Original subtitles

Sometimes, going off the beaten path can lead to a bumpy ride.

Like the roadside potty break that's interrupted

by impatient spirits.

She feels this power on the other side of the door

trying to get in.

Realizing that she's cornered,

she musters up the courage,

bolts out the bathroom, and then she's like, "We gotta go."

Or a work break that launches one man

into another time zone.

Gil finds himself 9,000 miles away

from where he was a few seconds ago.

He clearly does not belong there.

Something is very wrong.

How about Alexander the Great

taking a wrong turn

at the edge of the world?

The scouts describe these attackers

as hair-covered wild men

that are obscenely strong and very fast.

They fight so brutally...

clawing, biting, scratching, punching, that they cannot contain them.

These are the stories of people who veered off course

and took strange detours into the unbelievable.

Childhood is a time of make-believe,

imaginary friends, fantastic adventures,

and wild stories.

But one little boy's obsession with World War II airplanes

would lead his parents down a very unexpected path.

It's 2000,

and two-year-old James Leininger

is pretty much your typical toddler.

And he loves all his toys, but toy planes are his obsession.

Other kids, they might be watching, I don't know,

Blue's Clues, or something at that age.

He's watching videos of the Blue Angels.

When James' dad, Bruce, takes him to the Cavanaugh Museum,

he's immediately drawn to the World War II exhibit.

He is intensely focused,

for a two-year-old.

At first, James' fascination with airplanes seems harmless.

But before long, his playtime starts to sound less like make-believe,

and more like a memory.

James is flying his little toy plane around the living room.

But then he starts taking the plane and starts crashing it

into the coffee table while uttering the phrase,

"Airplane, crash on fire.

Airplane, crash on fire."

And one night he starts having

these vivid night terrors.

Night after night,

he's waking up, screaming.

I mean, not even crying, he is screaming.

And he keeps saying the same thing over and over again,

"Plane on fire.

Little man can't get out."

When they ask who the "little man" is,

his answer stops them cold.

James is looking at his parents and he's going,

"Little man is me."

"I'm the one that can't get out.

I'm the one that is on fire."

And Bruce said, "Why did your airplane crash?"

And he said, "It got shot."

And Bruce said, "Well, who shot your plane?"

And I'll never forget the look on his face. He went...

"Ugh! The Japanese!"

He starts adding more and more details.

And strange details.

For example, he says that he flew the plane off a ship.

And then when his father decides to delve a little bit deeper,

and says, "What ship did this plane fly off of?"

James, without missing a beat...

"The Natoma."

Both worried and intrigued, his father, Bruce,

starts doing some research.

And what he finds out is there was a ship,

a Casablanca-class escort carrier called the Natoma Bay

in the Second World War.

One day, James just matter-of-factly says,

"Before I was born, I was a pilot.

"My airplane got shot in the engine and it crashed in the water.

That is how I died."

It's a shocking claim, so Bruce begins searching for anyone

who might be able to verify the details.

In 2002, Bruce learns that there's going to be a reunion of the crew

of the USS Natoma Bay.

Bruce literally just crashes the reunion.

He just shows up.

And he's really hoping that they're going to tell him things that make it clear

that this is all in his son's imagination

and that his family can just go back to a normal life.

But the veterans reveal a detail that leaves Bruce stunned.

Now, according to the veterans,

there was only one pilot from the Natoma Bay

that was killed,

and that was a 21-year-old from Pennsylvania.

His name is James M. Huston Jr.

He's one of eight pilots that are sent out on a mission

to travel to the harbor of Chichijima

where they were supposed to attack Japanese transport vessels.

And the aircraft action that Bruce discovers

backs up a lot of what James has been talking about.

Anti-aircraft fire just rips through the air.

The plane gets hit in the engine.

Smoke, flames, fill up the cockpit,

takes a nosedive,

crashes, and is never recovered.

Bruce is able to find the flight chart from that day

and he traces the path of each pilot involved in the mission.

Only one flight line ends abruptly,

and that is Huston's plane.

The evidence is unsettling.

But for final confirmation,

Bruce reaches out to Huston's family.

Huston's sister, Anne, who's now in her 80s,

starts confirming family details

that little James has been saying all along.

Strange details.

Descriptions of the family living room,

his mother's favorite painting,

and Anne confirms everything.

Bruce is now convinced,

and Anne is, too,

that this little boy

is her brother, James Huston Jr.,

reincarnated.

Word starts to spread about this.

Paranormal researchers are interested in it,

as well as academics.

Dr. Jim Tucker, who's at the University of Virginia

in the Department of Perceptual Studies,

takes an interest in this case.

What interests Tucker is that James is sharing details

before they've come out.

And there's others like him.

And now they're studying this as an ongoing phenomenon...

young children,

typically between the ages of two and five,

who seem to have these memories

of a life previously lived.

Whether James' memories are proof of reincarnation

or something else entirely remains a mystery.

But for his mother, Andrea,

the experience leads to a profound conclusion.

There is something else out there... after this.

It's not over when you die.

Some souls may get a second chance,

while others, like our next wanderer,

remain a little more restless.

According to this story,

it's Christmas night in 2023,

and you've got this engaged couple,

they've spent time with their family for the holidays,

and they are heading home.

As they're driving through the mountains, nature calls.

The problem is it's Christmas night

so a lot of the places that they could stop are closed,

so they take a little detour

and they find a rest stop.

She goes in and the first stall, it's clogged, it's a mess,

it's disgusting, no-go.

So, she goes to the second one, same thing.

The third stall, it's locked.

She looks down and she sees feet.

But these are strange, old leather shoes with buckles,

and they're standing in what appears to be a puddle of--

what she hopes is water.

So, she decides to turn around, there's other stalls,

and she sees a mirror.

And standing behind her,

she says she sees a woman

dressed in 19th-century clothes,

soaking wet.

She's got long, black hair.

Her flat, gray, lifeless eyes

is probably the most terrifying thing about her.

Suddenly, those first two stalls don't seem that gross anymore,

so she rushes into one and shuts the door.

Then, she says that she feels

this power on the other side of the door shaking, trying to get in.

I mean, she was just trying to go to the bathroom.

Here she is, scared to death!

Realizing that she's cornered,

she musters up the courage,

swings the door open,

bolts out the bathroom.

And she's like, "We gotta go."

She finally, as she calms down, is able to explain to him

what she saw.

And it raises this question, what do you do?

Do you call the police?

What do you tell the police?

She saw a wet lady with old shoes and corpse-like eyes.

I mean, that's not a crime, is it?

So she does what a lot of us do when we want a second opinion,

but also want to remain completely anonymous.

She gets on Reddit and finds out

that she's actually not the only one that's ever had a chilling encounter

in this rest stop.

People talk about "creepy vibes."

And a lot of people point to the location of the rest stop.

Turns out this rest stop is near the Donner Pass.

The site of the most ill-fated detour

in American pioneer history.

It's 1846, and the Donner Party

is trying to go from their home in Missouri

to start a new life in California

via the California Trail.

As winter approaches,

the party is convinced to attempt a risky shortcut

through the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

This trail doesn't fit wagons,

so you have to cut trails.

They are going very, very slowly

when suddenly a massive blizzard hits.

It dumps feet of snow on top of them.

Cut off from help, they suffer through months of hunger.

And when supplies run out, they grow more and more desperate.

They start eating their pack animals.

And once they're through their pack animals,

they try to boil leather.

Then, when all of that runs out,

they start eyeing the dead.

And that's when the unthinkable

starts to become thinkable.

When the rescue party shows up,

they find emaciated survivors

and the remnants of what can only be described as cannibalism.

In the decades since the tragedy,

stories of strange encounters spring up all around Donner Pass.

People report that they see

maybe through mist or fog, what looks like figures,

people wearing 19th-century clothing.

And the figures seem to disappear into the fog.

Some people say that the ghost that they see

is of Tamsen Donner,

who did not engage in cannibalism.

She watched her husband suffer and die on the trip.

And people describe her as this petite, dark-haired woman

that matches the woman from the rest stop.

I think the real lesson from the Donner Party is

it's okay to entertain a detour...

...but if it starts to go wrong,

it's okay to turn around and go back.

As for the woman who experienced

the terrifying restroom encounter,

from now on she'll be holding it in

till she crosses Donner Pass.

Coming up,

a mid-air collision that defies the laws of time and space.

This plane is like a museum piece.

Where did this thing just come from?

What's this guy doing up here?

When a pilot takes a leisurely flight over Ohio,

he expects clear skies and a quiet afternoon.

Instead, he encounters a mystery

not covered in any flight manual.

It's January 1960,

and a pilot takes out his new Cessna airplane

to just go for a fun flight.

It's kinda like taking your Buick out on a Sunday afternoon.

As he's flying,

out of nowhere...

...another plane comes out of the clouds.

It's heading right towards him.

He's left scrambling,

he banks hard away from it.

Just enough...

...that his wingtip scrapes against the fuselage of the other plane.

He's petrified that either he took another plane out of the sky

or his plane isn't going to be able to land.

But what he sees behind him

makes even less sense than the near collision.

It is a very old-fashioned plane.

The kind made out of wood and canvas.

It looks like a Laird biplane,

an old 1920s, 1930s aircraft.

This plane is like a museum piece.

Where did this thing just come from?

Now, he doesn't get a chance to think much more about it because suddenly...

...that plane is gone in the clouds.

The pilot heads straight back to the airfield

to check his plane

and his underwear.

There's only minor damage on the very tip of his wing,

and he files a report as you're supposed to.

Now, he hopes the other pilot's okay,

but in trying to make sure,

he starts contacting other regional airports

and no one heard anything about it.

The terrifying incident haunts him for months.

Then one day, in the most unlikely place,

the plane resurfaces.

He hears of an old biplane

in a nearby barn,

so he decides to go check it out.

And what he finds is a Laird biplane,

just like the one that he thought he saw

up in the air that day.

Rusted, old,

hadn't been flown in many, many, many years.

He looks closer at it

and sees that there is a very long scratch on the fuselage.

The exact place where his wing

clipped the plane that he saw in the air.

And in the cockpit, he finds the logbook.

The last entry in the logbook was from 1932.

And it talked about how the pilot of that biplane

had a near crash with another plane

that barely scraped it.

And that plane...

was a "futuristic-looking aircraft."

Now, the pilot does want to check this out.

He takes the logbook to the Civil Aeronautics Board,

who then report it to Federal Authority.

Incredibly, they test the paint that's on the pilot's Cessna,

they compare it to the paint on the fuselage of the old plane,

and it seems to come up a match.

Could it be possible that one or both of these pilots

somehow took a strange detour through time?

There are physicists who are looking at things like...

the possibility of wormholes and second dimensions

and how time can exist in these very different ways.

So, in theory, it's entirely possible

that these two planes

did in fact have a mid-air collision.

My question is, how do you ever get back in the cockpit of a plane again?

Because if ghost planes are just gonna start flying

and buzzing you the whole time,

that's an omen I should stay on the ground.

If you think traveling through time sounds farfetched,

try explaining a leap across an ocean.

It is a hot, sunny day,

and palace guard Gil Pérez

is at his station at the Governor's Palace

in the city of Manila.

It's a pretty chaotic day at the palace,

because the governor has just been killed

by his own men, in a mutiny.

So, Gil is on duty for several hours.

It's a hot day, he's in full uniform,

and according to the story,

at one point he becomes

not just fatigued, but drowsy, a little bit disoriented,

and he staggers back against a wall.

Suddenly, Gil feels the temperature drop,

and he hears the sound of a loud crowd surrounding him.

He snaps to high alert,

and he thinks, like, you know, the palace must be under attack.

But instead of seeing enemy soldiers in front of him,

or even an angry mob,

he sees people with baskets of bread and fruit.

It's a marketplace full of people,

not the manicured grounds of the governor's estate.

Something is very wrong.

The Philippines, they've been a Spanish colony

for years at this point.

So, Gil can recognize that he's hearing Spanish,

but it's this different dialect from what he's used to hearing in Manila.

He's able to stop someone who passes by and ask them the question,

"Where am I?"

The answer hits him like a gut punch...

Plaza Mayor, Mexico City.

When Gil comes to his senses,

he finds himself in a location

9,000 miles away from where he was just a few seconds ago.

And just to be clear, for context,

this is 300 years before

the concept of teleportation

is even made into a thing.

There isn't even a word for teleportation at this time.

Gil Pérez is freaking out.

But so are the locals.

He is wearing a uniform from another army

and another country

and he clearly does not belong there.

They rush out and get the authorities

and Gil Pérez is immediately taken into custody.

The Mexican soldiers are able to make out

that this is a soldier from the Philippines.

But what he's saying is absolutely crazy.

They take him to their leader,

the Viceroy of New Spain, Luis de Velasco.

He has Gil tell him his story all over again.

And you can imagine the record scratch

when he hears that the Governor of the Philippines

is dead, murdered by his own crew.

Now, Gil hasn't committed any actual crimes,

but the Viceroy isn't exactly sure what to do with him.

But, he's dressed like a soldier,

so he's like, "Okay, maybe he's a deserter,

so I'll just put him in a cell."

The days turn into weeks,

weeks turn into months, but eventually,

a merchant ship from Manila makes its way to Mexico

bearing some pretty interesting news.

Unbelievably,

the crew from this ship not only confirm every detail

of the Governor's brutal murder,

they also know Gil Pérez personally.

So, the Mexican authorities gasp, thinking,

"Oh, my God, this guy was telling the truth the whole time

and we didn't take him serious-- Okay, cool."

So, they put him on the next ship back to Manila,

happy to get rid of him,

wipe their hands of the whole affair, get him out of Mexico.

Life goes back to normal for Gil Pérez.

And our guess is, he preferred it that way.

Coming up, a first date that veers wildly off course.

She gets out of the car and she says, "No.

Where I'm going, you can't go."

He watches Mary walk

towards the entrance of the cemetery and then disappear.

Just literally disappear into thin air.

There's nothing quite like young love.

One glance across a crowded dance floor and suddenly

the whole night is full of possibility.

But for one young man in 1939 Chicago,

a chance encounter with a beautiful stranger

would take him someplace he never expected.

It's 1939, six years since Prohibition ended,

and Jerry Palus and his friends

decide they're gonna go out for a night on the town.

So, they head out to Liberty Grove Hall and Ballroom

in Southwest Chicago.

And as Jerry recalls it,

he looks over in the corner

and he spots this alluring young woman.

She has shoulder-length blonde hair,

she's in a long white dress,

and he's immediately smitten.

Jerry asks her to dance,

and the young lady accepts.

She's not especially talkative,

but she shares her name, Mary.

Says she lives in a neighborhood on South Damen Avenue,

but that's about all he can get out of her.

It's a packed house.

Everybody's hot and sweaty from doing the Jitterbug

and the Lindy Hop.

But when Jerry holds Mary's hand,

he notices that it is ice cold.

Jerry dances with Mary all night.

Reportedly, they even share a kiss.

At the end of the night,

Jerry predictably offers his dance partner a ride home.

She accepts, and as they begin driving,

she asks him to take a detour

down Archer Avenue.

And he's excited when she directs him

to pull over directly in front of Resurrection Cemetery.

She gets out of the car,

and Jerry goes to follow her.

And she stops, and she says, "No.

Where I'm going, you can't go."

He watches Mary walk towards the entrance of the cemetery

and then disappear.

Just literally disappear into thin air.

Shaken, he drives home

and replays the evening's events in his head

as he tosses and turns all night.

Jerry wakes up, he decides,

"I'm gonna go to that address that she gave me."

So he drives to South Damen Avenue and knocks on the door.

A middle-aged woman answers,

and Jerry asks if he can see Mary.

The woman kind of takes a step back

and says, "My daughter, Mary,

died five years ago."

As Jerry's standing there,

he looks on the wall behind her and sees a portrait

of a beautiful young woman.

And he instantly recognizes her

as the woman he met at the dance hall last night.

Then he's forced to ask himself the unthinkable...

"Is it possible I was dancing with a ghost?"

Jerry's strange experience doesn't just end in confusion.

It ignites a legend that will haunt Chicago for generations.

It has to be acknowledged

that these details cannot be strictly confirmed.

There are no police reports that back up Jerry's account.

What we do have

are other alleged sightings

that describe similar encounters with a similar woman.

Eventually, enough of these stories circulate

to earn the subject a name.

People start calling her "Resurrection Mary."

According to the legend,

if anyone stops to offer her a ride or a taxi,

she always accepts.

But when they reach the gates of the cemetery,

she vanishes from the back seat.

As her legend grows, so does the obsession

with uncovering who she really was.

And in 1985,

a reporter from the Chicago Tribune believes he's finally found the answer.

Records show that one night in 1934,

a young woman named Marie Bregovy

went out dancing with some friends,

and on the way home, she was killed in a car accident.

And where is she buried?

Resurrection Cemetery.

In fact, still to this day,

there are people who cruise down Archer Avenue,

at night,

keeping an eye out for the lady in white.

A ghostly hitchhiker is enough to keep anyone up at night.

But our next mysterious visitor has a much softer side.

It's a cold January afternoon

in rural North Carolina.

Three-year-old Casey Hathaway

is playing with his cousin and sister in the front yard

of their grandmother's home.

And the two older kids get bored

and decide they're gonna head inside.

He wanders off into the woods,

which he's never done before.

When his grandmother realizes that Casey's gone,

that feeling of panic starts welling inside of her.

She runs inside,

wastes no time, calls 9-1-1.

Within hours,

a full community search party

is combing the surrounding area

looking for three-year-old Casey.

They scour the woods for hours with no luck.

Then, it starts to rain.

The conditions are awful.

The sheriff describes this as very rugged terrain.

There are swamps and sinkholes in the search area

where they're looking for this three-year-old.

As night falls,

the pressure to find the boy intensifies.

At this point, the temperatures begin to plunge into the 20s,

and little Casey, he's not dressed for this kind of weather.

Hypothermia is not a possibility.

It is an absolute certainty.

The searchers know that they have a very small window to find this boy,

about 24 hours, really.

So, as they get to that limit,

and beyond it, they start wondering,

"Does the nature of this search change?"

Are they looking for a boy,

or are they looking for a body?

As they pass the 48-hour mark,

hope is fading fast.

Then they finally catch a break.

A woman calls the Sheriff's Office,

says she was just out walking her dog,

she's not even part of the search party,

and she hears the sound of a small child crying.

The police go in there and they find little Casey

trapped in a thorn bush.

He's hungry, he's beat up,

but miraculously,

he is alive.

Everyone is thrilled.

And they whisk him off to the hospital

to start getting him some treatment.

Once he's warm and fed,

the questions begin.

They ask Casey,

"How did you do this?

How did you survive two nights in the cold woods, alone?"

And that's when Casey tells them

that he was never alone.

He was there with his friend.

He tells them that a large bear

stayed with him both nights

keeping him safe and warm.

And the more they question him,

the more adamant he becomes.

"It was a bear."

The police go back

and they start searching the area, but they don't see bear tracks,

they don't see scat around the area that they find Casey Hathaway.

As strange as Casey's story is,

it's actually not unprecedented.

Among some Native American tribes,

they do believe that bears act as guardians,

watching over the vulnerable.

There are reported cases of Cherokee children

who have wandered off into the woods,

and they have described their rescuer

as this large, warm, protective force

that they identified as a bear.

By the late 19th century,

encounters like these are even making headlines.

In 1888,

the New York Times runs a story about a three-year-old girl

who was lost for a day, uh, in a valley

and claims to have spent that day with a bear.

Now, ultimately, no one can disprove little Casey's story.

But somehow, a three-year-old, in January,

in freezing weather with rain,

survived two cold nights alone.

And that seems more impossible.

Despite Casey's successful rescue,

experts who study real bears

strongly urge that you don't try cuddling one yourself,

no matter how cold it gets.

Coming up,

a man takes a shortcut

and lives to regret it.

He encounters more of these bluish-green beings

and they have enormous eyes,

slit for mouths,

and these wedge-shaped feet

with just two toes.

At this point,

he's in shock.

He's like, "Am I really seeing this?"

In The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien writes,

"Short cuts make long delays."

Sounds like the good professor might once have taken a stroll

in a place called Ilkley Moor,

where something stranger than a Hobbit

seems to be running free.

It's just before sunrise.

Philip Spencer walks away from the town of Ilkley, England.

Today, he's gonna walk to his father-in-law's home,

and instead of taking the normal path,

he decides to cut through the moors.

Philip's hobby is photography,

so he brings a camera with him

to capture that moment just after sunrise on the moor.

As dawn lights up the landscape,

Philip notices a small figure moving up the slope

about 30 yards ahead.

According to Philip, it looks almost like a child,

but why would a kid be out at this time in the morning,

alone, in the moors?

But then, as he looks closer at the figure,

he notices that there are some things that are just off.

The head is kinda too big,

and then the arms are just a little bit too long.

He says he moves a little closer

and realizes the skin of this creature

is greenish-blue.

The figure kind of raises its arm

as if it's saying hello,

or maybe warning him away.

He picks up his camera and snaps off a photo.

But the act of doing that

causes an instant reaction from this creature,

and it just bolts over the hill.

As he reaches the top of the hill,

he hears this high-pitched, mechanical whirring sound,

like a hum.

Out of the fog,

something lifts into the sky.

Philip describes it as a metallic craft of some sort.

At this point,

he's gotta be in shock.

He's like, "Am I really seeing this?"

The craft accelerates

far faster than any craft he's ever seen move before.

And by the time he thinks to raise his camera to take a picture,

it's already gone.

No longer a leisurely walk,

Philip hightails it out of there to the nearest town.

Philip stomps into the city square.

He sees a clock,

it says 10:00 a.m.

It wasn't a long walk out of there

and somehow two hours have passed.

And he realizes he has lost an hour of time.

He's really hoping whatever he shot

can help shed some light on this.

So, he rushes to get the film developed.

This is way before digital cameras,

so he has to wait a whole 24 hours

before he gets his pictures back.

He gets the film back,

and as he is flipping through these photos...

there it is, the very figure he saw

staring back at him.

Hoping to understand what he photographed,

Philip contacts British UFO researchers

Peter Hough and Jenny Randles.

Hough immediately has the photo analyzed by experts.

And when Kodak's UK lab examines the original negative,

they can't find any evidence of tampering.

Intrigued, Hough wants to find out more

about Philip's encounter...

...including what details may be locked in his memory.

At Hough's suggestion,

Philip actually goes in for hypnotic regression.

And to all of their surprise,

it uncovers what happened during Philip's missing hour.

He recalls seeing the being and taking the photo.

But then he remembers this feeling

of being unable to move.

And he ends up inside the very craft that he saw.

He encounters these bluish-green beings

and they have enormous eyes,

a slit for mouths, just three fingers,

and these wedge-shaped feet with just two toes,

you know, like an ostrich.

These beings seem especially interested

in his human anatomy.

And he says he remembers going through a medical exam

where they put instruments in his mouth and nose.

He says he's then shown images

of nuclear explosions,

famine, flooding, horrible, cataclysmic events...

...as if they're warnings of things

that might come to pass on Earth.

The final thing Philip remembers

is being returned to the moor,

dazed and confused,

and trying to get his bearings.

He is so shaken up by this encounter,

he decides to move away from the moor.

But he still has his camera.

Of course, if something can travel light years to visit Yorkshire,

it probably isn't too concerned

about a change of zip code.

Coming up...

...even a trailblazer like Alexander the Great

can make a wrong turn into the unbelievable.

The scouts describe these attackers

as hair-covered wild men,

obscenely strong, very fast,

with long arms and razor-sharp nails.

They fight so brutally,

clawing, biting, scratching, punching,

that they cannot contain them.

Great generals pride themselves on preparation.

They anticipate rugged terrain,

enemy fire, and even harsh weather.

But sometimes, despite all that planning,

they encounter something

no battle plan can prepare them for.

In 327 BC,

Alexander the Great is making a push to expand

the Macedonian Empire as far east as possible.

And he has pushed into the Hindu Kush region

of which is now northern Pakistan.

The foothills, essentially, of the mighty Himalayas.

While he's trying to find his way through these mountains,

Alexander sends scouting parties off the main route

to find detours around the rough terrain.

According to this collection of legendary accounts,

that's called the "Alexander Romances,"

as Alexander's scouts are moving through this difficult territory,

they're facing resistance from local tribesmen.

But there's one particular encounter

that is especially terrifying.

That's because the scouts report being surrounded by figures

who don't appear to be ordinary tribesmen.

The scouts describe these attackers

as hair-covered wild men,

tall with long arms.

Now, that is a very ape-like description.

They have long claws on their hands that they attack with

despite being these-- these huge people.

They can leap big distances.

They can move so quickly

that it's hard to keep track of where they might be.

It also seems like these ape-men aren't just scary,

they're strategic.

Interestingly,

these wild men attack at choke points.

When prey go through a small, narrow opening,

that's a wonderful ambush location,

and that's exactly what happens to Alexander the Great's scouts

and even his army.

These giant creatures jump out, strike and attack,

and as soon as they do,

they're back over the hill.

And supposedly, at one point,

these soldiers actually surround

a couple of them...

...but they fight so brutally,

clawing, biting, scratching, punching,

that they cannot contain them.

The Macedonians have been fighting

all kinds of men, from large civilizations

to small tribal villages,

but this is different.

The Macedonians don't know what to do.

No tribe that they've faced

have fought as fiercely as these creatures.

Then, just as suddenly as they appear,

the creatures disappear,

leaving behind the soldiers' extraordinary account

of what they claim to have seen.

To be fair, all the volumes of the "Alexander Romance"

are known to be embellished

for the adventure and dramatic effect.

So, it's tough to say whether this is a tall tale or exaggeration.

Embellishment or not,

there are some much more recent accounts

that seem to back up Alexander's tale.

In the late 1980s,

there is a French zoologist,

Jordi Magraner.

He's traveling through the remote villages

of the Hindu Kush.

He's interviewing local shepherds and hunters.

He collects upwards of 50 firsthand accounts

of encounters with what appear to be large,

hairy, upright creatures.

The local villagers refer to these creatures

as "Barmanou,"

which literally translates to

"wild men of the forest."

In all these accounts, these creatures are big,

six to eight feet tall,

covered in hair,

and are even known to emit long, piercing howls.

The stories say that sometimes these creatures maybe will

make off with some livestock.

One of these shepherds tells Magraner he saw one of these creatures

standing near his goats.

Even a few years ago,

there was a story that made it to the Western media

of a rash of sightings of this "monkey man"

in this particular area.

So, things are happening even nowadays.

These things are still being seen.

Whether they were yetis, wild men,

or just Alexander's overactive imagination,

the Macedonians seemed happy to leave them in the mountains.

Coming up,

a struggling guitar player goes looking for a second chance...

and finds something far more mysterious.

People believe that Robert Johnson

met with a dark force that day

and was given a gift.

The band members that are in the juke joint

are just climbing over each other

to get on stage to play with him

because he's playing almost like a man possessed.

When you're chasing a dream,

there's no telling where the road might take you.

For one struggling bluesman, it led to a deserted crossroads

and a legend that still echoes through music today.

It's the 1930s, in the Mississippi Delta,

and a blues guitarist named Robert Johnson

dreams of being one of the best.

The only problem, he is one of the worst.

According to blues legend,

Robert Johnson used to just run people out of bars and out of juke joints

because they could not stand

listening to the type of guitar that he was playing.

He was terrible!

In all manner of the word.

He was just the worst.

As if being so terrible at this thing

you dreamed of being great at isn't bad enough,

there was also tragedy that struck Johnson

when his wife and child were killed during childbirth.

And he's not even there when this horrible tragedy goes down.

He's off playing this terrible music that nobody likes.

So, one day Robert Johnson just takes his guitar

and leaves everything behind.

And he's gone for so long, people start thinking he died.

But several months later,

Robert Johnson returns to the local juke joints

a changed man.

He immediately breaks out his guitar...

This guy again.

...people recognize him and start rolling their eyes.

"Oh, shoot, here we go.

It's just the same old Robert Johnson."

But what they hear isn't just good.

It's not just great.

It's the best guitar playing they've ever heard.

And it's not that he just got better.

He's now this masterful virtuoso of the guitar.

The band members that are in the juke joint

are just climbing over each other

to get on stage to play with him

because he's playing almost like a man possessed.

But, the older blues masters are watching this young guy

and going, "Something ain't right."

You don't just leave for six months

playing your hardest to just try to get to mediocre,

and you can't even reach that,

all of a sudden, you come back six months later

and you're better than everybody?

What gives?

According to legend,

late one night after a show, Johnson tosses back a few

with some of his fellow musicians,

and starts opening up.

Apparently, Johnson would travel

to these very dark, deep places

where he could just be alone with his grief.

He says eventually he wanders down an overgrown path in a dirt field.

And at the end of it, he comes to a crossroads

in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

It's dark here in the middle of nowhere at this crossroads

and it feels like the roads just go on forever.

And of course, the only light

is from the full moon.

So, just after midnight,

Johnson says this shadowy figure

sort of just appears in front of him.

This tall, dark stranger gives Johnson

this really thin, kinda eerie smile,

reaches out and takes Johnson's guitar from him.

And then he begins to play,

and it's amazing.

This shadowy figure finishes playing

and he stares at Johnson.

Johnson reaches out and...

he slowly takes his guitar back.

And that's when this shadowy figure...

...smiles at him.

Johnson describes it later

as almost like a deal has been struck.

And so, when Johnson starts playing this guitar,

he's not just playing music.

It almost seems as if he's commanding sound.

Sound is bending to his will.

People who believe that Robert Johnson

met with a dark force that day and was given a gift, they wonder,

"Is that a gift that comes with a price?"

You would think that achieving his dream

might brighten his lyrics,

but his songs only get darker.

He's got titles like, Hellhound on My Trail,

and Me and the Devil Blues.

Some of the lyrics are,

"Woke up this morning, a knock on my door,

"I said, 'Hello, Satan,

looks like it's time to go.'"

The darker his music becomes,

the more people begin to wonder

whether there's any truth to the stories.

Then comes a twist no one can ignore.

It's 1938,

and 27-year-old Robert Johnson

is handed an open bottle of whiskey in a Mississippi dance hall.

Johnson takes a big swig of this whiskey

and almost immediately

collapses to the ground.

Some have speculated

that the cause of death for Robert Johnson

was a jilted husband

who believed that Johnson was having an affair with his wife

and so he poured strychnine into the bottle

and that's what killed him.

Others insist it was the devil

returning to collect what he was owed.

The most ironic thing about Robert Johnson's life

is if you look at it, it's one big blues song.

It is triumph and tragedy

all in one place.

If you've got something you'd like to get much better at,

you can visit the alleged crossroads at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49

in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Just remember

to bring your soul.

We've seen highway rest stops that harbor hangry ghosts,

time-traveling planes,

and long-dead pilots who double back to be reincarnated.

Whatever path you take,

a strange detour might take you someplace

truly unbelievable.