[William Shatner] A dark forest
where people vanish without a trace,
a mysterious desert
that defies the laws of physics...
...and a mountain so feared,
no humans dare climb it.
For over 300,000 years,
modern man has been able to thrive here on Earth.
All around the globe, Mother Nature offers resources
for food, water, shelter and even medicine.
But despite the abundance that our planet provides,
the natural world can also be a very mysterious
and unnerving place.
A home to toxic caves,
foreboding forests
and strange, invisible anomalies.
Is there a reason why certain hot spots around the globe
are dangerous to humankind?
Well, that is what we'll try and find out.
♪ ♪
[Shatner reads on-screen text]
A majestic giant stands alone,
dominating the landscape for miles in every direction.
While it is a sacred site for Native Americans,
thousands of visitors are drawn to the pristine nature
and metaphysical energy found at Mount Shasta.
[A.J. Gentile] Mount Shasta
is a beautiful beast.
This is a 14,000-foot-high stratovolcano,
only partially dormant,
that is in the Cascades but not quite.
It just sort of shoots out of the landscape
with these sheer cliffs that pierce up into the clouds.
And it's that beauty that draws
25,000, 26,000 people a year to visit it.
Mount Shasta is extremely visually striking.
Um, it's very, very visible from,
uh, well over 100 miles away on a clear day.
It's captured the attention of writers and artists, poets,
for a long, long time.
And I think sometimes these places
seem to have some kind of energy about them.
[Shatner] For all its natural beauty,
Mount Shasta is more than a destination
for recreation and respite.
For many, it's believed to be a very energetic landscape
that draws spiritual seekers in search of the profound.
[Dustin Naef] Mount Shasta is
regarded as a sacred mountain.
People are drawn up here because they have these
really transformative, deep, spiritual experiences.
You might say this is a place where the veil is thinner,
and things from the other side can come through it
easier here than in other places.
People all over the world are coming here
and more than 75% of them
come here for spiritual purposes.
[Walking Eagle] Just about every tribe around Mount Shasta
say it's a very sacred place.
And the water that comes from there
is very, very sacred water.
A lot of the tribe goes up there and prays for the water.
But for me, I pray for the whole mountain.
Because it-- the whole mountain, to me--
is very sacred and very beautiful.
And so, our belief is that when we pray to
the top of Mount Shasta, that the energy
come back to us and it does.
And it give us a blessing and then we take it back down
and give it to the people.
[Shatner] Could there be some kind of spiritual energy
surrounding Mount Shasta?
There are many people who describe experiences
of insight, renewal
and deep personal change on the mountain.
But others believe there is also
a strong and powerful force present.
[Gentile] Mount Shasta has been occupied
for tens of thousands of years.
This is a mountain that was revered
in these cultures for millennia.
And not just revered but-but feared.
On Mount Shasta,
you were allowed to explore the mountain,
according to the legends,
but you were not allowed above the tree line.
That was the dwelling place of the gods.
And anyone who crossed into that threshold
had to pay their toll to the gods.
[Walking Eagle] My grandparents told me,
"Don't go above the tree line."
To me, it was-- I always thought it was a joke,
but it wasn't no joke at all.
It was something that's very sacred,
and to make sure that I had a lot of respect for it.
The first time when I went up there and I went above
the tree line, I got really, really sick,
and ended up in the hospital with pneumonia
and just about died.
I took it for granted that, you know,
that nothing would happen to me.
You know, I should have listened, I should have
paid attention, above all.
When you're driving up there, the energy changes.
It's like driving into a dimension in time and space.
Some of the things that I see, and it's really hard for me
to describe because I really don't understand what it was,
but I know it was there.
I've seen a lot of bigfoots.
I've seen a lot of little people.
I've seen a lot of green lights
coming off the top of the mountain.
And, uh...
yeah, I've been scared a lot.
[Jami Mayfield] People have seen so many scary things,
either on the ground or in the sky, around Mount Shasta.
One of my unusual sightings was last November.
I go out to take my pictures.
It felt like there was just
hundreds of beings watching me.
I know what being watched feels like.
This was so intense.
I've had to learn to overcome my fear
while being in Mount Shasta.
[Shatner] Could something of a supernatural nature
be inhabiting the mighty Mount Shasta?
And could it be connected to the strange
and troubling reports of visitors
who have allegedly vanished without a trace?
[Gentile] There's one recent case that still has
search and rescue teams scratching their heads.
It happened in May 2025.
Lesner Cardenas was in a car accident.
He swerved to avoid a deer, he flipped his car.
He wasn't injured.
Later that afternoon,
he puts together a backpack, calls a cab
and takes a ride to Mount Shasta, to a trailhead.
He gets out of the cab, he starts his hike,
and that's the last we hear of Mr. Cardenas.
His phone stops pinging that afternoon...
...and there is no trace of him.
Mountain hikers, uh, trailblazers, climbers,
they go missing on mountains.
This is, this is not unusual.
But there's always some residual evidence of it.
There's a pack, there's a body, there's bones.
But in at least a dozen cases on Mount Shasta,
there is just nothing.
[Shatner] Are these disturbing disappearances
simply the statistical odds
of getting lost in the great outdoors,
or is there something far more mysterious going on?
[Naef] There's this idea that
there's another realm inside of Mount Shasta,
that you can pass through it into another world.
And a lot of people in town believe
that many of the people who go missing
are actually taken by beings who supposedly live underground
beneath the mountain in some kind of utopian-type paradise.
And supposedly, all over the mountain, there's portals
that you can access to go into their dimension.
Even if you go back in prehistoric times,
you know, Indigenous people
had traditions about another realm
being inside of the mountain
that would cross over into the afterlife.
And I don't know if that's because of the energy here,
or whether it's some external force that's acting on you,
but almost everyone who lives up here
has probably experienced something
pretty strange and...
unusual on a fairly regular basis.
[Mayfield] Mount Shasta is considered an amplifier,
not a generator.
It absorbs others' energies.
It's gonna give back what you give it.
And if you haven't done the work,
it's a very frightening thing.
And that's the truth. I've seen it.
[Walking Eagle] I would say to the people that go there,
just to be aware of what they might see.
Be aware of warning signs. That's the most important thing.
If you don't feel right, don't be there.
If you don't feel right where you're at,
then get out of there, because there's something there.
There's things there that you don't understand.
[Shatner reads on-screen text]
With its gothic medieval castles
and famous folklore
that inspired the tales of Count Dracula,
the region's reputation for being a spooky place
is legendary.
And many believe that there's nowhere
quite as frightening as a one-square-mile stretch
of wilderness known as the Hoia-Baciu Forest.
[Stables] Hoia-Baciu is a small native woodland
on the outskirts of Cluj,
which is a city in northwestern Romania.
I visited Hoia-Baciu,
which is supposedly the world's most haunted forest.
The first thing that strikes you in there is just
the way it looks is very, very odd.
Lots of the trees are kind of bent
in all these strange formations,
almost like meat hook-type shapes.
A lot of them have this thing
of being bent quite low to the bottom of their trunks.
They sort of bulge outwards.
There's an eerie atmosphere about it, for sure.
But the interesting thing about Hoia-Baciu is that it's,
it's not just ghosts, it's kind of bit of everything.
It's a bit of a one-stop shop for the paranormal.
Shamans go there to channel spirits.
People report a feeling of dread,
sometimes a feeling of elation,
um, sometimes even feeling, like,
hands grabbing at them when they walk through the forest.
The name "Hoia-Baciu,"
it's named after a local shepherd
who, um, supposedly walked into the forest
with 200 of his sheep in centuries past,
and none of them were ever seen again.
So, there's lots of stories of people going missing.
There's a famous story about a girl
who went picnicking in there with her family,
and she wandered off.
And they never saw her
until five years later,
when she emerged from the forest,
and she hadn't aged a day in that time.
So, there's a huge amount of folklore and mythology
that has kind of grown up around the forest.
It's definitely got a kind of energy about the place.
[Shatner] The foreboding, unusual energy
found at Hoia-Baciu Forest
has made it a global destination for dark tourism,
attracting visitors who come in the hope of experiencing
its high strangeness.
When you go to the Hoia-Baciu Forest,
uh, most probably, you will experience something.
Something else, something different.
The forest is known, actually,
for all sort of things, such as unusual sounds.
Sometimes, the electronic devices
don't work well in the forest.
You capture all sort of things
that you cannot really see with the naked eye
in your pictures.
You can be dizzy or you can have headaches
or you can experience nausea.
If you go in the Hoia-Baciu Forest,
probably you will have the feeling of being watched,
and that's pretty strange.
We don't know why this is happening.
It's not just a regular forest.
[Shatner] Like Marius Lazin,
Alexandru Surdukan also guides curious travelers
into the depths of Romania's scariest forest.
And he's tried to find out firsthand
why it has such a strange effect on visitors.
So, people, when they are visiting the forest,
sometimes they feel a s-- um,
like, not so positive sensations,
like nausea, vomiting, um, anxiety.
Uh, I also had some tours
when, uh, they were almost near a panic attack.
Some scientists try to figure out maybe
it's radiation involved.
Uh, for my safety, I used a Geiger meter
for three years, and I can say it's safe,
or it was safe for those three years.
But most of these people with sensitivities,
when we are in these areas, they feel, uh, strange stuff.
[Shatner] What is the source of all the strange happenings
in this hair-raising natural environment?
Well, many believe it can all be traced
to the forest's most feared and mysterious location.
[Gentile] At the center of Hoia-Baciu Forest
is a clearing about 300 feet wide,
and it's called the "Circle."
Nothing grows in the Circle.
Uh, no plants grow there, trees, nothing can grow there.
Just outside the Circle, they do.
Something is affecting the plant life there.
Something also affects the wildlife and humans
who visit the Circle.
When visitors arrive at the Circle,
they become disoriented, they talk about headaches,
they hear noises.
And what's strange is not everybody is affected by it.
[Lazin] The Circle,
the so-called "Poiana Rotunda" in Romanian,
it's one of the most, uh, active spots of the forest.
It is told that the Round Clearing has somehow
the potential to amplify your thoughts and your mood.
All sort of interesting things happen there.
For example,
in 1968, a military technician, Emil Barnea,
captured a few pictures of a UFO.
That actually made the forest famous
because all those pictures were later analyzed
by different experts in photography,
which all concluded that they were not fake.
[Stables] The Clearing is where
the famous UFO pictures in 1968 were taken,
and it's where people report
having the most strange experiences, effectively.
Lots of photos have been taken in there
which appear to show some kind of apparition,
wraith-like beings,
and orbs of light and this kind of thing.
I can't say I saw a ghost there or anything like that,
but, um, that's definitely the place
that made me feel the most uneasy because,
you know, nothing grows.
[Shatner] Why does nothing grow
in this anomaly known as the Circle?
And what can explain the strange effects
this area has on its visitors?
A book by Romanian professor Adrian Patrut
may provide an answer.
[Gentile] There have been studies at the Circle that prove
there are electromagnetic anomalies
that happen inside that circle
that don't happen anywhere else around the forest.
This is not folklore, this is not legend,
this is scientific fact.
But what makes it very unnerving is nobody knows why.
[Lazin] Between the early '70s till the mid-'90s,
a lot of scientists went in the Hoia-Baciu Forest.
We know that they were taking
different soil samples from the forest
to see exactly if the soil is different.
Also, we know that the scientists mentioned
the magnetic field of the Earth may act different
compared to some other places.
But all the scientists
suddenly stopped in their research work,
and we never understood why.
Some people say that this is because they got some,
let's say, unusual conclusions,
or something really bad happened to them.
Or maybe they just didn't find what they were looking for.
So, at least for the moment,
we may conclude that we will never know
what is really going on in the Hoia-Baciu Forest.
Is there a natural explanation for the strange phenomena
reported in the scariest forest on Earth?
Well, I for one won't be going there to find out.
And perhaps even more bizarre
is an unsettling sound reported in the desert of New Mexico
where an unidentified hum
is slowly driving some residents mad.
[Shatner reads on-screen text]
This high-altitude desert and UNESCO World Heritage Site
has been continuously inhabited by Native Americans
for over 1,000 years.
Since the late 1800s,
artists have settled in the region,
inspired by the visually captivating terrain.
But lately, the town's peaceful beauty
-has been pierced... -[low hum]
...by a maddening and mysterious sound
known as the Taos Hum.
The Taos Hum first emerged in 1992
when a woman named Catanya Saltzman
heard something that was keeping her awake.
She turned to her husband said, "Can you hear this?
He's like, "I don't hear it,
I don't know what you're talking about."
And she's like, "No, I'm not crazy. I can hear it.
This is driving me insane. I can't focus."
So, she said, "I'm gonna find out what the hell's going on."
So she wrote to the local newspaper, The Taos News,
and said, "Is anybody else hearing this?
This mysterious sound that's keeping me up. I can't sleep."
And once the word got out,
dozens of people said, "Yeah, I hear it, too."
And it was hurting people. It was causing harm.
Some of the symptoms of the Taos Hum were insomnia,
nausea, anxiety.
And, interestingly,
it's not like the people in Taos who have heard the hum
had especially good hearing.
Some people were half deaf.
Some people were great hearers.
So, that was really what was puzzling.
[Shatner] What is the unidentified sound
that only seems to affect some of the residents
in Taos, New Mexico?
It's a question that's been asked for over 30 years.
Cisco Guevara has lived in the area
for most of his life,
and he first heard the infamous Hum in the 1990s.
[Guevara] Years ago, I was at a remote camp.
I have a rafting company, we do a lot of camping
in remote places.
After a long, hard day, I was pretty exhausted.
And I made my bed and I laid down,
and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I heard it...
...and I shot up.
I was like, "Oh, my God, it's real.
This is, this is not good."
And I laid back down to make sure I wasn't
mishearing something.
And every time I laid down, it was definitely there.
A very man-made, machine kind of sound.
You know, it's a real thing.
It was kind of like inside my skull,
and it was not comfortable.
In town, a lot of people were experiencing
a lot of anxiety and headaches and they couldn't sleep,
and it was definitely a major factor,
and their quality of life was going downhill fast.
[Shatner] Depending on the survey, anywhere
from two to 11 percent of Taos residents can hear the Hum.
But why so few?
In the early 1990s, the University of New Mexico,
and other esteemed institutions
like the Los Alamos National Laboratory,
cooperated to investigate this unnerving noise.
The Hum is described as sounding
like a low diesel motor operating in the distance.
-[thrumming] -It's described as coming from nowhere
and everywhere at the same time.
So is there some type of machinery,
industrial explanation for this somewhere?
They can't find it.
Maybe it's a military, a government operation.
But there's no documentation of that anywhere.
It still wouldn't explain
why only a small percentage of people experience this.
[Radford] One of the theories was that the Taos Hum
was an auditory hallucination, like tinnitus, right?
Auditory hallucinations
have been documented. Like, people do hear
things that aren't there.
[Glen MacPherson] Mass hysteria is a very fair question,
but approximately 75% to 80% of the people
who learn about the Hum
do so independently,
through independent research
and not because they heard it from somebody else.
That itself is a pretty powerful piece of evidence
against mass hysteria.
In the end, um, they were still left with a mystery.
[Shatner] Glen MacPherson has been investigating the phenomena
since 2012.
And according to his research,
the Taos Hum is not only reported as something
that can be heard--
for some, this bizarre sound can also be felt.
[MacPherson] Sounds
can have a very unsettling effect
in general on the human body.
About ten to 15% of the people
who can sense this phenomenon
report an actual sense of physical vibration.
Everything from mining to the electric grid
to even high-speed freeway noise
gives some of those characteristics.
But what's really interesting about this
is that for those who have heard this noise,
many of them do report that there is something about it
that is not akin to typical noises
that they've experienced before.
But one very commonly heard theory
or speculation surrounding the Taos Hum
is that this is a natural phenomenon.
[Ben McGee] Our planet itself, just by operating,
actually generates quite a bit of noise.
There are little earthquakes happening all over the world,
all the time-- seismics.
That generates constant sound,
a background hum, if you will, of earthquakes.
And it's so regular, some people have called it
the heartbeat of the Earth.
[Shatner] Could the Taos Hum
be created by a natural process we've yet to identify?
The theory has grown more popular
as similar audible phenomena are being reported
throughout the world.
The Taos Hum is probably the most famous Hum in the world,
but this is something that happens in England,
in Australia, New Zealand.
All over the world are these strange low-frequency hums
that people can feel in their bodies.
And the most recent case is coming now on the East Coast,
out of a small town on Long Island Sound,
West Haven, Connecticut.
[MacPherson] If you take a look at a map of population density
of North America and overlay it with the World Hum Map,
you'll see a very clean density line
running from roughly Winnipeg, Manitoba,
down to Laredo, Texas.
So I think
it's fair to assume
the number of potential Hum hearers in North America
could be vast.
Many hundreds of thousands,
possibly millions.
[Guevara] The fact that the Hum is heard around the world,
it leads me to believe that maybe there is
a more nature-based explanation.
It's everywhere.
So if you want to be open to that kind of energy,
check it out.
You might be one of the two percent
that can hear it, 'cause it exists.
What is the source of the strange Taos Hum?
I'd say it's a good thing that not everyone can hear it.
But...
just south of the New Mexican desert
is another unnerving natural anomaly.
This one can't be heard or seen,
yet it is so magnetically powerful
it's been named
the Zone of Silence.
[Shatner] The Mapimí Biosphere Reserve, Northern Mexico.
This largely uninhabited expanse of the Chihuahuan Desert
is the primary habitat for the endangered Bolson tortoise.
But for human beings,
this extremely hot, dry environment also contains
one of the most dangerous places to be stranded
in North America--
a 30-mile stretch of desert known as the Zone of Silence.
[Stables] It was given the name the Zone of Silence in 1966,
when a local petroleum company were testing out the area
for oil surveys and they found
that their radio transmitters suddenly stopped working
and they weren't getting any signals in or out.
And so the company called it the Zone of Silence,
and the name stuck.
[Radford] The Zone of Silence is a place where, allegedly,
things that should work don't work.
Radio transmissions drop,
compasses spin wildly,
technology just fails.
If the stories are true,
you can see why it would be a terrifying place to be.
You're in the desert, which is inherently hostile,
and you can't call out for help, right?
You're on your own.
[Gentile] You can't get a cell phone signal.
You can't get a radio signal.
This is something that's been investigated by the military,
by governments, by researchers,
by universities. Nobody knows.
[Shatner] What causes technology to completely malfunction
in the Zone of Silence?
While there are no definitive answers,
local investigator Benjamín Palacios
has spent years trying to unravel the secrets
of this dangerous environment.
[speaking Spanish]
[translated] Very often, it has happened
that when people go into the valley of the Zone of Silence...
...they can end up going deeper in
because they lose their compass.
That's why the recommendation
is that you don't enter unless you have a guide with you.
Often, there are lights, for example,
that illuminate the hills and then they come towards you
and then they disappear.
These are lights that are frequently observed.
Locals have spoken to me many times
about triangular ships, about cylindrical ships,
and other types of ships.
There is a lot of activity of this type.
We consider it to be something normal but not earthly.
[Shatner] While numerous reports of bizarre, unidentified lights
and strange glowing phenomena
have many calling the Zone of Silence a UFO hot spot,
perhaps even more unnerving
is that the area once attracted
a U.S. military radioactive weapon.
[Andrew Collins] In July 1970,
an Athena rocket was launched from Utah.
It veered drastically off course and crashed down
into the Zone of Silence in the Chihuahua Desert.
Now, there was a big operation to clear up the mess,
and undercover work went on.
And the reason why it was so important
to keep it undercover is that
there was actually radioactive material on board,
cobalt-57, two vials of it, which,
to be honest, if, you know, people had encountered it,
they would have unquestionably had radiation sickness
and could even have died.
[McGee] There was a huge government operation
from the U.S. to come down and scrape the top area
of that desert clean and ferry this stuff away.
And they made sure they found all the radioactive sources.
And it certainly didn't hurt the mystique
that now the rockets are crashing
and radioactive material is being spread out
and government agents are coming in
and military operations are carting things away.
[Stables] Lots of people were wondering whether there was
something connected to the strange magnetic anomalies
that made the rocket go so far off course
and then crash-land in this-- in this area.
And then that got tied up with the reports of aliens,
extraterrestrials in the Zone of Silence as well.
So, yeah, it all added to the mythology of the place.
[Shatner] Could a strange force be drawing radioactive rockets
and extraterrestrial crafts to the Zone of Silence?
Who knows?
And, remarkably,
there are other objects in the sky that seem to be attracted
to this mysterious stretch of desert.
[McGee] Meteors have crashed here.
And, indeed, there is a high preponderance of,
you know, delivered meteorites in the area. But...
...did the meteors crash because of the Zone?
Considering all of these phenomena reported
in the Zone of Silence--
compasses spinning out of control,
electronics turning on and off,
even rocket crashes--
is there any sort of underlying
geophysical explanation
that could relate to this? Well, I think there might.
And some have proposed that there is
a large magnetic formation
that underlies, geologically, the area.
And that could have
a negative influence on electronics in the region.
Scientists have determined that there is
a lot of magnetite in the region--
that's naturally magnetic rock.
[speaking Spanish]
[translated] So this is a normal rock that I've brought
from the Zone of Silence.
Apparently there is something abnormal about it.
However, it is surely charged with electromagnetism.
Because when it comes in contact with a compass...
...it produces exactly this effect.
It makes the compass lose its sense of direction.
There are questions of many, many minerals
in the underground.
Details that are anomalous.
And they encourage me to continue investigating,
to continue observing.
-[insects trilling] -[Gentile] For at least
100 years, people have been trying
to explain what is going on in the Zone of Silence.
Maybe it's the strange geology attracting meteorites.
But the truth is nobody really knows.
They cannot explain why radio signals drop,
why there is electromagnetic disruption inside this zone.
You don't want to accidentally find yourself
in the Zone of Silence unprepared.
You're putting yourself in a very deadly situation.
Is there something underground in the Zone of Silence
that's contributing to this desert's unnerving reputation?
No one seems to know.
But there are other places
where nature has proven to be far more dangerous,
where the Earth itself exhales toxic gases
that could kill a person in an instant.
[Shatner reads on-screen text]
While members of the alpine ski patrol work near the summit
of this 11,000-foot dormant volcano,
without warning,
the snow beneath their feet collapses.
[McGee] Mammoth Mountain ski patrol workers
were going about their operations,
and one ended up falling into a cavity
created by a geothermal vent.
Think of it like a hot spring,
but instead of producing water,
it's producing poisonous gas.
So the person who fell in immediately asphyxiated,
uh, because they fell into this invisible pocket
of poisonous air.
One of the associates went in to try and help.
They went down.
Then the third one tried to do the same thing,
and they went down,
and the fourth and last was the only one that survived.
[Shatner] It's frightening to think that toxic gases
are just under our feet.
But invisible killers can be found in many places,
just waiting for us to do something
as simple as breathing.
[Gentile] In the Amazon rainforest near Brazil,
you can go into the forest and be affected by fungal spores
that come out of the caves that are completely odorless.
They're invisible.
You don't realize that you've been infected by the spores
until days later,
when you come down with a serious case of histoplasmosis,
which causes delirium, dizziness,
nosebleeds, vomiting,
sometimes organ failure, and sometimes death.
And every year, there are tens of thousands of cases
out of the rainforest
where people are dying of histoplasmosis.
What makes this danger especially insidious
is the fact that it's completely invisible.
You don't know you've been infected until it's too late.
[Shatner reads on-screen text]
A drilling crew accidentally uncovers
a five-million-year-old extremely poisonous environment
known as Movile Cave.
Movile Cave was discovered in the mid-1980s
when they were drilling and excavating
for a new power plant.
And when they discovered this cave in Romania
in the Black Sea region,
it was something that was really new to science.
It had been completely sealed,
untouched by humanity
for millions of years.
Movile Cave has sections that are dry,
like air-filled passages,
but also submerged sections
where you would have to dive to continue through the cave.
It has toxic environments
that we can't breathe, we can't survive in.
There's hydrogen sulfide.
There's high carbon dioxide levels.
There's low oxygen levels.
There are some cave dives that I do
where I'm exposed to high levels of hydrogen sulfide.
When I descend into this sort of murky white cloud,
I can actually smell it in my mask.
It smells like rotten eggs.
It makes my eyes water.
And if you dwell in that layer for too long,
it'll actually soak into your skin
and it can eventually poison you.
But if I was in a dry cave and there was hydrogen sulfide,
high levels of carbon dioxide,
I could suffocate in minutes.
[Shatner] While Movile Cave's toxic air is extremely lethal
to humans without protective gear,
surprisingly,
strange creatures have been able to survive and evolve
in this so-called poison hellscape.
[Heinerth] A scientist named Cristian Lascu
went into the cave and discovered
all sorts of new species,
new forms of life that had never been documented before.
It's spiders, it's leeches,
it's cave scorpions, crustaceans.
So a lot of things with venomous fangs or pincers
or lots of things that are kind of frightening to people.
And this life was living in the complete blackness.
And it's within my lifetime that we realized
that that was even possible.
Now we know from places like Movile Cave
you don't need light to make life.
[McGee] The Movile Cave demonstrates a reality
that you can have entirely unique,
concentrated, and isolated ecosystems
lurking, you know, hundreds of feet below the surface,
just humming along.
I mean, truly a bizarre,
alien, deadly environment
that was just hanging out beneath their feet,
waiting to be discovered.
And if that's the case there,
it underlies the reality that that's the case everywhere.
♪ ♪
[Shatner reads on-screen text]
Rising nearly 22,000 feet in the Himalayas,
there is a mountain whose four sheer sides
align almost perfectly with the four cardinal directions--
north, south, east, and west.
Over one billion people around the world believe
it is the axis mundi,
or the spiritual center of the universe.
It's called Mount Kailash.
[Gentile] Mount Kailash is not
the tallest mountain in the Himalayas,
but it's maybe the most important
and certainly the most mysterious.
What's interesting is it's never been climbed.
Nobody has ever reached the top of it.
And it's not because it's that high or that difficult.
It could be climbed.
It just isn't.
Because it's just considered too important to touch.
There's something about that mountain.
[McGee] In the 1970s, there was a legendary climber
named Reinhold Messner
who had climbed Mount Everest with no supplemental oxygen,
which is a real feat.
And he went to climb Mount Kailash in Tibet,
and he took a look at it and then said,
"Mm, I shouldn't climb this mountain."
There was something about that mountain that told him,
"Not that I can't climb it--
I shouldn't climb it."
And that's interesting.
[Shatner] Many locals say that while visiting Mount Kailash,
the rate in which hair and nails grow on the human body
accelerates rapidly,
as if time moves differently in the shadow of the mountain.
And while it sounds far-fetched,
it has become a pilgrimage site for those that believe
it is imbued with the power of the gods.
[Stables] Mount Kailash is
very, very sacred to Buddhists, Jains,
Hindus, and also followers of Bon,
which is the indigenous Tibetan religion,
which makes you wonder whether there's something inherent
about this place that inspires people
of various religious traditions or inclinations to...
ascribe certain power to it or tell stories about it.
[Collins] Mount Kailash is obviously one
of the most sacred places in the whole of the world.
This is seen as a deity in its own right.
And for this reason,
it has a spirit and essence,
and you should not disrespect that.
Because I think if you do,
you are heading into trouble.
But is it really possible
that mountains like this can have
some kind of consciousness,
some kind of spirit?
[Gentile] Mount Kailash is a sacred place
where humans should not go.
Even non-religious people who visit the mountain
say that they can feel something about it.
Something about the mountain speaks to them.
Maybe it's the geometry, maybe it's the geology.
But there's a reason why a billion people
call this a sacred place.
[Shatner] What causes four major religions to fear
and respect one mountain so intensely?
Perhaps it's the knowledge that the natural world
holds many mysteries
and the acceptance that it can be a great provider
and a punishing force.
[Heinerth] Many of us, within the course of our lives,
make it about
finding safety and comfort
and controlling things.
But when it comes to Mother Nature,
it's more than just the unknown that unnerves us.
It's really the lack of control.
And Mother Nature makes her own timelines,
and that's incredibly disturbing
when we realize that it's not up to us.
[Stables] It almost feels like when we climb mountains
or trek through dangerous environments, whatever it is,
sometimes it almost feels like we're doing it
just for the sake of making sense of our place in the world.
Giving us this illusion of kind of control over it.
But, you know, that's always gonna be an illusion,
because nature always has power over us
to do what it wants in an instant.
It's safe to say that some of the legends and beliefs
that our ancestors created were the result of trying to explain
the mysteries they encountered in the natural world.
And while time and technology have helped modern man
decipher the environment around us,
just how much do we really understand
about how nature works?
On a planet filled with life-sustaining abundance,
there are also mysteries of Mother Nature
that are fascinating
and sometimes fear-inducing
that may forever remain...
...unexplained.
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