All language subtitles for The UnXplained s07e14 American Frontier.eng

WILLIAM SHATNER:
Mysterious ancient earthworks

that lead
to the land of the dead.

Strange lights that haunt
a town for hundreds of years.

-(animalistic screeching)
-And horrifying tales

of monsters said
to roam the American frontier.

In 1803,

the United States completed
the Louisiana Purchase,

acquiring 828,000 square miles

of untamed wilderness
from France for $15 million.

Quite the deal.

And almost immediately,
scores of explorers

and settlers began
pushing westward

to discover much more
than just an uncharted frontier.

Pioneers spoke of bizarre,
man-made structures,

strange mummies
and weird, ghostly lights.

Were these merely tall tales
spun around the campfire?

Or was the American frontier
far stranger

than we ever imagined?

Well, that is what
we'll try and find out.

? ?

(horse neighing)

SHATNER:
From the 1700s to the early 1900s,

the era of the American frontier
marked a period

of rapid westward expansion.

-(horse neighing)
-It was a time where explorers,

pioneers and adventurers
moved into unknown lands

to create a new life
and build a new country.

(indistinct chatter)

KEN LAYNE:
America really starts with the frontier.

The father of the country,
George Washington,

makes his name by fighting
in the French and Indian Wars

on the American frontier,

beyond the mountains of those
first coastal settlements

that made up
the American colonies.

As more people arrived,

a lot of those people went
straight to the frontier.

And for the next 100 years,

the story of America is really
moving across that frontier.

And as it did,

all of the different cultures
and landscapes

and the troubles that it took
to get through those places

all added up to the myth
and legends of America.

So on the frontier,
the American West-

it really became
the land of promise.

The idea was that
there was unlimited resources,

and all you had to do to get it
for yourself was go there.

Be willing to brave danger

or strife or difficulty,

and all of the resources,
the land-

that could all be yours.

This was a really different idea
for people.

That there was somewhere
where anyone,

not of a good family
or a particular lineage,

but anyone could achieve
their dreams.

SHATNER:
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson

purchased the
Louisiana Territory from France,

doubling the size
of the United States.

And for the next 40 years,

around seven million people
took part

in the treacherous
westward migration.

But in 1848, gold was
discovered in California,

igniting a feverish frenzy
of treasure seekers

who ventured even farther west

to claim their fortune.

IAN NELIGH:
When gold was first discovered

in California,

that brought a staggering
90,000 people into the frontier

and across the Rockies
to try to find gold.

And of course, along the way,

they were prospecting
the streams,

and they were looking for gold,
and they found a lot of wealth.

And some people
became quite rich overnight.

The gold rush happened again ten
years later in Colorado in 1859,

when another 100,000 people
decided to brave the frontier

and try to find gold.

The frontier could provide
an untold opportunity

for those who knew
how to look for it.

There was enough people
that they needed

to bring in cattle
to feed them all.

And with cattle,
you need cowboys.

And now you have the West.

SHATNER:
By 1862,

President Abraham Lincoln
signed the Homestead Act,

granting Americans 160 acres
of public land for free

if they were willing
to farm and develop their claim.

(horse neighing)

Around four million people
took on the challenge

to be part
of a westward expansion.

MAN:
Yah!

SHATNER:
And what they found was a world

unlike any other.

LANCE GEIGER:
The stuff

that they found in the West
was truly amazing.

The Yellowstone country,

the Grand Canyon.

Native American ruins, where
they were building walled cities

that we never knew
that that was going on.

They even found bones

of ancient elephants
and sabertooth tigers.

And newspapers at the time were
happy to print stories of,

you know,
finding giants in the West.

You could believe that

because so much was found
in the West.

But is it just legend,
or is it truth?

There was a lot of truth

stranger than fiction
in the West.

TOK THOMPSON:
You're moving to the area that was not mapped.

A land that had been inhabited
by cultures

for thousands
upon thousands of years.

Most of the North American
continent was Native American.

And these cultures
have their own stories,

a lot of strange stories.

Many, many million beliefs,
native legendary creatures

that had become a part
of Western folklore.

Even the most classic American
supernatural other, Bigfoot-

you know, Sasquatch-

this comes directly
from Native American lore.

SHATNER:
While pioneers experienced

Native American mysticism
for the first time,

the new settlers were also
creating stories and beliefs

that were all their own.

This included a strange form
of entertainment

found in traveling shows
that toured the frontier.

They passed off
questionable relics as genuine-

like McGinty, the petrified man,

the alleged mummy
of Abraham Lincoln's assassin,

John Wilkes Booth,

and other oddities
that further blurred the line

between fact and fiction.

LAYNE:
Frontier settlements were

completely isolated
from civilized America.

So, carnivals
and related traveling shows

brought a certain kind
of novelty to these small towns.

And one
of the favorite attractions

of such places
was the freak show.

And these freak shows would have
all sorts of strange animals.

You might have
a two-headed bull.

And there was also
human curiosities.

Like, very big humans.

People who were eight,
nine feet tall.

They would have people

who had hair growing
over their entire body.

And for the performers,
this was often a way

to get out of a doomed life

where they couldn't
really have a regular life.

Instead, they got to travel,

entertain people and achieve
a certain kind of fame.

SHATNER:
While so-called human curiosities

garnered great attention,

there was also
one strange object

that attracted so much notoriety
in the West,

people claimed it cursed the
entire city of San Francisco.

LAYNE:
One of the most grotesque,

weird curiosities was the head

of the notorious
gold rush bandit

and outlaw Joaqu�n Murrieta.

And this was a human head

in a jar of whiskey,
the legend goes.

It toured around
the state of California

and its last
permanent exhibit was

at Dr. Jordan's
Anatomical Museum

of Weird Curiosities
in San Francisco.

And it was
in that museum in 1906

when the great earthquake
of San Francisco struck.

(people screaming)

LAYNE:
The whole place was leveled.

And the legend grew
that perhaps Joaqu�n Murrieta

cursed San Francisco
for displaying his head

and caused
the actual earthquake.

SHATNER:
While it's safe to say

that a head in a jar
was not responsible

for leveling San Francisco,

could some of the countless
strange tales and legends

that are still told

from the American frontier
really be true?

McNEILL:
We have the historical reality of the frontier

and westward expansion,

and then this real mythical,
legendary world

of the Wild West
becomes this backdrop.

Like a landscape against
which anything can happen.

If we're looking for a place

where unknowns are going
to be encountered,

where strange
and bizarre things can happen,

the American frontier is
a magnet for stories like that.

SHATNER:
This remote frontier town is famous

for a rather strange phenomenon

that has been witnessed
since the 1880s.

The spectacle is so well known,

the town constructed
a viewing station

for the thousands of onlookers
who, every year,

hope to catch sight of...
the Marfa lights.

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh,
it's totally moving.

(crickets chirping)

MICHAEL HALL: I've been
coming out here for a long time,

going to the Marfa lights
viewing station

and seeing what I thought
were the Marfa lights.

People have been seeing these
lights for hundreds of years.

They mostly appear at night

and mostly in an area called
the Mitchell Flat,

which is between Alpine
and Marfa.

The more I reported,
the more I realized

that there was no real
consistency to the reports.

Everybody had an individualized
experience with the lights.

WOMAN: It's, like, flickering
and changing colors.

HALL: I talked
to people that said

they have different colors,
they hover.

Sometimes they shot off,
sometimes they came back.

They were different velocities.

A lot of people say
how playful they are.

It's like they're having
a spiritual experience

with these mystery lights.

SHATNER:
While some eyewitnesses claim

to feel
a transcendent experience

witnessing the Marfa lights,

others have found them
to be rather unsettling.

Belle Pe�a-Lancaster
was just 13 years old

when she and a bus
full of her classmates

got an up-close look
at the mysterious anomaly.

I remember sitting in the bus,

and that's when we saw them
for the first time.

They were out there
in the field.

And they came closer and closer
and closer to the bus.

Just kind of playing
with each other.

The whole bus lit up
with the lights.

It was, like, blue, green,
like, a soft yellow light.

But we could see
they weren't spherical.

They were two-dimensional.

They were about the size
of a big platter.

So, they're flat.

And they went back quickly
to the end of the field.

Some of the girls were
really upset and crying.

And that's when
our coach was just...

told the bus driver,
"We got to go. We got to go."

MAN:
We got two heading this way.

THORNSBURG:
I grew up here.

We all had our own idea
what the lights were.

They are very intelligent.

I'll tell you
how we communicated with them.

So whenever those lights
appeared, we would take a laser

and hit that light
with green, blue, whatever.

And they answered back.

But whatever color
you hit it with,

it turned that color,
and it grew every single time.

Now that is light that did that.

Those lights...
not supposed to talk.

They're not supposed
to communicate, but they did.

SHATNER: Can the Marfa lights
communicate with us in some way?

Well, it's an intriguing claim.

And one that's made
even more compelling

when you consider what happened
to military personnel

who were stationed here
during World War II.

THORNSBURG:
The Marfa Army Airfield was

the largest training bomber base
in World War II.

During the training progress,

whenever those bombers took off,

the lights would come out
of the ground

and either fly with the plane
or fly in the plane.

And they got to a point

where they would interfere

with the communication
that base had with pilots.

The military decided
to shut it down

because the lights were
getting out of control.

The officer in charge of flight
ops, his name was Fritz Kahl.

He became the mayor
of Marfa later on.

He was very much afraid
of the Marfa lights.

He said, "Stay away from 'em.

They're not of this world."

SHATNER:
Just what are the Marfa lights?

While no one can say for sure,

to this day,
there is endless speculation

about what this
mysterious phenomenon could be.

HALL:
Since the first time

anyone ever saw
the Marfa lights,

they've come up with theories
to explain them.

There is gas rising up

from the volcanic floor
of the Mitchell Flat.

That might have something
to do with it.

There's this theory called
"Fata Morgana,"

which is what happens

when you see a ship
out on the horizon,

and it seems
to be floating in the air.

So maybe
the lights are just a mirage.

A lot of folks out here think

that the Marfa lights are
connected to UFOs and aliens.

But the biggest theory is

headlights on the highway
from Presidio, Texas.

Of course,
there were no car headlights

back in the 19th century, but
that is the number-one theory.

(cattle lowing)

The first recorded sighting
of these lights is 1883

by a 16-year-old cowboy
named Robert Ellison.

He was driving cattle
with some other cowboys,

and he told his family

about seeing these weird lights
in the sky.

There is no documentation
to these early accounts.

What there are,
are oral stories, oral history.

But that doesn't mean
that they're not true.

SHATNER:
With no other explanation

for the strange, dancing lights
on the horizon,

it is said
that Robert Ellison believed

they may have been fires
set by a local Apache tribe.

But what's so intriguing is

that the Apache had
their own explanations

for these ghostly illuminations.

They believed
they were connected

to the death of a mighty
Apache chief named...

Alsate.

The Apache had a chief
named Alsate,

who was killed in the wars
with the Mexicans

back in the 19th century.

And what the Apaches
and the Mexicans thought was

that any mysterious light seen
down there

was Alsate's ghost.

Are the mystery lights
the ghost of an Apache chief

wandering
through the wilderness?

I don't know. Maybe so.

DOVER:
There are native tribes

that speculate that
the ghost lights are the spirit

of a chief,
and that the spirits

of the warriors are still
searching for him.

There are native stories
in that area

that these are called
"ghost lights."

We don't know for sure,

but native stories always
have some basis in truth.

I've talked to people
that had seen them,

that said that they've actually
communicated with them

and would ask them,
"Move to the left,

"move to the right,
move higher,"

and these lights would, in turn,
follow those instructions.

SHATNER:
Stories of the Marfa lights are

as old as Texas itself,
and continue to this day.

And while
there's no definitive answer

for what these anomalies
really are,

this phenomenon has become
an accepted member

of this remote,
frontier community.

HALL: The Marfa Public Library,
which is this really cool,

little small-town library,
right off the town square-

there's a room
full of local history.

And one of the highlights
of the room is this binder.

It's about four inches thick,

and it's full
of Marfa lights stories.

And there's hundreds of stories.

It's like any great mystery.

The great mysteries
are unsolved,

no matter how deeply
you look into them,

and that makes them
live on forever.

and that makes them
live on forever.

Even though the strange
Marfa lights remain a mystery,

the fact that they're still
visible today allows us

to continue to study them.

Which is also the case
with a massive, earthen mound

in southern Ohio,

that some experts believe
was built to serve as a gateway

to another world.

While mapping the West,

legendary explorers Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark

discover several
strange mounds made of earth

that appear to be hundreds,
if not thousands, of years old.

What they had discovered
are some

of North America's
greatest ancient wonders.

THOMPSON:
One of the

interesting things
that Lewis and Clark came across

in their expedition were mounds.

And these mounds are sacred
places for Native Americans.

Most average Americans,
around the 1800s,

they would have had no idea
what to make of this.

What they were stumbling on
is a tremendous story.

One of the ones
that they describe-

the so-called spirit mounds-
is a natural mound,

not a man-made phenomenon.

This lines up
with Native American ideas

of sacred landscapes,

that, you know,
the land itself has spirit.

But we also have
what's called "effigy mounds."

ROMAIN:
Effigy mounds are large earthen structures,

usually between two
to four feet in height,

and they're shaped in the shape
of an animal of some sort.

Many of them are bears.

Many of them are birds.

A few of them may have barrels
within them.

Most of them don't.
And, frankly,

the reason for effigy mounds
is not clearly understood.

SHATNER:
It's estimated that thousands

of mysterious earthen mounds
were constructed

all across North America
by ancient Native cultures.

But there is one structure
in central Ohio

that is more confounding
than the rest.

It's called
the "Great Serpent Mound."

The Great Serpent Mound
is an effigy earthwork,

in the shape of a snake

about to grasp, or bite into,

a circular,
or an oval-shaped object.

Often described as an egg,
but probably not.

It's about 1,300 feet in length,

which makes it longer
than a football field.

It's, quite frankly,
a masterpiece

of ancient
earthwork construction

that has yet to be rivaled

anywhere, frankly, in the world.

SHATNER:
The Serpent Mound is mostly made of clay and ash,

with a layer of rocks and soil
that help it retain its shape.

It was one of the first
archaeological sites

in U.S. history
to be preserved as a state park.

But even after centuries
of study,

experts are still working
to uncover its many secrets.

ROMAIN:
In 2010, we took solid cores-

like biopsies, basically-
from 18 different locations

within the body
of the serpent

to obtain radiocarbon
datable materials

from the base of the mound.

The object, of course, being

to try to ascertain
the best we could

who-who built the effigy.

So, the ground
at the Serpent Mound was dated

to about 320 BC.

I suspect that the
initial construction was built

by Adena people.

It may or may not have looked
like what we see today,

but it was continually
renewed, rebuilt

and restored by Native Americans

for well over 1,500 years.

SHATNER:
What would compel ancient Native people

to maintain this enormous site
for thousands of years?

Perhaps clues can be found
in the tales

of frontier-era discoveries
that can only be described

as gigantic.

In the mid-1800s,
people begin to find

what appear to be
really abnormally large bones

that seem to speak
to incredibly tall people.

Some reports say,
nine, ten, 11 feet tall.

This is a really
interesting suggestion,

that there were
ancient people living here

who were literal giants.

And then here we have,
in the landscape,

this impossibly large piece
of art representing a serpent.

It's not a stretch to think,
giant people make giant art.

DOVER:
There was one skeleton that was found

in direct connection
with the Serpent Mound.

They said that the skull was
large, the jawbone was huge,

and this skeleton became known
as the "Adena Giant,"

and it was put in a museum,

like so many others were,

and has been lost to antiquity.

And there still is an accounting

as to where
a lot of these remains went.

So, there's a lot of people
that believe

that the giants
that existed then

had a lot to do
with the construction.

SHATNER:
Was the Great Serpent Mound built

by an ancient race of giants?

It's an intriguing theory that
certainly adds one more layer

to the mystery

of what the extraordinary
Serpent Mound could be.

ROMAIN:
What else is a burial mound

except a portal
to another world?

And that's what I believe
Serpent Mound represents.

It's a portal
to the land of the dead.

This was a sacred burial ground,

with the serpent at its center,

as a guardian
to that land of the dead,

and as a protector of the people
who are buried there.

But ultimately,
no one really quite knows

precisely what Serpent Mound is.

Whatever the purpose

of the Great Serpent Mound
might have been,

it's a reminder
that the legends of the frontier

stretch back
thousands of years.

But there are other mysteries
that have yet to be solved,

like the case of a terrifying
giant creature who ran wild

in Arizona,
called the Red Ghost.

SHATNER:
This land of searing desert,

treacherous canyons
and ancient saguaro cactus

is a dangerous wilderness
reserved

for only
the most resilient frontiersmen.

But after the arrival
of the railroad in 1877,

the population explodes.

Settlers are hellbent
on exploiting this rugged land

for cattle ranches, agriculture,

and, of course, gold.

And around the same time,

word spreads of a strange,
new danger in the region-

a monstrous creature
roaming the desert.

In 1883,

there was two prospectors

who were camping at night,

and some terrible creature
ran through their camp

and destroyed their tents
and scared the heck out of them.

(eerie screeching)

And the next day, when people
went to investigate the area,

they found hoof marks
that did not look like anything

that anybody had ever seen.

JOHN:
This monster- it was huge.

It was aggressive.

It made this weird
screaming noise

that nobody had ever
heard anything like before.

Frontier people had dealt
with wild animals.

You know, bears and
mountain lions and whatnot,

and even crazy horses.

But this huge monster
was frightening.

People were scared
of this thing.

It left long red hairs on
the bushes as it went through.

And so, it acquired the name
"the Red Ghost."

SHATNER:
As the story goes, over the following weeks,

more locals reported
encountering a giant red monster

in Arizona.

Some accounts claimed
it was over 30 feet tall.

Others said it could knock over
heavy freight wagons with ease.

What possibly

could these frightened
frontiersman have witnessed?

LAYNE: Wherever Americans fanned
out across the frontier West,

people reported
seeing strange animals

that could not be found
in any zoology book.

There were stories
about creatures

like the Wendigo
and the Skinwalker.

These were sort of
werewolf-style humanoids.

There were legends
of great thunderbirds

that looked like pterodactyls,

-that would darken the sky...
-(screeching)

...as they went overhead.

A lot of people,
at the time period,

would have readily believed
in strange monsters

that might have been
lurking about.

This was unexplored territory.

There were animals
not yet known to science.

And so, nobody really knew

what the Red Ghost was
or what was going on.

It was a time of monsters.

SHATNER:
In addition to its frightening description,

there was another reason
that the Red Ghost was so feared

in the Arizona Territory.

Because according
to eyewitnesses,

this giant red monster...

also had a demonic rider.

The story takes
sort of a darker turn

when two prospectors saw it
crossing a mesa

and described it
as being this giant,

red creature being ridden
by the devil.

They couldn't quite make it out.

So, they decided
to fire at the creature.

(gunshot)

And it got away,

but something fell off.

So, they went up there
to look at it.

And they found the remains
of a human head.

So that kind of further added
to the legend

and sort of the creep factor
of this Red Ghost

that was sort of terrorizing the
Arizona Territory at the time.

SHATNER:
The legend of the Red Ghost and its rider spread

throughout the Arizona Territory
during the late 1800s.

So, what exactly was
this strange beast

said to be ridden
by the devil himself?

It wasn't until
about 15 years later

that, one morning,
a rancher got up,

and he looked out his window,

and he saw the Red Ghost
in his front yard.

And so, he carefully
took his rifle and fired...

-(gunshot)
-(screeching)

...killing the Red Ghost
once and for all.

It's always
an interesting moment

when somebody shoots a legend,
because at that point,

it's no longer really a legend.

Now, it's a dead creature.

When people got
to examine the dead creature

that the fellow shot
on his lawn,

it turned out to be a camel.

Camels are not native
to this area.

So, for the people there,
this would have been unusual.

SHATNER:
The discovery that the Red Ghost

was not a monstrous beast,

but, instead, an exotic camel,
left locals questioning

how on earth this creature
found its way to Arizona?

Well, many believe
it was a long-lost member

of a frontier
expeditionary force

known as
"The Army Camel Corps."

DOVER:
In 1855,

up to 1887,
there was a proposal that was

brought out
by the War Department.

The head of the War Department
was Jefferson Davis.

And he recommended that with the
American Southwest opening up,

that we probably needed camels.

So, they recruited camels
from the Mediterranean

and brought them over,
about 75 of them.

-(camels grunting)
-And they were actually pretty successful.

They could go for a week
without water.

They could go for a month
without food.

But the soldiers were
having difficulties

because the camels
had an ill temper

and would spit at them
and bite them.

The program was
finally dissolved

because the railroad
started coming through,

and they no longer had a need
for camels.

Was the Red Ghost just
the last of a regiment

of camel-riding soldiers?

It's certainly possible.

But even if that were true,

the identity of its skeletal
rider is another mystery.

DAVID ALBAUGH:
After this farmer killed the camel,

they found that a human body
was strapped on its back.

They did not know the origin of
the person that was on the back.

They thought
maybe it was somebody

that was dying of thirst,
and maybe

he would strap himself
to the back of the camel,

hoping the camel would
lead him to water.

But then they found
that the way

that the body was actually
attached is not something

he could have tied himself.

So, the question is, who put him
on the back of the camel

and tied him there
and just let him go?

JOHN:
It is extremely mysterious

how someone tied someone else
to the back of an animal

that was that unwelcoming
of human contact.

How did that happen?

Who was that person
and what happened to them?

There is a lot
of unexplained stuff here.

Could the Red Ghost have been
a lost Army camel

with a dead rider on its back
wandering the Arizona desert?

We may never know the truth.

Which might also be the case
with a bizarre discovery

found in Wyoming,

where prospectors uncovered
a humanoid mummy

that was only
six and a half inches tall.

SHATNER: This region in Central
Wyoming has long attracted

fortune seekers
in the search for frontier gold.

But it's also the site

of a strange discovery in 1934,

when gold prospectors
Cecil Mayne and Frank Carr

unearth a man-made cavern
hidden inside the mountain.

Cecil Mayne and Frank Carr-

they were looking
for gold one day,

and they just happened
to find a little bit

on the edge of the mountain.

So, they blew up
the side of the mountain,

hoping they'd find more ore.

(explosion)

But what they found was
this room,

and it was a room
that was obviously

constructed by somebody.

It was four-by-four foot wide
and 15 feet deep.

It looked like a tomb.

And standing on a little shelf

that was two and a half feet
off the ground was

this little figure,
a little mummy.

DOVER:
When they looked at it, it was

almost sitting cross-legged,
as if it had been posed there.

It was a total
of six inches high.

The head was flattened
on the top and large.

It weighed about a pound,

and they said
that if you stretched it out,

that it would be
possibly 18 inches high.

SHATNER:
This tiny mummy was nicknamed "Pedro"

in honor of the San Pedro
Mountains where it was found.

But just who or what is Pedro?

Well, according to the earliest
known newspaper reports,

soon after the mummy
was discovered, it was sold

to a man named
Homer F. Sherrill.

And for seven years,
he had scientists examine it.

And many of them believed
this small mummy

was actual proof
of a tiny race of pygmies,

or little people.

ALBAUGH:
Scientists had access to Pedro,

and they X-rayed it.

What they found,
according to them,

was a full skeleton inside

with fully-formed arms
and fully-formed legs,

and including
a full set of teeth.

Pedro also had
very sharp canine teeth,

much like a vampire would,

and they also found what
they called meat in its stomach.

According to them,

this was actually the body
of a 65-year-old person, and

an actual fetus would not
have a full set of teeth.

It would have teeth
that were in the gums,

not developed yet.

If this finding was true,

that meant
that it couldn't be a fetus.

So, could this be actual proof

of a race of small,
pygmy-like people

who lived
in that area of Wyoming?

People were very fascinated
by this mummy,

which seems
to have been a real mummy,

and fascinated by the idea
that perhaps there were pygmies,

or little people,
an undiscovered, perhaps,

branch of Native Americans.

DOVER:
Native American tribes, in the early days,

all of them had stories

of little people
that inhabited this world.

The Pedro mummy could very well
be some indication

that little people did exist.

THOMPSON: Now, Pedro does
seem to have been Native American.

And Pedro came from the area

the Shoshone people were
living in.

They had longstanding traditions
of little people,

which they called
"the Nimerigar."

These were a very vicious
and even cannibalistic race.

Their stories talk
about them even fighting

and eating each other.

Now, presumably,
if a Shoshone individual were

to come across Pedro the mummy,

Pedro would fit perfectly
into their ideas,

and in their folklore
and support

their beliefs in the pygmy race.

SHATNER:
Is Pedro, the mountain mummy, proof

that a lost race of tiny
cannibals once roamed the west?

Well, it's certainly exciting
to consider.

But after changing hands
among various collectors,

in 1950, Pedro reached

the American Museum of Natural
History in New York City,

and underwent a thorough
examination by Dr. Harry Shapiro

to try and determine
who and what Pedro was.

Dr. Shapiro,
as he continued his examination,

found that Pedro was actually
either an unborn fetus

or a child that was born
and died soon after,

suffering from a condition
called anencephaly,

where a good part of the brain
is not developed,

and oftentimes,
a part of the skull,

which would explain
why Pedro's head was flattened.

So, his findings did
completely conflict

with earlier findings as to
Pedro being a small person.

SHATNER: Is Pedro the mummy the
result of a rare birth defect?

Well, it's certainly possible.

But the debate rages on,

because the tiny mummy
went missing in 1980,

after its last known owner died.

And unless
Pedro is rediscovered,

the mystery endures.

What is interesting to me,
as an anthropologist,

about Pedro is that
it was loved by a community,

and its burial was very special.

This was not buried
in the usual way.

But, of course,
we no longer have Pedro.

If we did, we could probably
run very different tests now,

genetic tests and the like,

to know a great deal more
about this individual.

And since we cannot
reexamine Pedro,

Pedro is going
to remain a bit of a mystery.

SHATNER: Prospectors James
Cluggage and John R. Poole

discover gold
in Southern Oregon,

triggering a gold rush

that yields upwards
of $60 million mined

from the region.

But there is one
famous frontier legend

that speaks of a massive
amount of gold...

being lost.

And to this day,
it's said there still exists

a lost cabin
in the wilds of Oregon

with gold hiding
just beneath the floorboards.

NELIGH:
The lost cabin of gold in Oregon is

one of those stories that make

our fascination
with the Wild West live on.

It starts with two prospectors

who had found
a massive amount of gold,

and they had brought it back
to their cabin

to hide it
under the floorboards,

which seemed
like a pretty good idea

until they ran afoul
of the local Indigenous tribe.

-(screaming)
-JOHN: One of them was killed.

And then, the other one
just barely made it

and was taken to San Francisco
for medical treatment.

It didn't work. He died.

But on his deathbed,
he wrote a note

to his cousin back in Chicago,

saying, "I've got a cabin
with gold in it,

and I need you
to go and find it."

SHATNER:
Armed with the alleged location

of this cabin of gold,
the prospector's cousin

from Chicago teams up

with a frontier poet
named Sam Simpson

to try and find
the lost fortune.

And according to Simpson,

these two found more
than they bargained for.

-(neighing)
-JOHN: Sam Simpson

has a story
that he wrote in 1899

in which he claims

to have found the cabin.

They went into the cabin,

there was a skeleton there,

and at that very moment,

-the cousin from Chicago...
-(gunshot)

...accidentally shot himself.

And then Sam went out
of his gourd

and was found
a gibbering idiot

on the stage road
two weeks later,

and was never able
to find his way back to it.

But Sam Simpson,

by the time he wrote this story,

was deep in the bottle.

He struggled
with alcoholism all his life.

So, it's just really
hard to say.

You know,
maybe it's still out there.

SHATNER:
Could there really be a fortune of gold

still buried
under the floorboards

of a lost cabin
in the Oregon wilderness?

Perhaps.

But as with so many other
strange tales

of the American frontier,
the truth remains elusive.

McNEILL:
One of the sort of inescapable symbols

of the American frontier
is this sense of vastness,

this openness.

And any time we have
that kind of openness,

it's just waiting
to be filled with stories.

And even if the story is not

specifically correct
or accurate,

there's usually
a kernel of truth there.

And that's what fuels the legend
and keeps it going.

JOHN:
What fascinates me the most

about the American Frontier is

that nothing like it has ever
existed, or ever will again.

MAN:
Yah!

JOHN:
You've got that expansionist culture

moving
across the whole continent,

and there's so much
storytelling there

that the truth is not gonna be
really easy to pick out.

It's been layered
and layered and layered,

with more and more stories
and more and more stories,

leaving you to wonder,
what's the part that's real?

(neighing)

It's intriguing to think
that there may be a lost cabin

filled with gold somewhere
in the backwoods of Oregon.

And, as with so many
other frontier legends,

the truth,
like the cabin itself,

is elusive.

But when stories like
the mystery of the Red Ghost,

or phenomena
like the Marfa lights,

continue to raise questions
almost a century later,

it makes you wonder,

what other strange tales

from the American frontier
might emerge?

Stories of great adventures

that, for now, remain...

unexplained.

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