The Mystery Hole

We have had a life full of adventures! Even though we have traveled extensively, some of our favorite memories are not of exotic sites, but local attractions made even more special by the local folks. Such is the case of The Mystery Hole. One spring in the mid 1990’s, my wife and I and our special friend, Bea Brown, presented an animal demonstration for the 4-H camp in Fayette County. We showed a wide variety of living reptiles to the campers. Snakes (including rattlesnakes and copperheads), lizards, turtles, and even an alligator was transported in our van. On our way home we passed The Mystery Hole, which is located on Route 60 about two minutes from Hawks Nest State Park in Anstead, WV.

The tiny Mystery Hole roadside gift shop covered with signs encouraging you to come in has a gorilla mounted on top and an original VW bug smashed into its side. Don Wilson, the owner, immediately greeted us and gave us the “official tour”. (For an admission of one dollar each – what a bargain!) On the side of the gift shop, stairs led down into The Mystery Hole. We entered a narrow hallway and were greeting by a series of manikins that represented the annual Miss New River winners of the past.

Mr. Wilson’s humor was great- a combination of Appalachian lore and definitely “hillbilly” taste. The tour led us through hallways lined with fun house mirrors, weird posters and finally the main attraction. We entered a tilted gravity room that made one believe that berserk gravity tricks in this room were indeed real. Bea loved it! Balls rolled uphill and, as we sat on what appeared to be a normal bench, we soon discovered that we could not get up without help! How fun! The tour ended, of course, in the gift shop area. The gift shop was what we could easily describe as ultimate trashy. We bided Mr. Wilson goodbye and knew in our hearts that we has indeed a special adventure.

Our friends gave us a print of The Mystery Hole for Christmas one year. It is now framed and graces our entrance room. This is a copy of an original painting by West Virginia artist David Riffle. Here is a shot of our proud possession.


Postscript - The Mystery Hole was first opened in 1972 by Donald Wilson and was a popular tourist attraction in the Mountain State until Mr. Wilson's untimely and mysterious death in the late 1990s. The hole was promptly closed, its fate seemingly sealed along with its original proprietor. Then at the turn of the Millennium, a couple purchased and upgraded The Mystery Hole. Since then business has increasingly become better since the Hole's previous heyday in the 1970s and '80s. The link to the The Mystery Hole’s web site is http://www.mysteryhole.com/pages/415159/index.htm