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)
MARRS: There was an
explosion.
In those days... this is before
television, before jet
aircraft... any big noise got
your attention.
Plus, the ground shook, and so
they knew something tremendous
had happened.
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: We have iron,
iridium and uranium, three
substances which definitely
should not be considered to be
of any use to Native Americans.
The question then is: To who are
they of use?
NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut
theorists believe
extraterrestrials may have come
to this site to mine iridium for
their spacecraft, and point to
numerous caves found in the
crater swell beneath the mound
as evidence of this.
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?
HAMILTON: The Serpent Mound
is a marker for space according
to the Shawnee Indians.
They're convinced that space
travelers are using Serpent
Mound as a marker.
NARRATOR: According to Zuni
Elder Clifford Mahooty, the
Shawnee aren't the only Native
Americans who believe Serpent
Mound has an extraterrestrial
connection.
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 lndians,
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
lndians 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 lndians 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?
Captioning sponsored by
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS
Captioned by
Media Access Group at WGBH
access.wgbh.org