CASE FILE 002-A – SALT HOLLOW, PART 1: THE WATER REMEMBERS

There’s a silence that settles over a forgotten town; thick, permanent, soaked into the wood and stone like mildew. Salt Hollow doesn’t echo. It absorbs.

This report was never meant to surface. The town had already been condemned, the paperwork lost to fire, flood, or bureaucratic burial. And yet… the whispers persisted. Not metaphorical whispers. Real ones. Captured on analog tape. Heard by hikers. Described in identical phrases by people who never met. Welcome to Salt Hollow... Just don’t listen too closely.

📍 GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION:

Salt Hollow was a mining and rail town founded in 1887 in eastern Utah, nestled in a dry basin surrounded by red canyon walls and thick salt deposits. Once a key junction for transport shipments heading south, it faded from maps entirely by the early 1930s. No official records exist regarding its disincorporation. Population at peak: approx. 300. Population at disappearance: unknown.

🧾 BRIEF TIMELINE (RECONSTRUCTED):

1887 – Town founded around a natural salt spring rumored to have medicinal properties.

1891–1904 – Rapid expansion. Town gains a church, post office, rail stop, and saloon.

1907 – First documented “incident”: collapse of the Hollow’s only well after reports of it “singing” at night.

1912 – Four children vanish. All lived on “Creek Edge Road,” near the old well.

1913–1929 – Slow abandonment. No documented cause. Mining yields remained high.

1931 – Final mail delivery recorded. After this, no census, no tax records, no mention.

By 1935, Salt Hollow ceased to appear on any state-issued map.

📁 EXCERPT – LETTER FROM MARTHA LEONE TO HER COUSIN, AUGUST 4, 1912:

“...and still, the water sounds like it’s breathing. Not a wind, not a draft. It draws in and out, same as lungs. I asked the pastor about it and he just stared through me. He said the well was closed for a reason.

“We don’t send the children near it anymore. Not after Abigail and Jonah. They didn’t even scream, Luanne. Just... weren’t there. Their shoes were still beside the rope line. Who leaves their shoes?”

“Some nights I think I hear my name coming from it. But no one’s said Martha like that since my father died.”

🔊 AUDIOPHONIC DISTURBANCE – “THE WELL WHISPERS”

In 1976, a field crew from the University of Utah’s anthropology department stumbled upon Salt Hollow while mapping ghost towns and abandoned communities.

One member, Dr. Allison Ward, described the site as “eerily intact—like it had been left for a fire drill that never ended.” Their recording equipment caught low-frequency audio anomalies near the former well site.

“It was a whisper, but not language. A vibration. Like something beneath the rock was trying to imitate a human voice but didn’t understand what it meant.” – Dr. Ward, from field log (later destroyed in fire)

📸 IMAGE NOTES – RECOVERED & FLAGGED

Of the 36 photographs taken by the team, only 29 developed properly. The remaining seven showed blurred black vertical streaks, always appearing in or around the well. The camera was mechanical, non-digital, and had no prior defects. One photo is believed to show a partial face, reflected in the well’s inner stone—eyes wide, mouth slightly open. That photograph has since gone missing.

🧑‍🌾 WITNESS ACCOUNT – ROGER DELANEY, 92 (INTERVIEWED 2003)

Roger was 11 years old when his family left Salt Hollow “in a rush.”

“Dad came in from the field white as chalk. Said he’d heard my sister, but she wasn’t there. Said she was calling from the well. The one that got filled in. But she’d been gone three years. Drowned in a flood south of Provo.”

“He packed us up before sundown. We didn’t even take the horses. Just left the gate swinging behind us.”

When asked why he never returned: “Because I still hear her voice sometimes. And I don’t think it’s her anymore.”

🕳️ FIELD NOTE – CAELUM DIRECTIVE INVESTIGATIVE UNIT, 1994

A team was dispatched following satellite footage of visible geometric disruptions in the Salt Hollow basin—concentric circles appearing in salt flats, rotating slowly over several days. The team lasted 48 hours before being pulled due to:

• “equipment failure and psychological distress.”
• “Compass wouldn’t settle. Clock hands spun slowly. Felt like the whole town was leaning toward us.”
• “I heard a voice say my name. It was my voice saying it.”

🛑 CURRENT STATUS:

Salt Hollow remains unlisted on all major mapping platforms. Attempts to mark the town via GPS result in device restarts and storage corruption.

Recent visitors report:

• Static in phone recordings taken near the well site
• Feelings of “being underwater” despite the dry air
• Dreams involving unfamiliar children calling from basements

A tourist who posted a video near the site in 2019 later deleted her entire channel after claiming a distorted version of her voice continued to appear in unrelated uploads.

⛏️ UNRESOLVED MYSTERIES:

What caused the well collapse? Why is there no formal record of town disbandment? Why do independent visitors describe identical voices, despite arriving decades apart?

And perhaps most disturbing of all:

Who or what, is continuing to update the single mailbox still standing in Salt Hollow? Occasional postcards are found… stamped... but never delivered.

FINAL NOTES:

Some towns fade... Salt Hollow waits. It waits with open lungs... It waits with old names... And somewhere beneath the salt and silence…

The water remembers.

_________________________________________________

⚠️ Case File 004-A closed for now.

Return visit scheduled and approved...

PART 2 incoming, on Monday June 30th 2025

Filed by: Caelum Directive – Vault Contact Authorized

Transmission Recovered from Subsurface Node: [REDACTED]