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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 |
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The Nodoroc
"Buried behind Phil Chandler's farm three miles east of Winder [Georgia], underneath some scrawny trees and unearthly black mud, is a mystery or terror perhaps thousands of years old.
"'It's real dangerous,' said Fred Ingram, former director of the Barrow County Historical Society. "If you step off in some of that soupy mess, you're gone.'
"Before the Harrises drained and worked the land, the area was more than a geographical oddity. It was a sinister place with a reputation among American Indians and early settlers as a burning lake of fire.
"'The Indians called it Nodoroc,' said Mr. Chandler, leading a recent tour along the edges of the pit, 'But what they meant was Hell.'
"Although few signs remain today, the area was once a bubbly cauldron, a mud volcano from which a steady stream of foul gases ignited into an eerie plume of black smoke that could be seen for miles, according to numerous accounts from white settlers and Creek Indians inhabiting the area in the late 1700s.
"The Nodoroc slowly declined in intensity, and one day in the mid1800s it blew up in an awesome explosion of mud and heat and expired."
(Stenger, Richard; "Histories of Area Describe Terror," Augusta Chronicle, June 11, 1996. Cr. L. Farish)
Comment. Was the energy source of the Nodoroc volcanic or chemical (as from decaying organic material). It's final death throes resemble the explosion of Lake Monoun, Cameroon, in 1984. (See SF#45.)