Phantoms and Monsters

Alien towns. Lost 19th-century cannons. Lake monsters. Frozen bodies swimming at the bottom of Lake Tahoe. Nevada is a vortex for the unexplained.

And it appears at this writing that we have another whopper of a puzzle to add to the list.

The case of missing aviator Steve Fossett who disappeared from the Flying M Ranch near Yerington Sept. 3 has techno-sleuths, psychics and concerned folks around the world focused on our region.

The attention is natural, and for the same reason we see grown men in suits scribbling out sudoku puzzles in airports -- our race is obsessed with solving problems.

We want to know what happened to this most incredible man who has broken world records and triumphed over fear time and again only to be taken down during a simple day trip.

Fossett’s tale inflates exponentially as the weeks pass without any signs of the famed pilot or his blue and white plane, building upon his already legendary life.

“We like to think that anything is findable with enough resources. But it could turn into another Amelia Earhart situation,” Ric Gillespie told the Associated Press this week.

Government aircraft have searched more than 20,000 square miles around Northern Nevada, followed every lead by air and foot and have found nothing. Family and friends of the famous adventurer have also used state-of-the-art technology and aircraft to scour the land and have come up empty-handed.

And for the first time, Internet users have joined the effort. Tips and satellite coordinates have poured in from all corners of the globe by well-intended people who want answers.

One reader sent me an unusual e-mail message this week. The reader’s psychic friend had a vision of Fossett landing in Walker Lake (her best guess for the water she envisioned). The reader wrote: “She said his plane had a cracked block and he was trying to get back to the ranch when he crashed.”

Like Earhart, Fossett has fans the world over. Many wonder how much the search has cost our government agencies as the constant drone continued overhead for two solid weeks until the Civil Air Patrol ceased air operations on Monday.

Final numbers aren’t in, but it surely pales in comparison to Earhart’s search.

In 1937, when Earhart disappeared, the U.S. government spent $4 million looking for her, making the search the most costly and intensive air and sea operation of its kind in history.

Coincidently, Fossett’s plane could have landed close to the area of another mystery Nevadans have been trying to solve for more than a century -- Union General John C. Fremont’s lost cannon.

Snow was deep over the Carson Pass in January 1844 as Fremont’s group, which included Kit Carson, tried to cross. The 1835-model mountain howitzer they carried proved too cumbersome and they left it behind somewhere near the state line and Bridgeport, Calif.

“They were in the vicinity west of the Walker River,” said Nevada state archivist Guy Rocha. “They just walked away from it.”

The group headed to California and never returned to find it. Along the way, Fremont is believed to be the first white man to view Lake Tahoe. Treasure hunters have looked for the prized cannon without success, using Fremont’s journals as a guide.

“Like buried treasure, people will look for that cannon ‘til kingdom come,” Rocha said.

Other enigma that may never be solved includes Tahoe Tessie, the lake-faring monster that believers say lurks in the icy waters of Lake Tahoe (no matter how much science is thrown at them to disprove this notion).

Another stumper is the business about frozen bodies at the bottom of that same lake in the Sierra. Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau was supposedly frightened right out of his wetsuit during a dive in a sub in the mid-1970s. “The world isn’t ready for what was down there,” he was quoted as saying.

Cousteau did not release photographs from the deep-water trip, adding to the mystery. Many divers have since requested to duplicate the dive.

And, of course, the mother of all mysteries: Area 51. Scientist Bob Lazar who first spilled the beans about working with alien spacecraft at the site in 1989 is now living in New Mexico with his wife, Joy, their dogs and a rescue horse, and reportedly no longer talks about the little green fellows.

I hope by the time this is published, Fossett has been found and this mystery can be put to rest. If not, Nevada will keep his memory alive in its treasure trove of unsolved mysteries.

Fossett Mystery Nevada Mythology
Fossett Mystery Nevada Mythology