Original subtitles

When death sets its sights on you,

escape is usually a long shot.

But not impossible.

Like battling a poltergeist who fights dirty.

Suddenly, a clothesline wraps around his neck.

The noose is getting tighter.

Whatever this presence is, this thing is trying to hang him.

Or a priest who needs more than prayer on his side.

There's this blinding white flash.

The air itself feels like it's being turned into fire.

The doctors are wondering how long it will be

before the radiation starts to break their bodies down.

Or how about a Florida teenager who goes overboard

and somehow doesn't become seafood dinner?

Just as they're getting close,

suddenly a wave slams into them and rips them apart.

One by one, this sea monster begins to pick them off.

These are the death-defying encounters so strange they are truly unbelievable.

Military pilots are meticulously trained

to recognize and react to any airborne threat.

But in October of 1973,

an unsuspecting army helicopter crew

encounters something deadly

that doesn't appear in any flight manual.

It's 1973, and 36-year-old Lawrence Coyne

is commander of the 316th Medical Evacuation Unit

in the Army Reserve.

He's flying his Huey helicopter over rural Ohio

at about 10:30 p.m.

Coyne is an incredibly experienced pilot.

He's got about two decades of flight time under his belt,

3,000 hours if you wanna be more precise.

Yet just east of the town of Mansfield,

one of the crew spots a bright red light on the horizon.

It's flying parallel to them, kind of keeping pace,

almost tracking them.

Suddenly, the object changes direction

and heads straight towards them.

He grabs back the controls and undertakes a risky maneuver

and turns the Huey straight down and goes into a power dive.

He actually closes his eyes and winces.

And for a trained pilot to close his eyes,

you know it's bad.

The helicopter plunges 800 feet in a matter of seconds.

The crew braces for impact, but nothing happens.

When Coyne opens his eyes, he's stunned.

The helicopter is still airborne,

and an enormous object is hovering right above it.

Even though he does not believe in UFOs,

he very quickly understands that that is exactly what he's looking at.

Coyne doesn't get very much time to appreciate the irony

of this moment because this bright green light

bursts from beneath the craft in a cone-like shape

and fully engulfs their Huey.

The helicopter starts being pulled up.

The crew thinks that they're about to die again.

And unlike other UFO sightings,

there are actual spectators on the ground.

Down below them, there is a mother with her three children

and sister-in-law driving down the road,

and they pull over, and they watch as this helicopter and this other craft

have their little tug-of-war in the sky.

And suddenly, the green light vanishes.

The helicopter shutters,

and it's back under Coyne's control.

Coyne is shook.

His heart is pounding,

and he turns his helicopter back toward Cleveland.

And he can't believe what just happened.

He was certain that they were all gonna die.

In the days that follow,

Army investigators begin searching for answers,

but the evidence they uncover only deepens the mystery.

Army investigators find that there was no radar hits,

no strange weather, and no anomalies in the air that night.

But Coyne and his fellow servicemen

know exactly what they saw and what they experienced,

which is backed up by what the mother and her children

and her sister-in-law saw on the road.

Whatever it was, it was dangerous and potentially deadly.

And Coyne wants people to know.

Coyne becomes a vocal advocate

for science-based evaluation of UFO incidents.

And it is now being taken seriously,

and rigorous scientists are evaluating what is going on in our skies.

Coyne and his crew never learned the reason they were attacked.

In our next story, the intent is frighteningly clear.

It's 1989, San Pedro, California,

and photographer Jeff Wheatcraft has taken on a gig

that he's already regretting.

A videographer buddy convinced him to join a team

of paranormal investigators

to try and record some activity

at a single mother's home.

Jackie Hernandez, a young 23-year-old single mom,

has claimed to have violent and strange things

happening all throughout her house.

Inside the home, Jackie describes months of things flying across rooms

and beds collapsing for no reason.

Jeff kind of listens politely, starts nodding his head,

but he's not totally convinced.

All of this kind of sounds like some Hollywood movie.

Then Jackie mentions the strangest detail of all.

She's seen a disembodied head floating in the attic.

Jeff and another crew member climb up through the trapdoor.

They search every corner.

Jeff breaks his flashlight across the beams

and surprise, surprise, no disembodied head.

There is a vibe, though, and even Jeff, who's not a big believer,

definitely feels like there's some sort of energy here.

Like something is there staring at him.

And he all of a sudden realizes

his heart is starting to race.

Suddenly, a clothesline wraps around his neck.

Then it pulls tight.

And he realizes that it's looped over a nail above his head.

He reaches for the cord to free himself,

but it starts lifting him.

The noose is getting tighter and tighter around his neck.

It's cutting off his windpipe. He can't breathe.

Whatever this presence is, this thing is trying to kill him.

It's trying to hang him.

After what seems like an eternity, his colleague turns around

and realizes what is happening to Jeff.

The other crew member rushes to pick Jeff up

and then try to pull down on the rope

to get it off of the nail, which somehow, he does.

What the hell happened?

Are you okay, buddy?

- Oh, my God. - Look at his neck.

They take a look at the clothesline

and realize that it's basically a knot called a bowline

that's used by sailors.

At this point, the team is pretty rattled

by what they've experienced, and they decide to call it a night.

But before they leave, they tell Jackie to contact them

and keep them abreast of the situation.

And should things get worse, they'll come back.

After the violent attack on Jeff,

Jackie isn't taking any chances.

Convinced her family is no longer safe,

she decides to leave everything behind

and start over 180 miles away.

This place feels safe.

She feels like it's a fresh start for her family.

And then one day, she is moving a TV

with a neighbor into the garage.

The TV's not plugged in, but she sees this ghostly image

appear on the television.

Her neighbor sees it also.

Luckily, Jackie knows exactly who to call.

And even more shocking,

they actually drive all the way out to Weldon to investigate.

The house is quiet for hours.

They're not getting any activity.

That is until they pull out a Ouija board.

The Ouija board starts spinning out claims, rapid-fire.

Apparently, the spirit says he's a sailor

who died in San Pedro Harbor in 1930.

Not far from Jackie's house.

He says that he was murdered.

His head was held underwater until he died.

Then they asked the Ouija board,

"Why was the poltergeist attacking Jeff?"

And then it spells out,

"Because you are the likeness of my killer."

And he tells them that the reason he was hanging out in that house

where Jackie lived

was that's where the killer lived.

And then suddenly...

Jeff's chair lifts off the ground.

Jeff and the chair are thrown back into the wall.

Whatever this thing is, it seems to want him dead.

They help Jeff, and everyone leaves the room.

But the events of that night really stick with all of them.

As the dust settles, the team does some research

to verify the details of their violent encounter.

They find a newspaper article from 1930

about a sailor named Herman Hendrickson.

This is a sailor who was killed in San Pedro Harbor.

His head was held underwater.

And the investigative team starts putting all the pieces together,

like that knot that almost killed Jeff back in San Pedro.

Of course, it's a sailor's knot.

After the Ouija board incident, the activity quiets

and the poltergeist never threatens Jeff again.

Eventually, after a few more moves, it seems to let go of Jackie as well.

Nothing chokes the skeptic out of you like a ghost hanging.

Coming up, what lies beneath the world's deepest lake?

You might not want to know.

These are highly trained divers, and these guys are scared.

I mean, they have never seen anything like this.

And sure enough, they start circling and observing the divers.

With about eight billion people on the planet,

Earth's most remote corners still manage to hide deep, dark mysteries.

Case in point, Siberia's largest lake,

home to creatures so rare

they might kill to keep their secrets.

Lake Baikal is the deepest freshwater lake in the world.

It runs to a depth of 5,000 feet.

This is a strange, cold, forbidding place.

The lake is so deep that most of the water

stays near freezing and barely reaches 38 degrees

even in the summer, and half of the fish species

that call it home are found nowhere else in the world.

But Lake Baikal's icy depths

are famous for more than their unique wildlife.

For decades, they've also been the source

of some of Russia's strangest underwater legends.

In 1982...

a Soviet dive unit

is doing top-secret training in Lake Baikal.

Everything seems normal at first,

until several divers spot some strange movement in the distance.

They realize, oh, my God,

those are nine-foot-tall humanoid-type things.

And they have this helmet on, but it's a translucent helmet,

but there's no tubes attached.

There's no tanks, there's no bubbles.

How are they breathing underwater?

As the Soviet divers are watching, they come to the chilling realization

that these enormous humanoids are actually watching them.

These are highly trained elite divers, and these guys are scared.

I mean, they have never seen anything like this,

so they decide to head back to the surface.

They report the bizarre sighting

to their commanders, who then give an order

that raises eyebrows as well as the divers' heart rates.

Catch one.

These seven men go down,

and they don't know what they're supposed to use to hunt these guys,

so they've got these nets and cable snares.

They're down there in the murky, dark waters,

wondering if this is a waste of time.

Maybe they really were seeing things.

But then these silvery figures appear.

And sure enough, they start circling and observing the divers.

A Soviet diver reaches out to lasso one,

but one of the creatures raises up some sort of metallic device.

Then there's a whoosh,

and it's as if they're caught

in some kind of powerful vortex

that sends them flying to the surface,

which as we know in diving is very, very dangerous.

Microscopic bubbles of gas in your blood expand rapidly.

Rupturing, internal bleeding.

It feels like you're being torn apart.

If you're lucky enough to make it topside,

then you need to get to a decompression chamber right away.

The idea is to get those gas bubbles to shrink before they kill you.

But there's a brutal catch.

The decompression chamber only has room for four men.

So now commanders are forced to make a tough decision.

The three whose breathing has already been terminally compromised

are put to one side...

and the four other divers are locked inside the chamber.

They survive, but they have terrible injuries.

When the four divers finally recover, they all report the same thing.

Nine-foot-tall humanoids with the power to send them

flying through the water,

and they all agree there was one thing that they wanted,

and that was them dead.

Reports of the encounter remain confined

to military records for years

until one curious historian uncovers a new lead.

A researcher by the name of Alexei Tivanenko,

who has been studying the legends and lore of Baikal for many years,

he has a private contact in the Russian government

who goes off the record to confirm for him

that this 1982 tragedy with these naval divers

really happened in Lake Baikal.

You never know how or when the end will come.

But if it's in a lake at the hands of extra-large humanoids,

well, that's, let's face it, surprising.

So is being declared dead when you're not.

September 6, 2007,

on a highway just south of Caracas, Venezuela,

Carlos Camejo is riding a motorcycle with a friend.

All of a sudden, there's a truck flying

the opposite direction right toward him at 90 miles per hour,

and Carlos has to make a choice.

Carlos swerves to avoid the pickup truck.

But what he misses is there's another truck broken down in the other lane.

He smashes straight into it.

Carlos's friend is conscious, but he is badly injured.

Carlos, meanwhile, is motionless,

lying next to the pieces of his motorcycle

and the broken truck.

When emergency workers get there, they check for vital signs and find none.

Carlos is declared dead.

His body's transported to the morgue of the local hospital,

and the attendants put him on the autopsy table.

Now the examiner takes a scalpel

and begins to pierce Carlos's scalp, as would be typical.

But when the scalpel goes in,

what comes out makes the examiner flinch.

His head is starting to pour out blood,

and this is not normal for a corpse.

That is not supposed to happen on a person whose heart is not pumping.

The medical examiners look at each other startled

as they realize they don't have a corpse here.

They have a patient.

Medical examiners start to panic

because they do autopsies, they don't save lives.

I mean, essentially, they've made a hole. They've got to fix it.

There's no time for anesthesia, so they just start stitching him up.

Carlos' eyes fly open, his muscles start moving.

He's startled, he will later explain,

that it was the pain of them

stitching him up that woke him up.

To everyone in the room,

Carlos appears to have done the impossible.

But doctors have a name for this rare and baffling phenomenon.

This condition is sometimes known as the Lazarus syndrome,

which Lazarus in the Bible was the man that was raised from the dead.

In certain circumstances,

routine examination fails to detect signs of life.

Now, there are stories that exist about people

who come back to life during their funeral,

but all of those are from a long time ago.

We're talking about 2007.

Unfortunately for Carlos' wife,

news of the mix-up doesn't travel that fast.

Poor Carlos' wife, as far as she knows, is a widow,

and she's got to go to the hospital to identify his body.

She arrives at the hospital, and as she comes out of the elevator,

she finds her very alive husband staring at her.

Imagine the roller coaster of emotions on that day.

Carlos doesn't really remember the accident

or the few hours that he spent "dead,"

but he is very excited about his recovery.

Coming up, an even more terrifying brush with death.

The children hear this menacing growl.

The beast lunges at the smallest child,

pulling it away from the group.

In the winter of 1765, fear rules the French countryside.

A killer moves through the hills,

leaving bodies in its wake.

Few who face it survive.

So when seven children find themselves alone in its territory,

the question isn't whether it would attack,

but whether any of them would live to tell the tale.

On January 12, 1765,

a group of seven children,

five boys, two girls, ages 8 to 12,

are protecting a herd of cattle.

Normally, this would be a job for one or two kids.

But these days, the kids no longer work in small groups.

The fear in this region

started when a shepherd girl was found murdered.

After the incident, more bodies begin to pile up.

And they're not just normal deaths.

We're talking brutally ripped apart.

Throats gouged out.

It's gruesome, to say the least.

As the death toll climbs, so does the panic.

Before long, stories of a monster known as the Beast of Gévaudan

are spreading faster than the killer itself.

The local people say that there's this creature

roaming the land, and it's covered in red fur.

It also has a black stripe running down its back.

It's the size of a calf, but has the strength of a horse.

By winter, as many as 30 people have been killed,

mostly women and children.

Needless to say, the seven kids working together

to herd the cattle on this cold January afternoon in 1765

are a little on edge, especially when they hear

the rustling of the trees behind them.

They look and they see the trees shaking

and the branches moving,

and something really powerful is coming through the bramble.

The children see this huge shadow, hear this menacing growl.

And they just break out in screams.

The beast circles the group once, twice.

It lunges at the smallest child,

grabbing its arm in its jaws and pulling it away from the group.

That's when a 12-year-old boy decides to take a stand.

He rallies the other children,

telling them that they would not let the beast

take away one of the children.

This kid rushes the beast

and thrusts his spear right into one of his glowing eyes.

They begin to stab this beast in hopes he's gonna let this boy go.

Finally, the beast releases the child it has

and it slinks away into the forest

just as the men from the village arrive to the location,

having heard the children's screams.

Incredibly, all the children survive their deadly encounter

and become known as the brave heroes of Gévaudan.

Word even reaches King Louis XV,

who offers a reward of 650 livres,

300 to the boy,

which is a lot of money for the time,

about a year's wages for a farmer,

along with a royal education.

And then the remaining 350 livres

is split among the other children.

If you think surviving a bloodthirsty beast is a miracle,

try walking away from the most relentless hellfire

man ever created.

It's 1945.

Nazi Germany has been defeated.

But World War II isn't over.

Allied forces are fighting from one blood-soaked island to another

as they get closer and closer to the Japanese mainland.

Over the main island of Honshu,

you have this B-29 Super Fortress known as the Enola Gay

that is carrying a super weapon

that's designed to end the war immediately.

Meanwhile, in the heart of Hiroshima,

Four Jesuit priests: Fathers Hubert Schiffer

Wilhelm Kleinsorge, Hugo Lassalle,

and Hubert Cieslik,

begin their day as they always do,

gathering for morning Mass.

After Mass, the four priests leave the church

and go back to the wooden rectory next door.

Father Schiffer sits down to eat breakfast

and takes a spoonful of grapefruit.

And then there's suddenly this just...

blinding white flash.

A shockwave throws Father Schiffer from his chair,

and throughout the rectory,

the other priests are also thrown by the same force.

Windows are just being shattered into millions of pieces.

The air itself feels like it's being turned into fire,

and then... nothing.

Unbeknownst to the clergy,

the first atomic bomb, Little Boy, has detonated nearby,

unleashing a blast that levels an entire city.

Yet somehow, one building is left standing.

This wooden rectory, which you would think

would be incinerated in an instant, is still standing.

And the priests inside it are all still alive.

The priests need medical attention.

Even though their wounds seem, all things considered, relatively minor,

privately, the doctors are wondering

how long it will be before the radiation

starts to break their bodies down.

But the doctors are astonished, and they can't believe their own tests.

Father Schiffer's body shows no signs

of radiation poisoning or illness.

This is a wooden rectory, eight blocks from ground zero,

and yet somehow all four of these priests are alive.

Doesn't make sense.

Some start asking questions about something supernatural going on.

It's not like it was a pub or a brothel that was saved.

It was the living quarters of priests where there's praying going on every day.

A Catholic publication that writes about the story states,

quote, "It must be concluded

that some other external force was present."

It goes on to say that this external force

was one capable of transforming energy and matter

beyond current comprehension.

Was it purely physics, simple luck,

or divine intervention?

Whatever the explanation, when the unthinkable happened,

they were still standing.

Coming up, a titanic warning from beyond.

As he nears the gangway, he hears a voice.

As clear as ever in his ear, "Don't get on that boat."

When it comes to getting presents,

we're all taught it's rude to look a gift horse in the mouth.

You get free tickets to a show with bad reviews,

suck it up and go.

Gift certificate to a restaurant that's going out of business?

Enjoy dinner, just don't order the fish.

Free tickets on an unsinkable ocean liner?

Who wouldn't say yes?

April 12, 1912.

Southampton, England, and the world's largest

and most luxurious ocean liner, the Titanic,

is about to set sail on her maiden voyage to New York City.

Thousands of people are swarming the dock.

One of whom is a young man from Glasgow, Scotland,

by the name of Alex MacKenzie.

According to family lore, it was Alex's parents

who purchased him, at great expense,

a second-class ticket aboard the famed vessel.

Alex steps enthusiastically into the line

with his golden ticket in hand.

As he nears the gangway, he hears a voice.

"Don't go on that ship."

Alex looks around.

There's lots of people about,

but it doesn't look like anybody's talking to him.

Nobody's looking at him.

So he shakes it off.

Keeps walking forward.

And again, the voice, as clear as ever in his ear,

"Don't get on that boat."

And he stops and he looks around again. What is going on?

Is my mind playing tricks on me?

Alex starts to wonder, what if the voice isn't just in his head?

The crowd is rushing forward.

And the voice comes a third time.

"Don't get on the ship."

This time...

Alex turns

and begins working his way through the crowd

against the flow of traffic.

People are getting naturally annoyed at him

because you're not supposed to go this way.

But he makes it all the way back to the dock

and he watches as Titanic sets sail across the Atlantic

towards New York City without him.

Alex may feel he's done the right thing,

but he still has to explain it to his parents,

who spent their life savings on his ticket.

Alex's parents are, of course, shocked to see him.

And then when he offers his unconvincing explanation

for why he's not on the ship,

they become very disappointed.

They just spent all that money

to buy their kid an opportunity

to sail literally around the world,

and you're back home?

What's wrong with you?

And over the next few days, Alex starts to think,

"Okay, maybe I did make a mistake."

Just as Alex begins to question his decision,

the world is rocked by a stunning revelation.

The unsinkable Titanic has sunk.

2,200 people go scrambling for lifeboats

that are only equipped to hold half of that number.

1,500 people are killed,

including more than 90% of the men in second class.

By listening to that mysterious voice,

he probably avoids what could have been a death sentence.

Now his parents actually believe him,

and they're just over the moon that their son is back home.

It's hard enough to believe yourself

when you get an ominous warning from beyond.

Now imagine getting one from an ornery kid having a tantrum.

May of 1980,

Steve Terrill is an aspiring outdoor photographer

who's gonna try to get some images

of this thing that's happening at Mount St. Helens.

Mount St. Helens threatens to explode into a major eruption.

Scientists believe the real show hasn't started yet.

Steve has been going up there for six straight weekends.

This isn't his professional gig.

He works during the week, so he's kind of frustrated

'cause he's wasting his weekends,

waiting for this photograph that's just not happening.

On this particular trip,

he decides that he's going to bring along his seven-year-old.

If nothing happens, it's a wonderful weekend with his son.

He sets up camp at Spirit Lake,

which is only about three miles from the summit of the mountain.

He feels like this is a Pulitzer Prize-winning shot.

The perfect location if there's an eruption.

As he's putting up the tent, little Stevie suddenly freezes.

Steve looks over at his son, and his son is starting to freak out.

He's starting to scream, he's shaking.

And he's saying again and again, "We got to get out of here.

We got to get out of here now."

Even though this is a father-son camping trip,

that's not the whole point of it.

The point of it is to get this shot.

So he tells Stevie, he tries to call him down saying,

"No, no, no, we're not going anywhere. This is gonna be fun.

"Just calm down, relax a little bit. You'll see, look, it's beautiful out here.

This is a great time."

But no matter what he tells Stevie, he can't calm his son down

even a little bit.

He's never seen a tantrum quite like this.

So when he asks little Stevie why they have to go,

Stevie just says, "We have to leave. Something bad is gonna happen."

So Steve, even though he doesn't want to,

breaks down camp near Spirit Lake,

packs up the car along with his son,

and moves camp towards another location near Yale Lake,

which is on the other side of the mountain.

Before he's done packing up,

Steve feels a violent rumble under his feet.

At 8:32 a.m., it's quickly followed by the north face

of Mount St. Helens' collapsing.

There is a huge boom that could be heard for 200 miles away.

There's a column of ash and rock

that explodes out of the mountain 15 miles high.

Steve sees all this happening

and immediately grabs for his camera

and starts taking pictures as best as he can

from the location he's at.

And Steve is livid

because he knows where he needs to be.

He needs to be at that original campsite by Spirit Lake

because that is where he was gonna get the shot of shots.

They throw everything in the car,

then they start making their way out to the location

where they were the day before,

turn on the radio to monitor the situation.

And what they discover, Spirit Lake is no more.

- Mount St. Helens... - Mount St. Helens...

As Mount St. Helens erupted,

a plume of ash shot more than 10 miles into the air.

That campsite where they were the night before

is now buried under 30 feet of ash and mud.

It's the largest recorded landslide in history.

Fifty-seven people were killed.

Steve immediately turns to his son in shock

listening to what is being reported.

And he knows in that moment that if he had stayed

against what his son wanted, that they both would be dead.

Steve asked his son, how did he know?

And little Stevie can't explain it.

He just says that he feels something

that told them they needed to leave, something forceful.

Next time your kid's having a little bit of a meltdown,

instead of just turning them around, telling them it's gonna be okay

or giving them a time-out, give it a minute.

They might be onto something.

Not every kid gets premonitions that save them from danger.

Some have to swim their way through it.

Coming up, a day of fun in the water

becomes a fight for survival.

He hears one boy yell, "Help me, it's got Brad."

And then the boy stops mid-scream.

Ocean diving can be dangerous,

and it's why experts say never to dive alone.

But in the waters off Pensacola,

some believe the real danger isn't drowning.

It's what might already be down there with you.

March 24, 1962.

It's a beautiful day near Fort Pickens, Florida,

and five boys decide they're gonna go out to the USS Massachusetts.

The USS Massachusetts is a historical ship.

It fought in the Spanish-American War.

It was later used for training for World War I.

It was eventually sunk in 1921,

little less than two miles offshore of Pensacola, Florida,

and now it's a popular dive spot.

All that's really left now are her gun turrets

that sort of come out of the water at low tide.

But back in 1962, the wheelhouse was still there,

sort of like a beacon for fishermen and divers to come check out.

For Brian McCleary in particular, he's never had a chance

to dive on a shipwreck, so today is gonna be epic.

Brian is going along with four friends of his.

Eric Rule, Bradford Rice, Warren Sally, and Larry Bill.

The water is as smooth as glass

as the boys paddle their raft toward the wreck site.

Then the wind shifts

and the sea turns violent.

Brian says once they get out there,

the raft is basically stuck in the current.

They can't paddle it forward.

The current has them in its grasp, and they are making no headway whatsoever.

But they see a buoy not far away.

Their plan is to sort of hunker down there

and hope that these conditions

just sort of pass by them in a few minutes.

But the buoy bucks hard, capsizing the tiny raft.

They're all soaking wet and they're all cold.

The boys manage to flip the raft back to the right side up

and then crawl back inside.

There's really nothing to do but hang on and try to wait this out.

The storm fades as quickly as it came,

leaving behind a wall of fog.

They're all in agreement, as soon as the fog lifts,

they've had enough of this, they're headed back to the shore.

As they fight to catch their breath,

somewhere in the dense fog, they hear a splash.

One of the boys is a little frightened by this,

and he says, "What is that?"

And not long after that, they hear another splash

that's even closer.

According to them, this shape breaks the surface,

and it's this slick green-and-black creature.

They kind of describe it as almost like a telephone pole

with a bulb on the top,

and it kind of bends in the middle and goes back into the water.

The creature surfaces again,

but this time the creature's coming at them

making this like low rumbling roar sort of sound.

That freaks the kids out.

They panic and jump into the water

to avoid being capsized again.

At first, they're sort of shouting each other

and calling each other's names

to make sure everyone knows where everyone is.

Brian says that he hears one boy yell,

"Help me, it's got Brad."

And then the voice stops mid-scream.

One by one, this sea monster begins to pick them off.

And this happens one,

two, three,

until only two are left.

Brian and Eric.

As the monster closes in,

Brian and Eric spot their salvation through the fog.

USS Massachusetts.

The boys are swimming towards the wreck,

and Eric starts saying that his legs are cramping up.

So Brian takes his friend and starts swimming for two.

The shipwreck is coming in and out of their vision.

And just as they're getting close,

a wave slams into them and rips them apart.

The creature surfaces, mouth wide open.

In an instant, Eric is gone.

Brian is now alone.

He swims towards the Massachusetts wreck

and climbs up on the hull and passes out.

The following morning, Brian is found on the beach alone.

He has no recollection of how he got there.

He has no memory whatsoever of leaving the Massachusetts.

At the Pensacola Navy Base Hospital,

Brian recounts what he experienced that day on the water.

The director of search and rescue, E.E. McGovern,

listens with an open mind to everything Brian has to say,

and he says back to him something along the lines of,

"The sea has a lot of secrets.

"A lot of things people don't want to understand

"or even know about, because quite frankly, son,

it scares the hell out of them."

The Coast Guard searches for the other four boys,

but only the body of one is found.

They call it an unknown marine incident.

Local papers cover the incident,

but they leave out any mention of any sort of sea creature.

Several years later, Brian decides to tell his own story

about what really happened that day.

and he writes an article for Fate magazine in 1965.

His story never changes.

It is clear to him a sea monster killed four of his friends,

and he barely escaped with his life.

Whether it is an unknown marine incident

like the Coast Guard claims or a bona fide sea monster,

something took four lives and spared Brian McCleary.

Coming up, another close encounter of the near-fatal kind.

Fuel's leaking across the track,

and suddenly it's a blazing inferno.

It feels like someone's hands

grab him from under his arms and yank him up.

But photos and video confirm that there is no rescuer.

Of all the jobs that flirt with death,

few do it at 200 miles an hour.

But when one race car driver's luck finally runs out,

a helping hand appears from far beyond the finish line.

It's July 18, 2004 in Sonoma, California,

at Infineon Raceway.

This is a beautiful racetrack out in wine country.

Lots of elevation, tons of speed, and lots of turns.

It is action-packed.

And it's dangerous.

And behind the wheel of a Chevy Corvette

is Dale Earnhardt Jr.

And this guy is like one of NASCAR's biggest stars.

Dale Earnhardt Jr., he's a household name

and he's having a hell of a year.

Earlier in 2004, he's already won the Daytona 500,

which is the Super Bowl for NASCAR.

He's not just racing his fellow drivers.

He's also racing a legacy.

He is the son of NASCAR great Dale Earnhardt Sr.

And Junior knows full well the dangers of racing.

He's been in accidents before.

He was even in the race that killed his father in 2001.

But on this particular summer day in 2004,

Dale's not competing for a trophy.

He's just getting in some practice laps.

It's supposed to be routine. Thirty minutes of practice.

And everything starts off according to plan.

Then in an instant, everything changes.

Dale Jr. rounds turn eight,

and it's still early, so the tires are still warming up.

They're cold tires on a slick track.

And his car slides sideways.

And slams into a concrete barrier.

Fuel's leaking across the track.

And suddenly...

Look out!

...it's a blazing inferno.

Fire races across the hood,

and it spreads over the windshield,

and it fills the cockpit with this thick choking smoke.

And if you watch the video of this, it is terrifying.

You're watching these huge flames just engulf this cockpit

while you know Junior's in there trying to get himself out of the car.

Now Dale Jr. says that just before he passes out,

it feels like someone's hands grab him

from under his arms and yank him up.

He says they drag him away from the doorframe,

past the car, and out onto the track.

He doesn't recognize who this person is,

but he assumes it's one of the crew members.

He collapses near the wreck as the cars continue to be engulfed in flames.

He's then airlifted to the hospital.

He has second- and third-degree burns all over his body.

When he finally comes to, though,

his very first question is, "Who saved me?"

The answer is not what Dale Earnhardt Jr. is expecting.

So they tell him, "No, no, no. Nobody pulled you out of the car.

You got yourself out of that car."

He insists that that's not possible,

but photos and video confirm that there is no rescuer.

Dale Jr. alone climbs out of the car

moments before it explodes.

Now, luckily, Dale Jr. goes on to make a full recovery,

but he doesn't get past the thought

that maybe someone or something helped him out of the car that day.

On 60 Minutes, a few weeks after the crash,

he says that he can't explain it,

but he believes that it was his father that pulled him out of the car.

The dad that was always looking out for him

and the guy that taught him everything he knew about racing

was there that day looking out for him one last time.

We've seen poltergeists that try to strangle,

beasts that roam the countryside looking for a meal,

mystery crafts that try to crash into helicopters at 700 miles per hour.

By all logic, these stories should end badly.

But they don't.

Because in even the deadliest encounters,

sometimes the reaper swings and misses.