Original subtitles

[Dan narrating]

[rhythmic music]

- What if I told you there's a neighborhood

that's a literal circus?

- Elephants roam through backyards.

Giants trim their high hedges.

Bearded ladies host the book club.

- It's somewhere that being atypical

is not perceived as unusual.

It's perfectly normal.

- Or that you could live rent free in a stadium?

- He calls up every drunk buddy,

every drinking friend that he knows.

- They're hanging out, they're laughing.

And one of 'em tells Tom,

"You know, if you brought

a little bit more furniture in here,

this would make a pretty kick-ass apartment.

- How about a layover that lasts a lifetime?

- Mehran's residency in Terminal 1A

of Charles de Gaulle Airport goes on for months

and then goes on for years.

- And there's really not much

that any officials can do about it.

- These are the dwellings so odd

they are truly

Unbelievable.

[dramatic music]

Our homes, however strange they might be,

are our sanctuaries.

They are where we feel safe and secure,

comfortable in our own skin.

But what if that skin happens to be covered in thick hair,

or tattoos, or even pierced by fish hooks?

Witness an unbelievable town

where the very odd is very normal.

[dramatic music]

- In the early and mid-20th century,

traveling circuses and sideshows

are still a popular form of entertainment in America.

A caravan can roll into town

and transform a sleepy neighborhood

into something fantastic and out of this world.

There are rides, exotic animal acts,

and of course the freak show.

[rhythmic music]

- These sideshows highlight dwarves, giants,

bearded ladies, conjoined twins.

For many of these folks,

this is the best opportunity they have to make a living.

But life is grueling in the sideshow.

People get tired of being stared at for money

and they really just wanna find a place

they can call their own.

- [Dan] Welcome to Gibsonton, aka Gibtown,

population strange.

[upbeat music]

- Gibtown is on the Gulf Coast of Florida,

and it becomes this place

where a lot of these circus performers can put down roots

and it's somewhere that being atypical

is not perceived as unusual.

It's perfectly normal.

- One of the first residents of Gibtown is Al Tomaini,

known as the world's tallest man.

He stands at 7 feet, 11 inches.

He becomes the local fire chief, starts a fishing club,

and even settles down with Evelyn, the Half Woman.

- [Dan] Word spreads on the sideshow circuit,

and by 1967, more than 100 circus performers

call Gibtown home.

- This is a place

where these circus performers could thrive.

Like Louise Capps Hill, an armless girl,

is able to drive a tractor, milk cows,

and raise her kids on her farm.

Conjoined twins run the fruit stand.

Grady Stiles, the Lobster Boy, makes the place his home.

- [Dan] But this utopia won't last forever.

- The popularity of traveling sideshows erodes,

and fewer and fewer new performers move into Gibtown.

By the 1980s, it pretty much becomes

a circus retirement community.

Most of the old guard has passed away by now.

There are some museums and a few old timers left,

so if you hurry, you can still catch a faded glimpse

of the old glory of Gibtown.

[dramatic music]

- What more can you ask for

than a place to be completely yourself?

That's why a lot of us spend big bucks

making our house feel like home.

Maybe you add a story for the kids on the way

or you want a tricked out man cave.

Or if you're a very rich widow,

your inspiration comes from a much more unbelievable place.

[dramatic music]

- Widow Sarah Winchester had a particularly bad run of it.

She's lost her child, her father, her mother,

and her husband William,

who was heir to the massive Winchester Rifle fortune.

[upbeat music] [guns booming]

- [Dan] The Winchester 1873 repeating rifle

is touted as the rifle that won the West.

And widow Sarah now owns 50% of the company.

- Sarah inherits $20 million,

which would be half a billion dollars in today's terms.

But all these resources do nothing

to heal the grief in her heart.

- After the loss of her children and then her husband,

she's extremely vulnerable

and she's starts asking questions of,

why is this happening to me?

What is it about me that has caused so much loss in my life?

And she starts to worry that she might even be cursed.

In this moment of vulnerability,

she chooses to consult a spiritualist.

- This medium tells her she is cursed

because her fortune is blood money.

The spirits of all the Native Americans

and others that were killed by the Winchester rifles

are essentially exacting revenge.

[thunder cracking]

- She's told by the medium that the only way

to lift the curse is to uproot herself, move west,

and build an enormous house as an act of tribute

for the lives lost by the fortune she has inherited.

- [Holly] Sarah moves out to California

and she buys a pretty modest farmhouse.

It's eight rooms, but it's on a massive tract of land.

And Sarah begins building.

- She employs large carpentry crews round the clock,

building room after room, hallway after hallway.

- She adds hundreds of rooms to this house.

- [Dan] But it's not just the size of the project

that's stunning, it's the bizarre layout.

- There are very tiny doors that open to huge ballrooms.

And there are massive doors that just open to a brick wall.

There's skylights in the floor.

- There are hallways that lead to nothing.

There are doors that you can open up stories up

and you're just looking out into the sky.

Sarah is doing this because, according to lore,

she's trying to confuse spirits and send them off track.

[suspenseful music]

- Crews work independently.

None of them know what the other crews are doing.

- No one sees the whole picture except for her.

And so they're building up into each other's work,

but in ways that are never gonna make any sense.

This house becomes such a cockamamie arrangement of rooms

no one can make their way through the house

except for her.

- It's hard to even call it a maze

because a maze has a purpose.

You're supposed to end up somewhere.

This is just strange and bizarre.

- As the construction drags on and on year after year,

construction crews begin to spot strange phenomena.

- Workers start experiencing odd cold spots,

random things moving.

Several workers say they see the outline

in the shape of Native American warriors

happening again and again.

[ominous music]

Someone says they see the apparition

of an old woman holding a candle.

Sarah's assertion that this is about the spirit world

suddenly might hold a little water.

- [Dan] By 1922, Sarah has spent $5 million

on this 160-room tribute to her own torment.

The one thing that finally halts the project?

Her own mortality.

- Sarah dies in September of 1922,

and construction immediately stops.

In fact, there are nails half banged into walls.

This bizarre home is purchased by a consortium

at a bargain basement price

of just $120,000.

No one else wanted it.

No one else knew what to do with it.

And today it is one of the most widely visited curios

in the California area.

- If Sarah's maze successfully confused

a few menacing poltergeists, I say well done.

- How far would you go

to support your favorite sports team?

Maybe buy season tickets, shave your head, paint your face.

One devoted Phillies fan takes team spirit

to truly unbelievable heights.

- It's October 1979, and it's announced

that Pope John Paul II will be visiting Philadelphia.

This is hugely exciting, right?

Philly has a giant Catholic population,

so there's a huge frenzy awaiting the Pontiff.

- [Dan] But it's going to take more than prayer

to make room for the onslaught of devout Philadelphians

desperate for a view and a blessing from the Holy Father.

It needs what every big city lacks most, parking.

- But a lot of Philadelphians

breathe this huge sigh of relief

when it's announced that Veterans Stadium,

the home of the Philadelphia Phillies

and the Philadelphia Eagles,

will be opening up its parking lot

to accommodate the number of people

that are gonna try to park.

So, phew, okay, problem solved.

- One person who's not happy about this is Tom Garvey.

Tom runs parking for Veterans Stadium.

And he knows that he does not have enough staff

to deal with the crowd,

so he needs people and he needs them fast.

So what does he do?

He scrambles.

He calls up every drunk buddy, every drinking friend,

every bouncer and bartender that he knows,

and he gets them to join his staff

and work for him on parking at Veterans Stadium.

- But now he's got another situation.

How am I gonna get all these scalawags and ruffians

to actually get up on the day at 4:00 AM to start the shift?

- [Dan] That's when he comes up with the idea

to bring them all in for a slumber party.

- Tom happens to have keys to most of the facility.

And he remembers

that there's one old concession area near left field

that's loaded with furniture he agreed to store

for an Eagles player

who was sure he was getting booted from the team.

He can just sneak everybody in there for the night.

- This must be a dream for this group of Phillies

and Eagles fans, to be sleeping

in the catacombs of Veterans Stadium.

- They're hanging out, they're laughing,

and they're looking at the space,

and one of them tells Tom, "You know, if you brought

a little bit more furniture in here,

this would make a pretty kick-ass apartment."

- [Dan] Suddenly an idea flashes across Tom's brain.

Why doesn't he just make it his apartment?

- So Tom decides to actually take his friend's advice.

And the day after the Pope's visit, he moves in in secret.

- So right under the stadium owners' noses,

Tom starts creating this fully-functioning apartment.

He's putting up walls, he's got extra chairs,

he sneaks in a refrigerator,

gets himself a little hot plate,

you know, for all the hot dogs

he's naturally gonna be eating.

- And to add a touch of class,

he even manages some floor-to-floor carpeting

in the form of astroturf from the stadium.

And how does he keep himself clean and ready to work?

The stadium showers and bathrooms, of course.

Tom takes a quick trip down the hall

and he's ready for the day.

- [Dan] Sounds pretty convenient.

So how does Tom stay under the radar?

- Tom creates an elaborate fake facade

to fool anyone that might open the door

to the old concession stand.

- If you accidentally find this stand,

the first thing you're gonna see

is just this wall of cardboard boxes,

and you just close the door and just be on your way.

In reality, Garvey sets up the boxes

in such a way that it becomes this sort of intricate maze

so that when he walks in,

he knows how to get behind all of it

to get to where his apartment actually is.

But here's the kicker.

He lives in this bachelor pad undetected

for two years.

- What Tom pulls off is pretty extraordinary.

This stadium has 65,000 seats.

The number of people passing through has to be enormous,

and yet he's able to live in this 60-foot-long,

30-foot-wide,

that's 1,800 square feet, apartment undetected.

[suspenseful music]

- [Dan] Even though Tom bids farewell

to his stadium apartment in 1981,

he keeps it a secret for decades.

- It's not until 2020,

16 years after Veterans Stadium is demolished,

that Tom finally writes a memoir

where he tells his story of living in the concession stand.

[dramatic music]

- Hiding in the bowels of a sports stadium

might sound like quite an adventure,

but at least Tom Garvey

could leave and catch a movie once in a while.

Our next nomad wishes he had that luxury.

Witness the strange tale of the Airport Man.

[rhythmic music]

- In 1988,

at Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris,

a man shows up that is desperate.

- His name is Mehran Karimi Nasseri,

and he's an Iranian refugee

who's just been expelled from Britain

for failing to show documents.

He claims that his documents

indicating that he is a refugee were stolen.

- So Britain has kicked him out.

France doesn't know what to do with him.

The only option is to send him back to Iran.

Unfortunately, for Mehran,

going back to Iran is not an option.

He says he was exiled as a protestor in the late 1970s,

and so they would refuse to let him back in.

- It looks like he's going to be stuck for at least a night.

So he stakes out a corner of Terminal 1A,

he finds some plastic airport benches,

he procures some airline blankets,

and he basically sets up a small little living room.

- Airport officials see this,

and they don't get too upset

because they figured this will sort itself out.

After all, how long could anybody live at an airport?

- [Dan] The answer to that question is much longer

than anyone expects.

- Mehran's residency in Terminal 1A

of Charles de Gaulle Airport goes on for months

and then goes on for years.

Terminal 1A truly becomes his home.

[dramatic music]

- And there's really not much

that any officials can do about it.

They can't compel him to leave the airport to get arrested.

And he cannot physically get on any plane elsewhere

without papers.

- It's a bizarre way to live, but he makes the best of it.

He befriends passing travelers.

He gets to know the airport staff.

This becomes his world.

- He falls into a pretty steady routine.

He gets up in the morning.

He goes and takes a shower in the airport bathroom.

He will buy himself a little breakfast.

[Mehran speaking indistinctly]

- He's kind of going about a normal daily routine

that a lot of us have, except it's all taking place

within the walls of Charles de Gaulle.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] After an astonishing 18 years living in Terminal 1A,

a sad twist of fate grants Mehran his freedom.

- In 2006, Mehran develops health conditions

that, for once, cannot be addressed by the airport doctor,

so he has to leave the airport.

- He lives in France for the rest of his life,

but he can't leave Paris.

They're not deporting him,

but he also can't really go anywhere else.

And he really struggles with finding a life for himself

outside of the airport,

so much so that he goes back to the airport.

And it is there in 2022 that he dies of a heart attack,

in the one place that had felt more like home to him

than anywhere else in the world for more than two decades.

[dramatic music]

- It goes to show you home is where the heart is,

even if that's a hard bench across from the duty-free shop.

- For those of you

who have trouble getting to sleep on an airplane,

you might have reservations about this next odd dwelling.

[tense driving music]

- For 20 years, 74-year-old Bruce Campbell

has been living in the secluded forest

outside Hillsboro, Oregon.

- We're talking the deep woods here.

And so you might be thinking a rustic log cabin

or a repurposed cave.

But no, you have to think of the most ridiculous,

impractical thing to use to build your home.

- [Dan] Bruce's home?

A massive Boeing 727 airliner.

[dramatic music]

- If you take all the seats

and overhead bins out of a plane,

it's surprisingly spacious.

He has a living room, he has a bedroom,

he even has a fully functional kitchen.

- It is that same cramped airplane bathroom,

except he's now got plumbing

that takes it to the outside of the plane.

But not only that, he's got two.

He's got his own bathroom and a guest bathroom.

- Bruce loves living in a plane.

He's an electrical engineer, and he's surrounded

by the actual working mechanisms in the plane.

The cockpit is still intact.

Many of the circuit breakers still work.

[rhythmic music]

- [Dan] People flock from around the world

to got a glimpse of Bruce's dream airplane home.

And he always gets the same question.

- Did this plane crash here?

If a plane crashed, there'd be debris everywhere.

It'd be impossible.

Instead, he buys his 727 from a jetliner salvage company

for a cool hundred thousand dollars.

- Now the plane has to make it

through the streets of Hillsboro

all the way to the middle of the woods.

- Remember, this is a huge 727.

So in order to fit through the streets,

he has to remove the wings and the tail.

And once he has the plane reassembled

on his 10 acres of land,

he spends two years turning it into a home.

- An airplane is not meant to exist on soft ground.

He has to create foundations and support systems

to bear the weight of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

This is a real engineering endeavor.

- He attaches supports to the front wheel

using concrete blocks and uses a large metal pole

to keep the plane in place.

If you ever do visit Bruce's jetliner home,

he only has one rule for guests,

and it's the same rule in airports across the country.

You gotta take your shoes off.

[dramatic music]

- If living in a plane that can't fly seems to defy logic,

try living in a house where the couch is on the ceiling.

- On a little island between Germany and Poland,

there's a seaside town named Trassenheide,

on which is a house, that to call strange

would be an enormous understatement.

As you approach the house,

it looks like a typical German seaside cottage.

That is if your head is tilted a lot,

because the house is built upside down.

[dramatic music]

- The roof is the ground

and the front door is two stories above you.

This house is built by two Polish architects in 2008,

and it's part of a larger art exhibit

called "The World Upside Down."

- It looks like it fell from the sky and landed on its roof.

When you look up at what should be the first floor,

you see an upside down bench and an upside down wheelbarrow.

It starts to rattle your perspective

and really make you disoriented.

- [Dan] Once inside, things get even stranger.

- Walking into this house is very unnerving.

The floor is above you.

And attached to the floor are everyday household objects

sitting totally upside down.

There's a table and a chair hanging from the ceiling.

So when people go into this art exhibit,

they often duck for cover

thinking that a couch is just gonna fall off the ceiling

and hit them.

- The beds are on the ceiling,

with their sheets and blankets tucked neatly upward.

Plates and forks are mounted to the table on the ceiling.

Literally every single thing in the home is upside down.

So there's no outside perspective

for you to get bearing

that you are not the one who is upside down

and literally walking on the ceiling.

- Moreover, the house is built on a 6% incline.

- To see the things that we experience in our everyday life

in such a disorient manner will disorient you,

and it starts to change your perspective

and how you perceive reality,

because this project throws it all on its head, literally,

- It's important to note that this house

is not actually meant for living in,

it's just meant to visit.

No one wants you to live upside down

with a toilet on your ceiling.

- When designing a home, you might grab inspiration

from different sources, like nature, history, or even art.

But it's the rare man who finds his creative muse

taking out the trash.

- If you walk in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn,

you might pass by in the back lot of an apartment building

something that looks rather mundane, a dumpster.

From the outside,

this looks like your standard green metal dumpster.

But if you knock on the front door,

you're not going to find trash inside.

Instead, you'll find a guy named Gregory Kloehn

living in it.

- [Dan] Gregory is no Oscar the Grouch,

and this is no ordinary dumpster.

So how did he end up here?

[dramatic music]

- Gregory is an Oakland-based artist,

and he has a wife and kids, and he has a regular home.

But on his constant visits to New York,

he's frustrated at how expensive hotels are.

- He sees a dumpster one day and inspiration strikes.

And he gets the idea to buy a dumpster

and turn that into a home.

So he pays $2,000 for this standard dumpster.

And if you think about it,

$2,000, that's basically four nights

in a hotel in Manhattan.

- Gregory spends six months turning this six-by-six dumpster

into a house.

And the first thing he needs is a door.

So he grabs a welder and creates an opening on one side.

Now he needs some windows,

but there's not a lot of room to cut those in the dumpster.

He gets the ingenious idea of using the lid of the dumpster

as an extendable roof.

He installs a crank

so he can crank up the lid of the dumpster

and put some windows on the side of it.

- [Dan] Then the real work begins to transform it

from a dumpster house to a dumpster home.

- Greg fits it out like a typical studio apartment.

He has a couch that can turn into a bed.

He even has a little kitchen,

which is really just one burner stove,

a little icebox for storage, and the world's tiniest sink.

- So he does have a toilet in this dumpster house,

but toilet's probably too strong a word.

It's basically a toilet bowl inside a metal box

with a hole in it that drains into a bucket

that he has to empty out every time he uses it.

- The shower, unfortunately, is one of the few things

that cannot be inside the dumpster.

So on the outside, he's mounted a ring with a shower curtain

and his running water to a shower head.

So he does have to shower outdoors,

but at least he could do his business inside.

- But he doesn't skimp on the finishes, right?

He is a designer, and he wants it to feel luxurious.

So he installs hardwood floors

and buys granite for the countertops.

And, you know, he can probably afford to do that

'cause he probably doesn't need a lot of these materials.

- [Dan] Curious what it would be like

to spend the night there?

Well, you're in luck.

- Gregory only spends a couple of months every year

in his dumpster house in Brooklyn.

And when he is back in Oakland, he rents this out to people.

- 200 bucks a night,

and all you have to do is shower outside.

[lighthearted music]

- So the next time

you're walking down the street in Brooklyn,

be careful where you dump your coffee cup.

It could land on one of Gregory's tenants.

Our homes are designed to protect us

from all the outside forces that can harm us.

But what if they can't?

What if the world around you is so treacherous

you need an added layer of super protection?

Consider the case of one boy

who lives in his own little world.

- When David Vetter is born in 1971,

he's diagnosed with a very rare genetic disease.

It's called severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID.

Basically this means his immune system

can't protect him from everyday germs

that most of us shrug off.

- To keep David safe,

the doctors have to take a radical step.

They place him inside of an enclosed sterile isolation unit.

[atmospheric music]

They pray it's only temporary.

The doctors are convinced

that David's gonna outgrow this disorder

by the time he's two years old.

- [Dan] But David doesn't grow out of it,

which means the solution

to keep him safe until a cure is found

is to place him in a protective bubble 24/7.

- Doctors set up David's permanent bubble home

in his bedroom.

This plastic bubble takes up most of his room

and is made up of a series of multiple small chambers

for him to move between.

The bubble is completely sealed off

and is constantly being pumped with fresh, clean air.

David never touches another human being with his hands.

He's not allowed to.

And no human ever touches him.

- But he can interact with doctors, nurses,

and even his family by means of gloves

that are able to extend into his enclosure.

- [Dan] It's not long before David's story

gets picked up by media outlets nationally.

- He's in magazines, papers.

Year after year, as America watches him grow up,

as he becomes more and more famous,

the media even gives him a nickname, the Bubble Boy.

The name sticks, but obviously all David wants to do

is get out of the bubble.

- [Dan] In 1977, David finally gets his chance,

all thanks to the folks at NASA.

- When David is six years old,

NASA designs and gifts him a protective spacesuit

that costs about $50,000,

and it looks like a real spacesuit,

which of course is a thrill for him.

- The suit is connected to an air compressor

via a long cloth tube, and a NASA engineer

actually rolls the compressor behind David

as he exits his bubble home and out into the bigger world

for the first time.

[dramatic music]

- He throws a frisbee for the first time in his life,

he actually sees friends outside,

and he's able to get a hug from his parents

- [Dan] But the space suit is only for temporary excursions.

Once his air supply runs out,

David must return to his bubble home base.

Six years later,

modern medicine offers a potential permanent solution.

- When David is 12 years old,

he undergoes an experimental bone marrow transplant

with his sister Catherine.

The hope is that the bone marrow

will spur David's immune system into working normally.

The procedure comes with a huge risk of infection.

- It's a major surgery to do on a child,

and he is adamant that they absolutely have to try this.

He is ready to get out of the bubble.

- After the surgery, everything is looking good.

David's body does not reject the transplant.

He goes home.

But after a few months, things take a turn.

[apprehensive music]

His temperature rises.

He has a fever.

And it's thought

that perhaps something was introduced to his body,

maybe a virus, during the surgical procedure.

And ultimately David is unable to fight it off.

And at age 12, David passes away.

- Even in passing, David remains a folk hero.

His struggle inspires a movie with John Travolta

and a song by Paul Simon, "The Boy in the Bubble."

- When we think of an advanced mega city,

we probably envision a modern metropolis

designed by genius architects and civil engineers,

not a secret lair built by tiny, six-legged creatures.

[rhythmic music]

- In 2012 in Cerrado, Brazil,

there's a group of scientists led by Luis Forgi

who are studying this enormous ant colony.

Because this ant colony is a relic,

a leftover that's empty of ants,

Forgi realizes that he can use this as a mold

and have it be a perfect replica, a model,

of this ant city.

- He wants to somehow illustrate

the true scale of this colony.

- But there's a problem.

Forgi estimates that this tunnel system

extends more than 26 feet under the ground.

- So if they attempt to dig it up,

all of these little fine tunnels are going to collapse.

So Forgi comes up with an idea.

What if there was something he could do

to reinforce all those tunnels?

So what does it take?

10 tons of concrete.

It'll harden, and then Forgi and his team begin to dig away.

[rhythmic music]

And it takes months because this ant colony is intricate.

It's a bunch of nodes with connecting tubes and chambers.

It's not an easy task even for a team.

- [Dan] After digging away the surrounding earth,

what Forgi finds isn't just a colony, it's a mega city.

- This thing is bonkers.

In addition to being huge, it's complex.

There are major thoroughfares and little side roads

leading to chambers.

- And when they follow these tunnels,

they find they lead to garbage dumps and fungal colonies.

It's as if these ants built a municipal system.

- [Dan] The creatures responsible

for this intricate metropolis are leafcutter ants.

Next to humans,

they live in one of the most complex societies on Earth.

- All of these ants have roles, they have jobs to do.

For example, you've got waste management workers, soldiers,

and guards, gardeners, excavators,

and of course, most important, the queen.

- In addition to building a mega city

on the scale of Manhattan, these ants don't rest.

They're working 24/7.

And Forgi estimates that they've moved 40 tons of dirt

to make this underground mega city.

- It's not just the weight, it's the distance.

They have to carry all this dirt more than a half mile

to excavate it, and all of that on teeny little ant legs.

So in the end, it's not just a spectacular structure,

but it should give you an incredible respect

for the ants who made it

and maybe just a moment of hesitation

before you step on them next time.

- We've seen ants who build like humans.

What about humans who live like ants?

Consider one community in Alaska.

- When you picture small town Alaska,

you might picture a bunch of sort of huts spread around

or a little village

with a central diner maybe serving moose burgers.

But what you don't imagine is a 14-story high-rise

with pretty much everyone in town living under one roof.

- [Dan] Welcome to Whittier, Alaska, population 265,

where everyone, from the banker, to the butcher,

the mayor, to the town mechanic,

can be found under one roof.

- The entire town lives inside a pastel-colored high-rise

called the Begich Towers.

And it kind of sounds like a crazy social experiment,

and it sort of is, but it's a successful one

because it's been going on for years.

- It's convenient because it's not just residences,

it's not just apartments.

It's the post office, the grocery store, clerk's offices,

the courthouse, all of those things

located in just one building.

So, you know, you forget olive oil for dinner at one time,

you just run downstairs to the grocers

and you're back before your pan even heats up.

[rhythmic music]

- It actually makes a lot of sense

to have an entire town in this one building

because you are talking about Alaska.

You have got these devastating winters.

So if everything is in this one place,

you don't have to be exposed to the elements

and go outside to get anything.

- The only one way into Whittier

is a tunnel carved through a gigantic mountain,

and the tunnel closes at night.

It becomes insular, but it becomes deeply protected.

- [Dan] How exactly did this city

turn into a one- building dream world?

- The building was originally built as a barracks

and a command center for the military.

But as the Navy pulled out, a railroad came in

and bought the property around the building.

So it made it very difficult for people to buy property

to build their own homes.

So they decided, let's just live in the tower.

Over the years, the community has become very tight-knit,

some would even say a little bit too tight-knit

because it makes it a little difficult to date

and find somebody to marry.

- Fun fact, many residents have left Whittier

to find a spouse, only to come back and raise a family

in this unique little Alaskan utopia.

- In most big cities, a sky high penthouse apartment

is a sign that you've really made it.

What if I told you the same thing is true

in the most remote jungles of Papua, Indonesia?

[rhythmic music]

- In 1978, a Dutch missionary named Johannes Veldhuizen

ventures deep into Indonesia

and makes contact with the Korowai tribe

for the first time.

- Johannes wants to convert them to Christianity.

But since they've never had any contact previously

with white missionaries,

he's got his work cut out for him.

- They don't trust him very much,

and this is evident by the fact

that he's usually greeted with a sort of loaded bow

with a barbed arrow in it as he tries to preach to them

to convert them through a translator.

- [Dan] But while Johannes worries

about catching an arrow with his name on it,

he finds himself captivated by the tribe's housing.

- They dwell in these massive treehouses

that extend 150 feet

above the jungle floor.

- We're not talking about tiny platforms up in the trees.

We're talking about huge structures,

sometimes 2 or 300 square feet.

These things sometimes

have got 12 or more people living there,

and sometimes even livestock.

- This is one of the wettest places on the planet.

They get about 200 inches of rain a year,

so there's flooding, plus the lower areas

are filled with mosquitoes, and snakes, and scorpions,

and a variety of other things.

So being way up off the ground helps you with that.

- The tribe members reach their homes

by climbing up a notched pole.

Once they arrive,

they pull the pole up

and hitch it to the tree itself,

which is a security system.

Nobody else has any way of getting up to reach them,

either human or animal.

- [Dan] These massive engineering marvels

are built without the aid of any modern tools,

materials, or even measuring.

- To build a tree house,

first they find a really tall banyan tree,

and they lop the top off.

Then they make a floor out of branches lashed with rattan

and held up with a few more poles.

Sago palm leaves cover the walls, floors, and roof.

Not a single nail is used.

It's all notched and latched together.

It takes weeks to build one, but it lasts for years.

- Over the years, since the arrival of Reverend Johannes,

more and more members of the Korowai tribe

have begun to leave, seeking opportunity,

following their curiosity,

and the numbers of the tribe have begun to dwindle.

And sadly, these magnificent tree houses

are becoming a thing of the past

and likely to disappear in the next few generations.

[dramatic music]

- If you wanna see the Korowai treehouses

before they all vanish, it's just a few weeks trek

through insect-infested rainforest.

Not every treehouse sits high in the clouds.

Some are much more down to earth.

- In the mid-19th century, half a million Americans

decide that they're gonna pick up stakes and move west.

And this means that now they have to figure out a way

to hew out a life for themselves in whatever way they can.

- If you haven't struck it rich in the Gold Rush,

money's gonna be kind of tight.

So the people that are heading out West

have to think pretty frugally and out of the box

in order to acquire things like land and shelter.

- [Dan] Lucky for these settlers,

they're able to take advantage

of an industry new to the Pacific Northwest.

- This is a time when loggers are taking down

these massive cedars, and sequoias, and redwoods,

all to feed the insatiable need for lumber

as new towns are being built across the West.

- So as people are moving into California, Oregon,

what is today Washington State, they find this landscape

that looks like it's been completely harrowed.

[dramatic music]

It is basically full of these huge stumps,

sometimes 10 feet high, 30 feet across,

that the lumber industry has left behind.

And frankly, moving that stump out,

pulling it out in any way is too much effort.

- These are stumps of trees that have been in this region

for 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 years.

They're strong.

They're sturdy.

And these settlers see an opportunity.

All you'd have to do now is hollow them out

and you can make a pretty decent home.

- To create a stump house,

you need to chop or burn out the center of the stump

to create a shell.

Then you cut out a door, a couple of windows,

and throw on a roof.

- As for the insides, they could be left alone.

You could leave them rustic.

Or what you could do is you could put up walls inside

to build separate rooms,

and suddenly you've got yourself a house

much faster and much cheaper than framing one out

and putting one up yourself.

[rhythmic music]

- As whole communities pop up,

stump houses become a symbol of pioneer life.

- Some of these tree stump houses are super fancy.

One example is in Calaveras, California,

you have one stump that's turned into a dance hall.

- The very first US Post Office

in the northern Olympic Peninsula

is built in a stump in 1892 by a man named William McDonald.

And that post office still exists today.

You can go visit it.

It is now a national historic site.

- There's no place like home,

whether it's a multimillion dollar mansion

built to confuse ghosts,

or a sports stadium flop house that's rent free,

or even stumps carved from gargantuan forests.

These are dwellings so odd

we can only call them

Unbelievable.

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