Our unique and interesting planet has many secrets and phenomenon that we have not even begun to understand. But we are a curious and intelligent race and try to pursue knowledge and unravel mysteries to the best of our abilities. While some get solved and some do offer some kind of explanation, there are still some happenings that leave the best of researchers and scientists ‘scratching their heads’.

Just like ancient legends and folklore, some geological occurrences too are difficult to understand. The mysterious ‘hole’ phenomenon is another puzzle that needs some better explanations than the ones that are being offered as to the strange appearance of holes in the ground. Some happen overnight. Some have been there for millennia and some occur in the strangest of places, which are alleged to be some of the remotest and difficult-to-reach terrains in the world.

The ones that can be dated and are somewhat similar in appearance are said to have been seen since the end of the 1980s. These have been reported in the US, Russia and Guatemala. The holes in the ground that have been found in parts of Russia are in deep forests. They are round and deep as if dug into the ground by a skilled group of people or by some sophisticated machinery.

People found deep holes in three parts of Russia in the Ryazan region, Kaluga region and the Krasnoyarsk region.

A shepherd named Pyotr Malinkin, in the Russian region of Kaluga, was feeding his cows as usual in the pasture. Wandering five kilometres inside the field, he saw a huge hole in the ground, which was six metres in circumference. He was quite shocked as the hole was not there the previous day. To his further amazement, the cows would not eat the grass from near the hole, and they seemed scared.

Some enthusiasts and researchers went to examine the huge pit and found out from the locals that the hole just appeared overnight and was a not perfectly round but was oval in shape. There were no marks of buckets or digging equipment nearby and the inside was absolutely smooth and vertical and at the depth of 4.5 metres, some water was seen. The locals later built a fence round it. Exactly the same kind of hole mysteriously appeared 10 years ago in the Ryazan area, this time too nobody could explain its appearance.

When some interested people went to examine it, they were told by the locals that there was another huge hole which too had appeared several decades ago which was a couple of kilometres ahead and was even larger. Superstitious elders thought there was something or someone underground and threw sacks of grains in the pit as a sacrifice. When researchers tried to find this hole, they were not successful as a lot of trees and bushes had grown in the area. Nearby, according to the local townsfolk, is a spring that they call “the angry spring” as it boils over if anyone goes near it.

Moreover, according to a legend, there was a church that sunk nearby when Napoleon’s army came. However, researchers and scientists claim that the soil under the Kaluga region is limestone and water under the ground dissolves so the soil cause the ground to cave in. But what they cannot explain is how the holes are so perfectly vertical with such smooth walls. According to the Siberian News Agency, 100 kilometres away from the highway that connects Krasnoyarsk and Abakan, about 10 holes have been found which have cave-like entrances. Explanations range from local people playing pranks or maybe some strange animals that live around the area.

In Guatemala, an enormous 330-foot deep hole appeared right in the middle of the town and sunk almost 12 houses and killed a couple of people as well. Almost a thousand people were evacuated. But it is said that this was a ‘sinkhole’, which was caused due to the rains, and there was an underground sewage system which had ruptured.

Then we have the strange phenomenon occurring in Eastern Washington in the US; the case became famous as the “Cookie Cutter Phenomenon”. A huge piece of earth was scooped out from a wheat field as if someone had used a giant cookie cutter to take out tonnes of earth and threw it 73 feet away. How it happened no one knows but scientists say that if two seismic events take place underground, it can throw out a big chunk of earth and probably toss it away. But it is said that no such event had occurred in the area.

And lastly, there are holes of another kind in Peru. Strange and mysteriously carved and on the side of a barren rock are hundreds of man-sized holes stretching for miles. The locals say that these holes, which seem like they were always there on these barren rocks, have remained a puzzle, as there are no legends, or ancient stories that talk about them. Some are six to seven feet deep and some are just shallow carvings, but they are all in the formation of a path — a path that does not seem to be of any use. Even if in the ancient past, there had been a settlement somewhere around the place, the reason for these precise and painstakingly made holes has evaded the best of archaeologists. Of course, there are many assumptions but none are satisfactory.

So what is the mystery of holes both large and small appearing here in the midst of populated and remote regions of the world.

For now, the whole truth remains hidden.