan's first of all, the question is how many of these bands, how many of these bands truly have satanic models?

SPEAKER_17 29:00

I think that within the rock music field, you've got people who really are into the occult and into Satan. And then you've got some who probably are playing games, but no matter how you cut it, they're propagating Satan, they're propagating the demonic mind, the occultic world. I think it's a devastating thing on our culture.

SPEAKER_07 29:25

In the late 1960s, four young musicians from Birmingham, England were searching for a way to separate themselves from the countless rock bands emerging at the time. Performing under the name Earth, their music leaned heavily into blues and psychedelic rock, sounding similar to much of what already dominated the scene. But according to several members of the band, they were growing increasingly frustrated with the idea of sounding ordinary. At the same time, the world around them was changing. Horror films were becoming hugely popular across England, with audiences lining up outside theaters simply to experience fear as entertainment. The band began to notice this shift and became fascinated by it. They began to ask themselves, why were people so drawn to fear? And why did the discomfort of it hold people's attention so effectively. Around this same period, the band's bassist, Terence Butler, who went by the nickname Geyser, had developed an interest in the occult. Raised in a strict Catholic household, Butler eventually became curious about the occult, including supernatural phenomena, black magic, and spiritual rituals. He painted his apartment matte black and covered the walls with inverted crucifixes and images of the devil. According to Butler, Ozzie Osborne had given him a 16th-century book that he had received as a gift. The book contained rituals, accounts of demonic entities, invocations, and practices connected to dark ceremonial magic. Butler later claimed he became deeply absorbed in it, spending long nights alone in his apartment reading through its contents. And at first, nothing seemed unusual. But over time, Butler claimed the atmosphere inside the apartment began to change. He later described feeling an increasing sense of unease whenever he read the book, though he never fully explained whether he believed the feeling was psychological or something more. Then one night, after reading the book before he went to bed, Butler placed it in a cupboard nearby and drifted off to sleep soon after. Sometime during the night, he suddenly woke from a terrifying nightmare. There had been no loud noise or obvious disturbance that awoke him, but according to Butler, he immediately felt like something was off, almost like something else was in the room with him. Then he looked down toward the foot of the bed, and what he saw was absolutely horrifying. But instead, it was a solid, full-bodied, dark figure. It was humanoid in shape and cloaked entirely in black, standing motionless while watching him sleep. For several seconds he could only stare up at it, paralyzed with fear. Then, just moments later, the figure instantaneously dissolved into thin air right in front of him. And just like that, it was gone. Terrified by what he had just experienced, Butler searched for the book he had been reading the night before, planning to throw it away, but he claimed it had vanished completely from the cupboard he had left it in, and according to him, he never found it again. Over the years, people have dismissed the experience as nothing more than a nightmare or sleep paralysis, while others were convinced Butler genuinely experienced something he could not explain. Whether paranormal or psychological, the encounter had a lasting impact on the direction of the band. After Butler told the others what had happened, the group became increasingly interested in creating music that captured the exact sense of dread and tension he had described. And Earth's music began moving in a much darker direction. Their songs became slower, heavier, and more ominous, built around fear itself. One particular track was directly inspired by Butler's experience. It centered around the image of a dark presence appearing in someone's bedroom at night. They called the song Black Sabbath, and eventually the band adopted the name as their own, abandoning the name Earth. Following this, the members of Black Sabbath allegedly began to believe that aside from the four of them, a mysterious fifth presence was somehow connected to the band. Guitarist Tony Iomi later claimed there was always something watching over them.

SPEAKER_03 35:23

When we first wrote this sort of music, we didn't even know what we were doing, and we went, oh god, this we like this, you know, it's strange, but we like it. Um because we went from playing blues to this suddenly writing, you know, Wicked World and Black Sabbath were the first two numbers we wrote. And that I mean Black Sabbath, you know, is quite an unusual song.

SPEAKER_07 35:46

And unusual it was. Not only because the song was inspired by Butler's alleged encounter, but because Tony Iomi unknowingly built the main riff around a musical interval known as the tritone, often referred to as Diabolis in Musica, or the devil in music. According to legend, the interval had been prohibited in medieval religious music because it was believed to sound unnatural, evil, or even capable of summoning the devil. What makes the story even stranger is that Iomi later claimed he had no idea the interval carried those associations when he wrote it.

SPEAKER_03 36:28

Well, that again was was just something I liked. I never even thought of it. I never even knew about it, to be honest, from when I first did it. And then later I knew, oh, you shouldn't be playing those notes. Why? I mean, I didn't understand all that. I mean, we were in 19 years old, you know. Sabbath was the first song uh that that had that in. And and it and that was apparently the notes you never use, which which we did. But I never um I never knew that. And to me it was creating music, and and that's all I do is create music.

SPEAKER_07 37:04

The band's drummer Bill Ward shared similar memories as well. According to him, during the creation of their first three albums, it often felt as though the music already existed before they even began playing it.

SPEAKER_21 37:19

And the way that the only way that I can describe that, probably in its best the best way for me, is uh is that when we were um playing our first songs together, um, and especially our first al you know, the first three albums, for instance, um we would literally show up in a room, and it was almost as if the songs were already written. That's why I like to call Black Sabbath uh a phenomenon, um rather than a band. Although it is a rock and roll band, uh there's a phenomena involved there where that stuff just comes from somewhere, and it just so happened that it we we happen to be the ones that it came to.

SPEAKER_07 38:00

Naomi described a similar feeling, claiming the band always felt as though a fifth presence guided them throughout their career. According to him, strange things constantly seemed to happen around the group, reinforcing the belief that something unexplained was attached to the band itself. It sounds ridiculous now, but we always felt that there was somebody overlooking us and guiding us. We felt this presence when we were all together. It was one of those things we'd refer to as being the over-self or the fifth member looking out for us. Things always seemed to happen to us that were quite weird. We'd be in the van, for example, and one of us would look out of the window and go, Oh look, there's a fish and chip shop over there. And just as we'd say that, the lights would go out in the shop. There were just always strange things happening to us back then. Another strange occurrence reportedly shared by Ozzie, Geezer, Tony, and Bill during the band's early years involved recurring dreams. According to Bill Ward, all four members would dream about the same figure at night, a kind of priest or spectral entity that appeared while they slept. Ward personally believed the presence was some kind of guardian angel rather than something evil, though many others remain unconvinced. Even Butler himself later suggested that something darker may have surrounded the band during their early years. In a 2019 interview, he recalled being told that Black Sabbath had allegedly been cursed. There was some black magic organization that wanted us to play at a stone circle. We said no. We were sort of against Satan as opposed to promoting it, so they allegedly cursed us. The head of the White Witches called our management and said he knew we had a curse put on us, and we should wear crosses, and he'd do a ritual thing. It all sounds so hokey. According to Butler, this was why the band began wearing crosses during performances. The crosses themselves were reportedly made from spare pieces of metal by Ozzie's father, who worked at a metal factory at the time. But despite the imagery, the music, and the rumors that would follow the band for decades, Butler later claimed he ultimately distanced himself from black magic entirely after the disturbing experience he described in his apartment. According to him, whatever he saw standing at the foot of his bed was enough to completely change the way he viewed those subjects. And in the end, Butler insisted that despite the dark themes surrounding the band and the song itself, Black Sabbath was never intended to glorify Satanism or the occult. According to him, it was meant to warn people about it. Whether these stories were the result of coincidence, imagination, or something more difficult to explain, they became inseparable from the mythology surrounding Black Sabbath. The band didn't just pioneer heavy metal musically, they helped create an atmosphere around themselves that blurred the line between musical performance and the supernatural. And decades later, these stories surrounding the band still linger as unsettling pieces of the band's origins. And if they're true, then Black Sabbath was never just the name of the band, but only the beginning of something much darker than anyone could have imagined. And maybe the sound that gave birth to heavy metal came from somewhere far darker than anyone could have realized.

Backmasking Fears And Satanic Panic

SPEAKER_09 42:36

And like Def Leppard actually made fun of it with that McCloud. That's literally what it was. And it said, Don't play your music backwards. Is that what it said?

SPEAKER_10 42:46

I know um Iron Maiden actually has one. Um and it's on uh uh peace of mind. It's I think it's uh um I think I know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_09 43:04

It's probably saying something like, Well, this is how you make a grilled cheese.

SPEAKER_10 43:07

Right, yeah. And it's a real quick one, but I I I remember yeah, and it was like back then, you know, that was a thing. If you play records backwards, you're gonna hear something crazy. Well, yeah, it's going backwards with people.

SPEAKER_09 43:18

And I I was in a church one time with one of my buddies, you know, I was staying in his house for the weekend or whatever, and we went to church on Sunday, and the guy was playing Led Zeppelin backwards on an album and he was telling us why we shouldn't do it. And I was like, But you're doing it, bro. And we're doing it in the heart. Should you not be doing that in here, maybe or right now at all? Like you're telling us not to do it, and you're doing it. What are you doing?

SPEAKER_10 43:48

Like, I were a kid, you know. Yeah. Well, I I mean you know, m and I guess maybe that's why heavy metal you know, metal music has always had that that uh uh you know, following them is Oh, it's evil because you know, maybe that whole story of Black Sabbath is like yeah, you know, you know, people will take anything to the extreme.

SPEAKER_09 44:07

And so you know grieving parents, which is I'm not talking bad about the parents, but if they come in and find their child had committed suicide, their first thing is to go back in those days was to go see what's in their tape player. Yeah. You know, oh they got a bottle of whiskey and a thing of pills, but don't worry about that. Let's see what they were listening to. Right. You know, let's not figure maybe there was something wrong with our parenting. Let's just see what they were listening to, and that has to be what it was. That's when all the tipper gore parental advisory stuff started coming out. You know, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_10 44:44

The whole congressional, you know, uh hearings and all that. It was crazy.

SPEAKER_09 44:48

It made the dude from Twisted Sister look like a genius.

SPEAKER_10 44:51

Yeah, man. He was just like, right, well, you made them came out spitting some drink.

SPEAKER_09 44:55

Yeah, he straight made them look stupid.

SPEAKER_10 44:58

Well, and then the whole thing, you know, with uh Judas Priest and all that is you know, with the uh those two kids that had committed suicide, didn't one of them live or something like that? And he was like, Yeah, but I or it was something weird, and I mean most of y'all y'all know it because we all listen to kind of the same music and all that and and have the same as a butt.

SPEAKER_09 45:16

All that stuff is a little bit different than you know creating a completely new genre of music after checking out some occult books. You know, like you opened the portal to hell or something, and then all of a sudden these songs were already written. And I've heard that before too. When I heard that on the video, I was like, holy crap. I've actually heard that from like some of these uh new pop artists that are out there. Yeah. Well they're like, it's like the song had already been written for me.

SPEAKER_10 45:49

Yeah, that it w isn't that in the crossroads as well?

SPEAKER_09 45:52

I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 45:53

I think he was talking about, yeah, you just feel you know, the music was just coming to him. Like he didn't know where it where it w uh you know why he did like that. Yeah, and it just started coming to him. And hey man, I mean Is it an evil entity or is it just something that's flowing out there and you're just happily be in tune to it? I mean, you know, because that's the other thing too, is like, you know, people write wonderful songs about Jesus and all that stuff, so you you figure that's gotta be floating out there as well.

SPEAKER_09 46:24

Well, and you know, the masquerade that people do every day where they act like one thing and they're a completely different thing. You know, you got people like Katy Perry that were raised um religious singers and then couldn't make it like Amy Grant did, so she sold her soul to the devil, she says. You know, and now she's huge, she's everywhere. Um things like that aren't uncommon. You know, you hear people talk about especially these new hip hop artists. And like I was saying, back in the day it was all the heavy metals, the devil. And I used to tell people all the time, I'm like, you have no idea if that you know, country singer or rapper or whatever worships the devil, you have no idea. You really don't. If like if that's what you're basing music on, you shouldn't even be listening to music. You should be going to some place where you can get your spirit right, man. Like you're looking at the wrong place. I'm just saying for myself. It's like I went to church, I was raised a Lutheran, I went to confirmation, went to Sunday school every Sunday, you know, had to miss football practice on Wednesdays because confirmation was more important, those kind of things. And also listened to Slayer and Anthrax, Megadeth, and wore the shirts and all that stuff. Nobody ever questioned me as a that knew me. You know what I mean? I was never like, are you a Satanist? My mom tried that one time, and I was like, I just gave her the same story I just told you guys. I go to church all the time. Like, I know I know God, I know Jesus. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_10 48:06

I went to your institutions, I went to your institutions. Well, and that's the whole thing. And that I mean, I think that's why that that that song to uh to us metalheads and punkers and all that stuff is so iconic, is because yeah, just because of our music doesn't make it as bad people, man. Right.

SPEAKER_09 48:22

And with the Black Sabbath stuff, it's like You did kind of open up some of the things. There were there are some dark lyrics in there, and you can take them any way you want. But I've always kind of taken that stuff as a warning more than uh, hey, you should do this. Right it's scary, man. There's a reason why it's scary. I like scary movies too, but I don't want to get hacked up by Freddie Krueger, you know? It's like I like the movies, but I'm not gonna get into it like that. And that's what I'm saying with when it came to the whole satanic thing, it was a shock factor. Right. I think that's what Slayers even talked about that.

SPEAKER_10 48:59

Yeah, I mean, you know, Tom O'Reilly. He was raised Catholic and all that good stuff, and it was like, you know, he talks about, you know, God's out there, Jesus out there, you know, we we write stuff for just yeah, for that shock value. Well, he says different things.

SPEAKER_09 49:15

Again, unless you're listening to spiritual music, you you shouldn't be listening to music for spiritual guidance. You know what I mean? Like I'm not gonna go turn on, you know, rush so I can get close to God. You know, it's like well, I'm gonna be like listening to Monday before we have a mean, mean time. You know, it's like I'm not gonna even think about that. But people are that's how fanatical people can be about anything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 49:46

Well, I I mean, think about it, you know, I mean, they they took it that strong of a level to have a you know congressional hearing and brought in, you know, musicians to be like, why are you guys and be like, dude, it's just music, man. Right. Uh I I know that there are, you know, there there are some groups out there that, you know, are uh definitely satanic groups and you know that's what they're they're about, but I don't you know tend to listen to them.

SPEAKER_09 50:13

Some people just think that stuff looks cool. You know, I I don't really want it on my body or on my guitars or on my shirts and stuff like that, but that's just me. It has nothing to do with me saying one side or the other. It just for me, it's not what I do. There's friends of mine that you know, guys next door, they have upside down crosses on their logos and stuff like that. It's like that's to each his own, bro.

SPEAKER_10 50:40

I think it was uh to me, you know, back in the day, you know, when we'd wear shirts like the Slayer shirts and all that, I mean it was the shock value to you know.

SPEAKER_09 50:47

Well, remember like Slatanic shirts and stuff like that. They were obviously banking on the Satanism thing. Yeah. I mean most of the lyrics and most of their songs are about hell.

SPEAKER_10 50:59

You know, it's about evil stuff and evil things that people do and people have done it, you know, not so much that you know you should carry out, it's just that they're talking about history.

SPEAKER_09 51:13

Right. Like kind of that movie thing, like my grandpa told me. It's like it's just a movie, bro.

SPEAKER_10 51:19

Yeah. Don't I I I don't recommend you go out and, you know, skin people. Right. Please don't.

SPEAKER_09 51:26

Well, like when I was a kid, you know, these guys that would try to talk trash about metalheads and be like, kill your bob, kill your dad, stick them in a toaster. I'm like, Alright. Like, I don't ever come up with that. Are you dissing? Are you jiving right now? Are you like flowing? Yeah, I could flow some metal.

SPEAKER_16 51:48

Alright.

SPEAKER_09 51:48

That's a little odd. You got some teenage angst going on where you want your parents dead, but okay.

SPEAKER_10 52:01

Right.

SPEAKER_09 52:03

Like the lead singer from choir, right?

SPEAKER_15 52:09

Bang your head. Stick around and we'll talk about Mel's hole.

SPEAKER_22 55:57

But it's

Mel’s Hole And Art Bell Lore

SPEAKER_22 55:58

not a well. Like the owners of the property before him, Mel used the hole as a trash dump. His neighbors used it too. Garbage, broken appliances, old tires, everything went into the hole. After a while, Mel started to wonder, why doesn't it fill up? And then he started to notice other strange things about the hole. His dogs wouldn't go near it. It caused his radio to pick up strange signals, and it didn't seem to have a bottom. Mel's curiosity became an obsession. Let's see if we can get to the bottom of Mel's hole. Mel's hole is a round pit, 9 feet 9 inches in diameter. There's a stone retaining wall built around it that goes down about 15 feet. After that, the hole extends down into darkness. Well, not only did Mel Waters and his wife dump everything in the hole, but so did his neighbors. And this has been going on for a long time. For years before Mel even moved in, Mel's neighbors said they couldn't remember a time when the hole wasn't there. So why can't you hear objects hitting the bottom? Why can't you hear your own echo? Mel set out to determine exactly how far down this hole goes. An avid fisherman, Mel had spools of fishing line on hand, so he attached a one-pound weight to the line and sent it down the hole. It went 4,500 feet, the full length of the reel, and didn't hit bottom. He reeled the line up, attached a roll of lifesavers, and set it all the way down again. Mel wanted to see if there was water at the bottom, and if there was, the lifesavers would come up dissolved, but they came up dry. Mel had more spools of fishing line, each one 5,000 feet. He attached another spool, now down almost 10,000 feet, and still no bottom. Spool after spool of fishing line went down the hole. He could not reach the bottom. By the time Mel ran out of line, he was 80,000 feet down, over 15 miles, and still no bottom. While experimenting, Mel noticed that his dogs wouldn't come anywhere near the hole. Even when forced, the dogs would dig their feet in. There were no animals of any kind near the hole, no wildlife, no insects. Birds even flew around it. And since the hole was known to his neighbors, Mel asked around if anyone noticed their dogs feeling uneasy by the hole, and they all said yes. Then one of his neighbors said, Speaking of dogs, not too long ago his dog died, so he threw its body into the hole. A few days later, that dog came back. After Mel's neighbor threw his dead dog into the hole.

SPEAKER_23 58:25

Why?

SPEAKER_22 58:26

Just why? I don't know.

SPEAKER_23 58:28

You can't bury it.

SPEAKER_22 58:30

I really I I really don't know.

SPEAKER_23 58:31

Sometimes humans are very disappointing.

SPEAKER_22 58:34

They certainly can be. Anyway, a couple of days after disposing of his dog's body down the hole, he saw it running through a wooded area near the property. Now he knew it was his dog because it was wearing the same collar. But for some reason, the dog didn't come when he called.

SPEAKER_23 58:51

Ooh, maybe it's a version of his dog from another dimension.

SPEAKER_22 58:54

Well, that's definitely a theory. As the weird stories piled up and the fishing line kept going down, Mel was at a loss.

SPEAKER_23 59:02

He was out of his depth.

SPEAKER_22 59:04

Right. Mel needed help figuring out exactly what this hole was. And in 1997, there's only one place to discuss the strange and mysterious and be taken seriously. Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.

SPEAKER_13 59:18

From the high desert in the great American Southwest individual. Good evening or good morning wherever you may be across this great land of Mars.

SPEAKER_22 59:24

Coast to Coast was on hundreds of stations around the world and had 10 million listeners. If anyone could help Mel, it was Art Bell and his audience. Mel sent Art a message on February 21st, 1997. Art called him, and Mel's hole became known to the world. Over the course of several shows, Mel Waters would reveal more and more details about the mysterious hole. The good news is Mel was getting really good advice from people all around the world, like use a laser to measure or use radar to check the distance. The bad news is now millions of people knew about this hole. And from clues given by Mel on the radio, you can get a pretty good idea of where it was. The day after the first broadcast, Mel was returning to his property, but the entrance was blocked.

SPEAKER_23 1:00:07

The government.

SPEAKER_22 1:00:08

Yep. The US military was now aware of the hole, and they wanted it all to themselves.

SPEAKER_14 1:00:25

On Friday night, I went out there and uh and uh noticed uh there was some helicopter activity around the property. There was further helicopter activity the next day. Uh and so I figured that uh clearly uh somebody out there listens to your program.

SPEAKER_22 1:00:48

Mel said that the hole could affect things in the environment around it. Animals avoided it, but plants seemed to grow extremely well. Radios acted weird. If Mel brought a radio near the hole, the signal would get very static y and then start picking up broadcasts from somewhere else. One day his radio started picking up what he describes as old-time music. So he goes to change the channel and tunes into a baseball game. This is fine until he learns the game was played in 1967, 30 years ago. Art's first call with Mel goes on for about an hour and then they wrap up. Mel was staying in Ellensburg for a couple of days and had made the call from there. When Mel Waters returned from town, the access road to his property was blocked by armed military personnel, and there was evidence that heavy machinery had been brought in. Mel was told there was a plane crash on the property, but there was no report of a crash, no fire, no smoke. Still, Mel was told he couldn't access the property until the crash was completely investigated. When Mel asked to speak to the person in charge, a man in civilian clothes told him that the land was not necessarily his anymore, and it would be very easy to find a drug lab on the property if he didn't leave. Mel threatened to go to the press. The man in charge, man in black, the man in black told him, go ahead and talk. Nobody would believe it. But Art Bell and his audience would believe it. And a few days later, Art called Mel for an update. Mel said that a neighbor saw a dark beam coming out of the hole and up through the clouds, darker than anything he'd ever seen. Now, Mel admitted he didn't see this himself, but Art Bell and several callers said that this part of Washington has a lot of UFO sightings, disappearances, and other paranormal activity. Callers had their own theories. Maybe the hole was sitting on a ley line and there was a portal to another dimension. Or it was a portal through time, and that's why everything thrown into it disappeared. Maybe somewhere in an alternate reality, there's a big pile of garbage, old appliances, and dead animals just piling up, who knows? One caller thought this could be a tunnel to the hollow earth.

SPEAKER_23 1:02:57

Ooh, like a subway for lizard people.

SPEAKER_22 1:03:00

Something like that. There were a lot of theories. And since Mel couldn't access his property anymore, he talked to other locals trying to get more information. An elderly neighbor said that many years ago, there was a series of stone columns around the hole.

SPEAKER_23 1:03:14

Like Stone Inch?

SPEAKER_22 1:03:15

Right, but without the crossbeams, which are called lintels.

SPEAKER_23 1:03:19

Lintels?

SPEAKER_22 1:03:19

Lintels.

SPEAKER_23 1:03:20

What'd I say?

SPEAKER_22 1:03:21

Someone from the audience reminded Mel that calling into the show is a big mistake because obviously the government is listening. So the show ends and Mel agrees to come back for an update. On the day Mel is scheduled to reappear, he's a no-show and not picking up his phone.

SPEAKER_13 1:04:07

All kinds of uh information that would indicate military effect had been there or was there.

SPEAKER_14 1:04:12

Oh, they would have probably seen a lot of yellow gear tread marks in the um on the ground.

SPEAKER_13 1:04:16

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

SPEAKER_22 1:04:18

It would be three years before Mel resurfaces. He said he was offered three million dollars a year to lease his property to somebody. But the deal was sign a non-disclosure agreement, leave the country immediately, and never come back. So Mel takes the deal, and he lives in Australia for two years, but he's missing his family and decides to come back to the States for a visit. Not smart! It wasn't. Mel was warned not to do this, but he does it anyway. And during this time, he gets in touch with Art Bell and agrees to come on the radio, but he never shows up. Mel said on the day he was supposed to come on, he was on a bus to visit his nephew. And on the bus, there was some kind of altercation, and the police were called. All the passengers are questioned and put on a different bus.

SPEAKER_15 1:05:01

Then Mel blacks out.

SPEAKER_22 1:05:09

And the next thing he remembers is that he's in San Francisco and 12 days have passed. Mel woke up in an alley. His wallet and keys were missing. He realizes his arm hurts. He rolls up his sleeve, and there are needle holes and tape marks from an IV. And as he becomes more lucid, he tastes blood in his mouth. His back teeth are missing. Mel never makes it back to the property. There was legal action taken against him for illegal construction. Power lines, septic tanks, paved roads. Of course, he didn't build these. The government had occupied the property for two years. Still, Mel lost everything. And a day or two after calling into Art's show, his bank account was emptied. Now, to be fair, plenty of people are calling in saying that this is all a hoax, but Art Bell is the master. Hoax or not, it's a great story, so he lets Mel continue. But Art does say that a TV crew was in the area looking for the hole. They didn't find it, but they did find evidence of a lot of military activity, and the no-fly zone has been mysteriously expanded to cover the area. In fact, TerraServer, which was a mapping site before Google Earth, showed that the whole area was blacked out, and this was confirmed. Skeptical callers said that Mel could have found the blacked-out part of the map and pretended his property was there. The problem with that is TerraServer launched six months after Mel made the first phone call. He couldn't have known. Soon we learned that a Native American tribe had contacted Mel and asked him if he wanted to come to Nevada and help them research.

SPEAKER_23 1:06:42

Research what?

SPEAKER_22 1:06:43

Another bottomless hole.

SPEAKER_14 1:06:54

They took you to it. They took me there. I was I was not I did not go all the way up at all, but there was conversations between uh the Native Americans and the Basketball is basically uh agreed that you know everything was as it should be, that I wasn't, you know, from CNN or C F or C I A or whatever. Uh and so I went there and uh I got to see the hole. What's there?

SPEAKER_22 1:07:22

The second hole wasn't located on the Indian reservation where they lived, it was actually on public land that was used by Basques. The Basque are an ethnic group that comes from a small region between France and Spain. The Basques settled a couple of areas in the United States, including Nevada, in the mid-1800s, and they were using this land to herd sheep. They told Mel that the hole was there for as long as their people were, so at least 200 years, and they considered the hole and the land around it sacred. This hole was just over nine feet wide, just like Mel's. But where Mel's hole had a stone retaining wall of a few feet, the second hole had a metal collar and metal lining down as far as the eye can see. And this hole was warm to the touch. You could feel heat all around it, and the metal wouldn't make any sound or vibrate at all. Mel accidentally dropped a tool on the metal collar, and the impact was completely silent. So Mel and the Basque begin their experiments. The first test was they lowered a bucket of ice down into the hole about a thousand feet, and they kept some ice at the surface as a control. When the surface ice was melted, they brought the bucket back up. That ice didn't melt at all. And even stranger, the ice was no longer cold to the touch, and it wasn't wet. The ice felt like large pieces of salt. So they tried to melt the ice over an open flame.

SPEAKER_23 1:08:42

It didn't melt, did it?

SPEAKER_22 1:08:43

Nope. It caught fire. Not only that, it continued to burn for months. So they continued sending different amounts of ice down the hole. About two-thirds of the time it melted normally, but one third of the time it was transformed. Now at this point, one of the braver Basque volunteered to go down the hole himself. What?

SPEAKER_23 1:09:02

Is he nuts?

SPEAKER_22 1:09:03

Yeah, everyone agrees that that's not a good idea. So they decided to send down a sheep.

SPEAKER_23 1:09:08

A sheep? Ooh, what happened to the sheep? Oh no!

SPEAKER_14 1:09:22

Well, I just felt I was in the presence of something extraordinary, something beyond extraordinary, something like in that category of having a religious thing there where this was just such a stunning thing to witness.

SPEAKER_22 1:09:34

The sheep did not want to go in the hole. The closer it got, the more it tried to kick its way out of its crate. They lowered the crate down the hole to 1,000 feet. At that point, it stopped moving, and they felt a humming sensation. They left the sheep down there for 30 minutes and then brought it back up. There was no movement. The crate was unchanged and the sheep looked fine, but it was dead. The Basque, being shepherds, knew how to butcher a sheep, so they brought it to a table for a quick autopsy. Oh, for crying now, lad, what are they doing? The first thing that they noticed is that the sheep looked like it was cooked from the inside. And taking up almost the entire cavity of the sheep's body was what Mel described as a giant tumor. Ugh. Then the tumor starts moving.

SPEAKER_23 1:10:18

What in the d is going on with this story?

SPEAKER_22 1:10:22

Oh!

SPEAKER_23 1:10:23

I'm sorry, this is intense.

SPEAKER_22 1:10:25

Then they cut the tumor open. Inside the tumor is what Mel describes as a fetal seal.

SPEAKER_23 1:10:33

Wait, wait, wait, did you just say a fetal seal?

SPEAKER_22 1:10:36

Yeah, like a baby seal. It was attached to the tumor by an umbilical cord, but this seal-like creature had the eyes of a human. They watched the creature for a while as it crawled to the end of the table, and Mel felt like it wanted to get back to the hole, so he picked it up and set it near the edge. Of course, the creature was slimy, and Mel said that the fluid had the smell of ozone. So the men studied the creature and it seemed to study the men for about two hours. Then the seal creature gave them a final look and jumped in the hole. Now, before Mel went to Nevada, he was diagnosed with advanced esophageal cancer. He had only six months to live. But after this experience, Mel was cancer free. He thinks he was cured by the Magic SEAL. Yep. Mel felt like he had a transcendent experience. He was completely changed after this. And just then, the radio show runs out of time.

SPEAKER_16 1:11:30

No.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:39

Across from me over here is the actual roadway into Mel's home. Don't go up that road. Up there a ways is a fence. But uh you get across that fence, you're in a deep pungent trouble. It might be that you simply disappear, period.

SPEAKER_22 1:11:57

A few months later, Mel returned to coast to coast. Something crazy happened with that bucket of ice. Remember one of the basks took the burning ice to his cabin to keep warm? He had it in a stove. It burned for months, and it was pulling all the moisture out of the air. The air in the cabin was always dry. The owner's skin was always dry. He was constantly thirsty. When boiling water, the steam would be pulled into the stove. One day, the stove crashed through the floor and into the ground under the cabin, but it was still warm, so he patched up the floor and used the hole for warmth. A couple of weeks later, he's returning home and his entire cabin has collapsed and turned to dust. He moves in with his brother for a while. A month later, he comes back to the cabin and sees that the stove is now five feet underground, and the hole made by the stove was perfectly smooth.

SPEAKER_23 1:12:47

It was making a new baby bottomless hole.

SPEAKER_22 1:12:50

It was. And they couldn't get the stove back up. It took a giant crane to finally get the stove out of the hole. And at this point, the Basque said they were sometimes visited by the entity that they discovered in the hole.

SPEAKER_23 1:13:01

The magic seal?

SPEAKER_22 1:13:03

Yes, the magic seal. They felt it was a benevolent presence and considered the whole experience to be very spiritual. There are now brightly colored birds circling the hole. Birds that seem to be immune to bullets.

SPEAKER_23 1:13:16

That's how they respond to a spiritual experience. Shoot the birds?

SPEAKER_22 1:13:21

I guess. Freaking Basque. The Basque even believe the magic seal is communicating with them over the radio using a system of beeps and clicks as language, which they can understand. The creature warns the Basque that the ice is dangerous and can't fall into the wrong hands and would lead to the destruction of the planet. Art asks if there's a recording of this language. There is. The Basque recorded everything. For the next hour, a few more theories are considered, and Art finally gets Mel to agree to come back on the show. But this time, he would bring the recording, photos, video, and everything he can get his hands on. Mel agrees to go back to Nevada and gather all the evidence. He hangs up and the show ends. Mel is never heard from again. He doesn't respond to Art's calls and eventually the line is disconnected. So after five years, the story of Mel's Hole finally comes to an end. But it left so many questions. There are a lot of Art Bell highlights, and Mel's Hole is right near the top. So how much of the story can we confirm? First, the location of the hole. Terra Server did black out that part of Washington, but on Google Earth it showed back up. But if the military really had taken over the property, they would have covered up the hole. People have been searching for it for years, and of the many locations I found, there was one that was really compelling. This is the Google map. Someone actually went to the location to see what was there. These are the pictures. During one of his phone calls, Mel said there were two old buildings on the property, and one of them eventually collapsed under snow. This fits the description pretty well. And also on the property is this. Yep. A hole about nine feet wide with a stone retaining wall. Exactly how Mel described. Now this caused quite a stir online, but the hole turned out to be an old well and definitely had a bottom. If you search the internet, you'll find a lot of people claiming they found Mel's hole. They haven't. It's never been found. At least not yet. As for Mel, he's a complicated character. There's no record of a Mel or Melvin Waters living in the area, but some have claimed he was using a pseudonym to protect his identity. That makes sense? Now something that really hurts the credibility of the story is the lack of pictures. In every call, Art asks for photographs, but sometimes Mel just doesn't think to take a picture. He forgets, which is ridiculous. Another time he says cameras don't work near the hole because of interference. Or he does have pictures and recordings, but they're not handy, so he'll send them when he can. But in Mel's defense, he never plugs anything. Even if this is a hoax, he could have made a fortune selling t-shirts, books, phony photographs, anything. People would buy that stuff just because it's cool. I would buy a Mel's Hole t-shirt.

SPEAKER_23 1:16:14

I went to Mel's hole, and all I got was this magic seal fetus.

SPEAKER_22 1:16:18

Yeah, that part of the story was pretty wild. And that's a common argument, that Mel's story got crazier and crazier, and eventually he just couldn't keep up with it, so he bailed on the hoax. But he was pretty consistent with the facts over five years. And Art Bell tried many, many times to trip him up, but he couldn't do it. Now the hole itself just isn't geologically possible. A hole many miles deep would be unstable and collapse in on itself. Unless it was a bottomless hole to another dimension. Right, unless it's that. But I don't think we'll ever know. Mel's Hole has many believers, but I don't think Art Bell is one of them. But Art was an entertainer, and this is the type of story that his listeners loved. It's a legend that people still talk about 30 years later. But for me in this channel, this was a masterclass on how to present an urban legend. Let the story breathe, but still challenge the specifics. Explore the mystery, but keep it grounded. Be critical, but compassionate. I try to approach topics this way. But very few others do. A channel that tells mysterious stories without giving all the facts will get more clicks and it will get more subscribers. But that's a shame because it's dishonest and you deserve better. We all do.

SPEAKER_09 1:17:33

Told Jamel

Hoax Questions And What Still Fits

SPEAKER_09 1:17:34

had a hole.

SPEAKER_10 1:17:36

He had a hole that he did.

SPEAKER_09 1:17:38

I wasn't lying. That's a crazy ass hole, bro.

SPEAKER_10 1:17:45

It is a crazy ass hole, and uh it's a very interesting story. Uh the the seal part was kind of the I mean that that's the one that I was like magic feet of seal. Right. I mean, I you know, maybe they took something, and and maybe, you know, maybe that hole was releasing some kind of gas and you know, it made them hallucinate.

SPEAKER_09 1:18:09

Well, I when I first started talking about this, I thought there was another one in Russia. And so I guess it was in France.

SPEAKER_10 1:18:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 1:18:17

Or like the Basque Mountains somewhere and like the Pyrenees Mountains. So I you know, I'm not positive, but I was thinking something might have went right through the earth like when it was being formed or something like that. And somebody found it, and they're like, Whoa, let's just break it up at the top so it doesn't fall in and just keep dumping our crap in there.

SPEAKER_10 1:18:37

Crap in there and hope it fills up. The people on the other side are like, again.

SPEAKER_09 1:18:44

Well, like when we we were watching it, we were talking about maybe it's from another dimension. It's like you were standing in just some other dimension, just getting ready to go to work, and all of a sudden a dryer falls out of the sky. Like, not again.

SPEAKER_10 1:19:02

That is, yeah. I mean, and that's the stuff that I had picture too, is you know, people it's like poltergeist. But the the weird one was the dog. Oh hell no, we don't want your stinky dog. He threw it back.

SPEAKER_09 1:19:14

Who throws a freaking dog in a hole? You can't bury it.

SPEAKER_10 1:19:17

It's so harsh, man. I mean, obviously you didn't care too much about your, you know, your furry friend. I mean, me, I I I've always buried my dogs, or you know, I mean, I I have a uh urn of Bob, but still just I wouldn't just chuck them down the hole.

SPEAKER_09 1:19:32

I mean, how Hecklefish is right in that one, he was a good thing. Yeah, man, that's that's not human.

SPEAKER_10 1:19:39

That's right. Dude, that's cold, man.

SPEAKER_09 1:19:43

But yeah, I mean, you know, it could be a complete joke, could be all made up. People do like to make up nothing for nothing.

SPEAKER_10 1:19:51

Yeah, just uh you know and that's the thing too, is like, you know, the the the radio show is a reputable radio show, and and the fact that the guy had him on there and you know, let him tell the story and all that stuff, it's well and the Basque people were fine and stuff.

SPEAKER_09 1:20:05

Well, right. And they had a giant hole. So you know, the end where he's like, Oh, it wasn't really the hole because there was a bottom, it was a well. It's like course, after the government's been there. Right. I mean, yeah. Nothing's nothing's original after those guys have been in there.

SPEAKER_10 1:20:20

And that's the thing, yeah. It didn't look anything like how they were describing it, and other people had described it, and you know, uh it it's it it's insane. Yeah, the government's not gonna leave it. I'll be like, oh, here you go. This is what we came here for. Obviously.

SPEAKER_09 1:20:34

Oh, we just wanted to check it out, keep you off of property for a few months, no big deal. We're gonna put you in prison for it, though.

SPEAKER_10 1:20:40

Well, and that's even if it's uh that's even if the if that's what you know they could have they could have just designed it too. Like, here you go, this is what they'll think. You know. I mean, they were there for two years. Why would they be there for two years? Just to look down.

SPEAKER_09 1:20:55

We'll never know, will we?

SPEAKER_10 1:20:56

Nope. Not now. Right.

SPEAKER_09 1:21:00

That's the crazy stuff. It's like maybe whatever came out of Mel's hole is what was in Black Sabbath um dressing room.

SPEAKER_10 1:21:07

You never know. Especially if it's if it was dimensional. And what if they would they if they were able to close that dimensional hole?

SPEAKER_09 1:21:15

Maybe that was what the radio signals were picking up was backwards Led Zeppelin.

SPEAKER_10 1:21:23

Want a whole lot of love.

SPEAKER_09 1:21:26

And a baseball game from 1922 before the radios were invented. Sitting here spinning a phonograph.

SPEAKER_10 1:21:37

Who's on first? What's on second? It's crazy, man. You never know.

SPEAKER_09 1:21:43

Morse code. Five hundred women sitting in one room hitting switchboards.

SPEAKER_10 1:21:51

Dude, you know, and and look, you know, home run. All those jobs were now gone.

SPEAKER_09 1:21:58

Yep. None of that stuff. Well, and you know, they're phasing out everything from our past, so how do we know that they didn't phase out everything from everybody else's past, too? Well, no, that's totally it too. And this whole thing with Mel's Holt, it's kind of like, you know, what if what if everything's a what if. Yeah. But it's like, how how could this stuff like just keep falling and never have a bottom to it?

SPEAKER_10 1:22:23

Right. Well, you know, and he sent that, you know, the the fishing line and all that stuff down there, and you know, it went on forever, and you know, that that's that's the one that got me.

SPEAKER_09 1:22:31

I I was like, The only problem I have with that is that every time you connect five thousand feet, you have to you have to reel it up. You would have to have a reel that could reel 80,000 feet and keep putting five thousand feet on at a time.

SPEAKER_10 1:22:49

Totally, huh? I didn't even think about that.

SPEAKER_09 1:22:51

That would that'd be a big reel.

SPEAKER_10 1:22:53

For reels, man. I mean, dude, that would just be like forever, dude. Seriously. I'd be like, so I don't know. Yeah. That that's you know, it's a questionable one, but it's a good story, you know? And it is up for you to decide as well. If you don't like it, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:23:07

It's his fault.

SPEAKER_10 1:23:08

It is. I I did I I did bring that one up. I was like, hey, let's do Mel's home.

SPEAKER_09 1:23:11

I've seen this before, and I thought about it before. Yeah, it didn't. I thought it was cool.

SPEAKER_10 1:23:16

I if anything, it's a good story.

SPEAKER_09 1:23:17

So maybe that's where the reptilians are hanging out.

SPEAKER_10 1:23:20

Right? You never know. Strange facts, you may have never known.

Colton’s Wild Three Year Escape

SPEAKER_25 1:23:34

And sometimes you gotta be careful about who you bully. Meet Colton, a 16-year-old kid who took the FBI and police on an insane chase that lasted three years. But it all started because Colton had a problem. He was broke and everyone knew it. He went to school, they said, Colton, he said, huh? They said, You broke and everybody knows it. He said, Nah, y'all, I'm broke because my mom she be drinking and we don't got money. You broke and everybody knows it. Suddenly, a kid named Harley stands up and says, Hey, y'all leave Colton alone. He may be broke, he may be poor, he may not have the same drip as us. What was I saying? I said, You was telling us to leave him alone. He said, Leave him alone. Now Colton and Harley become friends because they find out that they both have bad home lives. But Harley has nice clothes, he be having drip. Colton doesn't have that. Harley's like, I be stealing. Colton's like, oh snap, I'm trying to steal. So they start stealing. Now, after a few months, the FBI catches him on camera. So they bust down his mom's place and say where he's at. She goes, he left. He tried to pay for me to stop drinking. I said no, he's in the forest now. So they go into the forest. They don't see him. But he sees them. He watches as they raid all of his stuff. It turns out he has a lot of stuff. So the FBI surrounds the forest. Holden writes a letter to his mom saying, Girl, they're not finna catch me. They got him. Why? Well, because he was hiding out in empty houses. And where he was from, there are a lot of vacation homes. Meaning, rich people would buy a house there and not be there for months. He leaves the lights on in one of these houses, but the owners reported that they weren't there. So the FBI brings him in. They said, ah, he's a kid. A few months in juvie, then we'll send him to a corrections house. He breaks out of the corrections house. And here's where things start to get wicked. Town is losing it. Everyone's looking for this 16-year-old kid. Why? Because houses are getting busted in left and right. People start getting mad at the cops. They're saying he's just a kid. Why can't y'all catch him? Boom, room, room, room, room. A car zooms past. It's Colton and a hundred thousand dollar Mercedes basically daring police to catch him. They start chasing. The car suddenly goes kaboom into something. The police surround the car. They look into the car, no one's there. They look into the forest. Colton's there. Dips. And inside the car, they find this picture with a Mercedes logo on it. Oh, yeah. It's getting stupid for police, but not Colton. He gets bored. He keeps going in the houses and he keeps getting away. So then he decides to take a plane. Hops in a plane, reads the manual, and starts flying. You may be asking yourself, how is this possible? Well, here's a note from a friend of mine who used to borrow cars. You won't believe how many people just leave the keys inside. Well, he learns how to do everything except land the thing. And actually, this is the wrong plane. This was the first plane he borrowed. The one I showed you was like the sixth one. Anyway, the police are like, what we finna do about Colton? The officer walks in and goes, Chief, he goes, Hold on, we're talking about Colton. He goes, Chief, you go, what?

unknown 1:26:15

I think I know where Colton is.

SPEAKER_25 1:26:16

The chief said, Great, you finna get a promotion. The officer said, No, I'm finna get a fire. Yeah, it turns out Colton went into my car, took everything, including my military grade. The chief said, Typical. Are you stupid? Somebody else walks in and says, Chief, he says, what now? We just got a report. We think it's Colton. The first officer said, Let's go. The chief said, Not you. Everybody else, let's go. This time they had him right where they wanted him. It turns out he was in a house and the homeowners came in early. The owners chased him outside, then found a red dot on him. Remember, he has that military break. The owners hopped in the whip and drove away. The police need to make this arrest. He's becoming kind of famous. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stuff is missing. Planes, cars. He gets away again. So the government has no choice but to call in Homeland Security and start looking for him everywhere. He catches wind of this and says, I gotta get out of here. Uh-uh, but the government is a step ahead of him. They call everybody within thousands of miles who owns a plane and says, Lock your planes now. But he finds the one person that wasn't in the meeting and hops in their plane and flies off. He's headed to Cuba where he knows they can't ship him back to the US. He makes a wrong turn though and ends up in the Bahamas. While he's in the air, he's out of gas. But luckily he sees an island and is able to maneuver his way down, and this happened. The FBI gets a distress signal about the plane, and the whole island is surrounded within the day. But it's party weekend in the Bahamas. He said, What? He said, Man, what are you finna do? He said, hop on the boat. He hops on the boat. He gets to the next island where they're partying. He goes, hey yo, can somebody call the popo? They go, what you mean? He goes, yeah. Um, they chasing me and I'm on board. They said, stop playing around, kid. Who are you? Why you got a speed po? You look kinda young, he said. I'm telling you, I'm robbing, bro. I'm coating. My mama wants to pose it. They go, uh, don't even worry about it. Just go to popo. You're finna see something. They call the popo. Mmm. Boats start flying in. He said, time to go. Boy, hits the speed, flies up, outruns them. Cause boy got a speed boat. They got boats. He looks behind him to see how far he got, but then uh beaches his boat. He grabs his and puts it to his head, but decides against it. The Bahama Popo said, put your hands in the air. He at them. Now you know if this was the United States, that would have been his last date. But I said the Bahama Popo. So they his boat, his engine. To scare him, he says, Y'all got me, and he raises his hand. They bring him in. They gather up all of his charges, and it's a lot. 67 felonies to be exact. He was facing 30 years, but his lawyer gets it down to six. Lawyer said he grew up in a tough home life. Nobody got hurt. And when they eventually make movies about this, he has to give away all the movie money because, in their words, crime doesn't pay. He does his deal, so he does his time, then decides to live his life quietly and privately.

SPEAKER_09 1:29:16

Dude, holy crap, Colton.

SPEAKER_10 1:29:20

Right, man. Holy moly, dude.

SPEAKER_09 1:29:23

That is uh now he's just living a normal life. Right? Yeah, a normal bag. Dude. Chilling with misses.

SPEAKER_10 1:29:31

Three years, dude. Three years of dude. And like he took him on the right.

SPEAKER_09 1:29:37

Straight up Grand Theft Auto in real life.

SPEAKER_10 1:29:39

Right, dude. That is like how I mean to give up any money that anybody makes on his Right, yeah. I mean, still, man, you'd still you're still gonna be famous. I mean, I'm sure you'll probably get something, but dude, that is just frickin' awesome. I mean, fuck, especially as a kid, you fucking talk about it.

SPEAKER_09 1:30:00

Talk about some balls, man.

SPEAKER_10 1:30:01

Right, dude. That's awesome as fuck, man.

SPEAKER_09 1:30:04

That's pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_10 1:30:05

Hell yeah. Fucking out, dude.

Final Thoughts And Sign Off

SPEAKER_09 1:30:10

Well, thanks, guys. Checking us out. Make sure you like, share, and subscribe, and then we will see you all next week.

SPEAKER_10 1:30:17

Thank you.