All language subtitles for Ancient.Aliens.S03E01.720p.HDTV.DiVERGE.en

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?

Sync by n17t01
www.addic7ed.com

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.

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 it's the
product or their 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.

The Aurora's cemetery
was founded in 1861

right at the start of the
war between 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.

50 years before, the United State's
Army announced that a

There was a report of a
strange unidentified object

that crashed on the property
of a local judge.

On an April morning
in 1897 an airship

supposedly run 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.

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

agents, which was the rationale
behind his, uh, his arthritis.

We find that people who are
using that well actually got ill.

And so what happens at
a moment in time,

is that the descendants of these people
actually decided to cement the well.

The incident at Roswell in 1947
also begins steering controversy

about the Aurora incident.

This time, concerning the
strange body supposedly still

resting in an unmarked grave.

We, searchers, wanted
to exhume the body,

but the local cemetery association
wouldn't let them.

My first question is, why not?
What's it gonna hurt?

As a historian it makes me suspicious

when somebody is 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 grave site was.

The grave was
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,
scientifics 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.

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?

Adams Country, 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 the sudden

you find this gigantic ephic
iman in a form of a serpent.

What you have is a gigantic structure
but it just sits there in the middle

of a fairy interesting landscape.

Serpent mound was one of the
amazing mysterious mounds

found by the first that came
over the Apalachian mountains.

There are thousands of mounds, but
Serpent mound must have been special.

Like the Nazca lines in Peru,
Serpent mound is a giant

prehistoric structure that looks as though
is meant to be viewed only from the sky.

When you see the
great Serpent mound in Ohio,

is 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.

It's mysterious in the fact that
it is on an elevated plateau

unconcealed from the world.

Unless you're flying over 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.

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 who the builders were

but on the property there were
burial mounds dated from

about very early 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 are certain spots were 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
talked 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.

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.

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)

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 a 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 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.

NARTOR: 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.

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.

According to Joseph Smith, not only the
Moroni claimed to be from another planet

he also directed him to dig up the
golden plates from the hill Cumorah.

What Scholars believe is a reference
to an ancient native american mound,

much like the Serpent mound.

We have since found out that in
burial mounds and other mounds

across the Native American region
we have such plates.

These written tables 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 theologist is directly related

to this idea of God and various angels and
various spiritual beings live on

different planets.

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

they look like depictions of
spacemen.

Great Falls, Montana.
October 19, 1865.

Six months after the assassination of
President Abraham Lincoln, a fur trapper

reports what might be the first
documented UFO crash in the Old West.

WHALEN: In 1865, the
Missouri Democrat

reported that a trapper saw a
light traveling through the sky

at night.

It flew over his camp, broke apart and
crashed in the forest some miles away.

The next day he tracked it down,

found a large stone imbedded
in the side of a mountain.

It was hollow, it was cracked
open; he claimed there were

chambers inside of it, and there
were hieroglyphic markings

on it.

And there was also some mysterious
liquid spilled around the area.

But the newspaper, you know,
went so far as to suggest that

these were meteoric conveyances of
aliens from Mercury or Uranus.

So, the whole idea
of UFO crashes was

explored in the 19th century
almost a hundred years

before Roswell.

NARRATOR: But what
makes this story even

more intriguing to Ancient
Astronaut theorists is the

location of the sighting-- along
the upper Missouri River.

This is the home of the Blackfoot
Indians, a tribe whose

ancient legends include strange
tales of Star Beings visiting

the region from other worlds.

ANDREW COLLINS: The Blackfoot
have very profound legends in

myth relating switch quite
clearly * to * come down from

some kind of sky-* to Earth

and in these sky vehicles.

And the way that they are
described, these can be modern

ideas of flying saucers or UFOs.

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
are 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.

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?

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 monsters with
a huge wings. The body was

described as being like an alligator
and wings were described as

memberness. There's another version
of the story told by the

cowboys when they were very old,
they never really, they just

shot at the bird and it got away.
It was literally bullet proofed.

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 these creatures that

resided in mines.

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 literated.
Face it, there was a lot of entertainment

out in 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 out 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 the space-time that connect
different regions of space.

The mystery of whether such portals
really exist may have been

♪♪ by Ambrose Bierce himself.
When he ventured south of the

border into the Mexican desert.

At the very early part of 20th
century Ambrose Bierce was

in northern Mexico, in this area
that's known for strange phenomenon,

called the Keymay, this area too
is thought to be another one these

interdimensional portal areas.

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.

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 18th
century from upon 'till about

1880's something was happening there
which frightened locals.

Some of the rich land owners built
ranches there, these ranchers

claimed to have been harassed and
tormented by some sort of

monsters 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 that we have today.

So when things happened that
they couldn't explain,

there was called the Devil's Lake,
there was called the Devils' this

or the Devil's that.

Take it away from legend and you
might find that this was a portal to

another dimension. Which locals
knew about and might have something to do

with the fact that this mysterious entity
was present at that very specific location.

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.

The Thunderbird was enormous,
it made enormous noises,

so the thunder part of it,
it could sound like a jet engine.

Was able to literally pierce
and emanate fire.

We have this large flying wing creature
which gives us a thunder sound,

and lights fly from it's eyes.
That to me says it has to

be dealing with some sort of craft.

Native Indians in North America
they know of course the bird.

But now something different 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.

Even when the airplanes started
going out up in the sky here

in the southwest, they referred them
as metal birds, as a matter of fact,

wen the first wing craft landed
in, the indians that were there

actually went out there and
worshiped the airplane.

It makes me think of a concept called
cultural tracking, which is the UFOs

can mask themselves to appear
as almost anything, you go back

ancient China and they talk
about the flying dragons,

you go back to the ancient Egyptians
and they talk about flying boats.

You go to the Roman times and they
talk about flying **.

Perhaps that was just their
interpretation or perhaps

that's what they actually saw.

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.

The truth of the matter is
there are some very interesting

and incredible stories that come
from the 1800s about flying objects

and strange encounters and events.

The Old West was not only
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.

How many things do we know today
that were thought to be just impossible?

I always try to keep an open mind
when I hear a story and

I may not believe, 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?

Sync by n17t01
www.addic7ed.com