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Unearthed Super 8 film shows ‘awe-inspire' 1979 eclipse at Washington Stonehenge replica

SEATTLE — While waiting on a hill for an eclipse to bring complete darkness over a small Washington town, photographer Douglas Keister gave 10 minutes worth of Super 8 film to his friend to capture the spectacle.

Before the camera was directed to the sky to roll on the moon, sun, and earth aligning for a perfect eclipse — their film recorded something something possibly more interesting than the natural phenomenon: the people gathering to catch a glimpse at it.

"Although the experience of seeing a total eclipse is incredible, the real story is the events around the eclipse as well as the shared experience," wrote Keister, now a professional photographer and author.

Amid the fascination of the upcoming eclipse, Keister recently uploaded video to YouTube of a trip he and friends took in 1979 from California to Goldendale, Washington.  

His video shows people dressed in robes and holding goblets; through the humming of the vintage film people are heard and chanting as the sun rises at a full-scale Stonehenge replica that stands on the Washington-Oregon border.

Scroll down to keep reading about the group at the 1979 eclipse, and why there is even a Stonehenge memorial in Washington state.

"There's obviously no better place to associate the eclipse, equinox, or solstice than Stonehenge," Keister told KIRO 7. "The last hurrah for the hippies. It was fun. It was a carnival atmosphere."

The film looks like a movie about the middle ages, though Keister said the group of people were not acting and called themselves "The Order of the Reformed Druids."

Reporter Don Duncan with the Seattle Times, who attended the event, talked to priests and priestess with the group who called it the "largest gathering of neo-pagans in North American history" at the time.

The group, according to Duncan, started a joke to rebel against obligatory church attendance at a Midwest college. But some stayed with the group after graduations and then traveled to  Stonehenge to talk about what they called the spiritual side of the eclipse.

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When the eclipse maxed, all came to a stop as people watched what Keister described as a perfect alignment over Stonehenge.

"When I was up on the hill, it's just a collective energy of people. It's everyone in a large circle, no matter if you're right next to someone or 10 minutes away, we're all concentrating on the same thing," he said.

"It's like watching a football game or a movie, and there's a moment when you all laugh, imagine that but multiple times a thousand. All these people concentrating on the same, and very small thing.

"When the moon goes over the sun, and it gets dark, that is the moment -- the birds stop chirping, the lights come like if someone left their porch light on -- so it's that moment, when everything goes dark … it's pretty awe-inspiring. Then the moment when the sun emerges it's almost like you can breath again, after two minutes [of darkness]."

Washington's Stonehenge actually serves as the nation's first WWI memorial; it was dedicated in 1918 to the servicemen of Klickitat County who died in service.

Businessman Samuel Hill commissioned the monument. According to the MaryHill Museum, Hill erroneously believed that the prehistoric Stonehenge in England was constructed as a place of human sacrifice. Concluding there was a parallel between the loss of life in WWI and the sacrifices at ancient Stonehenge, he set out to build a replica to honor heroism and peace.

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A total eclipse was predicted the year of it's construction, and astronomers helped position one of the memorial's altar stone at Hill's request to make the memorial as similar to the original size and design of the ancient Neolithic ruin in England.

The memorial took a decade to complete, but craftsmen left a message on the altar that reads:

"To the memory of the soldiers and sailors of Klickitat County who gave their lives in defense of their country. This monument is erected in hope that others inspired by the example of their valor and their heroism may share in that love of liberty and burn with that fire of patriotism which death alone can quench."