You Might Also Like: The UnBelievable - What Lies Beneath

Sometimes the strangest things on Earth... Are happening just below its surface. From tunnels carved by giant sloths to desperate attempts to stop the dead from rising again - these are the weird and wonderous tales of the sea beasts, hidden cities and impossible creatures that lurk beneath us. Thank you to our experts who contributed to this episode: Austin Rogers, Sabina Magliocco, Greg Jackson, Brandy Shillace, Mitch Horowitz, Kathleen Tracy, Cord Whitaker, Don Wildman, Joseph Dituri, Rebecca Lieb, Hakeen Oluseyi, David Mizejewski, Sami Jarroush, Jason Horton, Ramy Romany, and Kavitha Davidson. Follow The UnBelievable so you never miss an episode: https://pod.link/6815976107 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  A woman once survived a fall from more than two miles up because she crash landed on a nest of furious fire ants. A 13th century pope once condemned black cats as the servants of Satan. A lumberjack once survived near decapitation by his own chainsaw. These aren't tall tales. They aren't urban legends. They're real events. I'm excited to share an episode of The Unbelievable with you. A new podcast from the History Channel and Rewind Studios. Follow The Unbelievable so you never miss an episode. Adapted from the hit TV show, every episode opens a cabinet of curiosities to uncover the strangest but true stories

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  in human history, then digs into the historical record to show you exactly how and why they happened. Strange people, odd places, peculiar events. When it comes to history, the truth is always more unbelievable than you think. The episode is coming up right now. If you like what you hear, follow The Unbelievable on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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  And now, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind.

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  Warning: Parts of this episode could be disturbing to some. Listener discretion is advised. Imagine strange creatures lurking deep below the ocean's surface. Creatures, some say, are responsible for countless tragedies.

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  The ship disappears. All 31 crew members are lost, gone.

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  I know exactly what I saw. It's a dragon in the water.

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  Or shocking evidence of the undead, buried in a New England hillside.

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  The skull has been detached from the body.

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  Everyone gets superstitious, is whipped up into a frenzy, and starts desecrating graves.

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  How about uncovering an entire lost city in your basement?

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  Little do you realize that beneath your feet is an engineering marvel.

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  These are the stories of things that lie beneath that are so surprising, they're truly unbelievable. The world is full of things that defy explanation. From mysterious phenomena to incredible events to the downright bizarre, our planet is full of surprises. We want to tackle all of them. This is The Unbelievable, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind Studios. And today, we're getting into the strangest things below the planet's surface.

• 2:58Speaker 06

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  For many of us, the most disturbing answer to what lies beneath is also the most common: the dead. But do you know what's even more disturbing? The undead.

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  It's 1990 in Griswold, Connecticut, and what is about to happen is insanely creepy. A group of boys are playing in the woods, and they discover a human skull. The Griswold, Connecticut, police think it's a serial killer and immediately cordon off the area as a crime scene.

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  But once forensic anthropologists start doing their analyses, they figure out that this is someone who was buried many years ago, in the 1800s.

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  As they dig deeper, they uncover something even stranger.

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  There's four burials. Three of them are normal, but the fourth, they find that the skull has been detached from the body, and it has been laid on top of the coffin with the two thigh bones crossed in front of it. In other words, like a pirate flag on top of the coffin.

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  And carved upon it are the letters JB.

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  They dig down, and they open the coffin. That's when they find this one grave. Honestly, it looks like it could have been ritualistic. You've got a decapitated skull. You've got the ribs cracked open. As the forensics experts do their thing, they're able to tell that this body was dug up five years after death, and then dismembered and rearranged.

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  They call archaeologists, they call museums, they call universities. And finally, someone tells them, well, you know about the Jewett City vampires, right?

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  It turns out those kids playing in the woods stumbled across the first physical evidence of something deeply irrational.

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  The New England vampire panic sweeps New England from the late 18th up through the late 19th century.

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  When a death seems foggy or strange, everyone gets superstitious, is whipped up into a frenzy, and starts desecrating graves, making sure that the dead don't rise again.

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  Not entirely dissimilar from the tests that were used in Salem or in other eras with witches. If we have a series of deaths in a village, and we have a suspected undead member of the community, we'll exhume that body, cut it open, remove the heart, cut the heart open, and if there's blood inside, bingo, we found our vampire.

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  The mysterious JB is just one of many suspected vampires dug up during the panic. Perhaps the most notorious is the poor Mercy Brown.

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  In the 1880s, Mercy's mother and sister both succumb to tuberculosis, and Mercy is left with her brother and father. Mercy seems fine for about 10 years, but when she's 19, she too develops the symptoms of tuberculosis infection.

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  By the dawn of the 19th century, tuberculosis has killed one in seven people on the planet. So there's reason to be afraid.

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  Tuberculosis is not fun. It's a bacteria, and it attacks your lungs, but it also does a lot of other terrible things. It rots part of your body. It can cause you to spit up blood. You can't breathe. You get gaunt and pale. And this sort of looks a little bit like maybe vampires.

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  Mercy is being greatly diminished by this disease. Death is on her door, but rather than having compassion or a hem mercy shown to her by her neighbors, they think she was the source of her mother and sister's death a decade before. And they accuse Mercy of vampirism.

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  That resentment continues even after she dies. Though she's dead and buried, the entire village remains terrified.

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  It just so happens that Mercy's brother is also ill at this point, and the neighbors think Mercy is coming back to feed on her family members. They convince her father to exhume the bodies so that they can examine them for what they believe will be proof of vampirism, namely that there will still be blood in the heart. So they open the graves of Mercy's mother, sister, and Mercy's grave as well. Of course, her mother and sister have been dead for 10 years. There's no blood left in their hearts. Mercy's only been dead for a little while, so of course, when they open her chest, her heart still has blood in it, and they determine she must be a vampire.

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  And how the villagers plan to stop the vampire virus is, well, merciless.

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  They take Mercy's heart. They burn it. Those ashes are then fed to her younger brother as basically a vaccine against vampirism. Hopefully, at this point in time, he's too fevered to recognize what was happening.

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  But Mercy's scorched heart can't save her brother, and two months later, he too dies of tuberculosis.

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  Mercy's story is well covered in the media. It goes global.

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  Following these events, Bram Stoker is writing his soon-to-be world-famous novel, Dracula. And there is supposition that Mercy Brown is translated into the story of Lucy, who also withers

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  Away and then returns as a child of the night. But what legend inspired Stoker's infamous bloodsucker? Most believe it was an actual medieval prince, one with a very real thirst for blood.

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  Vlad the Impaler is the original Dracula. And he does execute people in nasty ways. He's famous for impaling alive his enemies.

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  He will go on to earn his moniker, the Impaler, where he would kill, according to Greek historians, upwards of 80,000 people, more than a quarter of whom were impaled.

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  Tales abound of Vlad dining among his impaled victims, even dipping his bread in their blood. Some reports even say that Vlad drinks the blood of his enemies, which would make him the closest thing we have to, well, a real vampire.

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  The question is, what caused this unholy bloodlust? Early in his life, Vlad the Impaler is imprisoned for political reasons. According to lore, Vlad spends years in an underground dungeon in a castle called Tokat.

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  He develops this taste for impaling rats, essentially conducting certain kinds of grotesque experiments on the corpses of rats. Mind you, if you were incarcerated in a dungeon or dark, damp cave underneath a castle for years on end, you might go a little bloodthirsty yourself.

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  Makes a weird kind of sense, but most historians write off this story because the castle where Vlad was imprisoned doesn't have dungeons. At least that's what they think until 2014.

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  The historical site of Tokat Castle in Turkey is finally excavated, and the archaeologists discover something that they never thought they'd find in a million years: tunnels.

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  Tunnels that lead to two hidden dungeons.

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  They start to realize that this was the place where people were imprisoned.

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  They put two and two together and realize that these tunnels and dungeons closely match the accounts of those where Vlad and his brother suffered torment. Does this prove that the tales of the real-life Dracula are actually true?

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  So this chance discovery in Tokat Castle may actually be the connection that we need of the dungeons and the terror experienced by Vlad the Impaler that led to the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Prince of Darkness.

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  Dungeons, the undead, and what else could lie beneath? As we'll find out, the deeper you go, the stranger it gets.

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  The Age of Exploration opened the world's eyes to just how vast the planet's oceans are. It also opened the door to many questions, like just how deep are those waters? And what the heck is down there?

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  In 1875, the HMS Challenger is circumnavigating the globe in what was really the first great oceanographic expedition.

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  Pretty big adventure here. They're making the first charts of the ocean, if you will, and this is pretty important. So they roll up to the area called the Mariana Trench and they drop a line. And it keeps going and going.

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  With five miles of rope onboard, the crew figures they have plenty to reach the bottom until the unbelievable happens.

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  They run out of rope and they can't actually get the exact depth.

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  And then, 76 years later, in 1951, the HMS Challenger 2 goes out.

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  Do they bring a bigger piece of rope this time? No need when you've got sonar, but they find shocks the world.

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  The Challenger 2 measures the Mariana Trench to be seven miles deep. It is officially the deepest part of the ocean.

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  It is also the deepest place on Earth.

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  Let's put how deep this goes in perspective. It's as if you stacked 25 Empire State Buildings on top of each other. That's how deep this is.

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  That's pretty deep, so deep it makes curious explorers worldwide wonder, can anything live there?

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  The first ones to take the plunge are oceanographers Jacques Picard and Don Walsh in 1960.

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  And they get in this thing called the bathysphere that descends underwater.

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  These guys get down to the bottom. They see what appears to be a barren landscape. The pressures are so great, there's no light to support photosynthesis. But when they look more closely, they see that there actually is life.

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  There is life at the bottom. I mean, this is unbelievable. This changes everything people know about what is happening in the ocean depths.

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  After a three-hour ascent, the divers return to tell their tale. But now there are new questions. How many creatures are down there? And how on Earth do they survive?

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  Most of the life that we see in the ocean lives within the first 600 feet, where the waters are warmer and there are kind of thriving ecosystems based on the sun. Below that, you enter the twilight zone, where not a lot of light filters down and the ecosystems are kind of different. Below that, it's pitch black. And you get into alien worlds, like something out of space, but they're happening right here below the ocean.

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  The creatures that live down there sound like creatures of darkness. Vampire squid, zombie worms, goblin sharks.

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  One of my favorites is the dragonfish. And the coolest thing about them is that because it's so dark down there, they don't really use their eyes that much, but they've evolved to use bioluminescence. And so along their face and their jaw, they have these little spots that light up in different colors, and that actually attracts smaller fish, which, when they approach the mouth of that animal, become a meal.

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  To say the trench's temperatures fluctuate is an understatement. It can range anywhere from a chilly 34 to a scalding 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

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  At those depths, there are also vents into the Earth's crust that release boiling hot water. And believe it or not, there are actually creatures that are also evolved to survive in those extreme conditions as well.

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  I'd say that the coolest thing about the trench is that it still remains largely unexplored. We've landed more people on the surface of the moon than we have in the depths of the Mariana Trench. So there is so much more there to find. There are more surprises to come and more evil, deadly creatures to discover.

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  Just off the coast of Japan dwells a creature legend calls both evil and deadly, one that lies hidden deep beneath these treacherous waters.

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  There's this area of the Pacific Ocean that's between Japan, Taiwan, and Yap Island that could give the Bermuda Triangle a run for its money. It's called the Devil's Sea, and it has a ton of shipwrecks and disappearances.

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  But according to Chinese legend, it's not the ocean that's to blame.

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  3,000 years ago, Chinese sailors tell stories of this huge undersea dragon pulling ships underwater and feasting on their crews, which is how the area gets its other name, the Dragon's Triangle.

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  The Dragon's Triangle continues to claim countless victims over the years, including a horde of fearsome 13th-century warriors.

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  The conqueror Kubla Khan, who is the grandson of Genghis Khan, decides to invade Japan and, according to records, lost 40,000 sailors to shipwrecks and determined to discontinue his planned invasion and to stay away from the Dragon's Triangle. The place is considered too dangerous.

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  So what actually destroys Khan's massive armies? Some say a typhoon, others say the gods, but Khan himself thinks something different.

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  Kubla Khan and his advisors believe that their navy was swallowed by a sea dragon. Even one of history's most fearless warriors was rattled by these waters.

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  The legend endures well into the 20th century, galvanized by an eyewitness account during World War II.

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• 18:44Speaker 05

  It's now 1944, and in the heat of a naval aerial battle, Japanese airman Toshiaki Lang swears, as he looks down, that he sees the Loch Ness monster-like head of a giant sea serpent. In his after-action report, Toshiaki says to his superiors that the beast was at least 150 feet long and used giant triangular wings to paddle its way through the tumultuous seas.

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  He's pretty indignant about this because when he mentions it, people think, what, are you been drinking a little bit? Or, or maybe you're mistaking it for some rain. And he's like, I know exactly what I saw. It's 150 feet long. This thing is a monster. It's a dragon in the water.

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  The pilot's warning is brushed aside, but after nine more ships vanish in the Devil's Sea between 1946 and 1951, the Japanese government can no longer ignore that what's happening here could be fishy.

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  In 1951, the Maritime Safety Agency assigns the task to a research vessel known as the Kaiju Maro Number Five. And what happens? The ship investigating the disappearances disappears. All 31 crew members are lost, gone.

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  So the Japanese government decides that maybe investigating this is not the best thing to do. So what they do is they just issue this thing called a notice to mariners, and they say, okay, just officially avoid this area because bad things happen.

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  Even with the warning, ships continue to vanish. Some say as many as 1,000 since 1951.

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  One thing seems certain. No matter what you think causes these problems, whether it's rogue superwaves or underwater volcanic activity, or here's another favorite theory, methane gas eruptions, something weird is happening in the Dragon's Triangle.

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  What other mysterious creatures wreak havoc from below? If you know where to dig, all kinds of strange and interesting things can be uncovered. But sometimes it's the hole itself that's the mystery.

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  In the early 2000s, geologist Heinrich Frank is driving in Novo Hamburgo in southern Brazil, and he passes a construction site, and something catches his eye, something weird. He sees this tunnel. It's a hole about 15 feet wide. This is a Friday afternoon, and he has to keep driving. But Frank thinks about this all weekend. I mean, what is it? Is it a tunnel? Who made it? Where does it go? Why is it there?

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  He can't stop thinking about it. So a few weeks later, he goes back to the site to investigate. He goes up to this tunnel that is leading underground, and he starts walking into this giant 15-foot hole.

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  And right away, he notices something weird. Remember, he's a geologist. He knows that earth shaped by water is not going to create a perfectly round opening. So this is an odd thing.

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  As he walks into this tunnel, the deeper he gets, he looks up at the ceiling, and he's noticing these giant claw marks.

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  Even as a geologist, Frank now understands the chilling reality. He's standing in the home of something very big and very deadly.

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  These look like the homes of giant jungle creatures. And Frank wants to know what kind of creature makes a tunnel this big?

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  Local paleontologists are thrilled to share that these huge burrowed tunnels are the work of giant prehistoric sloths.

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  When you think of a sloth today, you think of something that is slow and beyond adorable. But these prehistoric giant sloths, they put today's sloths to shame.

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  The extinct giant sloths all belong to the genus Megatherium, which is an awesome word that I think sounds like the name of a heavy metal band. These are huge animals. They can be 10 feet long and weigh 2,000 pounds. That's a ton. And they have these huge, long, hooked claws. They're nine inches long. Think about your kitchen knives. Now imagine that being on the end of the hands of these animals and them using it to pull tree branches down to their mouth. They can also use those claws as a form of defense.

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  Turns out, those same claws are the perfect tool to dig giant burrows in the ground.

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  So Frank, super curious guy, starts using satellite imagery to map out these network of tunnels. And he finds out there's not just one, not just two, there are 1,500 separate tunnels that are kind of snaking through this southern Brazilian area. I think it's incredible that these 2,000-pound creatures that once roamed the earth, that there's still evidence of them, like, next to a construction site. It's wild.

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  Created more than 10,000 years ago, today, these ancient tunnels feel more eerie than frightening. Now, that's not the case with a mysterious cave in the Americas. Here, it's not the size that matters, it's what's inside it.

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  In the jungles of Yucatan, Mexico, near a place called Contimo Village, there is a cave that could only be described as a living nightmare.

• 24:06Speaker 04

  So you go into this cave. It's a 65-foot mouth, but it narrows a little bit. And once you get into this narrower part, there are things hanging from the roof of the cave. They kind of look like vines, but they're not vines. They're snakes.

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  It's the yellow-red rat snake, and there's this one population of them that have evolved to live only in this cave.

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  At night, when the bats leave, they leave in this giant drope, and the snakes see this opportunity as dinnertime.

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  Tucked into the crevices of this cave, they open up their mouths and pretty much allow the bats to impale themselves on their fangs. It's easy picking, especially with the amount of bats that are in this cave.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  And there are so many of the bats in this particular cave system that this population of snakes has learned that they don't ever need to leave the cave. They're very aware of the time of day. They know when the bats are going to be coming out, and they actually get themselves into position. So it just goes to show you that these are actually very intelligent creatures.

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  Believe it or not, visitors are actually welcome to tour this dangling hall of terrors.

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  I've been to the Cave of the Hanging Snakes, and it is one of the eeriest places I've ever been to. The ceilings are very low, and as a human inside that cave, you have to crawl in with your head nearly touching the ceiling. And then hundreds, hundreds of snakes coming out of the ceiling to catch little bats, grab them with their mouths, and back up into the ceiling. It is the definition of a living horror movie.

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  No, no, thank you. This is my nightmare. This is my nightmare. Cave of the Hanging Snakes.

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  That's one cave you won't find me hanging around.

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  Sometimes what hides beneath is neither deadly nor evil, but rather a glimpse into a mysterious past. Take this astonishing find by a miner in 2022.

• 26:22Speaker 05

  In the Klondike Gold Fields of the Yukon Territory of Canada, you have a man by the name of Travis Delawski. He's working in a trench, and in this trench, you have this creek that is covered with permafrost that's sitting on the top layer.

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  As Travis is chipping away at the rock-hard ice, suddenly a crevice opens.

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  Inside, he discovers something strange, some kind of creature. He sees a short tail, and at first, he thinks it's a mummified buffalo calf.

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  But as Travis looks more closely, they see something a buffalo doesn't have: a trunk.

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  So he immediately calls his boss.

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  Trying to figure out what the hell he just came across. So the boss comes down to see what Travis actually find, and he's shocked. He sees fur, and it looks like it died maybe an hour ago. So he immediately yells out for everyone in the trench to stop working. He takes some photos with his phone, and then he calls some local paleontologists to come in and inspect the scene.

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  When they see the photos, they confirm the unbelievable. It's a baby woolly mammoth, straight out of the Ice Age. And they are all hands on deck, and they have to act immediately because once this woolly mammoth baby is exposed to the elements, it can start to deteriorate. And there's a storm coming that is going to totally flood out the trench. With moments to spare, they manage to get the woolly mammoth baby out. They carefully wrap it in a tarp, and then they transport it to a location where they actually have a ceremony with local indigenous elders.

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  Gather in a circle, the tribal elders offer a blessing and name the mammoth Nuncho Gah, which means "big baby animal" in their native Han language. With the clock ticking, scientists must examine the baby mammoth quickly before getting it into a freezer for preservation.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  But they're able to determine that Nuncho Gah is a female, and she was only about a month old when she died. They estimate that she died around 30,000 years ago.

• 28:27Speaker 04

  The geology of where the mammoth is found indicates that she was walking across the grassland, strayed from her mother. And then she fell, gets stuck in the mud, and is preserved under tons of permafrost to be found by us thousands of years later.

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  Incredibly, they find a piece of grass in the woolly mammoth's stomach. Fortunately, this means Nuncho Gah died quickly.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  While it's sad that Nuncho Gah only lived about a month, her discovery today is really incredible.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  This is the most intact, mummified Ice Age animal found in North America, if not the world.

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  While a 30,000-year-old creature trapped beneath the ice might be fascinating, something terrifying lies in an otherwise enchanting setting, something that has locals afraid to go anywhere near it. This place is 25 miles south of Merida, in an area surrounded by dense jungle. There's this little opening, this hole, which enters into a void. And inside this void is a drop into an abyss of watery darkness. It's called Sakwa Yum, and it's one of at least 40 cenotes, or underwater caves, that lie beneath this mysterious region. They collect so much naturally filtered groundwater

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  that in the 13th century, the Mayans decide to build their new capital there, Mayapan. This walled city of like 17,000 people thrives for centuries, and it has dozens of life-sustaining cenotes inside the city.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Most of them are within the walls of Mayapan, except for one, that for some reason, the walls zigzagged around and moved around to avoid having that one cenote inside their city, Sakwa Yum.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  They believe Sakwa Yum is a sacred place, a pathway to the underworld.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  The Maya also believe that this place is guarded by a feather-covered serpent with a horse's head, who will snatch children who get too close.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  I've personally visited Mayapan. I wanted to go to Sakwa Yum. And every villager I have met have told me their story,

• 30:52Speaker 00

  that they have seen a snake-like creature that flies and has a horse head that is guarding that place, and I should not get anywhere close to Sakwa Yum.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  Is it possible that Sakwa Yum's legendary feathered serpent is real? Or at least, once was? In August of 2013, archaeologists, led by Dr. Bradley Russell, attempt to find out.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  You could imagine that getting in and out of a sinkhole that has a 40-foot drop is quite difficult. So they basically have to be lowered down into the water, and then they can start their dive. But remember, if something goes wrong, you've got to be hoisted back out that 40 feet.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  You're being slowly lowered, and now you're in this dark, murky water, and you know you have to actually penetrate through and go into a cave.

• 31:46Speaker 00

  As Bradley and his team scuba through these tight passages, their tanks are hitting the limestone. I mean, it's so tight.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  That's where they discover human skeletons. Could these be ancient victims of the notorious serpent monster?

• 32:03Speaker 07

  There are just dozens of skeletons of men and women in this place.

• 32:13Speaker 07

  In Mayan civilization, we do not have evidence of mass graves or mass burials. These people seem to be in the prime of life. There's nothing that shows, for example, damage through warfare to the skeletons. And there's nothing that suggests that they're victims of human sacrifice.

• 32:35Speaker 07

  So the fact that in this cenote, there are dozens and dozens of human remains makes it a bit of a mystery. We don't know why these people ended up in this cenote.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  Whatever science might eventually uncover here, many of those who live by Sakwa Yum believe the legends are true and that this mysterious pool is indeed an entrance to the underworld. Coming up, miles of mysterious, twisting darkness, right beneath the city of lights.

• 33:10Speaker 05

  Wagon upon wagon upon wagon, cloaked in black cloths, are shipping bones from the cemetery down into the disused mines to create the Paris catacombs.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  The city of Paris is known for romance, art, and cafes. But below its charming streets lies something quite different. Miles of tunnels stuffed with human remains. The tunnels themselves are the result of limestone quarries that are dug around the 13th century. But quarrying was unregulated. People just dug where they wanted to. And then, when the limestone ran out, the tunnel was abandoned. So by the 18th century, this part of Paris was like Swiss cheese.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  By 1780, the city of Paris is left with nearly 200 miles of abandoned mining tunnels beneath its streets, until they find a dark new purpose.

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  Parisian cemeteries are literally overflowing.

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  Graves are buried on top of graves, on top of graves, on top of graves.

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  It gets so bad that a building next to the cemetery has its basement wall completely collapsed because there are so many bodies on the other side of the wall.

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  The Paris city officials realize something has to be done. They think what we really need is a good underground storage area, and we have one: all of those limestone tunnels.

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  So in 1786, thus commences the most macabre public works project of all time. Wagon upon wagon upon wagon, cloaked in black cloths, are shipping bones from the cemetery down into the disused mines to create the Paris catacombs. We're talking about millions upon millions of human remains.

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  Today, visitors can tour this bizarre display of over 600 years of the dead.

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  There's an official door to the catacombs, where you can pay, and you can go tour a certain small section of the catacombs.

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  But not everyone sneaks down there to gawk at old bones.

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  The catacombs also plays host to a very interesting and amazing heist. A team of people start going down through the catacombs, using the tunnel as a means of getting to a very fancy Luxembourg apartment.

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  They drill up 20 feet in order to get into this apartment. What's there are really expensive bottles of wine. Each bottle at least $1,000, and they steal 300 of them and disappear back down into the catacombs, just melting into the darkness.

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  The wine thieves are never found, but it's not even the strangest secret use of this underground labyrinth. The Paris Police Department has a unit to patrol these tunnels. And they regularly go down there to train. They're going along this dark tunnel, and they suddenly see a sign that says, "Building site, no access." And they haven't been informed of any kind of city construction project happening underground. So they push through this tarp to find out what's beyond.

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  They lift the tarp away to find a security camera. And suddenly, dogs begin barking from everywhere.

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  They don't turn out to be real dogs. It's pumped through speakers to frighten people away. But that makes it even more intriguing. Who is trying to keep us out of this space?

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  What they find is truly bizarre, even for catacomb police: a movie theater.

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  Not only that, this movie theater has attached to it a fully featured restaurant and bar. Not only that, it has telephone lines. So that means someone knows the reservation number. They're like, "Hi, secret bar?" They're like, "Yeah." Like, "Table for four?" "Yeah."

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  This underground theater is obviously illegal, but when police return three days later, they get another surprise.

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  They come back, everything's removed, and there's a sign that says, "Do not try to find us."

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  A photographer named Patrick Alk, whose whole thing is to document the underground exploration movement, is disappointed the movie theater got busted. But he says, you know, "No problem. There are dozens more where this came from. You guys have no idea what's down there."

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  Finding unusual things in your basement is fairly common for most people, but what one man finds in his home in Turkey is unbelievable. In 1963, in the Turkish town of Derinkuyu, a man is doing a home improvement project. Now, most of us who do this kind of DIY stuff, you expect to find old stuff in the walls, you know, old photos and maybe some jewelry. Well, this guy takes a sledgehammer and he hits the wall, and he hits it again and again, and he breaks through. What he finds is a passageway, which, when he crawls into it, leads to another tunnel, and another tunnel beyond that.

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  And the tunnel goes on a little bit longer, and a little bit longer, and then opens into chambers, and then more chambers, and then more tunnels. He's discovered an ancient subterranean city right in his cellar wall, all through the throw of a sledgehammer.

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  It's the 2,000-year-old lost city of Derinkuyu, one of the largest subterranean towns in the world.

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  What he uncovers is absolutely unbelievable. A tunnelled city that can house up to 20,000 people, animals, livestock, grain stores. The first eight stories have ventilation shafts that ensure that fresh air circulates through the entire subterranean city.

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  They've dug out troughs for the camels that are down there. They have large vats for the wine that they're fermenting. All of this is dug of the stone itself. It's very, very resourceful. But why build such an elaborate city underground?

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  The main purpose of this underground city is for the people of Derinkuyu to come in and hide from outside forces, from dangerous people who may have infiltrated the area.

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  One of the most amazing sights is there are these huge millstones, which are in place still to this day. They have a round hole in the middle, and you can roll this millstone into place, which would then block the tunnel and stop the enemy from going any further. This defense system worked so well, the city remains in use until 1923, before it's sealed up and nearly lost to history. Good thing for DIY projects. If you're just walking in one of these areas with one of these underground cities, nothing looks different. I mean, it's just life as normal on the surface. Little do you realize that beneath your feet is an engineering marvel. It makes you wonder what unexpected things could be on the other side of your

• 40:27Speaker 00

  own basement wall, or in your own backyard.

• 40:32Speaker 04

  In 1974, a plumber named Rzendo Cruz from Alhama, California, buys his wife a brand-new Ferrari Dino for her birthday. She's so excited, she can't wait to take it out. They cruise on out to the Brown Derby to have a birthday dinner, have a wonderful time, come outside the restaurant, and the Ferrari is gone.

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  Police are never able to find the Dino, and ultimately, it becomes a cold case that's unsolved.

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  Four years later, you have a couple of boys playing in the backyard. And these boys decide, "Let's dig up stuff in the backyard and see if we can find some buried treasure." And then their shovels start to make a clinking sound. "Oh, no. Did we hit a pipe?" So they immediately run out, and they flag down an LA County Sheriff's cruiser.

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  The policeman contacts the city. They bring out a bulldozer and begin to dig, and lo and behold, what do they excavate? A 1974 Ferrari Dino 246 GTS. The same Ferrari Dino that was parked outside the Brown Derby four years ago.

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  But after a little more digging, they notice something totally unexpected.

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  So when investigators uncover the car, they find that it's been almost impeccably preserved. It's been wrapped in plastic and tarp and even blankets, and someone clearly wanted to maintain this car.

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  Another thing that helps preserve the vehicle is that it's in Southern California, where it's dry. And during this time, there was actually a drought. So they basically made a Ferrari money.

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  No one has ever been charged for the theft of the Dino, though theories abound as to who stole it and why it was left there. Maybe the thieves just forgot where they put it. But even after four years underground, this Dino isn't destined to just be scrapped for parts.

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  Believe it or not, to this day, the Dino still lives. After it was recovered, it was sold to a collector. He decided to keep as much of the original materials as possible. It still has two of the original wheels, the original chrome, and today, it sports a license plate that says "Dug Up."

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  Whether it's a perfectly preserved baby mammoth, mysterious bones, or a vintage Ferrari in mint condition, what lies beneath us is fascinating, terrifying, and sometimes unbelievable.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  Thanks so much for listening to The Unbelievable, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind Studios. Join us next time for another deep dive into some of the most strange but true stories our planet has to offer.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  Thanks for listening to The Unbelievable. Make sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 43:32Speaker 04

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