A California anthropologist has revealed details during a secret trip to the Nevada desert – coming face to face with the strange events taking place at Area 51.

Jerry Freeman wasn’t looking for UFOs or secret government projects when he crossed the grounds of the forbidden military base in 1996, he was actually following in the footsteps of 1849 pioneers heading west in search of gold, reports the Telegraph.

However, this route took Freeman through a part of Nevada restricted by the US Air Force, forcing him to travel at night to avoid security patrols.

During one night of this week-long mission, Freeman spotted an incredible scene near Lake Papoose – a dry lake bed located in Lincoln County that some have claimed hides a secret hangar of alien spacecraft known as ‘S-4’.

Freeman told journalist and UFO researcher George Knapp that a portal suddenly opened near Lake Papoose, emitting a bright blue light before closing and disappearing completely into the desert landscape.

“It looked like a dry lake bed to me, nothing else, but at night it was a different story,” Freeman revealed.

“I could clearly see what the security lights were on the perimeters and I could see the lights going on and off near the center of the lake,” the anthropologist continued.

Freeman also revealed that he felt tremors similar to an earthquake as he watched the strange scene for about two minutes at the top-secret base.

“It’s something they’re testing either directly underground or I was feeling vibrations all the way from Groom Lake, I don’t know,” Freeman told Knapp during an interview recorded before the anthropologist’s death in 2001.

“I think if they had caught me there, they would have lit me like a Roman candle,” he said, sounding terrified.

Freeman’s desert trek was originally intended to track down the lost writings of a group of doomed prospectors who died while trying to find a shortcut to the California gold fields.

These 1849 pioneers had strayed from the historic Spanish Trail that was taking miners west through Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.

However, this group is believed to have broken off from the trail in Utah and tried to reach California more quickly, crossing the Nevada desert.

Unfortunately, they never made it, and the area would eventually earn its infamous name – Death Valley.

All that remained of the lost explorers were their journals, revealing that they had left behind seven inscriptions in the desert, marking their journey.

Unfortunately for Freeman, the journals revealed that some of these historical markers now lie within the boundary markers of the Air Force Test Site in Nevada – where the secretive Area 51 is located.

Although Freeman received encouragement from the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management to find these lost pieces of history, the Air Force flatly denied him entry to the area – forcing the adventurer to make the journey at night without permission.

To make matters worse, S-4 had just become a public talking point thanks to a man named Bob Lazar.

Lazar claimed to be a former government physicist who worked at S-4, reverse engineering alien spacecraft and extraterrestrial technology.

Lazar began claiming that the U.S. military was not only recovering UFOs but was creating their own aircraft using modified alien equipment in 1989.

He continued to make television appearances revealing the existence of Area 51 and the secret government projects being conducted in the desert for years, including several interviews with Knapp.

Although the U.S. government would not officially admit that Area 51 actually existed until 2013, the secret base was already becoming a cultural phenomenon in the 1990s.

Furthermore, a 1996 lawsuit by a group claiming to be stationed at Area 51 alleged that they were exposed to toxic chemicals while at the base.

This lawsuit was ultimately dismissed based on national security concerns, and President Bill Clinton would actually sign an executive order exempting the base from the country’s environmental laws.

However, the government avoids naming it “Area 51” in court documents, instead referring to “Groom Lake”—the exact spot where Freeman said he encountered the strange door in the middle of the lake bed.

Although the exact details surrounding Area 51 are still largely a mystery, it has been widely speculated that the military uses the facility to test experimental aircraft.

The base is located on a roughly 60-square-mile tract that encompasses most of the dry Groom Lake, and is believed to lie near the northeastern edge of a mountain range.