NARRATOR: In the Mojave Desert, there is a structure
built to bestow everlasting life.
BARBARA HARRIS: People were supposed to walk in one door
and come out the other and be healed.
NARRATOR: And according to the architect,
it was designed by otherworldly beings.
He could communicate with distant ancestors
or even time travelers coming and going from the Earth.
DAVID CHILDRESS: They showed him the future,
and this was his destiny.
JONATHAN BERMAN: In your wildest imagination,
you wouldn't come up with something like the Integratron.
The dome was taking many different scientific ideas
and melding them together.
NARRATOR: Could this strange domed building
really provide the key to immortality?
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: If we could figure out the Integratron, then,
for all intents and purposes,
we could live forever.
NARRATOR: There is a doorway
in the universe.
Beyond it is the promise of truth.
It demands we question everything
we have ever been taught.
The evidence is all around us.
The future is right before our eyes.
We are not alone.
We have never been alone.
Aerodynamics engineer and inventor George Van Tassel
is in his hotel room preparing to reveal
his latest scientific discoveries
in a television interview
when he suddenly and unexpectedly dies.
Friends and family members are shocked
when it is reported that he suffered a fatal heart attack,
since Van Tassel, at 67 years of age,
was in perfect health and had shown no warning signs.
His sister, Peggy Manyo,
became suspicious when she discovered
that the body had been cremated
before she was even notified.
And perhaps most curious of all,
his wife Doris claimed that, during her husband's funeral,
their home was ransacked
and George's papers stolen.
As soon as he passed away,
mysterious vans and trucks showed up,
and all of his equipment
and plans and drawings
and a lot of his writings were loaded up into these trucks...
supposedly government trucks...
and hauled away, never to be seen again.
If the government found all this stuff important enough
to show up right after he died and haul it away,
then at least some people within the government believed
there was something worth studying,
something worth looking at.
NARRATOR: But what was George Van Tassel working on
that would elicit so much interest
from the United States government
and even prompt family members to speculate
that he may have been murdered?
While Van Tassel had been working
on a number of intriguing projects,
including an antigravity device,
his masterwork was a machine he built
in the Mojave Desert called the Integratron.
It was a machine designed to extend life
and perhaps even lead to immortality.
George Van Tassel often quoted
Corinthians 15:26.
"The last enemy to be destroyed is death."
George believed that our lifespan is too short
and, in order to get wisdom,
we should live longer.
And that was part of his motivation
to create this machine,
to bring wisdom to people.
'Cause just as you're getting it together,
boom, you die.
If you could walk through this machine counterclockwise,
come out the other side and be 30% younger,
what more could you do with your life?
TSOUKALOS: It's in the middle of nowhere.
It's incredibly flat.
And there you see this white, round building
with a half dome on top,
and it's got these 16 sections.
MICHAEL MASTERS: The Integratron was made in a way that
is very ideally suited for capturing energy
and the way George Van Tassel thought of the Integratron
as a battery charger, a way to prolong life.
TSOUKALOS: The basic idea behind the Integratron
was to introduce a machine,
through harmonics,
with which you then can rejuvenate your cells.
Because if we could figure out a way
from preventing our individual cells
from deteriorating or getting older,
then, for all intents and purposes,
we could live forever.
NARRATOR: At the time of his death,
George Van Tassel had just announced
that the device he had been working on for 24 years
was 95% complete
and would be fully functional within weeks.
When his house was ransacked during his funeral,
the core of the Integratron and other critical components
also disappeared,
leaving no question as to what the intruders were after.
Those papers and that equipment,
none of that has ever been seen again.
NARRATOR: Could this unusual structure
located in the middle of the Mojave Desert
really hold the key to immortality?
While it may sound farfetched,
many who have studied the incredible story
of George Van Tassel are convinced
that he might actually have succeeded
in a quest for eternal life
that has endured for thousands of years.
BERMAN: We took a bite out of that apple in the Garden of Eden.
We had knowledge.
But the price of that knowledge
was that we were aware of our own mortality.
And since that day,
we've been looking for that fountain of youth,
that way to extend our lifespan or maybe even live forever.
NARRATOR: In 2018,
archeologists excavating the tomb
of a Han dynasty noble family in Luoyang, China,
unearthed some of the earliest evidence ever found
of human efforts to cheat death.
Recently, in an archeological dig in a Chinese burial chamber,
an ancient 2,000‐year‐old bronze pot was recovered
with the remnants of a substance that was later determined
was probably an elixir of immortality.
NARRATOR: Ancient Taoist texts confirmed
the liquid substance to be a legendary potion
brewed by Chinese alchemists,
granting eternal youth to those who dared drink it.
Lab results revealed the potion is largely made up
of potassium nitrate and alunite,
which, while not poisonous,
are used in pesticides,
fertilizers and rocket propellants.
FISHER: It's a powerful reminder
of the fact that humans,
probably for thousands of years,
have had this sort of desire to‐to extend our lives.
NARRATOR: The Han dynasty elixir
is just the latest of many ancient attempts at immortality
discovered by archeologists over the years.
But what drives humankind to seek eternal life?
Is it merely self‐preservation?
Or could there be another force at work,
one that may be connected to the fact
that every ancient culture on Earth
described the gods as immortal?
In ancient Greek myths,
we learn of the food of the gods,
which they called ambrosia,
an immortality food.
These beings possess some form of a‐a liquid or an elixir
that, ultimately, somehow altered their blood
and promoted immortality.
TSOUKALOS: Some of the stories that we hear
about this drink, ambrosia,
is when the eyewitness is taken up into the sky.
There are actual ancient Greek mythologies
that describe these shiny star islands
that descended from the sky
and then, under their own propulsion,
moved around.
The entire Greek pantheon of gods
is based on visiting extraterrestrials.
NARRATOR: Is it possible
that humanity's centuries‐old quest to attain eternal life
is fueled by a desire to become like the otherworldly beings
that our ancestors actually encountered?
Curiously, there are a number of stories from the ancient world
presented not as fiction but as historical record
that describe people of an earlier age
living extraordinarily long lives.
In the Old Testament, the Book of Genesis,
we learn of figures like Noah and Methuselah
who lived for hundreds of years,
800 and 900 years.
The Bible never tells us
how they were able to live that long.
TSOUKALOS: There is an artifact
at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England,
that is called the WB 44 Kings List
of ancient Sumeria.
On there, you have a chronology of kings,
and the combined years
of when these rulers were in charge
is 241,000 years.
And on that WB 44 list,
you have so‐called historical figures,
where you actually have archeology
corroborating existence of those people.
So, in my opinion,
the WB 44 list
is a list of extraterrestrial space travelers,
and the entire Kings List is correct.
NARRATOR: Could it be that George Van Tassel
and many others like him have been driven
by a deep‐seated memory of a time
when our ancestors existed alongside extraterrestrials
who seemed to live forever?
Perhaps the answer can be found
by examining the events that led to the construction
of the Integratron
and George Van Tassel's alien encounter.
NARRATOR: Standing alone in California's
barren Mojave Desert
is a towering seven‐story boulder called Giant Rock.
It is here that George Van Tassel's strange journey
began in the 1940s, just three miles
from where he would eventually build
the Integratron.
MASTERS: Giant Rock is a 25,000‐ton boulder
that takes up 5,800 square feet,
and is, until recently,
the largest freestanding boulder in the world.
NARRATOR: This massive boulder has
long been held sacred by local Native American tribes,
who believe it to be a site of great power.
HENRY: Spiritual vortexes like Giant Rock are known
to be places where people can have
extraordinary spiritual experiences,
healing experiences, deep states of meditation.
And what we find out at Giant Rock is that the local
Native American Indian tribes, the Serrano and the Chemehuevi,
would do their ceremonies at Giant Rock.
But only the chief was allowed to get close to Giant Rock.
NARRATOR: In November of 2019,
ancient astronaut theorist
David Childress traveled to the site of Giant Rock
to meet with local historian
Barbara Harris, and learn more about the inception
of the Integratron.
‐Hello, Barbara. ‐How you doing?
Hi. Thank you for coming.
Thanks for having me here.
So, please tell me the story of‐of Giant Rock.
Well, they say it is millions of years old.
And, uh, basically this whole
area here is made up of granite.
And, many, many years ago there's a,
a volcanic eruption.
And, of course, this is a product
of that volcanic eruption.
What is the early story of, of Giant Rock, then,
with Native Americans?
Well, this ground was considered
very sacred by the Native Americans.
And they would come here and use it seasonally.
But they considered it so sacred that only
the shamans and the chiefs
were allowed to stay
here at the rock.
At the turn of the 19th century,
the homesteading and
the white man started to come in.
And that has to do with this
early prospector, who lived under the rock.
Frank Critzer, and he was responsible
for building the roads to Giant Rock.
NARRATOR: In 1930, George Van Tassel
had a chance encounter with prospector Frank Critzer
at his uncle's auto repair shop in Santa Monica,
which led to him investing in Critzer's mining operations
in the Mojave Desert.
Critzer was known in the area for his eccentric behavior,
which included using mining dynamite to blow a hole
in the bottom of Giant Rock...
one big enough to live in.
Van Tassel's initial ties to the area stem
from a friendship forged with Critzer over the years.
CHILDRESS: He lived under this rock?
HARRIS: Yes, he was actually
a guy who was looking for people
to come and visit him under his rock.
However, Frank, he also had a dark side to him.
So, in July of 1942, the U.S. government
had the Old Man's Draft.
And, and it required people between the ages of 18 and 64
to register for the draft.
And so he got caught up in that, did he?
‐Yeah, he was 54. ‐Okay.
And the‐the local sheriffs
came out here, who happened to be friends with him,
and offered to take him into the local town
to register for the draft.
He walked into a back room and came out
wearing a pair of binoculars that had wires attached.
And he basically said, "Leave me alone,
or we're all gonna go to hell together."
And he took the two wires, put them together and...
‐Right under here, then? ‐Yes.
Okay, wow!
And he blew up into little pieces.
And, uh, one sheriff... actually, one of his rib cages
came off and impaled into a... the other one.
‐And the other sheriff came flying ‐Wow.
‐out of the bottom of the rock. ‐Yeah.
And the other sheriff, who stood out here,
stood in shock while it all happened.
NARRATOR: Frank Critzer's bizarre
and violent action
shocked the local community.
Many questioned if he may have been influenced
by the energy of Giant Rock itself...
which the local Native American tribes
had warned was only meant for sacred purposes.
And, according to geologists,
Giant Rock does, in fact, produce energy.
The interior of the rock is white,
because it is primarily composed of quartz...
a mineral that generates
an electrical charge when under stress...
as it would be
inside a massively heavy rock.
Giant Rock is also believed
to be located on top
of a natural earth energy line,
also known as a ley line.
George Van Tassel said
the Integratron needed to be in a special place,
full of energy.
We have a gold mine right nearby.
This area has ley lines and aquafers.
There's actually a mountain of quartz right here.
And you can feel the energy when you're here.
NARRATOR: Could electrical energy
emanating from Giant Rock have had
a deadly effect on Frank Critzer?
Despite the horrific event that occurred at Giant Rock,
one man was still drawn to the site...
George Van Tassel.
Over the course of his many visits to Critzer's rock home,
he had become convinced that it was a place of unusual energy.
Now, you have a vacancy under the rock!
‐Van Tassel told his wife, "Pack the girls..." ‐Santa Monica to...
"...we're moving out to live under a rock!"
So, did the Van Tassels
‐live underneath this rock then? ‐No, actually,
most of their living quarters were outside.
The underground area
was primarily used for his channeling
and meditations, so,
as the story goes,
Van Tassel had an experience.
NARRATOR: Before his death,
Frank Critzer had transformed the nearby ancient lakebed
into a small airport.
According to George Van Tassel,
on the night of August 24, 1953,
a craft landed on the runway that was not of this world.
He described the encounter in a 1964 television interview.
INTERVIEWER: What did you see?
A bell, a bell‐shaped, uh, type
of, uh, anti‐gravity, uh, ship
that they operate as a scout ship
out of their big carriers.
How big?
Uh, this was 36 feet in diameter
and 19 feet high.
And where was it, on the ground?
No, it was hovering ten feet off the ground.
And, uh, a man got off of the ship
and approached me.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go into this ship?
I walked with him to a spot underneath it,
and, uh, an anti‐gravity beam took me up
through a hole in the bottom.
NARRATOR: While skeptics were quick
to write off George Van Tassel
as some kind of delusional mad scientist,
many who knew him, or have studied his work,
believe he was nothing short of a genius.
George was super smart.
At 14, he drops out of school.
At 17, he becomes a certified pilot.
Moves out west,
and worked for Howard Hughes
and then became friends.
They both had a calling to, let's say, higher
or mystical or psychic experiences.
CRAIG HODGETTS: The parallels would be Edison,
who thought in this realm of electricity
that nobody could understand, but he somehow channeled.
Or Nikola Tesla.
He was so sensitized to the electromagnetic spectrum
that many of his inventions just came naturally.
And that may have been
someplace where George Van Tassel came from.
NARRATOR: George Van Tassel claimed
that over the course of his life,
extraterrestrials communicated with him many times.
And the most important message he received...
was to build the Integratron.
An eclectic group of several hundred travelers
descend upon the Mojave Desert to gather at Giant Rock.
It is here that George Van Tassel holds his annual
Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention.
And while there are no paved roads or facilities of any kind,
it has attracted enough attention
to garner a feature in Life magazine.
So, George has the idea... he's gonna do the first
intergalactic spaceship convention.
Couple hundred people show up.
It's a beautiful event.
Two years later,
there's 11,000 people there.
The 1950s and 1960s, uh,
Giant Rock ended up being the nexus
of the most highly attended UFO conferences
that has ever happened in the United States.
NARRATOR: The Giant Rock convention
was largely responsible for fueling interest
in the UFO phenomenon.
But for George Van Tassel,
it served a more important purpose.
George goes on to give these conventions for 23 years,
collects donations, and uses that as a way
to help fund the dome.
NARRATOR: Van Tassel claimed that the extraterrestrials
that had communicated with him at Giant Rock
gave him instructions for building a machine
that could rejuvenate cells in the human body
to extend life...
perhaps indefinitely.
At the peak
of the Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention attendance...
he gets an architect to draw up the plans
for this vision that he has,
this vision of a white dome in the desert
that he's going to build near Giant Rock.
And in 1958, they break ground and they begin work.
NARRATOR: While many in the mainstream scientific community
paid little attention to Van Tassel's project,
some believe he was a visionary on the level of Nikola Tesla,
who also claimed to be in contact with alien entities.
MASTERS: George Van Tassel was
very clearly influenced by Nikola Tesla,
a Serbian‐American researcher
known throughout the world as a genius.
Contributed so much to science and electricity and innovation.
VALONE: Nikola Tesla published
an article in 1898,
and Tesla states in his article,
when you're exposed to high voltage for a short period,
say 15 minutes or less,
you get beneficial effects.
Tesla was an inspiration for rejuvenation,
and this is what George Van Tassel was very attuned to.
And, in fact,
Tesla announced that he had been receiving radio waves
from extraterrestrials,
specifically messages from Martians.
So this is very similar to George's experiences.
And both of them were interested
in the effect of high voltage on humans.
NARRATOR: Both men were derided by the scientific community
for their claims of alien contact.
But today, it is well known that electromagnetic waves
have a number of beneficial effects on the human body,
including nerve regeneration, wound healing, pain management,
and even treating diabetes.
And like Nikola Tesla,
George Van Tassel did attract the attention
of at least one government organization
during his lifetime... the FBI.
The FBI's involvement with George Van Tassel,
which was considerable, started in the 1950s.
The Feds were interested in the technology
that George was working with and uncovering at the Integratron.
NARRATOR: Declassified FBI documents confirm
the Bureau did, in fact,
conduct surveillance on many of Van Tassel's speeches
and presentations for years.
ERIC RANKIN: He was definitely monitored by the FBI.
They were aware of what he was doing out in the desert.
If you go back into the early '50s to the early '60s, that was
the high point around the world
of people seeing extraterrestrial craft.
NARRATOR: During this time of increased UFO activity
in the late 1950s and early '60s,
Van Tassel finally had the resources necessary
to begin constructing the Integratron.
It is the circular plan,
two‐story, hemispherical, umbrella dome structure,
43 feet in diameter and 33 feet tall...
designed to facilitate cell rejuvenation
by means of the manipulation of electromagnetic waves.
INTERVIEWER: Let's talk about this picture.
This is a picture of the, uh,
machine we're building down there.
This structure's actually up.
We're working now on the parts
on the equipment that operate it.
This rim around here has armatures 57 feet in diameter,
which would be better than four times bigger
than the biggest armatures ever made before.
LAYNE: The incredible thing about the construction
is there are no nails.
Every piece is fit together.
All the wood,
it's formed, it's shaped.
A little glue,
and then there's the fiberglass shell.
NARRATOR: Construction of the building
was completed in 1960,
but Van Tassel would manufacture
the technology to power it himself.
Over the next two decades, he worked on the apparatus
to achieve his goal of cell rejuvenation
through the controlled manipulation
of electromagnetic waves.
HODGETTS: Because it's all built of wood,
it's unable to conduct electricity back to the Earth,
and so there's simply this kind of swarm
of electromagnetic energy
within the vessel
that essentially can't get out.
And so in theory, your cells,
which are also electrical impulses within them,
may be rejuvenated and recharged
so that their electrical component
is not fading away as you get older.
NARRATOR: While the Integratron was never finished,
one man who worked closely with George Van Tassel
has managed to build a working model
that represents the device at 95% completion.
Is it possible
that the key to activating the immortality machine
is still within reach?
NARRATOR: Continuing his investigation
of the Integratron, David Childress has arranged
to meet with Bob Benson...
‐Hey. I'm David Childress. ‐How you doing?
NARRATOR: ...a protégé of Van Tassel's,
and one of the only men alive
known to have worked directly with him.
‐You knew George Van Tassel. ‐Sure did, yeah. And I got
some things I'd like to show you.
Oh, good. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
Yeah. All right.
NARRATOR: In Van Tassel's final years,
Bob Benson helped him to publish various writings
on the scientific principles behind the Integratron.
BENSON: So I was living here, at his house.
‐CHILDRESS: At his house? ‐At his house.
‐Which was at the Integratron. ‐Right.
And what was he like then?
Very down‐to‐earth, but he was very intelligent.
He was wonderful.
NARRATOR: While Van Tassel
never disclosed the full details
for building his rejuvenation machine,
Benson attempted to create a model of it
based on what he learned.
BENSON: He didn't leave takeover instructions
for anybody, so nobody knew what to do, so...
I looked for the research, and I couldn't find anything.
So I had to go on my own.
And what I did, I said, well, I'll start by building a model.
I incorporated the things that I knew.
This spoke thing you see here,
that's an actual electrostatic generator.
It's 58 feet in diameter,
it weighs 1,500 pounds, and it's lifted up
with air jets that are around the bottom.
‐Uh‐huh. ‐And there's brushes on them,
and what they do is they generate electricity.
NARRATOR: The electricity generated by the brushes
travels through a wire
that connects to a capacitor.
The capacitor is designed to discharge when it reaches
a certain level of electricity.
It starts off very low, like this.
As it goes, it builds up to a part.
It builds up, builds up, builds up, builds up, build up.
Builds up... Bang! And then this comes on.
This is the spark gap. This is the regulator.
See? Boom. Now it's regulated.
You walk through this little door right here,
you walk around the back of it and out the other end there.
And you're rejuvenated instantly.
It's a rejuvenation machine,
sent by extraterrestrials to help human beings.
CHILDRESS: So how close
do you think that George Van Tassel was
to completing the Integratron?
Well, he says it was 95% done.
NARRATOR: Doctor of Engineering Physics Tom VALONE
is an expert in what is called "bioelectromagnetic healing"
and has spent years studying both Nikola Tesla
and George Van Tassel.
Based on his research,
he believes the Integratron was decades ahead of its time.
I would say that the genius of George Van Tassel
is very evident in the design of the Integratron.
He integrated a number of technologies
that were slowly being evolved over the 20th century.
The spark in the middle is an actual Tesla coil,
and this is designed by Nikola Tesla
to not only provide for the study of high voltage,
but also biological benefits of being exposed
to just Tesla coil frequencies.
The design we have here is the, um,
best current knowledge that we have
of finishing the Integratron design.
NARRATOR: Considering what scientists now know
about how electromagnetic frequencies and ions
can benefit the human body,
is it possible that George Van Tassel
really was just weeks away
from completing a working immortality machine?
While Van Tassel was ahead of his time,
he claimed to be tapping into knowledge
from the ancient past.
VALONE: He constantly referred to the Old Testament
in regards to the references for angels
and for God
and the construction of the Integratron.
But he was convinced from his extraterrestrial experiences
that angels were space people.
CHILDRESS: And Van Tassel said that the instructions
that he was given to build the Integratron
were very similar to the instructions
that Moses was given by the God Yahweh
to build a tabernacle.
So Van Tassel believed
in ancient extraterrestrials and UFOs,
and he saw all of these things as connected.
NARRATOR: Van Tassel was particularly intrigued
by the Great Pyramid of Giza,
which he believed was built to utilize
the piezoelectric properties
of the quartz contained within its granite blocks.
In the piezoelectric effect,
electrical energy accumulates
in rocks and otherwise lifeless matter.
VALONE: We see even in George's writings
that the pyramids were, to him,
a powerhouse made of granite, and therefore piezoelectric
and very high energy accumulators.
George was convinced that the pyramid structure
was designed to rejuvenate people.
Van Tassel had computed that the site of the Integratron
was also in line with the Great Pyramids
and that this area was a rare vortex
where energies from beneath and above the Earth
made it possible for us to be in contact
with intelligences
that we usually weren't able to easily reach.
NARRATOR: Could the Great Pyramid
have once acted as a fountain of youth
that enabled people to live for centuries,
as is described in both the Hebrew Bible
and the Sumerian Kings List?
If extraterrestrials really did give George Van Tassel
instructions for building the Integratron,
is it possible that they were providing humankind
with a technology that existed on Earth
thousands of years ago?
Perhaps further clues can be found by examining
newly discovered aspects of the Integratron
that may reveal it had a second
and perhaps even more profound purpose.
NARRATOR: In the year 2000,
many of George Van Tassel's followers were dismayed
when the new owners of the Integratron
decided to use the structure
to house sound baths.
But others believe it brings to light
a key element of Van Tassel's intention.
The Integratron was made in a way
that is very ideally suited
for capturing energy and especially sound energy.
It has tremendous acoustic properties,
and the way the sound moves about
and reflects off of the domed structure
is really unique to this building
and comes back to the way it was constructed
and the way it was made
and the materials that went into producing it.
HENRY: The dome of the Integratron
enhances the acoustic experience within.
This is very much like ancient temple sites
like Newgrange that are somewhat domed
and also focus on the acoustical experience.
RANKIN: It's a real mystery that it has
all these beautiful sound qualities
and properties to it.
But it's interesting to consider that all along,
maybe the Integratron's design
really was as a sound frequency machine
more than an electrostatic generator of some sort.
It seems odd that there would be
so many amazing acoustical properties to it
if they weren't supposed to be there.
Maybe it could've been both, both sound
and using electromagnetism in its design.
NARRATOR: Although Van Tassel's direct work at the Integratron
ended more than 40 years ago,
its unusual architecture
continues to produce scientific revelations.
But if the structure's acoustic and geometric properties
serve a technological purpose, what could it be?
RANKIN: The Integratron is a beautiful geometric building
divided into 16 parabolic arcs in the dome up top,
and then it's an octagon on the bottom.
So it seems to be functions of eights, fours, 16s.
All geometrics have a sum total of their angles.
Well, it also means
that we are living in a harmonic system.
HENRY: The sacred geometry
of the Integratron is very unique.
It is a 16‐sided building.
We don't see those very often.
We did see one in a painting by Raphael,
The Marriage of the Virgin, where he shows a 16‐sided tower
that is thought to be Solomon's Temple.
This is very important because Solomon's Temple
was the permanent home of the Ark of the Covenant,
and maybe this is what Van Tassel was hinting at
with the construction of the Integratron.
The Ark of the Covenant is a device
that opened up a blazing portal
through which Moses or an Israelite high priest
could communicate with an otherworldly being.
NARRATOR: The Ark of the Covenant?
The sacred object that was described in the Bible
as a device with which to communicate with God?
Is it possible that George Van Tassel,
who sometimes referred to the Integratron
as the Tabernacle,
was building a machine
that would not only rejuvenate the human body
but would use acoustic frequencies
to connect with otherworldly beings?
RANKIN: It is allowing us
through our mental state,
without ever having to make actual contact
with an extraterrestrial,
that there is some latent design built into us,
possibly intentionally,
that we have a little transceiver
that when we get everything right
and we start playing these tones
according to these exact codes and keys left behind for us,
that we might open this portal of communication.
Perhaps this is ultimately what Van Tassel envisioned
the Integratron doing,
was being able to open up a portal or a gateway
so that he could communicate with extraterrestrials
coming and going from the Earth.
NARRATOR: If the incredible story
of George Van Tassel is true
and he was carrying out an alien agenda,
could the Integratron be more functional than we know?
Could it be used to reconnect
with the very beings
he claimed to be in contact with
and thereby recover the key to completing it?
NARRATOR: More than four decades after his death,
George Van Tassel's Integratron
still stands in the Mojave Desert.
While the device was never finished,
many still see it as commemorating
a genuine extraterrestrial encounter.
When you come to the Mojave Desert,
there are a couple of places you have to go.
You have to go to Joshua Tree National Park.
Then you have to go to the Integratron.
And people come from around the world to see it.
The Integratron is the center,
historically, of UFO culture.
There's talk of trying to reengineer the Integratron
at some point in the future
to have the spinning armature outside
and generate this electronic field.
Many scientists and physicists and experimenters
have been going out there for a couple of decades now,
and there definitely is something subtly going on
energetically at the Integratron.
It is still a frequency machine.
NARRATOR: If extraterrestrials
really did give Van Tassel instructions
for how to build the Integratron,
might the same alien beings one day choose
another human conduit to finish the project?
Could it be that humanity
simply was not ready to possess such powerful technology?
If so, it would not be the first time.
Throughout history, we have individuals
who claim to have been mysteriously given information
that would lead to the advancement of humankind.
In the 1400s,
Leonardo da Vinci said that ideas
came to him during meditation.
He sketched things like helicopters and tanks.
All sorts of devices
that couldn't be realized in his lifetime.
In the early 20th century,
the Indian mathematician Ramanujan
credited a Hindu god with giving him theorems
that mystified everyone at the time
but which now form the basis of string theory.
And then we have Nikola Tesla,
who claimed that he was communicating with aliens
and that he had the key
to wireless energy.
But he died before he could give this technology to humankind.
So it may be that in each of these cases,
we were given information we weren't quite ready for
but that would be realized at some future time.
HODGETTS: I feel very confident
in the fact that this is
the work of pure inventive genius.
And if it's not aligned
with, uh, contemporary values,
that doesn't invalidate its genius.
But there's no question that something,
some catalytic event, shifted his focus
from being a...
you know, a‐a businessman, an engineer,
to having this vision
for something almost extraterrestrial.
Because of George Van Tassel's mysterious death in 1978,
the Integratron was never completely finished.
But it's fascinating to think
that George Van Tassel did meet with extraterrestrials
and they showed him the future.
POPE: Some people have speculated
that the extraterrestrial agenda
is all about a continuous process of evolution
to improve us.
To make us more intelligent.
To civilize us, perhaps.
To bring us to a level
where perhaps, one day, we'll be fit to take
a‐a wider role on the galactic stage.
This phenomena that's taking place today
is as old as our history, as our civilization.
This isn't anything new that's occurring.
They're walking among us on the Earth all the time,
and we don't realize it.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the Integratron
provides a glimpse into humanity's future?
Was George Van Tassel chosen
to plant the seed that will give rise to the next giant step
in humankind's evolution,
one that will lead to lifetimes that are measured not in years
but centuries?
Perhaps the Integratron is more functional than it appears,
and only when we are able to activate it
will we be empowered to fulfill
our alien destiny.