July 12, 2013 started off as a typical summer day at Mount Baldi. Mount Baldi is a giant

dune on the edge of Lake Michigan. It's over 100 feet tall. From the top was this great

view of the Chicago skyline and as usual lots of people were making the climb to the summit.

One family, the whasners, was on the way up. Their six-year-old son Nathan was playing

and laughing with another kid around his age but suddenly the boys cried out in panic. The

family turned around and Nathan was gone. Where Nathan had been was just a hole in the

dune. This deep dark hole perfectly round about a foot across. They could hear Nathan's

voice drifting up from somewhere deep inside of the dune but they could not see him. The family

clawed at the dune but each time they dug down the sand just immediately filled back in.

Finally a huge team of rescuers arrived at the scene and for three harrowing hours they dug

and dug. They excavated over 400 tons of sand. Until finally they found Nathan,

used 12 feet under the surface. His body was cold, pale and had no pulse.

Everybody feared the worst but a paramedic noticed something. There was a bleeding

cut on the boys' cheek which meant that his heart was still pumping and that Nathan was still alive.

After a week in the hospital Nathan made a full recovery but there was one thing no one could

figure out. How would this even ever happen in the first place?

Now if you know anything about sand there's no way you can fall in a hole in sand.

So that made everybody everybody start thinking.

I'm Dylan Therese and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange,

incredible and wondrous places. Today we are digging into the secrets hidden under mount

baldy. That is after this.

If you were standing on the lake shore looking at mount baldy you'd be looking at a

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