Bill Watts is shown at a possible meteor impact site in his backyard.
The two X-Files characters would come in handy helping a local man figure out what in the world, or maybe out of this world, caused a large, black hole to appear in his backyard, setting nearby woods on fire.
"I think it was a meteor," Bill Watts, 54, of Pell City said as he moved the wooden plywood board lying on the ground, revealing a dark, black crater at the edge of some woods on his property.
Watts admits he doesn't know exactly what made the large, round crater and caused a fire Friday at about 8 p.m.
"It had to be so hot and moving so fast to do that," he said. "This ground is pretty hard."
He gripped a post hole digger with both hands and drove it into the ground.
"See," he said.
The post hole digger barely made a mark on the hard ground.
The walls inside the crater are charred, obviously burned. A fine ash covers the bottom of the hole.
Watts took the post hole digger and carefully removed some of the burnt ashes from the bottom of the hole.
He piled the ashes next to the hole and knelt down, gently scooping up a handful.
"It's all burnt up," Watts said.
He said if a meteorite made the crater it is possible it is buried at the bottom of the hole.
Right now, Watts is careful not to disturb the site too much so an expert can take a look at it and explain to him exactly what it is and how it got there.
Henry Graves, Watts' brother-in-law who lives next door, may have witnessed the impact.
"All at once flames shot up 5 to 6 feet into the air," Graves said. "The flames went higher than the fence."
Watts' wooden fence is about 6 feet tall.
Graves was standing on the porch of his home, waiting for his daughter and grandchild to arrive for a visit, when he saw flames shooting up into the air.
He said the fire lit the entire back area behind the wooden partition.
"It was like daylight," Graves said. "It was like someone throwing gas on a brush pile. ... You wouldn't believe the light it put out."
Graves said he did not hear any type of explosion or see a shooting flame across the sky. He just saw the flames shooting up from the ground and into the sky.
He watched the fire for a few minutes and decided to call his neighbors.
"I said, 'What in the world are ya'll burning up there?'" Graves recalled.
His neighbors told him they weren't burning anything.
"We first thought our boats blew up. Then we thought someone built a big fire," Watts said. "All sorts of things go through your head."
He said they went out to the site "expecting to see someone fooling around."
There was nobody on the property, just a small fire that was burning fallen leaves and, of course, the charred crater.
Watts said they were able to stomp out the ground fire.
He said the fire appeared to have originated from the crater. A burned path led from the hole to the woods.
The crater is about 3 feet deep and measures 13-15 inches across. There are a couple of smaller, softball or football size holes next to the bigger hole, measuring 5-6 inches across.
Watts hopes a geologist or someone with expertise in meteorites will take a closer look at what he thinks is a meteor impact site, and dig up a meteor that is possibly buried beneath the crater.
But until then, the black hole on Watts' property remains a mystery.
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