Sometimes They Do Come Back

Mark Clayton discovered the sinkhole on his grandfather's farm when he was fourteen years old. It was just an old hole in the ground, about thirty feet wide and surrounded by a grove of Locust trees. It was full of water and was sometimes the host to young neighborhood boys who dared to go swimming there in the heat of the summertime. There was an old ancient barbwire fence around the place to keep the cattle and horses from falling into the abyss. Since it was a couple of miles from the cliff above the river, the family and just about everyone else figured that it was connected to the river in some way. It was so far away from his home that Mark rarely visited it, until that summer of 1931.

What was amazing about this sinkhole was the fact that it was filled with the clearest water that anyone in those parts had ever seen. And furthermore, on the night of the first full moon of the year, the water would start to twirl around about midnight. And before an hour had passed, you could hear the sound of the whirlpool. It sounded a lot like the rushing wind, or perhaps, a tornado. Mark had only experienced this phenomenon once in his entire life. That one time had been enough.

Nobody knew just why this occurrence happened when it did, or what caused it. Some speculated that the gravitational pull of the moon created a suction of some kind that caused the water to become the whirlpool. Some old farmers thought the river created the whirlpool by means of underground caves that were connected to the pond.

Whatever the cause, the effect was one of pure awe. Of course, there were other tales attached to the whirlpool. One such tale that had been told by Indians who lived in the area hundreds of years ago, told of warriors being sucked down into the pit, never to be seen again. The Native Americans believed that the pit opened up into another world. Some of the local old timer's said that it came out in China. Most local residents dismissed these insinuations as pure "idiocy" and ignored those who even dared to suggest such a thing.

As a very young boy, Mark had listened intently to his grandfather recount the stories as his father had told them to him. His grandfather had said, somewhat sarcastically, that it was just another way to get to Hell. Mark had been so frightened by the stories that he believed him.

The more Mark had researched the history of the hole in the ground, the more curious he became over the years. Since the hole was on private property, most knowledge of it had been contained in the local area and even some of the people that had more recently moved there didn't know about it. This made it hard to find out much, so Mark began talking to the old farmers and others that had lived in the area in days gone past. One ancient report, attributed to the Mound Builders, said the hole was created when a glowing, silver stone fell from the sky and knocked a hole through the entire earth. It was a legend in the time of these ancient people, so apparently it happened more than 10,000 years ago. One fact seemed to be apparent; whatever went in never came out.

On that hot, sunny afternoon in 1931, the whirlpool looked just like any other farm pond in Central Kentucky.