Mysterious whining rose from beneath family’s NC home. It came from a forgotten well

Old homes make strange noises, but rarely do the creaks and pops of wood resemble a barking dog.

Yet that’s exactly what one North Carolina woman heard around 10:30 a.m. Monday, May 22, as she did laundry at her home in Marion.

It sounded just like a dog barking and whimpering, and it was coming not from outside, but from the floor.

“She went outside to try and figure out where it was coming from, and ultimately they realized it was from beneath the house,” Jennifer Wilson, a public information officer with the McDowell County Rescue Squad, told McClatchy News.

“Her husband then went under the home, in the crawl space, and with a flashlight he saw a puppy at the bottom of an old well. It was 15 to 20 feet deep and had 4 to 6 inches of water in it — and a puppy.”

The well had long ago been covered with concrete and forgotten, but one small corner had become exposed and that was enough for a curious puppy to get hopelessly stuck, she said.

It was clearly a rescue that called for specialists used to strange predicaments, which led to McDowell County Rescue Squad being summoned. The squad is in the business of saving people, but has also pulled off some odd animal rescues, including a camel stuck in a creek and a dog wedged head-first in a tire rim, Wilson said.

“We’re talking a typical crawl space of about 4 feet,” Wilson said. “We went in and used a rope set up to pull it out, but if that didn’t work, we had someone on stand by to rappel down. Any time you’re dealing with an animal, you never quite know what might happen, but this was a puppy and he was ready to get out. He wasn’t fighting.”

The puppy was wet and cold but showed no signs of injury. It’s not known how long it was in the well, but the homeowner reports the dog had been seen 2 to 3 hours earlier, running around the yard.

The dog was handed over to the McDowell County Animal Shelter, in hopes an owner would show up to collect it.

At least one member of the rescue squad has since visited the puppy at the shelter, just to play with it, Wilson said.

Marion is about 95 miles northwest of Charlotte.

This story was originally published May 23, 2023 at 3:22 PM with the headline "Mysterious whining rose from beneath family’s NC home. It came from a forgotten well."