Original subtitles

[Dan narrating]

[enigmatic music]

- What are the most peculiar places in the world?

How about an island run by a population

of dangerous predators?

- By all accounts,

it is essentially a moving carpet of serpents.

- The snakes on that island have a venom

that is estimated to be five times as deadly

as the venom for mainland snakes.

- Or a town that's a real circus?

- People get tired of being stared at for money

and they really just wanna find a place

they can call their own.

- [Paul] Conjoined twins run the fruit stand.

Grady Stiles, the Lobster Boy, makes the place his home.

- What about a beach

where the waves deliver more than just seashells?

- [Dr. Steven] She sees this large, size 12 men's sneaker

washed up on the beach.

- She looks inside the sneaker and finds a foot.

[dramatic music]

- These are the tales of the strangest places on Earth,

so bizarre they're truly unbelievable.

[dramatic music]

Mexico boasts an abundance of enchanted wonders,

from the soaring El Castillo Pyramid

to the Sacred Cenotes of the Yucatan Peninsula.

But there's another must-see

known for something a little more unusual.

[rhythmic music]

- Outside of Mexico City

is one of the strangest places on Earth.

Why?

Because there are over 4,000 mutilated dolls

tied to the fences, to the trees,

and spread around everywhere on this island.

- [Dan] But this area's strange origins

go back long before the dolls took over.

- It's the 16th century,

and the Spanish conquistadors

are invading the Aztec Empire.

What's called Tenochtitlan,

which would later become Mexico City,

is the capital of the Aztec Empire.

And what we think of being in a high altitude basin

is actually a massive lake with manmade islands, canals,

and causeways all through it.

[dramatic music]

- So some of the earliest, darkest tales

about these islands really emerge in this period,

and they come from the conquistadors,

who, when they fall off these islands

because of their heavy armor, sink, never to be seen again.

And this leads to some of the mythology

about them being haunted or spiritually guarded places.

By the 20th century, these islands are still attractive

to people who wanna be off the grid.

And that's the case with Don Julian Santana Barrera,

who has a falling out with his family

and decides to go to one of these islands.

- [Dan] And that's when things start to get a little weird.

- The lore is that at some point,

he finds the body of a drowned child, a drowned girl.

But he also finds a doll nearby that he believes is hers.

And he hangs the doll up as this way to honor her.

- He doesn't stop at this one doll.

He decides to pay homage

to the deceased young girl

with a shrine of thousands upon thousands of dolls.

- [Dan] Thousands of dolls, hung from trees?

What prompted this macabre memorial?

- There is this sense that this discovery

of a deceased child, which would be harrowing for anyone,

is especially troubling to him

and that this maybe has caused him

to have some sort of break with reality

or some sort of issue.

He also is said to hear spirits, hers and possibly others.

- He is so moved and scared of the bad omens

that go with this tragedy

that we assume he went absolutely crazy.

- [Dan] Even stranger is what happens to Don Julian

in April of 2001.

- His nephew comes to visit him on the island

and he finds Don Julian Barrera face down,

drowned in the canal at age 80,

in almost the same spot that he alleged

that he found the original girl so many years before.

- [Dan] After Julian's death,

tourists keep his peculiar tradition alive

by adding their own dolls to the collection.

- Dolls are created in our image,

so it doesn't matter what your belief system is.

To see 4,000 mutilated dolls hanging from trees,

an island full of that would drive anybody crazy.

- Today, gondola-like boats called trajinera

take the curious out for a closer look,

but only during daylight hours.

The island is strictly off limits to visitors after dark.

Up next is another place

you probably don't want to visit at night.

[dramatic music]

- Widow Sarah Winchester had a particularly bad run of it.

She's lost her child, her father, her mother,

and her husband William,

who was heir to the massive Winchester rifle fortune.

[rhythmic music]

- [Dan] The Winchester 1873 repeating rifle

is touted as the rifle that won the West.

And widow Sarah now owns 50% of the company.

- Sarah inherits $20 million,

which would be half a billion dollars in today's terms.

But all these resources do nothing

to heal the grief in her heart.

- She starts asking questions of,

why is this happening to me?

What is it about me that has caused so much loss in my life?

And she starts to worry that she might even be cursed.

In this moment of vulnerability,

she chooses to consult a spiritualist.

- This medium tells her she is cursed

because her fortune is blood money.

The spirits of all the Native Americans and others

that were killed by the Winchester rifles

are essentially exacting revenge.

[thunder cracking]

- She's told by the medium that the only way

to lift the curse is to uproot herself, move west,

and build an enormous house as an act of tribute

for the lives lost by the fortune she has inherited.

- [Holly] Sarah moves out to California

and she buys a pretty modest farmhouse.

It's eight rooms.

But it's on a massive tract of land.

And Sarah begins building.

- She employs large carpentry crews, round the clock,

building room after room, hallway after hallway.

- She adds hundreds of rooms to this house.

- [Dan] But it's not just the size

of the project that's stunning,

it's the bizarre layout.

- There are very tiny doors that open to huge ballrooms.

And there are massive doors that just open to a brick wall.

There's skylights in the floor.

- Sarah is doing this because according to lore,

she's trying to confuse spirits and send them off track.

[frenzied music]

- Crews work independently.

None of them know what the other crews are doing.

- This house becomes such a cockamamie arrangement of rooms

no one can make their way through the house

except for her.

- It's hard to even call it a maze

because a maze has a purpose.

You're supposed to end up somewhere.

This is just strange and bizarre.

- Workers start experiencing odd cold spots,

random things moving.

Several workers say they see the outline

in the shape of Native American warriors

happening again and again.

[enigmatic music]

Someone says they see the apparition of an old woman

holding a candle.

Sarah's assertion that this is about the spirit world

suddenly might hold a little water.

- [Dan] By 1922, Sarah has spent $5 million

on this 160-room tribute to her own torment.

The one thing that finally halts the project?

Her own mortality.

- Sarah dies in September of 1922,

and construction immediately stops.

In fact, there are nails half banged into walls.

And today, it is one of the most widely-visited curios

in the California area.

- Take it from me,

outsmarting angry ghosts is difficult work.

Well done, Sarah.

- Off the coast of Brazil lies an island so deadly

it's been sealed off by the government.

No residents, no tourists,

just thousands of venomous reasons to stay away.

Welcome to Snake Island.

[snakes hissing]

- There's approximately five snakes per square meter.

That is a ton of snakes.

- By all accounts, it is essentially

a moving carpet of serpents.

[apprehensive music]

- Snake Island is formed at the end of the last ice age,

when rising ocean waters isolate what had been a peninsula

off the coast of Brazil and they make this island.

And in doing so, they isolate a population of snakes.

- [Dan] Specifically one of the most venomous snakes

in the world, the Golden Lancehead Viper.

- The Golden Lancehead population

that's left on Snake Island

quickly goes through all the available prey.

And then the only thing left to eat are birds,

which they don't normally eat.

And that forces them

into some pretty tremendous evolutionary pathways.

Now when a Golden Lancehead, which is a venomous snake,

attacks its normal prey, a mammal, it bites it,

the mammal walks away, doesn't get too far,

and the snake can easily find it.

But with birds, the bird can fly away

and the snake doesn't get a meal.

So evolution favors Golden Lanceheads

with more potent venom so that they can bite a bird

and have it die instantly.

- The snakes on that island have a venom

that is estimated to be five times as deadly

as the venom for mainland snakes.

- So it's creating this kind of super snake on this island

that can thrive.

[snake hissing]

- [Dan] You would imagine no one in their right mind

would ever set foot on this island.

Rumor has it that sailors prefer to stay on burning boats

rather than swim ashore here.

But some have tried.

[dramatic music]

- In the early 1900s,

a group of entrepreneurial banana farmers

go to Snake Island in the hopes of establishing

a banana plantation.

They burn down a bunch of vegetation

to plant the banana fields,

and that's when they see all the snakes.

[snake snarling] [snakes hissing]

They realized immediately this is not a place

not only for a banana plantation,

this is not a place for human beings to stay.

- So in 1910, they decided to build a lighthouse

to warn people to steer clear of this island.

- It's probably a pretty difficult job description,

in that here you are invited to inhabit

a very picturesque lighthouse on an island

inhabited by one of the most venomous snakes in the world,

and a lot of them.

- So they do find a lighthouse keeper

who's willing to take this job,

and he brings his family to Snake Island.

- [Dan] According to local lore, life on Snake Island

goes about as well as you think it would.

[apprehensive music] [snake hissing]

- The legend is one night,

supposedly someone left a window open,

the snakes slithered in, and killed the entire family.

[snake snarling]

Snake Island is basically communicating to mankind,

you are not welcome here, you will die here.

[snakes hissing]

- The lighthouse on Snake Island still stands today,

but it is automated so no human has to set foot

anywhere near it.

[snake snarling]

If snakes don't scare you off,

this next spot just might freeze you in your tracks.

[enigmatic music]

- As soon as you see pictures of Lake Natron,

you know that something strange is happening here.

It seems eerie, dead, and otherworldly.

- It's 13 miles away from a volcano.

The locals call it the Mountain of God.

And it spits out carbonatite lava.

And that stuff is pretty extraordinary

because it's calcium, sodium, and carbon dioxide.

And that's what makes it so corrosive.

[enigmatic music]

- [Dan] This is currently the only place on Earth

spewing this particularly nasty kind of lava.

And much of it makes its way into Lake Natron.

- So water is constantly flowing into the lake,

carrying with it minerals.

And then the water evaporates off the surface,

and it leaves behind a high concentration

of sodium carbonates.

This makes the lake extremely alkaline.

It has a similar pH to straight ammonia.

[enigmatic music]

- Alkaline is the opposite of acidic,

but the effects that it'll have on you

are equally corrosive.

If you were to drink some of that water,

you're gonna feel it immediately on your lips

as it goes down your tongue and into your esophagus.

All along the way, nothing but horror and pain.

[apprehensive music]

Even though most of the animals avoid it,

sometimes animals do get in the lake.

And they basically become petrified.

It's like they looked at Medusa.

- Creatures that perish in Lake Natron

don't actually turn to stone.

They become calcified,

meaning they are encrusted in these mineral salts

in such a way that preserves their bodies.

- There are these pictures of these birds that are dead.

They look like they're still alive

but alive like a zombie is alive.

[enigmatic music]

- [Dan] Incredibly, not everything

that touches this strange lake dies.

- Perhaps most marvelous of all,

you have two and a half million lesser flamingos

who don't just live at this lake,

but they actually nest there.

- The flamingos are especially adapted to this environment.

They have thick scales on their legs

that allow them to withstand

this highly corrosive environment.

And then all the salts that they're constantly ingesting,

they have special salt glands near their beaks

that pull salt out of their bloodstream and expel it.

- [Dan] The algae they eat are also peculiar.

- There's a special kind of algae

that thrives in these conditions

and occasionally has seasonal blooms

that turn it a very red color,

which actually provides the pigment

that makes those flamingos pink.

- It's astounding that this body of water

produces such visions of beauty and horror.

It just goes to show you even the most tranquil places

can have a deadly edge.

- If you're drawing a map of the weirdest places in America,

start with one line,

because along this stretch of latitude,

the bizarre, unexplained, and top secret

all seem to collide.

[enigmatic music]

- It is spring of 1975,

and ranchers across Colorado

begin discovering dead cows in their fields.

- These cows aren't just dead,

they're mutilated in really bizarre ways.

Ears, eyes, udders, genitals have all been removed

with surgical precision.

- These cows are typically found lying on their left side

and there's no blood.

Now we need to understand that cows

have five gallons of blood in them.

To find a dead cow that's been mutilated

with no blood anywhere, well, that's weird.

- [Dan] Over the next six months,

the body count skyrockets to 200,

and local ranchers want answers.

- Game and wildlife officials are certain

that it must be the work of scavengers,

and yet there are no footprints.

There is no damage to the surrounding vegetation.

- There's no claw marks, or teeth marks,

or any sort of sign that something was chewing on them.

- [Dan] As similar reports start pouring in

from 11 other states, the FBI has no choice but to act.

- A common theory that pops up

is that some sort of satanic cult

is running around the country mutilating cows.

- The Feds perform stakeouts, autopsies.

They look for witnesses.

They come up with nothing.

- [Dan] Meanwhile, local investigators

come up with their own unusual theory.

- Most of these deaths cluster

around a single line of latitude

known as the north 37th parallel,

which crosses Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.

- One New Mexico deputy sheriff,

a guy by the name of Chuck Zukowski,

finds something interesting.

The cow mutilations correlate

with known UFO sightings that have occurred during that time

across this one line of latitude.

- Also, there are an awful lot of important

and sometimes secret government and military facilities

all along that same line,

Fort Knox, Area 51,

Air Force bases, missile silos.

- The 37th parallel correlations

start to engender speculation

that maybe the cattle mutilations

and some of the related events, like UFO sightings,

are signs of a secret government op.

Maybe some strange airborne weapon

is being tested on the mutilated cows.

- This theory gets so serious in fact

that the National Guard orders their helicopter pilots

to fly above 2,000 feet

when they're flying over cattle ranches

because of a legitimate fear that ranchers

will start taking potshots at US military helicopters

to protect their cattle.

[gun firing] [enigmatic music]

- In the end, after 50 years of investigation

of this mystery, we still have no smoking gun

or alien death ray.

What we have is thousands of dead cows.

- Meanwhile, 7,354 miles away is another strange location

where dead livestock is the least of its residents' worries.

[enigmatic music]

- It is a pretty average day

for this young Cameroonian on his bicycle,

riding from his village to the village of Nyos.

Well, he's riding down the road with his wagon behind him,

and he encounters a dead antelope

right in the middle of the road.

"Great," he thinks, "that's free meat to feed my family."

Straps it to his wagon, continues on his way,

only to encounter another dead antelope,

and then dead rats, and dead cows,

and all kinds of livestock are dead all around him.

And this isn't looking right at all.

- And as he approaches the village,

he realizes that it is freakishly silent.

- So he goes into one of the neighbor's houses

and finds that all those people are dead.

He goes to another house, same thing.

- He begins seeing dead bodies around cooking fires,

dead bodies sitting at tables, dead bodies in their homes.

- He rides his bike to Lake Nyos,

where that village is named for,

and finds hundreds of dead bodies

lying along the lake shore.

- Stranger still, there are no flies buzzing around.

They're completely gone.

- The buildings are all intact.

Everything looks fine

other than this weird, silent death scene.

- What you find here is 1,700 dead people,

thousands of dead livestock.

There's nothing left living.

And even the tiny insects that feast on the dead

are not even present.

Everything has been killed off.

What can you imagine is going on here?

Has there been some sort of new weapon tested

that does not leave a trace

but yet kills every living thing?

It's the stuff of science fiction.

- [Dan] Scientists from across Africa, the US, and France

are sent to investigate.

What could cause such mass casualties?

- Lake Nyos is sitting on top of a magma pool,

where carbon dioxide is venting continuously

into the waters in the depths of the lake

and reaching super high concentrations.

- So what happens at Lake Nyos is that there's a landslide,

and the landslide displaces

some of the water at the surface,

allowing the carbon dioxide that's trapped below to escape.

- That's what causes a limnic eruption to occur,

limnic meaning a lake eruption.

And then all of that trapped gas surges to the surface

and suffocates any living thing that's caught in the cloud.

[dreary music]

- [Dan] Even scarier, experts worry

a tragedy like this can happen again.

- There's another lake, Lake Kivu,

that has 2 million people living around it.

- If a similar disaster occurs there,

estimates state that it could result

in the deaths of 4 million people.

[enigmatic music]

Lake Kivu is without question and in no exaggerated terms,

it's a ticking time bomb.

- With all of the dangerous

and unpredictable places out there,

it kind of makes you wonder,

how on earth do people sleep at night?

- Portland, Oregon, New Orleans, Louisiana, Austin, Texas

all proudly claim the title of weirdest city in America.

But there's a town in Florida that might have them all beat,

a place where unusual individuals are the norm.

[dramatic music]

- In the early and mid-20th century,

traveling circuses and sideshows

are still a popular form of entertainment in America.

A caravan can roll into town

and transform a sleepy neighborhood

into something fantastic and out of this world.

There are rides, exotic animal acts,

and of course the freak show.

[rhythmic music]

- These sideshows highlight dwarves, giants,

bearded ladies, conjoined twins.

For many of these folks,

this is the best opportunity they have to make a living.

But life is grueling in the sideshow.

People get tired of being stared at for money

and they really just wanna find a place

they can call their own.

- [Dan] Welcome to Gibsonton, aka Gibtown.

Population, strange.

[upbeat music]

- Gibtown is on the Gulf Coast of Florida,

and it becomes this place

where a lot of these circus performers can put down roots.

And it's somewhere that being atypical

is not perceived as unusual, it's perfectly normal.

- One of the first residents of Gibtown

is Al Tomaini, known as the world's tallest man.

He stands at 7'11".

He becomes the local fire chief, starts a fishing club,

and even settles down with Evelyn the Half Woman.

- [Dan] Word spreads on the sideshow circuit,

and by 1967, more than 100 circus performers

called Gibtown home.

- This is a place

where these circus performers could thrive,

like Louise Capps Hill, an armless girl,

is able to drive a tractor, milk cows,

and raise her kids on her farm.

Conjoined twins run the fruit stand.

Grady Stiles the Lobster Boy makes the place his home.

- [Dan] But this utopia won't last forever.

- The popularity of traveling sideshows erodes,

and fewer and fewer new performers move into Gibtown.

By the 1980s, it pretty much becomes

a circus retirement community.

[dramatic music]

Most of the old guard has passed away by now.

There are some museums and a few old timers left,

so if you hurry, you can still catch

a faded glimpse of the old glory of Gibtown.

[dramatic music]

- The curtain falls on one community of wonder

and opens on a tale that goes even deeper.

[dramatic music]

- It's the 1820s, we're in Washington DC,

and President John Quincy Adams

is being asked to fund an expedition

to send search parties deep beneath the Earth's surface,

hoping to discover subterranean worlds

and conduct trade

with a race of people who maybe live there.

According to some, Quincy Adams is a believer

in what's called the Hollow Earth theory.

[enigmatic music]

- The idea that the Earth may be hollow

and hide hidden worlds is actually a theory

that goes back all the way to the ancient Greeks,

but in the 1700s and in the 1800s

is when it really picks up steam in Europe and the Americas.

There's one man in particular,

a guy by the name of John Cleves Symmes,

who, in 1818, writes a piece

known as "Circular No. 1."

- Symmes postulates that there's two pathways

to the hollow center of the Earth,

one on the North Pole and one on the South Pole.

And that if we dig deep enough,

we can find those pathways and get to this new world.

- Symmes is ready to make this happen.

And so he calls out for 100 brave souls

to help him dig into the Earth

and to try to find these hidden worlds

that lie just beneath our feet.

- As an enticement, he tells these would-be volunteers

they're gonna find worlds full of men, full of riches,

and full of, this great phrase, "thrifty vegetables".

I guess this is what a world looks like

before the discovery of gold,

that the chance for riches

comes in the form of "thrifty vegetables".

- Now most people would obviously think

that an idea like this is crazy,

but it's not that far-fetched

to the President of the United States.

- There's some debate about whether Adams

was all in on the Hollow Earth theory

or if he just wanted to do some exploration

of the North and South Poles.

- Sadly, for Symmes, and Quincy Adams, and the Mole people,

Adams is voted out in favor of Andrew Jackson,

who was far too busy with above ground natives

to bother with any subterranean natives.

With government funding gone,

Symmes would die a few years later,

never realizing his dream of meeting the Mole people

and eating their "thrifty vegetables".

- While we have yet to dig 4,000 miles

to the center of the Earth to uncover a new world,

there are plenty of unusual places

right here on the surface.

- What does it take to start your own country?

A good idea, some ambition,

and a decaying maritime structure.

Welcome to the self-proclaimed kingdom

that proves anything is possible.

- Six and a half miles off the coast of England

is a tiny platform

about 60 feet off of the ocean's surface.

It looks like, from a distance,

maybe that it's an oil rig.

- This small little speck,

about the size of maybe two tennis courts,

is the Principality of Sealand.

[dramatic music]

Does the United Kingdom, the United States,

or the United Nations recognize

this small little micro nation?

No, but its royal family and small number of citizens

have fought fiercely for Sealand's independence.

- [Dan] Before asserting its itty-bitty independence,

Sealand served as an anti-aircraft post

during World War II.

There were three others like it, called Maunsell Forts.

- Their job was to shoot out of the sky

German Luftwaffe bombers.

[suspenseful music] [bombers rumbling]

And they were pretty successful.

They shot down 22 enemy aircraft and 30 V-1 rockets.

- [Dan] After the war ends, the battered British servicemen

leave the post to return to their families back home,

all except one.

- He's a retired major named Patrick Roy Bates.

And he and his family take up permanent residence

on one of these platforms.

- [Dan] Roy isn't just making this a vacation home getaway.

His grand vision?

To make this tiny fort an independent and free nation.

- The reason he's able to do this is that at this point,

a nation's sovereignty ends

at about three nautical miles out from the coast.

So these forts that have been built six and a half miles out

puts it beyond the reach of the United Kingdom.

That puts Roy in a position to say,

"This is out in international waters."

- [Dan] That might tell us how this retired major

claimed this former fortress for his own,

but it doesn't tell us why.

The answer is pretty unexpected.

- One of Bates' motivations

is that he is a World War II veteran.

He has fought against fascism,

and now 20 years later, in the mid-1960s,

he is disgusted with the way the British government

is repressing freedom of expression, freedom of speech,

and even different kinds of music.

- He's dealing with a country

that, because of the Cold War, censors popular culture.

And from his platform

just outside of the international limit,

he will broadcast a pirate radio station.

- Patrick sees the possibilities

beyond just setting up a pirate radio station.

If he's successful in creating his own micro-nation,

that means creating his own constitution,

issuing his own currency.

The possibilities really are endless.

- The British government is not happy with Bates,

and they jam his radio station.

Bates resists this, and in 1967,

decides that he's going to formally announce

the sovereign independence of this nation.

And he names it the Principality of Sealand.

[rhythmic music]

And he gives himself the title of prince

and his wife the title of princess.

- This is truly a slap in the face

to the British government.

To show Roy and his family that they mean business,

the government has the British Royal Navy

go out and destroy the other three Maunsell Forts.

- [Dan] The Bates family is unfazed by this show of force,

so the British Navy tries a more direct approach.

- The British government decides to send a message

by sailing around the Sealand platform,

harassing the family.

- Roy's 16-year-old son, Michael Bates,

fires a 22-caliber pistol shot

down at the boat as a warning.

That does not sit well with the British Royal Navy.

- [Dan] You'd think a civilian

firing upon the British Navy in broad daylight

would be an open and shut case,

but the proceedings take an unbelievable turn.

- Michael discharged this gun outside of UK jurisdiction,

meaning that they can't pursue it.

The showdown with the Crown government

attracts the attention of a German businessman

named Alexander Achenbach.

He sees potential for an offshore enclave

where money can be parked with no questions asked,

with no taxes being levied.

- Achenbach decides to reach out to Roy to talk to him

about possibly becoming a citizen of Sealand.

maybe even buying the whole place.

And he invites them to meet him in Austria to discuss it.

But this is all a trick

because while the prince and princess of Sealand

are on their way to Austria,

Achenbach is flying a helicopter

full of German and Dutch mercenaries

to go invade Sealand while they're gone.

- So Achenbach takes the Bates' son Michael hostage

and declares himself to be the prime minister of Sealand.

This may be the smallest coup in recorded history.

- [Dan] The coup may be small,

but they're messing with the wrong monarch.

- Let's remember that Achenbach is a businessman

and a scientist, and Roy is a retired major.

Bates organizes his own force, which flies in

and air assaults onto Sealand using helicopters.

- Most of Achenbach's men flee.

However, Roy manages to take Achenbach as a prisoner.

- [Dan] Bates allows his prisoner

the proverbial one phone call while in custody

to contact the German embassy in London.

This is where things take another strange turn.

- The German officials contact their British counterparts,

and the British officials say,

"We don't have any jurisdiction there,

so you're on your own."

Now the German government has to negotiate

with this tiny, little micro-nation

over the release of a German citizen.

- Incredibly, this coup d'etat

only further demonstrates the viability

and reality of Roy's Principality.

- Today, Sealand, like any other country,

has its own currency featuring the royal family,

its own stamps, even its own constitution.

They can also stamp your passport when you visit.

Though be warned, there's not a single decent hotel.

- In Canada, off the Sunshine Coast

in the Strait of Georgia,

one quiet beach has earned a strange reputation.

And it's not for the views.

[enigmatic music]

- It's 2007.

A little girl is out on the beach

of Jedediah Island in British Columbia.

And she sees this large size 12 men's sneaker

washed up on the beach.

[dramatic music]

- So she runs over.

She sort of looks inside the sneaker.

[apprehensive music]

- And finds a foot.

[passerby shrieking]

[ominous music]

Was this a murder victim?

Did someone fall off their boat

and get chopped up by the propeller?

Who knows?

But it's pretty disconcerting.

- [Dan] The only comfort locals take

is that this horrific discovery

seems to be an isolated incident,

that is until it's not.

- Less than a week later, on nearby Gabriola Island,

another sneaker washes up with another foot inside.

[ominous music]

- But the sneakers don't match,

and both feet are right feet.

So this is a second person, a second victim.

- You now have a pattern.

- 2008, a size 11 Nike washes up on Valdes Island,

also with a severed foot.

- In November, 2008, a woman's New Balance shoe

washes up on Kirkland Island,

also with a severed foot inside.

- November, 2011, men's size 11 hiking boot, foot inside.

- [Dan] Over the next 14 years,

more than 20 severed feet,

complete with late model athletic footwear,

wash up on nearby beaches.

- This is causing terror along the coast.

And to make matters worse,

now pranksters are putting chicken bones inside sneakers

and sending them afloat.

- [Dan] Investigators are flummoxed.

Could all of these victims be connected?

- None of them show any evidence of having been hacked off,

or sawed off, or chopped off through human action.

All of them are severed through the ankle joint

by decomposition.

- [Dan] Eager to calm the public,

forensic investigators start performing experiments

in deep water decomposition, with an unusual test dummy.

- Investigators take some pig cadavers

and sink them to the bottom of the Salish Sea,

the area where all these feet are washing up.

And what they note during these experiments

is that the scavengers,

crabs, lobsters, things that are down there,

immediately start to disarticulate the body.

- [Dan] Disarticulating is a fancy way

of saying pulling the body apart at the joints,

you know, just like humans do to crabs

and lobsters when we eat them.

Apparently the feet are often the first to go.

But why are they only showing up

in this one particular area?

[enigmatic music]

- It turns out the Salish Sea

has these sort of rotational currents.

As they're circling around,

western and eastern winds blow them back and forth.

And so rather than stuff flowing out to sea,

it sort of circles in a particular region

to push them up onto these beaches.

[dramatic music]

- The cause of all these severed feet

is actually natural and it's not the signature move

of some crazed serial killer.

- Authorities in British Columbia

are so happy with this explanation

that they actually tell the public not to worry

if more dismembered feet wash up,

because, and I quote, "This is no cause for alarm."

If that beach scene isn't unsettling enough,

just wait until you see what turns up in the basement

of one very surprised homeowner.

[apprehensive music]

- In 1963, in the Turkish town of Derinkuyu,

a man is doing a home improvement project.

Now, most of us who do this kind of DIY stuff,

you expect to find old stuff in the walls,

you know, old photos, and maybe some jewelry.

Well, this guy takes a sledgehammer,

and he hits the wall, and he hits it again and again,

and he breaks through.

[sledgehammer banging] [suspenseful music]

What he finds is a passageway,

which, when he crawls into it,

leads to another tunnel, and another tunnel beyond that.

- [Dan] It's the 2,000-year-old lost city of Derinkuyu,

one of the largest subterranean towns in the world.

[enigmatic music]

- What he uncovers is absolutely unbelievable,

a tunneled city that can house up to 20,000 people,

animals, livestock, grain stores.

The first eight stories have ventilation shafts

that ensure that fresh air circulates

through the entire subterranean city.

- [Dan] But why build such an elaborate city underground?

- The main purpose of this underground city

is for the people of Derinkuyu

to come in and hide from outside forces,

from dangerous people who may have infiltrated the area.

- One of the most amazing sites

is there are these huge millstones

which are in place still to this day.

They have a round hole in the middle,

and you can roll this millstone into place,

which would then block the tunnel

and stop the enemy from going any further.

- This defense system worked so well

the city remains in use until 1923,

before it's sealed up and nearly lost to history.

Good thing for DIY projects.

[dramatic music]

We visited places that drive people

to the brink of insanity,

others that lead us to question what else is out there,

and one that has a whole bunch of venomous snakes.

These are not only the strangest places on Earth,

they are also the very best of the unbelievable.

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