by Colin Hunter
You've probably heard by now that Harrison Ford has dusted off the bullwhip and suede fedora to reprise his role of the Nazi-bashing relic-finder, Indiana Jones. In the new movie, due out next month, Indy races against some nasty commies to discover a magical crystal skull.
The plot is still pretty hush-hush, but it would make sense if Indiana sleuthed around Kitchener, since that's where the world's most famous and (some say) mysterious crystal skull has been known to reside.
The crystal skull belonged to Anna Mitchell-Hedges, who spent most of her 100-year life in Kitchener and would welcome new-agers and curiosity-seekers who wanted to bask in the skull's uber-weirdness. The late writer Arthur C. Clarke called the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull "the weirdest gem in the world."
The story goes like this: in 1924, Anna discovered the strange relic in the Mayan ruins of Lubaantun, British Honduras, while accompanying her father, F.A. Mitchell-Hedges (an adventurer on whom the Indiana Jones character was based, according to some sources) on an excavation of the site. Anna was the smallest and lightest of the expedition crew, so she was lowered by ropes into the ruins to pluck the glimmering skull from its resting place. Anna remained keeper of the skull for the following eight decades, most of which she spent running a Kitchener motel.
Anna always maintained that the skull had strange powers -- for good and for evil -- and she attributed her longevity to its strange forces. She occasionally offered it up for scientific study, including one series of tests in the late-1960s in which researchers concluded the skull was truly ancient and not made by modern machinery ("The damned thing simply shouldn't be," one scientist supposedly gasped).
Skeptics, naturally, thought the whole story smelled of hooey, and have unearthed their own intriguing artifacts -- including a receipt of sale that seems to prove that F.A. Mitchell-Hedges bought the crystal skull at Sotheby's auction in London in 1943.
But Anna never wavered from her story of the skull's discovery. In 2005, I drove to rural Indiana, where Anna had relocated in the 1990s, to interview her for a story (read my full story here). She told me the same tale I had read countless times before: Mayan ruins, mystical powers, and the like. She was friendly -- even a bit flirty -- and came across as completely earnest.
The skull even seemed to exhibit its powers right in front of us, as the felt pedestal on which Anna had displayed it started to burn and smoke underneath it. The rational side of me insisted it was the result of sunlight refracting through it like a magnifying glass, but still..... kinda creepy. Anna died last June, and the skull is now in the hands of her long-time companian, Bill Homann of Indiana (a fitting place, given the name of of the action movie hero now associated with crystal skulls).
When you're munching popcorn at the local megaplex this summer watching Harrison Ford bullwhip baddies in search of a crystal skull, keep in mind that the world's strangest "real" crystal skull spent most of the 20th century in Kitchener. And it's watching you.... *
* but probably not really.
by Colin Hunter
