REI Co-op Studios If you're ever out in the dunes, any big sand dunes anywhere in the desert or on one of those wide beaches where the sand piles up.

If you're out in the dunes and for a moment you imagine that you see a hole open up in the loose sand ahead of you?

Stop!

That isn't your imagination.

It's a very rare, very real, very dangerous phenomenon that scientists call a

decomposition chimney. Isn't that a pleasant name? Even better is what people call them in the remote places where they've been known to occur.

They call them Devil's Stove Pipes. What you're seeing, if you ever have the misfortune to encounter one of these holes in the

desert sand, is the remains of an ancient tree, buried decades or even centuries ago by the slowly moving dunes and rotting away ever

since then from the inside out until only a thin tube of bark and rotten wood remains to keep the sand at bay.

But do not, do not, get close to it if you see one.

They're very unstable.

They're liable to collapse at any time, especially from the weight of approaching footsteps.

And if you're too close when one of these Devil's Stove Pipes collapses, they'll pull you down with them.

They'll pull you down into a sandy tube.

As for the story that we're about to hear, well it could be that Devil's

stovepipe should blame for the mysterious disappearances that have been

reported over the years on the remote Beaver Dunes in the panhandle of Oklahoma. But then the existence of

Devil Stovepipes wouldn't explain the strange lights and sounds that are

reported to occur at the same time that people vanish.

And it couldn't account for the voices of the missing

that folks claim they can still hear

months or years or even centuries after a person has disappeared.

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