Part 1
The Well From Hell — A Halloween Tale from the Rig Floor
Something sinister was waiting 2,000 feet down the hole
The Spooky mist and voice from the casing
Image: Generative AI image created via Gemini Pro
It all started out with my mom's ex-boyfriend, who was a driller. He raised me from the age of thirteen. His name is Mike, and I grew up helping him drill. At first, we drilled residential wells; then he built a bigger rig to drill freeze-protection wells in the orange groves; then we made that rig bigger, tooled it up for reverse circulation, and gave a go at a monitoring well for a Class I injection well at a sewer plant. We put an extension in the derrick, built a bigger, longer kelly out of six-inch square tubing, and bought new drill pipe, collars, and a new swivel. When the drill string got heavy, we hung the old collars with chains on the front of the rig as counterweights.
We were subcontracted by a company from the Texas and Oklahoma oilfield that sent a rig and crew to Melbourne, Florida, so that they could get into the big-hole business. The well we were drilling for them was about 2,000 feet deep, with multiple strings of casing. The final casing string was ten-inch, three-quarter-inch wall, about fifteen hundred feet deep. They were drilling the injection well; it was to end up about three thousand feet deep with a final casing string that was probably eighteen- or twenty-inch pipe to twenty-five hundred feet or so deep. I don't remember the exact numbers because the job was thirty-seven years ago when I was twenty-one years old. Since then, I've drilled many Class I injection wells and monitor wells, and this one was by far the worst.
Bad things or no things were always or never happening at night on the injection well rig. They got the big reamer stuck drilling the surface casing hole. They got it loose, finished the hole, logged it, and it was short by about 20 feet. They went back in, cleaned it out, and it logged to the right depth. But the casing didn't go to T.D. It was probably about 200 feet of 40-inch pipe. I don't remember how short the hole was, but the engineers thought it was close enough, and they were able to cement it wherever it landed.
Sr climbing out of the casing in flight mode.
Image: Generative AI image created via Gemini Pro
On our rig, we only ran day shifts. Me, Sr., and Jr. were drilling the well. They were a father-and-son outfit who had been working the groves with us for a few years, and I'd sometimes jump over to help them on their smaller rig, a Mayhew 1000. Once the iron was shut down for the day, we were all pretty good at putting away beers, and Jr. and I smoked our fair share of weed together. Different times back then, Sr. had actually handed me my first beer when I was seventeen. He never minded me and Jr. smoking a little pot after hours, but he had his code. More than once he looked at us and said, "I’ll whup both your asses if I ever find out one of yous smoked that crack."
Our surface casing was too big to fit in the derrick with the kelly in it, so we cut windows in the tracks on the derrick so the rollers would come out, lowered the blocks while tailing the kelly out with an excavator, and when the rollers came out of the slots that we cut in the tracks, one roller came off and fell in the hole. Mike was running the rig, and Sr. was on the excavator. Me and Jr. were on the floor, so Mike blamed me and Jr., as if it mattered who he blamed. We vowed to each other not to tell anyone, carried the kelly and swivel away from the rig with a loader that had forks on it, and covered the swivel with a raincoat so nobody would notice the missing six-inch steel cam roller. He told us it wouldn't be a problem—it was just some steel balls and thin metal—and we proceeded to set casing bigger, but shallower, than we had ever set it.
The first joint went down, and we set the ears on steel I-beams that ran across the area where the rotary table was before we removed it for the casing run. We lifted another one, tailing it in with the excavator and a chain. While we were getting it lowered to set down on the first, I heard a raspy female voice come from the pipe that was in the hole say, "I’ma gonna geet you, boy," and then it coughed up a foggy greenish mist from the pipe. Sr. set it down on the first and told me to check it with the level. I tried to put the level up against the pipe, but an unseen force wouldn't let me do it; it took control of my body, and I whupped Sr. across the back with a four-foot level. I came to my senses and froze in my boots as he picked me up over his shoulder and flung me off the rig. Scared to death, I crawled under the rig close to the hole and heard that raspy voice coming from the annulus again—it was laughing like a witch. There were two more pipes on the ground ready to go in the hole, and I crawled into one faster than a rattlesnake strikes. While the welders were welding the pipes together, Sr. crawled into the pipe and tried to get me out. I don't know what happened inside the pipe, but Sr. was white as a ghost when he crawled out backward. He got in the excavator and beat the bucket against the pipe until I came out. I took off fast to the plant entrance and then kept on running, not looking back. I woke up the next morning in the sea grape plants on the sand dunes at the beach, and the only thing that I could remember was running away from the plant. I figured the worst of it was behind me, not knowing that whatever was down in that hole was just getting started.
The getaway
Image: Generative AI image created via Gemini Pro
To be continued in Part 2...
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