Original subtitles

[suspenseful music]

[thrilling music]

- [Danny] Mysteries can be buried anywhere.

Under the earth.

[rumbling] [plane engine buzzes]

Beneath the sea.

[thrilling music] [plane woosh]

Or even right under our own feet.

[thrilling music] [coins jingle]

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes what we find can change history.

[thrilling music]

Tonight we're digging up all kinds of trouble,

from a mysterious potion...

[thrilling music]

- Floating inside are rusty nails and hair.

- The liquid is not rum, not wine.

It's 200-year-old human urine.

[thrilling music]

- [Danny] To a backyard discovery

that nearly ends with a bang.

- She goes pale.

She yells out to him, "Stop! That might be a bomb!"

[thrilling music]

- [Danny] To a cursed relic flushed and forgotten.

[thrilling music]

- What they did to incur such a horrible curse was

serious enough that the person

went ahead and invoked

Satan along with two demons.

[thrilling music]

- Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.

[thrilling music]

There are a few rules

that come with hunting for scrap metal.

Follow the law, use a magnet,

and most important, if it glows, let it go.

[eerie music]

- On September 13th, 1987 in Goiania, Brazil,

two scavenger hunters

are combing through an abandoned hospital

to see if they can find anything valuable.

As they go through the hallways and patients' rooms,

they're looking for metal that they can sell for scrap.

[thrilling music]

- After a long day of searching, though,

they have little to show for it,

so they decide to pack up and head home.

But on their way out,

they encounter what looks like a machine

with a large stainless steel casing.

[thrilling music]

- [Danny] There's just one problem.

It's way too big to haul out.

- These guys aren't going to just walk away from a payday,

so they grab screwdrivers and hammers

and start taking the machine apart.

[thrilling music]

Piece by piece, they load the parts

into a rusty wheelbarrow and head for home.

[thrilling music]

- [Paul] Soon the guys start feeling sick,

vomiting, diarrhea, and dizziness,

but they chalk it up to something they ate

and try to soldier on.

Later, they haul it over to a junk dealer

to sell it for a profit.

[thrilling music]

- [Danny] The merchant then stashes the parts

in his garage for safekeeping.

- [Dr. Hakeem] That night, the dealer walks into his garage

and he sees something strange.

[thrilling music]

He sees a faint blue light

glowing from a canister in the scrap pile.

As he approaches, he notices that the source of the light

is what looks like a powder made up of crushed gemstones.

[thrilling music]

- [Paul] He takes the canister home

and he shows it off to friends and family.

His whole neighborhood turns out

to see this mysterious substance.

He passes out fragments as souvenirs

and some of his friends' kids even rub it

on their body like glitter.

[intriguing music]

- Over the next couple days, several guests become sick.

Some so much so they're rushed to the hospital.

[thrilling music] [siren blaring]

But it's the same symptoms as the guys who discovered it,

nausea, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea.

This clearly is not food poisoning.

- [Dr. Hakeem] The junk dealer's wife is the first to connect

the dots.

She takes the canister,

goes to the local public health department,

slams it on a counter,

and tells anyone who's willing to listen,

"This is killing my family."

Officials think they know what's going on,

so they pull out a scintillation counter,

a device used for measuring radiation,

and when they point it at the canister,

it lights up like a Christmas tree.

[thrilling music]

- [Danny] The reading confirms their worst fear.

It's not just radioactive, it's deadly.

[thrilling music]

- [Austin] It turns out that the machine that they dismantled

was a radiotherapy unit designed to shrink tumors

with controlled doses of radiation.

[thrilling music]

And that canister with the blue glow

contained the radioactive agent Cesium-137.

[thrilling music]

- [Danny] Even scarier, now that it's been unleashed,

dangerous amounts of radiation

are spreading across the entire city.

[thrilling music]

- [Dr. Hakeem] Government teams sweep the area in helicopters

with radiation detectors.

Traces of radiation are found as far as 100 miles away,

and 40 homes are so contaminated

they have to be completely demolished.

[thrilling music]

- [John] In the end, over 100,000 people are treated

for radiation exposure, and four die from its effects.

The cruel irony to all of this is that a machine

that was designed to save people's lives

ended up hurting an entire community.

[thrilling music]

- [Danny] From a deadly glow in Brazil

to something far darker hidden in the California mountains,

this next find reveals the troubling end

to a sky-high mystery.

[eerie music]

- [Dr. Hakeem] It's September 29th, 2008 in Mammoth Lakes,

California.

A sporting goods store manager named Preston

Morrow is hiking with his dog through the

Sierra Nevada mountains.

On a whim, Preston decides

to take a diversion off the main trail.

[thrilling music]

He cuts through dense underbrush and steep terrain,

and then something unusual catches his eye.

[intriguing music]

- He crouches down for a further look

and he sees a wallet with a pilot's license,

a bunch of ID cards, and $1,000 in cash.

[intriguing music]

- Thinking that the items belong to a hiker,

he decides to bring everything home with him

to try and find the owner.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] Preston shows the items to his coworkers

and when they see the name on the ID, they're shocked.

[intriguing music]

- Steve Fossett is a millionaire adventurer

who has made headlines all over the world.

[intriguing music]

- [Steve] He's climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

He swam the English Channel.

He's raced hot air balloons with Richard Branson.

This guy's a legend.

- [Danny] But for the past year, Fossett has been missing

after he took off in a small single-engine airplane

from the mountains in Nevada on September 3rd, 2007.

- [Dr. Hakeem] It was supposed to be a short pleasure flight,

but he was never heard from again.

[intriguing music]

- [Paul] A massive search effort was put together

to find any trace of the millionaire or his plane.

But no trace was ever found.

[intriguing music]

- [Jen] Fossett's disappearance shocked the world,

but among pilots, the Sierra Nevadas were known to be

so dangerous that they had a chilling nickname for them.

The Nevada Triangle.

[intriguing music]

- [Adam] Much like the marine Bermuda Triangle

where ships and sailors have often disappeared,

in the Nevada Triangle,

over 2,000 aircraft have been lost...

since World War II.

- [Danny] Theories range from wormhole

to alien abductions.

But experts suggest a more down-to-earth explanation

for Fossett's disappearance.

[intriguing music]

- [Paul] This area of the Sierra Nevadas

is notorious for downdrafts.

These are bursts of wind

that can push with incredible force anything,

especially small light aircraft, in the mountain passes.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] Thanks to Preston Morrow's discovery,

investigators have their first real lead in nearly a year,

sparking a new search for answers

and a chance to finally solve the mystery.

- [Dr. Hakeem] Search teams returned to the area

and eventually find Fossett's plane,

just a quarter mile from where his ID cards were found.

And what they determined is that, at full speed,

Fossett's plane slammed into the side of the mountain...

[thrilling music]

completely destroying the plane in a second.

- [Danny] Among the debris,

searchers uncover the last piece of the puzzle.

- [Adam] Two small bone fragments are recovered

from the wreckage of the airplane.

[intriguing music]

Their DNA matched to Steve Fossett,

proving that this millionaire adventurer,

who had conquered so much of the natural world,

ultimately met his fate in the Nevada Triangle.

[intriguing music]

[eerie music]

- [Dr. Hakeem] In 2018, Matthw Emanuel decides to have

some landscaping done in his backyard in Staten Island.

As workers clear space to install a fence,

one of them notices a rusty metal box tangled in poison ivy.

He calls Matthew over to get the sign off

before moving this thing.

And Matthew says, "Go right ahead,"

because it's been an eyesore

for four years since he bought this property.

- He figured it was just an old electrical box,

but as the landscaper clears away the ivy,

he sees that there are no wires attached to this box.

So he digs it out...

[intriguing music]

flips it over...

[intriguing music]

and notices a dial on top of it.

[intriguing music]

This is not an electrical box. It's a safe.

[intriguing music]

- [Dr. Hakeem] They forget about the fence

and turn their attention to opening it.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] Inside the safe, they see a familiar face.

- Benjamin Franklin is staring back at them

from several thick stacks of $100 bills.

Three-inch-thick stacks.

They also find diamonds, jewelry, gold.

This is a literal treasure trove.

[intriguing music]

- [Dr. Hakeem] Matthew rushes inside, his hands shaking.

He weighs the jewelry on his kitchen scale

and it's over a pound of gems and precious metals.

[intriguing music]

He peels the damp bills apart and hangs them to dry.

He counts them, and it adds up to $16,000 cash.

[intriguing music]

And the gold, jewelry, and gemstones

is worth probably even more.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] Just as Matthew starts dreaming

about how to spend his unexpected windfall,

he finds something else in the safe.

[intriguing music]

- [Austin] Tucked in with the valuables and the money

is a piece of paper with an address written on it.

And it's the house two doors down.

Matthew's neighbors are an older couple,

and he heads off and he knocks on their door.

- [Danny] When they open the door,

he asks a simple question,

"Have you ever been robbed?"

[intriguing music]

Their answer is, "Yes."

- [Andrew] Back in 2005, long before Matthew moved into the

area, a thief began terrorizing the neighborhood.

Over a 10-year period, 100 homes were burglarized,

$4 million in cash and valuables stolen.

- [Danny] The man behind that decade-long crime wave

is Robert Costanzo, better known to the press

as the Ninja Burglar.

[intriguing music]

- [Kavitha] In 2016, he was caught and sentenced

to 22 years in prison.

As to how the safe ended up in Matthew's backyard,

nobody can say for sure.

But police believe that the thief was caught mid-heist,

an alarm went off, and he took the safe and just ran.

[thrilling music]

- [Austin] But it's not that easy to run with a 100-pound

safe, so he ditched it in a neighbor's yard

before making his escape.

And there it sat, for years, unnoticed.

[thrilling music]

- [Andrew] When Matthew shows the recovered treasure

to his neighbors, they're speechless.

They're, of course, happy to get the cash back,

but they are most relieved about the jewelry,

most of which was family heirlooms

that they thought had been lost forever.

So, of course, Matthew returns everything to his neighbors.

Police estimate that the total value of the cash and jewelry

is around $52,000,

but the value of doing the right thing,

priceless.

[eerie music]

- [Danny] Next, another unexpected backyard discovery,

only this one could wipe out an entire neighborhood.

[eerie music]

- [Andrew] It's May 1st, 2021,

and Sam and Pamela Coffey are clearing away grapevines

in their backyard in Missouri.

And as they do so, Pamela notices something odd

sticking out of the newly disturbed dirt.

It looks a little bit like a fish,

so she picks it up, takes it inside to rinse it off.

[intriguing music]

- It looks like there are Japanese characters on it,

and even after they've rinsed it,

they still can't really read it well.

So, Sam gets out a knife

and tries to scrape some of the dirt

out of where the characters are.

[intriguing music]

Pamela takes a couple of photographs of the object,

and runs it through an image recognition app.

[intriguing music]

- As Sam is poking and prodding this object,

Pam's looking on the internet, and she goes pale.

She yells out to him, "Stop! That might be a bomb!"

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] The search results are clear.

It looks like a World War II Japanese Navy mortar.

And it's in their kitchen.

[intriguing music]

- [Andrew] So, Sam carefully picks it up,

takes it out to the driveway,

gently places it on the ground, and calls 911.

[intriguing music]

- [John] Soon the police, the ATF,

and a bomb squad show up at their house.

[intriguing music]

The blast radius of this thing is potentially 500 feet.

The whole neighborhood's in danger now.

[intriguing music]

- [Andrew] A bomb disposal robot is deployed.

It picks up the bomb, places it into a blast-proof truck,

which drives it to a local Air Force base

where a few hours later it's safely detonated.

[intriguing music] [bomb blasting]

- [Danny] When news of the discovery gets out,

the public is stunned.

How did a live Japanese bomb end up in Missouri?

- [Martin] Very quickly, a theory emerges

that this device got to Missouri

as a part of the Fu-Go campaign of 1944 and 1945,

when the Japanese launched a barrage of over 9,000 balloons

that were equipped with explosive devices.

[intriguing music]

- [Andrew] The idea is that these devices would make it

to the US mainland, drop, and detonate in thick brush,

starting forest fires and instigating widespread panic

in the country.

[thrilling music]

Most of these bombs never made it to the US mainland,

but some did.

So, possibly, another one of these

veered a little bit off course,

landed in the dirt to Missouri, sank into the earth,

and stayed there, unexploded,

until it was found 80 years later.

[intriguing music]

- [John] Eventually, Sam and Pamela invest in a metal

detector and they go ahead and they scan their entire backyard.

Fortunately, they don't come across

any funny fish-shaped charges,

and they've been free of any explosives ever since.

[thrilling music]

[intriguing music]

- [Don] In 2010, an elderly German man named Cornelius

Gurlitt is stopped crossing the Swiss-German border

with 9,000 euros in cash.

[intriguing music]

It's just under the legal reporting threshold,

so it catches their attention.

They wave him on, but border agents report it

to local authorities.

Investigators decide to follow up

and pay Cornelius a visit at his home in Munich, Germany.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] When the agents enter the apartment,

they discover something astonishing.

[intriguing music]

- This modest apartment is stuffed,

floor to ceiling, with art.

[intriguing music]

We're talking about masterpieces

by some of art's biggest names.

Names like Picasso and Monet.

[intriguing music]

- Altogether, the investigators find

close to 1,200 pieces of artwork

with an estimated worth of close to $1.4 billion.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] How did one of the world's

greatest art collections end up in a tiny Munich apartment?

The answer is shocking.

- Investigators realize that Cornelius Gurlitt

is the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt,

one of four art dealers that Nazis had commissioned

to sell off what Hitler proclaimed to be degenerate art.

This was mostly modern art

deemed to be ungerman by the Nazis.

- [Danny] But some of the pieces had much darker origins.

- The Nazis systematically targeted

Jewish families' private collections,

forcing them to surrender the art

through a combination of both extortion and outright theft.

- [Micah] Jewish collectors faced impossible choices,

either sell their works of art

for lower than their actual value to pay punitive Nazi taxes

or just watch their priceless collections

be confiscated entirely.

[intriguing music]

And it was Hildebrand who brokered everything.

- [Danny] But it turns out

Hildebrand kept a lot of the art for himself.

- [Don] In the years after the war,

those who profited from the Nazi program

were often prosecuted and forced to give back

their dubiously acquired treasure.

So Hildebrand kept quiet about his collection,

and when he died in 1956, he passed it to his widow,

who then later passed it to his son.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] Cornelius holds onto the art for over four decades

until investigators seize the collection.

[intriguing music]

- [Hugo] Cornelius insists to authorities

that his father acquired this art collection legally.

But he agrees to cooperate in at least helping them

determine the origin and provenance of these words.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] Then in 2014,

before investigators can press charges,

Cornelius suddenly passes away,

and he leaves his entire collection,

[intriguing music]

worth over $1 billion,

to the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, Switzerland.

- [Don] With German authorities still investigating

the art's proper ownership, the museum takes the collection

with the promise to return any works

looted from Jewish collectors.

By 2020, 14 stolen masterpieces find their way back

to the descendants of Holocaust victims,

with dozens more still under investigation.

- [Hugo] The rest of the collection,

including hundreds of controversial masterpieces,

are now being displayed in exhibits all around the world.

The hope is that, with each exhibition,

someone somewhere might recognize something

that belongs to their family.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] Hidden art isn't the only thing that can

stir up trouble.

In California, one discovery in the dirt

does the same on a much bigger scale.

[intriguing music]

- [Andrew] In January of 1848,

a carpenter named James Marshall

is overseeing the construction of a sawmill

along the American River in what is now Coloma, California

when he spots a problem.

There's a blockage in the channel

that carries water away from the mill's water wheel

and the wheel isn't turning.

- Marshall calls several of the workers over

and they start digging to clear it out,

get the flow going again,

and suddenly something catches Marshall's eye.

- [Danny] Marshall is no geologist,

but it looks like gold.

[thrilling music]

- [Don] Knowing that gold is malleable,

he picks up a pea-sized pebble and pounds it with a rock.

[intriguing music]

Instead of shattering, it bends.

Marshall holds it up and shouts out to his crew,

"Boys, by God, I believe I found a gold mine."

[intriguing music]

- [John] Marshall brings the nugget to his boss, John Sutter,

who also tests it and concludes that it's the real deal.

The two men decide to keep the discovery quiet

until the mill is finished and fully operational.

- [Paul] Sutter's worried that if word gets out,

that prospectors will come and overrun the property,

prevent his men from getting the sawmill constructed.

- [Andrew] But Sutter just can't help himself.

He ends up bragging about the discovery

in a letter to a friend, and very soon word gets out.

[intriguing music]

By May, any man with enough strength to heft a pickax

heads for Northern California in search of their fortune.

- [John] Soon talk of gold in California

is spreading across the country.

One army officer sends some of the gold east

and it gets into the hands of President James Polk,

who refers to it in his State of the Union message.

- [Danny] From here, the California Gold Rush takes off.

- [Andrew] Between 1849 and 1855, an estimated 750,000

pounds of gold are extracted from the ground,

transforming the American West.

Cities like San Francisco explode in size

and California becomes a state in 1850,

just a few years after it was ceded by Mexico.

- [Danny] While the Gold Rush brings riches to many,

it's less prosperous for the two men

who accidentally started it.

- [John] Just as Sutter feared,

his land is overtaken by rabid miners

who were looking to strike at rich.

They destroy his crops, eat his livestock, and bankrupt it.

In 1850, having lost all of its workers to gold mining,

the sawmill shuts down before ever even being finished.

- [Don] James Marshall suffers an even worse fate.

For his role, the state of California does end up

granting Marshall a $200 per month pension for two years.

It's barely enough to live on.

And so the man who sparked America's biggest gold rush

dies penniless in a small cabin

in Kelsey, California in 1885.

[intriguing music]

[intriguing music]

- [Andrew] It's the summer of 2021

and Skipper Darryl Ertel is piloting his boat

across the glassy waters of Lake Superior.

[intriguing music]

As he passes over a deep trench,

something flickers on his sonar.

[intriguing music]

Something large, 600 feet below, on the lake's floor.

[intriguing music]

Looking closely, he sees the unmistakable shape

of a steamship smokestack.

[intriguing music]

Now he's not aware of any ships of that description

having wrecked anywhere in this area,

so his interest is peaked.

[intriguing music]

- Later, Ertel heads back to the water

with a remote-operated camera

and he sends the camera down into the waters

of Lake Superior,

and the images that start to come back to him

are a bit unsettling.

[intriguing music]

The first thing he sees is a pilot's house, then a hull,

and then finally a name

that's etched into the side of the ship, the Adella Shores.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] What he's found is no ordinary wreck.

Ertel has just unearthed a 112-year-old mystery.

[intriguing music]

- Built in 1894, the Adella Shores was a massive 195-foot,

735-ton wooden steamer.

[intriguing music]

It was designed to haul heavy freight.

In 1909, she followed the steel icebreaker,

Daniel J. Morrell, into a storm.

[eerie music]

The icebreaker managed to push its way through the storm

in these blinding horrible conditions.

But the Adella Shores, well, she vanished without a trace.

[intriguing music]

- The ship and all 14 of its crew are never seen again.

The experts are baffled by this

because a ship this size should have been able

to weather the storm.

Some blamed ice piercing the hull.

But others blamed something darker,

a curse.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] One that may have started

before she even left the dock.

[intriguing music]

- At the launch event for the Adella Shores,

a woman named Bessie, who was the real-life sister

of the ship's namesake Adella,

was responsible for christening it.

[intriguing music]

Now, to christen a ship, you're supposed to break a bottle

of alcohol, like champagne or wine, against the hull.

But Bessie's family had a strict no-alcohol policy.

So instead of a bottle of champagne,

she smashed a bottle of water.

[intriguing music]

Now, the mariners and sailors involved believed

that this immediately cursed the ship,

because it was not a sufficient tribute to them.

- [Danny] What happens next

only reinforces the superstition.

[intriguing music]

- [Sami] Now, only a few years after the christening ceremony,

the Adella Shores sinks in pretty shallow waters.

So, a crew comes, raises the ship, restores it,

the ship goes back into service.

But only a few years after that...

[eerie music]

the same thing happens again.

The Adella Shores sinks in shallow waters,

gets lifted out of the water, gets restored,

goes back onto the water again.

- [Andrew] And then a few years later,

when the ship finally disappears in 1909,

newspapers resurrect old rumors about the cursed vessel.

While we may never know

what ultimately sank the Adella Shores,

we do know one thing.

Thanks to a curious captain,

we have at least solved the location

of one of the lake's great nautical mysteries.

[eerie music]

- [Danny] Not all dark omen stay buried at sea.

This next hill brings the bad luck ashore

and makes it personal.

[eerie music]

- [Sami] It's 2023 and there's a German construction crew

that is busy at work extending the city hall

of Rostock, Germany,

a town that's about 150 miles north of Berlin.

[eerie music]

As an excavator is digging into the side

of this construction site,

it pings off of something very large and really hard.

[eerie music]

When they go to see what the excavator actually hit,

it looks like an old building foundation.

[eerie music]

- [Hugo] They call an archeologist to take over.

When they keep digging out more of this ancient foundation,

they realize that it's actually multiple stone houses

dating back as far as the 13th century.

- [John] Among the ancient structures,

they find a wealth of household treasures,

medieval dishware, even the remains of a water system.

And in one section, they find what appears to be a latrine

with bits of metal at the bottom.

- [Danny] When one researcher decides

to give that metal a closer look,

he notices something strange.

[eerie music]

- [Hugo] One of these pieces looks different from the others.

It's rolled up kind of like a scroll.

When he unfurls it, he sees etchings on it.

The writing is faint,

but the researcher makes out the words,

"Sathanas taleke belzebuk hinrik berith,"

written in a medieval script called blackletter.

- [Danny] Recognizing the words "Satan" and "Beelzebub,"

he quickly realizes they've stumbled

on an ancient curse tablet.

[eerie music]

- Curse tablets were typically sheets of lead

that featured spells with a wide range

of different applications.

According to historians, often they were used

to target ex lovers, rival dancers, and even enemy horses.

- [Paul] But curse tablets had never been found in

Germany before.

Historians had thought that only the ancient Greeks

and Romans used curse tablets in a span of time

going from roughly 800 BC to around 600 AED.

But this curse tablet comes from the 1400s.

[eerie music]

- [Danny] The tablet's age is astonishing,

but the dark forces it calls upon are even more outrageous.

[eerie music]

- This tablet is targeting a couple, Taleke and Henrik.

Now, what they did to incur such a horrible curse,

we have no idea.

But whatever it was, it was something

that was serious enough that the person who made this curse

went ahead and invoked Satan, along with two demons,

Beelzebub and Berith.

[eerie music]

- [Danny] But the true clue to their intent

isn't just the demons they invoked,

it's where they chose to hide the curse.

- [Sami] The fact that this curse tablet was placed in a

latrine is kind of significant

considering that, back in the day,

latrines were kind of seen as a

direct link to the underworld and to Satan himself.

[eerie music]

Whether or not the curse tablet actually worked

remains a mystery.

But clearly this spellcaster meant business.

[eerie music]

[eerie music]

- [Don] It's Saturday, August 10th, 2024 at La Jolla Cove.

Lots of swimmers, snorkelers, and kayakers.

On the water, a group drifts farther from shore

until one of them jerks upright,

nearly knocked off their kayak,

not by a wave, but by a wall of stench.

[suspenseful music]

Rotting, rancid, and unforgettable.

[suspenseful music]

- [Andrew] The kayakers eventually see something in the

distance it's long and bloated.

They assume that it's a sea serpent,

but as they get closer, they realize that it isn't.

- Oh, there we go. - Yeah.

- It's over 12 feet long, with a silvery ribbon-like body.

And the group works to get it onto a paddleboard

so they can drift it to shore.

They're hoping somebody might be able to identify it,

but nobody on the beach has any idea.

So, they call in the pros.

[suspenseful music]

- Scientists with the National Oceanic

and Atmospheric Administration arrive on the scene

and know exactly what they're seeing.

[suspenseful music]

It's called an oarfish.

It's a deep-sea creature that is incredibly rare.

In the past 100 years,

fewer than two dozen have washed up on California shores.

- [Don] Oarfish can grow over 30 feet long.

They have these large haunting eyes and blood-red spines

that gather on their heads in a cluster like a crown.

A lot of people think they were the original inspiration

for the monstrous creatures you see

on the edges of old maritime maps.

- [Danny] But the sight of one

rising from the deep isn't just wondrous.

It's a warning.

[suspenseful music]

- [Paul] In Japan, oarfish are known as doomsday fish.

[suspenseful music]

The theory is that they can sense deep-sea tremors

before they hit land.

So if you see one on the surface,

it means that something big and bad is about to happen.

[suspenseful music]

- [Andrew] This legend grew in 2011

when multiple oarfish were purportedly spotted

washed up on a beach in Japan

just before the catastrophic Tohoku earthquake...

[suspenseful music]

and subsequent tsunami

that caused the deadly Fukushima nuclear disaster.

[suspenseful music]

In 2019, scientists conduct a comprehensive study

and conclude that this is all just a coincidence.

There is no causal connection between the

appearance of oarfish and any natural disaster,

but if you were to ask the kayakers at La Jolla Cove,

they'd probably disagree.

Because just a few days later, Southern California is hit

with a 4.4 magnitude earthquake.

[suspenseful music]

- The ocean is not the only place

that people look for protection from dark forces.

Sometimes the danger is a lot closer to home.

[chilling music]

- [Don] In 2024, a renovation crew in the seaside town

of Cleethorpes, England is tearing down walls

in a centuries-old building.

[chilling music]

As they expose the ancient frame,

one of the workers notices something unusual

tucked into a hidden wall cavity,

a strange bulb-shaped object packed in dirt.

[chilling music]

- [Dr. Hakeem] The crew freezes.

With the object's rounded shape

and that faint metallic glint, they think the worst.

What if it's an unexploded ordinance from World War II

left over from the Blitz?

[chilling music]

- When the sunlight hits this object,

they realize it's not metal.

It's actually made of glass.

But what it is, they have no idea.

[chilling music]

- [Danny] After carefully extracting the glass

from the wall, they notice it is full of liquid.

[chilling music]

- [Don] Convinced they've uncovered some very well-aged

booze, one of the workers goes for the cork,

ready to take a swig of history.

[chilling music]

The project manager doesn't think that's a great idea.

He takes this bottle

and he brings it to the archeology department

at a nearby university to find out more.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] Third-year undergraduate Zara Yeates

examines the contents more closely.

- [Paul] She's able to date it to somewhere between 1790 and

1840, but she still doesn't know what's inside.

[intriguing music]

- [Dr. Hakeem] Using multi-spectral imaging and x-ray

fluorescence, Zara peers through the bottle without breaking it

open, and what she finds surprises everyone.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] The liquid is not rum, or wine,

or any kind of alcohol.

It is 200-year-old human urine.

[chilling music]

- [Paul] Floating inside the liquid are rusty nails and hair.

This is definitely not a concoction meant for drinking,

but it is something that historians

have encountered before.

[chilling music]

- [Don] It's what's known as a witch bottle,

a kind of medieval form of home security

once common throughout Britain.

The person seeking protection would put some urine

into a bottle, along with personal items,

like nail clippings and hair.

- [Nicola] These bottles were intended

to repel any malevolent forces.

The curse or the spell would be drawn

to this bottle in the wall,

and they would go and they would get trapped inside.

[chilling music]

- [Don] The idea was simple.

As long as the bottle stayed sealed and intact,

the person inside the house remained protected.

So, next time you're renovating an old house

and you discover a mysterious bottle hidden in the walls,

maybe think twice before popping the cork.

[chilling music]

[intriguing music]

- [Martin] It's September, 2017,

and Martyn and Michaela Tasker are exploring

Roughton Moor Woods,

an area that used to be an old military base

but is now a park and a favorite place

for bird watchers and dog walkers.

[intriguing music]

- [Paul] As they make their way deeper into the woods,

they spot a container that's partially buried in the ground.

Curiosity-piqued, they start to uncover it.

[intriguing music]

When they pry open the lid and look inside,

they find rows of rusty canisters,

each one about 10 inches tall and three inches wide,

about the same size as a typical 32-ounce water bottle.

- They have no idea what these things are,

but they do know this was a former military base.

And a lot of people like to collect military things,

so they gather up these canisters and others

and bring them to their house.

[intriguing music]

- [Danny] To help figure out what they found,

the couple reaches out to a friend in the military.

- While they're waiting to hear back from their friend,

they open one of the canisters and find a thick liquid.

[intriguing music]

They pour some of them out on the ground,

and immediately they're hit by this terrible smell,

which leaves them gagging and coughing.

[intriguing music] [people coughing]

- [John] So they realize they had to clean this stuff up.

But before they do, they get a phone call from their friend,

and the news he has to tell them is terrifying.

- [Danny] He thinks the canisters

are old mustard gas shells.

[thrilling music]

- [Martin] First used during World War I,

mustard gas is a chemical irritant

that attacks the mucus membranes of the body.

[chilling music] [people gagging]

It can have a powerful negative effect

on the respiratory system

that can cause coughing and bleeding.

It can temporarily blind you.

[chilling music]

Mustard gas is so potent and so dangerous

that it is eventually, on an international basis,

banned by the 1925 Geneva Convention Protocol.

[chilling music] [people coughing]

- [John] Now the Taskers are starting to panic.

Not only have they exposed themselves to a deadly compound,

but their friend informs them

that just possessing a chemical weapon in the UK is illegal.

- This is where the bad decisions

just keep getting worse.

[thrilling music]

They take a boat out onto the nearby Stixwould Lake,

where they decide to dispose of the contraband themselves

and they dump the remaining canisters into the water.

[thrilling music]

- [Paul] The next day, however, Martyn has to go to the hospital

because blisters have erupted all over his arms.

[thrilling music]

And Michaela experiences difficulty breathing,

so much so that she passes out in the doctor's waiting room.

- [Danny] The Taskers decide to fess up,

and authorities launch a huge search

to retrieve the canisters from the lake.

- [Martin] It goes on for 11 days.

Houses are evacuated, roads are closed.

They bring in a dive team that uses side-scan sonar

in an attempt to find what the Taskers dumped into the lake.

[thrilling music]

- [Jen] In the end, a seven-man navy dive team

equipped in full chemical protection suits

retrieve 10 canisters from the water.

And then the police pull another 140

from a nearby burial site on the grounds

of the Roughton Moor Woods.

When they're analyzed further, tests revealed, thankfully,

that all the canisters are still sealed.

[thrilling music]

- [Martin] In the end, both Martyn and Michaela

are convicted of illegal possession of a chemical weapon

and illegal dumping of a hazardous substance

into a waterway.

[thrilling music]

For this, they are both sentenced

to more than a year in jail.

However, this story could have ended a lot worse

for Martyn and Michaela,

because being exposed to 100-year-old chemical weapons

could have led them to an early grave.

[thrilling music]

- [Danny] Whether it's gold in the ground or a curse in the

pipes, one thing's for sure.

When you start digging, trouble has a way of finding you.

I'm Danny Trejo. Thanks for watching "Mysteries Unearthed."