Original subtitles

[Harry Pritchett] Worldwide, thirty six billion cameras are watching us,

on our streets, at work, and in our homes.

They capture things that seem impossible.

[sound wave]

Science says "This shouldn't happen."

[man] Do you see that?

[Pritchett] Experts carry out forensic analysis of these unusual events.

Wow! What a blast.

[woman squealing]

This doesn't make sense.

There has to be some sort of explanation.

What else is going on here?

[camera whirling]

[Pritchett] Coming up, A four foot long predator, pulled from a woman's throat.

That is one of the most horrifying and disturbing things that I have ever seen.

[woman laughs nervously]

Could this have been trying to eat her from the inside out?

[David Wallace] Wow!

This car just blew apart.

[Pritchett] An unexplained explosion,

-and an unbelievable excuse. - [siren wailing]

The government's saying one thing,

but this footage clearly shows that something else is going on.

[Pritchett] And, is the Loch Ness monster vacationing in Albania?

There's no way I'd go swimming in that water.

[Pritchett] Bizarre phenomenon.

Oh, my gosh. [exclaims]

-[Pritchett] Mysteries caught on camera. -[woman shrieking]

What's the truth behind them.

Strange evidence.

Levashi village, in the Republic of Dagestan, southern Russia.

August, 2020.

[siren blaring]

An ambulance rushes a female patient to the hospital.

[Jayde Lovell] We can see like a nurse or a doctor in scrubs.

Looks like she is pulling a foreign object out of the patient's mouth.

The patient is clearly anaesthetized.

[Pritchett] Slowly but surely the medic draws out an endoscopic probe.

[Shaena Montanari] They seem to be pulling something out.

And it's very pale in color and really long.

[Greg Szulgit retching]

[Szulgit] Think I'm gonna vomit.

It looks like a huge animal that they just pulled out of her.

Is that moving? It's definitely moving.

[Pritchett] The medics are terrified.

[woman laughs nervously]

And quickly throw the creature into a sterile bucket.

Oh! It's long. It's, God, it's so huge!

God, that is disgusting. How is there room for that inside of her?

[Pritchett] It could almost be a scene from the film, Alien.

That is one of the most horrifying and disturbing things that I have ever seen.

[woman laughs nervously]

[Pritchett] The startled medics laugh nervously.

It's like nothing they've seen before.

This is the stuff of nightmares. I mean, phobia quality.

As a doctor, I'm interested to know what is that thing,

and how did it get inside her?

[woman laughs nervously]

[Pritchett] This writhing monster is no ordinary parasite.

[Siobhan Deshauer] When I first started seeing them pulling out this creature,

I thought, maybe it's a tape worm.

Typically, they are about the size of a pencil.

But this looks like it's over an inch thick.

So I'd be very surprised to find out that this was truly a worm.

[Pritchett] Entomologist, Kevin Kasky, spots a telltale feature.

When they pull the creature all the way out,

one end looks bigger than the other.

It definitely has a head.

You can see the tail, the long body and the thick head.

To me, this definitely looks like a snake.

[Lovell] You can see as they are pulling it out,

you can see, one, two, three, more than four feet of snake

being pulled out of this woman.

I thought Snakes on a Plane was a worst case scenario.

But this, this beats it by a mile.

[Pritchett] If the serpent had crawled down the woman's windpipe,

she would've suffocated.

It seems this snake went down the smaller but more flexible, esophagus.

[woman laughs nervously]

A ten inch pipe that leads from the mouth to the stomach.

Journalist, Shaena Montanari,

finds that incredibly, it isn't the first time

a snake has been reported living inside someone's digestive system.

In 1864, The New York Times, reported that a woman

had a snake living inside her for four years.

This woman saw the best doctors available.

And after exhausting all other options,

they agreed, she had a snake inside of her.

The report even said, that if she was in the same room

as fish or meat being cooked,

that the snake would rise up in her throat, so far, that she would start to choke.

This doesn't sound real, does it?

How could a snake, live inside of a stomach with all that acid?

But believe it or not,

there is science to back this up.

[Pritchett] 2012, East Timor,

biologist, on a jungle expedition,

witnesses a small snake wriggling out from a predatory toad's anus.

Amazingly, the snake, a blind, burrowing species, is alive.

The scientist deduced that it was swallowed by the toad,

but it escaped by slithering through

the hungry amphibian's digestive tract.

The toad is probably less pleased with the outcome.

It's the first time anyone's seen

an animal of this size survive digestion.

[Pritchett] Scientists suspect the snake's closely knitted, overlapping scales

protected from the toad's gastric juices.

And due to its burrowing lifestyle, it can tolerate low oxygen levels.

It would seem that snakes can do incredible things.

[Pritchett] Biologist, Jayde Lovell,

compares the four foot long snake from the footage

to species known to live in Dagestan.

[Lovell] So in this region of Russia,

is a species of viper, called the Lotievi Viper.

That looks very similar to what we are seeing in the footage.

It's pale, roughly the same size.

[Pritchett] It's one of the last species of snake you'd want inside you.

[Szulgit] All vipers are venomous.

The fangs are connected to poison sacs in the back of their head.

All ready and loaded for when the snake wants to add

a little bit of poison to its bite.

[Pritchett] It gets worse.

It seems this area of Russia, has a major viper problem.

Just over 460 miles north of Dagestan,

the 2018 soccer World Cup, is being held in the city of Volgograd.

Hoards of deadly vipers suddenly leave their forest home,

and are found heading to the packed soccer stadium.

Snakes don't usually approach humans.

But if there is an infestation,

all of the normal rules kinda go out the window.

[Pritchett] Russian officials send out Search and Rescue teams,

to repel the venomous reptiles before any soccer fans start to panic.

Officials claim the cause of the mysterious migration remains unknown,

but Lovell has a theory.

As human frontiers of farming and civilization push more and more into nature,

we seen more of these instances of human versus wild.

Could this viper have been trying to eat her from the inside out?

There are no evident burrow holes anywhere in her neck or body.

So, the only way we can imagine

the snake could have gotten into her stomach was through her mouth.

[Pritchett] Coming up,

A Caucasian snake god, who demands the ultimate sacrifice.

Could she have swallowed the snake on purpose?

[Pritchett] An SUV inexplicably explodes.

A random accident? Or an assassination attempt?

This has got to be the mother of all blowouts.

I've never seen one take the side of a car out like this.

[Pritchett] In Dagestan, Russia.

Medics film a woman with a four foot long venomous viper

inside her stomach.

[woman laughs nervously]

Oh, my God.

I don't like stuff like that. I actually really don't.

[Pritchett] It's almost impossible

to accidentally swallow any animal alive, especially a large reptile.

Your gag reflex should prevent the snake

from slithering down your throat.

[Pritchett] But somehow, the viper ends up inside this woman.

Many religions, cultures, and cults all over the world, revere and worship snakes.

Often incorporating them into rituals.

Some evangelical Christians, take the word that's in the Bible as gospel,

when Jesus said, "Pick up your serpents", they choose to.

They also get bit a lot.

In the Caucasus, where this was filmed,

there's been a recent resurgence,

in interest in pre-Christian, in pre-Muslim religions.

Slavic cultures have mythology around a snake god called, Veles.

Who was lord of the Underworld.

These ancient religions were organized around complex rituals,

to show faith and devotion.

Now could she have swallowed the snake on purpose?

[Pritchett] There is no evidence this woman is a Pagan,

but a dangerous, religious ritual,

could explain the stomach serpent.

Kevin Kasky isn't convinced.

Eating a snake of this size, while it's still alive,

would be nearly impossible without biting it to pieces.

It must have gotten in some other way.

One possible explanation would be alcohol intoxication.

Alcohol can suppress some involuntary actions

like gag reflex or even breathing.

[Pritchett] Russians have long been famous

for their high alcohol consumption.

They drink around 2.5 gallons of pure alcohol, on average, every year.

But there is no indication from any of the reports,

that this woman had been intoxicated at the time of the incident.

She claims to medics, she was asleep,

and woke up to find the creature inside her.

How the serpent got inside her stomach remains a mystery.

We still don't know how the snake got inside of her,

but, man it creeps me out, because if it could happen to her,

could it happen to me?

[woman laughs nervously]

[Pritchett] Now, the city of Sanhe, northern China.

August 30th, 2016.

A traffic camera films at a busy intersection.

[Wallace] Well, here we have a typical city street.

Ah, cars at the red light.

Nothing really exciting happening.

[Pritchett] The traffic lights change. Then,

[explosion]

[Wallace] Wow!

This car just blew apart.

The whole side of the car exploded out. What is this?

-[explosion] - [Nick Householder] What happened?

It's like the whole back half of the car is gone.

[Pritchett] Just seconds after pulling away,

the black SUV is torn to bits by a powerful blast.

[Jeff Wise] The explosion just came out of nowhere.

Yeah, this looks like a scene out of a war zone.

[Pritchett] The SUV skids to a halt.

Split open like an overripe watermelon.

- Police swarm the area. -[sirens approaching]

Two of the people in the car are injured but alive.

Amazingly, it don't look like anybody else was hurt from this, but my goodness!

This is massive. This is nasty.

Did he run the red light?

Is this what happens if you run the red light in this country?

Cars don't just blow up.

There's clearly some foul play here.

[Pritchett] The Chinese authorities,

claim that the car's front left wheel, suffered from a blowout.

Engineer, David Wallace isn't convinced.

[Wallace] This has got to be the mother of all blowouts.

Now I've seen several tires explode,

and they can be violent, but I've never seen on

take the side of a car out like this.

[Pritchett] Further examination of the footage,

makes the Chinese authorities claim even more suspicious.

Looking at the footage, the one tire I can't see

that's almost intact is the front left tire.

And according to reports, that's what they blamed this on.

[Pritchett] Watching the footage in slow motion,

it appears the violent explosion

starts low down on the driver's side of the vehicle.

Military historian, Martin Morgan,

spots something amiss with one of the other vehicles caught on camera.

[Martin Morgan] When you pay close attention to the footage,

you notice something kinda suspicious,

and that the car directly behind the car that eventually explodes,

when the light turns, that following car, doesn't move.

The fact that that car doesn't move,

suggests that maybe what we are looking at here, is a planned attack.

Maybe, an assassination attempt.

-Go! -[explosion]

[Pritchett] Explosives expert, Matt Kutcher,

has over 20 years' experience with bangs and bombs.

That was beautiful. What a blast!

[Pritchett] He and his team, want to know if this could be a planned hit.

Wow! That's one massive explosion.

[Matt Kutcher] There's something suspicious about this.

You know, from my experience cars are just a simple, mechanical device,

and they have failure.

However, this particular failure, looks like it's placed by a human.

It's too exact.

You know, unfortunately, bad guys have a tool they go for.

And that tool is the high explosive.

It doesn't take a lot.

It could be combined with other materials

to place just critically in the right spot,

and create this kind of devastating force.

We're gonna go get some, put it in the car and see if we could duplicate this video.

[Pritchett] For many a car bomber,

C4 is the go-to plastic explosive.

Don't be scared. It ain't blowing up yet.

[Pritchett] But, Matt Kutcher is using a less volatile compound

for this experiment for safety purposes.

You know, the good thing about this

explosive that we're using, is that it's super stable.

You can even cook on it.

Set it alight, make yourself some eggs.

And it wouldn't even go off.

[Pritchett] Matt's using a car that's similar to the SUV in the Chinese footage.

This stuff is so strong, you'll only need a little bit to do a lot of job.

We're packing these explosives into the door.

So we can see it rip out just like we saw in that video.

[Pritchett] With everything set the team move a safe distance away.

Three, two, one. Hit it!

[Pritchett] Coming up, Kutcher's experiment goes off with a bang.

-Where do you guys think the windshield went? -The windshield?

It's right there.

[Pritchett] And, in a lake, once owned by a mad dictator.

Something unexplained is caught on camera.

It looks like a creature. I have never seen anything like this.

[explosion]

[Pritchett] Pyrotechnics expert, Matt Kutcher,

doubts the Chinese authorities claim,

that this car explosion in Sanhe,

was an accident caused by a blown tire.

It's like a high explosive charge went off.

[Pritchett] Kutcher wants to recreate the incident,

with his own explosive, to show this was a deliberate blast.

-In three, two, one. Hit it! -[explosion]

[Pritchett] The high explosive rapidly decomposes after igniting

causing a massive release of heat.

Simultaneously, large quantities of high-pressure gases expand,

creating a shock wave that trashes everything in its wake.

[laughs heartily] That ain't going to grow back.

[Pritchett] The explosion looks just like the one in the footage.

Initially, an orange fireball, quickly followed by a massive gray cloud

of expanding gas and smoke.

Well, clearly a little high explosives can change the shape of a car.

That is the smell of utter devastation.

I mean, look at the metal.

It pealed it apart like it's nothing.

-Where do you guys think the windshield went? -The windshield?

Well, some... Right there. [laughs]

[all laughing]

You know what that won't be needing? Windshield wipers.

[Pritchett] For Kutcher, the experiment proves his hunch.

You know, I'm completely convinced that that was high explosives used,

in targeting that vehicle.

[Pritchett] The location of the Chinese car blast,

Sanhe, is a key destination for China's top politicians.

Uyghurs, a repressed minority group in China,

have targeted Chinese officials with car bombs.

A van, packed with explosives was driven into the Chinese Embassy,

in Kurdistan in 2016.

But Chinese state officials themselves,

have also used car bombs to settle personal scores.

Duan Yihe, a senior politician in Shandong,

wanted to get rid of his mistress, Liu Haiping.

In 2007, he put a bomb in her car, so big,

it threw her torso 76 feet across the road.

Duan Yihe, was found guilty of killing his lover, and was executed.

The government is saying one thing,

but this footage clearly shows something else is going on.

[Pritchett] A clue to the target, maybe a nearby,

notoriously secretive prison.

One of only two prisons in China run directly by the Central government.

This place is supposed to be impenetrable.

[Pritchett] There are over 650 inmates.

including disgraced high-level communist officials and political opponents.

China is in the process of cracking down on democracy,

on ethnic unrest, on religious unrest.

Uh, there's a lot of different factions within Chinese society,

that the government is very interested in violently suppressing.

One human rights lawyer says,

that they tried to assassinate him in the guise of a car accident.

[Pritchett] There is no direct evidence,

linking the Chinese state to this bizarre blast.

Though their official line, that this was a blown tire, seems unlikely.

Chinese dissidents have been disappearing for years.

But, usually, it's a quiet affair.

If this is an assassination attempt, it's the most brazen I've ever seen.

[Pritchett] Now, Lake Prespa, eastern Albania.

December, 2017.

A group of tourists are enjoying sunset by the picturesque lakeshore.

The low sun, immediately gives this footage an eerie quality.

[Pritchett] Then, a woman can been seen pointing

to something in the lake.

They're running towards the shoreline. What's out there?

[Pritchett] The man tries to steady his camera.

[man] Woah!

You can hear the anxiety in the voices of the people there on the shore.

They're obviously distressed.

[Pritchett] Finally, the camera focuses.

[Karen Bellinger] I can see the outline of a head popping out.

It's big! No wonder that lady looks a little agitated.

This thing looks curious and not in a good way.

[Pritchett] Slowly, as if it knows that it's been spotted,

this strange shaped object slips back into the murky lake.

I mean, it, you know, it looks like a creature,

some kind of dinosaur-like creature surveying it's surroundings

before diving under the water.

I've never seen anything like this.

What really lies below the surface of that lake?

[water splashing]

[Pritchett] Coming up, reports of horrors, lurking in Lake Prespa.

The fish were so monstrous that the divers actually refused to carry on the search

for fear that they would be attacked.

[Pritchett] And, a weird opening on a Florida beach

where pirates are said to have buried treasure.

What would happen if somebody stepped into that bubbling mess,

would they fall through to some kind of underground cavity or chamber?

[Pritchett] In Albania, a startled group of people film a mysterious object

rearing out of Lake Prespa.

It looks like a creature with a long neck surveying its surroundings.

But it's not a creature I'm at all familiar with.

[Pritchett] Reports of something strange in this 100 square mile lake

stretch back to the ancient past.

[Bellinger] There's an old legend

that there's a dragon who lives in its depths

and would come up to the surface to devour small boats.

[Pritchett] And in modern times, the dark rumors

that swirl around this lake haven't gone away.

Fishermen on this lake have reported seeing large shadows

beneath the surface and even hikers on the mountains

around the lake have reported looking down and seeing really large shadows

moving beneath the water.

[Pritchett] Then in 2012, a group of Greek fishermen from the village of Naviker

say they saw a large creature with a long neck swimming in the lake.

It looks really cold anyway but now there's no way I'd go swimming in that water.

[Pritchett] Zoologist Greg Szulgit finds Lake Prespa

has a nearby neighbor, Lake Ohrid which covers over a 130 square miles.

The two bodies of water were once one giant lake

and are still connected to each other by natural underground tunnels.

The deepest point in these twin lakes is over 900 feet

almost the height of the Eiffel Tower.

[Szulgit] Prespa and Ohrid are two of Europe's oldest lakes.

Usually lakes fill up with sediment over time

and usually only last around a 100,000 years.

Scientists believe that these lakes however, are over a million years old.

How is this possible, why aren't they filled up with silt?

It's because of their enormous depth.

[Pritchett] This depth has kept the lakes

in existence far longer than normal,

preserving a life giving environment in ages of mass extinction.

This depth prevented the lakes from freezing during the ice ages

creating their own little micro-climates.

These lakes are deep and old. Anything could hide in them.

Could this creature be an ancient species

that somehow managed to survive in this lake's depths?

[Pritchett] Officials suggest the creature caught on camera

could be a giant catfish species,

that due to the lake's immense size and depths has so far evaded capture.

So in Europe, there are catfish that can grow up to 15 feet long,

like, that is a huge catfish.

They're so big that there are instances of the catfish

turning the tables on fishermen.

Actually eating the fishermen, dragging them into the water.

[Pritchett] And local eye-witness accounts suggest Prespa's catfish

are even bigger, potentially well over 800 pounds.

Retired Geography professor, Sinna Yanovsky said that when rescue divers

tried to recover survivors from a sunken ship.

They reported seeing giant catfish.

The fish were so monstrous that the divers actually refused to carry on the search

for fear that they would be attacked.

[Pritchett] Historian Craig Gottlieb

thinks this object isn't a living creature

but a madman's highly dangerous machine.

What you've got poking above the surface,

it looks very rigid, not fluid and organic.

It looks very mechanical.

So could this be a relic from one of Albania's most notorious leaders,

former Prime Minister, Enver Hoxha.

[Pritchett] Hoxha comes to power in 1944

and is deranged even by the standards of other communist dictators.

[Liberty Vittert] Hoxha follows in the footsteps of Joseph Stalin

implementing radical new reforms to lift Albania out of poverty.

But he's truly a sociopath and in reality a mad dictator.

In order to realize his goals, Enver creates the most tightly controlled society in Europe.

[Craig Gottlieb] This guy was an ardent communist, I mean red with a capital R.

His regime is responsible for so many state killings.

Purges, executions, his enemies, his friends,

he even has his brother-in-law killed.

He kills so many intellectuals that by the 1980s,

the only people they can find to work for government

are people with a high school education.

[Pritchett] This baby faced brute executes over 5000 Albanians.

He bans citizens from wearing beards

and has a paranoid obsession that neighboring countries, Greece and Yugoslavia

plan to invade.

Hoxha pulled up the draw bridge

and he began constructing concrete bunkers all over the country.

And I mean, all over. Over a 170,000 of them.

Citizens are trained to take up positions in these bunkers

to fend off invaders.

[Pritchett] But Albania's border with its neighbors

runs through Lake Prespa and Hoxha is determined

to defend his water boundaries too.

[Gottlieb] The Soviet's, they're his best friend,

they ship a bunch of submarines over to Albania.

So could this video have actually captured some sort of submarine

still operating in the lake?

[Householder] This look like it could be the periscope of a submarine.

And Lake Prespa is deep enough to accommodate such a craft.

[Pritchett] But Data Analyst, Liberty Vittert discovers Albania was left in poverty

after Hoxha's rule ended.

Isolation, zero trade and his mad bunkerization program

left the country's coffers empty.

It wouldn't be possible for a country that lacks resources

to maintain the complicated technology

that would be needed for such a submarine.

The submarines left by the Soviets would probably be in a scrapyard.

[Pritchett] Hoxha dies in 1985.

In his legacy, leaves Albania one of the poorest countries in Europe.

But today, the nation's heavily stretched defense forces

still seem very interested in this body of water.

Locals often wonder why there's such a heavy military presence

in Lake Prespa's lakeside towns.

You gotta ask, are these guys trying to protect residents

from some danger that's coming out of the lake.

[Pritchett] The Albanian authorities remain tight lipped

about their activities at Prespa.

[Lovell] So unfortunately, this will be a mystery that may never be solved.

But one thing is certain, I will not be swimming in Lake Prespa anytime soon.

[Pritchett] Now, Juno beach, Southern Florida.

August 1st, 2019.

Crowds are enjoying the late summer weather.

You see this beach and you see a bunch of tourists

on vacation at the beach.

[Pritchett] But, their enjoyment is short lived.

Wow, well this looks kind of terrifying.

[Pritchett] A bizarre bubbling hole mysteriously opens in the sand.

This could potentially be dangerous.

It's like a big whirled pool, stuff getting sucked in, and bubbling out.

It's really weird.

[Pritchett] Worried beach officials put hazard tape around the churning crater.

Onlookers stand dangerously close.

It looks like, kind of cross between a creepy cauldron and a mini geyser

to have thing bubbling on a public beach.

I mean, it's really eerie.

That actually terrifies me because it makes me think about a pot of boiling water.

And is it boiling, is it super-hot?

[Pritchett] Then, a child throws some seaweed

towards the hole's violent center.

In just a matter of seconds, it sucked from sight.

Yeah, oh well, okay. Yeah, yeah, you can lose a cat there pretty easily.

If i was walking along the beach with, with my little daughter,

I'd be really scared to see something like this.

Is it emitting gas, would she get stuck in it?

This is a potential death trap in the making.

[Pritchett] Officials called to the beach are at a loss to explain how this sandsucker

came into existence.

It's not something we've seen on a beach before, that's for sure.

What exactly is this?

[Pritchett] Coming up,

is this an 18th century pirate's booby trap treasure pit?

An intrepid woman decided to explore and stepped inside

and was sucked in up to her hip.

[Pritchett] And in Malaysia, what is this dangerous ditch dweller?

Oh, no. It seems to have tentacles now.

[Kevin Kasky] I wanna know what this thing is.

And I wanna know what it's doing creeping around in this ditch.

[Pritchett] On Juno Beach, South Florida,

a mysterious churning hole has opened in the sand.

This is so strange, this swirling bubbling water appears to come from nowhere.

What's down there?

[Pritchett] Athena Brensberger believes that this bubbling pit

could be a long lost 18 century treasure trove.

There were Spanish ships going up and down the coast of Florida

but this was perfect hunting ground for pirates to attack those ships.

These Spanish galleons laden with gold and silver treasure were easy targets for pirates.

This whole era of piracy of course created some larger than life characters

who were factual, Blackbeard, Calico Jack,

Captain Kid and there were male and female pirates.

[Pritchett] And West African pirates.

In early 18th century, a pirate named Black Caesar is said to be an escape slave

who becomes one of Florida's notorious buccaneers.

Originally a tribal chief and the size of two men,

patrolling the waters from Palm Beach down to Miami,

he buried so much treasure, it ends up with the name, the Gold Coast.

It's actually believed that Florida has the most sunken and buried treasure

than any other state.

[Pritchett] On Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Captain Kid's buried treasure

is said to be stashed in an elaborate underground chamber called the Money Pit.

The English Pirate captain who was hanged in 1701

is rumored to have hidden over two million dollars worth of treasure

in a shaft at least 90 feet deep.

He protects the pit with layers of oak logs

and booby trapped flood water channels.

This bubbling hole in Florida could be one of Caesar's hidden cache's

lying in a similar artfully constructed shaft.

It'd be fascinating to think that there's some treasure

that was buried there on that beach in Florida

and now that treasure is making itself known

through this bubbling up from deep underground.

[Pritchett] But treasure hunters, beware.

When a member of the public tries to investigate this sandsucker

she soon finds herself in trouble.

An intrepid woman decided to explore and stepped inside

and was sucked in up to her hip.

Because she was sucked in to her hips, it's possible that this was quick sand.

[Pritchett] But engineer, Lisa Lazareck-Asunta discovers this dangerous beach hole

could be a more recent accident than a deliberate 18th century

booby trap treasure trove.

So close by to this swirling, bubbling, sandy mess

there's a marine conservation unit

that looks after sea turtles.

[Pritchett] Before female sea turtles lay their eggs,

they use the Earth's magnetic field

to navigate back to the same nesting grounds they were born on.

Juno Beach is one massive turtle creche.

The sandsucker is born out of the effort to rescue and rehabilitate

these returning turtles.

Because all of these sea turtles have a lot of tanks,

these tanks have run off tubes,

these drainage tubes that are buried underneath the sand.

[Pritchett] The pipes from the turtle center

are designed to release waste water into dry sand.

But over the years, a shrinking tideline has brought this new menace.

[Lisa Lazareck-Asunta] And so what's happened is

the tide has come closer to the drain pipes,

has saturated the sand with water.

So instead of just being dry sand,

these pipes now feed into really watery sand

which is why you're getting the bubbling effect.

[Pritchett] The beach authorities need to act quickly

to secure this sand sinkhole as it's a threat to beach goers.

If a woman's leg can get trapped in it, what can happen to a small child?

[Morgan] I can't tell how deep it is.

One thing is certain, I would not want my kids playing around it.

[Pritchett] Now, Kuching city in Sarawak, Malaysia.

March 7th, 2013.

Twenty eight year old, Josh Tam is out for a walk

when he spots something strange in a roadside ditch.

All right. Looks like I'm looking down into a sewer or a rain gutter.

All I see is a rock. Oh, wait. It's moving. That's weird.

That's so weird. Has a rock come to life?

[Pritchett] Even with the footage sped up, it's pace is hardly noticeable.

It's moving and while it's moving, it's leaving a trail behind it.

This thing is alive. But what living thing looks like that?

[Pritchett] Next, the mud monster moves into the murky ditch water

when suddenly.

Oh, no. It seems to have tentacles now.

It's reaching out through the water.

Oh, no.

[Lovell] These tentacles almost look like they are waving around.

You can see there's one, two, maybe, three of them.

That is the weirdest looking thing I've ever seen.

[Pritchett] The tentacles or arms

seem to be able to stretch an impossible distance

away from the mud monster seeking something.

[Bellinger] I've never seen anything like this before.

It looks like a whole new species,

not anything I've ever seen on this planet, that's for sure.

[Kasky] I wanna know what this thing is.

And I know what it's doing creeping around in this ditch.

[Pritchett] Coming up,

c ould this mud monster cause mayhem in Malaysia?

If this dangerous animal was traveling closer to civilization,

we could see an epidemic of pain and kidney failure.

[Pritchett] In Sarawak Malaysia a strange creature is caught on camera.

It looks like long, thin tentacles popping out of the water.

[Pritchett] Biologist Greg Szulgit believes a deadly sea creature

could have migrated to the city.

[Szulgit] You can see from the footage that this animal has a round, brown body

that's quite flattish.

When we think of the extensions coming out of it, like tentacles,

it reminds me of an anemone.

[Lovell] There's a species of anemone called the Hellfire and it's called that

because of the horrible sting that it leaves on the human body.

[Szulgit] Anemone's usually use their venom

to stun and kill prey like fish.

And they do this with thousands of little stinging cells

called nematocysts, zapping the fish, filling it with toxins and paralyzing it

so that it can be engulfed and devoured.

[Pritchett] The Hell's Fire is only found in this region of the Indo-Pacific

and is so venomous, murderers here have been known to catch it dry it, powder it,

and use it to kill their enemies.

[Lovell] There was a diver in the Philippines

that touched one of these poisonous anemone's

and he was injured so badly that his kidneys started to fail.

[Pritchett] This creature seems less colorful than a hellfire anemone.

But this could be a new mutation camouflaged in its environment

to bring neurotoxins from the ocean to the heart of the city.

[Bellinger] If this dangerous animal was traveling closer to civilization,

we could see an epidemic of pain and kidney failure.

[Pritchett] But there's a problem with this scenario.

These anemone's can only be found in deep salt water

This ditch is far from deep and it's freshwater.

This must be something else.

[Pritchett] Kasky thinks this could be a rare and dangerous type of mollusk.

[Kasky] Look at how slow this creature is moving.

Even when the tape is sped up, one of the slowest species out there is the snail family.

And you don't have to be an entomologist to know that.

[Pritchett] It's clear the critter in the footage is no ordinary snail.

So there's a couple of distinguishing features about this creature.

Number on is its size. It's much bigger than a common garden snail.

It's a unique size.

Secondly, we can see it's able to live out of the water in the mud

but also submerged under the water.

So I would identify this creature as an Apple snail.

[Montanari] These giant mollusks can survive almost anywhere

because they have both lungs and gills.

[Kasky] They're called Apple snails because they can get as big as an apple.

But really, they just look like big brown monsters.

[Pritchett] These invasive baseball size beasts

are originally from the jungles of the Amazon.

They have been captured and sold for the aquarium trade,

and here in Southeast Asia, for human consumption.

But like gremlins they escaped and multiplied.

The Apple snail was first discovered in Malaysia in 1991.

And within 10 years, it had become a major pest.

[Pritchett] By 2010, the Malaysian authorities

find the snail has caused more than $28 million worth of damage

devouring rice crops throughout the region.

And now they are turning their tentacles towards America.

These snails have started to infest the United States as well,

especially in the south, in Louisiana and Texas.

And they're moving faster than you might expect.

Floods spread by yearly hurricanes are moving them steadily northward.

These snails can float,

so to them flood water is like getting on a bullet train.

These things multiply like crazy so dominating a new area is easy for them.

They lay hundreds of eggs, these little bright pink eggs.

It looks like thousands of children had spit out their bubblegum all at once.

[Pritchett] But Americans have more to worry about than these critter's appetites

The scary thing about these Apple snails is they're not only a danger to crops,

they're also a direct danger to humans.

Snails carry so many parasites.

But they are responsible for nearly 200,000 deaths per year.

The Apple snail's parasite is particularly horrible.

[Lovell] They carry a deadly parasite called lungworm

and you can get this lungworm just from eating a piece of lettuce

that's been in proximity to one of these Apple snails.

The parasite can infect your brain and even if it doesn't kill you,

it can give you lifelong side effects like seizures.

[Pritchett] In 2010, in Australia, 19 year old rugby player, Sam Ballard

swallows a slug as a dare during a drinking session with friends.

Eating slugs is a bad idea but eating one that's carrying lungworm is even worse.

[Householder] By the time doctors realized what had happened,

the parasite had invaded Sam's brain and given him meningitis.

He fell into a coma lasting 420 days.

He woke up, he was completely paralyzed from the neck down.

[Pritchett] Eight years later, he died.

It's more common in tropical regions

but there's been over 20 cases in the United States in the last 10 years.

[Pritchett] The mud creeper captured in this footage

is part of an ongoing global invasion

that looks impossible to stop.

If snails are capable of killing, I guess I'm never gardening again.