Alaska pyramid claim
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Type | Event (unverified claim) |
|---|---|
| Origin | Douglas A. Mutschler, retired U.S. Army chief warrant officer, to Linda Moulton Howe, June 2012 |
| Claimed discovery | After China's nuclear test of 22 May 1992 |
| Claimed location | Underground in western Alaska, between Mount McKinley (Denali) and Nome on Norton Sound |
| Claimed size | Larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza |
| Later repeated by | Tom DeLonge (podcast, 2021) |
| Status | No evidence; no 1992 crustal survey on record |
| Date | 28 September 2021 |
| Topics | Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Remote viewing & psi (topic), Bases & Area 51 (topic) |
| People | Tom DeLonge, Linda Moulton Howe |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 202 |
| Year | 2021 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2021 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
The Alaska pyramid claim is a story that a pyramid larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza lies buried beneath western Alaska. It was supposedly discovered by seismic study after a Chinese nuclear test in 1992 and then covered up. It was spread from 2012 by the journalist Linda Moulton Howe, based on the recollections of a retired Army counterintelligence officer. In a 2021 podcast the musician and UFO promoter Tom DeLonge said he had been told about a large pyramid beneath Alaska that "might" have a role in suppressing human consciousness. There is no evidence for it.[1][2][6]
Origin of the story
On 22 June 2012 Douglas A. Mutschler, a retired chief warrant officer of the U.S. Army, emailed Howe. He said that "during my service tour in Alaska I was informed of a pyramid under the land in Alaska". He said the information "was reported to us in 1992" and that "the news was buried the very next day". Mutschler said he had joined the Army in 1981, served as a chief warrant officer in military intelligence, and left in 1995 on medical grounds. Howe obtained his discharge papers, which confirmed his counterintelligence service.[6]
In later interviews with Howe the story grew more detailed. Mutschler said that when China set off its largest underground nuclear test on 22 May 1992, geologists used the blast to study the Earth's crust. They found, he said, a pyramid-shaped structure underground between Mount McKinley and Nome on Norton Sound. In late November or early December 1992, he said, he and about 39 other soldiers in the Fort Richardson orderly room watched an in-depth news report about it on Anchorage's Channel 13. He set his VCR to record the next broadcast, but nothing more was aired. His father in Ohio had heard nothing about it, and he said a station technician later told him the story had been suppressed and destroyed. He said the geologists "did not know if it were solid or hollow". Howe's articles on Earthfiles in 2012 went behind a paywall, but versions were copied across fringe websites in 2013 and 2014.[6]
Checks and criticism
The writer Jason Colavito examined the story in 2014. He noted that the Chinese test of 22 May 1992 was real, but that it took seismologists by surprise, so no monitoring had been specially set up in Alaska. A researcher who contacted the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage in 2012 learned there had been no crustal survey that year. Colavito pointed out that Mutschler's first email said nothing about a Chinese test or a TV report, and implied the information came through Army channels. His later accounts attributed it entirely to a television story seen six months after the test. None of the other 39 soldiers, nor thousands of Alaskan viewers, have come forward to remember it. Howe apparently did not check with the station or with transcription services. When Mutschler's phone number stopped working, he said the government was interfering with his calls. Colavito wondered whether Mutschler was misremembering the November 1993 NBC special Mystery of the Sphinx. He concluded that the evidence amounted to one man's twenty-year-old memory of what he thought he saw on television.[6]
DeLonge and later versions
Howe returned to the story in later years in podcasts on the "big dark pyramid" in Alaska, and it was taken up by entertainment websites such as The Illuminerdy. DeLonge co-founded To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science in 2017, and in 2015–16 he had sought meetings with officials on UFOs, as WikiLeaks emails later showed. In a 2021 podcast he repeated a version of the claim, saying he had been told about a large pyramid beneath Alaska that "might" have a role in suppressing human consciousness. DeLonge's willingness to repeat such claims has drawn criticism, even from people who take his earlier UAP work seriously.[1][2][3][4][5]
Assessment
The claim belongs to a genre of stories about ancient or alien structures hidden under ice or ground, often traced to anonymous or single sources. It resembles claims about bases in Antarctica. Geological surveys and satellite imaging have revealed no such structure, and no record of the 1992 news report or of any survey finding it has been produced.[6]
People and topics
- Tom DeLonge — Musician who founded To The Stars Academy.
- Linda Moulton Howe — Journalist and filmmaker who runs the Earthfiles website and has reported many crash-retrieval claims.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
On the Timeline
- Mary Elizabeth Elliot inquiry (15 September 2021) — Researchers ask sources about a name in the alleged Wilson memo.
- Energy Department labs as analysts claim (2 October 2021) — Eric Davis says Energy Department labs analyzed UAP materials for another owner.
See every 2021 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Linda Moulton Howe — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Tom DeLonge — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Tom DeLonge on the Podesta emails — Rolling Stone · rollingstone.com · archived copy
- Tom DeLonge emailed Clinton's adviser about aliens — BuzzFeed News · buzzfeednews.com · archived copy
- theilluminerdy.net · theilluminerdy.net · archived copy
- Jason Colavito, "Alaska's Underground Pyramid: A Case of Faulty Memory?" (20 May 2014) · jasoncolavito.com
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science”, “Tom DeLonge”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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