Crystals are associated with supernatural powers and mystical energy in cultures around the world. Sparkling crystals found in nature are believed by many to have healing powers. Man-made crystal balls have been employed by seers trying to connect with spirits and peer into the future. And then there are crystal skulls—reportedly found in ancient locations around the world, fully formed and resembling human heads. Could the crystal skulls have mystical properties—and might they in fact have extraterrestrial origins? Ancient Aliens proponists think so.
In 1924, British explorer Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges, a colorful adventurer who often spoke of discovering lost cities, was in the jungle of Belize in Central America. He and his daughter, Anna, were with an expedition party exploring the ruins of Lubantuun, an ancient Mayan city that dates back to the eighth century AD.
As the story goes, Anna climbed to the top of a crumbling pyramid hoping to see the ocean. The sun shone down through a crack in the structure and hit something that seemed to light up. It turned out to be a crystal skull, weighing eleven pounds seven ounces. Apart from a detached jaw piece found nearby, it appeared to be carved from a single piece of rock crystal. According to Mitchell-Hedges’ story, when the natives saw it, it was like their god had returned. The explorer presented the crystal skull to the high priest, and they celebrated and worshipped it.
Mayan elders believed that, in ancient times, thirteen crystal skulls were buried in secret places around the world. Legend says that when the thirteen skulls come together, something significant will change in the world. Many crystal skulls have since emerged. Some obviously are man-made modern versions and not ancient—and we don’t have all thirteen yet. A crystal skull given the name Synergy reportedly was retrieved from the Andes Mountains. When a man from a tribe in Micronesia saw the photo of Synergy, he thought it was his ancestor. In this region, ancestral myths talk of people descending from the sky and later returning to the stars.
Crystal skulls of ancient Mayan culture
Quartz crystal has properties that are technologically useful to us.
Some believe that crystal skulls are so perfectly formed that they cannot have been man-made and may be part of mythologies that link ancient events to otherworldly visits. Ancient Astronaut theorists note that quartz crystal has high-tech properties—it has been used in modern science in everything from radios to computer displays.
Like computer disks, crystals can also store information. Some Ancient Alien theorists speculate that a crystal skull could hold much more data than any computer device we have now. When multiple crystal skulls are brought together, perhaps to interface with one another, could it bring mankind untold knowledge from the stars?
Fire that burns underwater. Fighter planes that don’t need pilots. Rockets capable of destroying entire cities. Ancient history is filled with accounts of incredibly powerful weapons strangely similar to those in use today. Ancient lore even describes a weapon close to something we have seen only in the movies: light sabers! What were ancient authors really describing?
Throughout history, people have developed ever more deadly weapons: from rocks to spears, from swords to gunpowder, guns, bombs, and missiles. Much of our advance in deadly weaponry came from the ability to harness fire. Fire was powerful itself. It gave us the abillity to shape metal into swords, create explosions, and make other implements of destruction. Did the first secrets of fire, metalworking, and explosives come purely from humanity’s own ingenuity? Or could extraterrestrials have helped us along with these powers—perhaps to help us defend ourselves, to advance our civilization? Perhaps to help us become more like them? Ancient tales involving fire, weapons, and not-of-this-world beings leave a lot of unanswered questions.
Fire occurs naturally on Earth, but in one culture after another around the globe, fire is described as an element given to people by “the gods”—or stolen from them. Native American traditions often describe fire as stolen from the world above. Maori legends from New Zealand describe the theft of fire from the gods. In Greek legends, too—they have Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. Ancient Astronaut theorists say the fact that there are such similar myths around the world could be evidence that it was extraterrestrial beings, perhaps believed to be gods, who delivered firepower and knowledge of fire to humans.
According to archaeologists, metal weaponry was made in the Bronze Age, beginning around 3300 BC. One major advance was steel, made with iron and carbon and forged with fire. Steel could be made thin and stay strong, so it became an ideal material for swords. But while the forging of iron isn’t very complicated, the creation of steel is a more complex scientific process. Who or what was responsible for this innovation?
Ancient tales speak of magic swords crafted from steel, as if it took a wizard—or maybe a being even more extraordinary—to craft one. Villages might have one or two steel swords, and warlords sought to find all the steel swords and take them for their armies. In some cultures, people didn’t look village blacksmiths who worked with metal in the eye because blacksmiths were thought to have evil power.
The idea that metalworking was a dark and magical process was so prevalent in the ancient world that in Greek mythology, even mega-god Zeus looked upon his son Hephaestus, the god of metallurgy, with suspicion. Hephaestus made armor for the gods. Zeus was so suspicious of Hephaestus that he flung him from the heavens, where he landed on the island of Lemnos. That was all just mythology—supposedly. But there is a real city called Hephaestia, named after him. And according to some ancient stories, Hephaestus actually lived among the people of Lemnos. Could he have actually been present in ancient Greece? And if so, might he have been not a god, but an ancient alien visitor?
Swords have been thought to have magical properties throughout history. This is a monument of swords commemorating King Harold Fairhair (850–933 AD) who was responsible for unifying Norway.
Stories of metal weaponry and its otherworldly orgin are not limited to ancient Greece. Japanese legend says that in 700 AD, the swordsmith Amakuni and his son Amakura sealed themselves away in their blacksmith shop in an effort to forge the perfect weapon. For seven days and seven nights, they prayed to the Shinto gods to guide them. They emerged from their isolation with a curved, single-edged sword resembling no blade ever made before. At that time, the swords were double-edged, heavy, and prone to breakage. Swordsmiths thought Amakuni’s curved sword was ridiculous. But when the emperor returned from battle with an army equipped with those curved swords, Amakuni counted the blades. There were dozens—hundreds, even—and none were broken.
Replica of an ancient Japanese sword
What was the secret behind Amakuni’s radical sword design, one that deviated from what had been used for more than a thousand years? Was he simply ahead of his time? Or could he really have received otherworldly guidance during the seven days and nights he and his son prayed to the Shinto gods?
The history of the Japanese sword is a long one, and it includes mythological beliefs that the sun goddess Amaterasu gave her great-great grandson a sword when she sent him down to rule over the earth. According to the beliefs of the Samurai, higher beings called Kami began human life. And in order for humans to experience the divine nature of Kami, they had to undergo purification rituals, which were performed when making a new blade. Swordsmiths chanted when hammering new blades as if hammering their chants into the metal. Could Amakuni and Amakura have come in contact with Kami? Might alien beings have chosen Amakuni, the greatest sword maker of his time, to hold the knowledge of this new technology?
Maybe the best-known Japanese swords are those of the Samurai, ultrasharp precision instruments whose quality is difficult to produce even today. In Shingon Buddhism, the sword has a life of its own. It’s not that the Samurai selects the blade—the blade chooses its owner. Is that philosophy simply an example of early humans’ tendency to project spiritual consciousness onto inanimate objects? Or might ancient swordsmiths like Amakuni really have possessed some otherworldly knowledge? A knowledge that swords, like other deadly weapons, come not from humans, but from a divine or extraterrestrial origin?
From fifteenth-century France comes another tale of a magical sword with extraordinary origins. When Joan of Arc was arrested and brought to her condemnation trial, her inquisitors were obsessed with finding out about her sword. It was supposed to have divine power. Joan claimed that angelic voices led her to it. It is said that the sword was forged by Saint Michael the Archangel and that whoever possessed it was invincible. That was true when Joan of Arc used her sword in the Battle of Orleans, a decisive battle that sparked the series of events that eventually put King Charles VII on the throne of France.
Ancient Astronaut theorists suggest that Joan of Arc might have been led to her invincible sword by extraterrestrials who had an interest in the future of France. They point to the story of King Arthur, a legendary British ruler of the late fifth and early sixth centuries, as evidence of that idea.
King Arthur had two swords, though in movies sometimes the famous Sword in the Stone and Excalibur are treated as one and the same. The Sword in the Stone was what it sounds like: a sword embedded in a boulder. Only the true king would be able to pull it out, as King Arthur did.
Giorgio Tsoukalos has an intersting theory about how that worked:
When I hear a story about this magnificent sword that’s encased in this stone, with only the handle sticking out, and only King Arthur has the capability to pull it out, well then I start thinking about some type of a biometric security system, where today we now have guns that can only be fired if the handle recognizes your fingerprint. Is it possible that the sword in the stone was calibrated specifically to King Arthur’s biometrics? I think yes.
Replica of King Arthur’s legendary sword Excalibur
Statue of Joan of Arc in Paris, France
King Arthur’s weapon was the legendary Excalibur, which came to him from the Lady in the Lake, whose hand came up and presented him with the magical sword. It shone with the light of thirty suns and blinded his enemies! Yet another magical sword? Or advanced technology that was misunderstood?
In one battle in 941 AD, Prince Igor of Kiev attacked Constantinople with a fleet of 1,000 ships. Only five ships survived; the others were destroyed by Greek Fire.
Few knew the formula for Greek Fire even in the old days. Clearly it was a potent mix of incendiary chemicals. The most amazing thing is that scientists haven’t been able to reproduce it. Experts think it must have been some kind of petroleum, or something involving phosphorous and magnesium, which can explode when mixed with water. But where did the secret recipe come from?
Roman Emperor Constantine is said to have been given the secret to this weapon by angels. In the sky, he witnessesed what he described as a cross hovering above him. He interpreted the vision as a sign from the Christian God. But was the cross-shaped object in the sky really a sign from God? Might it have been some other extraordinary force? An aircraft with straight wings could look like a cross, too. Is it possible that Constantine, instead of actually having seen a cross floating in the sky, saw some kind of extraterrestrial craft? Could Greek Fire have been a type of advanced alien technology given to Constantine to ensure the success of the Roman Empire?
Eleventh century depiction of Greek Fire
While mixing chemicals in search of cures and even the key to immortality, alchemists in China as early as the year 850 AD came upon a mixture that made a real bang: gunpowder. Used in weapons such as cannons and primitive grenades, the booming powder helped China win battle after battle.
Gunpowder is made of charcoal, possibly from burnt trees, and sulfur, which could be obtained from volcanoes. It also needs potassium nitrate, a mineral that can come from caves. How did chemists of the time know how to mix these into such a potent cocktail? Could the formula for gunpowder have extraterrestrial origins? And if deadly technologies like gunpowder and Greek Fire really were handed down to humans by an alien race—a question remains: why?
In Southeast Asia and Cambodia, we can see evidence of yet another strange weapon that seems to have come from outer space: the mythical sword of Preah Pisnokar. In Cambodian mythology, Preah Pisnokar is the son of a human man and a woman who came from the sky. Stories say he was taken to the sky world and taught the technology of the gods.
Legends have credited him as being the architect behind the world’s largest religious shrine, Angkor Wat, which sits just north of Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap Lake. Besides magnificent structures, Preah Pisnokar was said to have fashioned a sword that made him invincible in battle. It was thin as a feather and could cut stone. Legend says that Preah Pisnokar threw his mighty weapon into the Tonlé Sap Lake when it grew too weak for him to use anymore. But how does a sword grow weak? According to Ancient Astronaut theorists, the blade had lost its power because it was made of light. What could they mean by “light”? At this time, fire was the only type of artificial light available. A sword of fire? That would be interesting, but what if it really was a sword made of light? This type of weapon is not unimaginable. Think about light sabers, for example. Might it one day be possible to create a weapon made of light?.
Angkor Wat Temple, Cambodia
Ancient Astronaut theorists think it might have been some sort of laser beam, which is intensely focused light, or a plasma beam, which is energetically charged particles. For those theorists, descriptions of laser-type technology can be found in numerous texts throughout the ancient world. In China, there is a Yin-Yang mirror, which could kill opponents with a beam of light. The Maori god defeated rebels with a kind of laser-lightning weapon. In ancient India, the arrow of Brahma could have been some kind of laser weapon. Even Archimedes famously used some kind of magic mirror to create a laser that set ships on fire.
Today, unmanned aerial “drones” patrol skies around the world and undertake missions impossible or too dangerous for human pilots. Strangely, devices like these are described in texts more than 2,200 years old.
The Mahabharata, a sacred Hindu text, contains stories about epic battles in the sky among what were believed to be gods. In all, forty-six different types of weapons are described, including flying chariots, unmanned aircraft, and what can honestly be called weapons of mass destruction. Vishnu was said to wield incendiary weapons that could locate their targets, as if they could detect motion, or act like heat-seeking missiles. The Pashupatastra is a weapon that multiplies into seven different arrows and then hits seven targets. Salva, an anti-god, could make his vehicle disappear—like a stealth fighter.
Drone aircraft launching a missile
Probably the scariest device in those ancient epics was one called Brahmastra (Brahma’s weapon), which Ancient Astronaut theorists believe could have been a sort of nuclear bomb of extraterrestrial origin. In the stories, people were burned and melted by the Brahma weapon, and descriptions of its deadly aftereffects are similar to the effects of exposure to intense radiation. One reference speaks of explosions brighter than a thousand suns, and that following these blasts, the suns were twirling in the air and trees went up in flames. Then people who survived lost their hair and their nails started to fall out. The similarities between these effects and those of radiation poisoning as seen after the United States dropped the world’s first atomic bombs on Japanese cities during World War II, are uncanny. Could the description of the Brahma weapon actually be an earlier, extraterrestrial version of the nuclear bomb?
In 1922, an officer with an Indian archaeological survey group discovered the ruins of an ancient city known as Mohenjo-daro. Mainstream archaeologists say the city, whose name might have meant “mound of the dead,” flourished between 2600 and 1900 BC. However, scientists in Pakistan have suggested Mohenjo-daro is much older. And later, in a 1979 book, Atomic Destruction in 2000 B.C., British researcher David Davenport claimed to have found a fifty-yard-wide epicenter at Mohenjo-daro, where everything appeared to have been fused together as though heated and melted at an ultrahot temperature.
How is it that some of the earliest written accounts of warfare describe sophisticated weaponry that humans wouldn’t develop for thousands of years?
Giorgio Tsoukalos thinks these tales weren’t just made up.
I refuse to think that our ancestors came up with these stories out of thin air. When writing was first invented, they wrote down their history. The first things that were ever written down were actual events.
Ruins of the ancient city Mohenjo-daro, in Sindh, Pakistan
What do the monsters of myths and legends—from Loch Ness Monster to Bigfoot to the three-headed dog Cerberus—have to do with aliens? Ancient Aliens theorists believe there may be a connection between these terrifying beasts and the idea that beings from beyond the Earth have visited us. How? One theory says aliens came to Earth to experiment and created fantastical and mutant creatures, just as our own scientists experiment with things like DNA, gene splicing, and transplantation of body parts with the aim of advancing medicine.
Today’s genetic scientists and medical researchers are performing pioneering work in laboratories with “chimeras,” organisms that have human cells and animal cells in their bodies. The results of these important experiments could help scientists better understand diseases, improve organ transplants, and test medicines. In 1954, a Russian scientist named Vladimir Demikhov—some might say a mad scientist—once transplanted a second dog’s head onto a dog, as part of his research into organ transplants. In 2003, a scientist in China fused human skin cells with rabbit eggs to try to grow tissues that could be used in human patients. Genetic experiments like these are ongoing. Transplanting animal organs into people for medical purposes is called xenotransplantation.
The scientific term “chimera” actually dates back to Greek mythology and one of the oldest books that has survived from ancient times. In The Iliad, epic poet Homer describes the chimera as “a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle, and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire.”
Maybe our civilization’s mythological beasts, many of which combine parts of various animals, really did exist—created by alien races that saw the Earth as a research lab filled with animals whose pieces could be mixed and matched!
Says Giorgio Tsoukalos:
If today we’re able to create a two-headed dog with six legs, is it possible that a similar creature existed thousands of years ago? I say yes.
What do you think? Here are some strange and legendary beasts.
Hybrid beasts that combine different animals (or mix animals with people!) are part of many ancient mythologies. Written descriptions of extraordinary beasts and carvings and statues of them are found all around the world. Could these mixed-up creatures have been the results of breeding or genetic experiments by alien mad scientists? Could they be aliens themselves?
Cerberus
Cerberus was a three-headed dog of ancient Greek myth.
The Egyptian god Anubis had the body of a man with the head of a dog or jackal.
The legendary Naga from India were part man, part snake.
The Greek monster Medusa had a hairdo made of snakes.
Medusa
Pegasus was a flying white stallion with a bird’s wings.
The ancient Greek centaur had the body of a horse and the head and upper body of a man.
The ancient Greek creature Minotaur had the head of a bull on the body of a man.
Painting of Anubis and a mummy (1314 to 1200 BC)
In the middle of the Indus River Valley in southern Pakistan lie the ruins of Mohenjo-daro, an ancient city whose name means “mound of the dead.” It was one of the largest urban settlements in the world in 2600 BC. Ancient Astronaut theorists think long ago it was the epicenter of some kind of devastating nuclear explosion. According to the Mahabharata—the ancient holy text of the Hindus—a white-hot smoke rose and reduced an ancient city to ashes. Some believe the ancient city it references is Mohenjo-daro. Horses were burned and corpses were vaporized by intense heat. Some skeletons found in modern times reportedly had far-above-normal radioactive levels, suggesting some kind of atomic blast occurred.
And, according to the ancient texts, a fearsome flying monster appeared in the sky after the devastation. It was called Garuda. Garuda was a huge birdlike creature with a red face, red wings, and sharp talons. The god Vishnu was said to ride on it.
Or was it something else? Some Ancient Astronaut theorists think Garuda may not have been a mutant beast. In some texts, Garuda’s exterior isn’t feathers—but metal. Maybe this ancient giant flying “beast” was actually a flying vehicle.
Statue of Garuda
The waters have given us many legendary monsters of mysterious origin. According to Scandinavian legend, gigantic sea monsters known as Kraken roamed the seas off the coasts of Norway and Greenland. They fiercely attacked ships, and when they submerged they created deadly whirlpools that could pull a ship down. In some legends, the Kraken is over a mile long, with hundreds of octopus-like arms. Could Kraken have actually existed, and does a story from the Bible offer clues to the origin of sea monsters?
In a famous Bible story, Jonah is at sea on a ship, after defying a command from God. A giant storm ensues, and when the crew throws Jonah overboard, the storm ends. Jonah is swallowed by a giant fish or whale that God has provided, and he spends three days inside, so the story goes. Eventually the whale spits Jonah onto dry land.
Artist’s rendering of the Loch Ness Monster
But was this whale a real, biological animal? Giorgio Tsoukalos says that in some references, you can read that the ribs of this whale were made out of gleaming bronze. That makes it sound like a vessel made of metal. Maybe Jonah was swallowed, not by a whale, but by a USO—an Unidentified Submersible Object!
No lineup of unexplained underwater monsters would be complete without the Loch Ness Monster. In the Highlands of Scotland, “Nessie” has long been part of Celtic and Norse folklore. Recorded accounts of sightings go back to the year 565 AD, to the Irish monk Saint Columba, who had his own run-in with Nessie, in which the beast came after him only to retreat after Columba defended himself. It’s been reported that there have been UFO sightings over the Loch, too—of strange, brightly lit objects hovering over the water, late at night, vehicles that aren’t helicopters or other aircraft.
Legends of large beasts that lurk in the wild—creatures that seem to be part ape, part man—come from all over the world. Hikers and explorers have reported fleeting glimpses and really big humanlike footprints, double the size of a human foot. In Asia, there’s the legendary Abominable Snowman, or Yeti. In Australia, they speak of the Yowie. In North America, we have Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch. He stands six to ten feet tall. He’s hairy and, by many accounts, smelly. And very elusive.
But what makes anyone think Bigfoot is connected to aliens?
Ancient stories describe all kinds of encounters with apemanlike beasts. Viking explorer Leif Ericson in the tenth century wrote of “horrible, ugly, hairy creatures with dark eyes.” In the remains of the ancient city of Nineveh, Sumerian tablets dating back to as early as 700 BC tell the story of King Gilgamesh, whose companion Enkudu is described as a hairy wild man living outside human society. Some Ancient Aliens proponents even believe that the giant Goliath from the Bible story of David and Goliath may be an early representation of a Bigfoot.
These same Ancient Aliens theorists believe that long ago aliens may have come to Earth to tinker with our species, possibly creating these hairy man-ape hybrids.
Some Sasquatch researchers have noted there’s a connection between Bigfoot activity and UFO activity—reports happening in the same areas. There was a wave of UFO activity in Pennsylvania in the early 1970s, and people also were reporting shadowy, lumbering apelike creatures walking out of the woods. Author and UFOlogist Linda Moulton Howe says she received a report from a man in Washington State who saw a silver disk in the sky, a beam coming down from it, and a shaggy gorilla-like man emerging.
Image of what a UFO might look like, according to many reports
In the summer of 2008 in Montauk, New York, a twenty-six-year-old woman and three of her friends discovered the carcass of a strange-looking dead creature that had washed onto the shore. It looked like a dog in some ways, but it had a beak like a bird, claws like a raccoon, and sharp teeth. It came to be called the Montauk Monster, and it remains unexplained today. Ancient Alien proponents believe the bizarre animal could be part of a long line of genetically modified creatures that have appeared throughout human history.
When you think about the days of America’s Old West—the period during the 1800s when pioneers were moving westward and setting up towns—you might imagine cowboys and Indians, gunslingers and sheriffs drawing their six-shooters, whiskey bottles sliding across the bar in rowdy saloons. But visitors from outer space? Intergalactic spaceships that buzzed down to Earth while desperados were rustling cattle and robbing stagecoaches?
It’s hard to believe, but several accounts from that early time in America’s westward expansion describe events that remain mysterious.
“People were seeing things in the sky they couldn’t explain,” says Logan Hawkes, a magazine editor and researcher who wrote Ancient Aliens of the Americas. “The truth of the matter is there’s some very interesting and incredible stories that come from the 1800s about flying objects and strange encounters and events.”
As American pioneers were exploring the western frontier, there may have been another explorer checking in, from a far more distant frontier.
The Old West is rich in tales of mystery and extraterrestrial contact
Not far from modern-day Dallas is the town of Aurora, Texas. It was here in April of 1897—fifty years before the U.S. Army announced that a flying disk crashed in Roswell, New Mexico—that an unidentified flying object was reported to have crashed on the property of a local judge. Supposedly the strange airship smashed into a windmill and was mostly obliterated.
“The ship exploded in flame and was burnt to a crisp essentially,” says Jeff Danelek, author of The Great Airship of 1897. “A local reporter arrived on the scene and he reported that there was a large debris field, and also that there was the charred remains of what appeared to be … an alien from another planet.”
Most of what is known about the incident comes from the report that appeared in the Dallas Morning News on April 19, 1897. Part of the article said:
Newspaper article suggesting UFO activity in Aurora, Texas, skies
The pilot of the ship is supposed to be the only one on board, and while his remains are badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.
Mr. T. J. Weems, a United States signal service officer and an authority on astronomy, gives it as his opinion that he was a native of the planet Mars. Papers found on this person—evidently the record of his travels—are written in some unknown hieroglyphics, and cannot be deciphered.
The ship was too badly wrecked to form any conclusion as to its construction or motive power. It was built of an unknown metal, resembling somewhat a mixture of aluminum and silver, and it must have weighed several tons.
Back in those days, manned travel in hot-air balloons existed, so the idea of an airship floating across the sky wasn’t completely unheard of. But 1897 “was six years before the Wright Brothers actually made heavier-than-air craft work,” according to UFO researcher Jim Marrs. So what could this mystery machine actually have been?
Witnesses claimed that debris from the crash was recovered by local law enforcement officials and never seen again. Others claim that the judge buried bits of the wreckage at the bottom of a deep well. The incident was mostly forgotten for decades until, in 1945, a man named Brawley Oates, who had purchased the land, blamed his severe case of arthritis on contaminated, maybe radioactive, water from the well.
Who or what was the strange aircraft’s pilot? The body reportedly was taken to the Aurora Cemetery after the crash and buried there, creating a new source of mystery and controversy that continues to this day. After the 1947 Roswell incident began stirring curiosity, some researchers began a move to exhume the remains of the pilot’s body—that is, dig it up to see if any new clues about it could be uncovered. Officials denied the requests to dig at the site. Jim Marrs says the small tombstone that once marked the burial location of the pilot went missing. But he knew where it was, and in 1973, he and newspaper reporter Bill Case got a metal detector and found three readings of metal at the gravesite. When they returned later, there were no metal readings—but holes had been drilled as if someone had extracted something. No one claimed to have tampered with anything.
Tombstone featuring the carving of a UFO from the Aurora Cemetery
Today, the Texas State Historical Commission has a marker at the cemetery discussing the story of the crash and the legend that an extraterrestrial pilot may have been buried there long ago. But what really happened remains a mystery.
INCIDENT REPORT: GREAT FALLS, MONTANAOctober 19, 1865. Six months after the tragic assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, a fur trapper reports what might be the first documented UFO crash in the Old West. According to the Missouri Democrat, the trapper observed a light flying through the sky over his camp and crashing in a nearby forest. When he tracked it down, he found a large stone embedded in the side of a mountain. The stone was cracked and hollow. According to the newspaper account, inside were hieroglyphic markings. The area along the upper Missouri River was home to the Blackfoot Indians, whose folklore told of alien visitations.
“The Blackfoot have very profound legends and myths relating to beings, which quite clearly are said to have come down from some kind of sky world to earth and in these sky vehicles,” says Andrew Collins, author of The Cygnus Mystery. “And the way that they are described, these can be modern ideas of flying saucers or UFOs.”
Could the object that the Montana fur trapper claimed to have found have been one of the alien crafts described in Blackfoot legends?
The town of Tombstone, in southern Arizona near Tucson, is renowned as the location of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the 1881 shootout in which Deputy Town Marshal Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday took on the notorious Clanton gang. Less than ten years later, it would become the location of one of the most bizarre UFO sightings in history.
Figurine of a flying beast, known as a Thunderbird
Explains John Whalen, author of The Big Book of the Weird Wild West: “According to a story in the Tombstone Epitaph in 1890, two ranchers were out in the desert of Arizona when they saw some sort of monstrous bird flying overhead with a huge wingspan. The body was described as being like an alligator, and the wings were described as membranous.” They supposedly shot at it, but weren’t able to harm it.
That wasn’t the only reported Old West sighting of an extraordinary creature flying across the sky.
According to descriptions, the Thunderbird might have looked something like this ancient pterodactyl.
Located in California, Elizabeth Lake was called Laguna del Diablo—the Devil’s Lake—by Mexican settlers who came to the area long ago. Legend said the devil’s own pet would enter this world through a hole at the bottom of the lake, which was supposed to be a portal to the underworld. Geologically the lake is above the infamous San Andreas fault line (an area known for extreme, violent, and ground-splitting earthquakes), lending credence to this theory. From about the 1800s onward, landowners who built around the lake claimed to have been visited by some sort of flying beast. Some called it a Thunderbird and described it similarly to what had been reported in Tombstone.
Were people really seeing a species of strange, large birds that no person had ever encountered before? Or might it be possible that the Thunderbird wasn’t a creature at all? Were these loud, large flying things really birds, or could they have been a form of sophisticated flying technology?
Native Americans knew what real birds looked like, says Erich von Däniken, the pioneering author of Chariots of the Gods. “But now something different arrived,” he says. “An object which could fly, which is bigger than the eagle, but at the same time makes tremendous noise. So you have the creation of the Thunderbird.”
Did the cowboys in Tombstone, Arizona, and ranchers at Elizabeth Lake witness extraterrestrial ships that may have been visiting North America for thousands of years?
Portrait of Ambrose Bierce
Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe, from whom Bierce drew inspiration for his stories
The Civil War veteran Ambrose Bierce was one of the great early American short story writers. Bierce also believed in the possibility of life beyond our world, and his death—really his disappearance—has never been explained.
Bierce is most famous for writing a thrilling short story called “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” which later was made into an episode of the classic sci-fi TV show The Twilight Zone. It’s about a Civil War soldier who is being hung as a traitor. Somehow he escapes from the hangman’s noose at the last possible moment and makes a daring escape.
Another Bierce story involves a bizarre disappearance. In “The Difficulty of Crossing a Field,” an Alabama farmer in 1854 is walking across a field when—poof!—he is gone.
Bierce seems to have been influenced by Edgar Allan Poe’s stories of mystery, science, and horror, and also by Native American folklore. In addition to belief in star beings, some Native Americans believed in the existence of interdimensional gateways or portals, which would enable visitors to travel between time and space. Still, the strangeness connected with Ambrose Bierce might have ended in his fantastical writing—but Bierce seemed intent on discovering something for himself.
In the early 1900s, he is believed to have ventured into Mexico, to an area known for strange phenomena, called Paquime. The Tarahumara, a Paquime tribe, are known for their visions of star beings. Paquime is in the same region as the Crystal Cave, where the largest crystal deposits in the world are found. Bierce may have ventured there with Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges, a British adventurer known for his discovery of a Mayan crystal skull, which he believed could have been a way to communicate with extraterrestrial beings. Where did Bierce go? His last known communication was a letter in which he wrote: “I leave tomorrow for an unknown destination.” Where the great writer’s final destination was—just like the farmer in his story—to this day remains unknown.