William shatner: A transnational flight
vanishes into thin air.
A legendary explorer is lost in the amazon jungle
and is never seen again.
And a notorious area in the north atlantic,
where entire airplanes...
Disappear.
When we find out that someone is lost,
we like to think that their disappearance
has a rational explanation and that, at some point,
they'll return.
Hopefully safe and sound.
But what happens when people don't return
and the circumstances of their disappearance
defy explanation?
Well...
That is what we'll try and find out.
♪ ♪
shatner: Malaysia airlines flight mh370
prepares to depart from kuala lumpur international airport
en route to beijing.
On board are 227 passengers
and a flight crew of 12.
John nance: Malaysia 370 was a commercial flight.
Malaysia airlines was a routine procedure,
a routine flight, as we say.
The flight path was more or less a straight line
aimed from kuala lumpur
out over the water in, uh, the south china sea
to the main landfall of china.
As far as everybody was concerned,
it took off normally,
was flying its route north towards china.
Tuttle: Then, all of a sudden, it turned off its communications
and basically went dark.
Shatner: At about 1:20 a.M.,
as the plane was flying over the south china sea,
ground control lost all contact with the plane.
One second, the 240-ton boeing aircraft
was emitting a clear transponder signal
to air traffic control,
and then, mere moments later,
there was nothing.
The fact that the signal disappeared--
that was the unusual element.
The fact that that transponder, which was chirping back
every time it was hit by the radar beam
from air traffic control, went silent.
Michio kaku: Flight controllers frantically tried
to communicate with the airplane.
Nothing. What happened?
How can you lose a jetliner?
How can it vanish in thin air?
Shatner: Although the aircraft was lost on civilian radar screens,
unbeknownst to ground control,
military radar was able to track the plane for another hour.
And what it detected was baffling.
At that point, when the radios were turned off,
the flight path did a 90-degree turn to the left,
basically on a southwestern heading,
and disappeared into the vastness
of the indian ocean.
We don't know the motivation for doing this.
We just-- we don't know.
Shatner: Around 2:20 a.M., radar contact with the plane
was lost for good.
By 7:20 a.M., one hour after it was scheduled to land,
authorities in beijing realized
that flight mh370 was not going to reach its destination.
A search and rescue operation was immediately launched,
and it quickly became the most expensive and difficult
in aviation history.
The initial search was basically, uh,
aircraft searching for the immediate wreck,
looking for any survivors
or telltale wreckage on the sea surface.
Unfortunately, after a while, things sink.
Survivors aren't there, and you go from
a search and rescue mission to a search and recovery mission.
Shatner: When the wreckage did not turn up,
officials were eventually forced to admit
that all 239 people on board the flight...
Had perished.
We were clueless as to what could have caused this tragedy
right under our noses
in an era when we have the internet, satellite,
radar communication,
it just disappears off the radar screen.
Shatner: The wreckage of the plane,
despite the efforts of the world's top aviation experts,
had seemingly vanished without a trace.
But then, after months of searching,
investigators finally uncovered an important clue.
Boeing had included a maintenance reporting thing
that goes by satellite.
It was called an acar system,
and boeing had installed the system
to report maintenance information
about the engines in the airplane every hour.
In this particular case, it was still pinging away.
It was saying essentially to the satellite,
"hey, I'm here. You want any information?"
shatner: The information revealed by the acar system was shocking.
It showed that the plane did not crash
anywhere near where it was last detected.
It actually changed course
and kept on flying.
Greg liefer: It was flown for another six hours
after it made the initial
diversion from its intended flight plan,
and it was flown, uh, to a very remote area.
Shatner: Based on this data,
aviation experts believe that the plane most likely crashed
somewhere in the southern portion of the indian ocean
after running out of fuel.
It seems that the aircraft flew in the wrong direction
for thousands of miles
to a distant part of the ocean
where there was no possible place to land.
But how could that have happened?
Initially, the theory that was proposed by a lot of the media
was that the pilot in command committed suicide.
But, in fact, the accident report
clearly stated that...
The pilot had no history of emotional or physical problems
that would preclude suicide,
and family, friends and coworkers said
he had no abnormal behavior before the flight.
Kaku: Other people say,
no, it was some kind of mechanical failure.
If it were to catch on fire,
the plane could rapidly depressurize,
meaning that people would suffocate very rapidly.
And I think that what happened then was
you had a ghost airplane.
Everyone was either dead or dying.
It was randomly going back and forth until it finally
ran out of fuel and crashed into the indian ocean.
You had theories of, uh, oxygen, uh, malfunction
that incapacitated the pilots,
but I don't think that makes sense because the aircraft
certainly appeared to me like it was being flown manually
for up to, uh, at least 30 minutes,
if not up to an hour, after it made that hard left turn.
The thing that makes the most sense to me
was some type of hijacking.
The abrupt maneuvers that it was making,
the changes in altitude and air speed and heading,
all that indicates to me
that it was a deliberate, uh, manipulation
by other people that took control of the aircraft.
But then that poses the question,
well, why did they hijack the aircraft?
What was the motive?
And why fly to the southern indian ocean?
Shatner: While the theory that the plane was hijacked may sound logical,
authorities thoroughly checked the background
of all the passengers and crew,
and none of them fit the profile of a hijacker.
The truth is that, while several of the explanations
that have been put forth seem to have merit,
we simply don't have enough information
to verify any of them.
We have no way of knowing
because the cockpit voice recorder is at the bottom
of the indian ocean someplace.
But the other and the most important thing
to keep in mind is we found a piece of that airplane.
A piece of the wing was found and verified.
It was washed up on, I believe,
the shores of madagascar or close to it,
and it was definitively from this particular airplane,
so we knew then categorically
that that airplane had gone into the indian ocean.
And in this case, this particular piece of the plane
had taken about a year and a half to float
all the way across the indian ocean.
Liefer: It was one of 27 pieces that were eventually recovered.
And it was one of three pieces out of the 27
that was positively identified as coming from the aircraft.
The aircraft wasn't found, occupants weren't found,
but yet 17 months later,
they find these pieces of debris
thousands of miles away,
and that's what makes this mystery, I think,
probably the biggest mystery of all the aviation mysteries.
Shatner: Unfortunately, a few scattered pieces of wreckage
are all that remain of flight mh370,
its passengers and crew.
Is the story a frustrating reminder that,
in modern times, the truth can still be elusive
in spite of all the knowledge and technology at our disposal?
For those of us who learned about this disappearance
in the news, that seems to be the case.
But how much more maddening would it be to try
and understand the disappearance of someone you know?
Perhaps the answer can be found by examining
the case of two united states congressmen
who went missing nearly 50 years ago
and whose families are still searching for answers.
Shatner: A cessna airplane taxis into position
and prepares for departure.
On board the small plane are four people:
The pilot and three passengers.
Two of the passengers are united states congressmen.
House majority leader hale boggs of louisiana,
and alaskan congressman nick begich.
My dad had a habit of bringing, uh,
his colleagues, uh, to alaska.
And-and the reason he did is
he wanted people to see the vastness of it
and the richness of the state.
You can talk about a place,
but until you're in it,
you really have no concept of-of any of it.
And alaska-- it's like 20% of the landmass of the country.
And my dad, uh, used small planes often
because you could take the side trips,
and he wanted to show people things.
Shatner: At 9:00 a.M., the plane took off into the foggy morning sky
and headed for juneau.
They were scheduled to land there
sometime between 12:00 and 1:00 p.M.
The pilot did not file a flight plan
until ten minutes after he took off,
which was, uh, completely uncharacteristic.
He filed the flight plan by radio transmissions,
and the route of flight he intended to take
was across prince william sound to yakutat
and then from yakutat to juneau.
We know the airplane, in this particular case,
had six hours of fuel, and it was only about
a three-and-a-half-hour flight.
And you could get almost there and turn around
and come back with the fuel that you had in it,
but they never made it to juneau.
Shatner: At about 1:15 p.M., air force officials
were informed that the flight was overdue to land at juneau.
When efforts to communicate with the plane failed,
both the local authorities and several branches
of the united states military
launched a massive, coordinated search for the missing cessna
and the two congressmen aboard.
Throughout the search, there was 30 to 40 aircraft involved
every single day, and those included assets
from the u.S. Air force, the u.S. Army, civil air patrol.
And there was a sea search that was conducted by ships
from the u.S. Coast guard as well.
Shatner: After 39 days of searching,
authorities announced that the plane could not found.
All flight members were declared dead.
What started as an adventurous aerial tour
of the alaskan wilderness in a small plane
while on the way to juneau
somehow went horribly wrong.
Begich: My dad was a totally energetic person.
He was 40 years old when he was lost.
You never think someone's going to die at-at that age
and in the circumstances, uh, that this happened.
Shatner: On the day of the flight, the weather was reported
"marginal," meaning that flying conditions were less than ideal.
But not everyone is convinced that the weather is to blame,
in part because no wreckage of the crashed plane
was ever found.
And by all accounts,
it should have been found.
Liefer: During the search, every possible area was covered.
They said there was a 97% probability
it would have been found. Nothing was ever found.
Begich: They did this massive search on every level
to come up with absolutely nothing.
And that was it at the time.
That was all we knew at the time. The search ended.
Shatner: The families of the two congressmen had no choice
but to accept that both men had died
and that the full story behind their disappearance
might never be known.
But then, two decades later,
the family of congressman begich
received some startling new information.
Begich: Years later,
a couple of boxes of archives showed up
on one of my brother's doorsteps.
And the files were from the fbi,
and they said that people had come into the fbi's office,
they said they had located the plane,
and then said there were two people
still alive at the crash site.
And so what the fbi had to do
is verify that the source was valid,
that they really were who they said they were, and they did.
So you have an agency confirming the authenticity
of the people that located the plane,
and two people were supposed to be alive then.
And that was a shock because we'd never heard this,
and we had been in touch with the fbi at the time.
It was traumatic because you had this unended open question
that never received a conclusion.
When they were pursuing every other thing and let us know
about every other thing, why not this?
Shatner: In the years since the fbi documents revealed
that their father may have survived the initial crash,
the begich family has reexamined the case
by requesting additional documents and photographs
related to the search for the plane.
But, on some occasions, the government seems
to have not fully cooperated with their requests.
For instance, when they requested copies
of aerial photographs taken by the military
sr-71 reconnaissance airplanes that flew over the search area,
they got an unexpected answer.
When we asked for the records, they told us there were none--
that they had gotten rid of all those sr-71 overflights,
all of this material was no longer available.
Which is a lie.
It's a lie because the government never gets rid of
those sr-71 overflights.
They're too valuable, they cost too much money,
and they don't get rid of them.
So, for some reason, they didn't want us to have the data.
Shatner: Did the government deliberately withhold
aerial photographs from the search for the plane?
And, if so, were officials
trying to cover up the possibility that the pictures
might reveal not only where the plane crashed
but also that two survivors could have been rescued?
I think all of the people that engaged in the search
sincerely looked at everything
and continued to follow up leads,
but I question the honesty of our government at that time.
There was things missing in this,
and we don't have the truth to this day, I'm sure.
So it remains unresolved
until, someday, uh, we can see
the full body of-of the record.
Shatner: Nearly 50 years after the disappearance
of congressmen hale boggs and nick begich,
the questions and possibilities
seem endless.
While there are many theories as to what took place,
the truth about what happened to these two men
remains unknown.
Just like the fate of another figure who,
after taking an adventurous risk,
never returned.
An explorer who was so bold, so daring,
that he may have gotten lost
because he didn't want to be found.
Shatner: Three englishmen, accompanied by two brazilian locals,
make their way through the dense foliage.
The men are searching for an ancient lost city
that has been rumored to be hidden deep
within the rain forest.
The leader of their quest
is an ambitious explorer who feels that he is on the cusp
of a remarkable discovery.
Colonel percy fawcett.
Colonel percy fawcett is a very interesting
historical character.
He was a geographer, an explorer,
a member of the world geographic society,
and also a military man for most of his career.
So a very capable individual,
and he was responsible for exploring and mapping
a lot of the unknown regions of south america.
So, uh, colonel fawcett makes an interesting
and rather dashing figure.
Shatner: After decades spent trekking through south america,
fawcett became convinced that a massive civilization
had once existed somewhere in the amazon jungle.
Deyermenjian: Fawcett came upon this particular manuscript
that was supposed to have been written by um bandeirante,
a portuguese fortune seeker
back in the 1700s.
And it looks to be describing
a particular city there
in the brazilian amazon.
Lynne mcneill: That manuscript describes
not just a lost city of ruins
but a lost city of epic proportions.
A lost city of riches, a city of gold,
and architectural marvels, technologically developed,
things that you would absolutely not expect to find
in the middle of the south american jungle.
Shatner: In time, fawcett's fascination
with a lost city in the amazon turned to obsession.
He even came up with a name for the place he was searching for.
He called it "the lost city of z."
armed with clues from the portuguese manuscript,
he plunged into the wilderness once more,
determined to solve the mystery.
His companions were his son jack
and his son's friend raleigh rimmel.
The geographical challenges along the routes
that fawcett and his party would face
included things like rivers that were extremely swift
that one could easily have their feet knocked from under them,
and there would have been piranha as well
in these areas of brazil.
And the swamps, the marshes,
were particularly virulent as far as disease, insects
and geographical difficulties.
Shatner: As fawcett moved deeper into the heart of the amazon,
he wrote about his progress
and gave his notes to native guides
who carried them back to civilization.
The newspapers eagerly published the details
of his latest exploits, portraying the explorer
as an international hero on the verge of making history.
Deyermenjian: Colonel fawcett was a world-known celebrity.
His exploits were followed in the press
and, uh, were quite popular and quite well known.
We know what we know of colonel percy fawcett
largely from his own writings,
stories about encounters that he had
with native peoples in brazil,
stories of having arrows drawn on him threateningly.
He tells the story of a 62-foot anaconda
that he shot in the spine and killed
as he was canoeing through the waters down the amazon.
Layne: He writes a letter to his wife and says,
"there's no fear of failure."
he apparently thinks he's right on top of it,
that he's going to find it,
this lost city,
and then he vanishes.
Shatner: Six weeks after the expedition started,
fawcett's letters stopped coming,
and people around the world began to fear
that something terrible had happened to the explorer
and his team.
After weeks, months and eventually years of waiting
with no word from him,
it became clear that colonel percy fawcett,
his son jack, and friend raleigh rimmel
would never return from the jungle.
Tok thompson: There was a great interest in what could have happened.
Some people thought he might have been murdered
by the local indigenous groups.
Other people thought that maybe some, uh, bandits
that were operating in this area, uh, might have killed him.
Some people even said that, look, maybe he found it.
Maybe he found his lost city of z
and just decided to stay there the rest of his life.
Shatner: The lost city of z
found at last?
Is it possible that fawcett's dream
actually became a reality?
Brian fawcett, uh, his youngest son,
reported that there's a distinct possibility
that percy fawcett did not intend to return.
That, for him, if he did find it,
it being the capstone to what he was looking for,
he might not have intended
to ever leave the jungle.
Layne: If you have dedicated your life now
to finding this lost city of treasure and gold,
and you actually find it,
maybe you don't want to reveal it to the rest of the world.
Maybe it's perfection, it's paradise,
maybe you can make the choice to stay.
Was the treacherous jungle,
insufferable heat
and a face-off with a giant anaconda
all too much for colonel percy fawcett and his team?
Or, as some people suggest,
did fawcett make such an incredible
archaeological discovery
that he chose to never leave it?
Perhaps further clues about the nature of obsessions
and their consequences
can be found by examining the life of an author
who helped to pioneer the science fiction genre
and whose greatest story may have been...
...His own disappearance.
Shatner: While serving in the union army,
22-year-old lieutenant ambrose bierce
is shot in the head by a sniper.
The bullet goes into his left temple
and lodges behind his left ear.
And it's too deep, at that time,
for them to do some kind of operation to remove.
So he lives the rest of his life
with a bullet in his head.
Layne: Some of the people who knew bierce say that
this brain injury caused him to become strange.
It caused him to start seeing the world in a more morbid way.
And after his experience in the civil war,
he wrote very memorable short stories
that were filled with the supernatural.
Shatner: Ambrose bierce is best known
for writing short stories that involve
paranormal incidents and strange disappearances.
One intriguing story
that he wrote for the san francisco examiner in 1888
was titled "the difficulty of crossing a field."
hawkes: "the difficulty of crossing a field"
was about an alabama farmer who one day
was taking a walk across the field...
...When he just disappeared.
He was gone.
And years later, his wife would say that she could hear
his voice from time to time,
but he wasn't there.
In the story, ambrose bierce was trying to show us
that this man traveled interdimensionally
to another place.
Shatner: Bierce's stories hinted at alternate worlds
and parallel dimensions
and helped to pioneer the science fiction genre.
But in December of 1913, bierce, who by then
was one of america's most prominent literary figures,
left the country.
He headed south of the border
because he wanted to witness the mexican revolution
taking place at the time.
Layne: He's 71 years old
when he crosses the border
to supposedly join pancho villa,
the great revolutionary of mexico.
He writes one letter in particular
to his niece laura, and he says,
"goodbye. If you hear of my being stood up
against a mexican stone wall and shot to rags..."
-man: Fire! -(gunshots)
"...Please know that I think it's a pretty good way
"to depart this life.
Affectionately yours, ambrose."
shatner: While in the city of juárez,
bierce joined pancho villa's army as an observer.
He then followed the army south
as far as the city of chihuahua.
On December 26, 1913,
bierce sent a letter to a friend,
which he ended cryptically by saying:
"as for me, I leave tomorrow
for an unknown destination."
the eccentric author was never heard from again.
After writing about people who disappear,
bierce himself disappeared
like a character in one of his own stories.
There are eyewitness reports of ambrose bierce dying
all over mexico at different times
separated by years.
Mcneill: We have a plethora of different stories
of people reporting that he was executed,
of people reporting that he died of illness,
of people reporting where and when they last saw him
and who he was with.
All we know is that he was gone.
Shatner: Reports of bierce's death
would continue to surface for years after his disappearance.
But for many, these stories are not as convincing
as the idea that bierce traveled south
not to join in a civil war
but rather to visit a remote location
that had captured his dark imagination.
An area known as
the zone of silence.
One of the more popular theories about his disappearance
is that he follows pancho villa into this mysterious area
called the zone of silence, which was locally known
as a place where people vanish,
where there are odd occurrences.
Gander: When bierce takes that trip to mexico,
if he wasn't killed along the way,
he would have passed through the zona del silencio.
The zona del silencio-- it's known as a place
that's full of meteorites.
There's a lot of magnetite in the rock around,
which people say makes it certain
that radio waves don't travel out of there.
The modern ranchers and cattlemen that live in the area
have lots of stories to tell about strange lights in the sky,
even strange encounters with individuals in the desert,
and it is indeed mysterious.
Shatner: Curiously, if you trace the route
that bierce traveled with the mexican army,
it appears that he was headed directly
for the center of the zone of silence.
But what was he hoping to find?
Hawkes: We don't really know what happened to ambrose bierce.
The theory is that bierce, within the zone of silence,
may have discovered or mastered
supernatural methods of traveling
from one place to another
and may have transported, as in his stories,
to an interdimensional space,
never to be heard from again.
Is ambrose bierce
buried in some unmarked grave south of the border?
Or, perhaps more intriguingly,
did ambrose bierce even die at all?
There are some who even suggest
that he was accidently transported
into another dimension.
Sounds preposterous, huh?
Well, for those who are familiar with the bermuda triangle,
it's a question that is not as crazy
as it may seem.
Shatner: A squadron of navy torpedo bombers,
collectively known as flight 19,
takes off for what is supposed to be a routine training mission
over the atlantic ocean.
Liefer: It was five u.S. Navy tbm patrol bombers
that were flying on basically
a, uh, practice navigation mission.
It was the last flight
that was required by the cadets before graduation.
The flight leader said that both of his compasses
on board his aircraft weren't operable.
(alarm buzzing)
well, the chances of both compasses going bad
at the same time is just extremely remote.
And there was also confusion
between the flight leader and the student pilots
about which way they should be going.
Shatner: All five planes experienced equipment malfunctions,
and then all five disappeared from radar.
Their last communication consisted of
nothing but eerie static.
Kaku: This is unprecedented.
Navy crewmen in airplanes
simply disappear off the face of the earth.
Now, of course, hundreds of theories have been proposed.
The most logical theory is the weather.
Perhaps there was a sudden hurricane
that came out of nowhere,
and people got confused.
And, as a consequence, they dove right into the water.
But the record and the data is sparse,
and that's because our technology, our sensors,
were very primitive back then.
So there is a chance that 100 years from now,
we'll still be debating what happened.
Shatner: The disappearance of flight 19
is just one of the many mysterious vanishings
that have taken place in that part of the atlantic ocean.
An area that is now known as
the bermuda triangle.
Airplanes, boats and people have just disappeared
for as long as we've been keeping records of travel
through that area.
And it's been very much a mystery of:
"is there something special about it?"
do the characteristics of the bermuda triangle
make it a unique or, uh, individual body of water?
In-in some ways, yes.
You go from bermuda,
1,000 miles southwest to florida,
you go about 1,000 miles over to puerto rico,
and then you go back 1,000 miles north to bermuda.
That is almost a perfect isosceles triangle.
Dennin: The bermuda triangle area,
because you're right near the jet stream...
...You do have extremes of weather and ocean conditions.
All of these will interact
with the electromagnetic field of the earth.
And so it's definitely a possibility
that you have some sort of magnetic anomaly.
When you think about possible reasons that people
have weird experiences in the bermuda triangle,
that could be a potential cause.
Shatner: When flight 19 disappeared in 1945,
there were many theories,
but none of them could completely explain
the strange incidents that continued to occur
in this mysterious area.
Then, in 1970,
a young aviator happened to fly through the bermuda triangle
and had no choice
but to face the forces that exist there.
But this time, the pilot lived to tell the tale.
Pilot bruce gernon is flying his small plane
100 miles off the coast of miami.
I've made several hundred flights
flying in the area of the bermuda triangle.
But this time, I found myself surrounded
by this strange storm.
There was only one exit that I could find,
and I call it a tunnel vortex
because these small puffs of clouds formed
around the walls of the tunnel,
and it was rotating slowly counterclockwise,
and it was probably 700 feet wide when I entered it.
I didn't want to do it, because I've been taught not to fly
through horizontal tunnels between storms.
But it was so critical that I decided
that I would go ahead and do it.
Shatner: Bruce experienced some terrifying moments,
but, fortunately, he was able to make it
out of the tunnel alive.
But when he looked at his flight readings,
he realized that his escape
was even more incredible than he thought.
Gernon: When I entered the tunnel vortex,
my navigational instruments said that I was 100 miles
east of miami.
I was in the tunnel for three minutes and 20 seconds.
And when I reached the other end,
I ended up right over miami beach.
So it only took three minutes and 20 seconds
to fly 100 miles.
So I realized, right at that point,
that something unexplainable had just happened.
Shatner: 100 miles?
In only three minutes and 20 seconds?
Bruce's plane would have to have been traveling
1,800 miles per hour
to cross that distance in such a short amount of time,
a speed that his small plane
was not even remotely capable of.
Does bruce's flight suggest that the disappearances
that take place within the bermuda triangle
are the result of time and space being somehow altered?
I believe that flight 19 experienced the same type
of phenomenon of the tunnel vortex
that I experienced.
They didn't know their position,
and so you get totally confused
and end up in a graveyard spiral and crash into the sea.
I was just fortunate because I didn't get confused.
If someone doesn't believe what I experienced,
I like to say to them
the only way to discover
the limits of the possible
is to go beyond them into the impossible.
And that's what I did.
Shatner: Are the strange occurrences
that take place within the bermuda triangle
proof that we don't understand our planet
as well as we think?
It's an intriguing possibility.
But if there are locations on earth
that cause bizarre vanishings,
should we try to investigate those places?
Or are we better off avoiding them
at all costs?
Shatner: Photographer charles mccullar
hikes around the rim of this picturesque body of water.
But what starts out as a simple walk through nature...
Quickly turns tragic.
Erato: Charles planned a two-day excursion to crater lake
to snap winter photography.
But he trudged out through the park entrance
and was never seen again.
Shatner: Authorities tried for months to find charles with no luck.
It wasn't until nearly two years later
that they got a break in the case
when his body was found in a remote part of the park.
The most baffling aspect of the charles mccullar case,
besides the way that the remains were found,
was where the remains were found.
It's about 14 miles from the park entrance,
so he would have had to trudge over
105 inches of new snow,
with some areas having 20-foot snowdrifts,
14 miles to a remote part of the park.
So how did charles get that far into the park?
Layne: The weird part that lingers with his story is:
How did his human remains end up so far away
from where he was, and why were they found
so long after the fact of his disappearance?
Search teams had been looking for him
from the week he disappeared.
Shatner: The idea that someone could hike 14 miles
in eight feet of snow
is a little hard to imagine.
But, on the other hand, crater lake has been the site
of similarly inexplicable occurrences for centuries.
Erato: Crater lake is a hotbed
for stories about paranormal activity
and just supernatural occurrences.
There are stories of people vanishing,
and it ties back to local native tribes
that have lived in the area thinking that it was
basically the location for the devil on the planet earth.
Shatner: Is it possible for a place like crater lake
to be imbued with some kind of dark power?
The native people of that area
had a largely sacred understanding
of that particular body of water.
And when we have a place, a geographic location,
that's recognized as powerful,
when individuals approach that area, unknowing--
or disrespectful, perhaps, even--
of the power that's there,
the story never ends well.
Erato: When someone vanishes in the wilderness,
we have a lot of modern-day technology that's used
in the recovery to go find people,
and it works most of the time,
but what drives public fascination about
a lot of these mysteries are the vanishings
where none of that technology seems to work.
We have all this stuff at our disposal,
and it turns up nothing.
And nobody can explain why.
So what do you think about these bizarre vanishings?
Could they all be the result of tragic accidents?
Foul play?
Or might extra-dimensional forces be at work?
Well, in any case, it's safe to say that
these mysterious disappearances
force us to challenge our preconceived notions
about what we believe is fact,
what we believe is fiction
and what we're willing to accept as being simply...
Unexplained.
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