Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: An elusive killer

-with a taste for blood... -(woman screams)

...an ancient mountain shrine

where demons emerge from the underworld,

and a frightening creature

that roams the frozen forest

and hungers for human flesh.

From an early age, we're all told stories

of scary monsters that lurk in the shadows.

From the Big Bad Wolf and bloodsucking vampires

to evil witches and dangerous beasts,

we learn early on

that the world can be a frightening place.

But what if some of these tall tales

are based on real life?

All around the globe,

there are accounts of terrifying creatures

that defy our understanding of the natural world.

Could the reports of gruesome beings with glowing eyes

or three-toed savages hiding in remote swamps be true?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

SHATNER: Vlad the Impaler.

Lycaon of Arcadia.

Nosferatu.

The Beast of Gévaudan.

These are the names of grotesque and terrifying monsters.

Unearthly creatures that, according to legend,

thrived on human blood and feasted on human flesh.

(growls)

But could they actually be real?

(wolf howls in distance)

Police arrive upon a gruesome scene.

A local prostitute lies bloody and battered on the street.

Her leg is shattered in three places.

Based on eyewitness accounts, it's believed

she intentionally leapt from a balcony 20 feet above.

JONATHAN WEISS: She'd been with a wealthy man.

He'd been friendly, generous, funny, kind.

He made no advances, though he paid for her time.

But then he attacked her.

(creature growling)

He moved upon her with unnatural swiftness

and wrapped his arms around her, pulled her head to the side,

and began to "rip at her flesh."

(woman pants)

SHATNER: Her attacker was a man

by the name of Jacques St. Germain,

an affluent, well-known fixture in the New Orleans upper class

who claimed to be a direct descendant of French nobility.

Historical accounts described him as a charming ladies' man,

celebrated throughout the French Quarter

for his tales of adventure and elaborately catered parties.

But curiously, his guests never see him partake

of so much as a morsel of the food he serves.

Instead, he reportedly got all of his sustenance

from bottles that were thought to be filled with red wine.

But when police went to question Jacques St. Germain

about the murder of the prostitute,

they found that his preferred wine

was of a very unusual vintage.

JOSEPH LAYCOCK: When they went to the house in the morning,

it was entirely empty.

No furniture, everything was gone.

Jacques had completely disappeared.

However, on the second floor, according to the story,

they found bottles of wine mixed with human blood.

SHATNER: Bottles of wine mixed with human blood?

Was Jacques St. Germain merely a demented killer

who preyed upon a vulnerable woman?

Or could his taste for blood

have had a more disturbing explanation?

KEN GERHARD: Jacques St. Germain resided in New Orleans

in the early part of the 20th century.

And one must look back in history

at an eerily similar-looking figure

named Count St. Germain, who lived in Paris, France

over a century earlier.

The similarities between the two gentlemen are pretty striking.

LAYCOCK: Count St. Germain was known

to the French court in the 1700s.

He was a mysterious figure,

he was rumored to be an alchemist,

and he let the rumor slip that he had found the secret

to eternal life through his alchemy.

MARITA WOYWOD CRANDLE: He would speak as if he had lived in the 1500s

and he never looked a day over 40 years old.

LAYCOCK: We have portraits of the original

Count St. Germain when he's 40 years old.

Jacques St. Germain was also 40 years old

when he disappeared, and some people commented

that he looked like the man in the portrait.

WEISS: Early 40s,

maybe five foot, six inches tall, 140 pounds,

pale skin and high cheekbones, thin lips, hawk nose,

long curling dark hair, large blue-gray eyes.

He's elegant, he's charming, he's French.

He spends money like it's water.

Many people say that Jacques St. Germain

and Count St. Germain are the same person.

SHATNER: Jacques St. Germain and the Count de St. Germain,

one and the same?

If so, that would have made him almost 170 years old

at the time of his disappearance from New Orleans in 1903.

That is, if he ever really disappeared.

CRANDLE: Even down to modern times,

there have been sightings of St. Germain

wandering our streets late at night.

People will say that they have encountered him,

and now and then one of them disappears.

(woman screams)

This is actually an account from some people I know fairly well.

A few years ago at Halloween,

they're in the middle of the crowd on Bourbon Street

when the crowd just parted itself,

almost of its own accord...

...and there was a man standing by himself

in the middle of the crowd.

Maybe five-foot-six, somewhat slight of build

with a long, dark coat

and sunglasses on at night.

He raised his head up like he's sniffing the air.

And the crowd kept parting around him.

And then, they said, he just vanished.

They swear that actually happened.

And in New Orleans, how can I not believe it?

SHATNER: Whether he's called the Count or Jacques,

there are many who believe that the vampire who haunted

the streets of New Orleans for over a century

still walks the streets at night.

If true, could it mean

that other seemingly absurd tales of undead creatures

living among us are also true?

DAVID SKAL: Vampires are just part of the human imagination,

going back to time immemorial.

In folklore, there are so many different ways

to become a vampire or to destroy a vampire

or to avoid a vampire.

The idea of the wooden stake,

the recoiling from the crucifix,

the destruction by sunlight.

Vampires like the night because they can skulk around

and cover their terrible deeds in the shadows.

HARVEY ROSENSTOCK: In Romanian, the word for a vampire

includes the word "vârcolac,"

which, uh, really means, uh, "werewolf."

So you have "werewolf," "vârcolac," uh, "vampyr,"

uh, "vampire," so it's sometimes...

I can see how people can coalesce

and come out with something that's a mixture.

The werewolf and the vampire merge

and morph and inform each other.

When Bram Stoker wrote his novel,

Dracula had the power to become a wolf.

He was a werewolf.

He was a bloodsucking vampire as well.

And, uh, it was the kind of arbitrary grab bag

of characteristics that he chose

that we are still mostly playing with today.

SHATNER: Vampires?

Werewolves?

Could these creatures actually exist?

And is it possible that there is a space

between the known and unknown

where the supernatural crosses into our reality?

Perhaps further evidence can be found

at a strange temple complex

that some believe is the gateway to hell itself.

SHATNER: High in the mountains of Central China,

along the banks of the Yangtze river,

lies a complex of shrines and temples

that is known as Fengdu Ghost City.

According to Chinese legend,

Fengdu is considered to be a place where our world

meets the underworld.

As you're approaching Fengdu City on Ming Mountain,

you're imagining something that's gonna be beautiful,

but instead you see these depictions

of hellish images

and devilish creatures who are actually devouring human beings.

One of the first things that you encounter,

uh, when entering the complex is, um, actually a gate

that is shaped as a head of a demon,

and you have to enter it through its open mouth.

So it's a very impressive first sight

that the visitor encounters.

JEREMIAH: Walking through this complex

is like walking through hell itself.

It's supposedly the place where the devil actually resides.

SHATNER: The vast array of devilish statues and carvings

found throughout Fengdu have earned the city

a ghoulish reputation.

But why did the ancient Chinese feel the need

to create an entire city

filled with such ghastly depictions

of the forces of evil?

Well, Fengdu Ghost City

is believed to have been first built

during the Han dynasty, around the year 200 AD.

The city was constructed to represent Chinese beliefs

about the afterlife

and how a person's soul is judged after death.

STEAVU: The Fengdu Ghost City is a type

of purgatory space in Chinese conceptions

of the underworld.

It's a place where the souls

of recently deceased people are brought

so that they can be in front of the court of the underworld

and tried and judged for all of the actions,

the good deeds, and the misdeeds

that they performed during their life.

If their karmic balance is positive,

then, after their judgment,

they are taken to various celestial realms

where they can enjoy a nicer afterlife.

If your misdeeds overshadowed

your good deeds during your life,

then you will be unable to complete this trial

and you will be presented for judgment forthwith

and then carry out your sentence.

SHATNER: The final judgment takes place

inside the oldest temple in the city,

where a person's soul is put on trial by King Yama,

the gatekeeper to hell.

STEAVU: This main building, which is actually King Yama's court,

is presided over by a statue of King Yama,

very fearsome in appearance.

King Yama is the overseer of the underworld

in the Chinese tradition.

So he judges the deeds and misdeeds of the deceased

and oversees all of this distribution

of postmortem justice.

So he's bringing down the full power

of the underworld state

to bear on the people that he judges.

And he is also flanked by a retinue of demons.

Their role is to dole out the punishment

and to make sure that the punishment is respected.

For those who don't go straight to the celestial realms,

they have to spend a certain amount of time

in the 18 levels of hell.

And you have a variety of hells,

you have the hell of burning oil,

you have the hell of fire,

you have the blood pool hell,

in which you have to spend a time,

sometimes close to eternity.

The fact that this has become a major site

that is open to the public and that people can visit

perhaps serves as a kind of warning

or an incitement, uh, for, uh, people to live more moral lives

and, uh, to be kinder to others.

SHATNER: The idea that your soul

can be doomed to hell for eternity is concerning,

to say the least.

But it also raises an intriguing question.

What led people to believe that this particular location

was so strongly connected to the devil and hell

in the first place?

STEAVU: There's a long history of connecting Fengdu

to the Gate of Hell, the Guimen guan,

or the Gate of Demons,

and this is considered to be the actual gate to hell,

to the, to the courts of the underworld.

It's the actual entrance portal to the netherworld.

This portal to hell is actually a two-way portal,

so not only can the deceased enter it

to get to the netherworld,

but you have demons of the netherworld

who are allowed to leave,

who can emerge from it

and sometimes wreak havoc in the world of the living.

SHATNER: The notion that Fengdu Ghost City

could be a portal to hell

may sound far-fetched to some.

But on the other hand, there are similar places

throughout the world that are also thought

to serve as bridges where Satan crosses over

from his realm into ours.

The idea of a portal to the underworld,

a doorway to hell shows up in many different cultures...

...and various locations.

There are certain caves in the Mediterranean area

that that is how you enter or someone returns from Hades.

There's a burning bowl in Turkmenistan.

It's actually a natural geological formation,

but it is continually burning

and it looks like a gateway to hell

if you would descend there.

The concept was always,

if Satan shows up on the Earth,

people asked, "How did he get here?"

Does he have a magic power where he can just appear

and just disappear,

or is there a way to a shortcut?

And what happened in a lot of religions

is, you had to have some kind of way

to get from the underworld up to the terrestrial plane,

and so you needed to have a cave or some kind of portal.

BADER: These can be in graveyards, they can be in old mines.

There's been a number of these reported over time.

These places have developed a folklore or mythology

that they are dangerous, scary places you should not be.

And the belief about portals to hell

is that these are places where the dimensional walls are thin.

These are places where it's easier for Satan

and his minions to cross over.

SHATNER: Could it really be true that Satan and his demons

use portals to spread across the Earth?

According to many systems of belief,

the answer is yes.

And there are some who believe that,

once Satan has entered our world,

he has the ability to take many different forms.

It's recorded in ancient literature

that these forces

who we call shedim, or demons,

it is well known that they can sometimes materialize

into physical form.

And they would look like whatever form they would choose.

(squawks)

In Christian demonology, angels don't have bodies,

demons don't have bodies,

so they can take whatever form they want.

They're natural shape-shifters.

So we need to understand that these entities,

they're not relegated to the ancient past.

We must protect ourselves from these interactions.

SHATNER: A group of psychiatrists

from the University of Miami School of Medicine

publish an intriguing and unsettling study.

Their report documents a rare mental illness

that is known as Wendigo psychosis.

BLACKBURN: Wendigo psychosis is a kind of controversial condition

in which a person is believed

to have intense cravings for human flesh.

This could result from, uh, isolation,

lack of food, in which a person

ends up getting a condition of high anxiety

that just sort of comes out

in this bizarre cannibalistic craving.

SHATNER: While Wendigo psychosis continues to be studied

by medical professionals...

...the name of this disturbing condition

actually has its origins in Native American lore.

For centuries, when Native people heard the word "wendigo,"

they understood it to be not a form of mental illness

but rather a terrifying monster.

McNEILL: The wendigo

is a creature that comes to us

from Algonquin tradition.

So, the Ojibwe people, the Cree people,

right around the Great Lakes area

in both the U.S. and in Canada.

This is an area of the world-- the Great Lakes region--

where winters are harsh,

and starvation-- that was a common thing.

The key theme to the wendigo story

is that this is a creature that eats human beings.

"Wendigo" is a word from the Algonquin language

which translates into

"evil spirit that devours mankind."

Descriptions of the creature vary from tribe to tribe,

but in general the wendigo is a very tall giant

with glowing red eyes, rows of sharp teeth,

and an extremely long tongue.

CHAD LEWIS: Many cultures believe

that the wendigo is the most fearsome

and deadly creature

ever to set foot in North America.

It has an insatiable hunger for human flesh.

The more it eats, the bigger it becomes.

SHATNER: A skeletal monster that becomes bigger and stronger

with each human it devours?

It's undoubtedly terrifying, to say the least.

But could the legend of the wendigo actually be true?

Well, according to Native American tradition,

it is.

And perhaps the most haunting part of the legend

is that these hideous creatures were once human beings.

BLACKBURN: According to the Native American stories,

the process for somebody becoming a wendigo

is either an evil spirit possesses the person

-and then becomes the wendigo... -(screeches)

...or the person simply transforms into the monster.

LEWIS: If you dreamed of the wendigo,

that would welcome the wendigo to come and attack you.

So there were multiple ways that you could be possessed

by the wendigo.

SHATNER: While Native American legends

of wendigo transformations

might be easily dismissed as parables

rather than real events, that may not be the case.

Perhaps the most compelling argument

that wendigo possession is, in fact, real

can be found by examining the horrific story

of a 19th century Cree trapper named Swift Runner.

The story of Swift Runner is one of the most gruesome

and heartbreaking tales of a person becoming a wendigo.

During the winter of 1878 and '79,

Swift Runner took off with his family

to their winter hunting grounds.

But then the game disappeared.

Times were tough and food was scarce.

During this particularly brutal winter,

he actually killed

and ate his wife and his children.

And according to the story, Swift Runner had been possessed

by the spirit of the wendigo.

LEWIS: Swift Runner said an evil presence overcame him.

When authorities took him back to the grounds,

they discovered something out of a horror movie.

Bones thrown all about, skulls everywhere.

He was eventually arrested and sent to Edmonton

and was hanged for being a wendigo.

SHATNER: Did Swift Runner commit shocking crimes

because he was possessed by the wendigo,

as some people believed at the time?

Or was he simply afflicted with an extreme form of psychosis,

as the modern medical community now claims?

Just like many tales regarding monsters of myth and legend,

the truth remains elusive.

The key defining feature of the wendigo

is about cannibalism.

We can see that as a supernatural creature

or we can see it as a medical condition.

But as far as anyone can tell, the Wendigo psychosis

is pretty specific to that cultural area.

And there are things known as culture-bound conditions

that only happen to people from a given cultural background.

BLACKBURN: Now, the fact that we have a science

referring to the wendigo,

it doesn't prove that the wendigo exists,

but it just underscores the fact

that the wendigo has transformed from Native American tales

to something we're talking about in modern times.

The possibility of contracting a psychosis

that would make you crave human flesh

is terrifying, to say the least.

But wendigo is not the only creature

to be concerned about encountering.

It you find yourself lost

in the swampland of rural Arkansas,

you just might come face-to-face

with a dangerous being known as the Fouke Monster.

SHATNER: Population: 733.

This small town near the eastern border of Texas

appears similar to hundreds of other rural communities

in the region.

A single highway cuts through the town,

which is surrounded by vast woods,

creeks...

...and acres of mosquito-ridden swampland.

BLACKBURN: Fouke, Arkansas

is thousands of acres of very swampy area.

And within that, there is plenty of places

that creatures could find seclusion

and could easily survive.

The woods and the swampy bottoms are just so thick

that they could travel through these woods

and not be seen, uh, very much, if at all.

SHATNER: This rugged landscape

is teeming with wildlife, but according to locals,

there is a massive, monstrous creature

that stands out from all others,

because it bears an uncanny resemblance to a human.

They call it the Fouke Monster.

By physical description, the Fouke Monster,

it's very large, seven to ten feet tall.

Very thick, long, matted-down hair,

usually dark brown or reddish tint.

It's a biped, walking and running upright

on its hind legs.

(howling in distance)

BLACKBURN: The creature is often known

to elicit a frightening howl.

It's often said to have

a very terrible, rank odor.

It's said to be similar to a bigfoot,

yet more scraggly,

more rugged-looking,

and witnesses often have a very emotional reaction

because of the fear of this creature.

SHATNER: It's estimated that there have been hundreds of sightings

of the Fouke Monster, dating back to the 1800s,

and locals are convinced that tangible evidence

of the beast exists.

Over the years, people have made numerous plaster casts

of unusually large footprints

said to have been left by the massive creature.

Today, many of them are preserved in a town museum

known as the Monster Mart.

SHATNER: Are these strange footprints

proof that a giant hairy beast

roams the swamplands of Southwest Arkansas?

Perhaps, but of course

many residents don't need convincing

because they claim to have actually seen

the Fouke Monster with their own eyes.

Back in the early '70s, my friend Karen and I

were riding in the back of a pickup truck.

And all of a sudden,

we saw this thing step out

-from behind a big tree. -(screams)

It was probably about three and a half feet

across the shoulders.

And it turned and took another step

and was gone into the plum thicket.

That's why we never went in the woods anymore after that,

'cause we-we knew how big it was,

and that thing could snap you like a twig.

DOYLE HOLMES: About 2004, I'm in a little canoe,

-and I hear splashes. -(water sloshing)

I could see the image, the silhouette

of something with two legs

standing up.

This thing was hairy.

It's big legs, big trunk.

It was very impressive-looking.

After a while, he just turned around

and just walked off in the marsh,

and I didn't see him again.

Now, I, at that point, never believed in the monster

or that there was something else out there,

but my mind started getting open to the possibility

at that point.

SHATNER: And many believe that the monster

is not only real but also quite dangerous.

The most infamous incident that cemented

the Fouke Monster's menacing reputation

occurred on May 2, 1971,

when it reportedly attacked a local man named Bobby Ford.

One of the most sensational and well-known encounters

with the Fouke Monster

originates at what's known as the Ford house.

On a Saturday night, the Ford family

started to hear something creeping around on the porch.

And all of a sudden,

this big hairy hand came in through the window.

Bobby Ford went outside

-and shot at it. -(gunshots)

All of a sudden, something ran out from beside the house

-and attacked him. -(creature growls)

He barely managed to escape, and whatever had happened,

uh, shook him up so bad

that they ended up having to transport him

to the Texarkana Hospital,

where he was treated for shock and injuries

as a result of this attack.

The Fords found a strange footprint

which looked, uh, large and somewhat humanlike

yet had three toes,

and so something very scary

and something very unexplainable happened.

Following the publicity around the Ford incident,

a farmer found a track line of footprints

that went across a soybean field,

and these tracks were roughly human-shaped

yet had three toes.

And this was investigated

by the Miller County Sheriff's Office,

the game warden, wildlife officials,

and none of them could really explain

what the heck these footprints were.

So that built credibility to what the Fords were saying.

SHATNER: Perhaps what's even more remarkable

than the fact that inexplicable three-toed tracks

were found shortly after the Ford incident

is that a plaster cast of those footprints

can still be seen today in the Monster Mart.

SHATNER: While the outside world may be skeptical,

many people in Fouke, Arkansas remain utterly convinced

that their town is home to a monster

that is not the stuff of myth and legend

but rather flesh and blood.

Do the three-toed tracks

recovered from an Arkansas farmstead

prove that a dangerous beast is on the loose?

Maybe it's this physical evidence

that will finally turn skeptics into believers.

Like in the case of an extraordinary discovery

in rural China that just might authenticate

the existence of giants.

SHATNER: Paleontologists from China's

Hebei GEO University analyze an astonishing discovery

from the bottom of an ancient well.

Their study is of the largest human skull ever found.

The extraordinary find makes headlines around the world

and sparks intense debate about this ancient skull,

which scientists have nicknamed the Dragon Man.

The Dragon Man skull is arguably the most mysterious cranium

that's ever been discovered in this world.

It is the largest ever.

It's actually around nine inches long

by six inches across.

It was discovered in 1933 by a Chinese workman,

and because, at the time,

that part of China was occupied by the Japanese,

he felt that the best thing to do was

to hide it away in a well.

And it was left there until 2018,

when he revealed the location to his grandson.

The grandson went and dug it up.

And it was still there in absolute perfect condition.

And he gave it to a local university,

and it obviously came to the attention

of the scientific community.

The Dragon Man skull is interesting because

the cranial shape is shaped like an American football,

being very elongated,

whereas a modern human skull-- Homo sapiens--

would be more rounded in shape.

The skull is generally very robust,

including a very pronounced brow ridge.

The eye sockets on Dragon Man are also very large

and-and more square in shape,

versus a modern human's,

which are smaller and more rounded.

Based off of what we know about the skull,

it probably dates to around 200,000 years ago.

Dragon Man is such a new discovery

that lots of ideas are coming out of the field

about exactly what did this population look like

and how do they relate to us?

PRYOR: The Dragon Man

is bringing us face-to-face for the first time

with a new Asian version of-of human,

which very likely we also interbred with

and whose DNA we probably also carry in us today as well.

It's one of these finds which occasionally comes along

which is really changing what we know about our human story.

SHATNER: Experts agree that the discovery

of the Dragon Man redefines our understanding

of humanity's past.

And there are some researchers who believe

that further investigation

of the skull will reveal shocking truths

about this previously unknown cousin of man.

COLLINS: There is every indication

that the Dragon Man may well have been

not only large in size but also of great height.

Possibly as much as seven to seven and a half feet tall.

And if you want to imagine them, just think that in the past

you'd have had the small guys

that would have been the Neanderthals,

who were about five to five and a half feet tall.

You'd have had our own modern human ancestors

that were around six feet tall,

and you'd have had the much bigger,

much stronger Dragon Man.

With the discovery of the Dragon Man skull,

we might have the first real evidence

that giants once walked the Earth.

SHATNER: Is it possible

that the Dragon Man was actually a giant?

Perhaps clues can be found

by examining the numerous historical accounts

of people claiming to have encountered ancient giants.

Giants are a stock character of folklore throughout the world.

For example, the Bible clearly states

that there were giants on the Earth.

HUGH NEWMAN: In North America,

the Native American cultures have many

of these giant stories.

For example, in Mi'kmaq tradition,

we find stories of giants

that would hunt people and eat them.

There are similar stories in the Algonquian-speaking

Natives of North America as well, and traditions,

even up to relatively recent time,

would honor these ancient giants.

And this is something that is prevalent

in different parts of the world.

SHATNER: There are many skeptics who write off tales of giants

as nothing more than exaggeration or fantasy.

But there are others who insist

that giants were, in fact, quite real.

And as evidence they point to accounts of large human bones

being discovered throughout North America.

NEWMAN: During the mid-1800s,

the Smithsonian Institution had an edict

where they would collect all the different skeletons

of Native American cultures

from mounds, from caves,

from all over the country, basically.

And they started finding these remarkable skeletons

and discoveries that suggested

there was a very advanced race of giants

living in North America.

And even in their Smithsonian annual reports

in the late 1800s--

specifically, the fifth and the 12th annual reports--

they documented between seven- and eight-foot-tall skeletons

that their Smithsonian employees actually dug up themselves.

And yet in 1910 onwards,

when Ales Hrdlicka became the director of the Smithsonian,

he put a news report out saying giants are no more

and tried to delete this idea that giants ever existed,

even though they discovered some themselves

in the late 1800s.

And so, there's a definite mystery here

when it comes to trying to find evidence

of these giant skeletons of North America.

COLLINS: Hundreds, perhaps even thousands,

of these giant skeletons have been unearthed,

but the problem with this is

that all of them today have been lost.

Everything that was inside the Smithsonian Institute had

to be given back, or they were just destroyed.

And so the importance of the discovery

of the Dragon Man skull is in the fact

that this archaic human that once existed

in this region of China has been brought back into reality

and is being studied by the scientists today.

You can discover so much information

from just a single bone.

It opens up a whole world of opportunity

for what we can learn about them--

who humans are and where we came from.

SHATNER: This rustic town located in the Mojave Desert

is adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park.

Each year, millions of people visit Joshua Tree

to hike through its twisting expanse of boulders

and oddly shaped trees.

But unfortunately, many adventure seekers

who trek into this wilderness never return.

BLACKBURN: On occasion, human remains have been found out

in the area of the Joshua Tree National Park,

and these are presumably

hikers who have gone missing over the years.

So, while it's a beautiful, striking-looking place,

it's also very secluded and very dangerous.

SHATNER: It's easy to see how tourists hiking

in Joshua Tree could get lost

and fall victim to the scorching temperatures

of this desert environment.

However, some locals believe

that mysterious deaths in the park are the work

of a frightening monster who is referred to as the Yucca Man.

BLACKBURN: The Yucca Man is seen

in the southern regions of the California area.

Sightings of the Yucca Man date back

to at least the 1960s.

It's described as being very tall,

covered in hair over its entire body.

BADER: The Yucca Man is what you might call

a desert-based bigfoot.

People go missing in the Yucca Valley

and its various campgrounds.

Part of the evolving lore of this creature is, perhaps it is

preying on humans when it finds people who are vulnerable.

SHATNER: The idea that a giant monster roams this remote area

and preys upon unsuspecting hikers is chilling.

But according to local lore,

another fearsome encounter involving the Yucca Man

allegedly took place at a nearby

U.S. Marine Corps base.

One of the more famous Yucca Man encounters occurred in 1971

at the Twentynine Palms Marine Base.

A Marine was on night duty

and encountered this eight-foot-tall,

-blond Sasquatch creature. -(creature growls)

(roars)

He then became unconscious,

and when he was found, his rifle was bent in half

with no explanation.

He was unharmed, but it's pretty scary

to think of a Marine being knocked unconscious

and a rifle being bent in half.

SHATNER: While it's impossible

to verify the Yucca Man's alleged run-ins

with military personnel, many locals are convinced

that this dangerous creature actually lives

in the Mojave Desert.

And like other monsters

that have been widely reported by eyewitnesses

but not officially recognized by science,

the possibility of its existence

both tantalizes and terrifies.

We love believing in these creatures

and monsters because we love getting scared.

But we also love the unknown,

not knowing if we've discovered every species on the planet.

The mystery is the best part of it all.

McNEILL: We are often inclined

to see belief in fantastical creatures as

somewhat irrational, maybe fantastical, something that

isn't scientific.

And yet there's news reports

of people interacting with creatures

that maybe we can't identify.

That keeps it alive.

It is not fundamentally proven false.

And that kind of monster is what we are continuing

to be obsessed with.

So, what do you think?

Are these dangerous and frightening creatures real

or just a figment of our imagination?

Could the stories we've been told

about scary monsters be strictly fantasy,

or are these tales based on actual experiences

with terrifying entities?

What exactly are people encountering

when they come up against these strange savages?

It's a spine-tingling mystery, but one that's best explored

from the comfort of your own home,

because nothing can guarantee your safety

while the truth about these creatures of the night

remains...

unexplained.

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