The Lost City of Mt. Shasta
Mt Shasta, California where a lost city is reportedly hiding underneath the mountain. Photo: Journal News
Legend has it that there is a mysterious race of people living in a hidden city beneath Mt Shasta, California.
The Legend of the Lost City of Mt. Shasta
No doubt about it, Mt. Shasta is one seriously impressive mountain. It's in Siskiyou County, California, at the southern end of the Cascade Range. This old volcano shoots up to 14,179 feet (4,322 m) above the forested valley below, making it the second tallest peak in the Cascades and the fifth tallest in Cali.
It's completely alone, not connected to any nearby mountains, so it juts up from the ground like some kind of giant mystical creature. It dominates the landscape of Northern California, and you can supposedly see it from up to 140 miles (230 km) away on a clear day. It's been a source of legends and stories for centuries, and some people even believe that there's a secret civilization of mystical refugees from a sunken continent living inside it.
Mt. Shasta and the Lemurians
A geological feature called a lava tube located on Mt. Shasta. Could one of these tunnels lead to a hidden city? Photo: Discovery.com
One of the craziest and most well-known stories about Mt. Shasta is that there's a secret city hidden inside the mountain where the descendants of the Lemurians live.
The Lemurians are supposed to be the first humans on Earth, and they lived on a lost continent called Lemuria that sank into the ocean a long time ago. Lemuria was named after lemurs because some people thought that's how the animals got from Madagascar to India.
According to the story, when Lemuria sank, a bunch of Lemurians escaped to Mt. Shasta and started a new city called Telos. They've been living there ever since, supposedly recreating their awesome civilization and keeping it a secret from the rest of the world. Some people think that the cataclysmic event that sunk Lemuria was the same one that took down Atlantis.
People usually describe the Lemurians as being super tall and slender, up to seven feet in height, with really fair, almost glowing skin. They have long, luscious hair and unusually long necks that they decorate with fancy collars made of beads, gold, or precious stones. These weirdos usually wear white robes and sandals, but sometimes they're totally naked or wear tunics.
Apparently, they were crazy advanced thousands of years ago and could do stuff like use atomic energy, magnetism, and electronics. Some people even say they could mess with space-time and have floating airships they use to get around. They supposedly light up their underground world with some kind of fake sun that's powered by a crazy energy source we don't know about.
The craziest thing about them, though, is this walnut-sized organ thing that sticks out of their foreheads. Apparently, it gives them all kinds of psychic powers like ESP, telekinesis, telepathy, and the ability to appear and disappear whenever they feel like it.
Where did the legend of the lost city of Mt. Shasta come from?
A Dweller on Two Planets, written by Frederick S. Oliver. You can buy it on Amazon today! (Affiliate link)
The origins of this story can be traced back to a book called A Dweller on Two Planets, written by Frederick S. Oliver in 1899. When Oliver was a teenager in the summer of 1883, he was helping his family mark their mining claim by driving wooden stakes into the ground and recording their locations in a notebook.
Suddenly, his hand began to shake and write uncontrollably, seemingly of its own accord. Terrified, he ran home and continued to write feverishly on paper handed to him by his mother. This mysterious seizure would stop shortly after, revealing the beginnings of a text.
Over the next three years, Oliver's hand would occasionally be overcome by this force, writing several pages here and there, until finally, in 1895, he had completed an entire book that chronicled and described the existence of a secret Lemurian city at Mt. Shasta and their history.
Oliver claimed that he had been chosen by the Lemurians as their secretary and that the entire book had been telepathically channeled through him onto the paper via automatic writing.
Oliver went as far as claiming that he had been astrally transported to the city itself and had witnessed it firsthand.
According to him, the city was located deep within the mountain and consisted of extensive networks of illuminated tunnels with hidden automatic doors, exquisite architecture, and apartments adorned with gold plating and luxuriant fleece carpets.
Oliver described the entire city as being bedecked with glittering crystals, precious stones, gold, silver, and bronze, all powered by crystal energies, brilliantly illuminated, and entirely inaccessible to outsiders without the Lemurians' express invitation.
The book was groundbreaking and futuristic for its time, delving into high-concept notions such as quantum mechanics, antigravity, mass transit, and zero-point energy, which Oliver referred to as "dark-side energy," all of which were incredibly unique and ahead of their time.
Oliver also made numerous mentions of the incredible gadgets and vehicles used by the city's residents, including large cigar-shaped airships that zoomed about and hovered overhead.
After Oliver's death in 1899 at the age of 33, his peculiar book was published in 1905 by his mother, Mary Elizabeth Manley-Oliver. The publication of Oliver's book quickly became a well-known occult classic and was widely referenced in various New Age belief systems, sects, and cults.
Other Accounts of the Lost City of Mt. Shasta
Over the years, numerous other accounts have emerged regarding the alleged existence of the Lemurian civilization on Mt. Shasta.
Oliver’s book inspired a sequel, An Earth Dweller's Return, and paved the way for numerous literary works that mention the lost city of the Lemurians on Mt. Shasta.
In 1931, Harvey Spencer Lewis, writing under the pseudonym Wisar Spenle Cerve, wrote an entire book on the subject, further popularizing the idea of a hidden city and society deep within the mountain.
The accounts of this mysterious race of powerful beings and their highly advanced city of Telos then gained even more traction.
One strange report published in the May 22, 1932 edition of The Los Angeles Times tells the story of a man named Edward Lanser who claimed to have seen the entire southern side of the mountain glow with an intense reddish-green light as he passed by on a train. When he asked the conductor about it, he was informed that it was the work of the Lemurians.
Lanser later investigated the incident and spoke to locals who reported a mysterious community residing within the mountain, who performed rituals using strange sources of brilliant light that could explain his sighting.
These ceremonies were referred to as the "Ceremony of Adoration to Guatama," with "Guatama" purportedly being the Lemurian word for "America," and commemorating their ancestors' arrival on the continent after their own homeland had been swallowed by the ocean. The ceremonies reportedly utilized extremely bright sources of mysterious light that illuminated the entire side of the mountain.
According to local accounts, the Lemurians occasionally left their hidden mountain realm and came into town. These towering and peculiar figures wore white robes and no shoes, and purchased large quantities of sulphur, salt, and lard with gold nuggets that far exceeded the value of the goods.
Lanser expressed his desire to locate these Lemurians and the source of the mysterious light he had observed, but local officials and ranchers ridiculed his intentions and claimed that entering their sacred territory was as challenging and prohibited as entering Tibet.
Lanser's quest to find the city appeared to be thwarted, and it is unclear what happened to him or whether he eventually discovered what he was looking for, or whether he simply vanished into obscurity.
According to an article published in the Mount Shasta Herald on June 27, 1940, Professor Edward L. Larkin of the Mt. Lowe Observatory reported having viewed the enigmatic city through his telescope on several occasions.
While adjusting his telescope, Larkin spotted a shining object on the mountain, which he found to be an enormous "oriental style" temple made of carved marble and onyx. He described the temple as a remarkable feat of architecture that rivaled the grandeur of the temples of Yucatan.
Larkin also claimed to have spotted other temples on the mountainside, some in a Greek style adorned with splendid white marble columns.
There have been no encounters with the residents of the lost city of Mt. Shasta in more recent times.
What do you think is going on at Mt. Shasta? Let us know in the comments.
If you enjoyed learning about the lost city of Mt. Shasta you might also be interested in the strange story of the MV Joyita or mysterious stairs in the woods.
