Original subtitles

[ominous music]

- [Dan] Warning, what you are about to see

could be disturbing to some viewers.

Viewer discretion is advised.

[instrumental music]

Imagine living in a home

where the walls don't just crack.

They bleed.

- There are spatters and streaks

and drops on the floor,

on the walls all over the place.

- They send some samples out.

It's definitely blood and definitely human.

- How about a mythical river so deadly

it could kill you in seconds.

- He scrambles for his thermometer,

and it reads 186 degrees Fahrenheit.

[gas whooshing]

- Monkeys who fall in, boil to death.

- Or that a convenience store could exist

in the most inconvenient location imaginable.

- The store is a phone-booth-sized shack,

perched 400 feet off the ground.

Straight up a sheer cliff.

- One false move could be disastrous.

- These are the places that are so peculiar,

they are truly unbelievable.

[bright music]

Travel deep into the Amazon,

and you'll find things you'd never expect.

Ruins swallowed by vines,

relics of lost empires,

even remnants of entire communities,

but none stranger than what you are about to see.

[birds chirping] [upbeat music]

- Imagine you're in a riverboat

sailing down the Rio Tapaj�s,

which has been designated the green hell by explorers.

Everywhere around you there are threats:

piranhas, poison frogs, the black caiman.

Then you come across a sight you're not expecting.

A water tower.

- When you come ashore,

you see large warehouses

and craftsmen homes, a power plant.

It's like someone dropped you into Main Street USA

in the middle of dense jungle.

Then you encounter a giant sign in Portuguese.

Welcome to Fordlandia.

[soft beat music]

- [Dan] Why is a slice of small-town America

hidden in the world's largest rainforest?

For answers, you need to go back a hundred years

to the heyday of this town's namesake, Henry Ford.

[engine puffing]

- [Rutledge] By the mid-1920s,

Henry Ford is one of the most powerful men

on the planet.

Half of the vehicles in the world

are the Ford Model T.

He dreams of building a utopia.

A place where Ford's production methods,

like the assembly line,

can really seep into every part of the culture.

A place that's exactly like he

and he alone wants it.

- [Dan] While the middle of the Amazon

seems like a weird place for it.

There is a business reason

for Ford's rainforest fantasy.

- [Sami] All the material for the Model T

is made in the United States except for one:

rubber for the tires.

Rubber comes from the sap,

from trees that grow in a tropical climate.

So Ford acquires 2.5 million acres

of Amazon rainforest

to build his utopian rubber plantation.

That's the size of the country of Jamaica.

- [Don] Things happen fast.

From 1928 to '29,

they drop an entire town into the rainforest.

Prefab homes with indoor plumbing,

shops, restaurants, a hospital,

even a school.

Ford offers workers 35 cents a day,

a very good wage in Brazil at the time,

plus free food, shelter, medical care,

electricity, treated water,

services that are extremely rare in the Amazon.

Pretty soon there are about 1,300 local employees

on the payroll.

- [Dan] From the outside,

it looks like Ford has thought of everything,

but in the Amazon,

even the most carefully laid plans are tested.

- [Sami] The rubber trees are dying

because the trees are planted so close to each other

that it's very easy for viruses to jump from tree to tree.

Wiping out huge sections.

On top of that, workers are getting sick

from diseases like malaria, yellow fever.

A few weeks into his utopian dream, 90 workers died,

which is about 7% of the workforce.

- [Don] Relentless heat, snake bites, insects, disease,

there's grumbling,

but Ford barrels ahead with his plans.

- [Dan] The more unpredictable the jungle becomes,

the more rigid Ford grows.

- [Hugo] The Ford way clashes with local life.

There's no alcohol allowed.

Random hygiene checks.

Locals are forced to take part

in square dancing lessons and poetry readings,

and they have to observe a US diet.

Gone are all the meats and foods they love.

It's just oatmeal, rice, spinach, canned beans.

- [Dan] Ford's unrelenting control

even extends to the lunch line.

- [Don] Ford's way is the assembly line.

Food service should be the same.

Workers queue up

and make their way down the food line with trays,

really slowly the line snakes outside.

Workers get hot, they're exhausted.

They hate the food.

One day, one furious worker

hands his food tray to a Ford supervisor

as if to say, "I've had enough,"

and the supervisor laughs at him.

The place erupts in violence.

- [Hugo] Workers begin smashing dishes,

shouting that they want to kill the Ford managers,

and the supervisors know enough Portuguese

to know they better run like hell.

- [Don] The riot spills outside.

Men smash windows and equipment,

anything with a Ford logo, especially vehicles.

One truck is rolled into a river.

The worst thing for all this misery and suffering:

Fordlandia produces very little rubber.

- [Dan] The uprising causes tens of thousands in damage.

Only ends when Henry Ford calls in the Brazilian army.

[soft music]

In 1945, after spending over $20 million,

Henry Ford sells an empty Fordlandia back to Brazil

for only $250,000.

But years later, a strange thing happens.

- [Sami] In the 2000s, locals start moving back in.

They refurbish sections of Fordlandia,

houses, the town square.

The school is back in operation,

and some of the machines still work.

Almost a century later.

- [Dan] Henry Ford did build things to last.

Unfortunately, Fordlandia

and his utopian vision weren't among them.

Our next unusual site is much closer,

yet somehow even harder to get to.

[mysterious music]

- [Martin] July 2008,

there's a group of young people in their twenties

walking on Ditch Plains Beach

on the South Fork of Long Island.

They spot something up ahead

that causes them to stop dead in their tracks.

- It's this bloated, hairless carcass with clawed feet,

a long jaw of sharp teeth

somewhere between a dog and a pig,

but it also has some sort of beak and pale,

almost human skin.

They've never seen anything like this before.

[camera shutters]

Photos of this carcass hit the internet,

and the thing soon gets a name.

The Montauk Monster.

This bizarre specimen disappears

before there's really any chance

to do a scientific investigation.

And there are lots of rumors that this monster

is some sort of strange animal hybrid

created by top-secret research.

- [Dan] It would seem like a wild theory

if it weren't for one tightly guarded area

just 14 miles away

from where the monster was discovered.

Plum Island.

- [Martin] Plum Island is the location

of one of the most notorious laboratories

operated by the United States government.

[dramatic music]

Theories about the date back to the 1950s,

when a scientist by the name of Dr. Erich Traub

is brought in to run the laboratory.

- Traub is one of many Nazi scientists

that was snuck into the US during Project Paperclip.

This was an effort

to leverage the best minds of the Third Reich

while protecting and hiding their identities

from the American public.

Traub served in Heinrich Himmler's SS science department,

creating bioweapons.

- [Dan] And in some cases,

their ambitions went even further.

Well beyond conventional science.

- [Martin] The Nazis did indeed attempt to create new species

and to bring extinct ones back to life.

For example, Heck cattle,

an unusually aggressive bovine

which exist in Europe today

because the Nazis experimented

with Spanish fighting bulls and other breeds.

[electric hums]

- [Nick] Given the facility's Nazi legacy,

conspiracy theories speculate

that the Montauk Monster

might have been an experiment at Plum Island

to create a new species,

something like crossing an eagle with a dog.

[creature screeching]

They also claim that other strange carcasses

have washed up on the shore,

only to be whisked away immediately

by strange, unnamed parties.

- [Dan] Whether or not those claims hold up,

Plum Island's longstanding secrecy

has fueled decades of speculation.

And years later,

when an unexplained outbreak emerges nearby,

it only further ignites suspicion.

- [Sami] In 1975, residents of Lyme, Connecticut,

start contracting this very debilitating

and deadly illness,

eventually called Lyme disease.

Now, the town of Lyme, Connecticut,

is only seven miles across the Long Island Sound

from Plum Island,

and some theorists suspect that bacteria

that were being studied on Plum Island,

possibly to weaponize them,

got out of the facility.

[soft music]

Then in 1993, a bombshell report is released,

which states that scientists on Plum Island

have actually been weaponizing bacteria,

including Rift Valley fever,

which causes a victim to bleed out,

kind of like Ebola.

- [Dakotah] Nazi scientists, bioweapons research,

top-secret experiments,

the connection to hybrid animal monsters.

This is all very hard to prove.

There's no clear smoking gun,

but at the end of the day,

conspiracy theorists remain unconvinced

that there's nothing but harmless research

going on on Plum Island.

[mysterious music]

- Over the years,

there's actually been talk

of selling this land for luxury homes.

If so, you might wanna wear a hazmat suit

to the open house.

- [Dan] A house is supposed to be a safe place

where nothing out of the ordinary happens.

But in Atlanta,

one strange home turns that expectation on its head.

- [Rutledge] It's a foggy night in Atlanta.

September, 1987.

A 77-year-old woman named Minnie Winston

is taking a bath.

As she steps onto the floor,

her foot lands in a puddle of something.

It's not water from the tub.

No, this liquid is red.

- [Dan] It looks like blood,

but it's not coming from her,

and as Minnie rushes to check on her husband, Willie,

she's met with another shock.

- [Troy] She sees more of this red liquid.

There are spatters and streaks and drops

on the floor, on the walls, all over the place,

and then she looks and notices

that a jet of red is coming out of the wood floor

like a tiny geyser.

- [Rutledge] She goes and gets Willie from the bedroom.

He's fine, not bleeding.

As they move through the house,

there's red everywhere.

They rack their brains,

trying to think of what it could be.

Some kind of weird chemical leak?

A wound on one of their bodies that they missed?

No, not a scratch on 'em.

- [Dan] The panicked couple decides to call 911

and report a problem that's hard to explain.

- No one's hurt.

There's no dead body in the house,

but it really looks like there's blood everywhere.

[ominous music]

- [Speaker] Investigators say there is no known crime,

but passersby all have pet theories

about where the blood came from.

- I hope it's just some type of animal

got in there and got killed.

That's all I can say.

- [Speaker] Still, police are continuing to try to solve it,

but say they don't have the answer yet.

- [Rebecca] There has to be a logical explanation.

Is paint leaking somewhere?

Did a wounded animal get into the house?

But they find nothing.

- [Rutledge] They send some samples out to a hospital,

which determines, yes, it's definitely blood

and definitely human.

Police get one answer when they test the blood type.

It's type O,

and both Minnie and Willie are blood type A.

It's not their blood.

- [Dan] But if it's not their blood, whose blood is it?

- [Reporter] Of all the mysteries veteran detectives

have seen, said one, this one ranks...

- Right up at the top. [chuckles]

- [Troy] The Winstons are spooked by all of it,

not just the blood,

but all the attention they're getting.

- [Speaker] Just came by to take a look.

- Yes.

- [Troy] Finally, Willie just starts telling everybody

it was a lie, that it was a mistake,

that it must have been red dye in a rug

or some kind of chemical spill.

- [Dan] With no crime, no suspects,

and two homeowners desperate for privacy,

the bleeding house story disappears

just as quickly as it began.

- [Rutledge] Then in 1994, a group called Georgia Skeptics,

which investigates paranormal activity,

publishes a piece on the bleeding house.

Blood spatter experts determine

that the patterns on the walls indicated

someone moving through the house and flinging blood,

maybe from some kind of a container,

but there's a lot of unanswered questions.

Who was it?

Where'd they get it,

and why on earth did they do it?

- [Interviewer] Any explanation for what this might be?

- Beyond me.

- Decades later, those questions are still unanswered.

- Thankfully, the bleeding house mystery never spread

beyond those four walls,

but in a sleepy little town, half a world away,

another odd phenomenon didn't stop at a single home.

It swept through the entire village.

[ominous music]

- [Mitch] It's the early 2010s,

and something strange is going on

in the tiny farming village of Kalachi in Kazakhstan.

Farmers, shopkeepers, students are falling asleep.

People are passing out in traffic, at work,

while they're using farm equipment.

Even the town's mayor passes out

in the middle of his official duties.

By some accounts,

20% of the village are hit by this strange force,

which townspeople refer to as the sleep.

- The sleep isn't just some catnap,

it can last for hours or even weeks.

One woman is out for 21 days.

It's extremely difficult to wake these people up

from the sleep, and when they do,

all they remember are these sort of crazy dreams.

- [Mitch] There are descriptions of worms eating their flesh

or their hands turning into snakes.

One girl speaks of seeing her mother

with an elephant's trunk.

- [Dan] Doctors from across Kazakhstan

do a battery of blood tests,

MRI scans, and chest X-rays

to get to the bottom of this,

but find no identifiable patterns

across all of the sleepers.

- [Mitch] Some sleep experts speculate

that this could be a result of mass psychosis

and compared to an episode in Nottingham, England, in 1980

where hundreds of children pass out

or fall asleep at a local fairground.

- [Dan] With no clear cause or cure in sight,

Kazakhstan officials make a drastic decision:

evacuation.

- By 2015, only a few staunch families remain in Kalachi,

refusing to leave,

but the government keeps investigating.

They zoom in on an abandoned uranium mine

looming over the village.

At first, the fear is radiation,

but the tests don't back that up.

- [Dan] So investigators keep digging,

and what they find is even more disturbing.

- [Mitch] The epidemiologist discovers

that toxic military-grade chemicals stored in the mine

have actually been slowly seeping out of their containers

into the local water source.

- [Agust�n] He believes the chemical containers eventually

emptied, which is why the residents who stayed

say the sleep has gone.

- [Dan] If the sleep does ever return,

I'd imagine a whole lot of insomniacs

will be lining up to fly to Kazakhstan.

- [Dan] Moving comes with plenty of stress:

finding a place to live, setting up utilities,

learning your way around.

But if you're moving to this unusual place,

there's something extra on your checklist,

and you won't believe what it is.

[dramatic music]

- [Agust�n] Not many people ever make it

to the bottom of the world.

Antarctica.

The continent is almost completely uninhabited.

Almost.

There are about a thousand people in total

living in small research settlements.

Villa Las Estrellas on King George Island

is one of those settlements.

It gets down to about negative 50 outside.

So really, there's not much to do

but to look up at the stars.

That's where it gets the name Villa Las Estrellas,

or Village of the Stars.

[screen whooshes]

- [Dan] But if you are one of the brave souls

who wants to visit?

There's something you'll have to leave behind.

- Authorities running Villa Las Estrellas

have a strict requirement

that before you arrive,

you must have your appendix removed,

because if your appendix bursts down here,

it can kill you,

and the nearest hospital is 625 miles away.

[instrumental music]

- [Dan] The strict ban on appendixes didn't always exist.

It's a rule born from one man's horror story.

- [Martin] In 1961, a Soviet surgeon named Leonid Rogozov

is assigned to Antarctica.

One day he starts to feel weak and nauseous.

He is experiencing pain in his abdomen,

and he knows exactly what's going on.

If a patient is experiencing an inflamed appendix,

there has to be immediate surgical intervention.

The appendix has to be removed

because a ruptured appendix can be a death sentence.

- [Dan] Dr. Leonid Rogozov knows two things.

One, there is no chance of transport

to the hospital 650 miles away,

and two, he is the only surgeon in the facility.

- [Agust�n] Rogozov makes a brutal decision.

He's gonna perform the surgery on himself.

He shoots his belly up with Novocaine,

and he starts cutting.

[upbeat music]

- [Chris] Blindly, he works his way through muscle and

intestine, and using only touch, he finds the appendix.

- [Agust�n] It takes about two hours, and he almost passes out,

but he's able to remove the appendix,

and miraculously he survives.

- [Dan] Because authorities believe

no one besides Dr. Rogozov

should or could live through this again,

Villa Las Estrellas has a strict no-appendix policy

to this day.

- [Martin] Villa Las Estrellas might be the only town on planet

Earth that requires you to give up a perfectly healthy organ

just to live there.

[tense music]

- [Dan] In another remote destination,

one visit could cost you far more than an organ.

- [Rutledge] For centuries,

a legend about the Amazon makes the rounds

in the world outside the rainforest.

The story goes that Spanish conquistadors

are exploring the massive jungle

when they stumble upon something

that's both amazing and terrifying.

It's a river, but not just any river.

This one is boiling hot,

literally bubbling and steaming.

- [Mitch] Birds who fly over it get their feathers singed;

monkeys who fall in boil to death.

It is said that any creature unlucky enough

to fall into this boiling river

dies an excruciating death.

- [Dan] The Spanish call it El R�o Hirviendo,

or the boiling river,

but it seems to just be a tall tale.

Then in 2011,

one man becomes obsessed with actually finding it.

- [Don] Andr�s Ruzo, a young Peruvian scientist,

is working on his PhD,

studying the potential for Peru

to use geothermal energy.

He's heard the story of the boiling river

from his grandfather when he was little,

and he starts to think,

could there really be something to this,

a river that could have energy potential?

He asks anyone he can.

Colleagues, companies who've done surveys of the Amazon,

every one of them says the same thing.

There is no way this river is real.

- [Dan] But at a family get-together,

Andr�s gets a shocking second opinion.

- [Rutledge] Andr�s is having dinner with his family,

and he brings up the boiling river legend.

His aunt casually says, "Oh yeah, it's there.

I swam in it once.

I know who can take us there."

- [Dan] It just so happens.

Andr�s's aunt knows the shaman of the Ash�ninka tribe,

the community that watches over the sacred boiling river.

- [Don] Andr�s figures probably something exists out there,

but the legend's gotta be exaggerated.

- [Dan] Even so, Andr�s decides

the only way to know for sure is to see it firsthand.

- [Don] They're pretty deep in the jungle

when he hears a loud sound

like a surge of ocean waves crashing again and again.

[steam whooshing]

Then he spots wisps of steam wafting through the trees,

and he sees it.

[bright music]

- Andr�s scrambles for his thermometer,

dips it in the river,

and it reads that the temperature

is 186 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now that's a little ways below the boiling temperature,

but that is extremely hot.

- [Rutledge] The Ash�ninka called this the

Shan�y- Timpishka, which actually means boiled by the

heat from the sun, but the heat's actually coming

from a totally different direction.

[dramatic music]

Groundwater by the spring

is leaking into an underground faults

and going deep into the earth,

where it's superheated by the earth's core,

then propelled by pressure and heat back to the surface.

That super-hot water makes this the largest thermal river

documented in the entire world.

- [Mitch] The Ash�ninka have known about the river

for centuries.

It's been a boon to them.

They use it for cooking, cleaning, even making tea.

Andr�s is the first scientist ever

to gain access to this legendary river.

The shaman gives Andr�s permission

to take samples of water from the river under one condition.

When he's done with the samples,

he must pour them on the ground

so that the water is able to find its way home.

[upbeat music]

- [Dan] Andr�s has made many discoveries

studying the boiling water,

including how his aunt swam in it and survived.

It turns out that after a heavy rainfall,

there's a short time when it's cool enough to take a dip.

there's a short time when it's cool enough to take a dip.

Thanks, but I'll stick to the pool.

- Imagine driving into a desert where your radio goes dead.

Your compass spins wildly,

and strangers vanish into thin air.

It seems like a place you'd want to avoid,

but many flock there,

including one curious couple in the mid-seventies.

[mysterious music]

[door opens]

- [MJ] One October day in 1975, Ernesto and Josefina D�az

drive their pickup truck

into the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico.

The couple's interested in a certain area of the desert,

known for its unusual rocks and fossils.

- [Hugo] Ernesto and Josefina aren't scientists.

They're just amateur collectors looking for some fun,

but the fun's over

when they notice dark storm clouds on the horizon.

This is an area where flash floods often happen

and can cause a lot of damage,

so they hop into their pickup

and drive off as quickly as they can.

- [Dan] But they don't make it far

before the torrential rain turns the desert road

into a trap.

- [MJ] The truck struggles to gain traction,

sinking into a deep track of mud,

and they start pushing, trying to get out,

but there's so much rain and mud, it's hopeless.

Just then, something catches their eye.

[rain drumming]

- [Dan] Two towering pale figures in yellow hoods

that seem Nordic.

A very strange sight

in the middle of the Mexican desert.

They say nothing,

but within seconds, push the truck free.

- [MJ] The couple hops out of the truck

to go thank their new friends for help,

but they're gone.

No vehicle tracks, no footprints, nothing.

- [Dan] This is just one of many unexplained incidents

to take place in this area of the desert,

known as the Zone of Silence.

- [Rutledge] The Zone of Silence is a patch of desert

about 31 miles wide,

where there's a history of weird phenomena happening there.

But the most well-documented stories began in the 1930s.

Mexican aviator Francisco Sarabia

is flying over the Chihuahuan Desert one day

when his radio suddenly goes dead:

no noise, no static, no nothing.

Then he realizes

all of his instruments are going crazy too.

Acting erratically without any explanation.

- [MJ] After that, other planes passing over the area

also start to report similar phenomena.

To many people, it makes this area

the landlocked version of the Bermuda Triangle.

- [Dan] While there are striking similarities,

the Zone of Silence has its own special brand of bizarre.

- [Hugo] First off, the zone is the site

of a high number of meteor strikes.

For a region that's just 31 miles across,

there are three major crashes in the 20th century alone.

In fact, two land on a single property.

- [Rutledge] Then in 1970, the US rocket Athena veers off

course after being launched in Utah

and somehow ends up right there,

crashing into the zone.

- [MJ] After the rocket crash, NASA recovery teams

also start experiencing some pretty strange behavior

during the salvage operation.

- [Hugo] Some workers inexplicably run off to the

desert, only to return

and claim that they have no memory of ever leaving.

Others speak of seeing strange mutated animals

and weird lights in the sky.

- The most curious stories are the accounts

of the tall, fair-haired Nordic beings,

and just like the ones Ernesto

and Josefina saw in the desert,

eyewitnesses claim

that these Nordic beings speak perfect Spanish.

They ask only for water,

and then they just simply disappear without a trace.

For those who have asked the Nordics where they're from,

all they do is simply say, "Above."

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] Leaving the desert behind, we travel to Italy,

where one weird island's dark history needs no explanation.

[soft music]

- [Sami] Italy has some of the most beautiful islands

in the world.

You've got Ischia, you've got Elba,

but there is one island that has such a dark and ugly past,

locals won't even mention it by name.

It's called Poveglia.

And locals tend to avoid this place like the plague,

which makes sense considering that

Poveglia actually has a very direct connection

to the plague.

- When we think of the bubonic plague,

most of the time we think of the 14th century,

but there were multiple outbreaks after that.

In 1793, Poveglia is a shipping port

on your way into Venice.

And one day a ship docks, two of the people on board

actually have bubonic plague.

Now, Venice has struggled with bubonic plague before.

They don't want it, so the authorities act immediately,

turning Poveglia into a quarantine site.

That means if you have bubonic plague,

you are sent there to die.

- [Sami] The scene there can only be described as appalling.

Some accounts say that there are about 160,000 corpses

that are littering the grounds of Poveglia.

You've got bodies that are being thrown

into these gigantic pits,

which are then being lit on fire.

Some believe that as much as half the soil on Poveglia

is human remains.

- [Dan] Unfortunately, as the centuries pass,

the island's legacy doesn't improve.

- In the 1920s, an insane asylum is built

right on top of these mass graves,

and as if that's not bad enough,

patients are experimented on, crude lobotomies,

people just butchered.

The doctor allegedly responsible for all this

is said to have gone mad himself

and leapt from the bell tower,

or possibly was pushed, depending on who you ask.

- [Dan] After everything that's happened here,

it's not surprising

no one wants to go anywhere it today.

- [Don] There have been numerous plans to sell it

for development, preserve it,

or build some sort of park out of it.

But Poveglia can't really escape its past.

It may never be anything more than a contender

for the world's most haunted island.

- Visiting an island built on dead people

might not be your cup of tea,

but there are plenty more peculiar places to come.

- Just off the coast of Japan's Miyagi prefecture

lies a tiny island

where the balance of power has changed drastically.

It was one of history's most unexpected coups,

over a century in the making,

carried out by some surprising insurgents.

- [Martin] At first, Tashirojima

looks like any other fishing village in Japan,

but spend a few minutes there,

and you are quickly aware of what makes it unique.

As recently as 2024, though,

the population is merely 48 people,

and those 48 people are outnumbered

by the new rulers of Tashirojima:

[dramatic music]

the cats.

To understand how the cats eventually

took over this island,

you have to look back more than a century in history.

[soft instrumental music]

- [Troy] From the 1600s to the late 1800s,

the island is a penal colony,

and then it becomes an important site for silk production.

As it turns out, mice are a natural predator to silkworms.

So cats are brought in from the mainland

to control the mice population,

and eventually the number of cats on the island grew

while the human population decreased.

- [Dan] Over the years, 90% of Japan's population

leaves small villages like this one

to live in large cities like Tokyo and Osaka.

The cats, however, remain,

and over time they don't just inhabit the place;

they define it.

- [Martin] There's an overall general cat aesthetic

that people value in Japan today.

You find cat cafes, cat art everywhere.

Most towns have a cat that is a mascot of the city.

The Japanese love cats,

and the Japanese love Tashirojima because of it.

[mysterious music]

- [Dan] That cultural fascination turns Tashirojima

into a must-see destination.

- [Troy] Tourists come from all over to visit Cat Island,

and the people who live there know

what their meal ticket is.

It's the cats.

They feed them, they care for them.

They make sure that there are never any dogs

on the island.

- [Martin] The residents of Tashirojima definitely

look to the cats

as being the actual residents and owners of the island,

and they just get to live there among their cat brothers.

- [Dan] Cats may rule Tashirojima,

but across the continent,

their mortal enemies have claimed a kingdom of their own.

[dramatic music]

- [Mitch] In a northern India town, Deshnoke,

there stands a 500-year-old temple.

The temple attracts thousands of pilgrims

and tourists each year,

but this devotional site has a strange element.

It is home to an estimated 25,000 rats.

[rats screeching]

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] No, this isn't an infestation

or a pest control problem.

The rats belong here.

- [Brandy] This is the Temple of Karni Mata.

According to legend, her stepson drowns,

and she pleads with the God of Death

to bring him back to life, and he refuses,

but ultimately they strike a deal.

Karni Mata agrees that her stepson,

as well as all of her male descendants,

can come back reborn as rats

before they get reincarnated as another human.

[rats screeching]

- [Mitch] Pilgrims who visit the temple believe

that these rats are in fact human souls

who are direct descendants or worshipers of Karni Mata.

- [Dan] Many believe these rats are essentially family,

and they are treated like it.

- They feed them milk and coconuts, grains, vegetables,

and all types of morsels

that the rats normally wouldn't get in the wild.

- [Mitch] Pilgrims are unafraid of the rats.

They frolic with them,

and in fact, pilgrims believe

eating from the offerings made to the rats

not only brings blessings to them,

but they are in effect sharing a meal

with their own family lineage.

- [Dan] It's a spiritual experience,

but not necessarily a clean one.

- [Brandy] Visiting the temple is not for the squeamish.

The floor is covered in bits of food and yes,

rat droppings,

and you cannot wear shoes in Hindu temples,

which means you must go barefoot or with socks.

- [Dan] It's hard to imagine a rat as a symbol of good luck,

but it's kind of nice to know

there's at least one place on Earth where they're cherished.

- We all love convenience.

Many of us expect that wherever we are,

there's a store nearby to grab water or a snack.

But in China, one store is taking convenience

to a whole new height.

[soft music]

- [Hugo] In China's Hunan province,

some 30 miles from the nearest city,

there's a national geological park.

Every day, one intrepid employee has to restock supplies

at a small shop in the park,

a few dozen water bottles, drinks, potato chips,

all lugged in a huge backpack.

Once the worker gets to the park,

there's still a long way to go.

- [Rutledge] The store is a phone-booth-sized shack,

perched 400 feet off the ground on a rock face,

operated solo.

The geological park is very mountainous

and filled with hiking spots,

but this particular sheer cliff

is for the more adventurous.

[bright music]

It's over 2,600 feet to the top, almost half a mile,

pretty much straight up and down.

So when this attraction opens in 2018,

organizers figure some people might need a break.

- [Don] There's not much to buy,

just water, energy drinks, granola bars.

But for anyone 400 feet off the ground,

it's the most welcome sight in the world.

- [Dan] Despite the high altitude,

the prices stay reasonably low.

- [Rutledge] The price of water is capped

at the equivalent of about 30 cents.

I guess they figure it's hard enough to get up there.

They're not gonna gouge you.

And judging from some of the photos,

it looks like they even take cash,

just don't drop the change.

[bright music]

- It might seem like a pretty inconvenient place

to put a convenience store,

but for climbers,

this is exactly where you would want water.

- [Dan] Now that's quite a pit stop,

but some destinations like this next one

aren't even on the map.

[dramatic music]

- Dayton, Nevada, is a small town

in the northwest corner of the state.

It's nowhere close to an actual border.

Mexico, 500 miles to the south,

Canada, 600 miles to the north,

and yet if you venture outside of town,

you come upon a strange collection of buildings

with a sign that reads, "Beyond this point

you are no longer in United States territory."

- [Sami] You're greeted by a man dressed in a military uniform,

and if you show him your passport, he will stamp it,

[dramatic music]

Republic of Molossia.

[soft music]

- [Dan] Welcome to one of the oldest micronations on Earth,

governed by His Excellency President,

Grand Admiral Colonel, Dr. Kevin Baugh.

- [Andrew] Molossia has its own post office,

its own phone system, its own currency.

Molossia has its own navy

comprised of inflatable kayaks

that are regularly deployed at a nearby lake,

and it also its own space program,

which is a foot-pump rocket.

- [Sami] The entire economy runs on tourism,

and any taxes paid to the United States

are considered foreign aid.

[soft music]

- [Dan] What Kevin actually does as president

is open to interpretation,

but he has taken the role seriously enough

to once declare war on East Germany,

despite the fact that East Germany no longer exists.

- [Sami] So is Kevin serious?

He has petitioned the United States government

for formal recognition,

which has consistently fallen on deaf ears,

but who knows?

Maybe one day the government will finally recognize

the micronation of Molossia,

and maybe then Kevin will finally get

to be an actual president.

[soft music]

- [Dan] From a bleeding house to a snoring village,

a desert patrolled by alien Good Samaritans,

and a river you can use to boil pasta.

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