Its the kind of story one immediately questions when hearing it for the first time:

A family of four is missing on Tuesday morning after a huge sinkhole opened up and a house and a truck fell inside it in St. Jude, about 77 kilometres northeast of Montreal near St. Hyacinthe, Que.

The home, located in the pastoral farmland about 75 kilometres outside of Montreal, disappeared into the sinkholes gaping maw around 9:30 p.m. Monday. The missing family is a mother and father in their forties and their two children, aged nine and 11. Residents identified the father as Richard Prefontaine.

Unconfirmed reports suggested that the family was in their basement when the house was swept away. Rescuers found the family dog , which according to a police spokesman had been tied to a tree outside the home and survived the slide.

Search and rescue dogs that entered the home this morning but did not find any signs of life, said National Post reporter Graeme Hamilton, who is at the scene:

They havent given up hope. Theyve still got ambulances standing by. There have been lots of examples of natural disasters where, for one reason or another, people arent able to communicate but end up being found.

Herman Gagnon, a neighbour, tells Canwest News Service that he heard a loud, mysterious groan last night. He initially thought it was an earthquake. After calling a neighbour, he hopped in his car and drove towards St. Jude:

In front of him lay a different kind of blackness, Gagnon recounted yesterday, at a security perimeter erected two kilometers from the sight of the sinkhole.

Gagnon has stopped at the edge of a giant precipice and found himself staring into the abyss.