Part 01Before you listen

1. Pick one call. Note the date and the host.
2. Listen for yes, and: the host accepts what the caller says as true and builds on it. That is improv, and it keeps a caller talking.
3. Listen for three claims. Write each in one plain sentence.

Part 02Sort the three claims

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it? How?	Truth or inversion?
1.
2.
3.

Part 03Then ask

• If you took out the claim that sounds impossible, would the other two still stand on their own?
• Which claim, if repeated by itself, would make you stop taking the caller seriously?
• What message is left if you drop the messenger?
• Which parts could you check today, and which only the caller could confirm?

Part 04A worked example

1RealMel’s Hole, the first call

Mel Waters, February 21, 1997, Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1. Dogs avoid the spot on his land.	Ordinary, rural.	Not by a listener.	Sounds true
2. The government bought the land and fenced it off.	Official-sounding.	Property records could settle it. Reporters found no record of the caller owning land in that county.	Sounds true
3. A dead dog thrown into the hole came back alive.	Extraordinary.	No.	The inversion

What this shows, as I read it: the third claim lets anyone dismiss the whole call, while the first two have already been said out loud. That is my reading of the structure. The hole is widely regarded as a hoax, and I am not saying any of it happened.

Part 05More worked examples

2Realthe fishing line

The same case, a different thread. Mel Waters, in his 1997 appearances with Art Bell, said the hole was on rural property about nine miles west of Ellensburg, Washington, and that he lowered 80,000 feet of fishing line with a weight on it and never reached the bottom.

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1. A rural property near a small Washington town.	Ordinary.	Yes. Property records. Local reporters found no record of anyone by that name there.	Sounds true
2. He measured it by lowering a weighted fishing line.	Ordinary, a hobbyist’s method.	Yes. Anyone can try a weighted line.	Sounds true
3. 80,000 feet of line never reached the bottom.	Extraordinary.	A geologist said the Earth’s heat would have snapped the line long before that depth.	The inversion

What this shows, as I read it: two details anyone could picture, then one number too big to test. The outcome of an actual check is on record. A state geologist called the hole geologically impossible, and a 2002 expedition of about thirty people did not find it. The structure is the point, not the story.

3Inventedthe ham radio operator

“I have held a license for forty years. Every spring, on the same frequency, I pick up a faint tone that repeats every eleven minutes. The club says the tone comes from a utility company testing its equipment. And I am sure the tone stops whenever my wife walks into the room.”

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1. A faint tone repeats every eleven minutes.	Ordinary, a hobbyist’s detail.	Yes. Another operator could listen.	Sounds true
2. A utility company is testing equipment.	Official-sounding.	Yes. Ask the utility.	Sounds true
3. The tone stops when his wife walks in.	Extraordinary.	Not in a way that proves anything.	The inversion

4Inventedthe fishing guide

“I have guided on the same lake for thirty years. The fish stop biting an hour before every storm, and I know the lake better than anyone. One of the rangers told me the state restocked the lake without telling the guides. Last August a heron stood on the water and looked at me for ten minutes without moving, and then it told me my own name.”

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1. The fish stop biting before storms.	Ordinary, a guide’s lore.	Partly. Anglers have reported this for years.	Sounds true
2. The state restocked the lake without telling guides.	Official-sounding.	Yes. State stocking records are public.	Sounds true
3. A heron stood on the water and said his name.	Extraordinary.	No.	The inversion

5Inventedthe mail carrier

“I carried the mail on one rural route for twenty-six years. A house at the end of the road never got a single bill or catalog. The postmaster said the owner had a private box in town. And every night at nine, the porch light blinked once for every year I had worked there.”

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1. The house never got a bill or catalog.	Ordinary, a carrier’s observation.	Only by someone on the route.	Sounds true
2. The owner had a private box in town.	Official-sounding.	Yes. Postal records would show a box rental.	Sounds true
3. The porch light blinked once for each year he worked.	Extraordinary.	No.	The inversion

6Different showThe War of the Worlds, 1938

Not a call-in show, and announced as a play. On October 30, 1938, CBS aired Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre on the Air adaptation, which was announced as fiction four times during the broadcast. I include it because the structure is the same, and because the record is public.

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1. A dance orchestra is playing, and news bulletins interrupt it.	Ordinary. It copies a format listeners knew.	Yes. The recording and script survive.	Sounds true
2. A Princeton professor and a Secretary of the Interior speak about it.	Official-sounding.	Yes. They were characters in the play.	Sounds true
3. Martians land at Grovers Mill, New Jersey.	Extraordinary.	No.	The inversion

What this shows, as I read it: ordinary format, official voices, one impossible thing. Historians generally agree the panic was much smaller than the 1938 newspapers reported, so the lesson is how credible the shape of a story can feel, not that everyone was fooled.

Part 06When the pattern also fits a hoax

7Realthe Cottingley Fairies, 1917 to 1983

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1. Two cousins, aged 16 and 9, took photographs in a garden in Cottingley, West Yorkshire, in 1917.	Ordinary.	Yes. The photographs survive.	Sounds true
2. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used the photographs to illustrate an article in The Strand Magazine, December 1920.	Official-sounding.	Yes. The magazine is in archives.	Sounds true
3. The photographs show fairies.	Extraordinary.	Not directly.	The inversion

What was established: in a 1983 magazine article the cousins admitted the photographs were faked. Elsie had copied figures from Princess Mary’s Gift Book, cut them out, and held them up with hatpins. Both said they had really seen fairies, and Frances insisted the fifth photograph was genuine. So the sorting shows how a story is built, not whether it is true.

8RealAlien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction, 1995 to 2006

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1. Grainy black-and-white film of a medical examination room.	Ordinary, a familiar look.	Yes. The film is public.	Sounds true
2. It was released as footage connected to the military and the Roswell incident.	Official-sounding.	Not by a viewer.	Sounds true
3. The film shows an alien body.	Extraordinary.	No.	The inversion

What was established: Fox aired it on August 28, 1995, hosted by Jonathan Frakes, and showed it twice more to higher ratings. On April 4, 2006, on Sky’s Eamonn Investigates, the man who released it, Ray Santilli, and Gary Shoefield admitted they had created the footage. Santilli still said it was inspired by real footage that had been lost. I cannot check that part, and I am not saying it is true.

Part 07When the explanation is the thing to sort

Sometimes the extraordinary claim is not the first one. It can be an official explanation that changes over time. These two are documented in public records, and I draw no conclusion from them. They show what to watch for.

9Real“swamp gas,” Michigan, March 1966

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1. About two days of mass sightings were reported near Dexter, Michigan, in late March 1966.	Ordinary, a local news event.	Yes. Press coverage survives.	Sounds true
2. J. Allen Hynek, an Air Force consultant, offered a provisional idea that a few of about 100 witnesses had mistaken swamp gas for something more spectacular.	Official-sounding, and checkable in the record.	Yes.	Sounds true
3. “Swamp gas” was repeated in the press as the answer to UFO reports in general.	The extraordinary stretch.	Yes. Hynek said it applied to only part of the Michigan reports.	The inversion the explanation became the thing ridiculed.

What this shows, as I read it: a careful, partial explanation can be flattened into a joke, and the joke can outlast the nuance. His qualifications were largely overlooked, and the phrase drew national derision.

10RealRoswell, 1947 to 1997

What was said	Kind of statement	Can you check it?	Order
July 8, 1947: the Roswell Army Air Field press office said the military had recovered a “flying disc.”	Official statement.	Yes. The release is in the record.	Claim 1.
Soon after, officers at a press conference identified the material as a weather balloon.	Official statement.	Yes. Newspapers reported it.	Claim 2.
1994: an Air Force report said the object was a Project Mogul balloon device, a classified program that monitored nuclear tests, and said the weather balloon story had been a cover.	Official statement.	Yes. The report is public.	Claim 3.
1997: an Air Force report attributed accounts of bodies to distorted memories of military crashes and to test dummies.	Official statement.	Yes. The report is public.	Claim 4.

All four are checkable. What is worth noticing is that the explanation changed over fifty years. I am not saying why, and I am not saying anything beyond what the reports say.

Part 08All the worked examples side by side

Look at the last column. In each call, the inversion gives the listener the easiest thing to talk about, and the two checkable details quietly stop being the story. That is my reading, and you can test it on any call you hear.

Part 09Practice calls

These three callers are invented for practice. They are not real people, and none of this happened. Sort each call before you open the answer key. Then try the two exercises below them.

Practice call Athe night driver

“I drive nights for a produce company. Past a rest stop near the state line, the radio static changes pitch every time I pass the same mile marker. A man I used to work with says the county repaved that stretch twice in one year for no reason. And last month a deer stood perfectly still in the road and spoke to me in my late father’s voice.”

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1.
2.
3.

Answer key

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1. The radio static changes at one mile marker.	Ordinary, a driver’s detail.	Not by a listener.	Sounds true
2. The county repaved the same stretch twice in a year.	Official-sounding.	Yes. County road records would show it.	Sounds true
3. A deer spoke in his father’s voice.	Extraordinary.	No.	The inversion

Take out the deer and the call is a small, checkable story about a road. Keep the deer and anyone can dismiss all of it.

Practice call Bthe retired nurse

“I worked thirty years at a regional hospital. Every winter a dark van parked behind the loading dock on the same Tuesday. The charge nurse said it was a medical supplier, and I never saw that supplier’s name on an invoice I handled. Last week my neighbor’s cat, which died in 2019, walked back in through my kitchen window.”

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1.
2.
3.

Answer key

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1. A dark van parked behind the dock every winter on a Tuesday.	Ordinary, a shift worker’s detail.	Only by someone who was there.	Sounds true
2. The supplier never appeared on an invoice she handled.	Official-sounding.	Only with the hospital’s records.	Sounds true
3. A cat that died in 2019 came back.	Extraordinary.	No.	The inversion

The first two claims are small enough that no one would argue with them. The third is the one a skeptic repeats at dinner.

Practice call Cthe warehouse worker

“I did inventory at a warehouse outside a desert town for two summers. The badge colors changed twice while I was there. They paid in cash on Fridays. And I believe the owner is not one person but three brothers who share one face.”

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1.
2.
3.

Answer key

Claim	Ordinary or extraordinary?	Can you check it?	Truth or inversion?
1. Badge colors changed twice in two summers.	Ordinary.	Only by former coworkers.	Sounds true
2. Pay was in cash on Fridays.	Ordinary, a little unusual.	Not by a listener.	Sounds true
3. The owner is three brothers who share one face.	Extraordinary.	No.	The inversion

Notice that nothing in the first two claims can be confirmed from the radio either. That is the point of the next section.

Part 10Exercise 1: yes, and

For each practice call, write the host’s next line the way an improv partner would, accepting the premise and adding to it. For example: “Yes, and what did the voice say?” Notice that this keeps the caller talking and adds nothing you can check.

Part 11Exercise 2: the question nobody asks

Now write the follow-up a fact-checker would ask for each call. For example: “Which county, which year, and where is the record?” Coast to Coast AM is a show and nothing on it is vetted. That means a sincere caller and an invented one sound exactly alike, and the only way to tell them apart is the question the format does not ask.

Part 12Listening log

Keep five calls of your own.

Date and host	Claim 1	Claim 2	Claim 3	Which is the inversion, and why?

Part 13Cautions

• This sorts the shape of what is said, not whether it is true. Many callers are sincere, and some are not.
• Do not use it to judge a real person. It is a listening exercise.
• If a call involves someone in danger, stop the exercise and make sure they get help.

Art Bell died in 2018. I do not speak for him, for George Noory or for any caller, and none has endorsed this site. Read the FAQ for how I use this idea, and the encyclopedia article on Mel’s Hole for the record.