In a story reminiscent of the famed ‘Mel’s hole,’ news from Arkansas of a hot mystery..

Dateline MIDWAY ARKANSAS:

Flames as high as 8 to 9 feet were shooting from a hole in the ground when a fire chief got to the scene, he told the Springfield News-Leader.

“It burned that way for 30 to 45 minutes before it went out,” fire chief Donald Tucker told the newspaper.

The hole is the size of a volleyball and located just off Highway 5 South in Midway, Arkansas, KY3 reported. That’s a town of about 1,000 people in the northern-most part of the state.

Once the fire burned out, Tucker told the News-Leader that he took a temperature reading — it was 780 degrees inside, he said. The hole was about 3 and a half feet deep..

“But what caused it? I have no idea,” Tucker, chief of the town’s Volunteer Fire Protection District, told the paper. “There’s no gas lines nearby and there was no smell of natural gas.”
He isn’t the only official who has no idea what could have caused a burning hole in the ground.
“I can’t think of any geologic situation that would allow that to happen. Not in this area,” Ty Johnson with the Arkansas Geological Survey told KY3. “There’s not any fossil fuels, or natural gas or petroleum that occurs in the area.”
Geologists said they don’t think it was a lighting strike, according to the TV station.
And Jim Sierzchula, director of Baxter County’s Office of Emergency Management, told the News-Leader that the cause is still a mystery.
“At this time we don’t have a clue what it is,” he told the newspaper. He thinks it looks like an “existing hole,” and he said it smelt like burnt plastic when he got there.

Here is one of the HORROR REPORT’S favorite YouTubers showcasing some local reporting on the bizarre hole with no explanation:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDGspJcxVxs]

There is another part of this mystery to consider. While experts state that there was no meteorite, no gas lines, no construction, no booms of any kind, a little more digging into the hole (no pun intended) is necessary before ruling all of that out..

The Baxter Bulletin from Arkansas actually reported booms around August 27 2018 in Midway.

This is the report from the local paper: 

A loud explosion was heard shortly after 2:30 p.m. on Monday. Residents across the Twin Lakes Area reported hearing the noise.
Local law enforcement officials have reported receiving numerous calls about the noise. One local law enforcement official said people in Fulton County reported hearing the noise as well.
Social media sites had people reporting they heard the noise in places such as Melbourne, Calico Rock, Norfork, Mountain Home, Marion County and rural Baxter County.

And in the early part of the summer of 2018, massive booms were being heard and felt in various parts of Arkansas and adjoining states as illustrated by this news article:

A boom so strong it shook ceiling tiles in the West Plains area was heard and felt over much of the Ozarks shortly after noon. It may have been a meteor exploding high in the atmosphere. At least that’s a working theory at the National Weather Service in Springfield, which received several calls about the 12:15 p.m. event. “We first realized it when we got a call from the Little Rock office that they were getting all these reports from the Mountain Home area about a very loud, shaking boom,” said Mike Griffin, meteorologist at the Springfield NWS office. “We talked to the Howell County dispatch center and they were taking a tremendous amount of calls, powerful enough it shook ceiling tiles.” Griffin said he had seen reports on social media of people hearing and feeling the boom in Bolivar, West Plains and Houston, Missouri, as well as Mountain Home, Arkansas, Gainesville, Bakersfield and Salem.

Did these loud noises and explosions with earth shaking but not quaking have anything to do with this bizarre hole that shot flames from within the Earth appearing? A hole that defies all logic and expertise..? A hole that has no explanation from leading experts in fields of study who would be able to give scientific and level-headed analysis?

AT this point the only conclusion we have is that this is a mystery without a conclusion. Period.

And while this may not have any direct correlation, it’s certainly worth noting and considering:

A thermal spring near Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park has erupted for the fourth time in the last 60 years, a park official said Thursday.

Ear Spring on Yellowstone’s Geyser Hill went from being dormant on Saturday to spewing steam and water between 20 and 30 feet (6 and 9 meters) high, a height not recorded since 1957, said park spokesman Neal Herbert. It has since continued to erupt at a near-constant height of about 2 feet (0.6 meters), he said.