Original subtitles

[Tubi theme]

[Narrator] In Scariest Monsters in America,

we traveled across the country

in search of the creatures that struck the most fear

and wreaked the most havoc all across the land.

But in truth, every region of the world has its own tales

of horrifying beasts,

ones even more frightful and more terror inducing

than many of the ones found in the States.

We are talking about the absolute scariest monsters

in the entire world.

They say most legends are rooted in the truth.

There are terrifying monsters that

really do exist in this world.

[Narrator] There's the undead who guard

one of the Seven Wonders of the World

and snarling predators in the heart of Africa.

It's an anaconda that was possessed by Satan.

That's exactly what you'd get.

He can probably just grab you whole and kill you instantly.

[Narrator] There's bloodsucking demons

who've terrorized Europe for centuries

and hideous creatures who stalk and kill

the youngest among us.

Her main kind of victims are children.

She has long claws, pig faces, and tusks.

[Narrator] But which of these monsters

is truly the most terrifying?

We're taking you continent to continent

to find the top 10 scariest monsters in the world,

learning of the bone-chilling legends behind them

and the stories that catapulted them into modern pop culture.

And if we're lucky, we'll witness videos

of alleged encounters with these fiendish beasts.

Thousands of people are seeing these creatures.

[siren wailing]

They're clearly frightening.

[Aaron] The question isn't if monsters are real or not.

The question is if monsters are real, where are they hiding?

[theme music]

[music]

[Narrator] Kicking off our countdown at number ten

is a monster that walks among us by day...

but at night,

transforms into a terrifying hunter of human beings,

one who roams the forests of Eastern Europe

and could rip you to shreds in minutes.

The infamous werewolf.

Where did the werewolf culture come from?

It's huge in society.

It's in all kinds of movies.

The Howling.

It's in the Twilight series.

Books and magazines, cartoons.

He's one of the old school monsters.

If he's real, I'm scared to death.

[growling]

[Todd] Jaws, snout, big teeth, terrifying.

Glowing eyes.

Big ears stand above the head.

Terrifying.

[Dr. Downs] In human form,

a werewolf looks just like a normal human,

which is part of what makes them so terrifying,

that you can't look at a person and know

whether they're a werewolf until they become a werewolf.

This is basically a person losing all of their rationality,

losing all of the things that make them human,

and becoming an animal.

[howling]

[Camille] The transformation for a werewolf

is probably one of the most iconic moments

in any story that's related to the werewolf.

These human bodies, right, are starting to...

you know, break and bend in weird places,

you know, to kind of fill the idea

of what a wolf would look like, right?

So their claws are popping out.

Their feet are bending inward.

Their faces are growing.

The teeth and their fangs are growing.

It's such a frightening display.

[howling]

[growls]

[Melisa] The thing that makes werewolves doubly scary

is the simple fact that they do walk among us right now.

It could be your cousin. It could be your father.

It could be your neighbor. And you just wouldn't know

that they could be that dangerous.

[Narrator] For nearly all of the monsters on our list,

eyewitness accounts paint very,

and often wildly contradictory,

descriptions of them.

And the same is true for werewolves.

Some eyewitnesses describe them as hulking,

almost giant creatures.

Others depict them as smaller and more doglike.

Some accounts describe them as more human in form,

while others are more lupine.

Either way--

[woman screaming]

[Narrator] --werewolves have struck fear

into the hearts of people across the world for centuries,

with the first stories of these menacing man beasts

emerging in Eastern Europe during the late Middle Ages.

[Dr. Zarka] According to various historical texts,

in the 16th century,

one of the most famous werewolves

was a German man named Peter Stumpp.

Reportedly, Peter Stumpp

was able to transform into a werewolf

because of a pact he made with the devil at a young age.

And promising to do all these horrific deeds,

the devil gifted him with a werewolf girdle, or belt,

to allow him to transform at will

to commit all these atrocious acts.

[Narrator] According to the story,

for the next two decades,

Peter, when in werewolf form,

took the lives of more than a dozen of his neighbors,

including women, children, friends, and family members,

which prompted a massive hunt for the beast.

[Dr. Zarka] These hunters are out one day,

trying to capture this wolf.

They're chasing the wolf,

and their dogs are chasing the wolf,

and it goes behind these bushes,

or in this area they can't see.

And then all of a sudden, who's there?

It's a naked Peter Stumpp.

So they think, of course, Peter just transformed

from the wolf into this human figure.

[Narrator] Peter was taken into custody

and stood trial for his alleged crimes.

[Dr. Burdorrf] He killed 16 people,

according to the trial records,

including his own son, whose brains he allegedly ate.

Once he confessed under torture to all of these crimes

and to the pact with the devil

that had motivated and enabled them,

he was brutally executed,

along with his daughter and his mistress.

All of these horrifying things

were printed and distributed widely

just all over in Europe.

[Narrator] As the story of Peter Stumpp,

the bloodthirsty werewolf, spread across Europe...

people feared either being attacked

by one of these monsters

or becoming one themselves.

But in order to become a werewolf,

you have to come face to face with one.

There are many different ways

that people can become werewolves.

It depends on the culture and it depends on the legend

that, I guess, you're talking about.

One of the most infamous ways

is if you're bitten by a werewolf,

you will become a werewolf.

But I've also heard that they can curse you,

and every time you see a full moon,

you turn into a werewolf.

I think a very scary part of werewolves

is that they could be walking among us

and we wouldn't even know it.

In some traditions, there are signs

that would be an indication of a person being a werewolf.

They're often not physical signs.

They tend to more so be behavioral.

So obviously if you notice that they spontaneously go missing

at every full moon, that might be a thing to look out for.

[Erica] Werewolves hang around the forest.

You know, it's easy for them to evade anything if they need to.

And it's also a place for them to act kind of like animals.

So, I would say just don't find yourself walking alone

at night in the woods, where you hear some howls, and a big moon.

[Narrator] On rare occasions, people have captured

what many believe are videos of modern day werewolves.

Perhaps the most disturbing video,

and one that initially seemed to prove

the existence of the werewolf,

is a clip that was posted on TikTok in 2023,

which viewers claimed was taken in Pakistan the previous year.

According to the story that circulated online,

the beast had been hit by a car.

But when the drivers of the vehicle

called for an ambulance,

government officials arrived on the scene,

and the werewolf was allegedly

whisked off to a research facility

and never seen again.

However, just as the story went viral,

a special effects artist named Rob Kabasky came forward

and announced that he had created the monster

for a motion picture studio back in 2020.

[music]

[Narrator] Today, speculation still abounds

that the werewolf was real

and that the video was proof these creatures

do in fact exist.

Whether the beast was real or not,

there is one sure way to kill an actual werewolf,

as one werewolf hunter explains on social media.

In case you didn't know, it takes a silver bullet

to stop a werewolf.

We got the big dog to polish off the werewolf family.

You shouldn't be going anywhere in the woods

without this 25 ounce of pure silver.

I think the werewolf has to be

one of the most scariest monsters

because it can only be killed by a silver bullet.

But who has a silver bullet handy, you know?

[Dr. Burdorrf] Werewolves are one of the monsters

that reminds me very specifically

how ill equipped human beings are

to, like, survive in the world.

When you really get down to it, you know,

We're more likely to be the prey

than we are to be the predator, and I think the werewolf

is a very frightening reminder of that.

[Todd] Would I like to see one? Yes.

As terrifying as it would be,

I would definitely like to see one.

I would just hope I would survive.

[growling]

[Narrator] Next on our countdown at number nine

is a trip to Ireland

and a creature that has long haunted the Emerald Isle--

the banshee.

[Brian K] Well, the banshee is an interesting character

in folklore for me because

it's this sort of whispy woman that appears

and sort of foretells somebody's death.

[Dr. Zarka] They've usually suffered

some kind of horrible death

or have been wronged by people, in life.

Usually this is murder, sexual assault,

maybe death during childbirth,

those kinds of things.

[woman screaming]

[Dr. Downs] Some of them are seen as beautiful young women.

Some of them are seen as old hags.

[Dr. Burdorrf] Her eyes are always red,

and it's from weeping.

So she really is this figure of inconsolable grief.

[music]

[Narrator] But perhaps the banshee's

most terrifying trait doesn't lie in her appearance.

[Dr. Zarka] A banshee sounds like

an incredibly high-pitched, loud,

bone-chilling scream.

It's not your usual maybe crying or wailing.

It's so profound in both loudness

and its otherworldly pitch that it stands out.

[Camille] Her mouth is massive,

and she can scream for miles,

miles and miles and miles.

[Narrator] However, the banshee's bloodcurdling scream

cannot be heard by everyone.

But if you do happen to hear it,

you're in for trouble.

The banshee is an omen of death.

[Dr. Burdorrf] The only person who can hear

the banshee wailing or singing

is the person that she has come for,

the person that she's warning

or the person whose death she is predicting.

[high-pitched scream]

[Dr. Zarka] Only ancestral families of Ireland

can have a banshee attached to their lineage.

And according to tradition,

the banshee can appear to any member of that familial line

to warn them of death.

[Melisa] That's exactly what's so terrifying about a banshee.

And it smacks you right in the face

with the potential of having you or your loved one die.

Just knowing that you don't know

what the next move is going to be

is absolutely terrifying.

[high-pitched scream]

[Narrator] The banshee's mournful cry

mirrors an aspect of a real-life Irish tradition.

I think one of the reasons that they're seen as frightening

is that there was the real practice of keening,

an Irish death tradition.

So a keening woman was a professional career.

A keening woman would rhythmically wail

and lament and serve as a catharsis for the living

so they didn't have to spend all their time necessarily

mourning publicly and dramatically.

[music]

[Narrator] From folklore to modern media,

banshees have been in the public zeitgeist for years.

There have been banshees on TV shows like Supernatural.

Arthur?

[screams]

[Dr. Burdorrf] Pretty much anywhere

you're gonna think about that kind of ghost

or the haunting prediction of death,

the banshee is a creature that comes to mind.

What's more terrifying? Seeing a creature like Bigfoot

or seeing a ghost entity coming at you?

Definitely a banshee. You don't know what she wants.

Is she coming for me? What's she doing here?

What is this? Where did she come from?

And why is she here?

Terrifying.

[high-pitched scream]

[Brian B] The banshee is pretty scary to me.

I mean, if you hear it, somebody's gonna die.

[Brian K] I think most commonly

what most people fear is death itself.

So anything that's showing up and sort of foretelling death

has gotta be pretty scary for most people, including me.

[Narrator] As terrifying as the banshee may be,

our next monster hails from the jungles of the Congo,

and like the werewolf, also hunts human prey,

but does so inarguably in an even more bloodthirsty manner.

[Dr. Downs] There's something about

something with that many legs that just seems wrong.

It'd be terrifying for a lot of people.

[Aaron] It's big, it's fast, it's smart,

and it's going to get you.

[growling]

[Narrator] After werewolves and banshees

comes a monster that knows how to lay

the perfect trap for its victims.

But before we get there, let's take a look

at a few other terrifying monsters from around the world

that just missed the list.

There's Lady Midday, a scythe-wielding demon

who hunts down field workers

in the lowlands of southeast Europe.

She is the last face these men and women see

as she sentences her victims to death

by decapitation.

Across the globe, in Japan,

the gashadokuro is a massive skeletal creature

comprised of the bones from its human victims.

With a name that literally translates to

"rattling bone giant,"

the gashadokuro stalk their human prey

under the cover of night,

beheading them and drinking their blood,

before adding their bones to its own skeletal form.

So, if you're in the forests of central Japan

and you hear the sound of rattling bones,

the gashadokuro isn't far away.

[music]

[Narrator] There's also the typhon,

a beast with the upper body of a man

and a lower half comprised of hundreds of snakes.

With roots in Greek mythology,

the monster once tried to overthrow Zeus.

When unsuccessful, he was buried under Mt. Etna

and is said to be responsible for its volcanic activity.

These are just a few of the monsters

that barely missed the cut.

But the next monster terrorizing folks in our top ten

preys on a fear that has festered

in people's nightmares for centuries.

[music]

[Todd] People are scared of spiders in general,

even little tiny baby spiders.

Can you imagine seeing a spider bigger than you

coming after you with its fangs open,

ready to just chomp on you, wrap you up, and...kill you?

[Narrator] Number eight is an arachnophobe's worst nightmare,

the eight-legged terror of Central Africa...

the jba fofi.

[Dr. Downs] The jba fofi is certainly scary because

I think a lot of people are scared of spiders of any size.

There's something about something

with that many legs

that just is inhuman and seems wrong.

You need a very large shoe or fly swatter to kill this thing.

[Martin] It lives in the Congo forests

and it's usually a brownish color

with a purple mark on its abdomen.

[Aaron] The young ones are described to be very colorful,

bright yellow and a purple abdomen.

They're actually supposed to attract a lot of people

so that you don't see the parents.

So you may see this giant spider

and go like, oh, that's bad. Hey, guess what?

There's actually a bigger one looking at you right now,

but you can't see it.

[Dr. Burdorrf] It uses hunting tactics

that are similar to trapdoor spiders or funnel web spiders.

So it'll dig a little tunnel and cover the entrance with leaves,

and then it kind of rigs up the web around it

and directs the animal or whatever walks by

into this trap that it's built.

So it's clearly incredibly intelligent.

The usual prey for jba fofi is sort of medium-sized animals.

So anything from birds

getting up to about the size of antelopes.

They are also opportunistic predators,

so if humans become caught in their webs,

they're not above eating them.

[Narrator] Like tarantulas or black widow,

jba fofi are believed to be extremely venomous.

So that big of a spider, how much venom are they holding?

That's terrifying to think about.

[Narrator] While the indigenous people living in the Congo area

have had the most encounters with jba fofi,

visitors to the area have allegedly run into them as well

with what has been described as deadly results.

There are very famous encounters of Europeans with jba fofi

or something that may have been jba fofi.

There was a missionary in 1891

who was traveling through the jungle with some porters.

[Aaron] Apparently what they saw were two gigantic spiders,

one smaller, one bigger.

So they were supposed to be a male and a female.

He got bitten.

His men got trapped in the web.

So he was able to supposedly "harm them,"

but not kill them by shooting.

And as he's running, he's getting nauseous,

chills, anxious.

[Dr. Downs] He died a few days later

after suffering from pain and inflammation,

as well as hallucinations and fevers and chills.

[Dr. Burdorrf] Members of his party were bitten.

They became very ill.

And then in a couple of days, they were dead,

and there was nothing anybody could do to help them.

[Narrator] Over the next century,

real life sightings of the jba fofi

have been few and far between.

And the main way their legend was kept alive

was through the Harry Potter books and movies

and the extremely large, extremely venomous spider,

Aragog.

Do we panic now?

[Melisa] Many people today haven't heard of the jba fofi.

But if you think back to the very first Harry Potter movie,

Aragog, that is exactly what a jba fofi is described to be--

a massive creature, a poisonous creature,

that's pretty much just out to kill you.

[Narrator] Giant spiders also make terrifying appearances

in Lord of the Rings...

[grunts]

[Narrator] ...and in Kong: Skull Island.

[gunfire]

[gasping]

[Narrator] Even as giant spiders

continue to strike fear into the hearts of moviegoers,

many experts believed jba fofi to be extinct.

But all that changed a few years back.

[Todd] There's a viral video out there.

It's a black and white night vision video

of a small pond.

And you can see in the right-hand corner,

about 40 seconds in,

of a large, spider-like creature

crawling away out of the screen

with its arms reaching out and grabbing and pulling

and dragging and pulling itself like a spider does.

It has to be at least probably 8 feet in diameter

based on the tree size.

[music]

I think that jba fofi video was pretty, pretty compelling.

[Erica] To me, this is kind of like an unsung hero

of the monster world, you know?

You've got all of these sightings of this giant creature

that everybody's afraid of, you know?

So I think that I would love to see jba fofi

get the credit that it deserves.

[Todd] Seeing a large spider

that definitely would want to eat you for a meal,

you know your chances are very slim.

It would be terrifying to see one of these things.

It's very possible that that's crawling around out there

and that's definitely why I will not be going to Congo.

[music]

[Narrator] Up next is another monster

with a craving for human flesh

and a physical appearance that's downright sinister.

Probably in my opinion the most terrifying monster.

[Brian B] But r eally the perfect hunter,

really.

Super fast, super strong, can't be seen most of the time

until it's too late.

If you're anywhere close to one, you're probably done for.

[music]

[Narrator] The remote wilderness

along the US-Canada border

has long been a destination for hikers,

hunters, and fishermen.

But should you find yourself in this area,

you might also find yourself face to face

with one of the most frightening monsters on the planet.

Number seven on our list, a man-beast born in the forests

near the Great Lakes.

The wendigo.

[Aaron] The wendigo is probably, in my opinion,

one of the, if not the most, terrifying monster

that I have learned.

[Narrator] According to legends found in the oral histories

of several groups of indigenous North Americans,

a wendigo is born when a person slips into a psychosis

brought on by extreme hunger

and commits one of the most twisted and taboo acts

a human can commit.

[Dr. Downs] Anyone can become a wendigo.

It's generally seen that it starts often

in a survival situation,

where a person has no choice but to eat human flesh

and then becomes fixated on it.

[Aaron] No, you do not want to become a wendigo.

It is not fun at all.

You are always hungry.

You're always cold.

And you are at the brink of death, literal death.

You are dying literally, but you will never die.

You are forever stuck in this eternal torment.

The only thing you can do is just crave human flesh.

[Narrator] And according to most accounts,

the first of which were recorded as far back as the 1600s,

the wendigo is not only stuck in the limbo of the undead,

they rapidly adopt physical features

from the animals of the great north,

like elk antlers, bear claws,

and the fangs of a timber wolf.

[Camille] They're massively tall.

They almost look like skeleton creatures, skin walkers.

They have protruding bones and long talons,

and they grow super, super long.

And they have, like, pieces of skin

barely touching their bodies and gripping on for dear life.

And their hearts are something that you can see,

like, within their ribcages.

It's said that they can walk on snow without sinking into it.

They can even walk on water.

[Dr. Burdorrf] He is gigantic.

He is fast.

He is strong.

He's powerful.

And he's driven purely by hunger and the desire for human flesh.

So he is the perfect predator and we are his only prey.

[music]

According to Algonquian lore,

you don't find the wendigo-- the wendigo finds you.

[Dr. Burdorrf] He can mimic the voices of friends or family

and call out to someone from the woods.

And if you go to see this person that you recognize

that's calling you, the wendigo has him.

[Narrator] In recent years, several videos

have appeared online of people

in the upper Midwest wilderness--

[Man] Hello?

[Narrator] --who claim to have heard voices

calling out to them.

[Man] I got something screaming down there.

I don't know what this is, man.

Something fucking screaming down there, man.

[screaming]

[Male voice] Help me. Help me.

[Narrator] These eyewitnesses all believed

what they were hearing was quite possibly a wendigo.

[Male voice] Help me.

[Man] What the hell is in there?

[music]

[Dr. Zarka] A couple different ways you know

a wendigo might be coming for you.

One is a sudden appearance of a snowstorm.

Because of their speed, wendigos are said that--

to move with the blizzards.

You might also have a really putrid stench.

[Camille] They have a disgusting body odor

that can be smelled for, like , miles and miles and miles,

mostly because of the undead flesh that they're eating,

but also because their bodies are in this weird,

decomposed, kind of monstrous state.

[Melisa] A wendigo is basically if

Bigfoot, a zombie, and Hannibal Lecter

decided to get together and create a monster.

That is exactly what the depiction

of a wendigo is to me,

which is absolutely terrifying

because that basically means that it's out for blood

no matter what.

[music]

Wendigo can be killed through conventional weapons,

but it takes a lot more than it would take

to kill a normal human.

[gunshot]

They say that you can remove their heart,

which is made of ice, and melt it,

that would destroy a wendigo.

How are you gonna get that close to even try it

without risking it killing you?

[music]

[Narrator] Recently, one TikTok provided

what many believe is the clearest evidence

of a wendigo sighting.

[Man] Over there, look. Look, look, look, look, look.

-Over there. You see that? -[Woman] What the hell?

[Erica] Wendigos are one of those things

where if you see it,

you probably aren't gonna live to tell.

[Narrator] The wendigo's reputation

as one of the world's scariest monsters

has grown in recent years.

The idea of the wendigo and the way that it haunts

and the monster that it is is all over popular culture.

[Dr. Zarka] The wendigo appears in over 300 Marvel comics

as one of the villains, Big Bad,

that combines traits of the wendigo with the yeti

and with werewolves.

[Aaron] The wendigo in pop culture,

the most accurate one so far, in what I've seen, is Until Dawn.

Until Dawn is a video game created in 2014,

and it's about a bunch of teenagers

that go into the mountains.

And wouldn't you know it, the wendigo's hunting them.

[screams]

[Martin] I think the biggest one lately

that brought the wendigo back to everybody's consciousness

is Supernatural.

Remember Supernatural ?

The wendigo was big on that show.

[Camille] One of my most famous depictions,

I think of the wendigo would be Antlers,

which was a 2021 film.

Guillermo del Toro had a big hand as a producer in the movie.

[Aidan] The wendigo itself has been adapted

in a number of ways by white Americans and Europeans

to better fit our own stories from our European ancestry.

[Dr. Zarka] I for one would love to see

a true representation of the wendigo

from an indigenous source

and give us what the monster truly is scary for.

[music]

To me, the wendigo is honestly the embodiment of evil.

It's everything that humans just try to stay away from--

cannibalism, greed, selfishness.

It kind of plays back into popular culture

on how we shouldn't be those things.

[Aaron] It's got all of those traits

that I think it's probably a good depiction

of what that most intense, core, primal fear that humans have is.

[music]

[Narrator] Up next is another bloodthirsty monster,

one whose bad reputation spans the globe,

making them perhaps the most famous monster of all.

[Aaron] It looks extremely human.

It's something that is hidden in plain sight.

[Todd] He's known to be enticing, charming, handsome.

Indulgent to women, attracting them with his allure,

and then attacking them, biting them, claiming them as his own.

[music]

[Narrator] Rolling in at number six

is one of the most classic monsters of all time...

best known for their association with Transylvania

beginning in the 15th century

and now known all around the world.

The vampire.

[Dr Burdorff] The vampire is an undead creature

similar to the zombie and the mummy.

But what distinguishes them primarily

is their thirst for blood.

It's the only substance that they are believed to consume.

It is how they sustain themselves.

They're sucking the literal life force out of you

and they toy with you.

That's a situation no one wants to be in.

[music]

[Narrator] In recent years, these fiendish creatures

have been all the rage in pop culture.

[growling]

Plenty of television references to vampires.

[growls]

We've got Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural.

Oh!

How much blood do you think he's lost?

Oh, I still think he has something to offer.

[Erica] In True Blood,

you've got a lot of attractive vampires.

True Blood does a great job at showing you

every different type of monster there could be,

and that's why I love True Blood.

[music]

[Narrator] In addition to all the TV shows...

[screaming]

[Narrator] ...vampires have also been immortalized

in books and films.

Beginning in the 1970s through the early 2000s,

Anne Rice's series, The Vampire Chronicles,

brought on a new thirst for stories

about these bloodsucking demons.

The Vampire Chronicles were the catalyst

for the new crop of vampires.

[Todd] Interview with the Vampire

a different kind of twist on the vampire movie.

And obviously the women loved it.

You have Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt representing the debonair,

suave, handsome vampire.

[Erica] This huge star-studded cast

and you've got an iconic story by Anne Rice.

And I think it just really made the vampire craze go even more,

which leads us into Twilight .

[Camille] If you were a tween in the late 2000s/early 2010s,

Twilight was probably a book that you kept in your backpack.

[Aidan] Twilight is the pop culture vampire thing.

It is what everyone immediately goes to,

and it's also the one that probably shows them

in the least folklore-accurate way.

[Brian K] Twilight was very interesting

because I think it sort of created

this romantic heartthrob version of

the character for vampires,

and they look like good guys.

I'll make it go away, Bella.

[pants]

I'll make it go away.

[Narrator] Long before Twilight,

vampires first ascended into the pop culture pantheon

in the late 1800s,

when Irish author Bram Stoker

released his literary masterpiece, Dracula.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is certainly

the most influential narrative

in terms of shaping how we think about vampires today.

[Aaron] We all know Dracula.

He's very seductive. He has all these women around.

He's very wealthy.

He lives in this ginormous castle.

He's a playboy.

He has everything that a woman may find attractive.

And he'll go in with what they think is a kiss,

but really is actually him biting

and drinking their blood.

[Martin] The Bram Stoker novel, Dracula,

is the one that set up the modern day vampire.

Suave, you know, the debonair ladies man kind of vampire.

But still, you don't want to mess with him.

[Narrator] Though Bram Stoker's Dracula

brought vampires into the pop culture spotlight...

tales of them have been lurking around for centuries.

The origin story of vampires is very, very hard to pinpoint,

and the reason for that being is because

there's so many different life-sucking demons and entities

around the entire world.

Even the Chinese have their own vampire, the jiangshi,

known to entice its victims just as other vampires

and also attack them by hopping toward them.

[Aaron] And they always have their arms stretched out

with these long fingernails that are like claws.

The reason why they do that is not only

so they can grab onto their prey--

they're ridiculously strong, by the way--

but they can also sink their fingernails in

so even if the prey does get away,

they still have blood to drink.

[Narrator] While vampires are ubiquitous

in the folklore of many cultures,

the legend most closely associated with the vampire

is that of Count Dracula...

aka, the savage 15th century Transylvanian warlord

Vlad the Impaler,

better known as Count Dracul.

Vlad the Impaler was a Romanian

who took on the task of stopping the advance

of the Ottoman Empire into Romania.

And he used Bran Castle as one of his military strongholds.

[Alex] Vlad the Impaler has quite a gruesome history.

One of his favorite ways of executing

the hundreds of thousands of people that he killed

was to impale them.

And there's also legends that say

that he resorted to cannibalism

and drank the blood of his victims.

[Joshua] "Dracula" actually comes from Vlad Dracul,

which "Dracul" comes from the word "dragon."

And his dad was actually a part of the Order of the Dragon,

which was a group meant to defend Christianity.

[Martin] If you go to Romania, Transylvania,

and talk to those people, he was a hero.

But, you know, to other people, he was a monster.

[music]

[Narrator] The stories of the atrocities

carried out by Vlad the Impaler

eventually merged with tales of alleged encounters

with other bloodthirsty Transylvanian monsters.

[thunderclap]

The much earlier kind of folkloric

Eastern European vampires,

are much more localized.

they were likely to haunt the village

that they came from, that they died in.

[Dr. Downs] There are a lot of Eastern European stories

of a village where people will continually become sick

or livestock will go missing, or become sick,

or be found drained of blood.

And people will start to realize

there must be a vampire in our midst somewhere.

And it's often done through digging up graves

and finding who looks like they might be

rising in the middle of the night

to drink everybody else's blood.

And they have so many identifying qualities

and factors to them.

They don't have a reflection.

They have fangs for teeth.

[Aidan] Vampires will vary in their appearance,

anything from something that is indistinguishable from you and I

to something that has the pale skin, sunken eyes,

kind of an elvish appearance.

[Todd] Vampires are intriguing

where they lure their victims in in a sensual way

because human nature is, you know, sensuality,

it's a big attraction.

So a vampire will use that as a big piece of bait.

He's a terrifying serial killer-type monster.

[Brian K] It's very difficult to

defend yourself against a vampire

because the really scary thing about a vampire

is you could be sitting across from one

and having your conversation

and they may be sizing you up to drink your blood,

and you would never know it until it's too late.

[Melisa] The scariest part to me about a vampire

is the fact that anybody can be a target for them--

children, the elderly, young, old.

It doesn't really matter who you are.

[Camille] In order to get rid of them,

they also have very famous tropes in that way as well

such as the stake to the heart, or a crucifix,

or garlic in many different places as well.

[Todd] I think vampires walk among us.

Anyone who's evil, and kills people,

and does terrible things to people,

I consider them vampires in the modern day world.

They do exist. They're here.

[Narrator] Next up, we're moving on from vampires

to a monster whose most terrifying trait

may be her choice of victims.

[Todd] She's a skinny old witch woman who lives in the woods.

Her fence is made out of the bones of children

and topped with skulls.

[Narrator] Before we enter the top five

scariest monsters in the world,

we're turning our eyes to a few more

of the menacing creatures that didn't make the cut.

First up is the kelpie,

a water-dwelling creature from Scotland

that's half horse, half fish...

but can also shapeshift into human form.

It lures little children into the water,

where it transforms back into its monster form...

dragging the unsuspecting children

into the briny deep,

then drowning them and feasting on their flesh.

Malaysian folklore brings us to the pontianak,

a red-eyed woman with long black hair

and a blood-smeared white dress.

Part vampire, part zombie,

part Samara from the film The Ring.

[music]

[screams]

[Narrator] The pontianak craves human flesh

and kills her victims by digging sharp claws

into their abdomens,

ripping their organs out for a snack.

There's also the mare, a small, but sinister demon

from Scandinavia,

who climbs onto the chest of a sleeping person

and incites horrific nightmares.

When the victim wakes up,

they feel the weight of the mare on their chest

and are unable to move...

a sensation that today is known as sleep paralysis.

Now back to our list.

From Snow White to Hansel and Gretel,

nearly every kid in the world at some point in their life

has been terrified by the notion of an old witch in the woods.

But the OG of creepy old ladies,

one who builds her house out of the bones of kids,

comes in at number five on our list.

From the windswept steps of Russia...

the baba yaga.

[Camille] The baba yaga has its origin stories in Russian

and in Slavic folklore.

She is known as one of the greatest witches of all time.

[Aaron] Baba yaga, the queen of witches, the cannibal hag.

She is your classical evil witch.

[Dr. Downs] "Baba" basically means old woman or grandmother,

so she's always seen as an old woman.

[Dr. Zarka] Baba yaga seems frail.

She has white hair.

She has a very large nose.

Her teeth may be made of iron.

And she's very, very thin.

[Dr. Downs] She's sometimes described as having

only one bony leg that she hops around on.

[Aidan] Once you get past the sort of silly nature

of baba yaga's appearance,

the actual details become pretty frightening.

[Dr. Zarka] Baba yaga can control life and death and time

and is seemingly all powerful.

It's unusual for a monster to have that many traits

that are so powerful in one being,

so that's one of the reasons a lot of folklorists think

that she likely harkens back to some kind of deity.

[music]

[Camille] She lives in a moving house

and it walks on chicken legs,

which is so strange.

[Dr. Downs] You never know for sure

where her hut is going to be

because it can go to different parts of the forest.

Just because it wasn't in a place yesterday

doesn't mean it won't be there tomorrow.

This would be a terrifying thing to come upon.

The fence around her house is made of the bones

of people that she has killed and eaten,

whether those are children,

whether those are heroes that tried to conquer her and failed.

And there are skulls that are used as fence posts.

In some of those stories, the skulls' eyes

actually light up sort of like lanterns at night.

You could easily become one of those bones that she uses

as yard decorations.

[music]

[Dr. Zarka] Baba yaga does not travel by broom

like a stereotypical witch,

but by mortar and pestle.

[Dr. Downs] She flies through the forest.

She'll make the ground shake.

She'll make the trees shake.

She will create storms.

[thunderclaps]

[Dr. Zarka] Baba yaga stories almost always involve

a human adolescent who is just on the cusp of adulthood.

[music]

[Camille] A lot of children are drawn to her,

but she has this inherently evil side, right?

And unfortunately, children get eaten.

That's very frightening.

She might tear you limb from limb,

and crush you bones, and potentially eat you.

She is associated with cannibalism.

[Todd] When it comes to cannibalism,

the only thing about it is that

the person doing it is the monster.

They know that they're eating their own kind

and they're doing it purposely.

So it has to be-- it has to be just terrifying

to think that there's people out there that do do this.

But there are.

[Erica] You add this witch that lives in the forest

and then tie in cannibalism, and it is a little unnerving.

[screaming]

[Narrator] The baba yaga's penchant for cannibalism

and for using human flesh and bone

as macabre home décor

has links to modern day monsters,

both in the real world and in Hollywood.

Baba yaga can definitely be seen

in a lot of real world stuff.

Take Silence of the Lambs . Buffalo Bill, for example.

Mister, my family will pay cash.

Whatever ransom you're asking for, they'll pay it.

Put the fucking lotion in the basket!

[Melisa] He was known to be somebody

that would have been potentially a baba yaga,

as well as Ed Guinn, who was known to kill people

and take their skin and do absolutely grotesque

and disgusting things to them,

something similar to what a baba yaga is known to do.

Don't you look lovely?

Most think me grotesque!

[Narrator] Other creepy pop culture versions

of the baba yaga can be found in

the Hellboy films and comic books,

and even video games and Japanese anime.

[creaking]

I would say one of my favorite pop culture references

with the baba yaga is Spirited Away,

which is a Miyazaki film.

There's actually a character

that's completely modeled off of the idea of the baba yaga.

Please! I just wanna work!

Don't say thaaaat....

She puts these children, or one specific girl,

through all these tests and trials and tribulations

in order to bring her back to her own family.

I knew it.

There's also a Netflix show called The Witcher

that's based about the baba yaga.

[Dr. Zarka] Baba yaga, in her most horrific element,

is eating children

and consuming souls and causing rainstorms

and making all these calamities.

[Dr. Burdorrf] She's frightening in ways that remind us

of the catastrophes that can happen

if we lose sight of civilization.

If we don't follow certain protocols and certain rules,

then it's just us and the storm and the forest

and the dark of the night and baba yaga.

[Todd] It'd be terrifying to think

that there was a woman out there doing this,

but it could exist. Very easily could exist.

[Dr. Zarka] In a lot of ways, baba yaga might be, I guess,

the morbid role model in that she is so wise.

I mean, you shouldn't mess with women,

and baba yaga is a great example of that.

[music]

[Narrator] As we bid goodbye to our favorite child-eating witch,

the next creepy cryptid in our countdown

might be even more deadly.

You can't look into it's eyes. If you look into his eyes,

you're done for. You're basically a goner.

[screaming]

[music]

[Narrator] Up next on our countdown

is one of the deadliest monsters on the planet,

one that has stoked fear across the world for centuries.

Hailing from ancient Greece and slithering in at number four

is the king of snakes...

...the basilisk.

[Dr. Zarka] The basilisk is a creature

said to be the most poisonous of all snakes.

So poisonous, in fact, that every aspect of its being

causes death.

This includes its hiss, its gaze,

its skin, its venom.

Even its breath is said to be able to kill people miles away.

The basilisk was said to be poisonous

to all living creatures,

animal, human, or vegetation.

They're so dangerous. One look and they can kill you.

[Camille] It's definitely something

you don't wanna be in the same room with.

People even say that birds flying over this monster

would die just because they were in

the near vicinity of this thing.

[Dr. Burdorrf] The basilisk is known as the king of snakes.

And the name actually comes from the Greek basiliscus,

which is "little king".

It's supposed to have a marking on its forehead

that looks like a crown or a crest,

that looks regal and royal.

[Martin] It has very deepy, scary yellow eyes

and rows of sharp, venomous teeth.

[Camille] They're giant.

They're absolutely just super, super long.

And they have very, very thick scales.

And a lot of weapons can't even penetrate

through the scales themselves.

They have millions of teeth, and they're very, very sharp teeth.

And of course, they have huge fangs

that are filled with poisonous venom.

The basilisk, he can probably just grab you whole

and you swallow you down, kill you instantly.

[Camille] It just is very scary.

It's huge, it's massive, and it could be anywhere.

We've seen what snakes can do.

We've seen them kill humans, animals.

We've seen how venomous they can be.

So I think this idea of a giant snake

kind of roaming the premises is very terrifying.

[Melisa] If I had to describe a basilisk,

I would basically say that it's an anaconda

that was possessed by Satan.

That's exactly what you'd get.

[music]

[Narrator] The first documented sightings of the basilisk

occurred roughly 2,000 years ago in ancient Greece and Rome,

around the dawn of Christianity.

[Dr. Zarka] Pretty much any monster in Christianity

that has reptilian or serpent features

is going to be tied to the devil

because of that Garden of Eden connection.

And the basilisk just happened to fit the bill

more so than maybe other monsters

because they were already seen as poisonous and threatening.

There are lots of different artistic representations

from the medieval period that show saints or Christ

fighting and defeating these basilisks.

[Dr. Burdorrf] From the middle ages to today,

the basilisk has been an incredibly popular creature.

You see it multiple times in Shakespeare's plays,

references to the basilisk.

"Whose unavoided eye is murderous,"

is what it says in Richard III.

[Narrator] Adding to the fear factor

surrounding the basilisk

is the fact that over time,

it has come to take on a variety of

ever more monstrous forms.

From a griffin-like basilisk with the head of a raptor

and the body of a lizard...

to ones that almost defy description.

"Basilisk" became a term for

really a broad variety of creatures.

It's a term that evolves.

And as terms evolve, the folklore evolves with them,

and we go from a 12-inch in length,

cockatrice-related creature to giant snake.

[Dr. Burdorrf] We see him in video games.

We see him in books, in comics.

There's always this kind of serpentine antagonist

that comes up over and over again.

[Narrator] While the lore of the basilisk

has evolved over the centuries,

a more traditional take on this creature

managed to slither its way back into pop culture

thanks to one of the best-selling

fantasy novel and movie franchises of all time.

[roaring]

I think when some people picture a basilisk today,

we think of the Harry Potter version,

where it's this absolutely massive,

monstrously large snake with huge fangs.

I think that JK Rowling took the idea of the red-eyed basilisk,

who, yes, was very poisonous and deadly,

and because of that, had some mythology around it,

and blew it up, literally.

[Dr. Downs] Eventually, at the end of the Chamber of Secrets,

Harry fights the basilisk in its lair underneath Hogwarts

and is able to defeat it

of course with the Sword of Gryffindor

[wails]

It's still popping up in today's day and age.

The basilisk is very cool in that aspect.

[Dr. Downs] There are a couple of ways to defeat a basilisk,

and one of the most common ones is with a weasel.

It's said that if you send a weasel into a basilisk's burrow,

it will flee.

Even just the smell of a weasel

is enough to make a basilisk flee.

They're terrified of weasels,

which may come from stories of other snakes, such as cobras,

that are killed by animals like weasels and mongooses.

[Erica] If you do have a mirror handy,

you can just pop it up.

And then if it catches its own gaze, you're good, it's dead.

[Dr Burdorff] Another vulnerability that it has

is the crowing of a rooster.

So if it hears the crowing of a rooster, it will flee.

[Erica] The idea of a basilisk is absolutely terrifying

because this giant creature where

if you do happen to catch its eye gaze, you're done for--

you know, that, to me, is pretty terrifying in itself.

[Melisa] I believe that a basilisk

is something that could still potentially be out there

in the world today.

Many different creatures have stood the test of time.

And every single day, it seems like scientists

are finding new animals

that they previously thought were extinct.

So it's only a matter of time.

[Todd] To think that something like

the basilisk exists is terrifying.

They're slimy. They're squirmy.

They're poisonous.

They're evil looking.

And they can kill you with a bite

or constrict you until you stop breathing

and swallow you whole.

It's just scary to think a snake in general,

let alone something like the basilisk, is out there.

[music]

[Narrator] Next up...

perhaps the most elusive and most humanlike

monster on our list.

Many of the times, they have the ability to shapeshift.

And that's how they lure men in.

[music]

[Narrator] Number three on our list,

one lady you definitely do not want to mess with.

From the sweltering jungles of Southeast Asia,

the little-known, but wildly terrifying churel.

[Camille] The churel herself is probably

a lesser-known monster

in the world of cryptozoology or monster lore.

[Dr Burdorff] The churel is interesting because

as an exclusively female monster,

she is, in some cultures, actually starting to be regarded

as kind of a feminist symbol for taking vengeance

or exacting justice for women

who are mistreated by their families.

It can also happen if a woman dies while menstruating.

It can happen if a woman has some kind of unnatural death,

often caused by abuse by her husband or her in-laws.

[Dr Burdorrff] After such a woman is buried,

she comes back as a creature who is grotesque.

[music]

[Aaron] She is described to be a shapeshifter.

She can disguise herself as this very, very beautiful,

attractive, irresistible woman.

But it's a trap because when she does get her victims,

she then turns into this absolutely terrifying thing.

[Dr. Downs] The churel's true appearance is hideous,

so she often is an older lady.

Sometimes with the face of a pig.

Sometimes with a black tongue.

Sometimes with no mouth at all.

She'll be described as having saggy breasts

and kind of decrepit physical characteristics.

There's always one way to tell if it's a churel or not,

and that's her feet are backwards.

[Dr. Downs] This is both sort of a mark of how twisted they are

and how inhuman they are,

but it is also something that helps them,

catch their prey,

because people will see the footsteps of the churel

and think, oh, they're going this way.

And in fact, when they think

they're running away from the churel,

they're actually running directly towards her.

[Erica] The churel hangs out around very low-populated areas,

so, like, graveyards.

Some say that she hangs around bathrooms.

And then areas where there aren't a lot of people.

[music]

[Narrator] As for her victims,

the churel has a very specific type.

[Aaron] She goes after the males first,

to where there are no males in the family,

and the family name cannot be passed down.

And when she's done all that,

then she just goes down and kills anybody she sees.

[music]

[Erica] She's kind of a malevolent spirit

that basically goes and attacks men.

And she sucks their life force out of them,

leaving them completely incapacitated,

which is pretty terrifying, when you think about it.

[Dr. Burdorrf] Sometimes the victim will die.

Sometimes what had been a young, handsome man

will return to his home

a wrinkled, weakened old man

over the space of a night.

[Dr. Downs] The churel is definitely an embodiment

of female frustration.

They are sort of a way of fighting patriarchy

and a way of getting back at men in ways

that women in their day-to-day lives may not be able to do,

but through supernatural powers

have kind of a way of getting back at them.

[Camille] She haunts in places where females need her the most,

where females that are in need that have had

evil acts done to them

or they've died at the hands of toxic masculinity,

she'll haunt there and she'll figure out a way

to help these people and seek revenge.

[music]

[Dr. Burdorrf] The churel has appeared for some time

in novels written by European authors,

including probably most famously Rudyard Kipling,

who wrote quite a bit about south Asia

and wrote a lot about south Asian traditions.

And he wrote about churel.

But in India, for example,

they have been used in a lot of Bollywood movies.

And they're starting to kind of find their way

into Western cinema.

[Erika] There was a movie on Netflix about it called Bulbbul.

And basically, it just kind of talks about

how the churel is this evil spirit

and basically the encounters with her.

So hopefully we'll be seeing

more of the churel in the future.

[screaming]

[Narrator] Lest you think churel is pure fable,

think again.

[Dr. Downs] You can find a lot of videos, if you look online.

If you go to YouTube, you can find a lot of clips

purporting to show churel.

Often these are kind of female-ish figures

lurking in the dark,

but there'll be a close-up to show

that her feet are on backward,

proving that this is really a churel.

[Man shouting]

[Man] Whoo!

Whoo!

You think this person is quote unquote "normal" and beautiful,

and perhaps even this individual is attracted to this person.

And then out of nowhere, it pulls off the guise,

and it's like, nope, I'm gonna eat you.

[music]

[Dr. Downs] Churels are certainly terrifying

if you're a man,

particularly if you're a man who has been bad to women.

I think that if you're a woman,

you don't have a whole lot to fear about a churel.

[Dr. Burdorrf] The churel is very frightening because

patriarchal structures and the victimization of women

are so ubiquitous globally

that any figure who is created by that,

but also arises regularly to punish, to avenge it,

is something that potentially could be anywhere.

[Dr. Downs] There really isn't much of a way to avoid a churel.

The best way to avoid one is to prevent one

from being created in the first place.

So the best defense is to make sure

that you are taking care of the women in your life

and to make sure that you are burying them

with the proper respect.

[Narrator] Speaking of treating your dead with proper respect,

the next monster on our list has ties to an ancient civilization,

terrorizing anyone who dares to disturb

the sacred burial grounds they patrol.

[Narrator] Before we head to the Middle East

and an encounter with

the second-scariest monster on our list,

we're taking a few more detours

to check out the monsters that, while terrifying,

didn't quite make the cut.

First stop, West Africa, home to the ninki nanka.

Believed to measure over 100 feet in length,

the ninki nanka is sort of a distance cousin to the basilisk.

A scaly creature that looks like a cross

between a serpent and a dragon,

it is rumored to live in the swamps of West Africa,

where it dwarfs its fellow reptiles

like the African crocodile.

The ninki nanka is said to feed on children

who swim in the marshy waters against their parents' wishes.

[music]

[Narrator] Another water-dwelling quasi cousin

of the basilisk lurks in the swamps and rivers of Australia,

the bunyip.

With origins in Aboriginal folklore,

the bunyip is a slimy, long-necked amphibian

with a howl so piercing, it can cause paralysis or death.

The monster is also known to leave its watery home at night,

searching for women and children to devour.

But perhaps the most terrifying

of all the slithery, slimy monsters

that just missed the top ten

is the most feared resident of the Gobi Desert,

one whose existence was first recorded

by travelers to the region in the 1920s.

The Mongolian death worm.

A sand-burrowing creature said to be

between 10 and 50 feet long,

the death worm can kill you in a trio of ways.

Through a deadly venom that it can spray at targets

hundreds of feet away.

Through skin so toxic that even the slightest touch

can kill you instantly.

Or through electric shock waves

that are said to deliver a jolt deadly enough

to kill creatures that are 10, 20, or even 30 times its size.

Now back to our epic countdown,

where we head to Egypt and the Great Pyramids of Giza.

One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

And the home of the second-scariest monster

on our list...the mummy.

[Lamont] So, ancient Egypt was fascinated,

fixated with death and the afterlife.

They believed that mummification preserved their shell,

their vessel for the afterlife when they go to the other side.

They're not to be disturbed.

When they're disturbed, what happens is

the people bring on plagues and curses

to those who disturbed their sleeping space.

[Dr. Downs] Egyptian mummies were created out of a belief

that you needed to have your body with you

to get to the world of the dead.

You needed to take your body with you.

Your body needed to be preserved.

And so especially with nobles, kings, queens,

but also wealthy people, would be preserved in this way.

The organs would be put in separate jars

and buried with the person

because it was believed that they would need that

when they got to the underworld.

[Dr. Zarka] The ancient Egyptian belief was that

whatever you were buried with,

you would also have access to in the afterlife.

So of course for pharaohs, it was chariots.

It was all the gold and riches that they had in life.

[Lesia] The tomb was actually sealed,

and there would be curses that would be engraved on the tombs,

warning people, don't open, or you will be cursed.

[Narrator] It's these curses that gave rise

to the monster we know today.

[Camille] The idea is if you uncover the tomb,

if you take away any of the valuable organs

or anything of that nature, that a curse will befall you.

[Narrator] And in 1922, a real-life,

well-documented incident occurred inside the pyramids

that helped cement the mummy's status

as one of the scariest monsters in the world.

Within months, multiple members of the team

present at the opening of the tomb were dead.

And over the next several years,

others there also died under dubious circumstances.

I don't think the scary part of the mummy happened

until they found King Tut's tomb,

and all those people died after they opened it.

So that's kind of where the curse of the mummy came from.

[Alex] There was a group of archeologists.

They all died from the same thing.

Like, they all had strokes

or they all had heart attacks.

They all had brain aneurysms.

[Narrator] And with that, the legend of the mummy

made its way around the globe

and into American pop culture.

The stereotypical Egyptian mummy that we see today

with the white bandages, the shambling gait--

those things didn't really appear in popular culture

until Universal Studios' The Mummy.

[Todd] The correlation of the mummy

goes back to the 1920s,

when King Tut's tomb was discovered.

And then ten years later, the movie The Mummy

with Boris Karloff was made.

[music]

[Dr. Zarka] In that movie, we see

a group of scientists and archeologists

who uncover the tomb of this Egyptian king.

And of course, in the pursuit of so-called science,

they end up reanimating this mummy.

[Erica] People started flocking in the 1930s

to see this new mummy movie.

And then, you know, the crazy thing is,

is that it's almost 70, 80 years later,

and then another mummy movie comes out

and gets people right back in it again.

-[growls] -[screams]

[Narrator] That second blockbuster mummy movie,

starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz,

not only brought the legend of the mummy roaring back to life,

it also brought to light another name long revered

and feared in Egyptian mummy lore--Imhotep.

[Camille] Ironically enough, Imhotep was a real person.

However, a very well-known architect

that had a lot of wonderful hands

in a lot of pyramid creation.

[Narrator] Though he did not design

the Great Pyramid of Giza,

Imhotep's work on the Step Pyramid

in the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis

would inspire the architects later working in Giza.

Architects who, riffing on Imhotep's original design,

added another terrifying feature to the Great Pyramid--

booby traps.

The ghosts of these architects alongside the mummies

are said to patrol the pharaohs' death chambers,

ready to ward off intruders,

be it by booby trap or through sheer terror.

As for Imhotep, legend says when a similar team of archeologists

set out to find his mummified remains,

they met the same fate as the researchers at Giza.

The legend goes that these British archeologists

unearthed his tomb, found the spell that he had created,

this resurrection spell, read it,

because they didn't know what it was,

and they accidentally resurrected

this very angry, very powerful person.

[roaring]

[Melisa] I believe that the pyramids still have spirits

of the undead there

simply because with all of these prominent figures,

like different pharaohs and different

high-ranking members in society during that timeframe.

[Alex] The tombs themselves

and the open spaces were underground.

So you had pathways.

You had ancient booby traps.

All for the purposes of protecting these large tombs.

[Narrator] It is believed that along with

this arsenal of booby traps,

the army of undead mummies can also summon

a sea of snakes to help protect the pharaohs' tombs.

The ancient Egyptians were known to revere snakes

in many different ways.

So of course it kind of seems like it's pretty likely

that if anybody were to enter any of the pyramids,

that they would be shrouded in a sea of snakes.

These mummies could possibly have the potential

to even, after death, still command the snakes

that might still guard their bodies today.

Now, when you add all of that together

and you think about the mummy Imhotep,

he was out for blood.

You disturbed his rest, and he's out to get you.

He has an end goal, and that end goal is to kill

anybody who was disturbing him.

So that would be the most terrifying thing

in regards to going to the pyramids.

Something makes them extra dangerous

that they can't be stopped.

[Narrator] Not sure if the curse of the mummies exist?

You might want to check out these clips

taken at the pyramids in Giza.

[Man] When I was struggling to get through

the Egyptian pyramids,

I couldn't help but think I was being followed.

Unlike some monsters where there's debate

about whether they even exist, we know that mummies exist.

You can go to Egypt and see mummies.

You can go to museums in many parts of the world

and see mummies, so we know that they have physical space.

What is the fascination with the mummy?

Is it because he's kind of like a zombie,

and people believe that zombies can be real?

The fact that he was human once, a lifeform living,

and now is a dead form?

It's fascinating to think that this could be possible.

[music]

[Narrator] Up next, the moment we've been waiting for,

the number one scariest monster in the world.

[Narrator] Our countdown has taken us around the globe

and brought us face to terrifying face

with nine of the scariest monsters on Earth.

It's now time to reveal number one on our list,

an undead terror whose sinister real life origins

and potential to spread like a pandemic across the planet

strikes fear in the hearts of everyone.

[music]

[Narrator] Rising from the grave

on the Caribbean island of Haiti,

the zombie.

[Dr. Zarka] I'm one of those people,

I can't get enough of zombies.

I think that because just like

any other reanimated corpse monster,

there's something so attractive about reanimated monsters

because they were us.

So we are all, it seems like, one breath away

from becoming a zombie.

Zombies are very much figures of legends

and stories that have been around for quite a while.

Zombies are actually quite a popular monster

in mainstream media,

in books and movies and TV shows.

You see them all over the place, especially today.

[Lamont] We see a good example

of what a zombie actually is

in The Walking Dead.

Where the hell is our backup?

We need every available trooper at the east gate.

Something about that period in the late aughts/early 2010s,

Zombies really came to the foreront.

You got a purty mouth!

Zombieland , a great movie, with Woody Harrelson.

You also have Will Smith and his dog in the movie I Am Legend,

where they have those fast zombie-like creatures

who can't come out in the daylight.

[Erica] You've got The Last of Us,

which is not only a video game, but now a TV series.

So this idea of zombies is something that's definitely

around in popular culture,

and I don't think that it's going anywhere.

[music]

As with many monsters, we see a wide variety of ways

that they're depicted.

So I think the most common is this kind of malicious,

evil, shambling monstrous figure

that wants to attack and eat humans.

But a lot of people actually don't know

that the zombie actually originated in Haiti.

You can't talk about Haitian zombies

without talking about slavery and racism.

It started back when the French brought African slaves

over to Haiti.

[Erica] These people in Haiti were being enslaved.

And they were basically forced

to work in these horrific conditions.

And so their religion of Vodou and Voodoo

was kind of like their way to escape

this horrific world around them.

So you've got this terrible environment,

and then that kind of breeded the idea of the Haitian zombie.

The Haitian zombie is terrifying

not only because it's actually something that exists,

but because of the conditions, the horrific conditions,

that kind of existed

that kind of culminated these Haitian zombie stories.

[Dr. Zarka] Part of Vodou's belief system is that in death,

one achieves freedom and returns to the ancestral land

so they can be with their ancestors

and spirits and deities.

So becoming a zombie, having one's soul captured

and then used to control you

was horrific in so many ways.

[Narrator] But over time, the mythic notion of zombies

morphed into an actual real world ritual.

[Dr. Downs] The person becomes a zombie

through specific rituals performed

by a Haitian Vodou sorcerer known as a bokor.

In the Vodou tradition,

a person is often made into a zombie

because of some kind of debt that was owed.

This might be their debt that they owed to the bokor,

and it's therefore paid off by them becoming a zombie.

[Lamont] What happens is, this conjurer,

they conjure up a potion.

The victim either drinks it

or they inject the victim.

The victim dies. They're buried.

And then the conjurer goes, digs them up,

and they're at this person's mercy.

They were just kind of carcasses of their former selves,

yet they would do everything that the bokur said

that they had to do,

which is very haunting and very scary.

[Lamont] The concept of these original zombies,

they were not physically decaying

as we know as American zombies,

where skin is falling off, hair is falling off.

They're full embodiment.

So when they're released from this spell,

they're pretty much back to normal.

[Dr. Downs] The idea that your mind and your will

could be taken control of

by someone who wishes you harm

or who wishes to just simply take you from your loved ones

and use you for manual labor, that is extremely terrifying.

They took away from them even the hope of freedom in death.

[Narrator] It might be difficult to believe

that zombies can truly exist.

But in the 20th century, one man proved it was possible.

Clairvius Narcisse is known to be the original walking zombie.

[Brian K] Clairvius was a 40-year-old man in 1962,

in Haiti.

He wasn't feeling well.

He had fever, fatigue.

He was coughing up blood.

He goes to the hospital and admits himself.

And he's pronounced dead by two American doctors

just hours later.

They put his body in cold storage.

And within a day or so, they bury him,

just like they would anybody else.

[Erica] After he was pronounced dead,

that's where things get a little crazy

because apparently, the bokur in the region

came and dug up his body and administered this potion

that makes him a zombie in order to take Clairvius' body

and basically make him a zombie on his own plantation.

[music]

Then in 1980, a man claiming to be Clairvius Narcisse

shows up at a marketplace, walked up to his sister,

and said, "I'm Clairvius Narcisse."

And he's been dead for 20-something years.

[Brian K] Many people in the town recognized him.

He even used his childhood nickname

that nobody else would know but him.

[Todd] He believes that a bokor priest held him hostage

and drugged him with pufferfish venom

to keep him in a zombified state.

According to Clairvius, he was also not the only one

on that plantation,

and that there are many more like him out there,

which makes it even more believable, really.

He also said the reason he got away

was because the owner had died,

was unable to administer the poison to them any longer,

and they came out of their zombified state.

Anyone who's skeptical of the story

can actually go on YouTube and see videos of Clairvius Narcisse

sitting on his tombstone.

There's other documentation out there

to prove that he was actually alive and a walking zombie.

[Narrator] The type of zombie that Clairvius Narcisse

claims to have been...

is much different than the zombies we have seen recently

in pop culture.

If you look at all of these versions of

modern stories about zombies,

it's never some sort of magical curse on a group of people.

It's usually a bioweapon,

a virus, a parasite, fungus.

[Dr. Zarka] As human culture develops

and our technologies develop, the zombie looks different

because we as people look different,

and because our fears and our values look different.

[Erica] There are some zombie depictions

that display zombies as kind of being like

lifeless and slow-walking and kind of, like, emotionless.

But on the flip side, you've got rage virus zombies

that are, like, more irrational.

They run, they chase, they grab things, they're terrifying.

[Narrator] Perhaps no modern film

captured the fear associated with rage virus zombies

like Danny Boyle's 2002 horror masterpiece,

28 Days Later.

[roars]

[Aaron] Nowadays, we think of the zombie

as this virus or fungus or disease

that turns people into these mindless flesh-eating things.

They're not even human anymore.

And the scary thing about them is that they don't stop.

They will not stop.

They're going to keep going until the find you and kill you.

I think zombies are extremely scary because of...

their propensity to be real.

We joke about the zombie apocalypse,

but it could actually happen.

[Aaron] One zombie is not scary.

We can take one zombie.

A whole horde zombies,

thousands of them, maybe even millions of them coming for you?

You may have a lot of bullets,

but bullets have to run out sooner or later.

[Dr. Zarka] It's not a ghost.

It's not nebulous.

It's tangible. It's a corporeal body.

And those are things we all have

that we're walking around with.

So there's an additional layer of fear.

If there's one thing that human beings value above all else,

especially in the Western world culturally, it is free will.

Not only losing the ability to speak your mind,

but the ability to even think for yourself

is probably one of the scariest things out there.

[music]

[Narrator] Whether born from curses,

from nature, through legend, or just pure evil,

there are more than enough monsters out there to make us

all sleep with one eye open.

There's definitely a lot more going on

than just A, B, and C, like we're taught in school.

People are seeing creatures, they're seeing these beings.

They're not making this up.

Talked to a lot of witnesses, and their voice gets shaky,

their hair stands up, they get goosebumps.

So you know they're telling you the truth.

[Brian K] Are monsters real?

I think monsters are real to everybody

in some shape, form, or fashion.

For some people, it's a serial killer.

For some people, it's a vampire or a werewolf.

[Todd] I tend to believe that in this world,

you have good and you have evil.

You can't have one without the other.

And these monsters represent the evil side of things,

tell us what is good and what is not.

They're here to remind us of that,

the balance of good and evil.

[theme music]

♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh-ooh

[bell dings]