A theory of a lost civilization of beings called Lemurians was taking hold

In 1934, at the foot of Northern California’s towering Mount Shasta, a geologist named J.C. Brown started telling a captivating story to anyone who would listen.

He spoke of an 11-mile tunnel filled with gold and giant skeletons, and said it led straight to the heart of Mount Shasta, an active volcano. Lots of people believed Brown, and soon, he was organizing an expedition into the tunnel. 

But it never happened. Instead, mere days before the expedition was scheduled to depart, Brown mysteriously disappeared without a trace.

His story of the treasure-filled tunnel, however, has endured. Because like any good urban legend, it was just close enough to the truth to make it believable.

A time of discovery

Back in 1934, finding treasure inside a mountain was in style. 

British archaeologists had discovered the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun just a decade earlier, setting off a series of similar expeditions. King Tut’s tomb contained chambers filled with chariots, thrones, statues and jewelry, and of course, a golden burial mask. Pictures of the latter were shared across the globe.

The golden sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in Egypt in 1922. Getty Images

Meanwhile in Northern California, a theory of a lost civilization of beings called Lemurians was taking hold. 

Several books, including “The Lost Continent of Mu” by James Churchward and “Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific” by Wishar S. Cerve, popularized the idea that the West Coast of the U.S. was actually the remains of the continent of Lemuria. “Even disbelievers cannot dispute the fact that the mountainous terrain on the west coast is indeed different,” writes Emilie A. Frank, in her 1998 book, “Mt. Shasta: California’s Mystic Mountain.”

Frank told the tale of a “cataclysmic action” that supposedly caused Lemuria to sink.

And although that “action” has never been explained, it apparently prompted North America to rise from Lemuria’s “partially submerged state,” joining the two to form the region we know today. Cerve’s book — “very widely read,” according to Frank — took it a step further, claiming that Mount Shasta was the last refuge for the Lemurians who survived the destruction of their continent.

Cerve even wrote that the Lemurians at one time kept their village hidden on the interior of Mount Shasta and accessed it through a tunnel on the eastern side of the mountain.

People were riveted by the story.

They came from all over the world to find Lemurians at Mount Shasta. Some reported strange lights on the mountain at night. Others even claimed to have met Lemurians. There are still people, to this day, who believe in Lemurians.

The Milky Way Galaxy rises above Mount Shasta. Getty Images/iStockphoto

“The Lemurians were very tall,” said Jennifer Bryan, a volunteer at the Siskiyou County Historical Society. “They apparently had long arms [and] big heads. No one could ever say they saw them. Supposedly, they came into the communities and traded gold for supplies. Everybody from all over Siskiyou County had heard those stories.”

Separately, Native Americans in the region had long told stories of a giant race of people that once roamed the Earth. Passed down through the Shasta Indian Nation, the Wintu Tribe of Northern California and the Karuk Tribe, some of those stories have included depictions of “mean and fierce” giants known to squeeze people to death. Hoaxes leveraging those beliefs had been perpetrated for years, even at Yosemite National Park.

“People like the mystery of it,” Bryan said. “It’s almost spiritual. They like the feeling that the mountain is spiritual. The Native Americans certainly feel that way.”

A convergence of these discoveries, beliefs and stories was perhaps inevitable.

‘Stories can change’

For Brown, a British geologist seeking his fortune near Shasta, the shoe fit.

When Brown came along in 1934 with a fantastic tale about a tunnel that led him to rooms of copper and gold, statues, hieroglyphics and 27 giant skeletons, ranging from 6 feet, 6 inches to more than 10 feet tall, it quickly gained traction. The geologist claimed he was in the area prospecting for gold at the time of the discovery.

Tutankhamun’s tomb, Valley of the Kings, Egypt, November 1922. View of the antechamber of the tomb looking south. Getty Images

Brown reportedly noticed an unnatural section of rock on a cliff face, which gave way to a cave “that curved downward into the mountain,” Frank wrote. After days of exploring and cataloging, Brown “cleverly concealed the entrance of the tunnel” and left, Frank explained.

“It would be one thing if it was a room full of gold, but the fact that he adds that there were giant Egyptian sarcophagi is another thing,” said filmmaker Michael Flanagan. “That really was believable back then.” That, the location and the presence of giant skeletons were also a dog whistle for anything relating to Lemurians.

Flanagan’s “The Mysteries of Mount Shasta,” based on a book by D.W. Naef, dives into the legends associated with the area, including Brown’s story. But verifying Brown’s claims proved difficult for Flanagan, who found himself relying on old stories, urban myths and scant writings about the alleged tunnel to create a narrative.

“The hard part about old history is that it’s kind of written by the survivors,” Flanagan told SFGATE in a phone interview. “We don’t have a way to ask everyone that was around in 1934. Stories can change over time.”

A screenshot from "The Mysteries of Mount Shasta." Courtesy of Michael Flanigan

The weird thing was Brown claimed to have discovered the tunnel in 1904, some three decades before he told the story publicly.

What he did during those 30 years remains up for debate, though most agree he “disappeared here and there” and was mostly off the radar, Flanagan said. He also reportedly told his story to anyone that would listen in bars around Sacramento.

According to Flanagan, it’s believed Brown may have told a few friends and relatives his story, and was thought to visit the tunnel frequently. According to Frank, Brown surfaced in 1934 to advertise a trip to the alleged tunnel and invited more than 80 people from Stockton to tag along.

The group, which met nightly for six weeks to plan the trip, included a museum curator, newspaper editor and a number of scientists, Frank wrote.

“He wasn’t really asking for money,” Flanagan said. “He was telling people that they could have the stuff in two of the rooms, and he basically just wanted what was in one room.” And, after decades of apparently studying Lemurians, Brown also told the group “the antiquities in the cavernous rooms inside Mount Shasta were those of the Lemurians or their descendants,” according to Frank’s research.

The group was scheduled to leave for the tunnel on June 19, 1934.

Clipping from the Stockton Evening and Sunday Record, June 19, 1934. Newspapers.com

But that never happened, because Brown never showed. No one from the traveling party ever saw him again. Completely “bewildered,” concerned members of the group even filed a police report, though many still believed there was a tunnel into Mount Shasta, Frank said.

“There are some accusations that some members of the group had something to do with his disappearance,” Flanagan said. “He maybe oversold it or something like that.”

Of course, Brown never revealed the exact location of the tunnel to anyone before his vanishing act.

Years later, researchers would claim Brown’s identity was an alias. Brown — or someone who claimed to be him — is reportedly buried in a Nevada desert, according to Frank’s book. In the decades following his disappearance, there have been a few small expeditions to try and find the tunnel, though “nothing major,” Flanagan said.

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