The so-called Devil’s Tower is a monolithic igneous structure located in the Black Hills, in the northeast of the state of Wyoming, in the United States.
The rock formation rises dramatically 386 meters above the surrounding terrain, and its summit is 1,558 meters above sea level.
The enigmatic natural wonder is the first declared national monument in the United States, established on September 24, 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt.
The impressive landscape around Torre do Diabo is mainly made up of sedimentary rocks and the first documented ascent of Torre do Diabo was made in 1893 by William Rogers and Willard Ripley.
Devil’s Tower and the Pleiades
According to the legends of the Kiowa, Sioux and Lakota Native American tribes, in the distant past, some girls went out to play and were seen by giant bears who began to chase them.
In an effort to escape the bears, the girls climbed onto a rock, knelt down, and prayed to the Great Spirit to save them.
Hearing their prayers, the Great Spirit made the rock grow skyward so that the bears could not reach the girls.
The bears, in their attempt to scale the rock, which had become too steep, left deep claw marks on the sides, and when the girls reached the sky, they became the constellation Pleiades.
Some researchers of the Ancient Astronaut Theory support the hypothesis that many of these legends would have originated from events related to aliens and UFO sightings in the past.
However, there are other stories and legends about the mysterious rock formation.
A Sioux legend tells of two boys wandering from their village when another mighty clawed bear began to chase them. When the bear approached the children and was about to grab them, they prayed to Wakan Tanka, “the holy one” or “the divine one”, the Great Spirit, to save them from the bear.
They climbed onto a large rock as the bear desperately tried to climb onto the rock and grab the two children. However, the bear was unable to climb and left huge marks on the rock. The bear, named “Mato,” eventually gave up and rested at a place now known as Bear Butte.
Wanblee, an eagle, rescued the children and helped them out of the huge rock, returning them to their village.
For some theorists, these beings that apparently protect the inhabitants of the place, such as the Wanblee eagle, would be spaceships and beings of extraterrestrial origin, misinterpreted by the ancient inhabitants of the time as gods and great birds.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Scene from the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
In 1977, Devil’s Tower was used as the setting for the film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” by Steven Spielberg, which was consulted by astronomer J. Allen Hynek, one of the members of Project Blue Book, the project carried out by the United States United States Air Force between 1952 and 1969 to study UFOs.
Strangely, like many other places nearby, tourists and locals alike have reported strange lights in the sky just above the enigmatic rock formation.
Witnesses claim that these lights stop at the top of the huge rock and, as it has a strong connection with extraterrestrial beings and legends of beings from the sky, this was the reason why the Devil’s Tower was chosen by Steven Spielberg for his famous movie. .
