Atlantis is buried under the ocean. But Telos hides in Mount Shasta.
Mount Shasta looms over 14,000 feet, the snow-capped peaks visible from California’s Central Valley to southern Oregon on a clear day. The mountain has long been thought of as sacred by the Native Americans who settled in the area, including the Klamath people, who believed that a mighty spirit called Skell descended from heaven to the top of Mount Shasta. In the last century, though, there’s another legend that has been circulating about this mountain: that a city called Telos is hidden underneath the mountain.
Telos is said to be inhabited by an ancient yet advanced civilization known as the Lemurians, who are survivors from the sunken continent of Lemuria. The existence—and the name—of Lemuria was first proposed in 1864 by zoologist Philip Sclater to explain the similarities in lemur fossils found in Madagascar and India. Sclater hypothesized that a land bridge must have existed between the two at some point in history. However, rather than this hypothesized land in the Indian Ocean, the Mount Shasta connection is a little closer (geographically at any rate) to the Lost Continent of Mu, proposed by a 19th-century British writer, James Churchward, to have sunk in the Pacific Ocean. The two names have become interchangeable as the legends evolve.
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The legend of Lemuria originally had no connection to Mount Shasta, but a couple of books published in the early 1900s cemented the lore of this lost civilization hiding under Mount Shasta, the most significant of which was Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific by Harvey Spencer Lewis, who published the book under the pseudonym Wishar Spenle Cerve.
The lore these days goes something like this: Some Lemurians escaped before their continent sank into the ocean and sought refuge in Mount Shasta, eventually establishing a five-level “City of Light” called Telos inside the mountain. The Lemurians are said to be seven-feet-tall beings who wear white robes and communicate through crystals, spreading messages of love and unity. Some people believe there’s a door to Telos somewhere on the surface of Mount Shasta (Pluto’s Cave, a partially collapsed lava tube near the base of the mountain, seems to be a popular choice), but the prevailing theory these days is that the door is a metaphysical one, found only by people who the Lemurians invite in. Walk around the city’s main streets and you’ll find a number of crystal shops that sell Lemurian quartz crystals (these crystals mostly come from South America), believed to be encoded with messages of unity.
Lemurians or not, there’s something about Mount Shasta. It attracts spiritual seekers from the world over (the mountain is also known for its energy vortexes). The city of Mount Shasta has a population of a little over 3,000 but draws around 25,000 tourists a year, and while it isn’t tracking how many of those tourists come for the spiritual element, anecdotes from local tour companies indicate at least half of them are spiritual seekers.
Amanda “AJ” Brown who works as the Director of Philanthropy and Strategic Development for Siskiyou Economic Development was born and raised in the area and says the story about Lemurians has been circulating for decades.
“Growing up, [the legend] would always come up in conversation,” Brown says. “As a kid, with the stories I would hear, I always assumed there’s some kind of secret door that you can find on Mount Shasta… you can go into the mountain, into this underground civilization.
“The Lemurians have always been a thing everybody knows about. Whether it’s Lemurians, Bigfoot, it’s something you kind of grew up with.”
John Kennedy, who runs Shasta Mountain Shuttle & Tours, has lived in Mount Shasta all his life and confirms that he too grew up with the Lemurian legend. “I can tell you that I’ve never seen one, for sure, because they live in a different dimension, but I remember back in the ‘50s, people were talking about the Lemurians,” says Kennedy. “The story has been around for much longer than that. Growing up, it was already around. I run into people and they say, ‘Yeah, we’ve seen the Lemurians. We went up to Ascension Rock and meditated and Lemurians came and talked to us.’ But I have no proof of that, right?”
These days, there are a few different spiritual retreats in the area (one of the most locally well-respected is Shasta Vortex Adventures) but Kennedy and Robin Kohn of Mt. Shasta Tour Guide (who calls herself the “fun guide”) also lead many spiritual groups that come with their own spiritual guides. “I will take people to the vortexes and portals,” says Kohn, “but I don’t lead the guided meditations, that’s what the spiritual guides do.” Kennedy mainly shuttles travelers around, noting that he’s hosted spiritual tourists from Brazil, Switzerland, England, France, Australia, and Japan.
Mount Shasta guides need commercial permits from the U.S. Forest Service. According to Kohn, the Forest Service made the permit application easier around six years ago, which contributed to the boom of spiritual retreats in the area.
If travelers are enamored by Lemuria, the locals seem to be split. “I have to admit, I don’t think the locals believe quite as much as the people that come here to find spiritual guidance,” says Kennedy, but he thinks that may partly be because they’re so used to Mount Shasta’s energy. “A lot of the locals have lived here for a long time and sometimes I think that like myself, growing up with this spiritual energy, we don’t feel any different.”
Whether or not you believe, strange things seem to happen on Mount Shasta. Kennedy remembers around 15 to 20 years ago, “There was a big thing about somebody’s TV… they talked about this energy and spirit that possessed that TV, and they had people touring this house because the TV put images on their screen and this TV wasn’t even turned on.”
Massachusetts-born Elijah Sullivan spent the last 10 years working on a documentary surrounding one incident: in 2009, a hole appeared on the side of Mount Shasta. The hole was 60 feet deep and 15 feet wide and seemed to have been dug by hand. The hole was quickly refilled by the Forest Service. The official story is that the people who dug it were looking for gold, but other supernatural theories still circulate. Sullivan’s documentary on the subject, The Hole Story, should be released before the end of 2024, but in the meantime, he’s keeping his findings close to his chest. Sullivan did share that, “most of the film has to do with some aspect of the mythology around the mountain and Lemuria is the principal one.”
In the 30 years Sullivan lived in the city of Mount Shasta, he found that “there are a lot of people around here who very firmly believe in it and more. There used to be a gentleman who would sit on the bench at the bus stop every day, and he said he was waiting for the bus to Telos, and I don’t think he was kidding.”
Sullivan himself is a skeptic. “It’s kind of an odd idea, you know, to think that the Native Americans lived here for tens of thousands of years, but there [are] these white-skinned blue-eyed aliens who live under the mountain who never once showed themselves to the Native Americans until the white people arrive. I have trouble with that,” says Sullivan. Yet, he can’t completely dismiss the idea.
“There is some kind of interesting phenomena occurring here, in the sense that so many people are reporting very powerful, subjective experiences. I haven’t had one of those myself and I’m very skeptical, but I’ve spoken to too many people who have had them to completely discount that something’s happening,” Sullivan explains. “I tend to believe it’s more psychological, but I don’t know.”
Whether there are Lemurians underneath or not, there’s no denying that Mount Shasta is a special place that is worth visiting. The potentially active volcano is awe-inspiring, and not just for those who live in urban areas. Even locals like Kohn, who frequently guides group tours on the mountain, finds peace whenever she’s up there.
“It’s up to the tourist or guest or whoever is experiencing that. They can choose how they want to experience that energy,” says resident Brown. “Other people who aren’t into metaphysical anything, they even talk about just coming to Mount Shasta and feeling at peace … and just a grounding that happens up there as well. It really spans the entire spectrum of spiritual experiences. It’s all up to you on what you make it, right?”
Great article. I learned about the Lemurians from locals when I visited Mt Shasta about 60 years ago! But Mount Whitney is noted as the biggest (tallest) mountain in the state.