WILLIAM SHATNER: Hidden churches...
cut from the depths of the earth.
Staircases that defy the laws of physics.
And mansions where visitors become lost
in an endless maze.
Mysterious structures fascinate us because
they're like puzzles...
waiting to be solved.
What appears on the surface to be...
a church...
or a mansion...
...can actually be more than that.
Could a pyramid have been a power plant, for example?
[chuckling]: Well...
that is what we'll try and find out.
♪
[wind whistling]
SHATNER: High in the mountains of Northern Ethiopia,
a mile and a half above sea level,
lies the city of Lalibela.
Each year, tens of thousands of worshippers
make the arduous journey here,
despite its remote location,
to visit 11 of the strangest holy places on Earth.
Lalibela is one of Africa's most mysterious sites.
It's a complex of 11 monolithic churches
that are hewn right out of the bedrock.
Most churches are built on the surface
and they're built from the bottom up.
Whereas, in Lalibela, they're built from the top down.
It's the only place on the Earth that has cathedrals
that are built underground as opposed to being
built on the surface.
ANDREW COLLINS: What makes the Lalibela churches
so unique...
is not just their building construction,
which is unlike anything else in the world.
But also the otherworldly feel of the complexes
where these different monuments can be found.
Entering into the complex of churches
was almost like entering another realm.
Almost as if those who constructed Lalibela
had a ritual function.
And that was to bring themselves closer to God.
STEVE BURROWS: It's an incredible piece of engineering--
this idea that you build 11 churches below ground.
But it creates its own unique problems.
How do people get down there?
Uh, how did they move all of the rock out and where did it go?
Uh, those are the things that start running through my mind.
SHATNER: Dating back to the 12th century AD,
each of Lalibela's 11 churches was painstakingly
carved by hand--
and from the outside--
like enormous sculptures.
The complex also includes an extensive system of tunnels,
catacombs all carved out of solid bedrock.
But why?
Why build a magnificent series of structures
in the toughest way possible?
COLLINS: The builder of Lalibela
was a king by this very name, Lalibela.
And it is said that in the 12th century,
he was living in Jerusalem
and decided to come back into Ethiopia
and create these monolithic churches.
And it's very clear
that Lalibela, uh, in the design
of these different churches,
was trying to replicate Jerusalem.
Indeed, he was trying to create a new Jerusalem.
So by entering into this complex,
it's almost like you were entering into Jerusalem itself,
which was considered to be the most holy shrine in the world.
MICHAEL GERVERS: It is described that
Lalibela had a dream
and in the dream, he was instructed by God
to go back and make a copy of Jerusalem...
at the site.
And in order to fulfill God's request,
King Lalibela and others who were involved
worked night and day for 20 years.
So in their minds, right at the beginning,
they had a three-dimensional structure in mind.
'Cause when they started, it was just a big piece of rock.
And how did they know that if they were going
to go 150 feet down into the ground,
that everything was okay?
Because the worst possible thing would be
that you'd almost finished and then you found
that there was a massive problem at the bottom.
SHATNER: 11 underground churches.
Some over 100 feet deep.
Each carved from a single block of stone
in only 20 years' time.
Archeologists date the churches back nearly a thousand years.
But even with today's modern technology,
such an incredible architectural feat
would be considered impossible.
So how was it accomplished?
TRAVIS TAYLOR: If we go and build
a big structure today, a skyscraper,
we have blueprints, we have engineering
design pathways and we have a construction plan.
It tells us how we would do every step
of the way; where every screw, nut, bolt,
weld, poured concrete goes.
None of that exists for these large, ancient structures.
So we really got to think outside the box
and try to find how they were done,
why they were done
and who built them.
WHITEHEAD: A very curious thing
at Lalibela is that there are some very unique carvings there.
There's very interesting symbols
that are carved into these churches.
Do they mean something if you put them together?
COLLINS: In the church of St. Mary at Lalibela,
there is the Star of David.
And this, along with a number of other mementos
and designs are extremely indicative
of the presence of the Knights Templar.
This has suggested to many
that they may well have been present
during the construction
of the churches at Lalibela.
TOK THOMPSON: Now the Knights Templar were a very interesting
religious order that became
very powerful during the Middle Ages.
But what people don't often realize is
they were very interested in building,
in, uh, geometry, in, uh, numerology.
Uh, and so they were at once very practical
and pragmatic and then also very spiritual and mystic.
WHITEHEAD: The Knights Templar had
a great amount of knowledge in masonry
and architecture and building structures.
Now, it's debated as to whether or not
the Knights Templar would have been in Ethiopia at this time.
But there's some interesting evidence
that an Armenian geographer at the time
documented seeing men with red and white regalia,
blond or reddish hair, long hair,
which could indicate that he's talking about Templars.
So, it could be that the Templars themselves
were the ones that built Lalibela,
or that they helped King Lalibela build the site.
SHATNER: Could Templar stonemasons have
influenced the construction of the churches at Lalibela?
And if so, for what purpose?
COLLINS: If you look around Lalibela,
there are altars there
that have spaces in them that would
precisely fit the Ark of the Covenant,
which was approximately four feet in length,
two feet wide and around two feet in height.
It has been suggested that the rock-cut churches
at Lalibela were built to house the Ark of the Covenant.
SHATNER: The lost Ark of the Covenant,
the gold box which contained the original Ten Commandments--
could it have been hidden at Lalibela centuries ago?
During the Crusades, we know that the Templars
occupied the Temple of Solomon.
And so, it could be that they were
the keepers of the Ark of the Covenant.
And the more you look at Lalibela, and given the fact
that we see that it's built underground,
you start to think, here we have these churches
that are hewn out of these megalithic rocks.
They're built like defensive structures.
They have all kinds of interesting symbolism there
that indicate Templars.
And you start getting the impression that this is actually
some kind of defensive fortress
to protect... something.
SHATNER: Was Lalibela originally built
to house and hide the Ark of the Covenant?
And if so, why only 11 churches?
Jesus had 12 apostles.
So wouldn't it seem likely that there were
12 churches built, one for each of them?
There are many who believe
the answer to that question is yes,
and that the Ark is still hidden in an undiscovered church.
Incredible, you say?
Perhaps not as incredible as a stairway in New Mexico
whose builder wasn't only divinely inspired
but may have actually been sent...
directly from heaven.
SHATNER: February 11, 2019.
Investigative journalist and radio host
David Whitehead travels to the Loretto Chapel
in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
WHITEHEAD: I'm here to investigate a really mysterious structure,
the famous Loretto staircase.
We don't know who built it, we don't understand
the physics behind it and we don't even have
a good indication as to what it's made of.
[door creaks open]
Oh, wow.
This place is beautiful.
SHATNER: Meeting with David is chapel curator Richard Lindsley.
-WHITEHEAD: So this is it. -LINDSLEY: Absolutely.
Our miraculous staircase.
I've heard so much about it.
I've read so many theories about it,
and it's amazing to actually be here to see it.
SHATNER: In 1873, the Sisters of Loretto
commissioned the construction of the chapel
for their new girls school.
Officially consecrated five years later,
the Loretto Chapel is a triumph of Gothic Revival design,
with its high spires, soaring buttresses
and enormous stained glass windows.
But as construction was nearing completion,
the project's architect suddenly died,
before he could build what was considered
the most ambitious part of the job:
the staircase leading up to the choir loft.
The mystery of the staircase actually begins
with this mysterious carpenter.
The sisters asked the local carpenters to build one,
but they failed; they didn't know how to do it.
The sisters, they decided to turn to prayer,
and said a nine-day novena, asking St. Joseph,
the patron of carpenters,
to help them with their problem.
At the last day of their prayer,
it's said that a knock came at these doors.
This elderly man was standing there with a donkey
by his side,
and he told the sister that he had come
to build their staircase.
Was it St. Joseph, like the sisters believed?
Some pious people think it was an angel.
But he was very reclusive, and insisted upon
working inside this chapel by himself,
never allowing anyone to see him work on the staircase.
Throughout the, uh, Christian and Catholic world,
we have a tremendous amount of these stories
of miraculous help from saints.
And this is a part of the Catholic belief system.
You can pray to saints, and they're supposed to,
uh, try to help.
So it's a built-in part of the package,
this idea of an intercessory,
closer to people, and yet closer to God.
After three months, the sisters came into the chapel,
and the man was gone.
And when they could not find him to even pay him for his labor,
they went to the only lumber yard in town
and asked them how much they owed for the materials.
And the lumber yard told the sisters that the man
never got any materials from them at all.
So, what material is this staircase made of?
I gave a core sample of the wood
from the inner stringer to a U.S. Naval scientist,
and he determined right away
that it was a form of Picea spruce.
WHITEHEAD: Is this form of spruce local to Santa Fe?
LINDSLEY: The wood in the staircase did not match up
with any other Picea spruce known to science.
This wood does not match up
with any other quite like it on Earth.
The staircase at Loretto Chapel is-is amazing.
It's a double spiral system.
There's no glue, there's no nails, there's no screws.
It's put together in a way that how it's just
sitting on itself is holding it together.
WHITEHEAD: So, Richard, an interesting thing about this design
-is the double helix. -Mm-hmm.
The double helix-- or the double spiral--
is that it's an incredibly unique design.
LINDSLEY: Well, we had a world-renowned physicist come visit us,
and he was convinced that the double helix design
was integral to its inner strength.
-Mind if I go up? -Please.
Be my guest.
This is a very special privilege.
WHITEHEAD: I definitely feel very privileged.
I've waited for this moment for so long.
Oh, wow, yeah.
It's a unique feeling, just right on that first step.
I almost feel, like, a vibration.
[stairs creaking softly]
Feeling like... I'm floating.
Like there's nothing underneath my feet.
It's truly a remarkable feeling.
Now, how many stairs have we got here?
LINDSLEY: There are 33 steps to the staircase,
which reminded the sisters of our Lord,
because he lived 33 years.
WHITEHEAD: Well, I find it very interesting
that, here we are in this chapel in Santa Fe,
and we're seeing the motif of a sacred number: 33.
And this number is important to the Templars.
SHATNER: 33 steps?
One of the most sacred numbers to the fraternal order
of builders known as Freemasons,
who, in turn, are thought to be the spiritual descendants
of the Knights Templar.
Could this number of steps really provide an important clue
as to who built the stairway, and how?
So the number 33 is a sacred number in Templarism.
So, they would have encoded that number,
whether it be in staircases,
or artwork in the stained glass windows,
or even the mathematical dimensions
of some of these structures.
To the Templars, they don't just see a staircase
or a stained glass window or a layout of a church design.
They see an esoteric number,
the number of a master builder,
the manifestation of the divine on Earth,
and it's very deeply rooted in the entire Templar tradition.
BURROWS: I think the quality of construction and detailing
show that somebody who did it was highly skilled.
And they must have learned that.
So the person who built that staircase
apprenticed with somebody.
They learned some things.
They applied those things later in Santa Fe.
So there's no doubt they could have been working
with a mason, but they were way too skilled
to have been the first time they did something like that.
The construction of the staircase
defies all conventional construction practices--
any kind of rational, conventional explanation.
Where did the materials come from?
Who built it?
It seems like we just have more questions
than we do answers.
-Yes. -But we do know that
it's a mystery, and...
hopefully one day we'll be able to solve it.
SHATNER: Could the stairway of the Loretto Chapel
really be the product of a miracle...
or is it just the work of a gifted builder
who preferred to keep his identity and his methods
a well-guarded secret?
To millions of the faithful, the answer is clear.
Which is more than can be said for an architectural curiosity
located some 1,000 miles from Loretto Chapel.
One that many believe was not inspired by heaven...
...but by the fires of hell.
SHATNER: Strange.
Macabre.
Disturbing.
In San Jose, California, stands one of the largest
and most bizarre private residences
in the United States.
Known as the Winchester Mystery House,
this 24,000 square foot Victorian-style mansion
contains an astonishing 160 rooms,
17 chimneys,
47 fireplaces,
two basements,
three elevators,
and more than 10,000 panes of glass.
And those are just the ones we know about.
But why?
MAGNUSON: The Winchester Mystery House is a very special place
that was built with no master plan.
But there are a lot of architectural oddities
that remain a mystery as to why they're here.
BURROWS: Most buildings start with
some drawings, some blueprints,
some documents that say "this is what it's gonna look like"
when it was finished.
That building looks like they made it up as they went.
BOEHME: There are doors that open to
12-foot drops outside.
There's doors that, you step through them,
you'll land in a kitchen sink on the first floor.
It's almost like an Escher picture in some ways.
SHATNER: The mastermind behind this architectural jigsaw puzzle
was Sarah Winchester,
the widow of the man who manufactured
the Winchester repeating rifle.
[gunshot]
It was famously known as
"the gun that won the West"
because it could kill more people faster
than any gun previously invented.
BOEHME: The Winchester rifle was special because it could fire
up to 15 rounds without being reloaded,
which was very different from most of the smooth bores used
in the Civil War, say, which were--
y-you loaded it, you fired one shot and that was it.
So you can imagine the advantage that you would have
being able to shoot round after round after round
without reloading.
SHATNER: When Sarah's husband died in 1881,
she became the heir to his massive fortune.
Three years later, she began construction on a mansion
that would take 38 years to complete.
She just added things on as she had a great idea.
So everybody had to listen and say, "Oh, okay.
You want a large ballroom up there?"
And then they'd figure it out as they went.
WHITEHEAD: Even to this day, they're still finding
new rooms and new features to this house.
Was Sarah just working off of her whims?
Was she just an eccentric crazy lady?
Or is there some other unknown explanation
that we have yet to understand?
SHATNER: It is suspected that one reason
Sarah kept building and building
around the clock for 38 years
is that she was trying to protect herself
from all the dead souls the Winchester rifles had killed.
Perhaps, it was thought,
if the house was built as a giant maze,
the ghosts would never be able to find her.
MAGNUSON: The story is that Sarah Winchester
went through a long period of grief.
She, unfortunately, lost a child, uh, only weeks old,
and she lost her husband to tuberculosis.
And she started wondering,
"Why are all these terrible things happening to me?"
And, uh, what was common at the time
was to seek out a medium or spiritualist for guidance.
And that person said that the karma of this,
the gun that won the West, and all of these terrible things
associated with this firearm, is kind of haunting you.
[gunshot]
BOEHME: This spiritualist medium told her
that in order to pacify these spirits,
who were very offended
at having been killed by Winchester rifles,
she needed to build a house.
And she should never stop building, and the idea also
was that the constant sound of the saws and hammers
would drive the bad spirits away.
MAGNUSON: Some of the design features were specifically built
to confuse evil or malicious spirits.
So if the stairs led to the ceiling,
or if a door led to the outside,
possibly they would be confused and-and leave the property.
SHATNER: Did Sarah Winchester spend nearly 40 years
and the equivalent of more than $60 million
constructing a bizarre labyrinth of stairs,
halls and doors
in order to keep the vengeful dead at bay?
Perhaps.
But some have suggested that she built the house
not to guard against the dead,
but to fool the living.
There's an even deeper mystery in the house,
and that is the numerology.
BURROWS: In the Winchester Mystery House,
there is a number that appears everywhere--
in, you know, light fittings, in mirrors,
in all sorts of things. And it's the number 13.
WHITEHEAD: We have the number 13 encoded all over the place,
in the walls, in the flooring, in the stairways.
We've got 13 bedrooms. We've got 13 bathrooms.
There are 13 wall panels in some of the rooms;
and on and on we could go.
So there may have been another motive here
for why Sarah built this house this way.
BOEHME: A lot of people have put forth theories
that there was some sort of complex puzzle
going on here, that she was leaving clues.
MAGNUSON: It's possible that the number 13 could be a puzzle
that could possibly unlock some secret as to
why it was so prominently featured
as a design element in the house.
WHITEHEAD: An interesting symbol that you see
all throughout the house is the symbol of the sun.
In astrology and astrotheology,
you have the idea of the zodiac,
which is, you have the 12 houses of the zodiac,
and the number 13 is the sun.
At the front gates of the house, and on each gate,
you have a symbol of the sun.
And the rays of the sun add up to 16 on each sun.
So when you put the 16 and the 16 together,
you have the date that William Shakespeare died.
BOEHME: Two most cryptic windows, stained glass windows
in the house are Sarah's ballroom windows.
They're the only ones that have any text in them,
and they're two quotes from different Shakespearean plays.
And they read, "Wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts."
And then the other one says, "These same thoughts
people this little world."
We don't know exactly what that meant to Sarah.
She took that secret with her to her grave.
MAGNUSON: Sarah Winchester passed away September 1922.
As you can imagine, there was great excitement
to see this incredible home that everyone in the town
had seen being built up over so many years.
All the furnishings were sold anonymously at auction,
but what was left was one large safe
in the grand ballroom.
WHITEHEAD: Sarah put a safe in the grand ballroom,
which is an odd place to put a safe.
And the safe itself is very odd.
It's basically, you open up the safe,
and then you find another safe,
and you have to open up another safe,
and it's a safe within a safe within a safe.
BOEHME: People were kind of just mystified,
like, "What's in the safe?" And they were hoping
for maybe treasure, gold bars or jewelry.
MAGNUSON: After they finally got inside, they found
just two things. No gold, no silver, no diamonds.
A lock of hair from her baby Annie,
who passed away at just a few weeks old,
and the obituary of her husband,
who passed away to tuberculosis very young.
SHATNER: A lock of hair and an obituary?
Are we really to believe that Sarah Winchester
had nothing of value
safely hidden somewhere in the house?
What if it was built as a giant puzzle,
one that protects a vast treasure
that still lies hidden behind one of the house's
hundreds of walls? Something to ponder
while we investigate yet another architectural mystery--
one whose building method has baffled everyone,
who has not only wondered why, but how.
SHATNER: Homestead, Florida.
In this small town, tucked away between Miami
and Everglades National Park,
stands an elaborate stone edifice.
The locals call it "Coral Castle."
Sculpted from massive blocks of coral,
this incredible structure features a five-ton,
heart-shaped table,
a 28-ton obelisk,
and a perfectly balanced nine-ton door
that opens with the touch of a finger.
And even more incredible than this marvel
of design and engineering,
is the fact that it was built by just one man.
And nobody knows how he did it.
R.L. POOLE: Ed Leedskalnin was an immigrant from Latvia
who immigrated to the United States,
and he built the only modern megalithic structure ever known.
The Coral Castle is 1,100 tons of coral bedrock
that he dug out of the property on which it rests.
He was only about five feet tall, but he managed to move
hundreds of tons of coral rock
into this megalithic modern temple.
He had no technology there that could have lifted
these stones or cut the stones.
And yet, it's there to this day.
WHITEHEAD: The story goes that Ed Leedskalnin
built this incredible megalithic site
using only a few pulleys, a tripod; uh, he did it
all by himself, and he worked at night,
and he was very secretive.
GEORGE NOORY: The blocks of stone used to build Coral Castle
are tons and tons,
yet this guy was able to construct this place by himself
without any heavy equipment.
Some kids, years later, watched Edward Leedskalnin
constructing and moving the blocks.
They kind of peaked over and watched him.
He spotted them and chased them away.
But they said he was working all by himself.
SHATNER: From 1923 until 1951,
Leedskalnin perfectly shaped, lifted, fitted,
and stacked over two million pounds of limestone.
For decades, hundreds of the world's top architects
and engineers have come to this place
to solve the mystery of its construction.
The tripods, for instance,
were three pieces of Florida pine,
about the same size as a telephone pole.
He used five-ton chains, he used a-a ten-ton chain hoist,
yet somehow was able to impossibly lift stones
that were wider than the tripod's diameter,
that were taller than the tripod stood,
that weighed more than the chains were rated for.
Well, he didn't lift a, a 20-ton stone
with a five-ton, uh, block and tackle,
but he definitely found a way to lever the stone up.
TAYLOR: There has to be some other technology
being used here, or this is one of the best magic tricks
ever pulled over on mankind.
So, what could it have been?
Did he learn some unique mechanical trick,
or did he learn some new physics?
POOLE: He was found often at the public library,
studying the Egyptians,
studying ancient megalithic structures.
Ed said he knew the secrets of the pyramids.
I believe this to be accurate.
He was able to replicate their accomplishments,
which enabled him to be able to create something
which, by any other standard, you cannot do.
SHATNER: Did Edward Leedskalnin actually crack
the engineering secrets of the Great Pyramids?
There are those who believe the answer is yes,
and that one of the secrets involves magnetism.
One of the most curious things that Ed designed
was called a perpetual motion holder.
You could find a drawing of it
on the cover of his booklet, Magnetic Current.
He created something that is made from
a 1½-inch-thick steel bar,
a mile of coil of copper wire with a bar on top,
and if you lock these coils together with current,
this current will run through this device forever
and never leave it.
MICHIO KAKU: Magnetism can in fact levitate very large objects,
but you have to have what is called
superconducting technology.
You have to cool down, cool down helium,
for example, to near, near absolute zero
before you get superconducting magnets.
TAYLOR: Ed claims in his notes that he used reverse energy,
or antigravity.
The question is, what did he mean by this?
The device that Ed used or allegedly used
to move these rocks were an old-school tripod
that had a large black box on top of it.
We don't know what was in that box
and Ed never says what was in that box.
We could speculate that it's some device
that he's created that enables him to lift
more weight than he should be able to lift
with this rudimentary tripod fulcrum and lever system.
But we have no idea what it was he did.
What makes the Coral Castle so unique and mysterious
is that no one has ever been able
to replicate his results using his methods.
What this means is that he knew something that we do not know.
SHATNER: Whatever secrets
Edward Leedskalnin used to build Coral Castle,
he took to his grave. But why?
Perhaps the answer can be found 6,500 miles away,
inside the ultimate engineering marvel of all time:
the Great Pyramid at Giza.
SHATNER: Just outside of Cairo, Egypt
stands what is arguably the most famous structure on Earth:
the Great Pyramid of Giza.
481 feet high.
756 feet long on each side.
2.3 million blocks of limestone
and granite weighing 6.5 million tons.
But incredibly, thousands of years after
its first stones were laid,
there's still three important questions
that have yet to be answered:
What was its purpose?
Who built it?
And how?
BURROWS: The Great Pyramid is completely bizarre.
Hundreds and hundreds of brilliant engineers
have made many various attempts with different technologies
to actually uncover its secrets.
And yet, so far, we've been unable to.
SHATNER: Mainstream archeologists have
long maintained that the Great Pyramid was built
some 4,500 years ago as a tomb for the pharaoh Khufu.
But that assertion has come under scrutiny in recent years,
owing largely to the fact that no mummy
was ever found in its chambers.
And there are no hieroglyphics to be found
on its massive granite walls.
COLLINS: This extraordinary monument
contains the most profound mathematics and geometry.
Now, why would this be incorporated
in such a structure if it was simply a tomb?
There's obviously more to this story than meets the eye.
NEWMAN: The Great Pyramid on the Giza Plateau
in Egypt is one of the most magnificent sites on the planet.
One of the seven wonders of the world
and I don't believe it's a tomb.
I think it's much more than that.
SHATNER: So could the Great Pyramid
have been built for another, arguably more useful, purpose?
One that would make more sense,
given the size and complexity of its construction?
In a paper published by the Journal of Applied Physics
in 2018, a team of scientists
did some research on the Great Pyramid
and found that electromagnetic energy
was present in some of the chambers when stimulated.
TAYLOR: This experiment used very long wavelength radio waves
and it actually caused these waves
to be focused into certain regions.
They realized that the pyramid's shape
might actually act as a lens or a focusing mechanism
for radio frequency energy.
MICHAEL DENNIN: One of the things that's interesting,
of course, when looking at the Great Pyramid
as a possible coupling to energy sources is to ask,
"Could it have been coupling somehow
to seismic or sound vibrations in the earth?"
I think the real question would be,
what type of energy were they trying to focus
or how would they leverage it?
NEWMAN: The Great Pyramid sits
very close to a fault line.
So almost like it absorbs seismic energy
and then gives it back out again.
So it could have been a generator of Earth energies
that then would spread out through the landscape.
SHATNER: Was the Great Pyramid
constructed to channel power from the Earth?
While the idea may sound fantastic,
it is one that was pursued by a man who is credited
as one of the inventors of modern electricity,
Nikola Tesla.
KAKU: Nikola Tesla is one of the great
geniuses of the last century.
He wanted to create wireless technology.
Not with radio, but through the planet Earth.
And that's why he built this gigantic tower
in Shoreham, Long Island.
Some people think that maybe he got inspiration
for his gigantic antenna from the pyramids of Giza.
There are a lot of parallels between what Nikola Tesla
was doing, uh, at Wardenclyffe
and the Great Pyramids.
The pyramids don't look today the way they did
thousands of years ago when they were first built.
But they had, on the top of the pyramid,
some conductive material that made it shiny on the top.
And that's very much like the Wardenclyffe Tower transmitters,
that you had a conductive surface on the top of the tower.
And it's really interesting that the height
of the pyramid to the base of the pyramid
is the height that Tesla wanted to build his Wardenclyffe Tower.
Well, due to monetary reasons,
he built a scale version of it and he didn't build it as,
as high as he wanted it to and as large as he wanted to.
Tesla wanted it built over a flowing aquifer
and he said this allowed him
to grip the earth in order to transmit
this power from one location to another.
I find it intriguing that the pyramids are very similar.
So it's very likely that if the pyramids were built
for some purpose of absorbing and capturing
and harnessing energy from the Earth,
that that's what Tesla was trying to reproduce.
[electricity crackling]
NOORY: Sometimes we have to look beyond
what might seem like logical and think illogically.
The question is, did Tesla get knowledge
from the pyramids or are the pyramids there
for other purposes?
SHATNER: Ancient Egyptian pyramids
with the ability to harness the raw power
of the Earth itself.
Preposterous?
Perhaps.
But there are other structures whose purpose is so baffling,
we have no idea why they were constructed.
SHATNER: Not all mysterious structures
are as vast as a mansion...
...or as ingeniously constructed as a pyramid.
Some are much smaller and appear at first glance
to be rather simple.
That is, until you look closely
and realize that sometimes,
the simplest structures can be among the most astounding.
In the Diquís Delta of Costa Rica,
there are over 300 stone spheres of various sizes
scattered across 25 acres of jungle.
Archeological evidence dates the earliest
to approximately 200 BC.
But why they were made and who made them
remains a mystery.
NEWMAN: All of the spheres in Costa Rica
are carved and shaped, um,
created from different types of rock.
Over 300 have been discovered.
These range from the size of a tennis ball
all the way up to nine feet in diameter.
They're very precise, they're very abstract.
They're bizarre in their own right.
The spheres in Costa Rica are, um, fabulous
and fabulously interesting.
They almost sort of demand a-a story.
There-there has to be a story behind it.
And so this of course has caused people
to wonder a great deal about where these come from.
Are they man-made or natural-made?
NEWMAN Some people believe that
the ancient spheres of Costa Rica
are from Atlantis or from other lost civilizations.
Different people say they are navigational tools.
Some people suggest they're even mapping the stars on the ground.
As the stars and the planets moved around,
you'd move the spheres around to match it.
One of the traditions, uh, that goes way, way back
with the Costa Rica stone spheres is the idea that
at the center of the spheres, there's a black stone.
Many of the stones got cracked open to find
that there was nothing in them, but some of them
actually did have a black stone in the center.
How they would know that, how they would know,
indeed, there was a black stone in the center
is another mystery in itself.
SHATNER: Just what are the Costa Rican spheres?
Even with all our knowledge of the past,
all our modern technology...
we still don't know why they were carved
so perfectly in stone.
Were the Costa Rican spheres intended as weapons?
Were the churches at Lalibela carved deep underground
because there were no other building materials available?
And what about the Winchester Mystery House?
Perhaps like the Great Pyramid, they were built in such a way
that their very construction would be considered a miracle.
Bait for mankind's insatiable curiosity.
Something deliberately wondrous and intended to be among...
[whispers]: The UnXplained.