Paranormal Sites of Kansas: The Big Well & Meteorite

by JeremyT

It is no coincidence that the world’s largest hand-dug well and one of the world’s largest pallasite meteorites are both found in Greensburg, Kansas. And it is no coincidence that a recent tornado flattened the prairie town and everything within it.

The official stories of these two artifacts do not intertwine. But a town of the size of Greensburg, Kansas had no need for a 109 foot deep, 32 foot wide well. The hole’s use as a well is an old cover-up, as is the story of a Hutchison man locating the meteorite in the 1900s with a primitive metal detector.

Local stories tell that the simple farmers and ranchers of Greensburg found themselves compelled to dig the well for no reason that any could speak of in the spring of 1887. They dug for days on end, in shifts, each man and woman confused as the other. Only the children were spared from the compulsion. After 90 feet, they discovered the stone, which weighed over 1,000 pounds. My source, the great-grandaughter of one of the well’s architects, claims, that as soon as the townspeople touched the stone, it floated into the air like a balloon, and the diggers were able to gently guide it up the shaft and into the light of the moon. Once it arrived at the surface, its weight and mass returned just as the compulsion to dig disappeared.

The meteorite remained undisturbed, and the real story of its discovery mostly forgotten, until 2006, when the largest tornado to strike Kansas in 30 years touched down within Greensburg, destroying thousands of homes. The town is only just beginning to rebuild. And while you can still see a meteorite on display at the Big Well, it is not the meteorite from before. Local officials have replaced it with a fake made from plaster; after the twister, the original meteorite was never found.

Hunting for Ernest Hemingway in Kudu Heaven

by Luc Reid

I had been up more than an hour, drinking coffee, when Thorn came out of his tent to join me.

“Coffee?” I said, pointing a hoof.

“Wonderful,” said Thorn, and took a cup. Thorn was a springbok, hardly half my size, but he was a good friend, and a damned good hunter.

“Ready for it?” said Thorn. “Maybe you’ll have better luck today.”

“Maybe.”

We set out from camp toward the water hole we’d watched for three days. We hadn’t seen anything but a few dog teasers, but I didn’t care. Crouching in the grass, the dust cool against my legs, the sky the same blank blue as a robin’s egg, I was happy. It was good to be a kudu, hunting, in Kudu Heaven.

There was nothing that morning. It was dry and still, and very hot. The trees came close to the edge of the water hole, shading it, and it was hard to see from where we sat downwind. We didn’t see anything until a few minutes before sunset. It was nearly too dark to shoot already.

“There!” Thorn whispered. “By god, there!”

An Ernest Hemingway had come out of the high grasses, an old bull, heavy, powerful, wearing a pair of Bermuda shorts.

“Look at that bastard,” Thorn said. “Isn’t he magnificent?”

I lined Hemingway up with my Winchester special, with its hoof-sized trigger. He crouched by the water, alert, confident. Heat rippled the air between us. Then he lifted his head, and he reared. He’d seen my horns. He bolted for the trees.

I shut away my excitement and tracked ahead of him with the Winchester. When I had the shot, I squeezed. Hemingway jumped at the edge of the trees and disappeared into them.

“Good shot! Marvelous!” said Thorn, leaping out over the grass on all fours. I followed him at a trot. “Do you think you killed him?”

“I don’t know if I hit him.”

“I’m sure you hit him.”

“I don’t think so.”

He was there when we reached the edge of the wood, collapsed in the brush. My shot had gone through his lung and heart. His massive head was turned to the side, staring at an anthill with glassy eyes. Thorn was delighted. Hemingway looked fierce even dead.

He was mine, dead like that. But he’d been mine since I lined him up in my sights. If I’d let him live, he would have been mine and alive, still roaming. Maybe that’s what hunters were bad at: letting things live.

“God, what a kill!” said Thorn. “Don’t you admire these things?”

“No,” I said.

“You don’t?”

“No. Not anymore.”