All language subtitles for Historys.Greatest.Mysteries.S07E05.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

[intense music]

- Tonight, the search for one
of the most terrifying creatures

said to prowl the open seas.

- Stories of the Kraken
have been around

for centuries.

- It was the size of an island

and its sole purpose was
to feast on human flesh.

- There are countless
alleged encounters

between sailors and the Kraken,

but descriptions of this
creature vary wildly.

- There were tentacles
coming out of the water,

wrapping around people,

pulling them back
into the ocean.

- All they saw was
rapidly moving water,

a vortex that was
getting bigger,

and that adds to the mystery.

- Now, we explore
the top theories

surrounding this
fearsome creature.

- He says, "I have found proof
that the Kraken is a real beast

and did exist about
200 million years ago."

- Every time we go
exploring in the deep sea,

we find new creatures,
and some of them are big.

- With that much
isolation and open ocean,

you can imagine that

sailors would start to kind of
lose their grip on reality.

- Could the legendary
Kraken possibly be real?

[epic music]

- [Laurence] As long as people
have sailed the open seas,

[thunder crashes]

they've told tales of encounters

with deadly, man-eating
sea creatures.

- Both Jewish and Christian
texts reference the leviathan,

which is a giant sea creature
that was incredibly dangerous

and eventually killed by God

so that they would
not reproduce.

- In the epic poem
"The Odyssey,"

Homer describes a deep-sea
beast with six heads

and triple rows of teeth
that devours passing sailors,

including half of
Odysseus's men.

- All cultures
that have grown up

along the oceans or the seas

have tales of
massive sea animals.

That's why from the 10th
century to the 17th century,

maps had all of these
sea monsters drawn

and written around the sides.

If you stay within this, you're
going to probably be okay,

but if you go out, you
could run into something

that could literally
swallow your boat whole

and drag you to the
bottom of the ocean.

- [Laurence] But
over the centuries,

arguably the most feared
sea monster of all

becomes known as the Kraken.

In 1180, writings
from a Norwegian ruler

placed the beast in Scandinavia.

- King Sverre specifically
warned people

against this monster
that was menacing ships

between Norway and Iceland,

and he tells us it was
the size of an island,

and its sole purpose was
to feast on human flesh.

- Later on in the 1500s,

an archbishop named Olaus Magnus

describes the Kraken
as having long horns

and built thick like a
tree with fiery red eyes.

And this is based on accounts

that he's heard from sailors

whose ships have
been attacked at sea.

This is an animal that
will sink your ship.

- After the invention
of the printing press ,

this description gets
distributed far and wide

and is taken aboard ships

that are bound for destinations

like China or even
the West Indies.

- [Ryan] Naturalist
Pierre Denys' illustration

of the Kraken is arguably
the best one of all time

because you have
a British warship

being attacked by
this massive beast

with all of these tentacles

and it appears to be winning,

so you have to go
out there knowing

that this thing could,
at any point, take you

to the bottom of the ocean.

- [Laurence] These
stories aren't just

centuries-old fables.

Such alleged attacks also
occur in modern times,

including one harrowing
encounter during World War II.

- [Kavitha] In 1941,
the Germans attacked

a British steam liner,
the SS Britannia,

just about 750 miles off
the coast of Sierra Leone.

Hundreds of passengers
are forced to abandon ship

in just a handful of lifeboats,
and they're cast adrift

for several weeks,
if not months.

- [Ryan] So you have people
hanging over the side

of these lifeboas,
waiting to be rescued.

Now during this journey,

one of the men on the boat
says they were attacked.

There were tentacles
coming out of the water,

wrapping around
people, injuring them,

or pulling them
back into the ocean.

He says, "I was
attacked as well,"

and he actually watched an
Indian servant be pulled down

with these thick
tentacles and devoured.

- This sounds like a tall tale,

but 15 years later,

the eyewitness shows the
circular scars on his leg

to a marine naturalist,

who confirms that it was
caused by the suckers

of an animal more than 20 feet
long, just like the Kraken.

- [Laurence] More
than a thousand years

after it first appears
in written records,

the Kraken remains a mystery.

What could this terrifying
monster really be?

- The thing that the
Kraken is most known for

is its massive tentacles.

And there are animals
in the sea today

that have tentacles, and
they're called cephalopods.

- [Lynne] Typical kinds of
cephalopods in the ocean

are just not nearly on
the scale of the Kraken,

and in fact, there's really
only one potential sea creature

that would even come
close to that size.

[tense music]

In the 1850s, a Danish zoologist

by the name of
Japetus Steenstrup

is gathering information
about these different types

of documented giant creatures,

one of which is the sea monk,
which is this large creature

purportedly resembling
a monk or a friar,

and these red, flowing robes

that sort of hang in
sheets off of his body.

- And as he continued to
look at these accounts,

he came up with a scientific
description of this monster,

which he called Architeuthis
Dux, the giant squid.

This is the first time

where we have a scientist
formalizing a description

based on these historical
accounts of the Kraken.

- [Laurence] Later in the 1800s,

evidence supporting his
theory begins to emerge.

- [Peter] In 1875 in St.
John's Newfoundland,

there is an attack of a
small boat by a giant squid.

And what's really stunning

isn't just the
description of the attack,

but that the sailors, in an
effort to save themselves,

grabbed an ax and
hacked off a limb.

- The creature slides off
into the water and disappears,

but now they have evidence.

One of the tentacles that
they have in their boat

is 19 feet long.

- If you were a sailor

and you didn't know
the proportions,

you could easily imagine that
this was only a tiny fragment

of an even more massive beast.

- Around the time of
this encounter in 1875,

full giant squid carcasses

begin washing up off the
shores of Newfoundland.

This is the first time that
zoologists have an opportunity

to study an intact giant squid.

It features a body which
is also called a mantle,

eight shorter arms, two
very long feeding tentacles,

and what might be the most
fearsome part of this creature,

its mouth or beak.

- By the early 1900s,
the scientific community

finally has to admit that
Steenstrup was right,

that there is a giant sea beast
at the bottom of the ocean

that could be the Kraken that
everybody's talking about.

- [Laurence] Unfortunately,
live giant squid

prove to be elusive creatures.

Decade after decade goes
by without any sightings.

- It's not until 2004
that a living giant squid

is spotted in its
natural habitat,

and this happens about 600
miles off the coast of Tokyo.

A marine team has been tracking

what they believe
to be a giant squid

using a baited line to try
to lure it to the surface,

and on their hundredth dive,

they finally capture
it on camera.

- [Ashley] And now,
because it's 2004,

we're not talking
about the world

of ancient mariners in Denmark

writing letters to each other.

This became a
worldwide sensation.

- The world has the first
image of a living giant squid.

And watching the animal
in its natural environment

answers at least some questions
about the Kraken legend.

First of all, the
creature's deep-sea habitat

helps explain why
encounters with it

have been extremely rare

and the power of its
large black beak,

now seen in action
by scientists,

jives with descriptions of
the flesh-eating monster.

- [Ashley] That beak, which
of course has evolved

for catching prey
in the deep sea,

is strong enough to
sever a steel cable.

- [Laurence] The
question remains

whether giant squid
grow large enough

to take down ships
or devour humans,

as in the Kraken legends.

- [Peter] The squid that was
seen off the coast of Japan

was a juvenile,

and while it gave us a sense

of what these squid looked
like when they're swimming

and how they
position themselves,

there's still a lot that we
do not know about the adults.

- If the complete
length of a giant squid

is something like 50, 60 feet,

compared to even the
largest things in the ocean,

in terms of length and
almost in terms of weight,

these are truly large animals.

- [Laurence] But is it possible

for giant squid to
grow much larger,

to mammoth sizes
we've yet to document?

Some marine biologists say yes.

- There has been this
idea of deep sea gigantism

that sometimes at deep
depths in the ocean,

things are able to
achieve a larger size

than they do at
more shallow depths.

- Scientists have studied
this phenomenon for decades

and we know that as
we look at creatures

that live in the
deep dark ocean,

some of them reach
extraordinary sizes

because it helps them
get around the deep sea

and find what little
food there is.

- One reason that we postulate

that the giant squid don't
come to the surface very often

is because the amount
of energy it would take

to rise up from those
deep, cold depths

would be too much
of a caloric intake.

- These creatures are
certainly not going

to be comfortable living
at a higher level,

so it makes sense

that sightings would
be incredibly rare.

- [Peter] We know that
there are giant squid

that are close to 60 feet,

but could they
actually get to be

but could they
actually get to be

100 feet, 120 feet?

We don't yet have the answers,

but I think the more we look,
the more likely we're going

to encounter these giant
creatures lurking in the deep.

- For centuries, sailors
in and around Scandinavia

talk about deadly
encounters with a Kraken,

a sea creature some experts
believe matches the giant squid.

But is that the
only possibility?

- Some stories of the Kraken
actually have features

that don't match well with
the features of cephalopods.

Some have enormous size but
are relatively flat in shape,

and it leads us to
ask the question,

what other things might have
been referred to as the Kraken?

- In 1765, one sailor
describes seeing a Kraken

as an enormous fish, but
with tiny eyes and fins,

so we're not always talking

about something that
can be explained

by the existence
of the giant squid.

And some scholars have actually
suggested that it might instead

share more characteristics

with a different type
of marine animal.

[tense music]

- Whales are enormous

and it's hard to
fathom how big they are

until you're alongside them.

When those whales feed,
it's loud and boisterous

and it is a sight to behold.

And the cool waters
of Scandinavia

are home to many whales

because that's
where their food is.

- These whales existing
in that environment

tend to be a little bit larger.

I mean, you have humpback
whales at almost 60 feet.

You have sperm whales,
almost 70 feet.

You can see how
these sea animals

could inspire the
Kraken mythology.

- Whales are the largest
creatures that have ever lived.

Imagine that you're out at sea

and something strange
rolls across the surface

and all you see is a
dinner-plate-sized eyeball.

That looks like a
sea monster to you.

- So there's a real
instinctive fear

simply encountering
that size of creature,

who, for the most part, is
really not interested in us.

But there was one instance off
the coast of Ecuador in 1820

when the whaling ship, the
Essex, was attacked by a whale

that it had been
attempting to harpoon,

and the whale rammed
into

the side of the ship
and split it into two.

- The story of the Essex
was widely reported

after the few
survivors came to shore

and was a major
influence, we believe,

in Herman Melville's
writing of "Moby-Dick."

- After the destruction
of the Essex,

that kind of helped stir the
lure of giant sea creatures

that are powerful enough

and mean enough to take
out an entire ship.

- [Laurence] In 2024, a
much smaller fishing boat

off the coast of New Hampshire

is slammed by a
breaching sperm whale.

- The sperm whale body
checked a small boat.

The whale didn't pursue the boat

or try to damage it any further.

I think it probably was just
as confused as the sailors.

- Nobody dies in this
case, thankfully.

The ship is flipped, the
people take a dive off of it

and are rescued by
two other fishermen.

- [Laurence] There is one
whale species so enormous

that any encounter could
easily destroy a fishing boat

and kill everyone on board.

- Blue whales are
unbelievably huge organisms.

They can grow to
over 100 feet long

and weigh more than 200 tons.

To put that in perspective,

the largest dinosaurs ever
weighed about 65 tons.

- If you had not
yet seen a whale,

or even if you had seen a whale
and not seen a blue whale,

the scale difference there

is enough to really make you
question what you had seen.

- Even though blue
whales feed on krill,

which, tiny little
marine animals,

the odds of them
swallowing a human

or going after humans
is almost zero.

But somebody could
have just happened

to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time

and, boom, swallowed completely.

- [Laurence] It's
hard to imagine

this happening in real life,

until a marine biologist claims
he was swallowed by a whale

and has the pictures
to prove it.

- [Ashley] In 2019, Rainer
Schimpf was taking photos

on the coast of South Africa

when he was swallowed
by a massive whale.

He spent about 30 seconds
in the mouth of this whale

before being spit back out, but
he made it through unharmed.

- No one would've
ever believed him.

It would've been
just a big fish tale

if it wasn't for his wife,

who was standing nearby

and snapping photos
of the whole incident.

- If that story weren't enough,

we have further accounts.

In 2025, off the coast of Chile,

a man kayaking is
caught on camera

in the moment that a whale
rises up from beneath him

and scoops him up entirely.

- He was quickly spat back out

because whales do
not eat people.

But if you're in the wrong spot,

even if you're in something
as large as a kayak,

you might get
swallowed by a whale.

- Even if these
encounters with whales

that led to them being
engulfed are harmless,

witnessing or experiencing
something like that

could easily contribute

to the myth of the
man-eating Kraken.

- [Laurence] Is it
possible a whale

might be mistaken for a Kraken,

not just at sea, but
on dry land as well?

- Unless you understand anatomy,

if you encounter a
decomposing animal,

particularly a sea
creature on the beach

that's getting reworked
by the elements,

it might be very hard to
identify what that creature is.

- In 2017, a strange,
misshapen carcass

washes up off the shores of
the Indonesian island, Seram.

Photos of it

immediately go viral worldwide.

It's 50-feet long, bloated,

and unlike anything that's
ever been seen before,

- People are talking
about weird fur on it

and that there's this
red liquid nearby

and they're just baffled.

So it's easy to understand
how they could have thought,

"This is the Kraken."

- Many cases of
unexplained animals

or unexplained carcasses

have very poor
quality documentation,

but eventual testing of
this revealed from DNA

that it actually was
part of a baleen whale.

What was initially
thought to be fur

was actually the structures
within the whale's skin

as it falls apart.

The red fluid was eventually
identified as whale blood.

- [Laurence] For centuries,
people have been searching

for evidence of the giant sea
monster known as the Kraken.

Marine biologists
have compared it

to whales and giant squid,

but neither seems to
be a perfect match.

- What if there is
something else out there,

an unknown sea animal that

we just haven't been
able to capture yet?

- Scientists pretty
much dismiss this idea

that it could be its
entirely unique species

until a group of
fishermen in the 1970s

haul in something
truly unexpected.

- In 1977, a Japanese
fishing trawler

was able to pull in
this massive carcass.

This thing was 30 feet
long and 4,000 pounds.

- This is truly something
they have never seen before

and cannot account for.

It appears to have an
incredibly long backbone.

It has these four sort
of strange fins on it,

but because it
smells so atrocious,

they all decide to toss
it back in the ocean.

- Luckily, somebody snapped
a couple of photos of it

and actually took a sample,

and they sent that sample
away to get it tested.

Now what's interesting is,

normally a sample comes back

and you're like,
"Oh, blue whale."

This came back inconclusive .

- Based on photos,
based on the description

that the fishermen
were able to give,

the official interpretation
that the government makes

is that this was likely a
decomposing basking shark,

so it's one of the largest
creatures there is.

They grow up to
about 30 feet long.

- [Laurence] But another
Japanese scientist

has a much more
controversial theory.

- Professor Tokio Shikama of
Yokohama National University

believes that the carcass

is actually the
remains of a dinosaur,

specifically the plesiosaur,

which was one of the deadliest
beasts to ever roam the seas.

Some descriptions of the Kraken

do fit with certain
aspects of the plesiosaur.

So if the dinosaur had managed
to survive to modern times,

as Shikama maintains,

that would mean that
the origin of the Kraken

actually goes back
millions of years.

[tense music]

- Plesiosaurs are
large, aquatic reptiles

that lived during the
time of the dinosaurs.

They lived in the
Cretaceous Period.

- These creatures are the
T. rex's of the ocean,

big giant animals with
extraordinary teeth

that were voracious hunters.

And they've been
extinct for some time.

But this professor said,

"Well, this could
well be a plesiosaur

that we just have
never caught before."

- [Laurence] If this
creature is a survivor

from the age of dinosaurs,
then it rewrites everything

we thought we knew
about their demise.

- Most scientists agree that

there was a mass
extinction event

about 66 million years ago

when this asteroid,
six to nine miles wide,

slams into the Yucatan
Peninsula with such power

that it drives itself
14 miles into the Earth.

- When you have an
asteroid that is this size,

you have boiling oceans,

you have pure darkness
that takes place,

and also displacement
of a lot of water,

so it wiped out 75% of
the Earth's species.

And for the animals
that dwell in the water,

this was the apocalypse.

- [Laurence] Yet some
theorists counter

that an asteroid
strike in the Yucatan,

no matter how destructive,

wouldn't wipe out all the
dinosaurs around the world.

Some, they contend, could
survive the cataclysm.

- The Loch Ness Monster is
arguably the most famous

possible plesiosaur
in the world,

and Loch Ness is
connected to the ocean,

but so far away that
you could theorize

that if they were inland
when this happened,

they would've been saved
from this catastrophe.

- [Kavitha] It's
interesting to note

that Loch Ness does
connect to the open ocean,

the North Sea, which then
connects to the sea of Norway,

and all of these waters
surround Scandinavia.

- [Ryan] The Loch Ness
Monster has gathered

decades of attention, but
until they find a body,

there is no way to prove

that the Loch Ness
Monster or a plesiosaur

is what is actually the Kraken.

- [Laurence] There are
other formidable predators

thought to be long extinct

that share similarities
with the Kraken.

One is a giant fish

that cruised the seas
for a million years.

- There are some
Kraken descriptions

that talk about a long, sleek
fish with massive teeth,

and this has led many
to think that maybe,

that's evidence that
megalodon still lives.

[tense music]

- [Ryan] We have
great white sharks

which can grow up to
about 20 feet in length,

and the megalodon was two times
the size of the great white

or maybe bigger,

the largest fish ever to exist.

- [Lynne] It is believed
to have gone extinct

about 3.6 million years ago,

but of course, similar
to the plesiosaur,

there could have been

some that survived
down in deeper water,

still living in
the oceans today.

- Most scientists think
this is highly unlikely

because no bones or
teeth of a megalodon

have ever been found
on the ocean floor

that weren't fossilized.

But some theorists wonder
if maybe a few megalodons

actually did manage to
survive into the modern era.

- [Laurence] It might
seem farfetched,

but there are other examples

of prehistoric beasts
surviving the asteroid impact

that have been
verified by scientists.

- [Ryan] In 1938, a South
African fisherman catches

something that he's
never seen before.

It has these
armored, blue scales

and its fins aren't
normal like fish fins.

They're actually fleshy.

- So he sends this off
to a marine biologist

who absolutely cannot
believe what she's seeing.

It's called the coelacanth,

but the most recent one was
from 66 million years ago.

- The news of this is so
startling, it's a bizarre animal

and maybe one people
hadn't thought of before,

but the resurrection story of it

led to a worldwide
recognition of an animal

that was thought to be from
the age of the dinosaurs.

- [Laurence]
Evolutionary biologists

are faced with a new mystery:

If this prehistoric fish
survived the great extinction,

is it possible a beast like
the Kraken did as well?

- Perhaps the
coelacanth fish survived

because it's relatively small.

It's only six feet long

and weighs about 200 pounds,

so it doesn't require
a ton of food.

But for a species the
size of the Kraken

to endure an extinction event,

it would've had to have
somehow been protected

from all the destruction.

Some wonder if maybe
there were sealed pockets

in the ocean floor that
acted as safe zones

for colossal prehistoric beasts,

and something later happened
to open these pockets

and something later happened
to open these pockets

to release one of these
beasts into the ocean.

- Could the Kraken be more
than a mariner's myth?

Scientists are still
trying to find out

whether or not this infamous
sea creature is real.

If it is, could it be a
survivor from prehistoric times,

something that could
grow three stories tall

and crush the skeleton of
even the largest predator?

- In 2011, at a meeting of the
Geological Society of America,

paleontologist Mark
McMenamin presents

a really interesting
and controversial idea.

- He says, "I have found
something that I believe

is proof that the
Kraken is a real beast

and did exist about
200 million years ago."

He was unearthing fossils

in a ghost town called
Berlin in Nevada,

and he came across
an ichthyosaur,

which we know existed.

- These are almost
dolphin-like in shape,

many sharp, pointed
teeth in a long snout,

very highly adapted
to ocean life,

and the fossils that
were found in Nevada

are actually whale-sized.

- What's strange to McMenamin

isn't the existence
of the ichthyosaur,

but that when he
finds these bones,

he doesn't find just one set.

He finds nine of them,
and they're all arranged

in a distinct pattern.

These piles are not
the result of nature.

Some other creature had
to have placed them there.

- [Lynne] The ichthyosaur
would've existed

near the surface of the ocean.

Of course, this is a time

when Nevada was
entirely underwater,

so whatever killed them

traveled to the
surface of the water,

hunted them, and then brought
them down, all the way

to the floor of the ocean
to stack their bones.

- If you then take the markings

on the actual bones themselves,

they don't look
like teeth marks.

They look like something
that a beak would do.

And to pull something of that
size down into the depths

and hold it down and eat it,

you would have to be enormous.

So he postulates that this is
an ancient giant cephalopod.

- McMenamin is convinced
and he keeps digging,

and he finds what he
thinks is the jackpot:

a beak, the kind of beak
that would have come

from a creature
about 100 feet long.

- [Laurence] The giant squid
is not the only creature

that uses a beak to
tear apart its prey.

In this case, the evidence
points more toward an octopus.

- [Ryan] What we
know about octopus

is they attack with twin beaks

and they pile the
bones of their victims

in front of their lairs.

You know, they use this.

These are traits we know and
we have witnessed in nature.

- Today, the largest
octopus that we have is

a lot smaller than the largest
giant squid that we have,

but it's entirely possible
that in the prehistoric eras,

there was an enormous
octopus species

that could have
survived into modern day

and become what people
saw and called the Kraken.

[tense music]

- [Kavitha] During
the great extinction,

earthquakes caused
massive craters

on the sea floor
some many miles deep.

Some species, including
octopus, which prefer to live

on the sea floor in
spaces like these,

could have found
sanctuary in them

and survived the
apocalypse happening above.

- Imagine if you had
the size, the stealth,

and the intelligence to
hunt and stay unnoticed

by not only the
predators in the sea,

but the predators from above.

And the one thing we
know about octopus

is that they are arguably

the most intelligent species
in the entire ocean.

- We know very little about
what lives on the sea floor.

You'll hear people
say that, you know,

we know the surface of Mars

better than we know the
floor of our own ocean,

and that is literally true.

- In 2024 in Norway,
scientists have been

discovering these sites
called hydrothermal vents

on the sea floor that are
just booming with life.

A secret to success
are the bacteria

that are able to
take the chemicals

that come out of there,
really noxious chemicals,

and to eat and to grow
off of it, and you end up

with these really lush
communities of creatures

all basically living
off the energy

that comes out of the
inside of the Earth.

- This totally changed the
way that we thought about

the domains in which
life could exist.

The animals at
these deep sea vents

don't necessarily
even need sunlight.

If the sun blinked out,
the animals at the deep sea

might not know about it
for millions of years.

- [Kavitha] Many marine
biologists dismiss the theory

of the Kraken emerging

from these deep sea holes

as something out of
a Jules Verne novel.

Just because a giant
prehistoric cephalopod

might have existed many
millions of years ago

doesn't necessarily
mean that it survived

into the days of
seafaring humans.

- [Laurence] But others say
it's not so far fetched.

It's estimated that 2/3rds

of the marine
species in our oceans

have yet to be discovered,

and some argue that among them

could be survivors of
the great extinction.

- Every time we go
exploring in the deep sea,

we find creatures that we
had not previously known,

and some of them are big/

So are there monsters
lurking in the deep

that we don't know about?

It's possible.

- [Laurence] For centuries,
people have been trying

to identify the Kraken

by comparing it to other
marine life, real or imagined.

Now, some are asking

if other factors fueled the
imaginations of sailors,

especially those heading
into the treacherous waters

of the Scandinavian seas.

- One of the descriptions
of a Kraken attack

is that suddenly the
ocean begins to spin

and it creates this
massive whirlpool

that sucks ships
down to their graves.

- The churning waters off the
coast of Norway do just that.

Their force inspires writers
like Edgar Allen Poe,

who wrote a short story about
a man who survives a shipwreck

and a whirlpool that
he calls a "maelstrom."

- The legends of the maelstroms
could well be based in fact.

The Saltstraumen Channel
on the Norwegian coast

has terrifying opposing
tidal currents.

They can capsize boats,
and when that happens,

people can drown and
people have drowned there.

It's taken many lives.

- Sailors back then, all they
saw was rapidly moving water,

a vortex that was being
created and getting bigger.

You might perceive
that as a beast

because they didn't
know what we know now.

- [Laurence] Could it be
that generations of sailors

have been blaming ship disasters

on an imaginary creature, when
the sea itself is to blame?

[tense music]

- Most long-lasting maelstroms
are not the consequence,

like a tornado, of wind masses,

but actually of convergent
currents in the ocean itself

that when they meet at different
angles, produce a vortex.

- [Karlene] These vortexes
that are being created,

they're moving at a pace
of about 23 miles per hour.

They could be about
33 feet in diameter,

and that creates the illusion.

Not only are you out there
thinking about a mythical beast,

but you're also seeing
some movement in the water.

- [Laurence] It's rare
that these whirlpools

are strong enough to
pull in entire boats,

unless the circumstances
are just right.

- Maelstroms are
especially dangerous

when they have a deep hole
at the bottom of the water

that acts like a drain
speeding up the flow.

- One incredible example of this

is something that
happened in 1980

in Louisiana's Lake Peigneur.

In this lake, there's
two activities going on.

One is a salt mine being
dug out underneath the lake,

and one is an oil rig.

And due to an accident
of calculations,

they end up drilling

into one of the lower
shafts of the salt mine.

- And as they're drilling, they
hear a couple of loud noises

and then the water begins
to spin around the rig.

The lake is only 10-feet deep,

but what happens is they created

the hole needed for the water
to go into the salt mine,

multiple levels,
thousands of feet down.

In seconds, it sucks
a tugboat, 11 barges,

an entire island with a
botanical garden on it,

into the whirlpool, gone.

Maybe the most incredible
thing about it

is that nobody was hurt.

- That was human error.

You're talking about an oil rig

that went right
into a salt mine.

That's something that definitely

does not happen
every single day,

but we also see these whirlpools

that are created out
in the open water

just from naturally occurring
events like earthquakes.

- [Lynne] In 2004, off
the coast of Thailand,

an underwater earthquake
caused a tsunami so large

that the loss of life
topped 200,000 people.

And in 2011 in Japan,

a similar tsunami
took out 19,000 people

and the entire
Fukushima Nuclear Plant.

- In both instances,
the first to succumb

are people sailing near
the quake's epicenter.

Before a tsunami rises up from
the displaced tectonic plates

and hits the coast,
there are several moments

when water fills inside
the enormous cavity,

and in that case, boats
as far as 10 miles out

can be sucked into
this giant whirlpool

that's been created by the
cracks in the sea floor.

- [Laurence] In such events,

it's possible sailors
might have confused

a natural maelstrom with
the Kraken's attack.

- You have to ask,

how many times could this
mistake have been made?

How many times could
someone have seen

a natural phenomenon like this

and attributed it
to this monster?

- [Karlene] If you're
already going out there

with the notion that there
is a beast in the water

and you continue to see the
whirlpool getting bigger,

you're gonna think
that the beast is

about to jump out of that wate,

and you're about to be face
to face with the Kraken.

- [Laurence] Many
theorists have turned away

from trying to link the
Kraken to a living creature.

Some now wonder if

the psychological
effects of sea travel

gave rise to this
legendary beast.

- You have to think
about the conditions that

sailors live with, especially
hundreds of years ago.

A lot of sailing voyages

could be up to three
years at a time,

and with that much
isolation and open ocean,

you can imagine that sailors

would start to lose
their grip on reality.

- We walk on land,
we live on land.

To remove you from that

is something that you have
to experience to understand.

It begins to immediately
play with your mind.

- Some experts have theorized

that the stories that
are told about the Kraken

aren't the result of any
actual creature in the ocean,

but instead are a sign of
the psychological impact

that being on the
ocean has on the crew.

[tense music]

- You can imagine
how terrifying it is

to go to sea in an old,
rickety sailing ship

with no GPS, no
weather forecast,

and you probably don't
have much of an education,

certainly not in zoology.

- Many sailors in the
past couldn't even swim,

and so anything that happened

beyond the bulkheads of a ship

was often misunderstood.

- These sailors are dealing
with stress and storms,

cabin fever, and
obviously heavy drinking,

and all of these things
can actually affect

whole crews at the same time.

It's called mass hysteria,

a phenomenon where
a group of people

can experience similar physical
or psychological symptoms

without a singular,
identifiable medical cause.

- In 2024, the U.S. Navy did
a really interesting study

and found that 41% of
sailors going to sea

suffer a form of high stress
before getting on the boat.

Let's go back
hundreds of years ago

and you're about to
head off into sea,

and the only thing you
know is that there is

a Kraken out there
waiting for you.

Tell me that your stress levels
wouldn't be through the roof.

So these sailors weren't
just battling sea monsters

and crazy
environmental problems,

they were also
battling themselves.

- [Laurence] Diseases at sea
can also induce hallucinations.

- Another big component
back then was scurvy.

And so scurvy is a
lack of vitamin C,

and that deficiency is
a horrible way to go.

You're talking about your arms

as well as your legs
being sore and then stiff,

you have your teeth falling
out, your gums are bleeding,

and then eventually it makes
its way into your brain

and causes damage.

- Under the stresses of scurvy,

sometimes the senses
become changed,

and in the 1740s,
an entire squadron

of British sailing vessels
was overcome with scurvy

and their sailors
reported strange sounds,

exaggerated sights,
and one famous report

was of a man who the
simple smell of a flower

was enough to make
him scream in agony.

- According to one historian,

scurvy is responsible
for more deaths at sea

than storms, shipwrecks,
and other diseases combined.

And it was not a quick death.

It could take weeks for
people to die of scurvy.

- You're in this mental
state because of scurvy,

your brain is deteriorating,

so what you think you saw

might not actually
be what is out there.

- [Laurence] Hallucination
brought on by

psychological stress,
fear, and disease

might be a convincing
explanation

for stories of the Kraken,

but it's not the only way
the brain might trick us

into believing there are
strange creatures nearby.

- For folks who
spend time at sea,

you realize very quickly that
your eyes can deceive you.

The fact that you don't
have a frame of reference

when you look out
across the ocean

means that things
can seem grander

and larger than they appear.

[tense music]

- [Karlene] Atmospheric
factors play into this.

You have the cold air that's
closer towards the sea level,

the warm air that's
rising over it.

Once that light moves from cold
air into warm air, it bends,

and so that changes

what you are physically
seeing out in the distance.

The flying mirage illusion

can make it look like
a boat is in the air

because of the way that
the light is bending,

so your perception is off,

and that creates a bigger story

when it comes to creatures

that are out there
on the open water.

- Even real objects perceived

with these
atmospheric conditions

can be elongated,
stretched, or bent

in ways that might make
them appear monstrous.

- [Laurence] Could
phenomena like these

have contributed to
Kraken sightings?

- At the end of the day,
the oceans are not our home.

That is not our
natural environment.

So I don't care
how brave you are

or how prepared you are,
you're going to step off

into that adventure with a
little bit of apprehension.

- Stories of the Kraken have
been around for centuries,

and even modern discoveries

don't fully explain
where they came from.

- [Peter] History is
replete with stories

of sailors talking about
creatures trying to kill them,

and if you take a look at them,

you begin to see
that those monsters

probably tell us more about
us than anything else.

- It may be tempting
to dismiss the Kraken

as the world's oldest
maritime legend,

or the product of sailors'
minds playing tricks on them.

But if so, then why does
the Kraken still fill us

with fascination and fear?

With as much as 80% of the
ocean still unexplored,

discovering a sea monster

that truly lives up
to the Kraken lore

may just be a matter of time.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching
History's Greatest Mysteries.

[dramatic music]