The Night Eleven Thousand Gallons Appeared: The Cistern That Shouldn't Be

The Night Eleven Thousand Gallons Appeared: The Cistern That Shouldn't Be

Sweating concrete in an exceptional drought, beads of moisture covered every surface of a sealed cistern that should have been bone-dry - and inside were eleven thousand gallons of water where the well had failed years earlier. How did a padlocked cistern, with no footprints, no hose, and no precipitation, end up full enough to be called a reservoir?

In this episode, we follow the account of a jogger who discovered the anomaly and the background of the rancher who lived with a failed well and a sealed cistern, leading to a sequence of observations that point to an unexplained intervention and a forensic clue that changes everything. What do the condensation, the intact padlock, and microscopic abrasions on the lock’s interior reveal about who - or what - filled eleven thousand gallons?

Person: Dale Morgan Person: Wade Burke Date: February 4, 2019 Location: Griggs Crossing, Texas-Oklahoma Panhandle Volume: 11,000 gallons

- Air temperature hovered just above freezing the morning the cistern was found sweating. - The region had recorded no precipitation in January and February and was under an "exceptional drought" classification. - The cistern held a capacity of eleven thousand gallons and had been padlocked since October 2015. - Wade Burke was 62 years old and had last filled the cistern in summer 2015 after his well failed that year. - A locksmith found micro-abrasion marks inside the lock body consistent with a precision picking tool, with no exterior scratches on the keyway.

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