Well, sort of.

This strange adventure took place many years ago when I was attending UCLA. At the time, there had been a spate of books that were republished about Atlantis and Lemuria. This happens every 20 or so years. Being a contrarian (I was in college…what do you expect?), I looked for a more unusual book on Lemuria. The book I selected was Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific by Wishar Spenle Cerve. It turns out that the author’s odd name is an anagram of Harve Spencer Lewis, late Imperator of the AMORC Rosicrucians. The book was also published by AMORC, so I consider this to be my Rosicrucian adventure.

The book offers a some of the strangest stories about the supposed continent of Lemuria, sort of the equivalent of Atlantis but located in the Pacific ocean. According to the book, direct descendants of the original Lemurians were still alive and living in gigantic caves beneath California’s Mt. Shasta. They apparently came out at night and only rarely during the day. People living in the area saw odd lights and an occasional strange-looking person coming to buy supplies, but they kept quiet about it. I wanted to investigate for myself.

It was Spring Break, and I talked my girlfriend, whom I’ll call “Cindy Favor,” into using her VW camper van conversion and driving north to Mt. Shasta. Cindy and I had met in music classes at UCLA and ended up having an on-again off-again relationship for years. This time it was, of course, on, so we drove from Los Angeles up to the mountain. We stopped in Cindy’s home of Los Gatos and spent the night, visiting with her mother.

The next day we completed the drive up to Mt. Shasta. We arrived in the last town before starting up the mountain, Weed (!), around 3:00 p.m. It was just the beginning of the tourist season and few restaurants were open. We found a little place that was definitely a tourist trap. We ordered a plain pizza. The lady gladly took our money before taking the pizza out of a freezer and tossing it into a toaster over. She hadn’t removed the wrapper and had to pry it off after it was heated.

If you ever want a pizza that tastes like cardboard with ketchup coated with American cheese and the flavor of plastic, you can buy it in Weed. We were very hungry so we each had a piece but threw the rest away.

There was one grocery store in town that was still open. A major chain, the vegetables and fruits were all wilted and the cheese was moldy in packages. We picked what we could, along with boxes of crackers, and started the drive up Mt. Shasta.

VW conversion vans had very poor power, and the poor vehicle struggled up the mountain. We drove up and up as the night began to fall. We eventually went off road into the forest. The snow was still visible in places and what had melted left the ground rather soft. I was driving, and found a large clearing that would just take the weight of the camper. The clearing was about 40 feet across and formed a ragged circle. I parked in the middle.

It was cold, and we hadn’t bought wood to make a fire. We just had warm jackets. We watched the night skies and sang songs. Cindy accompanied us on guitar. It was pleasant and intimate. Without a fire, we could hear the sounds of small creatures and insects. We watched the mountain below us, looking for unusual lights. There was only darkness. Around midnight we unfolded the camper’s bed and went to sleep.

A Visit From…?

It was a few hours later when I roused from my sleep. I realized something wasn’t right. A window was slightly open for air, and I noticed the silence. No animal noises. No insect sounds. It was perfectly quiet.

Too quiet.

Suddenly, the entire van started to shake. It wasn’t like an earthquake; I’d been through several of those living in southern California. It was more like a large, incredibly strong creature was at the side of the camper, shaking it back and forth, trying to rip open the side of the van and get in!

The shaking lasted for about 20 seconds, maybe longer. And then…it was over. Bugs immediately began to make noises again and small animals could be heard scurrying through the trees. Apparently, whatever had shaken us was gone.

Cindy and I were both sitting up, breathing heavily and fast. Our hearts were racing. Finally, she spoke: “Take the flashlight and see what shook us.”

“I’m not going out there,” I said. “You go out there.”

“You’re the man,” she pouted. “You’re supposed to do stuff like that.”

I knew that acting like a frightened girl was far from Cindy’s nature. “You’re the liberated woman,” I said. “You go check it out.”

Finally, she stuck a flashlight in my hand and demanded I check to see what happened.

I struggled into some clothes and shoes, and slid open the side door. Cindy huddled under the covers. I looked around. There was nothing to be seen. I walked once around the camper. There was nothing within 20 feet of the vehicle.

I shone the flashlight down toward the ground. Although the ground was soft enough for me to leave footprints, and easily soft enough to show the footprints of any animal strong enough to shake the van, there were no footprints other than my own!

What Was It?

I got back in the camper and closed the door. I told Cindy what I had seen. We locked the doors and didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Our plan had been to spend several days camping on different parts of the mountain. Instead, when the light came up, we checked the grounds once more. There were no footprints other than our own. Nothing led to or from the van. There were no marks on the top of the dirty van. We decided to leave and drove back down the mountain.

So what was it? Was it a Lemurian threatening us into leaving the mountain? I don’t think so. AMORC, it turns out, had published an article in their privately circulated magazine several years earlier stating that all the Lemurians had left. This didn’t get the circulation of the book, and they kept printing editions of the book without including that the Lemurians had left the mountain. A bear would have left tracks. I don’t think a mountain lion could have made a leap of 20 feet from the trees to the van and then another leap of 20 feet from the van back to the trees. I also don’t think it was a large bird as it would have left marks on the top of its landing zone.

There have been Bigfoot sightings on Mt. Shasta, but that gives me even more questions. If a Bigfoot did shake the van, how did it get from the edge of the clearing to the camper without leaving any tracks, and how did it get support to shake the van without leaving marks in the soft earth or on the vehicle? The same is true for space aliens or trans-dimensional travelers.

To this day, I have no idea what it was. I just call it My Rosicrucian Adventure.