All language subtitles for IneXplicável - S07E14 - Strange Tales from the American Frontier

Mysterious ancient earthworks

that lead to the land of the dead.

Strange lights that haunt a
town for hundreds of years.

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.

From the 1700s to the early 1900s,

the era of the American
frontier marked a period

of rapid westward expansion.

It was a time where explorers,

pioneers and adventurers
moved into unknown lands

to create a new life
and build a new country.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Around four million people
took on the challenge

to be part of a westward expansion.

Yah!

And what they found was
a world unlike any other.

The stuff

that they found in the
west was truly amazing.

The yellow stone 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.

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, big foot

you know, sasquatch

this comes directly from
native American lore.

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.

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.

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.

One of the most grotesque,

weird curiosities was the head

of the notorious gold rush bandit

and outlaw joaquín 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.

The whole place was leveled.

And the legend grew that
perhaps joaquín murrieta

cursed San Francisco
for displaying his head

and caused the actual earthquake.

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?

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.

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.

My gosh, it's totally moving.

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.

It's, like, flickering and changing colors.

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.

While some eyewitnesses claim

to feel a transcendent experience

witnessing the marfa lights,

others have found them
to be rather unsettling.

Belle peña-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."

We got two heading this way.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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?

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 skin walker.

These were sort of
werewolf-style humanoids.

There were legends
of great thunder birds

that looked like pterodactyls,

that would darken the
sky... 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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."

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 often times, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

What fascinates me the most

about the American frontier is

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

Yah!

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?

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.