All language subtitles for Ancient.Aliens.S03E01.1080p.HULU.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

>> NARRATOR: Cowboys with

six‐shooters...

(gunshot)

covered wagons crossing the

the plains, and Native Americans

wearing war paint and feathers.

These are the images most people

associate with America's Old

West.

>> JOHN WHALEN: The Wild West

as we know it tends to come from

Hollywood movies.

And that's a very cleaned up,

sanitized version of what the

West was really like.

>> NARRATOR: But might there be

more to the story?

Much, much more?

>> LOGAN HAWKES: When we think

of the Old West, the last thing

we think about would be Billy

the Kid chasing a flying

saucer across the desert.

From cowboys, to lawyers, to

doctors, to housewives washing

the clothes and taking care of

the sheep‐‐ people were seeing

things in the sky they couldn't

explain.

>> STANDING ELK: This is a

replica of one of the bars that

was in one of the light ships.

And they're guarded by the Star

People.

>> BILL BIRNES: Ancient

aliens have been around for tens

of thousands, if not millions

of years.

Why would they avoid the

American Southwest?

>> NARRATOR: Millions of people

around the world believe we have

been visited in the past by

extraterrestrial beings.

What if it were true?

Did ancient aliens really help

to shape our history?

And did the cowboys and natives

of America's Wild West actually

come in contact with alien

beings from another‐‐ much more

distant frontier?

>> COLONEL DOLARHYDE: What

kind of a man goes around

blowing up other people's cows?

>> ROY MURPHY: You got to

believe me.

There's white lights!

There's bright lights!

>> DOLARHYDE: So there was

this big light, and you fell

in the river, and when you come

back, two of my best hands has

just disappeared.

There weren't no lightning this

evening.

>> NARRATOR: In the 2011 film,

Cowboys and Aliens, a man

awakens in the desert, with no

clue to his past, except for a

mysterious metal device shackled

to his wrist.

This may provide the key‐‐

not only to his identity but to

his ability to protect the town

of Absolution from a deadly

attack by alien spaceships.

Based on the graphic novel

by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg

and directed by visionary

filmmaker, Jon Favreau...

Cowboys and Aliens skillfully

blends the conventions of the

classic Hollywood Western with

the futuristic effects of an

alien invasion film.

But although Cowboys and Aliens

is the product of its

creators' imagination,

there are those who believe

this story might have a few

roots in historical fact.

Aurora, Texas.

This rural southwestern town

covers an area of just over

three square miles.

Headstones at the local cemetery

mark the final resting places of

the area's hard‐working ranchers

and farmers.

But one body allegedly buried

here has no marker at all.

>> JIM MARRS: The Aurora

Cemetery was founded

in 1861, right at the start of

the war between the states.

Texas State Historical

Commission has a marker here

that states the cemetery is well

known because of the legend that

a spaceship crashed nearby in

1897, and the pilot, killed in

the crash, was buried here.

>> NARRATOR: 50 years before the

United States Army announced

that a flying disc had crashed

at Roswell, New Mexico, there

was a report of a strange

unidentified object that crashed

on the property of a local

judge.

>> JEFF DANELEK: On an April

morning in 1897, an airship

supposedly ran into a

windmill on the property of a

gentleman named Judge Proctor.

The ship exploded in flame and

was burnt to a crisp

essentially.

(explosion)

>> DANELEK: A local reporter

arrived on the scene; he

reported that there was a large

debris field, and also that

there was the charred remains of

what appeared to be to him an

alien from another planet.

>> MAX McCOY: The occupant

described as unworldly

by witnesses, was given a

Christian burial and put in an

unmarked grave.

>> MARRS: In 1897, this was six

years before the Wright Brothers

actually made heavier‐than‐air

craft work.

So, uh, this is why I consider

the Aurora spaceship crash the

smoking gun of the UFO

controversy, because this

occurred six years before there

was anything manmade in the air.

>> NARRATOR: Witnesses claimed

that debris from the crash was

recovered by local law

enforcement and never seen

again.

Others claim that Judge

Proctor buried it at the bottom

of a deep well.

For decades, the incident

remained largely forgotten

until, in 1945, a man named

Brawley Oates, who had purchased

Procter's land, reportedly was

cleaning out the debris from the

well when he later developed an

extremely severe case of

arthritis, which he claims to

be the result of the

contaminated water.

>> DANELEK: He believed that the

water from the well contained

some sort of element to it that

gave him a severe case of

arthritis.

It was a bad enough case of

arthritis that it eventually

killed him.

So a lot of people today wonder

if the well wasn't contaminated

with some sort of radioactive

agents, which was the rationale

behind his, uh, his arthritis.

>> PHILIP COPPENS: We find that

people who are using that well

actually get ill.

And so what happens at a moment

in time is that the descendants

of these people actually decide

to cement the well.

>> NARRATOR: The incident at

Roswell in 1947 also began

stirring controversy about the

Aurora incident‐‐ this time,

concerning the strange body

supposedly still resting in an

unmarked grave.

>> WHALEN: Researchers wanted to

exhume the body, but the local

cemetery association wouldn't

let them.

>> MARSHALL TRIMBLE: My first

question is: Why not?

What's it gonna hurt?

As a historian, it makes me

suspicious when somebody's

trying to hide something from

you; tells you, you can't...

you can't do something.

>> MARRS: I first got onto the

Aurora story back in 1973, and

was, uh, there before the

tombstone went missing, and

actually probably one of the few

people around who still remember

where the actual gravesite was.

Now, the little grave is located

right here.

It was a short little grave.

That of a child or a very small

person.

And the teeny little headstone,

the marker, was right about

there.

A few years ago, scientists with

ground penetrating radar

established that there really

had been a short grave here.

Now, back in 1973, Bill Case was

the aviation writer for the

Dallas Times Herald.

I was working for the Star

Telegram.

We met up here.

He had a metal detector, and we

found three readings of metal in

the grave.

A couple of months after the

headstone went missing, Bill

invited me to meet him up here.

We went over the grave, and

there was no readings in the

grave.

He showed me three little holes

that had been drilled in the

grave.

Somebody had extracted the

metal out of the grave.

>> NARRATOR: In recent decades,

further investigation of the

crash site has turned up

inconclusive evidence, including

unusually high traces of

aluminum at the bottom of the

now‐sealed well where Judge

Proctor had supposedly disposed

of the wreckage.

Could the events that happened

on a Texas farm in the early

hours of April 17, 1897, really

be evidence of an alien close

encounter?

Could it have been the first

such event to occur in America's

western region?

Or was it only one of many?

>> NARRATOR: Adam's County,

Ohio.

At the end of the 1700s,

President George Washington

awarded what was then the

unchartered land beyond the

Appalachian Mountains to

Revolutionary War veterans‐‐ in

600‐acre parcels‐‐ as payment

for their service.

But when the settlers arrived,

they found much of the land

covered with thousands of Indian

burial mounds.

And one of these was very

different from the rest.

>> COPPENS: Imagine when

you're pushing west, and all of

a sudden, you find this gigantic

effigy mound in the form of a

serpent.

What you have is a gigantic

structure, which just sits there

in the middle of a very

interesting landscape.

>> BRAD LEPPER: Serpent Mound

was one of the amazing,

mysterious mounds found by

the first settlers as they came

over the Appalachian Mountains.

There were thousands of mounds,

but Serpent Mound must have been

special.

>> NARRATOR: Like the Nazca

Lines in Peru, Serpent Mound

is a giant, prehistoric

structure that looks as though

it is meant to be viewed only

from the sky.

>> DAVID CHILDRESS: When you

see the Great Serpent Mound

Mound in Ohio, it's massively

huge.

And it can't really be

appreciated when you're standing

there, looking at it.

What we have here is meant to be

seen from the sky.

>> THOMAS JOHNSON: It's

mysterious in the fact that

it is on an elevated plateau

and concealed from the world,

unless you're flying over it in

a plane.

And it's on very uneven ground.

And really, to lay that out and

make it right, you'd almost have

to be above, looking down to get

it right, which is a mystery.

>> NARRATOR: This 1,330‐foot

long structure winds across the

land and depicts a coiled

snake, eating what appears to

be an egg.

It is the largest effigy mound

in the world, and curiously,

unlike most Native American

mounds, the Great Serpent Mound

was not constructed for burials.

>> ROSS HAMILTON: Serpent Mound

had no burials.

It's one of those mysterious

mounds that offered us no clue

as to who the builders were, but

on the property, there were

burial mounds dated from about

very early Adena period, nearly

3,000 years ago.

>> NARRATOR: Another curious

aspect of Serpent Mound is where

the ancient Native Americans

chose to build it‐‐ on the

outside swell of a five‐mile

wide meteor crater.

>> JOHNSON: 300 million years

ago, a meteor came into this

area and struck the Earth going

about 50,000 miles an hour.

The Serpent Mound is built right

on the very edge of the crater.

And there's magnetic anomalies

and faults that go across the

Serpent Mound and that the

Native Americans could dowse

them, and they could feel the

positive energy that's coming

out of the ground.

>> GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: If you

bring a compass to the Great

Serpent Mound, there's certain

spots where the compass needle

just keeps going.

So, obviously, we have some

weird magnetic fields there and

also some gravitational

anomalies.

>> JOHNSON: The myth has it

that the Native Americans, when

they came here, could see birds

similar to passenger pigeons, or

homing pigeons, circling by the

millions.

Because within the skull of the

pigeon is a little piece of

hematite, or magnetite, and

that's how they navigate.

And they couldn't figure out

where north was.

Can you imagine millions of

birds flying in a circle five

miles wide?

>> NARRATOR: In addition to

creating magnetic anomalies, the

meteor also deposited a number

of elements not indigenous to

the area, including one of the

rarest elements on Earth‐‐

iridium.

>> COPPENS: When we look at the

location of the Serpent Mound,

we find that not only that there

is iron, that there is uranium,

but also iridium.

Iridium can withstand

temperatures up to 2,000

Celsius.

It is non‐corrosive.

And it's actually been used in

unmanned spacecraft.

>> A. J. SHAKA: A lot of

iridium apparently comes from

outer space rather than being

found on the Earth.

There is a use of iridium for

thermal electric circuits.

These deep‐space probes include

actually a radioactive source,

because it's the only thing that

can provide enough power when

you're out beyond Jupiter and

there's no sunlight and there's

no nothing.

>> COPPENS:

>> NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut

theorists believe

extraterrestrials may have come

to this site to mine iridium for

their spacecraft, an

>> HAMILTON: Right here, we can

see one of those caves.

It's pretty large.

And since this site is believed

to be many, many, millions of

years old, there's a chance that

there are many, many caves.

>> NARRATOR: But if alien

visitors really did come here to

mine iridium and other elements,

might this explain why the

Serpent Mound was built on a

scale that made its shape

visible from the sky?

>> CLIFFORD MAHOOTY: The Star

Ancestors taught the American

Indians about where they came

from, and how they're supposed

to carry out their rituals.

The mound builders, I believe,

were those Indian tribes that

had contact with the

extraterrestrials.

>> NANCY RED STAR: It's the

essence of our culture, and the

mounds were a place where we

would practice and learn from

those beings that come in from

outside of this world to visit.

>> NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut

theorists also point to the

placement and shape of the Great

Serpent Mound as proof of its

extraterrestrial origins.

>> HAMILTON: The serpent itself

was aligned to a constellation

that had its apex at the height

of the night sky 5,000 years

ago.

The constellation Draconis‐‐ it

was used to align the Great

Pyramid.

>> NARRATOR: In addition to

lining up with the stars of

Draconis, the coils of Serpent

Mound also align with the solar

events of the solstice and

equinox, as well as the

18.6‐year lunar cycle.

Could these precise astronomical

alignments suggest that the

Serpent Mound served a greater

purpose than just acting as a

marker?

Some believe that because of its

magnetic anomalies, this site

may also have been used to

harness energy.

>> JOHNSON: These magnetic

anomalies, these faults, attract

lightning.

>> HAMILTON: The Serpent Mound

is right on the edge of an

outcropping of pure limestone or

dolomite, which is even better

than the limestone they built

the Great Pyramid from, and it's

highly semi‐conductive.

This is what I call the Serpent

Mound stone.

It's an unusual feature that

seems to be made of a different

kind of dolomite than what

exists on the outcropping of the

general serpent.

This stone could've been placed

in the center of the oval.

Therefore, you wouldn't get a

lot of random strikes, so much

as you would a lot of strikes

that would tend to come to the

stone.

(lightning crackles)

>> NARRATOR: Could the Serpent

Mound have been a source of

great energy?

Might it have held an advanced

alien technology that was

somehow lost?

>> NICK REDFERN: When I look

at our history of building

ancient monuments like

Stonehenge, the Sphinx, the

Pyramids, the Mayan temples,

what it tells me is, no matter

how technologically advanced we

are today, we've lost a

knowledge of something

tremendous that came thousands

and thousands of years ago.

And it's a tragedy that not only

have we forgotten how to utilize

it, but we've relegated it to

the realm of folklore and

mythology.

>> HAMILTON: When the lightning

lamps were eliminated, the

native culture fell into the

darkness again, about 5,000

years ago.

But we know that if their

prophecies hold true, the

Serpent Mound will be

reactivated again one day.

And when that re‐activation

occurs, that'll be the beginning

of the restoral of the earth.

>> NARRATOR: Was the Great

Serpent Mound really a hub of

ancient extraterrestrial

visitation?

If so, perhaps there is also

truth in legends of other, even

more bizarre, alien encounters

in the American West.

>> NARRATOR: Palmyra, New York,

September 21, 1823.

In the upstairs bedroom of a log

cabin, just south of this

small, rural village,

17‐year‐old Joseph Smith had a

vision of someone, or something,

not of this world.

>> ANDREW JACKSON: It was late

at night, it was dark, and the

room filled with a very, very

bright light.

And this personage was floating

in midair, his feet was off the

ground.

And he identified himself as

Moroni.

After talking with Joseph Smith

for a while, Moroni seemed to

ascend into the air, completely

leaving the room again dark.

The next morning, also, Moroni

came back to Joseph Smith to

show him the hidden golden book,

which is what we know as the

Book of Mormon today.

>> NARRATOR: According to the

Book of Mormon, Moroni

identified himself to Joseph

Smith as a man who lived in

America in the late fourth and

early fifth centuries.

But America was not Moroni's

home‐‐ he claimed to have much

more distant origins.

>> HAWKES: Moroni claimed to be

from the Pleiades star cluster.

So a church today, nine million

members strong, believe that

their church may have originated

not of this world, but of

another world.

>> NARRATOR: According to Joseph

Smith, not only did Moroni claim

to be from another planet‐‐ he

also directed him to dig up the

golden plates from "the Hill

Cumorah," which scholars believe

is a reference to an ancient

Native American mound, much like

the Serpent Mound.

>> COPPENS: We have since found

out that that in burial mounds

and other effigy mounds across

the Native American region, we

have such plates.

These writing tablets have been

found, and not just in North

America, but also in South

America.

This entity tells Joseph Smith

to go on a physical search for

an object, which we know could

have been an archeological

finding.

>> NARRATOR: But if Moroni was a

spiritual or metaphysical being,

why would he give Joseph Smith

physical objects with which to

translate the plates?

According to ancient astronaut

theorists, Moroni may, in fact,

have been a Star Being‐‐ an

extraterrestrial whose mission

was to pass down to Smith and

his followers the advanced

knowledge of the mound builders.

>> TOK THOMPSON: In Mormonism,

actually a lot of their theology

is directly related to this idea

of God and various angels and

various spiritual beings live on

different planets.

>> NARRATOR: According to Native

American legends, the Star

Beings left Earth thousands of

years ago, at about the same

time ancient astronaut theorists

believe extraterrestrials left

Egypt.

But if Joseph Smith's vision of

Moroni was real, might this have

been not so much a spiritual

encounter as an

extraterrestrial one?

If so, perhaps there were other

such alien visitations‐‐ ones,

which in turn, fueled an

increased interest in the stars

throughout the 1800s.

>> WHALEN: In the 19th century,

people were very interested in

astronomy.

There was some thought that

there might be life on other

planets.

So, often times, lights in the

sky were attributed to possibly

visitors from another world.

>> NARRATOR: Joseph Smith felt

such a strong connection to the

Native Americans that he

believed they could help guide

him to a new holy land, which

he called "the new Zion."

Although Smith died in 1844‐‐

the victim of mob violence‐‐

his successor, Brigham Young,

ultimately led the Mormons

further west to Utah.

In 1849, when the Mormons

arrived in the area of Parowan

Gap, local Ute leader, Chief

Wakara, told them they had

entered "God's own house" and

showed them proof in the form of

petroglyphs dating back

thousands of years.

>> TSOUKALOS: All throughout

Utah, petroglyphs depict

hunters with bows and arrows

going after buffalo.

Very ordinary, daily life

occurrences.

But there are also some other

depictions, which are very odd.

And they look like spaceships.

They look like beings with

halos.

They look like beings with

antenna on their heads, or

beings that wear some type of a

suit.

For all intents and purposes,

they look like depictions of

spacemen.

>> NARRATOR: Great Falls,

Montana. October 19, 1865.

Six months after the

assassination of President

Abraham Lincoln, a fur trapper

reports what might be the first

documented UFO crash in the Old

West.

>> WHALEN: In 1865,

the Missouri Democrat

reported that a trapper saw a

light traveling through the sky

at night.

It flew over his camp, broke

apart and crashed in the forest

some miles away.

The next day he tracked it down,

found a large stone imbedded in

the side of a mountain.

It was hollow, it was cracked

open; he claimed there were

chambers inside of it, and there

were hieroglyphic markings

on it.

And there was also some

mysterious liquid spilled around

the area.

But the newspaper, you know,

went so far as to suggest that

these were meteoric conveyances

of aliens from Mercury

or Uranus.

So, the whole idea of

UFO crashes was

explored in the 19th century

almost a hundred years

before Roswell.

>> NARRATOR: But what makes

this story even

more intriguing to Ancient

Astronaut theorists is the

location of the sighting‐‐

along the upper Missouri River.

This is the home of

the Blackfoot Indians,

a tribe whose

ancient legends include strange

tales of Star Beings visiting

the region from other worlds.

>> ANDREW COLLINS: 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.

And the way that they are

described, these can be modern

ideas of flying saucers or UFOs.

>> NARRATOR: Could the object

that the Montana

fur trapper claimed to

have found really have been one

of the alien crafts described

in Blackfoot legends?

And might the markings

have been the same as

what Joseph Smith

found on the golden plates?

To some Native Americans,

like Chief Standing Elk of the

Yankton Dakota Tribe, Star

Beings are still very much

amongst us‐‐ and they are still

making contact with humans.

>> STANDING ELK: A lot of

our relatives that come

from the stars, they speak on a

telepathic level, and there were

some that came to me and showed

me a bar with symbols on there.

They talked to me, and I

understood them very, very well.

This is the replica of one of

the bars that was in one of

the light ships.

And they represent the

universal laws.

And they're guarded by

the Star People.

So these are universal laws.

>> NARRATOR: Did early Americans

really encounter

what the natives

called Star Beings as they

crossed the frontier?

And what other strange

encounters might they have

experienced as they made their

way further west?

>> NARRATOR: Tombstone, Arizona.

In 1881, this mining boomtown

was the home of Wyatt Earp and

the site of the gunfight at the

O.K. Corral.

Less than ten years later, it

would become the location of

one of the most bizarre UFO

sightings in history.

>> WHALEN: 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.

>> MARSHALL TRIMBLE: There's

another version of the

story told by the two old

cowboys when they were very old

That they never really, uh,

they just shot at the bird,

and it got away.

It was literally bulletproof.

>> HAWKES: There were a number

of reports of big birds that

cowboys would shoot at or chase

for great distances.

And they reported the bullets

would bounce off

the leathery skin.

>> NARRATOR: But was the story

of this giant

bird simply a hoax,

as many believe?

Or was there some degree of

truth to it?

>> TSOUKALOS: In the Old West,

we have stories

of the Tommyknockers, these

creatures that resided in mines.

Of the ghost rider, which was

this cowboy that was flying

across the sky, but also of

ghost trains.

So, were all of those stories

just campfire stories that were

invented on the spot?

Or were they based in some type

of truth?

>> NARRATOR: For many Americans

living in the early and

mid‐1800s, the vast western

frontier offered both

opportunity and profound

sociological change.

Freed of the constrictions of

European tradition and

Judeo‐Christian fundamentalism,

the early pioneers could now

experiment with political,

social and religious

philosophies which their Eastern

counterparts had frowned upon.

One such newly emerging

philosophy was called

Transcendentalism.

>> MICHAEL J. CROWE:

Transcendentalism was perhaps

the leading philosophy developed

in America in the 19th century.

One of the founding figures in

it was Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It was belief in

extraterrestrial life that led

him to depart from Christianity,

and another author who is part

of that is the poet

Walt Whitman.

His most famous book 1855 was

"The Leaves of Grass."

And in

"The Leaves of Grass," there are

like 200 references

to astronomy.

He believed strongly in

extraterrestrials.

>> HAFNOR: In a nutshell,

transcendentalism reminded

young America that all

things are not knowable, and

that some things are knowable,

but not through the five senses.

So it opened up Easterners as

they went west to new ideas and

new sights.

>> NARRATOR: Another strong

influence on the

way 19th century Americans

viewed the world was the

emergence of a new genre of

literature: science fiction.

>> McCOY: I think the image

that has come down to us from

lots of movies and TV shows,

that the cowboy is kind of a

rough, illiterate character.

Most cowboys were extremely

literate.

Face it, there wasn't a lot of

entertainment out on the Plains.

>> NARRATOR: One of the

first great American

science fiction writers was

Civil War veteran Ambrose

Bierce, who believed strongly in

the possibility of life beyond

our world.

>> HAWKES: Ambrose Bierce

was an author of

some very strange short stories.

"The Difficulty of Crossing a

Field" was about an Alabama

farmer who one day was taking a

walk across the field when he

just disappeared.

He was gone.

And years later, his wife would

say that she could hear his

voice from time to time,

coming from the circle, but he

wasn't there.

Ambrose Bierce was trying to

show us that this man traveled

inter‐dimensionally to

another place.

And while he was still there,

he wasn't there.

>> NARRATOR: It is thought

by many scholars

and historians that Bierce‐‐

as well as

other authors of early fantasy

fiction‐‐ had been influenced

by Native Americans and

their folklore.

In addition to belief in

Star Beings,

they believed in the existence

of inter‐dimensional gateways

or portals,

which would enable visitors to

travel between time

and space.

>> MICHAEL DENNIN: If you're

thinking about like

people suddenly disappearing

through a hole in space time

into another dimension, at the

surface of it, when we think

about our modern theory of

relativity and that you can bend

space and time, it seems not so

crazy, because we know

mathematically how to describe

holes in space time that connect

different regions of space

to others.

>> NARRATOR: The mystery of

whether such portals really

exist may have been solved by

Ambrose Bierce himself, when he

ventured south of the border

into the Mexican desert.

>> CHILDRESS: At the very early

part of the twentieth century,

Ambrose Bierce was in northern

Mexico, in this area that's

known for strange phenomenon,

called Paquime.

This area, too, is thought to be

another one of these

interdimensional portal areas.

>> HAWKES: One theory is that

Bierce may not have traveled

into Mexico alone.

Another very colorful figure by

the name of F. A. Mitchell Hedges

may have traveled with him into

Mexico.

Mitchell Hedges was a great

British adventurer, most noted

for his discovery of a Mayan

crystal skull.

The ancient city of Paquime is

just a few miles away from the

Crystal Cave.

The largest crystal deposits in

the world are found here.

Mitchell Hedges believed that

his skulls were capable of

psychically communicating with a

person and interdimensionally

transferring that message to an

extraterrestrial being.

The theory is that Hedges, along

with Bierce, may have discovered

or mastered the method of

speaking through the crystals or

employing their power, and may

have transported, as in his

stories, to an interdimensional

space, never to be heard from

again.

>> HAFNOR: While there, he sent

his last communication that we

know of, which was a letter, and

that letter ended with this

ominous line: "As for me, I

leave tomorrow for an unknown

destination."

>> NARRATOR: The man who wrote

about so many strange

disappearances was never seen or

heard from again.

Did Ambrose Bierce meet with

foul play, or did he find an

interdimensional portal, like

the ones described in his

stories?

Perhaps the answer can be found

in a mysterious lake in

California, one thought by many

to be an actual gateway to

another world.

>> NARRATOR: Elizabeth Lake,

Southern California.

This high desert body of water

sits at the junction of the

tectonic plates that form the

powerful San Andreas fault.

The Mexicans who colonized

California in the 1700s called

it Laguna del Diablo: Lake of

the Devil.

And it was said that the devil's

own pet would come into this

world through a portal at the

bottom of the lake.

>> COPPENS: Local legend says

that at the bottom is actually

an entrance to the underworld.

They call it the Lake of the

Devil.

And it's said that in the middle

of the 18th century, from up

until about 1880 onwards,

something was happening there

which frightened locals.

>> WHALEN: Some of the rich

landowners built ranches there.

These ranchers claimed to have

been harassed and tormented by

some sort of monstrous beast

that would come out of the water

and steal cattle and menace the

locals.

>> NARRATOR: The ranchers who

claimed to have witnessed this

beast called it, "The

Thunderbird," and their

description of it was nearly

identical to that of the giant

bird witnessed by cowboys in

Tombstone in 1890.

>> WHALEN: Eventually, one of

the landowners got it in his

head that he was going to hunt

this creature down and sell it

to the circus, so according to

the story, this rancher was able

to actually fire a few shots at

this creature, which seemed to

be bulletproof and metallic.

The bullets bounced off.

And after that encounter, the

bird flew east, never to be seen

again in California.

>> NARRATOR: Could this

so‐called Thunderbird really

have been the same creature that

cowboys shot at in Tombstone?

And why was it referred to by

locals as, "The Devil's Pet"?

>> STANDING ELK: They didn't

have the vocabulary we have

today, so when things happened

that they couldn't explain, it

was called the Devil's Tower.

It was called the Devil's Lake.

It was called the Devil's this,

or the Devil's that.

>> COPPENS: Take it away from

religion, and you might find

that this was a portal to

another dimension which the

locals knew about, and might

have something to do with the

fact that this mysterious entity

was present at that very

specific location.

>> NARRATOR: If a portal to

another dimension or another

part of the universe does lie at

the bottom of Elizabeth Lake,

might it also be possible that

the Thunderbird was not really a

creature at all, but something

even more incredible?

>> JONATHAN YOUNG: A thunderbird

was enormous, it made enormous

noises, so the thunder part of

it could sound like a jet

engine.

>> REDFERN: Its eyes were able

to literally pierce and emanate

fire.

So we have this large flying

winged creature, which gives off

a thunderous sound, and lights

fly from its eyes.

That to me says, yes, we could

be dealing with some sort of

craft.

(engines roaring)

(chanting)

>> ERICH VON DANIKEN: Native

Indians in North America‐‐ they

know, of course, the bird.

But now something differently

arrived.

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.

>> MAHOOTY: Even when the

airplanes first started going

out, up in the sky here in the

southwest, they referred them to

as metal birds.

As a matter of fact, when the

first fixed‐wing craft landed in

Zuni, the Indians over there

actually went out there and

worshipped the airplane.

>> MARRS: It makes me think of a

concept called cultural

tracking, which is the idea that

UFOs can mask themselves to

appear as almost anything.

And you go back to ancient

China, and they talk about the

flying dragons.

You go back to the ancient

Egyptians, they talk about

flying boats.

You go to the Roman times, and

they're talking about flying

shields.

Perhaps that was just their

interpretation, or perhaps

that's what they actually saw.

>> NARRATOR: Did the cowboys in

Tombstone, Arizona, and ranchers

at Elizabeth Lake witness an

alien vehicle?

One that may have been visiting

North America for thousands of

years?

>> HAWKES: 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.

>> McCOY: The Old West was not

only rugged, deadly, bloody, but

it was also mysterious.

It was a time when people often

encountered things that they

didn't understand and had to

make up stories to account for

it.

And you see this in nearly every

society.

>> TRIMBLE: How many things do

we know today that were thought

to be just impossible?

I always try to keep an open

mind when‐when I hear a story,

and I might not believe, but I

don't disbelieve, either.

>> NARRATOR: Aliens invade a

quiet Western town, and

terrified residents scramble

for their guns in a valiant

attempt to defend themselves.

A mere product of Hollywood's

high‐concept imagination?

Or are films like Cowboys and

Aliens actually inspired by

historical events?

Stories that challenge

everything we know or

Stories that challenge

everything we know or believe

about ourselves?

As we continue to explore the

vastness of the universe and

examine more and more of the

mysteries of the Earth, are we

getting closer to unlocking

the secrets of our past, and

opening a doorway to our future?

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