01x06 - File: Mysteries of Mt. Shasta

[bunniefuu]

[epic, mysterious music plays]

[ominous tone plays]

As a Karuk person,

Mount Shasta is the final destination

for our prayers.

We don't look up when we pray,

we look toward Mount Shasta.

Native people,

we have places on the landscape

that it's not our place to be.

The peak of Mount Shasta,

higher elevations on the mountain,

those are places

where the spirit people inhabit.

A lot of the Native American accounts

describe Mount Shasta

as a creator-made temple or church.

[ominous ethereal music plays]

And just like some parts of churches

and temples are off-limits,

that's how they feel about the treeline.

Native people actually said,

"If you ever build something up here,

the mountain's going to destroy it."

In 1959,

developers leased land

from the Shasta-Trinity National Forest,

intending to build the Ski Bowl,

the biggest ski resort

in the United States,

on the top of Mount Shasta.

We consider it a sacred mountain,

and building this ski resort

was a violation.

[man 1] In 1971,

the ski lodge caught on fire

and burnt to the ground.

And then a massive avalanche took out

the main chairlift on Mount Shasta.

[man 2] People think

they're smarter than nature.

Sad news for those folks.

They're never gonna win.

Places all over this mountain

hold mysteries

that humans will never understand.

[theme music plays]

[narrator] In Northern California,

Mount Shasta rises

over 14,000 feet above sea level.

Its mysteries go far beyond

the destruction of the ski lodge.

For thousands of years,

Mount Shasta has been

a spiritual nerve center.

Seekers claim to be called

to the mountain by a greater force.

Is it all a coincidence,

or could the mountain have a power

that exceeds our understanding?

[uplifting classical music plays]

For thousands of years, Indigenous people

lived in these landscapes.

The Karuk name for Mount Shasta,

we call it

The Karuk tribe, our practices

originated here in this place.

According to our origin stories,

at the beginning of time,

only the spirit people roamed the Earth.

And they say at the time

of the great transformation,

some of those spirit people

were transformed into animals

and rocks, trees, water,

all these things

that exist in the natural world.

And some of those spirit people

were transformed into human beings.

It's really important

that people develop a relationship

with the mountain,

with all the spirit people.

[ethereal music plays]

We don't see humans and nature

as separate things.

It's a mutual relationship

that is co-dependent.

[lighthearted classical music plays]

[man] The northern part of California

is very sparsely populated.

It's just miles and miles

of open country and farmland.

And in the center of that,

we have Mount Shasta,

and at the foot of Mount Shasta

is the city of Mount Shasta.

And it's not like

the surrounding communities.

You really have so many

different types of people coexisting

in a fairly small community,

about 3,600 people.

People come from all over the world

to climb Mount Shasta,

and it's one of the best places

in the country to do outdoor activities.

But about 50% of the people

that came to the mountain

actually said

they came for spiritual tourism.

[narrator] Despite its tiny population,

Mount Shasta draws

more than 25,000 tourists a year.

And many of them take to social media

to share the town's unique spirituality.

[TikToker narrating]

Dropping down the light,

through into our heart.

[speaking alien tongue]

Mount Shasta is

an incredibly eclectic melting pot

of spirituality of every stripe

from around the world.

Some people refer to it

as sort of a New Age mecca.

Everybody was drawn here for something.

I've lived here for over 20 years now.

I first heard about Mount Shasta

when I was a teenager living in Utah.

There were stories

about people seeing entities

and different spiritual apparitions

while they were up hiking on the mountain.

And stories about a lost civilization.

You know, it fascinated me.

[menacing, droning music plays]

Mount Shasta is like

this revolving door to the paranormal.

It's possible for anything

of a spiritual nature to come through.

In the wilderness

surrounding Mount Shasta,

there's thousands of caves and tunnels

that radiate out in all directions.

Pluto's Cave is the closest one

directly to the mountain.

Sometimes when you go into this place,

it can feel really oppressive,

like you're being watched.

Just the seein' somethin'

out of your peripheral vision,

and you sense that someone's

moving around down there.

[eerie music plays]

A lot of people describe

seeing things walk into walls,

as if there is a door there,

and disappearing.

There's always been this idea

of some kind of spiritual realm

that you can gain entrance into

through Mount Shasta.

Pluto's cave is said

to hold some kind of doorway

that leads into a lost civilization

called Lemuria.

[narrator] The lost civilization

of Lemuria

is one

of Mount Shasta's most enduring legends.

But many believe

Lemuria isn't a myth at all.

[suspenseful music plays]

What mysteries

do the mountain's caves conceal?

Many people believe

that there's a physical civilization,

this gigantic city,

under Mount Shasta.

It's an extraordinary concept.

[narrator] According to legend,

Lemuria was an ancient continent

populated by an advanced race of beings.

But Lemuria was destroyed.

Some say a w*r erupted.

Others say the continent

sank to the ocean floor.

Whatever the cause,

Lemurians were forced to flee.

Many believe they made their way

to Mount Shasta,

where they built a new home

hidden deep within the mountain.

I have been searching the truth

for so long.

I was born and raised a Mormon,

and I believed their truth

for the first 19 years of my life.

And so, on this search,

I have come across Lemuria.

Lemuria looks a lot

like it does here on Earth,

but it's a little more majestic.

And it's beautiful,

the waterfalls are pink and green.

The love is so thick there

you can cut it with a knife.

There is no negativity going on there.

The popular descriptions

that you hear about Lemurians

is they're taller than average people,

they're white, blue-eyed,

blond-haired, Nordic-looking beings.

[narrator] Some say

that when the Lemurians went underground,

they named their city Telos.

And many believers

now use the names interchangeably.

[intriguing music plays]

[Elijah] There's a lot of controversy

around where these entrances

to Lemuria or Telos are.

There are people who come here

looking for physical entrances.

Those are rumored

to be all over the place,

and you can probably find people

who will accept your money

and claim to be able

to lead you to the entrance.

But more often than not,

it's a non-physical entrance.

Uh, you're encouraged more

to meditate and work on yourself

and hope to be invited.

That sounds like some New Ager stuff

to me, but it doesn't offend me.

Indigenous people also have stories

of little people,

and have stories of big people

on the mountain as well.

It's not that they travel

through a portal or something like that.

They are actually another species of human

that we're related to.

So, having a relationship

with the spirit people

that exist on the mountain,

those are things

that are natural for human beings.

[gentle music plays]

I've had meditation experiences

where I've been welcomed into Telos.

And what I experienced was

going through the mountain

into the sphere of the city.

There were different beings

that were tall and short.

It was a very grounding experience,

and it was truly

a spiritual journey for me.

Telosians are advanced versions

of ourselves,

and they really offer us

the opportunity to learn,

if we're open to that.

[Ashalyn] I take people,

through meditation,

into the inner-Earth city of Telos.

One woman, I took her into Telos.

After several minutes, she started sobbing

with tears coming down her face.

She goes, "I have never, ever felt

that kind of love,

and I've been looking for it all my life."

[sinister music plays]

How do you get to Telos?

You just have to be open-minded,

and uncritical,

and be in an acceptive state of mind.

And then perhaps you will see Telos.

And being a scientist,

I think it's absolutely ridiculous.

I don't think Telos is a real place. No.

People see Telos

because they wanna see Telos.

Or just because

they wanna be accepted by a group.

But silly stories can still

have spiritual consequences.

[suspenseful classical music plays]

[Elijah] Getting to be invited

into a spiritual paradise

inside of Mount Shasta

was a very strong selling point, I think,

for the spiritual scene here.

But Lemuria originated, actually,

as a zoological idea.

There was a gentleman named Philip Sclater

who was trying

to figure out why fossilized lemurs

in Madagascar and India

resembled each other.

So, he postulated

that there was some kind

of sunken land bridge or there's something

that would've allowed the lemurs

to migrate from one to the other.

And I think he was kind of joking

when he called it "Lemur-ia."

[bold classical music plays]

A lot of people latched

onto the idea of a sunken continent

because nothing really fires

the imagination like something like that.

There were a number

of occultists and mystics

who picked up

on that scientific idea of Lemuria.

And they started introducing

their own spiritual

and metaphysical ideas into it.

Over time, when you have these legends,

as more people tell the story,

they add embellishments to it.

[Elijah] And so, what began as lemurs

crossing a land bridge in the Indian Ocean

eventually became a sunken civilization

in the Pacific Ocean,

the inhabitants of which fled

to Mount Shasta.

Eventually, as it went on,

it became more and more

of a mystical order

that lived inside the mountain.

And if you were on the right frequency

and knew the right m place to look,

if you were

evolved yourself enough, spiritually,

you might be invited to go inside.

I'd love for there to be

an ancient civilization

under the mountain.

That'd be that'd be really interesting.

But I I'm very, very skeptical of that.

Very, very skeptical.

If you hollow out

that much of the mountain,

it's gonna start sinking.

It just, geologically,

would be too impossible.

All this stuff intersects

with science fiction constantly.

[narrator] If Telosians truly exist

inside Mount Shasta,

it begs the question,

how did they get there?

Some believers say

the mountain isn't just the home of Telos,

it's a portal to the stars.

[energy pulses]

I do believe that Telosians

are what we would consider aliens.

Mount Shasta is somewhat of a epicenter

for intergalactic travels, communications.

It's almost like an intergalactic airport.

UFO sightings on Mount Shasta

are extremely common.

It is almost unusual not to see activity.

[gentle ethereal music plays]

[man] One night in 1992,

friend of mine and I decided to drive up

and go and look at the stars

on the east side of the mountain.

So, we were hangin' out

in the back of my pickup,

and we were lookin' in the sky,

and there was a configuration

of three stars

on equal angle of triangle,

which is the portal.

Basically, it's a shortcut

through hyperspace.

All of a sudden, these stars blinked,

and out of the center of it,

it looked like if you shake up

a a soda bottle and you pop the lid.

It looks like there's a roiling of energy.

A UFO came out of it.

And it took a pause

as it materialized completely.

It did a right-hand turn

and it went directly

into the side of the mountain.

There's a door

on the side of the mountain,

but it was cloaked well.

If you looked at it,

it seemed like there was nothing there

except a sheer cliff.

And another ship came out

15 minutes later,

and it did the same pattern.

We watched for three hours.

Nine craft came out

and went into the side of the mountain.

I was blown away.

I think that the off-worlders are here

to observe and keep tabs

on how we are maturing.

To stop us from destroying ourselves

and maybe other civilizations as well.

[otherworldly music plays]

[Kay] I believe the UFOs and aliens,

they are an advanced reality

of where we could be.

There's a purpose to seeing them,

and it's just the awareness

that we are not the only life form

that exists here.

And so, when you see them,

instead of feeling terrified

or fearing, fearful,

you can just recognize

that we're not alone.

[mysterious music plays]

Mount Shasta is one

of those classic UFO mountains,

probably because of the lenticular clouds.

[Bill] It's one of the best places

in the world to see a lenticular cloud,

which, if you have a mountain,

and you have moist air,

and if it has enough force,

it gets lifted up and over Mount Shasta.

And as soon as it goes up,

the air expands and cools.

All of a sudden, a cloud appears,

and then as it comes down the other side,

it instantly compresses

and the cloud instantly disappears.

So, what you're seeing

is a constantly

creating-and-disappearing stream of air.

But a lot of people think

that there are Telosian spacecraft

hidden within the lenticular clouds.

Things like UFOs, alien contacts, uh,

you know, millions of people

living under Mount Shasta

All those kinds of ideas,

they strain your credulity.

You're kinda at the mercy

of people's imaginations.

I think if an alien s species

was going to hide itself using a cloud,

they might not use a cloud that was shaped

exactly like the thing

that they were trying to hide. [laughs]

I'm not a total skeptic

on stuff like this.

I don't think any of it's

really out of the question.

Almost anyone can come up here

and have some kind of experience

that's out of the ordinary.

And, most of the time, I think

that's a positive and healthy thing.

But, sometimes, this can be carried away

into, like, a dark place.

And people can become twisted.

[narrator] While many find enlightenment

at Mount Shasta,

there's no denying its troubled history.

Why are dark forces drawn to the mountain?

[dramatic classical music plays]

There's tons of different cults

who trace their origin in some way

back to this mountain.

It offends me when somebody

is clearly exploiting people.

You can tell which people

want to be a cult leader,

and we've had many of them

here in Mount Shasta,

including Amy Carlson.

You know, that famous leader

of Love Has Won.

[narrator] Amy Carlson became notorious

when her extreme ideas and unusual death

spread across news and social media.

The leader of a cult was found dead

and mummified in a sleeping bag.

The body was found in a back room

of the house, fully clothed,

decorated with Christmas lights,

and with glitter makeup around its eyes.

Carlson believed that she had lived,

oh, hundreds of times,

and at one point was Marilyn Monroe

and Cleopatra and Joan of Arc.

[narrator] As the leader of Love Has Won,

Amy Carlson proudly shared

her bizarre beliefs and behavior

across TV and social media.

Greetings, love beings.

It is Mother God.

Mother of Creation,

Mother Gaia, Mother Earth.

We finally got rain here at Mount Shasta.

Are y'all aware that she says

that she's actually Jesus?

- Yes. Yeah, she has the documentation.

- Yes.

I commanded all my atoms

to come home and back into the light.

Cabal, over!

Spiritual ego wh*re, done!

I remember reading about it

in the newspaper

and what a shocking strange story it was,

and then reading further to realize

that her previously-known location

was ten miles away

from where I live, and

I mean, it it's a little surprising,

until you think about it

for about ten seconds

and you go, "Yeah, that makes sense."

[narrator] Love Has Won's connection

to Mount Shasta

went far beyond

residing in the town of Dunsmuir.

Carlson also claimed

to be the Queen of Lemuria.

[Dustin] They trafficked

in a lot of New Age stuff.

They talked about Lemuria

and all of the things

that you see up here,

and these ideas can turn

into something really dark, real fast.

[melancholy music plays]

[narrator] For decades,

Mount Shasta has provided a foundation

for many cults to take shape.

[sinister music plays]

[Bill] A woman who went

by the name of Sister Thedra

claimed to be, since the 1950s,

in daily contact with these space beings.

Her ideas reached Mount Shasta

from Chicago, where she lived.

And she prophesized

that they would be picked up

by a spaceship and taken off the planet

before there was this big cataclysm

of earthquakes and horror.

They gave up their possessions,

quit their jobs.

and went with her to the appointed time.

Turns out two sociologists infiltrated

her group in Chicago

and wanted to know

what would happen to her followers

when this event didn't happen,

when the prophecy failed.

And lo and behold,

they all believed that their love

had prevented the catastrophe,

and they doubled down on the belief

in Sister Thedra and the space beings.

And the sociologists

coined the term "cognitive dissonance."

You're so much involved

with the thing you believe in

that you can't see

the proof that it's not there.

Later, Sister Thedra

moved to Mount Shasta.

And she had

a big group of followers there,

some very well-educated people.

But even intelligent people

don't wanna see proof.

Very few people have

the tools to evaluate truth.

[sinister music intensifies]

[Dustin] Cult leaders become obsessed

with power and control over people.

And they invent these spiritual constructs

to be able to control their behavior

and what they do and think.

And another way this stuff is used

is to control the narrative of the past.

You can invent a story

in order to justify your entitlement

to a place that doesn't belong to you.

[tense ethereal music plays]

Native Americans, they've been here

since time immemorial.

Mount Shasta is really

a Native American sacred mountain.

This idea of some kind of spiritual realm

that exists, you know,

inside the mountain,

that comes directly

from Native American-sourced cosmology

and history.

When you come to a place like Mount Shasta

and you claim

that the Lemurians or the Telosians

have been here for a million years,

that's a kind of theft of history.

It does a disservice to Indigenous people

and their history

and connection to the mountain.

[sparse ominous music plays]

The earliest types of rituals

that were done in this cave

were Native American.

They did ceremonial

spiritual practices here,

and when the settlers settled this area,

all of these caves around here

were taken over by secret societies

who practiced occult rituals

in the Masonic tradition.

This is one of the things

that introduced darkness

into a place like this.

This was done by a secret society

who called themselves

the Improved Order of the Red Men.

They would come down into this cave,

and they would dress up

as Native Americans,

and they would just make a mockery

of their culture and rituals.

It was kind of, like, a way

to dehumanize them.

People have come here

and done depraved things.

[gentle ethereal music plays]

Humans can have some weird concepts

that they think somehow makes

their time on this Earth better.

Indigenous people have sustained

their cultures and for millennia.

As human beings,

we're all related.

We all have responsibility to one another.

[tense ethereal music plays]

[narrator] The legends

that surround Mount Shasta

may always be shrouded in mystery.

When so many people claim

to have the same experience,

is it real, or is it a figment

of the collective imagination?

Whatever the answer,

something extraordinary

is happening at Mount Shasta.

I do certainly think

there's something paranormal and spiritual

that's going on around here.

It just seems to take on the form

of whatever you're holding in your mind.

That can be something benign

or that could be

something harmful for people.

[Elijah] There is no substitute

to coming here yourself,

and then the person next to you

is telling you

that they're hearing voices in their head.

You're looking them in the eyes and you're

like, "This person is not lying to me."

Keep expanding, keep on going,

haven't disappeared,

because there's just something

about that awesome beauty

and naturalness of the place

that helps people

have unusual experiences.

The narratives, I think, are all false,

but they all have a grain

of some kind

of experiential truth to them.

You kinda have to ask your intuition,

what resonates with you?

But it starts with being open.

Come on the mountain

and have an experience yourself.

Come on the mountain, open yourself up

to the many possibilities that may exist.

[Leaf] It is the great mystery and

we don't know everything

about what goes on all around us.

I don't spend my time

tryin' to understand things that just are.

Some of those things

aren't meant for us to understand.

[mysterious music plays]