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00:00Morning. What you're about to see could be disturbing to some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.
00:12What are the most peculiar places in the world? How about an island run by a population of dangerous predators?
00:20By all accounts, it is essentially a moving carpet of serpents.
00:25The snakes on that island have a venom that is estimated to be five times as deadly as the venom for mainland snakes.
00:34Or a town that's a real circus.
00:37People get tired of being stared at for money and they really just want to find a place they can call their own.
00:42Conjoined twins run the fruit stand. Grady Stiles, the lobster boy, makes the place his home.
00:49What about a beach where the waves deliver more than just seashells?
00:53She sees this large, size 12 men's sneaker washed up on the beach.
01:00She looks inside the sneaker and finds a foot.
01:06These are the tales of the strangest places on earth. So bizarre, they're truly unbelievable.
01:12Mexico boasts an abundance of enchanted wonders, from the soaring El Castillo Pyramid to the sacred cenotes of the Yucatan Peninsula.
01:33But there's another must-see, known for something a little more unusual.
01:38Outside of Mexico City is one of the strangest places on earth.
01:44Why? Because there are over 4,000 mutilated dolls tied to the fences, to the trees, and spread around everywhere on this island.
01:55But this area's strange origins go back long before the dolls took over.
02:02It's the 16th century, and the Spanish conquistadors are invading the Aztec Empire.
02:12What's called Tenochtitlan, which would later become Mexico City, is the capital of the Aztec Empire.
02:19What we think of being in a high-altitude basin is actually a massive lake with man-made islands, canals, and causeways all through it.
02:30So 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.
02:43And this leads to some mythology about them being haunted or spiritually guarded places.
02:52By the 20th century, these islands are still attractive to people who want to 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.
03:03And that's when things start to get a little weird.
03:05The 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.
03:22He 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.
03:36Thousands of dolls? Hung from trees? What prompted this macabre memorial?
03:41There 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.
03:57He also is said to hear spirits, hers and possibly others.
04:02He is so moved and scared of the bad omens that go with this tragedy, that we assume he went absolutely crazy.
04:13Even stranger is what happens to Don Julian in April of 2001.
04:18His nephew comes to visit him on the island, and he finds Don Julian Barrera face down, drowned in the canal at age 80,
04:27in almost the same spot that he alleged that he found the original girl so many years before.
04:35After Julian's death, tourists keep his peculiar tradition alive by adding their own dolls to the collection.
04:43Dolls are created in our image, so it doesn't matter what your belief system is.
04:48To see 4,000 mutilated dolls hanging from trees, an island full of that would drive anybody crazy.
04:56Today, gondola-like boats called Trajinarra take the curious out for a closer look.
05:03But only during daylight hours.
05:06The island is strictly off-limits to visitors after dark.
05:11Up next is another place you probably don't want to visit at night.
05:18Widow Sarah Winchester had a particularly bad run of it.
05:23She's lost her child, her father, her mother, and her husband, William, who was heir to the massive Winchester rifle fortune.
05:35The Winchester 1873 repeating rifle is touted as the rifle that won the West.
05:43And widow Sarah now owns 50% of the company.
05:45Sarah inherits $20 million, which would be half a billion dollars in today's terms.
05:56But all these resources do nothing to heal the grief in her heart.
06:02She starts asking questions of, why is this happening to me?
06:06What is it about me that has caused so much loss in my life?
06:09And she starts to worry that she might even be cursed.
06:13In this moment of vulnerability, she chooses to consult a spiritualist.
06:19This medium tells her she is cursed because her fortune is blood money.
06:25The spirits of all the Native Americans and others that were killed by the Winchester rifles are essentially exacting revenge.
06:36She'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.
06:53Sarah moves out to California, and she buys a pretty modest farmhouse.
06:59It's eight rooms, but it's on a massive tract of land, and Sarah begins building.
07:06She employs large carpentry crews, round the clock, building room after room, hallway after hallway.
07:14She adds hundreds of rooms to this house.
07:18But it's not just the size of the project that's stunning.
07:21It's the bizarre layout.
07:24There are very tiny doors that open to huge ballrooms, and there are massive doors that just open to a brick wall.
07:33There's skylights in the floor.
07:36Sarah is doing this because, according to lore, she's trying to confuse spirits and send them off track.
07:44Crews work independently.
07:48None of them know what the other crews are doing.
07:50This house becomes such a cockamamie arrangement of rooms.
07:55No one can make their way through the house except for her.
07:58It's hard to even call it a maze because a maze has a purpose.
08:03You're supposed to end up somewhere.
08:05This is just strange and bizarre.
08:09Workers start experiencing odd cold spots.
08:12Random things moving.
08:17Several workers say they see the outline and the shape of Native American warriors happening again and again.
08:27Someone says they see the apparition of an old woman holding a candle.
08:33Sarah's assertion that this is about the spirit world suddenly might hold a little water.
08:39By 1922, Sarah has spent $5 million on this 160-room tribute to her own torment.
08:46The one thing that finally halts the project?
08:50Her own mortality.
08:52Sarah dies in September of 1922, and construction immediately stops.
09:00In fact, there are nails half-banged into walls.
09:05And today, it is one of the most widely visited Cheerios in the California area.
09:12Take it from me, outsmarting angry ghosts is difficult work.
09:20Well done, Sarah.
09:23Off the coast of Brazil lies an island so deadly, it's been sealed off by the government.
09:29No residents.
09:31No tourists.
09:32Just thousands of venomous reasons to stay away.
09:36Welcome to Snake Island.
09:38Snake 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.
10:05And in doing so, they isolate a population of snakes.
10:10Specifically, one of the most venomous snakes in the world, the golden lancehead viper.
10:15The golden lancehead population that's left on Snake Island quickly goes through all the available prey.
10:22And then the only thing left to eat are birds, which they don't normally eat.
10:26And that forces them into some pretty tremendous evolutionary pathways.
10:29Now, 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.
10:40But with birds, the bird can fly away, and the snake doesn't get a meal.
10:44So evolution favors golden lanceheads with more potent venom, so that they can bite a bird and have it die instantly.
10:52The snakes on that island have a venom that is estimated to be five times as deadly as the venom for mainland snakes.
11:01So it's creating this kind of super snake on this island that can thrive.
11:05You would imagine no one in their right mind would ever set foot on this island.
11:10Rumor has it that sailors prefer to stay on burning boats rather than swim ashore here.
11:15But some have tried.
11:19In the early 1900s, a group of entrepreneurial banana farmers go to Snake Island in the hopes of establishing a banana plantation.
11:30They burn down a bunch of vegetation to plant the banana fields, and that's when they see all the snakes.
11:38They realized immediately this is not a place not only not for a banana plantation, this is not a place for human beings to stay.
11:46So in 1910, they decide to build a lighthouse to warn people to steer clear of this island.
11:51It'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.
12:04So they do find a lighthouse keeper who's willing to take this job, and he brings his family to Snake Island.
12:11According to local lore, life on Snake Island goes about as well as you think it would.
12:16The legend is, one night, supposedly someone left a window open, the snake slithered in, and killed the entire family.
12:28Snake Island is basically communicating to mankind, you are not welcome here. You will die here.
12:37The lighthouse on Snake Island still stands today, but it is automated, so no human has to set foot anywhere near it.
12:47If snakes don't scare you off, this next spot just might freeze you in your tracks.
12:56As soon as you see pictures of Lake Natron, you know that something strange is happening here.
13:02It seems eerie, dead, and otherworldly.
13:07It's 13 miles away from a volcano.
13:10The 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.
13:24This is currently the only place on Earth spewing this particularly nasty kind of lava, and much of it makes its way into Lake Natron.
13:35So 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.
13:49This makes the lake extremely alkaline.
13:54It has similar pH to straight ammonia.
13:59Alkaline is the opposite of acidic, but the effects that it'll have on you are equally corrosive.
14:06If you were to drink some of that water, you're going to feel it immediately on your lips as it goes down your tongue and into your esophagus.
14:15All along the way, nothing but horror and pain.
14:20Even though most of the animals avoid it, sometimes animals do get in the lake, and they basically become petrified.
14:28It's like they looked at Medusa.
14:30Preachers that perish in Lake Natron don't actually turn to stone.
14:34They become calcified, meaning they are encrusted in these mineral salts in such a way that preserves their bodies.
14:45There are these pictures of these birds that are dead.
14:47They look like they're still alive, but alive like a zombie is alive.
14:52Incredibly, not everything that touches this strange lake dies.
15:01Perhaps 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.
15:13The flamingos are especially adapted to this environment.
15:19They have thick scales on their legs that allow them to withstand this highly corrosive environment.
15:26And 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.
15:38The algae they eat are also peculiar.
15:40There's a special kind of algae that thrives in these conditions and occasionally has seasonal blooms that turn it a very red color,
15:50which actually provides the pigment that makes those flamingos pink.
15:56It's astounding that this body of water produces such visions of beauty and horror.
16:02Just goes to show you, even the most tranquil places can have a deadly edge.
16:07If you're drawing a map of the weirdest places in America, start with one line.
16:14Because along this stretch of latitude, the bizarre, unexplained, and top secret all seem to collide.
16:21It is spring of 1975, and ranchers across Colorado begin discovering dead cows in their fields.
16:32These cows aren't just dead, they're mutilated in really bizarre ways.
16:39Ears, eyes, udders, genitals have all been removed with surgical precision.
16:47These cows are typically found lying on their left side, and there's no blood.
16:52Now, we need to understand that cows have five gallons of blood in them.
16:55To find a dead cow that's been mutilated with no blood anywhere.
16:59Well, that's weird.
17:01Over the next six months, the body count skyrockets to 200.
17:06Local ranchers want answers.
17:09Game and wildlife officials are certain that it must be the work of scavengers.
17:16And yet, there are no footprints.
17:18There is no damage to the surrounding vegetation.
17:21There is no claw marks, or teeth marks, or any sort of sign that something was chewing on them.
17:28As similar reports start pouring in from 11 other states, the FBI has no choice but to act.
17:36A common theory that pops up is that some sort of satanic cult is running around the country mutilating cows.
17:43The feds perform stakeouts, autopsies, they look for witnesses, they come up with nothing.
17:51Meanwhile, local investigators come up with their own unusual theory.
17:57Most of these deaths cluster around a single line of latitude known as the North 37th Parallel,
18:04which crosses Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.
18:10One New Mexico deputy sheriff, a guy by the name of Chuck Sikowsky, finds something interesting.
18:16The cow mutilations correlate with known UFO sightings that have occurred during that time across this one line of latitude.
18:24Also, there are an awful lot of important and sometimes secret government and military facilities all along that same line.
18:34Fort Knox, Area 51, Air Force bases, missile silos.
18:40The 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.
18:59Maybe some strange airborne weapon is being tested on the mutilated cows.
19:05This 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.
19:13But because of a legitimate fear that ranchers will start taking pot shots at U.S. military helicopters to protect their cattle.
19:25In the end, after 50 years of investigation of this mystery, we still have no smoking gun or alien death ray.
19:34What we have is thousands of dead cows.
19:38Meanwhile, 7,354 miles away is another strange location where dead livestock is the least of its residents' worries.
19:54It's a pretty average day for this young Cameroonian on his bicycle, riding from his village to the neighboring village of Nyos.
20:02Well, he's riding down the road with his wagon behind him, and he encounters a dead antelope right in the middle of the road.
20:08Great, he thinks. That's free meat to feed my family.
20:11Straps it to his wagon, continues on his way, only to encounter another dead antelope.
20:17And then dead rats and dead cows and all kinds of livestock are dead all around him.
20:23And this isn't looking right at all.
20:25And as he approaches the village, he realizes that it is freakishly silent.
20:29So he goes into one of the neighbors' houses and finds that all those people are dead.
20:34He goes to another house, same thing.
20:36He begins seeing dead bodies around cooking fires, dead bodies sitting at tables, dead bodies in their homes.
20:44He rides his bike to Lake Nyos, where that village is named for, and finds hundreds of dead bodies lying along the lakeshore.
20:52Strangers still, there are no flies buzzing around.
20:58They're completely gone.
20:59The buildings are all intact. Everything looks fine, other than this weird, silent death scene.
21:07What you find here is 1,700 dead people, thousands of dead livestock.
21:14There's nothing left living, and even the tiny insects that feast on the dead are not even present.
21:22Everything has been killed off.
21:24What can you imagine is going on here?
21:26Has there been some sort of new weapon tested that does not leave a trace, but yet kills every living thing?
21:32It's the stuff of science fiction.
21:35Scientists from across Africa, the U.S. and France, are sent to investigate.
21:40Lake 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.
22:01So 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.
22:11That's what causes a limnic eruption to occur.
22:16Limnic meaning a lake eruption.
22:19And then all of that trapped gas surges to the surface and suffocates any living thing that's caught in the cloud.
22:27Even scarier, experts worry a tragedy like this can happen again.
22:35There's another lake, Lake Kivu, that has 2 million people living around it.
22:43If a similar disaster occurs there, estimates state that it could result in the deaths of 4 million people.
22:53Lake Kivu is, without question, and in no exaggerated terms, it's a ticking time bomb.
23:03With all of the dangerous and unpredictable places out there, it kind of makes you wonder, how on earth do people sleep at night?
23:12Portland, Oregon, New Orleans, Louisiana, Austin, Texas, all proudly claim the title of weirdest city in America.
23:19But there's a town in Florida that might have them all beat.
23:23A place where unusual individuals are the norm.
23:29In the early and mid-20th century, traveling circuses and sideshows are still a popular form of entertainment in America.
23:38A caravan can roll into town and transform a sleepy neighborhood into something fantastic and out of this world.
23:47There are rides, exotic animal acts, and of course, the freak show.
23:54These sideshows highlight dwarves, giants, bearded ladies, conjoined twins.
23:59For many of these folks, this is the best opportunity they have to make a living.
24:04But life is grueling in the sideshow.
24:07People get tired of being stared at for money, and they really just want to find a place they can call their own.
24:11Welcome to Gibson Town, a.k.a. Gib Town, population strange.
24:18Gib Town 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.
24:34It's perfectly normal.
24:35One of the first residents of Gib Town is Al Tumany, known as the world's tallest man.
24:43He stands at 7 feet 11 inches.
24:46He becomes the local fire chief, starts a fishing club, and even settles down with Evelyn, the half-woman.
24:55Word spreads on the sideshow circuit, and by 1967, more than 100 circus performers called Gib Town home.
25:05This is a place where these circus performers could thrive.
25:10Like Louise Capps Hills, an armless girl is able to drive a tractor, milk cows, and raise her kids on her farm.
25:18Conjoined twins run the fruit stand.
25:21Grady Stiles, the lobster boy, makes the place his home.
25:26But this utopia won't last forever.
25:30Popularity of traveling sideshows erodes, and fewer and fewer new performers move into Gib Town.
25:37By the 1980s, it pretty much becomes a circus retirement community.
25:41Most of the old guard has passed away by now.
25:44There 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 Gib Town.
25:53The curtain falls on one community of wonder and opens on a tale that goes even deeper.
26:03It's the 1820s. We're in Washington, D.C., and President John Quincy Adams is being asked to fund an expedition to send search parties deep beneath the Earth's surface,
26:14hoping to discover subterranean worlds and conduct trade with a race of people who maybe live there.
26:21According to some, Quincy Adams is a believer in what's called the hollow Earth theory.
26:30The 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.
26:36But in the 1700s and in the 1800s is when it really picks up steam in Europe and the Americas.
26:41There's one man in particular, a guy by the name of John Cleaves Sims, who in 1818 writes a piece known as Circular Number One.
26:50Sims postulates that there's two pathways to the hollow center of the Earth, one on the North Pole and one on the South Pole.
27:00And then if we dig deep enough, we can find those pathways and get to this new world.
27:09Sims is ready to make this happen.
27:10And 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.
27:19As an enticement, he tells these would-be volunteers they're going to find worlds full of men, full of riches and full of this great phrase, thrifty vegetables.
27:32I 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.
27:42Now, 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.
27:49There'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.
28:04Sadly for Sims 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.
28:16With government funding gone, Sims would die a few years later, never realizing his dream of meeting the mole people and eating their thrifty vegetables.
28:27While 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.
28:38What does it take to start your own country? A good idea, some ambition and a decaying maritime structure.
28:45Welcome to the self-proclaimed kingdom that proves anything is possible.
28:51Six and a half miles off the coast of England is a tiny platform about 60 feet off of the ocean's surface.
28:58It looks like from a distance maybe that it's an oil rig.
29:00This small little speck, about the size of maybe two tennis courts, is the principality of Sealand.
29:07Does the United Kingdom, the United States, or the United Nations recognize this small little micronation?
29:14No, but its royal family and small number of citizens have fought fiercely for Sealand's independence.
29:21Before asserting its itty-bitty independence, Sealand served as an anti-aircraft post during World War II.
29:27There were three others like it, called Monselforts.
29:31Their job was to shoot out of the sky German Luftwaffe bombers.
29:36And they were pretty successful. They shot down 22 enemy aircraft and 30 V-1 rockets.
29:42After the war ends, battered British servicemen leave the post to return to their families back home.
29:50All except one.
29:52He's a retired major named Patrick Roy Bates.
29:56And he and his family take up permanent residence on one of these platforms.
30:01Roy isn't just making this a vacation home getaway.
30:03His grand vision? To make this tiny fort an independent and free nation.
30:11The 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.
30:18So these forts that have been built six and a half miles out puts it beyond the reach of the United Kingdom.
30:24That puts Roy in a position to say, this is out in international waters.
30:27That might tell us how this retired major claimed this former fortress for his own, but it doesn't tell us why.
30:35The answer is pretty unexpected.
30:37One of Bates' motivations is that he is a World War II veteran.
30:41He has fought against fascism.
30:43And 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.
30:52He's dealing with a country that, because of the Cold War, censors popular culture.
30:58And from his platform just outside of the international limit, he will broadcast a pirate radio station.
31:06Patrick sees the possibilities beyond just setting up a pirate radio station.
31:11If he's successful in creating his own micronation, that means creating his own constitution, issuing his own currency.
31:18The possibilities really are endless.
31:22The British government is not happy with Bates.
31:25And they jam his radio station.
31:27Bates resists this and in 1967 decides that he is going to formally announce the sovereign independence of this nation.
31:34And he names it the Principality of Sealand.
31:39And he gives himself the title of Prince and his wife the title of Princess.
31:44This is truly a slap in the face to the British government.
31:47To show Roy and his family that they mean business, the government has the British Royal Navy go out and destroy the other three Monsel forts.
31:57The Bates family is unfazed by this show of force.
32:01So the British Navy tries a more direct approach.
32:04The British government decides to send a message by sailing around the Sealand platform, harassing the family.
32:10Roy's 16-year-old son, Michael Bates, fires a .22 caliber pistol shot down at the boat as a warning.
32:20That does not sit well with the British Royal Navy.
32:23You would think a civilian firing upon the British Navy in broad daylight would be an open and shut case.
32:30But the proceedings take an unbelievable turn.
32:33Michael discharged this gun outside of UK jurisdiction, meaning that he can't pursue it.
32:40The showdown with the Crown government tracks the attention of a German businessman named Alexander Achenbach.
32:47He sees potential for an offshore enclave where money can be parked with no questions asked, with no taxes being levied.
32:56Achenbach decides to reach out to Roy to talk to him about possibly becoming a citizen of Sealand, maybe even buying the whole place.
33:05And he invites them to meet him in Austria to discuss it.
33:09But 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.
33:21So Achenbach takes the Bates' son, Michael, hostage and declares himself to be the prime minister of Sealand.
33:30This may be the smallest coup in recorded history.
33:35The coup may be small, but they're messing with the wrong monarch.
33:39Let's remember that Achenbach is a businessman and a scientist, and Roy is a retired major.
33:44Bates organizes his own force, which flies in and air assaults onto Sealand using helicopters.
33:51Most of Achenbach's men flee. However, Roy manages to take Achenbach as a prisoner.
33:58Bates allows his prisoner the proverbial one phone call while in custody to contact the German embassy in London.
34:04This is where things take another strange turn.
34:07The German officials contact their British counterparts, and the British officials say, we don't have any jurisdiction there, so you're on your own.
34:15Now the German government has to negotiate with this tiny little micronation over the release of a German citizen.
34:22Incredibly, this coup d'etat only further demonstrates the viability and reality of Roy's principality.
34:29Today, Sealand, like any other country, has its own currency featuring the royal family, its own stamps, even its own constitution.
34:38They can also stamp your passport when you visit.
34:41Though be warned, there's not a single decent hotel.
34:46In Canada, off the Sunshine Coast in the Strait of Georgia, one quiet beach has earned a strange reputation.
34:54And it's not for the views.
34:55It's 2007.
34:58A little girl is out on the beach of Jedediah Island in British Columbia.
35:04And she sees this large size 12 men's sneaker washed up on the beach.
35:11So she runs over, she sort of looks inside the sneaker.
35:15And finds a foot.
35:22Was this a murder victim? Did someone fall off their boat and get chopped up by the propeller?
35:30Who knows? But it's pretty disconcerting.
35:33The only comfort locals take is that this horrific discovery seems to be an isolated incident.
35:40That is, until it's not.
35:42Less than a week later, on nearby Gabriola Island, another sneaker washes up with another foot inside.
35:50But the sneakers don't match, and both feet are right feet. So this is a second person, a second victim.
36:00You now have a pattern.
36:032008, a size 11 Nike washes up on Valdez Island, also with a severed foot.
36:12In November 2008, a woman's New Balance shoe washes up on Kirkland Island, also with a severed foot inside.
36:19November 2011, men's size 11 hiking boot, foot inside.
36:27Over the next 14 years, more than 20 severed feet, complete with late model athletic footwear, wash up on nearby beaches.
36:35This is causing terror along the coast, and to make matters worse, now pranksters are putting chicken bones inside sneakers and sending them afloat.
36:44Investigators are flummoxed. Could all of these victims be connected?
36:53None of them show any evidence of having been hacked off or sawed off or chopped off through human action.
37:01All of them are severed through the ankle joint by decomposition.
37:05Eager to calm the public, forensic investigators start performing experiments in deep water decomposition with an unusual test dummy.
37:14Investigators take some pig cadavers and sink them to the bottom of the Salish Sea, the area where all these feet are washing up.
37:21And what they know during these experiments is that the scavengers, crabs, lobsters, things that are down there immediately start to disarticulate the body.
37:32Disarticulating is a fancy way of saying pulling the body apart at the joints.
37:37You know, just like humans do to crabs and lobsters when we eat them.
37:42Apparently the feet are often the first to go.
37:45But why are they only showing up in this one particular area?
37:48Turns out the Salish Sea has these sort of rotational currents.
37:54As they're circling around, western and eastern winds blow them back and forth.
37:59And so rather than stuff flowing out to sea, it sort of circles in a particular region to push them up onto these beaches.
38:07The cause of all these severed feet is actually natural and it's not the signature move of some crazed serial killer.
38:14Authorities in British Columbia are so happy with this explanation that they actually tell the public not to worry if more dismembered feet wash up.
38:25Because, and I quote, this is no cause for alarm.
38:28If that beach scene isn't unsettling enough, just wait until you see what turns up in the basement of one very surprised homeowner.
38:37In 1963, in the Turkish town of Derinkuyu, a man is doing a home improvement project.
38:45Now, 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.
38:51Well, this guy takes a sledgehammer and he hits the wall and he hits it again and again and he breaks through.
39:00What he finds is a passageway, which, when he crawls into it, leads to another tunnel and another tunnel beyond that.
39:11It's the 2,000-year-old lost city of Derinkuyu, one of the largest subterranean towns in the world.
39:22What he uncovers is absolutely unbelievable.
39:25A tunneled city that can house up to 20,000 people, animals, livestock, grain stores.
39:31The first eight stories have ventilation shafts that ensure that fresh air circulates through the entire subterranean city.
39:41But why build such an elaborate city underground?
39:45The main purpose of this underground city is for the people of Derinkuyu to come in and hide from outside forces,
39:53from dangerous people who may have infiltrated the area.
39:56One of the most amazing sites is there are these huge millstones, which are in place still to this day.
40:05They 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.
40:14This defense system works so well, the city remains in use until 1923, before it's sealed up and nearly lost to history.
40:21Good thing for DIY projects.
40:27We've visited places that drive people to the brink of insanity.
40:30Others that lead us to question, what else is out there?
40:33And one that has a whole bunch of venomous snakes.
40:36These are not only the strangest places on earth, they are also the very best of the unbelievable.
40:42The unbelievable.
40:43The unbelievable.
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