On this episode of Destination Truth.
When did they first have reports of hauntings here?
There are a lot of evil spirits in this village.
Josh travels to Thailand to investigate a real-life ghost town.
You're scared of this place?
Not now, but after sunset.
At night? Yeah.
If you're going to find a ghost in Thailand, this is the spot.
He finds that in this cemetery,
things go more than just bump in the night.
Next, the crew heads to the Mekong River
for the reported sightings of the legendary Naga.
Does he believe that the Naga still lives here?
Yes, he believes that.
If we got any chance of finding any Naga,
that's the place to do it, on the Mekong.
Does he discover the elusive serpent?
Or does he find himself all wet?
Whoa!
What are you hearing? A little bit of movement.
What is that? Did the camera get that?
I'm Josh Gates.
My travels have taken me to the most exotic and mysterious places on Earth.
I've seen some unexplainable things which have raised some strange questions.
Now, I've pulled together a crack team
armed with the latest technology to search for answers.
I'm not sure what's out there waiting for me,
but I know what I'm looking for.
The truth.
Outside of my love for the film Poltergeist, I'm not a huge ghost buff.
I usually leave the apparition searching to the boys over at Ghost Hunters.
But when I read in the Associated Foreign Press
about a village in Thailand under siege by ghosts,
I figured it was about time to put my paranormal hunting skills to the test.
We packed up our night vision cameras,
thermal imager, and EMF detector in the hopes
that we would be able to capture physical evidence of the hauntings.
My crew and I then hopped a plane
from Los Angeles to Bangkok, Thailand.
While on the plane, I had some time on my hands,
so I did some further research into the reported sightings.
Descriptions of the sightings ranged from a flesh and blood human that had recently died
to a disembodied red glow in the sky.
What made this story stand out for me
is that the hauntings had become so problematic in the province of Khon Kaen
that the villagers were compelled to bring in
professional ghost hunters to combat the evil spirits.
Eight bad airplane movies later, I was in Thailand.
Do you know?
You got it? We got it? No idea.
There wasn't a direct flight to Khon Kaen, so we landed in Bangkok
and made our way to the Shock Gallery,
where we met with Tom, local translator and fraidycat
who had his own reservations about coming face-to-face with a supernatural entity.
I assured him I wouldn't let a ghost get anywhere near him,
unless of course the cameras were rolling.
So, hauntings and ghosts, very popular in Thailand?
Very. Actually, they believe.
I'm sure it's popular everywhere else, as well, but in Thailand especially.
And so, everything in here are just photographic evidence of hauntings?
Uh-huh. These are quite, quite famous among the Thai
because they were published in our local newspaper.
This is actually kind of scary. Yeah.
I didn't fly halfway around the world
to look at some seriously fishy photos of extras from The Ring,
so the next morning we made our way out to the province of Khon Kaen
to meet with the village chief,
who could shed more light on the sightings
and hopefully direct us to where all the Thai ghouls reportedly hang out.
So even last year, there were still people who saw, like, a headless ghost.
A headless ghost?
Walking around. They freaked out, ran, and got sick.
Specifically where in the village have these sightings occurred?
Have they been in different areas or all...
Are they all centralized to one place?
There's this one specific location that people often see spirits and ghosts.
It was a long drive to where the witnesses claimed to have seen the headless ghost,
and the chief set up a meeting for us
with the two ghost hunters he'd hired to capture the spirits.
He warned us that their attempt to rid the village
of the paranormal entities had apparently failed.
But who knows? Maybe these ghost hunters could capture the ghost for me
and I could just go back to the hotel for one of those famous Thai massages.
So if there are spirits nearby, it's like a detecting device, it goes very quickly.
I will take this and we will scoop it into this container. This is like a ghost trap.
Exactly. It's a ghost trap.
Very low, and it will go in the ghost trap. Okay.
Okay? And now we'll cover the end of it with this.
Ghosts can't get through this?
No. Because this is a holy cloth.
It's a holy cloth. Okay. I get it.
Ladies, lead the way.
All right, so it wasn't the most scientifically credible investigation
I had ever been on, but who was I to question
their tried and true ghost hunting technique?
You got one? All right. All right. All right!
Okay. Okay, okay, okay. And there's a ghost in here now? For real?
They say it's a ghost. Okay. Well, I, um...
Okay, so, um...
Excuse me for one moment. Hold on.
All right, so supposedly this contains a ghost.
But now what do we do? Do I let it go?
Let it go. You let it go.
Go ahead. Let it go.
Give it back to them.
All right, so I am inclined to believe that there is no ghost in here.
But I will give this to you. Do with it what you will. Thank you very much.
Okay. Let's go.
I wanted to stick around and see
if these two had a method for hunting Bigfoot.
I'm sure it would involve a banana and a lasso.
But it was getting late, and the chief told us
that the most haunted spot in the province
was a monastery at the other end of Khon Kaen.
There, we would find a graveyard that had so much paranormal activity
that many people refused to get anywhere near the premises.
It was exactly the invitation I was looking for.
The first thing we're supposed to be listening for is howling.
We made our way to the monastery
where the sightings had reportedly occurred.
With such a high incidence of paranormal encounters here,
most locals avoided this place like the plague, leaving it largely abandoned.
We sat down with one of the few remaining residents, a monk,
who gave us his account of the hauntings.
This monastery, this area, we've heard is haunted with ghosts?
He's been hearing noises.
He thinks there are a lot of ghosts?
It's an old graveyard.
An old graveyard? Graveyard.
And that's an area with a lot of supernatural activity?
Yes.
The monk gave us his blessing to set up
our night investigation in the graveyard,
but warned us to keep our senses alert
for the signs that precede the presence of a spirit.
First, we should listen for the sound of howling dogs,
as they are believed to be able to see and hear what humans cannot.
Second, he mentioned a foul, noxious smell
that fills the air when a ghost is present.
And just when I thought Tom couldn't get any more frightened
by our investigation, we stumbled onto the crematorium.
You're scared of this place?
Not now, but after sunset.
At night? Yeah.
The furnace had been used to cremate thousands of bodies over the years,
a fact which made our poor translator a little uneasy.
This is the most insane thing that anybody can do.
Why? Because people wouldn't do it.
It's like you're entering your death because you're opening a place that,
you know...
Now I'm scared, officially.
That's a lot of ash in there.
It's okay now, just imagine at night. It's very creepy.
Okay, so this is where we'll set up.
The crew and I set up our night vision cameras,
thermal imaging system, and remote audio technology against the setting sun.
If anything, even things undetectable to human senses
were to move, make a sound, or even cause a slight drop in temperature,
our gear would pick it up.
We could transform the graveyard into a maximum security surveillance center
for spook hunting, and with our cameras fixed on their targets,
I was ready to see where the night would take us.
So how often do they say there's activity here?
This is the spot. This old, kind of ruined area is very, very active.
Well, it makes sense, obviously, if there's been...
Thousands of people cremated here. Yeah.
And the remains of hundreds of people sprinkled around.
Put it this way, if you're going to find a ghost in Thailand,
this is the spot.
This tree over here is the spot
where a monk claims he felt the presence of a spirit.
We've got one camera on that.
Camera 2 is pointed directly at the crematorium.
Cameras 3 and 4 are facing out that way, towards the headstones.
Just like a dog whistle, some sounds can't be heard by the human ear,
so what we're hoping to do is pick up these electronic voice phenomenons
known as EVPs on the tape, and then send them back to the U.S. To be analyzed.
This is an Electro 100 wireless microphone.
It should pick up any noises that come from inside the chamber.
Testing, testing. Hello?
That looks good. That level. NICK: Clean.
It's perfect. Levels are good and it's really sensitive.
You guys ready to go dark?
Okay, guys, I'm going to make my way
up to the crematorium to place this mic.
Marc, you're with me. We're going to go up and place the unit.
If a spirit makes any sound inside the crematorium, this mic should pick it up.
Testing, testing. Putting the unit inside the crematorium.
Okay, the mic is in the crematorium.
Okay.
Hopefully the mic will allow us to catch any disembodied voices or unexplained sounds.
So, everybody, super-quiet now.
Let's just do, like, five or 10 minutes of uninterrupted recording on this thing.
Do you hear that?
Yeah, I hear it.
What is it?
I think it sounds like howling.
It's crazy. It sounds like hyenas.
Locals say the first thing we should be listening for is howling.
What was that?
Okay, that is straight-up terrifying, whatever that is. I know.
Locals say the first thing we should be listening for is howling.
What was that?
That sounds to me like a bird,
but something is definitely freaking the animals out over there.
I think we should go and check out the perimeter.
I'm going to take the Bullard and the electromagnetic sensor.
Okay, let's go.
Some people believe that fluctuations in temperature
indicates the presence of a spirit.
It feels colder over there by the headstones. Let's check the thermal imager.
I'm not detecting any sort of change in temperature
that would lead me to believe that we've got a ghost here.
Let's keep moving.
That howling came from this direction, but I'm not hearing it anymore.
There's a belief that spirits emit an electrical charge
that I should be able to read on the EMF detector,
but I'm not getting anything over here.
Guys, let's just head back.
The detector didn't pick up any electromagnetic signals.
How does it sound?
It was like the shaking of a paper bag, a plastic bag.
I hear something.
It sounds like something moving around.
Inside there?
For sure.
It's too infrequent to be static.
It sounds... It sounds almost like it's scraping the ground.
Stop, stop, stop. That one. Right there. Right there. There to the right, yeah.
Okay, that is straight-up terrifying, whatever that is.
I know. It's crazy. It's like...
Not only is it just off-the-charts loud compared to
anything else that mic picks up, but it's just...
It's like rustling around.
I mean, there's no sound out here at all that that thing's picking up.
It's all internal in that chamber.
It's super creepy.
A rat or something?
It's a sealed room.
Neil, do you want to come and see what this thing looks like?
Yes.
What is that smell?
It stinks. It's like burning garbage.
It's a really sharp, bad smell.
Hey, that's another sign, right?
Okay, let's go.
I'm not picking anything up on the thermal imager,
but that smell is up here and it wasn't before.
There's no visual here.
Let's go.
So, the state of affairs is this. We have a ton of audio data to cull through,
we're definitely hearing some weird stuff from that microphone in the crematorium,
and visually I can see in the wave forms
that there's funny spikes that I really can't account for.
We have to review that later. The hard drive is just chock-full of data.
I think at this point we should just break everything down, head back,
we can review all this data later, but I think in terms of, you know,
being here, we've got everything we're going to get.
All right, guys, let's break down all the cameras.
Tom, can you pull the car around for us?
Tom?
Where's Tom?
Where the hell did he go?
Tom?
You got the audio recordings we sent you from Thailand?
Yes.
Is there a more isolated way to listen to these sounds?
Right there. Stop right there.
What is that?
After packing up our gear, I headed back to the town to track down
our trusty guide who, in Scooby-Doo fashion,
had decided to flee the scene in the middle of the night.
So, first things first. At one point tonight during our investigation, you vanished.
First, we heard... We all heard it.
Okay? Then, I smell.
I don't want to stay to see anymore.
So you're convinced, based on the evidence that we collected, that
we had some sort of encounter tonight? Yes.
With something supernatural? Truly.
A frightened guide was one thing,
but I wanted to find out exactly what we heard out there.
So while Tom went home, presumably to triple lock his doors
and hide under his bed, I sent the recordings back
to an audio forensics lab in California to be further analyzed.
Before heading home to get the results,
I wanted to check out rumors of a long, serpentine creature
that reportedly lives deep in the Mekong River. It is known as the Naga
and it had recently received Loch Ness Monster status
having reportedly been spotted on numerous occasions all along the river.
It's been described as having a long, snake-like body with the head of a dragon.
Similar to something you'd find tattooed on a biker's shoulder.
In the late '90s, a photo surfaced of a bunch of men
holding what was said to be the Naga, but was later debunked.
I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that all of these men were American
and not in Thailand.
Then there was the fireball sightings reported all along the river.
Some Thais believe it is the Naga blowing these glowing red orbs out of the water.
Lastly, there is the footage that a woman had allegedly shot
from the shore of the Mekong.
Obviously, she never heard of YouTube
because the only way to acquire her little Naga paparazzi video,
watch it, and get more information from her about the Naga,
was to travel all the way to Nong Khai and track her down in person.
It was enough to extend my plane ticket for a few days
and make our way to an expert who had written many books on the Naga.
So, what do you make of all the people who have these sightings of the Naga?
Do you think that these people are actually seeing something in the Mekong?
Do you think it's possible that, that video footage is of a Naga?
What do you make of that experience?
But what do you think they are?
Some people believe that it's a natural occurrence,
some sort of a gas that emits from the Mekong.
That has yet to be shown scientifically?
Yes.
After my interview with Pongpol, I made my way to a local market.
It was the perfect place to start my investigation.
I knew it would take me hours to sift through all of the evidence,
analyzing every last detail to lead me to the Naga.
All right, it had nothing to do with my investigation, but I was in Thailand.
Do you have any idea how little they charge for watches here?
Please. Thank you.
Bright and early the next morning, we began our drive to the Mekong River.
Pongpol suggested we meet with a man that claimed
to have found tracks of the Naga on a storeroom floor.
He lived in a small town outside of Nong Khai entirely dedicated to the creature.
After a quick detour to a snake village
where the locals get a little too intimate with the cobras, we arrived in Naga central.
So this is ground zero for the Naga.
There's shrines and statues.
Does he believe that the Naga still lives here?
Yes. He believes.
What evidence is there here of the Naga?
There's certain evidence of his trace up here.
There's evidence of his trace? Yeah.
Of his track? Of his track, yes.
So it looks like it was muddy here,
and there are these drag marks on the floor that are supposed to be
the scales from the bottom of the Naga.
But then they washed the floor. Or they didn't preserve it.
And it went all the way around?
It went all the way around the building?
But then why isn't it here now?
They put a glass box over it, but then...
Then one month later, it was gone. It vanished.
The serpent cleaned it? Yeah.
As much as I relished the thought of a giant serpent with no arms
diligently tidying up after himself,
I had a hard time imagining how he'd pick up a broom.
As I continued through the village and passed the many shrines dedicated to the Naga,
I was beginning to realize that the creature experiences in this town
were more of the spiritual variety than the physical.
The Naga's kind of a complicated creature
because it's obviously a really important part of both Hindu and Buddhist religion.
This place seems to be primarily a temple devoted to the Naga.
We know further up north we have these eyewitnesses
who actually had physical encounters with the Naga,
so we need to go and talk to those people and see if we can
start to thread together some more material evidence.
I scanned the photos and sent them back to Dr. Andrew Engilis,
our zoologist in the U.S. To get his opinion.
I figured if anyone could tell me what was moving around on that floor, he could.
Meanwhile, I wanted to find someone
who'd actually seen the mighty creature in its physical form.
Our Naga village tour guide told us about a local schoolteacher who had
allegedly spotted the creature on several occasions.
Credible eyewitnesses would help us find the perfect spot to set up our investigation.
The spot where they said they saw the Naga.
Now, they've explained to you that you and I are going to arm wrestle?
Have they explained that to you? We're going to have an arm wrestling competition.
Okay. To the death.
Okay. Okay?
No? Okay. Um, so...
So, I understand that you had an experience where you saw a Naga?
You've seen the Naga? Yes.
Where were you?
By the Mekong?
What did you see?
With the horns? Two horns? Yes. Yes.
Yes.
All right, so we'll go to that place where she said she saw it? Check it out.
All right, let's do it.
My new friend took us to the Mekong River.
So, this is the spot where people saw the Naga? A few years ago?
Where did they see it? Just out here in the water?
And is this the Pagoda here?
A Pagoda is a multi-tiered structure
thought to be spiritually charged and usually built near a temple.
In this case, our witness believes
that the Naga was protecting the religious tower.
The Naga was starting to blur the line between the spiritual and the physical again.
But I found the woman credible.
She seemed to see something physical moving in the river.
I decided it was time to meet with a marine biologist
to get the scientific lowdown on whether or not this thing could exist.
Many people claim to have seen a Naga in the Mekong.
What does he think these people are actually seeing?
There may be a Naga.
Yeah.
Ask him to give me a sense of what large animals live in the Mekong River.
There are giant catfish.
Usually, there's also a giant Russian catfish.
A giant Russian catfish? Yes, because...
What's the difference between a giant catfish and a giant Russian catfish?
The giant catfish has no scales. It's the largest non-scale freshwater fish.
All right.
And Russian catfish is about one-and-a-half to two meters long.
Another difference is that the Russian catfish eats meat, but the catfish eats plankton.
Eats plankton. Yeah.
I was pretty sure I'd be able to tell a catfish
from a giant fire-breathing serpent when I saw it.
Luckily, we'd get an opportunity
since the biologist told me exactly where we'd be able to find
this mysterious footage that led us on our journey.
On our way to find it, we got distracted by another less credible lead.
You believe in the Naga? Yes, I do.
Show me on this map where the Naga is.
All right, Thailand.
Show me exactly where the Naga is on this map.
Sort of in the Mekong River.
Mekong River. That's where the Naga is.
Apparently, the woman worked in a local market down the street
and the biologist said I couldn't miss it.
Have you seen the Naga in the Mekong River?
I believe I seen.
And there's video footage of that, correct?
That you filmed?
With your friend? Uh-huh.
And so, you believe that was a Naga?
The woman gave us two different videos
shot in two different places that supposedly captured the mighty Naga on the Mekong.
I gathered my team and sat down to watch the elusive footage.
The only thing missing was the popcorn.
Do we have the footage? This is the perfect spot to look at it,
in the shadow of what has got to be the tallest Naga in the world. Here we go.
Yeah. There's something moving around out there.
If we've got any chance of finding a Naga,
that's the place to do it. On the Mekong.
I'll jump in for the sake of the show.
Eric, you will immediately disintegrate.
Whoa!
Eric, you got company in there.
Here we go.
There's something moving around out there.
What is...
There's something big in the water right there. See?
It's kind of cool-looking.
Well, it definitely looks like something alive, swimming around in the river.
All right, next up.
Well, now that's definitely something in the water.
What is that?
Looks like a head of something, right?
That's definitely a head.
Yeah. It's strange-looking.
So, I don't know. I mean, I'm definitely buying that this is the head of something.
All right, that's weird.
We should do our investigation.
Yeah, I mean, we definitely have to get out there, you know?
If we got any chance of finding a Naga,
that's the place to do it. On the Mekong.
You got a boat?
Big one.
This huge one?
Yeah, they're setting up right now.
So, we take the barge down river?
Right. To the Pagoda.
To the Pagoda, where the sightings occurred. Right.
And we'll set up the cameras there and scan the water.
We'll see if we can drop the main camera in the underwater housing
and see if we can scan the river floor. Okay.
See what we see down there.
How are we gonna get it down?
Mekong is... I don't know. Who knows what's down there.
Dirty. Dirty, weird.
I'm not getting in this. There's no way.
With the sun setting quickly,
I knew we had to get out on the river as soon as possible.
The crew took the equipment and set up while we headed up river
to the spot where most of the sightings had occurred.
So the Naga's supposed to protect this Pagoda.
And the old Pagoda collapsed, is that right?
Yeah.
Yeah, there's just one piece of it left sticking out of the water.
Once we reached the Pagoda,
we made a curious discovery, and it wasn't the Naga.
What's the driver's plan? Is he able to drop an anchor, or...
You cannot step on it?
But how will he stop the boat from moving?
I don't think this guy's got an anchor.
I have the feeling that we're just going to ram right into the side of this thing.
Naga.
That was Naga-ish.
What is going on?
Well, uh, we forgot an anchor.
So now we're going to try to tie off directly to the Pagoda, which...
That's a little scary. ...seems dubious and
sacrilegious at the same time.
We decided to head to shore to see if we could find an anchor on another boat.
Faced with the revelation that apparently no boats in Thailand ever need to stop,
we decided to just travel up river and let the boat float with the current.
It was time to figure out how we could record an image
beneath the surface of the Mekong.
The underwater housing unit helps us shoot video at very deep depths
and is primarily used during our diving investigations.
We hoped it would catch a glimpse of any large underwater creature
that approached the boat.
Unsure how we were going to get an underwater housing unit
to sit at the water's surface, Eric came up with a grand solution.
I'll jump in for the sake of the show.
Serious? Yeah, I'll do it.
You're going to jump in the Mekong River?
Eric, you'll immediately disintegrate. It's like a pool of acid.
I don't know. I got to... Let me just think about this, just for a second.
What are you talking about?
No, I mean, I'm getting in. I'm just wondering what the plan of attack is
once I'm way over there and the boat's up here.
Tied to the camera. What are you talking about?
All right, all right, all right. Okay.
Whoa!
There you go.
This thing's heavy.
Eric, you can swim, right?
I'm holding onto something that weighs 30 pounds.
I hate to admit it, but watching one of my producers
struggle to stay afloat in some of the filthiest water in Southeast Asia
made the entire trip worthwhile.
We wanted to find another way to survey the surrounding area,
so we attached the PiranhaMAX fishfinder to the side of the boat.
The fishfinder is a radar device used to track large marine life in the water,
such as a giant catfish or a giant sea serpent.
Eric, splash a lot. Yeah.
Sound like you're a fish in distress.
I'm right in front of it. You see it?
Yeah, I see you.
Probably having sealed his fate to weeks of painful treatments
against typhoid, dysentery, malaria, SARS, and bubonic plague,
Eric agreed to help focus the radar in the right direction.
Many of the witnesses had reported seeing the creature at night.
This gave me hope that our investigation would pick up
once the sun fell below the horizon.
Lindsay, why don't you get some of the head lamps out
and see if you can rig them to hang them on the boat, so we get some light in here.
Very nice. Yes.
The fishfinder is going crazy.
Eric, you got company in there.
Yeah?
You got something down there.
What is that noise?
Fish alarm. More fish.
All in a day's work. You got some fish.
Little fish, I think.
Let's see if we have anything from earlier today
from the underwater camera housing unit.
Eric, let's get you back in the boat.
Let's see what we got. I can't wait to see what's on this thing.
Man coming in.
How was it, Eric?
Here we go. Ready? Let's see if we got anything. Up and over.
God, it's so dark.
Okay, I can't see a thing down there.
I mean, this is obviously no help to us at all.
It's just totally silted up. You can't see anything in there.
Unless a Naga swims up to the camera.
With night upon us, we turned our attention
to the four night vision surveillance cameras pointed off the edges of the boat.
These cameras would capture anything breaching the water's surface.
Where are we with the camera setups?
I think we're pretty good to go. Charlie?
All the cameras are up. We got one over there.
Okay, Camera 1 is pointed towards Laos.
That's Laos, yeah.
Camera 2 is pointed towards Laos.
Three and four are pointed towards the Thailand shore.
How deep do you want the DolphinEAR?
Let's get it just off the... Just off the floor.
It should be sensitive enough to pick up the faintest noises down there.
What's our depth here?
Bottom of the river, or how far down is the DolphinEAR?
Both.
The DolphinEAR right now is about 20 feet down,
and I think the bottom of the river is 30-ish.
But, I mean, you saw the Pagoda and you saw...
I mean, I think there's ruins and stuff like...
Scattered throughout. Up and down.
But on the average, it's about...
Thirty feet.
What's that in there?
Let's see.
I think those are just reflections in the water.
It's noisy out here. Eric, do you have any activity on the fishfinder?
The river's definitely getting deeper in this area.
Forty feet?
Yeah. About that.
Um, I'm not seeing anything, but I was seeing a few fish earlier.
I'm seeing nothing now. It's just nothing.
Lindsay, are you picking up anything on the DolphinEAR?
The sounds haven't changed very much
since we started drifting and killed the engines.
What are you hearing?
A little bit of movement.
What is that? Did you guys see that?
What the hell was that?
I don't know.
What camera picked that up? Three.
There's something bumping around out there.
A little bit of movement.
What is that?
Did the camera pick that up? Did you guys see that? What is that?
I don't know.
What camera picked that up? Three.
What the hell was that?
I got nothing on the fishfinder. I know I heard it.
The fishfinder's on that side of the boat.
Yeah, that's the problem. The fishfinder's on that side of the boat,
and it's scanning just directly below.
Anything that's on the surface up here,
which whatever that was definitely was up on the surface,
is not going to be detected.
I mean, it was right there. It was like eight feet off.
There's a lot of big things.
These giant catfish and things live in the Mekong.
How long did they say the catfish got?
What did they say? Twenty-feet long?
No. Really?
They caught some giant one that was like...
The biggest freshwater fish in the world.
Yeah. They've banned catching it.
For sure though, there is something out in this water.
There is something out here, and this is exactly the place
where the Naga footage was shot.
Can we make these cameras any more sensitive?
I mean, it's really deep right now.
It looks like we're going to hit something a little higher, though, in a second.
This is the deepest it's been for a while.
There's something bumping around out there.
Can you turn the boat lights on?
It's creepy out there. Carter, are you seeing anything?
No, I'm not seeing anything.
Lindsay, can we take a look at Camera 3 again?
It's too dark.
It's tough because this camera uses all the available light,
but there really isn't very much up here.
Yeah. And with no ambient light, there's just no contrast...
Right. ... between the water and the...
If it were a full moon, it might be a little easier to see, but...
I mean, you can see something disturbed the surface of the water, for sure,
but beyond that you can't... I mean, it's really difficult to discern anything.
Let's see if we can look around a bit more.
Can you kill the lights for me, please?
I'll start a new recording.
Still nothing on the fishfinder.
Captain says that we're drifting back towards the rocks again,
so we're going to need to pull up the DolphinEAR
and we're going to have to head back towards the Thailand side.
Well...
I mean, it's been a while now since we've had anything
disturb the surface of the water. We're really...
I think we're looking for a needle in a haystack here, at this point.
I think we should wrap this up
before we end up shipwrecking somewhere on the Laos border
and head back up towards the docks
and call it a night and pack this stuff up.
We didn't capture the mysterious Naga on camera,
but at least we had the photos of the Naga tracks
on the linoleum floor that could be analyzed.
We called Dr. Andrew Engilis, a zoologist
who has specialized in marine creatures for the past 15 years
to take a look and give us his opinion of what was in these photos.
Andrew, hey, it's Josh Gates. How are you?
Hey, how's it going?
I'm well, thanks. Uh, did you get the e-mail that I sent you?
Yes. I am looking at it right now.
The markings you see on the floor, the locals are claiming
are the traces of a Naga, which is like a serpent
that has slithered across the floor.
Does that seem consistent with the kind of markings that a snake could make?
Well, just looking at the marks that's left behind,
it just seems like something...
I've never seen a pattern like this ever left behind by a snake before.
Usually they leave sort of concentric rings.
Does it seem consistent with the markings of any animal that you know about?
I don't know. It doesn't look like something
that I'm familiar with, that an animal could leave.
As I expected, the pictures from the Naga village
didn't prove to be much help in tying up this investigation.
But we still had the two Naga videos to take a look at.
But before I gave them back to the doctor for analysis,
we traveled back to the U.S. To meet with a team of video, audio forensic specialists
to see if they could reconstruct the images of the shaky pixelated video.
Being that they were leaders in forensic investigation,
I was confident they would give the doctor and myself a clearer picture to look at.
So, this is the "ripples in the water" video, correct?
Okay, so were you able to do anything with this?
This one I wasn't. There's nothing that appears to have come up out of the water
or anything I can focus on.
Okay, did we have better luck with the other piece of footage?
Yes, we do. Okay, great.
Well, let's take a look at that.
This one, I took still photos and did the enhancement from there.
Over on the side here, you can see each photo
that is layered and just stacked on top of each other
to get the definition of this image, right in here.
Do you think that what we're looking at here is organic?
In my opinion, that's organic. It's some kind of life form. There appears to be an eye.
It's my opinion that, that is an organic life form.
With a newly reconstructed image of our submerged star,
I e-mailed the files to Dr. Engilis
to get his opinion of what we were looking at.
I looked at this image, and it clearly shows
an animal that sort of begins and ends, I think, in a fish-like structure.
In my mind, clearly shows a catfish under the water.
I don't think it represents any sort of serpent.
It just doesn't seem logical to extend it to something
that's real long and snake-like. Sure.
But that still didn't explain the numerous eyewitness accounts.
One thing was for sure, I saw no horns and found no fireballs in the photos.
It was time to leave the Naga and turn our attention
to our audio files from the crematorium.
So, if you want to just go ahead and play this.
First of all, we wanted to have you send us
the recording equipment that you created, and so we did tests with that.
We did not see anything that was identical
to what you sent us in the crematorium.
The forensics guys were unable to recreate
the static patterns we picked up in the crematorium,
even using the same exact equipment we used.
This ruled out the possibility of a faulty microphone.
But I decided to listen to the recording a little more carefully,
with a section of the audio isolated.
It was then that I noticed something strange.
Can you amplify it even more?
Sure.
There's definitely something talking there. Can you amplify that for me?
What does that sound like to you?
It does sound like speech.
It does sound like speech, right?
It does sound like speech.
That definitely sounds like whispering.
Does anybody in your office speak Thai?
No.
Whispering voices?
We immediately took our recording to a Thai translator back in Los Angeles,
to see if she could make out what was being said.
What do you think?
It means, "Get out of here?"
That's very scary.
Uh, all right, well, thank you so much.
You know, this place that we went, it was a completely abandoned cemetery.
There were no people around, and we have this really dynamic audio recording
with sounds and what appear to be voices on it.
So, this is a place that may actually have paranormal activity.
My search for the Naga revealed it to be more of a complex phenomenon
than I ever could have imagined.
Steeped in Buddhist history,
it seems to be a mythological meeting point between the physical and spiritual worlds.
As for its eyewitness accounts,
I believe the Mekong River is sort of like a religious Rorschach test.
And that in Thailand, hints of that revered serpent
are what the faithful see in those waters.
However, our zoologist felt that the cause of many of these sightings
might be nothing more than a giant catfish.
And as for me, well, my instincts tell me that it's a mystery for a reason.
Regarding the monastery and the sounds we recorded in the crematorium,
a voice telling us to "get out" in the native tongue
is definitely outside of normal. But paranormal?
I suppose that, too, is open to interpretation.
One thing is for sure,
those whispering voices apparently demanding that we get out,
and of course the sight of my producer flailing around in the Mekong,
are both going to stay with me for quite a while,
even as we push onward in search of the next dark corner of the globe.