a genuinely ancient origin. Indeed, one of Dr Walsh’s scientific colleagues had apparently pointed out to her that any traces of copper on the skull’s surface might not necessarily have been there right from the time the skull was made. Apparently some types of crystal polish, including those used today, contain copper compounds. So the traces of copper might be the result of someone polishing the skull only yesterday! Therefore, the copper traces and the fact that the skull was made by hand didn’t prove a thing.
Indeed, it seemed that Dr Walsh was gradually moving towards the view that perhaps none of the crystal skulls was genuinely ancient. Like most archaeologists, she seemed particularly concerned that, to her knowledge, none had been found on any official or properly recorded archaeological dig. There were no official records to prove the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull had been found at Lubaantun, while the British Museum crystal skull, bought from Tiffany’s, was said to have been brought from Mexico by a Spanish soldier of fortune, but again there were no records of where he had got it, or even anything to show that this was really anything more than a story. The Smithsonian’s own skull could have come from just about anywhere, and so for that matter could the Parisian skull.
Dr Walsh had now also come across some other skulls that were of equally mysterious, and therefore potentially dubious, origin and she put us in touch with their owners. These included two small skulls, less than 5” (12 cm) high, one clear, one cloudy, with fixed jaws, brought to her office by an antique dealer called Kirk Landauer from Maryland, near Washington. Judging by the photos he sent us, the clear one looked almost like a monkey’s head, the other one like no creature ever known. The cloudy skull had apparently been found in 1916 in the Yucatán area of southern Mexico; the clear skull was bought from an antique dealer in Mexico during the 1920s. But no exact details of either find were available.
Yet another small skull was brought to Dr Walsh’s office by the son of another antique dealer, who lived in Altadena, California. This man, Larry Hughes, told us he had bought it around seven years previously from a wealthy man who said it had originally been collected in the 1880s or ’90s, but he didn’t know where from and there were no documents accompanying it. Again this skull was only about 4” high (10 cm), cloudy and with a fixed jaw. It also looked a bit like a monkey’s head, but it had circles, like goggles, around its eyes. As Dr Walsh explained, this was a symbol traditionally associated with the Mesoamerican rain god, Tlaloc. The skull also had what looked like an ancient hieroglyph carved across the top. Dr Walsh said she had shown a photo of this skull to two Mexican archaeologists, who immediately identified it as being in the style of the ancient Mesoamerican town of Xochicalco. As she later confirmed in her research report:
‘Two Mexican archaeologists, to whom I showed the glyph, instantly recognized it as Xochicalco in style… A Xochicalco-style glyph, if authentic, would date this particular artifact to somewhere between 800 and 950 AD, predating by several centuries the work of [both] Aztec and Mixtec lapidaries [or stone carvers]’ 2
Another interesting thing about this little skull was that it also fitted the description of one we later heard about from a crystal skull researcher named Joshua Shapiro. He had seen such a skull in 1989. It apparently belonged to an old Mexican named José Iníquez, who claimed to have found it in 1942 during a field trip to some ancient Mayan ruins in the Yucatán with his school party. He also said that after this skull came into his possession every dream and desire he had ever had in his life had been fulfilled. But he had died in 1993 and the whereabouts of his skull thereafter remained unknown.
Suddenly tiny crystal skulls seemed to be turning up just about everywhere we looked, even in leading museums. Jane Walsh said she thought these little skulls were actually more likely to be ancient than the larger ones. But the ancient legend Ceri and I had heard specifically said that there were 13 life-size crystal skulls, so we were only interested in testing the larger ones.
Dr Walsh had, however, come across one other life-size crystal skull. It belonged, she said, to a woman named JoAnn Parks who lived in Houston, Texas. Like all the other skulls, it was of mysterious origin and surrounded by claims of miraculous powers. Whilst Jane Walsh herself did not believe any of these claims, she was keen to get hold of this skull for the scientific tests so, while she continued with her research paper, we set off for Texas.
It was a warm winter’s day when we arrived in Houston. The Parks lived in a typical suburban home with one of those street numbers running into the thousands which always surprises us British, whose street numbers never get nearly that far. JoAnn had told us that the day we planned to visit an ‘activation ceremony’ with the skull had been scheduled, which we would be welcome to join, and as we arrived we found the suburban Saturday afternoon calm disturbed by a steady drumbeat emanating from the Parks’ home.
JoAnn Parks came to the door to greet us with a big smile. Petite, with bouffant white-blonde hair and dressed in a bright green shiny trouser suit, she welcomed us into her home and invited us to join her and a group of about six other women, presumably friends and neighbours who had gathered for the occasion. Pictures of JoAnn’s family adorned the walls, along with a dramatic print of a jaguar stalking through the forest, alongside assorted pictures of JoAnn’s crystal skull.
The sofas in the Parks’ comfortable living-room had been pushed back, the curtains were drawn and the women were sitting silently on the floor in a circle, eyes closed, with one woman in the centre. She was in her mid-40s, wearing a colourful poncho and clutching two large crystals. She had large intense eyes and a peaceful expression on her face. As we later discovered, her name was ‘Star’ Johnsen-Moser. JoAnn sat down and joined in the drumming. The crystal skull was at the centre of the circle, facing Star, so at first I couldn’t see its features. I could see that it was bigger than the Mitchell-Hedges skull and that the crystal was both cloudy and clear, with a white patch on the top of the head.
We quietly joined the circle. The drumbeat was steady and hypnotic. After a few minutes Star started to breathe very strangely, with very short, gasping intakes of breath. Beginning slowly at first, she started to talk in a strange language I did not recognize, becoming quicker and more fluent as she went on. Her face contorted and she started to writhe around, gesticulating. In a sudden unexpected movement she thrust the two crystals upwards, stabbing at the air with them in all directions. She began chanting, joined by the other women, who vigorously repeated the sounds.
There was something slightly surreal about witnessing this extraordinary ceremony. What were Chris and I doing, watching this strange chanting and crystal waving being performed in front of a crystal skull? Had these people taken leave of their senses? Star was now waving the crystals around directly above the skull and the chanting was becoming louder and louder. Star then put her hands on the crystal skull, slumped forward and stopped.
I had not been sure what to make of Carole Wilson channelling, but this crystal-waving ‘activation ceremony’ seemed even stranger still. Trying to make sense of it as Star recovered her composure, I asked her about her relationship with the crystal skull. Star, who lived on a remote farm in Missouri, explained that she wasn’t even ‘interested in crystal’ until she met the crystal skull in 1987 and since then her life had ‘totally changed’:
As soon as JoAnn brought the skull out I could hardly understand my feelings, because I had never seen a crystal skull before… But as soon as she brought the skull out, something stirred in my heart. It was like meeting a long-lost friend and I just felt this overwhelming degree of love for this rock, for this skull. It was on a very basic emotional level… A little while later I spontaneously found myself speaking in this strange language and I thought, What the hell is going on? What would my friends think? What would my family think? But something told me the crystal skull would understand this language.
‘So I went to see it again and I began speaking in this language. And then I could see what looked like things beginning to happen and things beginning