According to a W W McCormick of Abilene (Texas, USA), his grandfather Atlas Almon Mathis had worked in a coal mine at Heavener (Oklahoma, USA), where a stone block wall was found in 1928. The published account states that the discovery was made in Room 24 of Mine number 5, two miles north of the town, said to have been some two miles deep. On the day following blasting in this room, a number of cubic blocks of ‘concrete’ measuring about 305 mm (12 inches) square were found. Their six faces were all polished smooth to the point that they gave mirror-quality reflections; when broken, they proved to be filled with gravelly concrete. The room is supposed to have collapsed before any further work could be done on shoring it up. The collapse revealed an entire wall made from the same type of blocks and a similar wall was exposed some 91 to 137 m (100 to 150 yards) farther into the mine. The source claims that as soon as it learned about the discoveries, the mine company immediately ordered the workers from the shaft and forbade them to talk about what they had found. Mathis also claimed to have spoken to miners at Wilburton who had found a solid block of barrel shaped silver, with the imprints of individual staves still visible in it.
It is difficult to deal with this type of personal testimony. We don’t know who W W McCormick is or was, and there are a lot of McCormicks in Abilene: the best known is perhaps Wayne McCormick, a television newsreader. As for Atlas Mathis, the only trace of anyone by this name is in connection with this story: no records of birth, marriage or death, which is very suspicious. One blogger, White Rabbit (from Missouri, USA), claims to have spoken to a grandson who was raised by Mathis (the post, hosted at Underground Ozarks’s forum, which is moderated by White Rabbit, was taken down some time after this page was first published in July 2007), but claims of this sort are not unusual in the blogosphere and must be treated with scepticism. The story, which was first reported by Brad Steiger in Worlds before Our Own, has every appearance of a hoax. In the age of the Internet, where checking the circumstantial details of these stories has become so much easier than it once was, those details, like the alleged Room 24, begin to crumble under a lack of evidence.
Why does the story crumble? Is it solely due to the lack of evidence? Or is there counter-evidence proving the story is false? That’s the part I’m interested in, its very easy it one organized group wanted to, to erase this discovery from the history books, thus your lack of evidence.
This story rings truth to me and I don’t think you should dismiss it just because your google search for corroborating evidence turned up nothing. Yes its easy to get information on just about anything online these days, but its rarely very solid information, I’ve seen this over and over again, for the good info, you still have to get off the couch and get to a library, or open a book or two.
Yes, it’s the lack of evidence that causes the story to crumble. And you have the problem that it’s impossible to prove a negative: it’s the claim about the wall that requires evidence (proof is something that can only be found in abstractions such as maths).
The problem is that we are reliant on one single source – the Brad Steiger book to which I refer – and that source cites only the personal testimony of a man who alleged that his grandfather was present at the discovery. It’s not a good chain of evidence and I don’t follow your reasoning that because the story “rings true” to you, it should not be dismissed.
Why do you think that I rely on Google for my information? I don’t; it helps in many ways (particularly in speeding up research), but it’s “rarely very solid information”, as you correctly point out. Real research usually takes place away from the computer screen.
Lack of evidence doesn’t make a story crumble.
There was lack of evidence for many many things over the years that have since turned out to be true. At the time of the original reports, iran contra, watergate, the rediscovery of the cealocanthe, the greek clock, Silkwood, etc. etc. ad nauseum there are hundreds of these, the original reporters were laughed and and called nut jobs. Lack of evidence means nothing when powerful forces can cover things up, governments and big corporations do it everyday.
So the story does NOT crumble.
There are simply rumors of an underground wall, and there is some evidence, albiet very little, that it may be a fact. It warrants further investigation. It should be no trouble to find this mine. Perhaps interested party will drill a few test holes.
Lack of evidence doesn’t exactly help the case for its existence, either. Stories like this, that appear in poorly referenced sources, that are effectively unattributable, that rely on the reporting of second-hand anecdotes, are hardly good evidence. What would be the point of sinking expensive boreholes to find out whether or not the report has and validity? How many boreholes would it take? How much would it all cost?
There is ONE rumour, reported in a “friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend” manner that doesn’t inspire confidence.