Whether true or not, these sorts of claims added more mystery and panache to his self-promoted persona. In one of his real-life adventures in Central America, Mitchell-Hedges reported that he had been captured by the famous Mexican revolutionary general Pancho Villa, and that he had spent some time as a spy. While he fit the image of a heroic character one might see in a silent 1920s movie, his stories were a combination of truths, partial truths, and unverified exploits. Unfortunately, Frederick Mitchell-Hedges lost some credibility when he cast doubt upon his own claims. He called it the “skull of doom” and made the outrageous, yet unprovable, claims that “several people who have cynically laughed at it have died, others have been stricken and become seriously ill.” Mitchell-Hedges then wrote that he had no reason for revealing how it came into his possession (even though he did so in a private letter to his brother). Reporting on this story, Daniel Rennie noted that Mitchell-Hedges had written about the crystal skull in his 1954 memoir Danger My Ally, in which he claimed it was a relic of the Mayan ruins.
While all vary in size and are carved from either clear, cloudy, or colored quartz, somehow the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull remains the most romantic in the minds of those who first hear of it.
Mitchell-Hedges’ discovery seems like a once-in-a-lifetime find, and yet it was but one of many crystal skulls now on display in private and public collections worldwide.