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Tuesday, February 7, 2012 – Daily News 7A At Shasta, there's humming around the mountain MOUNT SHASTA (MCT) — Locals didn't find the ads, posted at the laundromat or running in the SuperSaver, to be strange at all. A number of people, in fact, reached out to Brian Wallenstein, the "researcher looking to gather stories and infor- mation" for a book on Bigfoot and UFO sight- ings. A woman named Rudi emailed to report that she'd seen a bright disc hovering above Mount Shasta. She attached a photo from a ski resort snow cam that showed a luminous speck. (Credi- ble, Wallenstein thought.) A man named Larry recounted his own research — including tele- pathic communication with "them" — conducted in preparation for the day extraterrestrials would reveal themselves to earth- lings. (Too out there, Wal- lenstein decided.) People pulled him aside to share anecdotes of mystery lights and star gates, or to whisper the names of neighbors and brothers with tales to tell. Secondhand accounts flowed in: about the forest ranger who casually spoke of spotting a Bigfoot east of McCloud, and the deer- hunting couple from Weed who came across a bright chrome vessel on a dark mountain road. "Their stories will die if I don't do this," Wallen- stein, a 56-year-old com- puter technician and self- published children's author, said recently from his home here, a 2{-acre sanctuary of sorts for the six cats who serve as his muses. Mount Shasta, a 14,162-foot peak often tinged in pink alpenglow and topped by lens-shaped clouds, long has elicited awe. When John Muir first caught sight of it, "I was fifty miles away, afoot, alone and weary," he wrote in 1874, "yet all of my blood turned to wine and I have not been weary since." A tale written a few years later by a teenager from Yreka, just north- west of the mountain _ a story of advanced beings living in a crystal city beneath the mountain — cemented Shasta's other- worldly reputation. The mountain has been touted as the site of an energy vortex that allows passage into the meta- said, stemmed from expe- rience: In 1987, he saw a family of Yeti emerge from an abandoned cabin on the mountain. He says a reversal of gravity on one grade often pulls his Subaru uphill. As for spacecraft, he's "watched UFOs ... head into the mountain." After mulling a book on local sightings for two decades, Wallenstein said, he decided to move on it "before more of the origi- nal locals pass on." His goal: to rattle the presumptions of those who resist the unknown. physical dimension; the birthplace of a spiritual foundation whose adher- ents believe they can ascend to the eternal realm; and a hot spot for UFOs that hide in the clouds and enter the mountain's core through mystery "portals." Newer to the repertoire are sightings of Bigfoot (the word serves as both singular and plural, like fish and sheep), believed by some to secret them- selves by passing into a fifth dimension. "Mount Shasta has always had a spiritual drawing, but it's getting more and more popular," said Karen Anderson, a supervisor in the town's visitors bureau, who esti- mated that a fourth of the area's tourists come for that reason. To assist seekers from around the globe, the bureau's website includes a list of energy healers. Shops carry crystals for the "spiritual pilgrim." Drop-in channeling ses- sions are held each Sun- day at a spiritual center. Guides lead soul-cleans- ing treks up the mountain in all seasons. Among them is Asha- lyn, as she is known. Her Shasta Vortex Tours also offers spiritual journeys into Telos, the sparkling refuge said to lie beneath the mountain, inhabited by lanky beings who fled the sinking continent of Lemuria 12,000 years ago. Pins on a map in Asha- lyn's office mark her cus- tomers' home countries: Japan's cluster is the dens- est, as Mount Fuji is thought to be Shasta's sis- ter sacred mountain. Rus- sia, Latin America and China show more recent activity. Although nonbelievers abound here — as Ander- Lassen House Lic. #525002331 Assisted Living & Memory Care Community Where our family is committed to yours 705 Luther Road Red Bluff (530) 529-2900 www.LassenHouseALF.com TEHAMA ESTATES PROVIDES: Active Senior Citizens A Retirement Community for the ◆ Independent Living ◆ Private Apartments ◆ Three Nutritious Meals Daily ◆ 24 Hour Secure Environment ◆ House Keeping Services ◆ Warm & Friendly Staff ◆ Recreational Programs ◆ Scheduled Transportation ◆ Private & Formal Dining Rooms EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY 750 David Avenue, Red Bluff • 527-9193 Sweetheart Dinner Special Steak & Lobster Tail Complete Dinner including Dessert & Champaign 645 Antelope Blvd. #1 Reservations recommended in Frontier Village across from the fairgrounds. 527-1420 LESS SCHWAB.... RED BLUFF 614 WALNUT ST. 530-529-1612 530 529-2040 1355 Vista Way, Red Bluff MON.-FRI. 8AM-6PM SAT. 8AM-5PM son said, "We're a normal town. We have a hospital. We have a grocery store" — a number of them have seen things they can't explain. In 2008, the Mount Shasta Herald reported that five people claimed to have witnessed a jellyfish- like craft that hovered noiselessly over neighbor- ing McCloud, with what appeared to be a fire rag- ing inside it. "I really don't believe in flying saucers," lifelong resident Dick Cary told the newspaper, "but I do know that something weird was happening." With its hot springs and glaciers, the dormant vol- cano at the southern edge of the Cascade Range has always been sacred to Native Americans, some of whom view it as central to their creation myth. But it was the Yreka teenager, Frederick Spencer Oliver, who blew the mystical door wide open in the 1880s when he claimed that an ancient native of Lemuria had used him as a "channel" to write a manuscript that described a buried city with walls "polished as by jewelers, though excavat- ed by giants." Residents who say they speak for the inhabitants of that underground realm have since multiplied. Oliver "was the earliest channel in this area," said historian William Miesse, who put together a vast bibliography of primary sources on the mountain and its lore for the College of the Siskiyous. "Now," Miesse said, "you can hardly miss a channel walking down Main Street." In a 1932 Los Angeles Times Magazine article, Edward Lanser wrote of seeing Mount Shasta "ablaze with a strange red- dish-green light" from the window of his Oregon- bound train. "Lemurians," a fellow passenger confid- ed. Returning to explore the legend further, Lanser was told that tall men from a sunken civilization were known to patronize local stores, buying "enor- mous quantities of sulfur as well as a great deal of salt." In a stroke of fortune for the Mount Shasta economy, the items were "always paid for with gold nuggets, and the gold always far exceeds the value of the merchandise." Lanser's account came as another spiritual move- ment was building near the mountain: violet-clad followers who believed that loving "Ascended Masters," Jesus among them, could teach humans to raise their vibrational levels and thus pass freely between Earth and the eternal realm. The move- ment is still prominent in Shasta. As for UFOs, reported sightings exploded in the 1950s and persist today. Appearances by rank- smelling Bigfoot, also called Yeti, came later. Tales of dwarfs and fairies flavor the mix. "Lewis Carroll's White Queen, who famously said: 'Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,' would feel right at home here," said Michael Roesch, a retired College of the Siskiyous professor who wrote the Shasta project's folklore segment. Roesch said the true believers are good neigh- bors who "recycle and readily give hugs," but he wondered about the con- sequences of their cos- MOULE'S TEHAMA COUNTY GLASS REMOVE ALL • Well water build-up • Water stains • Soap scum with NOTHIN'S BETTER stain remover only at Moule's 515 Sycamore St., Red Bluff • 529-0260 Complete Autobody Repair INTERCITY BODY & PAINT Factory Trained Specialists In: • Painting • Fiberglass Repair • Exotic Metals • Color Matching • Frame Repair • Spray-In Bedliners • All Auto Manufacturers • Rental Cars Available We accept all Insurance Carriers mology: "If you believe wisdom comes from a 35,000-year-old chan- neled spirit named Ramtha, why would you bother reading the Great Books?" The upside, spiritual guide Andrew Oser argued in the Mountain Spirit Chronicles _ a newspaper that Ashalyn publishes twice yearly _ is that "in these times of rapid change, there is a great need for people who can maintain their equa- nimity in the midst of any earthquakes, nuclear dis- asters, or bank collapses." "Just like the moun- tain," he wrote, "they radi- ate a calming energy that impacts all those around them." Wallenstein, a student of Eastern mysticism, left New Jersey as a teen and eventually made his way to the mountain. His cluttered house — filled with musical instru- ments and lush plants — lies equidistant from Mount Shasta and the imposing Black Butte. The geometry, he said, gives one of the bedrooms a "hum." A father of two, Wal- lenstein owned a car repair shop before turning to computers and chil- dren's books. His latest project, he For help coaxing recal- citrant witnesses to con- fide in him, Wallenstein has turned to Pamela Padula. He reasoned that someone with her back- ground — years of work- ing in fire lookout stations and a family with law enforcement roots in the region — can help con- vince old-timers that shar- ing their sightings won't cause them to be labeled crazy. As a teen, Padula said, she once saw three small triangular craft hovering noiselessly in formation. Her boyfriend, sister and future in-laws watched with her, she said. "I do know what I saw," said Padula, 51. "I don't know that it was anything extraterrestrial, but it was definitely unidentifiable to me." Wallenstein long has been an explorer of the boundary between the real and the metaphorical, with a good dose of grounded humor. "I'm cosmic," he said, "but I eat meat." To him, the search is all about open- ing up to possibility. "If you think about it empirically, there's got to be life all over the uni- verse," he said, his voice quickening with an isn't- it-obvious frustration. 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