Jon Solo Sebastian 05/18/2025:
The Devils Tower, also known as Bear Rock, or as a structure made of mashed potatoes by Richard Dreyfuss in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, resides proudly in Northeastern Wyoming. Devils Tower has a few theories as to how it came into existence like the story the Lakota Indians told having to do with two children trying to get a way from a giant bear. The ground rose into the shape of the tower with the children on top of it. The lines covering every side of Devils Tower are said to be scratch marks from the bear as it tried every angle to climb up to get the children. This is likely just a campfire story told to warn children about the consequences of wandering off too far.
Other tribes claimed it to have a lake and gold deposits inside/underneath the tower. Three warriors in the early 1900’s explored the area but couldn’t bring the gold with them. They decided, considering many tribes believed and still believe it to be sacred land, to not speak of their discovery so it could remain undisturbed by man. One of the warriors reportedly spoke of this on his death bed. Did anyone go hunting for the gold? Not sure.
What exactly is the Devils Tower?
With some great campfire folktales and a name like Devils Tower, you might expect there to be more to it than it just being an odd, yet beautiful looking monolith. There might be more to it, or some truths to the Native American tribes stories, but so far nothing has been proved; not even how exactly it was formed.
The main theory comes from www.nps.gov, where they state, “The simplest explanation is that Devils Tower is a stock—a small intrusive body formed by magma which cooled underground and was later exposed by erosion. In 1907, scientists Darton and O’Hara decided that Devils Tower must be an eroded remnant of a laccolith. A laccolith is a large, mushroom-shaped mass of igneous rock which intrudes between the layers of sedimentary rocks but does not reach the surface. This produces a rounded bulge in the sedimentary layers above the intrusion. Other ideas have suggested that the Devils Tower is a volcanic plug or that it is the neck of an extinct volcano. The limited evidence of volcanic activity (volcanic ash, lava fows, or volcanic debris) in the area creates doubt that the Tower was part of a volcanic system. It is possible that this material may simply have eroded away.”
The problem is that if erosion played a role in the formation, it washed away any hard evidence required to determine which theory is the correct one.
While the Devils Tower isn’t in my usual wheel house, it caught my attention when I recently rewatched Close Encounters of the Third Kind. With the characters being led to the Devils Tower and the UFO above it, it made me wonder if any theories included beings from outer space. It seems to be more of an act of nature, but that doesn’t mean UFO’s haven’t been spotted near Devils Tower.
In my research, I learned that a member of the Blue Book Project was an advisor for Steven Spielberg while he was filming the Close Encounters movie. If you’re unfamiliar with Project Blue Book—in short, it was a program that compiled reports on thousands of UFO sightings between 1952 and 1969. The program has been recently declassified. If you look at the Blue Book advisor, and the numerous sightings of strange lights and crafts near the summit of Devils Tower, and combine that with the folktales told by Native American tribes, there could very well be something extraterrestrial or paranormal going on there—and it could be something that’s been going on for hundreds if not, thousands of years.
*X-Files Theme Music*
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