So Supernatural - MYSTICAL: Crystal Skulls

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

In 1992, the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. acquired a mysterious artifact with unclear origins known as the Crystal Skull. It was the size of an average human skull, made of milky white quartz, but more importantly, it was said to hold supernatural powers and ancient wisdom. And it wasn’t the only one… Those who’ve come into contact with the skulls have had prophetic visions, disturbing dreams and have even encountered deadly curses – but to this day, no one knows who made the skulls, or why.  For a full list of sources, please visit: sosupernaturalpodcast.com/mystical-crystal-skulls So Supernatural is an audiochuck and Crime House production. Find us on social!Instagram: @sosupernatualpodTwitter: @_sosupernaturalFacebook: /sosupernaturalpod

I don't know about you guys, but I definitely went through a phase as a kid where I enjoyed collecting rocks. My brother did this too. We would sift through the bucket when we would go to the store, and even better if we could find something that was like a crystal. There's just something about crystals that made me feel like I held a little piece of magic in my hands. And apparently that intuition wasn't wrong.

Plenty of people say crystals have special powers, that they work with the body's energy field to create balance, alignment, that sort of thing. So when I heard about the case of the crystal skulls, I was like, how do I get my hands on one of those things? See, the crystal skulls are like the mother lode of any rock collection. They're these ancient, mostly quartz stones carved into the shape of human skulls. And they don't just balance vibes. Supposedly, they give supernatural powers to their owner. Things like healing powers and psychic abilities.

Some even say they unlock new dimensions in their mind. These things are rumored to date back tens of thousands of years, only no one is certain where they came from, who made them, or if their creators were even human at all. Which is why I tasked Rasha and Yvette with getting to the bottom of it today. So here we are again. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is So Supernatural. So when we first heard from Ashley on this one, I couldn't help but think about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Oh my god, Rasha, I was on the plane back from Vegas watching this again. And it's so crazy because, you know, you get caught up in the movie, but you don't really think it's like for real. You know what I'm saying? Yes. The thing is, I have so many questions about this. Same. Today, we're exploring a wild archaeological mystery about a collection of crystal skulls.

Starting in the mid to late 19th century, life-sized skulls carved out of single blocks of crystal began popping up in museums and private collections all across Europe. Everyone said they were created centuries earlier by ancient civilizations like the Aztecs or the Mayans. But the thing is, no one's been able to confirm their origins, let alone why they were made in the first place, which is a mystery we'd both like to solve. I'm Evette Gentile. And I'm Rasha Pecorero. And there's an ancient Mayan legend that claims

these crystal skulls may hold the key to some pretty game-changing abilities, like saving the world. Have you ever stopped to think about how amazing the brain is? It's the star of the human anatomy, the most important part of our bodies. It's the reason we have technology and art and endless existential thought loops. So it makes sense that in some cultures, the brain and the skull it's inside are symbolic of life itself. And death for that matter.

I mean the brain is the control center for everything. Like when we get down to the nitty-gritty, it controls our feelings, our emotions, how we walk, how we talk, how we breathe. I mean, it is the most fascinating and yet the most delicate part of the human anatomy. I think a lot of that was what Jane McLaren Walsh found interesting too, and probably why she chose a career that allowed her to work at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Jane was an anthropologist and researcher specializing in Mexican and pre-Columbian

archaeology, which basically means she studied the history of those areas prior to colonization. That's probably why, in 1992, she's the one to get a fortuitous phone call from a man named Richard Alborne. Richard's the museum curator for the Hispanic American collections. He wants to get Jane's take on a peculiar package he just got, one containing a large, artificial skull. According to Richard, it's made of a milky white stone. It's heavy, over 30 pounds, and about 10 inches tall. For reference, that's a bit bigger than your average seven to eight inch adult male skull.

Plus, there's a note with it, which you'd think would clear things up, only it actually makes this package way more mysterious. For one thing, the note's unsigned and the message is pretty short. It says, quote, "'This Aztec crystal skull, purported to be part of the Porfirio Diaz collection,

was purchased in Mexico in 1960. I'm offering it to the Smithsonian without consideration. Perfirio Diaz was the president of Mexico until 1911, by the way. And that's a pretty big name drop. If this thing comes from the Mexican president's personal collection, it has to be valuable in some way. Plus, there's the mention of Aztecs. Right, and the Aztecs were a mega-powerful civilization from the 1300s to the 1500s,

who lived in an area known as Mesoamerica. That's the region that's now Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Mexico. So if I'm Jane, I'm thinking, if this is a real Aztec artifact, it'd be a killer addition to the Smithsonian. Exactly, that's what I'm saying. There's a chance it's genuine. Jane knows these ancient civilizations

had a very spiritual connection with death, and the skull is a common image in Mesoamerican art. But when Jane finally puts her hands on it, one of the things she notices is that the skull is made of quartz. A detail that sounds pretty cool. But it's actually disappointing for Jane. She's an expert when it comes to Mesoamerican artifacts and she knows that quartz was rarely used to make skulls. Plus, the carvings are basically perfect, smooth and clean. Which to her is alarming, because if it was shaped with ancient tools, it would look a lot rougher. All to say, Jane's pretty sure it's not Aztec or pre-Columbian, but she also doesn't

know what it is. Now, Jane must be a busy woman because she apparently doesn't have time to investigate. She sets the skull in a cabinet and sort of forgets about it. I'm not sure how much time passes, but she's reminded of it again when a coworker asks if she's ever come across a quote, problematic object.

I'm guessing that means something she couldn't quite confirm the veracity of. But this makes her think of the skull. And suddenly she's like, you know what? I should take a deeper look at that thing. She goes through the Smithsonian's archives looking for anything she can compare it to. And she finds that they did have a much smaller

two inch crystal skull on display sometime in the 1950s. But Jane can't check it out in real life because at some point after this smaller skull was declared a phony, it disappeared. There's another place she can look though, the British Museum in London. They have a life-sized crystal skull that's more translucent

than the Smithsonian's milky white one. So she reaches out, you know, museum to museum to ask for some info on it. Now the Brits got their skull almost a hundred years earlier. They actually purchased it in New York from a little jewelry store you might have heard of before, Tiffany and Company. Back in 1897, Tiffany's had an auction and one of the items up for grabs was a crystal skull. The skull was thought to be an ancient artifact from Mexico. So the British Museum bought it

and put it on display as a Mesoamerican artifact. But when Jane tries to figure out how Tiffany's got it, the trail gets murky. Allegedly, they bought it a decade before the auction from a French antiquities dealer who had tried to sell it for years in Paris, and then to the Museo Nacional in Mexico. And that's where the acquisition history seems to end.

There's no record of this thing actually being uncovered for Mexican ruins or any other kind of excavation. There are still some breadcrumbs left for Jane to follow though, because she learns there are even more of these skulls around. Some are in renowned museums, like Musée du Coeur Branly in Paris. Others are in private collections. And what these skulls have in common is that they're all

made of quartz. And they're said to be Aztec or Mayan or otherwise Mesoamerican. But none of them have documentation that confirms that, which means their entire history is basically just a rumor. is basically just a rumor. No one actually knows where any of them originally came from. But Jane eventually realizes that their unknown origin isn't the only mystery. Because at some point, a Smithsonian archivist sees Jane with the skull and makes a shocking comment. Don't look it in the eye, they said.

It might be cursed. Stories about the Crystal Skulls and their magical abilities have been floating around long before Jane McLaren Walsh got her hands on one. But one of the best comes later in 2008 when reporters from the LA Times went to the Mexican jungle to learn about the crystal skulls firsthand. They visited a group of indigenous people in the forests of southern Mexico called the Lacondin. The Lacondin people are descendants of the Mayans, some of the only descendants who weren't colonized by the Spanish, actually, and they called

themselves the True People, though today there's not many of them left, probably no more than about 500 total. Well, during that research trip, a Lakandan priest told the Times an unsettling anecdote. He said it happened one morning when he was all alone, and this was around 2 a.m. A glowing light filled the priest's room. The phenomenon was steady, consistent, and it lasted for about a minute. Now this bizarre light show happened to him more than once, and each time he said the source was the same.

It came from an object a relic the priest had in his possession, one that he used in ceremonies and rituals, a crystal skull. The article didn't say what the priest's skull looked like, just that it was heavy and he got it from a local man. Nothing beyond that, but he thought the skull was more than just an artifact. According to the priest, the skull prevents sickness and protects the jungle they live in from outsiders. If he had any specific examples of this, he didn't share them with the LA Times. But history can give us some insight into why the skull itself is such a powerful object. Back in the Mesoamerican days, skulls were the symbols of various gods.

And because of that, both the Mayans and the Aztecs used skulls in religious ceremonies. For example, a 15th century shrine was recently found in Mexico City. It contained over 600 human skulls. These were thought to be sacrifices to the god of sun and war. And there's evidence that crystals, including maybe even quartz, were used by the Mayan shamans 2,000 years ago in rituals. They were seen as connected to the earth and therefore were totally special. So powerful skulls plus powerful crystals equals a mega-powerful object. The Lakandan people aren't the only ones who would say that, and there are plenty of

claims from all over the world about the mystical properties of these crystal skulls. That crystal skulls can project visions, they can induce premonitions, and give people psychic abilities. Some even say they're sort of like computers and contain the entire history of the world. Kind of like an ancient hard drive. Some of these rumors actually come out of Houston, Texas, where a woman named Joanne Parks claimed to possess an incredibly powerful crystal skull. Like the one at the Smithsonian, hers was life-sized and made of quartz.

The Huff Post actually interviewed Joanne about it in 2017. She told them she got it as a gift from her employer, an American-Tibetan healer, back in the 1970s. He said he got it from a shaman in Mexico. The thing about that is, like, okay, yes, if I was giving something like that, I would totally be honored. But at the same time, I would be a little apprehensive because this is an old artifact. So, you know, there's going to be good and evil. So I'm not so sure if I'm going to take this thing.

I can totally see that. Just like if someone were to give us a gift of a lava rock from the Hawaiian Islands, I'd say, nope, no, send it back to the goddess Pele. I do not want that. No, thank you. No, take it back. Take it back. Take it back. Anyways, Joanne is totally into this skull, especially because her boss seems to imply it's a pretty special gift. He says, quote, pretty special gift. He says, quote, Someday you will know what this is for. But Joanne just puts it in a box and stashes it in her closet, I guess not having anywhere else to display it. She doesn't forget about it though, she can't. Because for the next decade Joanne is plagued by vivid dreams about the skull. She doesn't tell Huff Post what

they were about exactly, but apparently they're intense enough that she puts pillows over the box in an attempt to stop the dreams, but I'd put a lot more than pillows over the box if it were me. I'd be like, uh, hell no. I am getting this up out of my house. I am not. There's no pillow that's gonna save me. I'm taking this right back to the person who gave it to me. Bye bye. See ya. I don't want it no more." Agreed. And you guessed it. Because the pillow thing doesn't work and the skull seems to get more powerful, or maybe more desperate over time, because finally around the late 1980s,

it stops communicating via dreamland and reaches out to her while she's awake. Now according to Joanne, this thing actually talks to her telepathically. It says its name is Max and it's a teacher meant to serve humanity. Oh no. No. I know, like I'm sorry, what? Get this thing out of my sight. So today, Max is one of the most famous crystal skulls in circulation because of all the mysticism around him.

Now, aside from Joanne's account, other people who've been around Max also have reportedly experienced trances and dreams and visions. I mean, this is crazy. As we're sitting here talking about this, it sounds like something straight out of a movie. Like, hello, the Indiana Jones. I mean, yes. But the thing is there's no denying it's real for people who've reported having these experiences. And it's not just Max. There's another skull that's even more notorious, and possibly the real-life backstory behind the fourth installment of our favorite adventure franchise, Indiana Jones and the

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Except the courageous groundbreaking explorer who found it wasn't some suave Harrison Ford type. It was a teenage girl. In 1924, a 17-year-old named Anna is deep in a jungle in Belize. She's wandering the ruins of an ancient mine city. She's with her dad, who is Frederick Mitchell Hedges, the famous British explorer and scholar. And some say he's the inspo behind the character of Indiana Jones. And in 1924, Frederick is allegedly on an expedition to comb over the ruins of a Mayan city

called Lubantun. Some say the place was already discovered in 1903. Others think Mitchell-Hedges uncovered it on his trip in 1924 with the help of his Mayan guides. Regardless, Lou Bantoon is definitely something to write home about. It sits on a hilltop full of crumbling temples, courtyards, and palaces, and archaeologists think it was a trading hub for the Mayans and other neighboring civilizations. Have you seen the picture of this, Rosh? It reminded me a lot of the temple that I hiked up to in Mexico City, except it was crumbling,

but it was crumbling almost perfectly. Yeah. Like it was purposefully put that way. Yeah, totally. It's like if you guys, if you Google this picture, like my interpretation of this is beautiful chaos, right? And that's like good and evil. At some point during their time at the ruins, Anna splits off to climb one of the really tall pyramids, and she wants to check out the view of the jungle from high up. But during her climb, she sees something through a crack in the side of the pyramid. She can tell it's some kind of reflective object because it glimmers as it catches the

sun. But it's deep in there, so she can't exactly see what it is. Anna seems to understand. Hello, her father is a major scholar. Like, you shouldn't keep quiet about strange things that you see around an ancient site. If you see something, say something. So what does she do? She goes and she tells her dad about it and he gets a team of men over there to check it out. And no one can tell what it is, but in order to get closer to it, they have to physically remove the pyramid stones, which isn't easy. In fact, it takes weeks, but finally, they're able to make an opening large enough

for a small teenage girl to slip through. Anna gets wrapped up in some rope and she's lowered down into a dark hole until her flashlight hits the glimmering object. And that's when she grabs it. It's heavy, and she manages to wrap it in her shirt, holding on for dear life until she's hauled up from there. And finally, the light of day reveals what she's found.

A skull carved out of a heavy block of transparent quartz crystal. Not only is it beautiful, it's about the size of an actual human head. And you can imagine, Anna and Frederick are stunned, and the Mayan guides who are with them, they're cheering and trading hugs, they're even kissing the ground. Two days later, a Mayan elder comes to check it out. He tells Anna and Frederick some incredible news. The skull is ancient and apparently modeled after the head of a priest. And best of all, it's supernaturally infused with all that priest's wisdom.

Even though this is a huge archaeological find, Frederick does something weird. He doesn't tell anyone about it, not for years. And it's not until the 1950s, about 30 years later, that he mentions it in his memoir titled, Danger, My Ally, in which he also drops some big claims. According to Frederick, scientists estimate it's thousands of years old and took 150 years to make, apparently by multiple generations. Frederick also says he's pretty sure this thing is evil and can cause death if you look at it the wrong way. And as it turns out, Anna's a big supporter of her dad's claims, so much so that after he dies in 1959, she essentially becomes the Skull's PR coordinator.

She travels around the world with it, showing it off at exhibitions and writing about her experience. The television docuseries Myth Hunters even follows this story around in 2013. They note that in 1960s, a man named Frank Dorland joined the Skull of Doom's promo tour. He's an art restorer and he wants to help Anna prove to any naysayers that the skull is bonafide. Because according to Frank, he's had his own supernatural experiences around the object. He says it releases sudden, random smells, like vinegar or water from a fresh mountain

stream. He also hears disembodied sounds and music, and notices it emits a weird electrical current. And Frank is so dead set on proving the skull is magic that in 1970, he sends it to a lab in California for some tests and age dating. And the lab is impressed. They seem to agree the rock is thousands of years old, just like Frederick said. According to myth hunters though,

there's at least one scientist at the lab who thinks the carvings in the skull are just too perfect to have been made by a human hand and too pristine for ancient machinery. Anna also spends the rest of her life believing in the skull's power and she goes around warning people about it. And at one point, she gives an interview where she talks about this cameraman who laughs at the skull and then later dies in an explosion. I mean, the clear implication being, watch your mouth or the skull might get you. But remember our Smithsonian sleuth, Jane McLaren Walsh? Well in 2008, almost 80 years after Anna supposedly found it,

Jane gets her hands on it and discovers what she believes to be the truth. In 2008, Jane McLaren Walsh at the Smithsonian Museum in D.C. sends the Mitchell Hedges skull out for testing, and scientists use an updated process to compare it with other genuine Mesoamerican artifacts. They find one very important detail. This skull was made using rotary tools. Now rotary tools are hand- handheld equipment with fast spinning wheels and most of us, you know what, we have some variation of these in our home toolboxes. I

know my husband does because you can use these for filing, grinding, for very intricate detailed cutting work. But as you might expect, this kind of tool didn't exist in Mexico during the Aztec period. In fact, it didn't arrive there until after the country was colonized by the Spanish in the 1500s. Which means Mitchell Hedge's skull is a fake. More than that, it seems almost identical to the skull that the British Museum had. So researchers think it's a copy made sometime in the 1930s. Dun-dun-dun-dun. Maybe you saw that coming. But the thing is, it's still a huge bummer. Jane, however, she isn't surprised. That's because back in 1992, she helped test the

Smithsonian Crystal Skull and two from the British Museum. The same results came back from both. Made with modern tools, not Mesoamerican, not ancient. Jane could have left it at that. All the skulls are fake. End of story. But it seemed like she couldn't put this mystery aside because there was still one giant lingering question. Where did they actually all come from? So for this part of the study, Jane analyzed a skull at the museum in Paris too, and she locked into one key piece of information.

It was acquired from a collection assembled by a man named Eugene Boban. Now, Boban was an art dealer who loved Mexican culture and even led an expedition there in the 1850s. And at some point, he returned to Paris and sold Mexican artifacts out of his shop. Now, remember how the British Museum skull was purchased from Tiffany's in 1898? Well, it turns out they got it from a French antiquities dealer. And you guessed it, that person was Beaubon, which means both the British and the Parisian skulls came from the same guy. Jane also found documentation that even earlier than that, in 1867, two more crystal skulls were at an exposition in Paris. They were from Beaubon's collection too. So basically, Jane started to see this guy's name pop up everywhere. You know, like when you're thinking

about a certain car and suddenly everybody's driving one? That's what happened to Jane when she was researching her artifacts. All roads led back to Bobon. Ultimately, documents connected him to at least five crystal skulls, including the one in Paris. That makes you wonder if Bobon was purposefully moving fake artifacts to feed Europe's hunger for antiquity. This was a big time for mummies and ancient Egyptian relics.

And it doesn't seem like there was any trace of crystal skulls appearing in Europe until the second half of the 19th century when Bobon was selling that stuff. But on the other hand, he could have been the one that was duped. But on the other hand, he could have been the one that was duped. Sometimes local artisans fed the demand by creating knockoff artifacts to sell to visiting collectors. In fact, it seemed

like it was a thriving business. A Smithsonian archaeologist named W. H. Holmes visited Mexico City in 1884 and saw tons of shops selling fake items claiming to be relics. So it's possible the crystal skulls were phonies sold directly to eager collectors just like Bobon and then paraded around Europe. Except there's an outlier, Anna Mitchell Hedges. Even though tests revealed her skull was made using modern tools, there were a few things about it that didn't quite fit with the others. Like for instance, Bobon didn't seem to be connected to her at all, and the skull of Doom was the only one allegedly found at an ancient site.

That last part might not be true either. For one, there's no documentation of Anna ever going to Belize until the 1980s, even though her story takes place in the 20s. In 1933, there's a record of a London art dealer owning the skull, and then selling it to Frederick Mitchell Hedges in 1943. So maybe the reason he didn't tell anyone about it between its supposed discovery in 1924 and his book release in 1954 was because he didn't own it yet. Here's the thing though. Anna did have an explanation for the art dealer thing.

Her dad apparently gave it to the guy in exchange for a loan and ended up having to buy it back in 1943. But that didn't stop the director of the Institute of Archaeology in Belize from suing Anna's estate in 2012. They claimed she had profited off of a stolen artifact taken from their country illegally. They sued the makers of that Indiana Jones movie as well for profiting from the likeness of the skull. But okay, even if Anna was lying, it still doesn't clear up the mystery because there is still a complete absence of information about where the Skull of Doom and all the others originated. No matter what way you slice it, all of the skulls seemingly just appeared out of nowhere.

Yeah, which actually leads me to one of the more out there theories surrounding these skulls, and that is that they're all a part of a prophecy. This theory seems to stem from a 19th century German translation of an ancient Mayan manuscript called the Dresden Codex. It's one of the four Mayan documents to ever be found, and it contains ritual divination calendars, astronomical tables, like telling you when the eclipses will happen, that sort of thing. According to this translation, the Dresden Codex includes a passage that says the Mayan people created 13 life-size crystal skulls. And when those skulls are all brought together

in the same spot at the same time, the bearer will receive wisdom that could save the human race from cataclysmic events. That's exactly like Indiana Jones in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Hello. Now some say that this translation isn't totally accurate and might be, you know, exaggerating a tad, but that didn't stop people from trying it anyway. In 2011, get this you guys, 13 skulls were brought together in an organized event presided over by a Mayan priest to see if they could unlock that alleged dimension of ancient

wisdom. I don't know which skulls were part of this crew or if any of them were authentic, but I have to guess our Houston skull, remember Max? He had to be involved because he was rumored to be one of the Great Thirteen. This big reunion didn't work, but maybe the timing wasn't right. The second part of this prophecy is that we'd only get that knowledge if humanity was ready to hear it. Maybe that's the reason why it didn't work. Maybe we're just not ready to hear it. But also, it could be that the crystal skulls are fake because of the modern tool thing. The skulls were made by tech that wasn't invented before the last century or so. But it wouldn't be the first time we've underestimated what ancient people had access

to or could do. Archaeologists have uncovered things in Aztec cities like liquid mercury, which we didn't even think had existed yet. Even if we accept the idea that these tools didn't exist during the Mesoamerican period, we haven't considered that maybe these skulls are even older than that. From a super ancient civilization that we have no way of studying

because it's been lost to time. So Rasha, could you be possibly talking about Atlantis? You're so right. And side note, I am named after Lady Rasha, the Princess of Atlantis supposedly that fell when Atlantis fell. But I've never found this ancient tale that I've heard my entire life.

But there are some people who think the skulls came directly from the lost city of Atlantis. It was written about by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. And while there are those who assume it was fictional, others think it was this advanced, possibly alien civilization that collapsed or was swallowed by the sea and that we just haven't found it yet. Right? Could be true.

We don't know. Just because we haven't found it, it doesn't mean that it never existed. And if it did exist, who's to say they didn't have the tools that could have made these skulls back then? There are at least a dozen crystal skulls out there, ranging from a few inches tall to the size of an actual human head. The one that was sent to Jane at the Smithsonian is kept in a cabinet, but the British Museum's is still on display. Many people, both fans of crystal skulls and those that own them, still think they're real artifacts.

For example, Mexico City's National Anthropology Museum has two small crystal skulls on display in their Aztec exhibit. And just because something isn't ancient doesn't mean it's not powerful. A traveling lecturer on crystal skulls named Josh Shapiro was interviewed in the LA Times, and he had a really interesting take. He suggests these skulls, or the idea of them, link us to different worlds, lost civilizations of the past, or things greater than ourselves. They give us purpose. is its own sort of magic.

[♪ music playing, sound effects playing, and music playing over the music playing in background. This is So Supernatural, an AudioChuck original produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at Sew Supernatural Pod and visit us on our website at sewsupernaturalpodcast.com. Join Rasha and me next Friday for an all new episode. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?