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The Witch Hannah Cranna & Mel's Hole image

The Witch Hannah Cranna & Mel's Hole

Sinister Sisters
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48 Plays4 years ago

This week, Felicia discusses our new favorite, inspirational witch: Hannah Cranna or "The Wicked Witch of Monroe". Instead of denying the accusations that she was a witch, Hannah used her reputation to influence and terrify her neighbors. An icon. Next, Lauren tells the story of Mel's Hole. This was supposedly a 80,000 ft hole in Washington that might have been a portal to another dimension. 

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Transcript

Introduction and Spooky Passions

00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters Podcast. I'm Felicia. I'm Lauren. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff.

Nostalgia for In-Person Meetings

00:00:21
Speaker
And last week, if you saw on our Instagram, we actually got to be together in person in real life. And now I'm looking at Lauren again on our video screen. And I am sad.
00:00:37
Speaker
But it's okay. We had a great time

Whisper House Musical Review

00:00:39
Speaker
though. We ate a lot of food. We saw some theater. It's good stuff. Yes. Yes. Oh, I shouldn't. I just forgot what we even saw. What was the show? The Whisper House? Whisper House. Yes. I'm not sure that we were the biggest fans, but it was a ghost musical. Yes. By. Duncan Sheik. Duncan Sheik who did Spring Awakening. And then I forgot the guy's name.
00:01:03
Speaker
wrote the lyrics. Oh, yes. Sorry. Me too. Wow. We tried. We tried, but I was going to say highly recommend, but I actually don't know that we do. I would say a loose, it was kind of fun to see together, maybe recommendation. Yeah. It's a show that I feel like could use some work shopping, maybe. I don't know.
00:01:23
Speaker
But it was nice to see theater. No matter what, I was very excited just to see theater. And the music was very pretty. Yeah, the music was very pretty for sure.

Diving into Texas Chainsaw Massacre

00:01:34
Speaker
For recommendations, I have to tell you that yesterday, I am binge watching, and I'm done now, watching the entire Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.
00:01:46
Speaker
You watch the whole thing? I have officially watched the entire thing. I feel like my eyes are never going to be the same. No, I mean, that's a lot of hacking people up with chainsaws back to back to back. It's a lot. It's a lot because I'm trying to do this like series on it before the new Netflix one comes out.
00:02:06
Speaker
And I thought I had seen more than I had, but I didn't realize there was like nine freaking movies. I was like, what? Where did these come from? I had that realization at some point, not that long ago, where I was like, oh yeah, I've seen most of the Texas Chainsaws, which by the way, was only the original and the remake. And it just could be the second one. Yeah.
00:02:28
Speaker
But then I, yeah, I found that out too, that I was like, wait, what? Like, many, many. I had no idea that existed. What was the other one that I didn't know about? Oh, I didn't, I didn't know about the next generation one. But I, I think I did that for another thing on my channel. But it's the one that has Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey, like before they were famous. And it is not good, but it is slightly entertaining.
00:02:53
Speaker
I should watch them. Is it like, how does it stack up as a franchise for you or like, you know, as related to like Halloween or Scream? Oh, sure. They're a little bit more all over the place in terms of, well, actually, Halloween's all over the place, too. So maybe they all kind of are.
00:03:10
Speaker
But I found most of them very enjoyable, but they were kind of pretty different in like budget and production value or something. I don't really know how to say that. But I did have fun watching most of them. Even the ones that I'm not sure were my favorite, like they were still entertaining. Nice. And it's always Leatherface in some way.

Anticipation for New Texas Chainsaw Movie

00:03:37
Speaker
In some way. Yeah. And there's a lot of like trying to like figure out Leatherface's backstory and like there isn't a ton of similar with, you know, Halloween and stuff. There isn't always the best continuity, but who cares? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm excited to see the new one. Yes. That trailer looks kind of all over the place too, where I was like, wait, what? Yeah. It's I'm sure it's going to be just as wild as the rest.
00:04:05
Speaker
Oh, and the other thing Texas Chainsaw does, I guess in a similar way to Evil Dead was it like makes fun of itself in that second movie. And then like comes and then like returns back to horror. And then has this like early 2000s saw looking color palette. Jessica Beale version like there's this it's very it's interesting. Anyway, the Jessica Beale one is very saw. You're right. I had so green. So green. You're so right.
00:04:34
Speaker
But yeah, that's basically most of what I've been watching. I love that recently, but yeah.
00:04:40
Speaker
I finally watched An American Werewolf in London after that was on my list of shame last week. Yeah, I was like, you just said that. That's so good. Yeah, so I watched it. It was actually a lot more like horror comedy than I thought. I mean, it's not really, it's not like really like, you know, it's not Evil Dead, but it feels kind of, I don't know, there's just like, there was a lot of moments I was laughing and
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't know it was a romance. There's a whole romance in it. Oh, yeah. It's because most of what people talk about is that and what the YouTube has shown us is just the transformation scene. So outside of that, if you haven't seen the movie, like you don't really know what to expect. Right. And I thought it was I mean, the makeup's really amazing, but I thought it was a very well done movie. I really like. Yeah. I was surprised I hadn't seen it.
00:05:27
Speaker
And then just to be silly, we watched Wolfwalkers, which is an animated movie about kind of werewolves. They're sort of like, they kind of have the Fiona thing from Shrek where there are people during the day and then they turn into wolves at night.
00:05:45
Speaker
And also have healing capabilities, but it's so fun and the animation style is really cool and really beautiful to look at. But it too is basically the story of two girls becoming friends and one is very wild and one is like
00:06:03
Speaker
very, you know, just like, like a civilized, civilized little girl. And so it's like, you know, one of my favorite things are, I mean, obviously, because I have such a wonderful best friend, that's a girl. But like, I think you don't see a lot of just like, two girls becoming friends stories. And it was so cool and really fun. Yeah, I looked it up. It looks like a newer movie, right? Like, yes, I think last year or something.
00:06:29
Speaker
Yes, I think it was nominated for an Oscar last year, right? Is it in a different language? No, but it is. Why did I think that? I thought so too. I think the animation style is so different and it's a very Irish creative team. Oh, but it's in English. But it's in English. Oh, great. It's really fun. I can't remember where we watched it. I want to say Apple TV, but it's streaming somewhere for free.
00:06:53
Speaker
Definitely recommend you check that out if you need, especially if you need like an after horror movie, happy cleanse. Yes. Palette cleanser, my fave. Yeah. So those are my recommendations this week. Nice. Well, this week's, my story is going to be about a witch, which I'm very excited about.

The Legend of Hannah Crana

00:07:14
Speaker
And this is about Hannah Crana.
00:07:17
Speaker
which is a great... It's actually a nickname, but it's a great nickname. Hannah Crana, the Wicked Witch of Monroe, Connecticut. And if Monroe, Connecticut sounds familiar at all, it's because that is where the Warren Museum is and where the Warren family, Ed and Lauren, I guess, have both passed now. But I think their children still live there and apparently it's a very spooky town.
00:07:42
Speaker
So this is a witch story that has some vibes of like the Salem Witch Trials, though Hannah Crannell was never actually persecuted for her witchcraft. But for a little bit of timeline clarification, the Salem Witch Trials were in the 1690s. And after that happened,
00:08:06
Speaker
They kill all these women for no reason, classic. And people in America and New England were pretty embarrassed about it. Makes sense. Yeah, pretty quickly people realized that it had been this insane, what's the word I'm looking for? Just massacre.
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah, basically a massacre, but also just like a lie, like none of it was actually real and all of these people died for no reason. So that had happened in the 1690s and then where Hannah Crannell was actually not born until 1783. And we don't know a ton about her early life other than she married Captain Joseph Hovey, who was probably a lot older than her.
00:08:55
Speaker
but they didn't have any children. And apparently they had a pretty normal life going on until one night her husband died very suspiciously. In the middle of the night, he went on a walk. He just walked out of the house and he fell over a cliff in an area that he was very familiar with. And so after this happened, everyone was like, oh, Hannah's a witch.
00:09:21
Speaker
Definitely a witch. She has somehow put a spell on him that caused him to do this. He would have never done this. And so all these rumors started going around about Hannah, who they would then start calling Hannah Crana, that she was a witch. I wonder why they didn't go till she pushed him off the cliff. That's where I went. They knew witchcraft. I don't know. They went for witchcraft, I guess.
00:09:50
Speaker
And so the thing that I think is really funny about this story is that Hannah Crana never denied these allegations. She actually ended up kind of using them in her favor. She didn't get along with a lot of her neighbors. And so when people started being sort of scared of her, she kind of ran with it.
00:10:16
Speaker
So basically she started threatening people and obviously this is like the 1700s or I guess at this point we're probably in the early 1800s. She didn't really have a job, right? And so her husband dies. She's now a widow. She doesn't have any income.
00:10:33
Speaker
And she still needs things like food and firewood. And so she would just go around town being like, if you don't give me food, I'm going to curse you. Wait, this is amazing. This is my new favorite story. I want to try this out. It's so good. I know, right? And people, people did it because they were scared of her. And she started doing some other, you know, things just, I mean, who knows, who knows, right? But something she was known for,
00:11:02
Speaker
is that there was a rock, she was on a little hill and there was a rock at the end of her road. And she would sit on that rock and just watch people go by and stare at them and act really creepy. And people always said that when she was on that rock, she was having conversations with the devil. The devil was sitting with her because people said that there were these hook prints that were like etched onto the rock. And she's like carving them. Yeah, she's just chilling with the devil.
00:11:32
Speaker
So other legends started coming about. One is that her house was guarded by snakes of all different sizes, which of course is another symbol of the devil. And it's sort of this thing where I wonder if Hannah Crana, being a woman now living alone, started these rumors so people wouldn't take advantage of a lonely woman living by herself in the 1800s.
00:11:59
Speaker
I don't know. It's pretty genius if that's true. She sounds very resourceful. Yeah, she's very resourceful. She also had what she called her familiar. She had a rooster named Boreas. And this rooster was known for always crowing at the witching hour, which is 3am, the kind of most haunted hour of the night. And people apparently the townspeople even set their watches by it. They're like, Oh, 3am. Exactly. Boreas is
00:12:28
Speaker
is growing. And then when Boreas died, she said, Oh, my time is coming now too then. And I'll get to that in a second. I hope she fakes her own death. It's even better. Okay, so she's taking advantage of townspeople. Some people are getting, you know, a little mad about it. And they did try to
00:12:56
Speaker
bring charges against her, but it never really, it never really went through because nobody could really ever prove anything. And because the Salem Witch Trials were such a dark stain in New England that I think the local government wasn't really willing to persecute this
00:13:15
Speaker
now old woman for witchcraft. Wow, that's amazing. She really did say... Yeah. She really got away with it. Yeah. And then so there's a couple of things that people noted as curses and magic things that people say were because of Hannah Crana.
00:13:34
Speaker
So one, and this is probably the funniest to me, is that she went by this baker, this bakery and she was like, give me a pie or I'll curse you. And so there were big pies and small pies and the baker would only give her a small pie because it was for free. And she was like, why would you not give me the big pie? And he was like, because you're not paying for it, take the small pie.
00:13:58
Speaker
And she was like, Hmm, shouldn't have done that. And so she cursed him. And apparently, the results of this curse was that his pies were never as good again. They just lacked a little flavor.
00:14:14
Speaker
A gentle curse. Yes. Another time, there was a stream on her property and this guy was fishing at it. And she was like, you're not a lot of fish here. And he was like, yes, I am. And so she put a curse on him. And the results of that curse was that he did not catch a fish that day. Gentle, gentle curse. I love it. I know. Just an annoying little curse. Yeah, they're all just like annoyances. It's great.
00:14:43
Speaker
Okay, and then for the her big theatrical moment. So she dies. And before her death, she lived to 77. Nice, long, long life. But she said that after she dies, she wanted to be carried down to the cemetery in her coffin by foot. So she wanted men to carry her down. She would not be rolled. She did not want to be put in a wagon. She wanted to be ceremonially, ceremoniously carried down.
00:15:13
Speaker
And so when she died, it was sometime in the winter and it was there was snow everywhere and they were like, OK, no, this lady is dead now. We're not going to do this. They put her on this, you know, little cart thing. They try to start wheeling her down. The coffin keeps falling off. Oh, that's good. Over and over again, where finally they had to pick it up and carry it down the hill.
00:15:40
Speaker
And this, once again, who knows what's legend, who knows what's real, but apparently after they buried her, the townspeople went back to her house and found it engulfed in flames, which seals Hannah's
00:15:57
Speaker
reputation as a witch. You can visit her grave. Her gravestone is kind of in this really small, berry-worn-down graveyard, but people seem to keep her grave looking pretty good. And you can go visit that in Monrogan, Connecticut, if you want to. And what's funny is that, I guess, because of the time period, it says, you know, Hannah Crana, 1783, and that it has two different
00:16:26
Speaker
dates for her death, but I think it's because they just know she died sometime that winter and they don't know if it was before or after the new year. But yeah, that's Hannah Crana, maybe the sneakiest
00:16:41
Speaker
most self-sufficient genius of the 1800s.

Plans to Visit Monroe and Warren Museum

00:16:48
Speaker
But I loved everything about her. That's my new favorite story. And I think we now have to do a combo long weekend in Monroe, Connecticut, where we go to the Warren Museum and to her grave.
00:17:00
Speaker
I think we have to I'm trying I don't so the war museum I don't know if they're still running it or not because it was supposed to be left to I think either the son or the daughter sorry I forget but I don't think they actually like do tours anymore since they died but I don't know I'll try to look it up later well
00:17:22
Speaker
I would love to take a trip. We should still go. I know. I'm also like, should we like, that is such a good like patron, which of our podcast, right? Yes. I'm feeling very Hannah Crann today. So give me some pie where I will curse you. Good stuff. I love it. Amazing.

Shoutout to Anthropomantic Fiend

00:17:47
Speaker
Do you love horror?
00:17:48
Speaker
Then check out Anthropomantic Fiend on YouTube for a host of horror-related things. There you'll find movie reviews for familiar classics and forgotten gems, story readings, unboxing videos, music, and so much more. Anthro is here to satisfy your craving for the creepy.
00:18:18
Speaker
Okay, so for my story this week, I found this on TikTok, which is my new source of Sinister Sisters podcast ideas. And any source of joy. And any source of joy, legitimately. I told Felicia when we were in New York together, TikTok is the only social media that just consistently brings me only happiness. Yeah, absolutely. Me too.
00:18:44
Speaker
But this story I saw on her TikTok, what do you even call that? Handle? I guess so. I don't know. Is macabre happenings? So check it out. This is a crazy story that's basically about a deep hole in the middle of Washington that people

The Enigma of Mel's Hole

00:19:05
Speaker
believe to be either a portal to another dimension or perhaps a time machine of some kind. Oh, man. Washington State. Real wild.
00:19:14
Speaker
Yes. I feel like it's just dangerous to live there. I feel like you're either going to get murdered or abducted by aliens or something, something. Yes. Or, you know, famously falling in love with the vampire there. That's what I hear. Like Twilight. I mean, that's the only reason to move there. I am dying to visit Forks one day because they because of the fact that it's a town that's fully embraced just being from this movie and like everything's Twilight themed. Like that's our other long weekend. So funny. Oh, my God. Good.
00:19:43
Speaker
So this story began on February 21st, 1997, when a man calling himself Mel Walters appeared on a national late night radio show that was called Coast to Coast with Art Bell. And it's one of those classic radio shows that's like conspiracy theories and aliens and a lot of similar things like that. So it's a really wild show if you listen to some YouTube videos or, you know, watch some YouTube videos.
00:20:15
Speaker
It's a good time. This man calls in on the show and it's a long phone call that you can listen to on YouTube as well that is talking about this mysterious hole on his property that he claims is about nine miles west of Ellensburg, Washington.
00:20:35
Speaker
So basically in the middle of nowhere. But he claimed that the locals had been dumping their trash in there for years. And yes, and that the hole had supernatural and paranormal properties. He believed possibly a portal to another dimension. So he even claimed that a resident nearby had thrown his dead dog into the hole only for him to see the dog alive later.
00:21:04
Speaker
like totally fine and living. I just can't imagine the impulse to throw your dead dog down a mysterious deep hole.
00:21:19
Speaker
Maybe he knew it would make him like pet cemetery. Right. That's what I mean. That is what I'm led to believe by the story. So this man starts doing tests, right? His wife worked at Central Washington University. So he claimed he was doing all these tests very scientifically. You know, first first on his list was he lowered a weighted fishing line down the hole and he ended up using more than get ready.
00:21:47
Speaker
80,000 feet of fishing line. Okay, so my question is how many feet is a standard real fishing line? And then how many did he need? So I did do some math and it is 15 miles deep. No, 15 miles? It's just a wild story that I'm like, there is just simply no way that this man did anything like this.
00:22:18
Speaker
supposedly just lowered 15 miles deep of fishing line. Also, like, how long would that take him? That's many days of work, right? Here's what I picture. I'm sorry. Here's what I picture. He puts it down there and it hits the bottom, but he doesn't know it. And he just keeps letting it go. And it's just a big pile of fishing line sitting at the bottom of a 20-foot hole.
00:22:45
Speaker
That's exactly where my head went. I was like, how does he know that this isn't touching the bottom? But it says it wasn't touching the bottom. He also said that other locals had seen a black beam coming from the hole during the day, and other people claimed that portable radios that they held close to the hole's entrance
00:23:06
Speaker
would play programs and music from the past. Which again, it's like, was it just an oldies station? Oldies? Oh no. And he also said that any medals you held close to the nine foot hole would, or the nine foot hole opening, sorry, not the hole. The opening was nine feet. They would change into other medals or substances, which I think is interesting.
00:23:29
Speaker
So Art Bell, who's the expert of this conspiracy theory podcast, brings up the idea that there is a massive amount of naturally generated high voltage electricity deep in the earth. So maybe the bottom of the hole could be this natural occurring focal point.
00:23:52
Speaker
which led or I guess like even on the call they kind of talk about the idea of it being a portal or a time machine or something you know supernatural like that which would make sense because the other part of the hole that he discusses is that there isn't the sound of an echo like you can't like yell down it and hear an echo which again I don't really know if it was like a very deep hole if you would I guess you would I haven't yelled into a lot of holes
00:24:20
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. But I understand the idea of like the sound bouncing off something. Right, right. Yeah. So he said there was a lack of echoes. And then also, they were talking about, you know, that all these people had been putting trash in it for years, it had never filled up. And, you know, maybe that this
00:24:39
Speaker
If this was a portal or some kind of, you know, something at the bottom, that would explain like the soil falling in, maybe the dog, you know, getting a shock of electricity from that portal. Back to life. It's a Frankenstein dog. Frankenweenie. I love it. So it gets even wilder from here if you can believe it. So this man supposedly Mel.
00:25:06
Speaker
calls back two other times. And on the first call, he says, listen, Art, so right after I made the first phone call, federal agents had come onto his land with no explanation, blocking him from going to where the hole was.
00:25:24
Speaker
So he lived close to the Yak Training Center, which is a military base. So he thought that maybe the hole was dangerous or related to some kind of national security issue or something like that.

Conspiracies and Government Involvement?

00:25:38
Speaker
So the government said, you can't come anywhere near this hole.
00:25:43
Speaker
And they also told him it was supposedly the location of a crashed aircraft. And he said, I'm still going to come try to get to the hole. And they said, well, if you try to get onto this part of your property, we are going to plant drugs.
00:26:00
Speaker
in your house and bust you in a drug raid. So it's really crazy just listening to this man tell the story on the show. So instead they forced him, so he, you know, obviously he was like, well, I'm not doing that. I'm not gonna go to jail for having drugs. So these federal agents forced him to lease the land to the government for $250,000 a month
00:26:30
Speaker
which honestly is a great chunk of change. I'm like, I would do almost anything for $250,000 a month. Absolutely. I would sell my soul. Right? I think I would too.
00:26:43
Speaker
So they supposedly gave him $250,000 a month and these lease payments were enough that he decided to up and move to Australia to help rescue wombats. I wish I was making any of it. I mean, it's probably all made up, but what a hilarious man.
00:27:00
Speaker
So they paid him to not talk about the hole again. He also supposedly tipped them off to a second bottomless hole in Nevada. So he went to save some wombats. And when he came back to his property nine months later, the government informed him that his property was now being seized so he could no longer live there. So he got onto a bus
00:27:28
Speaker
to go somewhere, and he got into a fight on the bus, the police got involved, said they'd escort him home in their van, and then he didn't remember anything after that. When he woke up, it's really crazy, when he woke up, he was in an alley in San Francisco with no teeth, and the money had all been removed from his bank account. Wait.
00:27:55
Speaker
No teeth? No teeth, supposedly. I didn't actually get a chance to listen to this call in. And I'm just fascinated if he sounds different because he doesn't have teeth. I guess maybe he got the burning questions. This reminds me, I mean, not at all. But remember that guy that like went missing in Canada and they found him in like California and he was like, I don't know how I got here. No, but that's crazy. Was that really? It was like a couple of years ago. I'm going to I'll do it for a story.
00:28:25
Speaker
I love that. But it's yeah, yeah, just like the idea of like lost time. And everyone was like, how did you get over the border? And he's like, I don't know. I mean, there's yeah, there's a lot of weirdness. The story I'll keep going. And then I don't know. We'll get into a little bit of like what was real and what wasn't seemingly. But there also is this satellite photo that was taken of where Mel's property supposedly was.
00:28:52
Speaker
And it is like the area that he says he lived is completely blotted out with a big white square so people you know all the conspiracy theories are like loving that little little bit of evidence.

Local Myths and Skepticism

00:29:05
Speaker
But after this phone call I mean it did create a fair amount of interest so
00:29:11
Speaker
like some local news reporters later found that they couldn't find record of anyone named Mel Walters, or at least, you know, someone that fits the description of his wife working at CWU or owning rural property or anything like that. So this man at least had, you know, called in with a fake name, seemingly. Oh, also most recently Seattle's Como TV station,
00:29:38
Speaker
ended up broadcasting a news segment on February 7th that included comments from Red Elk who was actually an intertribal medicine man living in the area who claims that his father showed him the hole in 1961 and claims the same thing, that it was totally bottomless. So investigators asked him to lead them to the hole and he couldn't remember where it was and couldn't find it.
00:30:08
Speaker
I don't know if it's like a little bit of like people kind of jumping on board and trying to, you know, get in on this, but Mel and others who, you know, anyone who's claimed to have found the hole has never revealed the location publicly. But kind of the cool urban legend part is that it's known to be on Manastash Ridge.
00:30:33
Speaker
Manastash, I'm not sure. And that's located, as I said, like nine to 10 miles southwesterly of Ellensburg. So you can hike this trail and look for the hole. That's kind of a fun legend that people in Washington are still convinced it exists and spend a lot of time and energy trying to find it. So it is this kind of weird urban legend where if you go on a hike in this area, you got to look for the hole.
00:31:03
Speaker
Oh, that's fun. Yeah, I kind of like that. So some other scientists that got involved. So Jack Powell, who's a geologist for the Department of Natural Resources, he actually grew up in Ellensburg and heard the segment of the show and actually thought he knew where the hole was. So he knew of an old gold mine shaft.
00:31:25
Speaker
that actually went down on an angle, but it was actually in northwest of Ellensburg. So he had played around there when he was a kid, and it ended up the actual mine I think was like around 90 feet, but it may have been up to 300 feet deep when it was an active mine. So people have thought that that could possibly be
00:31:50
Speaker
what this man was talking about. Although as I said it was in a different location than he had said so not really sure. And then just for fun I looked into a little bit some other deep holes and apparently the deepest shaft in the world that's ever been was 12,672 feet deep
00:32:12
Speaker
So pretty far off from our friend who said it was 80,000. I was like, was I three miles? Yeah, something like that. If it was, yeah, I'm trying to, I can't do that math. I know. And then the deepest. Someone write in, tell us how many miles.
00:32:32
Speaker
But the deepest known cavern was 7,188 feet, so nothing is quite that deep except, of course, the Russians actually have drilled the deepest borehole, which is just like a smaller circumference man-made, and that went down 40,230 feet.
00:32:56
Speaker
Yes, in 1989 too. I wonder what that was for, like oil or something. Right? And then I'm also like, did we just give up on that? Was that like the one time someone's dug that deep? It's like, we've gone far enough. We don't need to know any further. 40,000 feet's as good as we can do. So actually going back to Jack Powell, that geologist, he actually was like angry about this story as he was listening because he was saying, obviously it's not
00:33:25
Speaker
geologically or physically possible for a hole to be that deep, it would collapse into itself under the pressure and heat. So he didn't believe that this was a real hole. But a member of a Seattle area discussion group actually reached out to Jack Powell in 2001. And the caller was part of this online chat club that was studying the hole and hoping to get a scientist's opinion, get a geologist's opinion.
00:33:55
Speaker
So they actually came to visit him and he kind of gave his standard lecture, kind of a scientific overview of the geology of the county and some specifics about the Manistash Ridge that I mentioned. And he actually even took them to the old mine shaft that was inspiration for the whole, he thinks.
00:34:15
Speaker
And the group just kind of refused to take no for an answer. And they wouldn't let go of the possibility that this whole existed. They believed it to be a portal to another dimension, the whole thing. But what I love is that this group later became the Seattle Paranormal Society. So it seems like they are open to the idea of spooky things like this. But that's pretty much it on Mel's hole.
00:34:43
Speaker
And you can definitely as I said, you can listen to his calls into the radio show.
00:34:47
Speaker
they exist, you can also go to that ridge and try to see if you can find the hole. But I think mostly, any kind of conspiracy theory stuff always makes me a little eye-rolly. It kind of feels sometimes to me like not that different than, I don't know, I don't want to get into anything too much, but like how people talk about the COVID vaccine, where it's just like, I really think if you want to believe something, you're going to find the evidence.
00:35:15
Speaker
Yeah, information to back up your belief. And if you just shut down everything else, then, you know, it I don't know, it's hard to have a discussion. Yeah, I guess what's hard about this is like, he did all these experiments on this hole, but no one else can find the hole. Right. I don't know.
00:35:37
Speaker
I was thinking about how there are so many, I mean, obviously, not obviously, but I've mentioned before how I've been listening to all these podcasts that are like kind of like therapy or, you know, people giving advice. I've been listening to Anna Ferris' like giving relationship advice podcast. And I'm like, people can literally say anything. We don't know that anything's true. Like we're just going off of, you know, like it's just such an interesting concept to have someone call into a show.
00:36:03
Speaker
and be able to tell their story and share this information. And it's like no one does the extra step of investigating who these people are or what they're talking about is where it's like, it's just like weird to me that nobody podcasts. Well, that's true too.
00:36:20
Speaker
Oh, my God. That's really good. But yeah, I just think it's such a like there. And there were so many shows like that, TV shows where people called in and like, you know, spoke on the phone and you could hear it, but you never know who that person is or what they look like or what's real.
00:36:39
Speaker
So anyway. That's true. I like conspiracy. Right? I would love if there was in fact a portal to another dimension that was just through a giant hole in Washington. Maybe that's how that guy got from Canada, California. He went in there. I'll let you know in a couple of weeks. I love it.
00:37:02
Speaker
Well, thank you all for listening. We had two very different stories today, but now I guess we do everything in the name of Hannah Crana. That's right. When in doubt, be more like Hannah Crana. All right. We hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Bye. Do you have a podcast, short film event, or any creative project to promote? We would love to plug your work in our podcast for free.
00:37:30
Speaker
Please DM us on Instagram or email sinister sisters podcast 666 at gmail.com and see if you end up on next week's episode. Please send us the title log line and commercial copy. That's ideally less than 50 words. Thanks. Bye.