Speaker 1: In the beginning, before the world was shaped, the earth
Speaker 1: lay in darkness, covered only in water. No mountains rose,
Speaker 1: no rivers ran, and no people walked upon the land.
Speaker 1: In the vastness beyond the sky lived Chirea, the old
Speaker 1: man above, a being of great wisdom and power. One
Speaker 1: day he looked down upon the empty world and decided
Speaker 1: it should be made ready for life. He descended from
Speaker 1: its high place, stepping carefully upon a great cloud, before
Speaker 1: coming to rest on a shallow reef in the sea.
Speaker 1: With his mighty hands, he gathered stones and earth and
Speaker 1: shaped the first lands. He piled high the mountains and
Speaker 1: carved deep valleys. He traced the paths of the rivers
Speaker 1: with his fingers, and where his hands lingered, water began
Speaker 1: to flow. Jaraya saw that the world needed light, so
Speaker 1: he reached into the sky and brought forth the sun,
Speaker 1: setting it in its place. He took the cold and
Speaker 1: placed it in the mountain tops, where it would rest
Speaker 1: as snow and feed the rivers below. He made the
Speaker 1: trees to hold the soil, the animals to roam the land,
Speaker 1: and the fish to swim in the waters. Then he
Speaker 1: created the first people. He taught them how to hunt
Speaker 1: how to build shelters, and how to live in harmony
Speaker 1: with the world he had created. When his work was done,
Speaker 1: he climbed back into the sky and returned to his
Speaker 1: home above. Among the mountains he raised, one stood above
Speaker 1: all others, Ui Taku, the White Mountain. In time, others
Speaker 1: came to the region, Klamath, Wintu, a Chumawee, Art, Sugawe, Modoc,
Speaker 1: and Kaho Sadi or Shasta, as they came to be
Speaker 1: known by later settlers to the region, and that mountain
Speaker 1: would eventually take that name too, becoming known as Mount Shasta.
Speaker 1: All agreed the mountain was a sacred place, a place
Speaker 1: of visions and power, and for seeking communion with the
Speaker 1: unseen world. Some even say, if you're not careful, there
Speaker 1: are places on the mountain where you can fall into
Speaker 1: this unseen world too. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm
Speaker 1: Richard mclin Smith. The volcanic peak of Mount Shasta looms
Speaker 1: out of the Shasta Trinity National Forest in the North California.
Speaker 1: Its upper slopes are devoid of trees and often clad
Speaker 1: in a blanket of snow. Tackling. The peak is fraught
Speaker 1: with danger in winter The ascent is slick with ice,
Speaker 1: requiring at least crampons to make the summit. In summer,
Speaker 1: the snow melts to reveal steep slopes strewn with loose rocks.
Speaker 1: Over seventy climbers are known to have died attempting it
Speaker 1: since records began, none of which deterred sixty nine year
Speaker 1: old Carl Landers, who was on a mission to climb
Speaker 1: the highest peak in every county of California. Back in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, Carl made a failed attempt to summit
Speaker 1: Mount Shasta. It had haunted him ever since, so naturally
Speaker 1: he wanted to try again. Carl's wife, Bobby, was nervous
Speaker 1: about its latest adventure. After summitting the mountain, Carl planned
Speaker 1: to climb two more peaks in the area, but once
Speaker 1: he had an idea in his head, there was no
Speaker 1: stopping him. It was a warm sunny day in May
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine when Carl arrived in Mount Shaster Town
Speaker 1: at the foot of the mountain. He grinned widely at
Speaker 1: his friends Billy and Milt, who were there to greet him.
Speaker 1: The three men became climbing pals through a local organization
Speaker 1: for older exercise enthusiasts. Both had accompanied Karl on his
Speaker 1: failed trip in nineteen ninety seven. Being a little younger,
Speaker 1: it was their arrangement that they would walk ahead they
Speaker 1: wait for Karl to catch them up. Back in ninety seven,
Speaker 1: after Barry and Milt made it to the summit, Carl
Speaker 1: failed to appear. They found him on their return down
Speaker 1: the mountain, having been too exhausted to continue. They teased
Speaker 1: him gently about it that morning, but Karl was having
Speaker 1: none of it. This would be the day, he told them.
Speaker 1: The men bought some provisions, then made the winding drive
Speaker 1: up to Bunny Flat trailhead, a popular place to begin
Speaker 1: the trek to the summit. A gusty wind picked up
Speaker 1: as the men laced up their boots and strapped on
Speaker 1: their fifteen pound packs. Karl gazed up to the snowy
Speaker 1: tip of the mountain, a steely intent in his eyes.
Speaker 1: This time, he thought, I'm going to get you this time,
Speaker 1: and with that they set off, winding through a dense
Speaker 1: forest of fur. The men savored the fresh, tingly scent
Speaker 1: of the trees and serenity of the great outdoors. Before long,
Speaker 1: the forest began to thin and the paths deepened, leading
Speaker 1: up into more desolate rock strewn to rain. It wasn't
Speaker 1: long after they left the forest that Carl's stomach began
Speaker 1: cramping up, and he was forced to take regular toilet breaks,
Speaker 1: possibly due to the drugs he'd been taking to offset
Speaker 1: altitude sickness. By the time they'd reached nine thousand feet
Speaker 1: above sea level, Milt and Barry were stopping every ten
Speaker 1: minutes or so to wait for their friend. They agreed
Speaker 1: to carry his pack for him, taking it in turns
Speaker 1: to hold it as they trudged on together. Barryon Milt
Speaker 1: then tried walking behind Karl, hoping it might help to
Speaker 1: spur him on. Not wanting to hold his friends back, however,
Speaker 1: Karl suggested they go on ahead without him. The friends
Speaker 1: reluctantly agreed and arranged to rendezvous with Karl at their
Speaker 1: first waypoint, an area of flatter, snow covered ground called
Speaker 1: fifty fifty, but they planned to camp for the night.
Speaker 1: It was just approaching eight p m. As a hazy
Speaker 1: dusk to send it when Barrion Milt arrived at fifty fifty.
Speaker 1: The pair watched on as more hikers appeared in drips
Speaker 1: and drabs, but there was no sign of Carl. With
Speaker 1: the sun inching closer and closer to the horizon, the
Speaker 1: pair had no choice but to head back down in
Speaker 1: search of their friend. It didn't take long to spot
Speaker 1: him about two hundred yards below, making steady but achingly
Speaker 1: slow progress. Having been worried that his climbing jacket wasn't
Speaker 1: right for the conditions, Karl's wife had lent her his
Speaker 1: a bright purple and red number, meaning even in the
Speaker 1: low light of dusk, he was easy to spot. Barry
Speaker 1: and Milt moved quickly down to get him, then escorted
Speaker 1: him back up to fifty fifty. The wind had picked
Speaker 1: up considerably by the time they arrived, whipping dry snow
Speaker 1: up off the ground as they set to work digging
Speaker 1: an igloo like shelter to keep it at bay. Once finished,
Speaker 1: it took them almost an hour, wrestling with the near
Speaker 1: fifty mile pro hour gusts to pitch their tent inside it.
Speaker 1: Finally nestled inside the tent, the men cooked chicken noodle soup,
Speaker 1: but Karl refused to eat it, worried it might make
Speaker 1: him sick. The following morning, the men awoke as the
Speaker 1: first neon rays of daylight emerged above the horizon. Though
Speaker 1: Carl's stomach hadn't quite settled, he was well enough to
Speaker 1: share breakfast with Barryon Milt and insisted he was fit
Speaker 1: enough to continue the climb. Barr and Milt were happy
Speaker 1: to take his word for it. The next stage was
Speaker 1: a two mile stretch across steep but mostly open ground
Speaker 1: to an area known as Lake Helen, with only the
Speaker 1: occasional pile of rock and some minor ridges to negotiate
Speaker 1: after that. In any case, they planned to make another
Speaker 1: assessment at the weather to determine if it was safe
Speaker 1: to continue or not. Since they had a fairly unobstructed
Speaker 1: view of the summit, it was agreed that Carl should
Speaker 1: go on ahead while Barrion Milt took down the tent.
Speaker 1: This way he could get a head start, but they
Speaker 1: could also keep an eye on him if he got
Speaker 1: into any difficulty. When nearing an especially high summit, climbers
Speaker 1: are written often of the strange sense of serenity and
Speaker 1: focus it can engender. The wind house, the snow crunches
Speaker 1: under foot, and the sky feels closer, almost oppressive. Some
Speaker 1: describe it like having entered another world. Your mind suddenly
Speaker 1: detached from the world down below. Striding out for the
Speaker 1: summit of Mount Shasta is no different. Perhaps something of
Speaker 1: that was going through Karl's mind as he stood outside
Speaker 1: the tent that morning, staring quietly off into space. When
Speaker 1: Barrion Milt suggested he start walking, he replied simply okay,
Speaker 1: then promptly set off up the steep, rocky trail. Milt
Speaker 1: was the last of the three to leave, having needed
Speaker 1: to make some adjustments to his crampons. About an hour
Speaker 1: after Karl's departure, Milt could still see him just about
Speaker 1: among a steady line of fellow climbers. He was slowly
Speaker 1: edging higher up the mountain, stopping to rest briefly every
Speaker 1: five paces. Barry, meanwhile, was some distance behind, but quickly
Speaker 1: closing the gap. But when Milt caught up with Barry
Speaker 1: soon after, he found him looking pale and feeling unwell.
Speaker 1: As a wind picked up, the pair sensed stormy weather approaching.
Speaker 1: With both of them now also struggling with the effects
Speaker 1: of altitude sickness, they make the difficult decision to abandon
Speaker 1: their effort to reach the summit. The stronger of the pair, Milt,
Speaker 1: volunteered to fetch Carl, while Barry headed back down to
Speaker 1: the Bunny Flat trailhead, where they'd part their car. With
Speaker 1: only one path to take, Milt soon arrived at Lake Helen,
Speaker 1: surprised not to have yet caught up with Carl. Seeing
Speaker 1: another group of hikers there, he asked if they'd seen
Speaker 1: a man wearing a bright purple and red jacket on
Speaker 1: their travels. Thankfully, they had, as one of the group
Speaker 1: explained the man had asked him for advice on how
Speaker 1: best to reach the summit. He told him about the
Speaker 1: two possible routes he knew of. One was a lot
Speaker 1: harder than the other, which he discouraged him from taking.
Speaker 1: Wilt gazed up toward the easier route to the summit,
Speaker 1: where he could see around twenty people winding their way
Speaker 1: up to the top, and on the harder route, he
Speaker 1: saw one single climber wearing what seemed to be a
Speaker 1: bright purple and red jacket, stopping to rest briefly after
Speaker 1: every five steps. Dismayed, Milt promptly took off after him,
Speaker 1: trying to keep the man in his sight. Milt suddenly
Speaker 1: lost him as he disappeared behind a small ridge. When
Speaker 1: he finally arrived at the same spot. He saw then
Speaker 1: that the footprints of whoever it was merged with a
Speaker 1: number of others, suggesting the solo man had in fact
Speaker 1: been walking with a group. Milt realized that this climber
Speaker 1: was also moving way too fast to have been calm,
Speaker 1: Dangerously tired and despondent, and with no sign of his friend,
Speaker 1: Milt had little choice but to head back down the
Speaker 1: mountain in the hope that he might yet pass Karl
Speaker 1: on the way back At fifty fifty, where the men
Speaker 1: had camped for the night, there was no sign of
Speaker 1: his missing friend, and a few hours later he was
Speaker 1: back at the Bunny Flat trailhead, but only Barry was
Speaker 1: there waiting for him. By the following day, Karl had
Speaker 1: still yet to return. On hearing that her husband was missing,
Speaker 1: a distraught Bobby was quickly on hand to assist. She
Speaker 1: insisted to police that she and Karl weren't experiencing any
Speaker 1: financial or marital difficulties, or anything else that might suggest
Speaker 1: he'd intended to go missing. The police wondered also if
Speaker 1: Karl had any enemies, but Karl was well liked in
Speaker 1: his local community, and though Barry and Milt agreed he
Speaker 1: could sometimes be stubborn and bad tempered. They'd never seen
Speaker 1: him have a violent disagreement with anyone, though poor weather
Speaker 1: had moved in across the region. Since Carl was an
Speaker 1: experienced hiker with enough provisions to survive the coming days,
Speaker 1: there were reasons to be optimistic that he would soon
Speaker 1: be found. But one day turned to two, then three,
Speaker 1: and four. A week after he disappeared, more than seventy
Speaker 1: people were searching daily for any sign of him. Trails
Speaker 1: stretching down from the summit were scoured, and the rest
Speaker 1: of the mountain meticulously searched using a systematic grid. Even
Speaker 1: cadaver docks were deployed to help, but they found nothing.
Speaker 1: What Barrion Milt couldn't understand was how Carl could have
Speaker 1: disappeared within such a short time window, during which he
Speaker 1: would not have been out of view from either themselves
Speaker 1: or other hikers on the trail for more than a
Speaker 1: period of thirty minutes, which at the pace he was moving,
Speaker 1: would have made it near impossible for him to venture
Speaker 1: off track without being seen. And if he had been
Speaker 1: overcome by fatigue and exposure, where could his body, in
Speaker 1: its brightly colored jacket be on wide open slopes with
Speaker 1: no dense vegetation, cliffs or crevices to conceal it. The
Speaker 1: searchers didn't find any traits of Karl's clothing or equipment.
Speaker 1: It was, as one rescuer described it, like the mountain
Speaker 1: had just opened up and swallowed him. On June third,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, the search to find Karl was called off.
Speaker 1: There was simply nowhere else to look. Entry nine five
Speaker 1: six three seven is still up on the US National
Speaker 1: Missing and Unidentified Person's website. The entry has a picture
Speaker 1: of Carl Herbert Landers as he was shortly before he disappeared,
Speaker 1: a man on the cusp of seventy with receding white hair,
Speaker 1: a hand and somewhat weather beaten face, and a rye grin.
Speaker 1: If he was still alive today, he would be ninety
Speaker 1: six years old. Carl Landers is just one of many
Speaker 1: people who have vanished without a trace on Mount Shasta.
Speaker 1: Back in July nineteen sixty five, a much more experienced
Speaker 1: mountaineer by the name of John Nez had set off
Speaker 1: up the mountain one bright summer day. At eighty years old.
Speaker 1: It might have seemed foolish for Nezer to go alone,
Speaker 1: but he'd climbed the mountain many times before, summitting successfully
Speaker 1: no less than forty times. So confident was Nezer of
Speaker 1: the weather and his abilities that he left a lot
Speaker 1: of his equipment at a cabin below the tree line,
Speaker 1: expecting to summit and return the same day. When he
Speaker 1: failed to return, a search was initiated. Two snowslides were
Speaker 1: spotted on the mountain, while a buzzard circled ominously overhead,
Speaker 1: but like landers, Nesser's body was never found. It's hard
Speaker 1: to find solid numbers of just how many people go
Speaker 1: missing in America's wild places every year. There's no mandatory
Speaker 1: centralized repository where search and rescue teams must file reports,
Speaker 1: but in twenty twenty one, nearly three thousand, four hundred
Speaker 1: people needed help getting out of the wilderness in u
Speaker 1: s national parks alone. In his twenty twenty book The Cold,
Speaker 1: Vanish author and journalist John Billman researched the people currently
Speaker 1: missing in North America's wilderness. He found that most of
Speaker 1: these disappearances were likely easy to explain, caused either by hypothermia, falls, avalanches,
Speaker 1: or attacks by wild animals like mountain lions or bears.
Speaker 1: But Billman is most fascinated by vanished without a trace
Speaker 1: cases that defire conventional logical explanations like that of Karl Landers.
Speaker 1: In his book, he says these happen more often and
Speaker 1: a lot closer to human habitation than most people realize. Unexpectedly.
Speaker 1: During his research, Billman found that often the most reliable
Speaker 1: information comes from bigfoot hunters. Their database of disappearances occurring
Speaker 1: under what they call mysterious circumstances was set up by
Speaker 1: the founder of the North America Bigfoot Search, David Paul
Speaker 1: Idy's in twenty eleven. According to this data, it's likely
Speaker 1: that there are currently around sixteen hundred people missing across
Speaker 1: North America's wild lands in circumstances that are hard to explain,
Speaker 1: but Mount Shasta is among the stranger regions for inexplicable disappearances.
Speaker 1: For years, Mount Shasta has been at the center of
Speaker 1: numerous myths, legends, and every kind of paranormal sighting, from
Speaker 1: bigfoot to UFOs and even ghosts. The mountain's ice clad peak,
Speaker 1: steaming fumaroles, and actively eroding shape shifting surface or contribute
Speaker 1: to its eerie mystique. Some have speculated that the rare
Speaker 1: mysterious portals to other dimensions hidden around the mountain, which
Speaker 1: the disappeared to have stumbled into, adding to its mystique.
Speaker 1: It turns out that significant electromagnetic anomalies have been recorded
Speaker 1: around the mountain, leading some to wander if the mountain
Speaker 1: has become a repository for the phenomena of X points.
Speaker 1: X points are formed when the magnetic fields of the
Speaker 1: Sun and Earth cross each other, suddenly joining to create
Speaker 1: openings in the combined magnetic fields. These openings can propel
Speaker 1: uninterrupted jets of charged particles at high speed from the
Speaker 1: Sun's atmosphere to Earth. Invisible, unstable, and elusive, these electron
Speaker 1: diffusion regions, as they are called, appear to open and
Speaker 1: close without any warning. Observations by NASA have suggested that
Speaker 1: these magnetic portals open and close dozens of times each day.
Speaker 1: Most are small and short lived, but others are vast
Speaker 1: and sustained, during which time tons of energetic particles can
Speaker 1: flow through the openings, heating Earth's upper atmosphere, sparking geomagnetic
Speaker 1: storms and igniting bright polar auroras. Typically, X points are
Speaker 1: located tens of thousands of kilometers above Earth, where the
Speaker 1: geol magnetic field meets on rushing solar wind. So far,
Speaker 1: it's not known whether large magnetic anomalies on Earth, like
Speaker 1: the one known to extend underneath Mount Shasta, have any
Speaker 1: interaction with these invisible and elusive magnetic portals out in space.
Speaker 1: Scientifically speaking, this is highly unlikely and far less likely
Speaker 1: that these points would create pockets in space and time
Speaker 1: through which someone might fall. We hope. To the Modoc,
Speaker 1: a Native American community local to the area, the volcano
Speaker 1: is home to a creature they call the matter Cagmi,
Speaker 1: their word for Bigfoot, a race of giants who they
Speaker 1: consider to be the keepers of the woods who have
Speaker 1: existed as long as their own people, and modern sightings
Speaker 1: of Bigfoot are rife around Mount Shasta. Back in eighteen ten,
Speaker 1: twenty six European traders arrived in the area. They introduced
Speaker 1: cattle ranching and lumber practices, which were used successfully by
Speaker 1: incoming settlers and the Native American communities alike. But as
Speaker 1: conflicts between local communities and settlers grew, the Native Americans
Speaker 1: were eventually forced to seed twenty three million acres of
Speaker 1: their land and moved onto reservations. Then the new settlers
Speaker 1: began to weave their own folklore around Mount Shast None
Speaker 1: were stranger than the tale of a British geologist called J. C. Brown.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o four. J. C. Brown was said to
Speaker 1: have been hired by the Lord Cowdry Mining Company of
Speaker 1: England to prospect for gold in the Mount Shasta area.
Speaker 1: During his explorations, it was said that he discovered a
Speaker 1: large tunnel hidden beneath a rock, which sloped downward for
Speaker 1: eleven miles into the mountain. According to Brown, at the
Speaker 1: end of the tunnel was a strange village like complex
Speaker 1: of caverns which contained machinery of fortune in gold and copper,
Speaker 1: and twenty seven giant skeletons, some of them as much
Speaker 1: as ten feet tall. Two were said to be shrouded
Speaker 1: in robes and appeared to be a queen and a king.
Speaker 1: Brown was reported to believe he'd found Telos, the City
Speaker 1: of Light, or that remained of an ancient lost kingdom
Speaker 1: called Lemuria, first proposed in eighteen sixty four by zoologist
Speaker 1: Philip Sclater. Lemuria as a hypothetical lost continent that supposedly
Speaker 1: sank somewhere beneath the Pacific Ocean. Brown seemed to believe
Speaker 1: that the remaining le Murians had fled and established the
Speaker 1: city under Mount Shasta, but then Brown disappeared. What happened
Speaker 1: over the next thirty years is unclear, but in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four, in Stockton, California, the local newspaper reported that
Speaker 1: a man calling himself J. C. Brown was in town
Speaker 1: preparing an expedition to go back to Mount Shaster. Eighty
Speaker 1: local men signed on to join the expedition after attending
Speaker 1: a series of daily lectures apparently given by Brown, who
Speaker 1: they described as a cultured gentleman with white hair. Brown
Speaker 1: told them there were incredible treasures waiting inside the mountain,
Speaker 1: and so on June ninth, nineteen thirty four, the men
Speaker 1: assembled at Stockton Harbor, ready to board boats they hoped
Speaker 1: would take them north to help Brown excavate his discovery,
Speaker 1: But J. C. Brown didn't show up and was never
Speaker 1: seen again. To this day, people continued to disappear inexplicably
Speaker 1: on and around the mountain. As recently as July one,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, a new missing person's case was opened
Speaker 1: after a grandmother and her daughter failed to return to
Speaker 1: their home in Chico, California. Deloras Sakamoto eighty four and
Speaker 1: her daughter Vivian Luna sixty four were reported missing by
Speaker 1: a neighbor for some unknown reason. The pair had apparently
Speaker 1: rushed from their house to go somewhere, leaving food out
Speaker 1: on the kitchen counter. Police investigations revealed that on the
Speaker 1: day of their disappearance, Luna had taken money out of
Speaker 1: an eight m in Susanville, a two hour drive from
Speaker 1: their home. Two days later, California Highway Patrol issued an
Speaker 1: alert for Luna's black Lexus car. The last trace of
Speaker 1: the pair came from a cell phone tower near Mount
Speaker 1: Shaster Ski Park. Despite a multi agency search effort, including
Speaker 1: the use of airplanes, elliicopters, deputies, and sniffer dogs, no
Speaker 1: trace of the two women has ever been found. This
Speaker 1: episode was written by Diane Hope and Richard McLain Smith.
Speaker 1: Diane is an audio producer and sound recordist in her
Speaker 1: own right. You can find out more about her work
Speaker 1: at Dianehope dot com and on Instagram at In the
Speaker 1: Sound Field unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created
Speaker 1: by Richard McClain smith. All other elements of the podcast,
Speaker 1: including the music, are also produced by me. Richard McClain smith.
Speaker 1: Unexplained the book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
Speaker 1: You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and
Speaker 1: other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
Speaker 1: touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
Speaker 1: heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of
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