Starchild Mystery

Written by: Jeff Rent
Case Filed: 08/29/02 - Jackson, Mississippi
Executive Producer: Rick Garner

The mystery of the Starchild skull began in Mexico nearly 70 years ago when a young girl discovered it in a cave. In that cave was a human female skeleton lying on the floor with a small hand sticking out of the dirt, wrapped around the arm of the skeleton.

The young girl began to dig.

"She found in a shallow grave another skeleton of a smaller being that she said was misshapen all over," says Lloyd Pye, the author and researcher for the Starchild Research Project.

It's this misshapen skeleton, of which only the skull remains, which has baffled scientists and researchers. "Who" and perhaps more importantly "what" was found in that Mexican cave? Pye believes it's a Starchild, or a human-alien hybrid, along with its mother or some sort of care taker.

Pye adds, "When it died, she buried him, left its hand sticking up out of the ground, wrapped its hand around her arm and she committed suicide."

Pye says stories of Starchildren are common among ancient cultures. The stories say a being from the heavens comes to earth and impregnates a woman who is usually infertile. Then, the village raises the child until the being returns several years later to take the child with it. As far-fetched as this might sound., Pye has done everything to prove that this couldn't possibly be what he now believes is the remains of a real Starchild.

"There is nothing to account for it, because we've been through every book that we can find about human deformities and there's nothing like it."

Pye says all reasonable theories have been disproved. And that the symmetrical, but flattened head, the unusual position of the eye sockets and the unusually low bone density point to this skull as being genuine.

But Pye's argument isn't enough to convince our experts Dr. Michael Galaty and Dr. Julian Murchison, anthropologists from Milsaps College. Both men viewed a videotape with great details about the skull presented by Pye.

Galaty says, I didn't see anything that looked so outlandish that I couldn't, I wouldn't expect it to exist."

"(Pye) didn't convince me that all other possibilities had been accounted for," says Murchison.

Galaty continues, "What you have here is a case of someone who has found something that's interesting, that he can't explain. Therefore he is jumping to the most extreme possible explanation."

"It was totally out of context," says Murchison. "We, as anthropologists - as scientists - are concerned about how things appear in context. So, he tells this fantastic story about sort of how this woman found the skull and the position of the bodies, but there's no way to go back and check that out."

Both anthropologists agree that it's tough to judge Pye's argument without physically examining the skull for themselves. However, they did suggest one way that could solve the mystery of the Starchild skull once and for all - DNA testing. Interestingly enough, Pye agrees, "That should tell us definitively one way or the other whether it is indeed a very unusual human deformity as rare and bizarre as the "Elephant Man" in it's own way. Or whether it's something else."

Pye says the only thing keeping him from conducting DNA testing is the high cost. He is currently raising the funds, which will tell him if this is a Starchild or just some old bones.

Carbon 14 dating tests have estimated the age of the skull at 900 years old.

Additional Resources:

Official Starchild Project Website

Watch Lloyd Pye Full Interview


Watch Athropologists Full Interview