Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: A transnational flight

vanishes into thin air.

A legendary explorer is lost in the Amazon jungle

and is never seen again.

And a notorious area in the north Atlantic,

where entire airplanes...

disappear.

When we find out that someone is lost,

we like to think that their disappearance

has a rational explanation and that, at some point,

they'll return.

Hopefully safe and sound.

But what happens when people don't return

and the circumstances of their disappearance

defy explanation?

Well...

that is what we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

SHATNER: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370

prepares to depart from Kuala Lumpur International Airport

en route to Beijing.

On board are 227 passengers

and a flight crew of 12.

JOHN NANCE: Malaysia 370 was a commercial flight.

Malaysia Airlines was a routine procedure,

a routine flight, as we say.

The flight path was more or less a straight line

aimed from Kuala Lumpur

out over the water in, uh, the South China Sea

to the main landfall of China.

As far as everybody was concerned,

it took off normally,

was flying its route north towards China.

TUTTLE: Then, all of a sudden, it turned off its communications

and basically went dark.

SHATNER: At about 1:20 a.m.,

as the plane was flying over the South China Sea,

ground control lost all contact with the plane.

One second, the 240-ton Boeing aircraft

was emitting a clear transponder signal

to air traffic control,

and then, mere moments later,

there was nothing.

The fact that the signal disappeared--

that was the unusual element.

The fact that that transponder, which was chirping back

every time it was hit by the radar beam

from air traffic control, went silent.

MICHIO KAKU: Flight controllers frantically tried

to communicate with the airplane.

Nothing. What happened?

How can you lose a jetliner?

How can it vanish in thin air?

SHATNER: Although the aircraft was lost on civilian radar screens,

unbeknownst to ground control,

military radar was able to track the plane for another hour.

And what it detected was baffling.

At that point, when the radios were turned off,

the flight path did a 90-degree turn to the left,

basically on a southwestern heading,

and disappeared into the vastness

of the Indian Ocean.

We don't know the motivation for doing this.

We just-- we don't know.

SHATNER: Around 2:20 a.m., radar contact with the plane

was lost for good.

By 7:20 a.m., one hour after it was scheduled to land,

authorities in Beijing realized

that flight MH370 was not going to reach its destination.

A search and rescue operation was immediately launched,

and it quickly became the most expensive and difficult

in aviation history.

The initial search was basically, uh,

aircraft searching for the immediate wreck,

looking for any survivors

or telltale wreckage on the sea surface.

Unfortunately, after a while, things sink.

Survivors aren't there, and you go from

a search and rescue mission to a search and recovery mission.

SHATNER: When the wreckage did not turn up,

officials were eventually forced to admit

that all 239 people on board the flight...

had perished.

We were clueless as to what could have caused this tragedy

right under our noses

in an era when we have the Internet, satellite,

radar communication,

it just disappears off the radar screen.

SHATNER: The wreckage of the plane,

despite the efforts of the world's top aviation experts,

had seemingly vanished without a trace.

But then, after months of searching,

investigators finally uncovered an important clue.

Boeing had included a maintenance reporting thing

that goes by satellite.

It was called an ACAR system,

and Boeing had installed the system

to report maintenance information

about the engines in the airplane every hour.

In this particular case, it was still pinging away.

It was saying essentially to the satellite,

"Hey, I'm here. You want any information?"

SHATNER: The information revealed by the ACAR system was shocking.

It showed that the plane did not crash

anywhere near where it was last detected.

It actually changed course

and kept on flying.

GREG LIEFER: It was flown for another six hours

after it made the initial

diversion from its intended flight plan,

and it was flown, uh, to a very remote area.

SHATNER: Based on this data,

aviation experts believe that the plane most likely crashed

somewhere in the southern portion of the Indian Ocean

after running out of fuel.

It seems that the aircraft flew in the wrong direction

for thousands of miles

to a distant part of the ocean

where there was no possible place to land.

But how could that have happened?

Initially, the theory that was proposed by a lot of the media

was that the pilot in command committed suicide.

But, in fact, the accident report

clearly stated that...

the pilot had no history of emotional or physical problems

that would preclude suicide,

and family, friends and coworkers said

he had no abnormal behavior before the flight.

KAKU: Other people say,

no, it was some kind of mechanical failure.

If it were to catch on fire,

the plane could rapidly depressurize,

meaning that people would suffocate very rapidly.

And I think that what happened then was

you had a ghost airplane.

Everyone was either dead or dying.

It was randomly going back and forth until it finally

ran out of fuel and crashed into the Indian Ocean.

You had theories of, uh, oxygen, uh, malfunction

that incapacitated the pilots,

but I don't think that makes sense because the aircraft

certainly appeared to me like it was being flown manually

for up to, uh, at least 30 minutes,

if not up to an hour, after it made that hard left turn.

The thing that makes the most sense to me

was some type of hijacking.

The abrupt maneuvers that it was making,

the changes in altitude and air speed and heading,

all that indicates to me

that it was a deliberate, uh, manipulation

by other people that took control of the aircraft.

But then that poses the question,

well, why did they hijack the aircraft?

What was the motive?

And why fly to the southern Indian Ocean?

SHATNER: While the theory that the plane was hijacked may sound logical,

authorities thoroughly checked the background

of all the passengers and crew,

and none of them fit the profile of a hijacker.

The truth is that, while several of the explanations

that have been put forth seem to have merit,

we simply don't have enough information

to verify any of them.

We have no way of knowing

because the cockpit voice recorder is at the bottom

of the Indian Ocean someplace.

But the other and the most important thing

to keep in mind is we found a piece of that airplane.

A piece of the wing was found and verified.

It was washed up on, I believe,

the shores of Madagascar or close to it,

and it was definitively from this particular airplane,

so we knew then categorically

that that airplane had gone into the Indian Ocean.

And in this case, this particular piece of the plane

had taken about a year and a half to float

all the way across the Indian Ocean.

LIEFER: It was one of 27 pieces that were eventually recovered.

And it was one of three pieces out of the 27

that was positively identified as coming from the aircraft.

The aircraft wasn't found, occupants weren't found,

but yet 17 months later,

they find these pieces of debris

thousands of miles away,

and that's what makes this mystery, I think,

probably the biggest mystery of all the aviation mysteries.

SHATNER: Unfortunately, a few scattered pieces of wreckage

are all that remain of flight MH370,

its passengers and crew.

Is the story a frustrating reminder that,

in modern times, the truth can still be elusive

in spite of all the knowledge and technology at our disposal?

For those of us who learned about this disappearance

in the news, that seems to be the case.

But how much more maddening would it be to try

and understand the disappearance of someone you know?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining

the case of two United States congressmen

who went missing nearly 50 years ago

and whose families are still searching for answers.

SHATNER: A Cessna airplane taxis into position

and prepares for departure.

On board the small plane are four people:

the pilot and three passengers.

Two of the passengers are United States congressmen.

House Majority Leader Hale Boggs of Louisiana,

and Alaskan Congressman Nick Begich.

My dad had a habit of bringing, uh,

his colleagues, uh, to Alaska.

And-and the reason he did is

he wanted people to see the vastness of it

and the richness of the state.

You can talk about a place,

but until you're in it,

you really have no concept of-of any of it.

And Alaska-- it's like 20% of the landmass of the country.

And my dad, uh, used small planes often

because you could take the side trips,

and he wanted to show people things.

SHATNER: At 9:00 a.m., the plane took off into the foggy morning sky

and headed for Juneau.

They were scheduled to land there

sometime between 12:00 and 1:00 p.m.

The pilot did not file a flight plan

until ten minutes after he took off,

which was, uh, completely uncharacteristic.

He filed the flight plan by radio transmissions,

and the route of flight he intended to take

was across Prince William Sound to Yakutat

and then from Yakutat to Juneau.

We know the airplane, in this particular case,

had six hours of fuel, and it was only about

a three-and-a-half-hour flight.

And you could get almost there and turn around

and come back with the fuel that you had in it,

but they never made it to Juneau.

SHATNER: At about 1:15 p.m., Air Force officials

were informed that the flight was overdue to land at Juneau.

When efforts to communicate with the plane failed,

both the local authorities and several branches

of the United States military

launched a massive, coordinated search for the missing Cessna

and the two congressmen aboard.

Throughout the search, there was 30 to 40 aircraft involved

every single day, and those included assets

from the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army, Civil Air Patrol.

And there was a sea search that was conducted by ships

from the U.S. Coast Guard as well.

SHATNER: After 39 days of searching,

authorities announced that the plane could not found.

All flight members were declared dead.

What started as an adventurous aerial tour

of the Alaskan wilderness in a small plane

while on the way to Juneau

somehow went horribly wrong.

BEGICH: My dad was a totally energetic person.

He was 40 years old when he was lost.

You never think someone's going to die at-at that age

and in the circumstances, uh, that this happened.

SHATNER: On the day of the flight, the weather was reported

"marginal," meaning that flying conditions were less than ideal.

But not everyone is convinced that the weather is to blame,

in part because no wreckage of the crashed plane

was ever found.

And by all accounts,

it should have been found.

LIEFER: During the search, every possible area was covered.

They said there was a 97% probability

it would have been found. Nothing was ever found.

BEGICH: They did this massive search on every level

to come up with absolutely nothing.

And that was it at the time.

That was all we knew at the time. The search ended.

SHATNER: The families of the two congressmen had no choice

but to accept that both men had died

and that the full story behind their disappearance

might never be known.

But then, two decades later,

the family of Congressman Begich

received some startling new information.

BEGICH: Years later,

a couple of boxes of archives showed up

on one of my brother's doorsteps.

And the files were from the FBI,

and they said that people had come into the FBI's office,

they said they had located the plane,

and then said there were two people

still alive at the crash site.

And so what the FBI had to do

is verify that the source was valid,

that they really were who they said they were, and they did.

So you have an agency confirming the authenticity

of the people that located the plane,

and two people were supposed to be alive then.

And that was a shock because we'd never heard this,

and we had been in touch with the FBI at the time.

It was traumatic because you had this unended open question

that never received a conclusion.

When they were pursuing every other thing and let us know

about every other thing, why not this?

SHATNER: In the years since the FBI documents revealed

that their father may have survived the initial crash,

the Begich family has reexamined the case

by requesting additional documents and photographs

related to the search for the plane.

But, on some occasions, the government seems

to have not fully cooperated with their requests.

For instance, when they requested copies

of aerial photographs taken by the military

SR-71 reconnaissance airplanes that flew over the search area,

they got an unexpected answer.

When we asked for the records, they told us there were none--

that they had gotten rid of all those SR-71 overflights,

all of this material was no longer available.

Which is a lie.

It's a lie because the government never gets rid of

those SR-71 overflights.

They're too valuable, they cost too much money,

and they don't get rid of them.

So, for some reason, they didn't want us to have the data.

SHATNER: Did the government deliberately withhold

aerial photographs from the search for the plane?

And, if so, were officials

trying to cover up the possibility that the pictures

might reveal not only where the plane crashed

but also that two survivors could have been rescued?

I think all of the people that engaged in the search

sincerely looked at everything

and continued to follow up leads,

but I question the honesty of our government at that time.

There was things missing in this,

and we don't have the truth to this day, I'm sure.

So it remains unresolved

until, someday, uh, we can see

the full body of-of the record.

SHATNER: Nearly 50 years after the disappearance

of Congressmen Hale Boggs and Nick Begich,

the questions and possibilities

seem endless.

While there are many theories as to what took place,

the truth about what happened to these two men

remains unknown.

Just like the fate of another figure who,

after taking an adventurous risk,

never returned.

An explorer who was so bold, so daring,

that he may have gotten lost

because he didn't want to be found.

SHATNER: Three Englishmen, accompanied by two Brazilian locals,

make their way through the dense foliage.

The men are searching for an ancient lost city

that has been rumored to be hidden deep

within the rain forest.

The leader of their quest

is an ambitious explorer who feels that he is on the cusp

of a remarkable discovery.

Colonel Percy Fawcett.

Colonel Percy Fawcett is a very interesting

historical character.

He was a geographer, an explorer,

a member of the World Geographic Society,

and also a military man for most of his career.

So a very capable individual,

and he was responsible for exploring and mapping

a lot of the unknown regions of South America.

So, uh, Colonel Fawcett makes an interesting

and rather dashing figure.

SHATNER: After decades spent trekking through South America,

Fawcett became convinced that a massive civilization

had once existed somewhere in the Amazon Jungle.

DEYERMENJIAN: Fawcett came upon this particular manuscript

that was supposed to have been written by um bandeirante,

a Portuguese fortune seeker

back in the 1700s.

And it looks to be describing

a particular city there

in the Brazilian Amazon.

LYNNE McNEILL: That manuscript describes

not just a lost city of ruins

but a lost city of epic proportions.

A lost city of riches, a city of gold,

and architectural marvels, technologically developed,

things that you would absolutely not expect to find

in the middle of the South American jungle.

SHATNER: In time, Fawcett's fascination

with a lost city in the Amazon turned to obsession.

He even came up with a name for the place he was searching for.

He called it "the Lost City of Z."

Armed with clues from the Portuguese manuscript,

he plunged into the wilderness once more,

determined to solve the mystery.

His companions were his son Jack

and his son's friend Raleigh Rimmel.

The geographical challenges along the routes

that Fawcett and his party would face

included things like rivers that were extremely swift

that one could easily have their feet knocked from under them,

and there would have been piranha as well

in these areas of Brazil.

And the swamps, the marshes,

were particularly virulent as far as disease, insects

and geographical difficulties.

SHATNER: As Fawcett moved deeper into the heart of the Amazon,

he wrote about his progress

and gave his notes to native guides

who carried them back to civilization.

The newspapers eagerly published the details

of his latest exploits, portraying the explorer

as an international hero on the verge of making history.

DEYERMENJIAN: Colonel Fawcett was a world-known celebrity.

His exploits were followed in the press

and, uh, were quite popular and quite well known.

We know what we know of Colonel Percy Fawcett

largely from his own writings,

stories about encounters that he had

with native peoples in Brazil,

stories of having arrows drawn on him threateningly.

He tells the story of a 62-foot anaconda

that he shot in the spine and killed

as he was canoeing through the waters down the Amazon.

LAYNE: He writes a letter to his wife and says,

"There's no fear of failure."

He apparently thinks he's right on top of it,

that he's going to find it,

this lost city,

and then he vanishes.

SHATNER: Six weeks after the expedition started,

Fawcett's letters stopped coming,

and people around the world began to fear

that something terrible had happened to the explorer

and his team.

After weeks, months and eventually years of waiting

with no word from him,

it became clear that Colonel Percy Fawcett,

his son Jack, and friend Raleigh Rimmel

would never return from the jungle.

TOK THOMPSON: There was a great interest in what could have happened.

Some people thought he might have been murdered

by the local indigenous groups.

Other people thought that maybe some, uh, bandits

that were operating in this area, uh, might have killed him.

Some people even said that, look, maybe he found it.

Maybe he found his Lost City of Z

and just decided to stay there the rest of his life.

SHATNER: The Lost City of Z

found at last?

Is it possible that Fawcett's dream

actually became a reality?

Brian Fawcett, uh, his youngest son,

reported that there's a distinct possibility

that Percy Fawcett did not intend to return.

That, for him, if he did find it,

it being the capstone to what he was looking for,

he might not have intended

to ever leave the jungle.

LAYNE: If you have dedicated your life now

to finding this lost city of treasure and gold,

and you actually find it,

maybe you don't want to reveal it to the rest of the world.

Maybe it's perfection, it's paradise,

maybe you can make the choice to stay.

Was the treacherous jungle,

insufferable heat

and a face-off with a giant anaconda

all too much for Colonel Percy Fawcett and his team?

Or, as some people suggest,

did Fawcett make such an incredible

archaeological discovery

that he chose to never leave it?

Perhaps further clues about the nature of obsessions

and their consequences

can be found by examining the life of an author

who helped to pioneer the science fiction genre

and whose greatest story may have been...

...his own disappearance.

SHATNER: While serving in the Union Army,

22-year-old Lieutenant Ambrose Bierce

is shot in the head by a sniper.

The bullet goes into his left temple

and lodges behind his left ear.

And it's too deep, at that time,

for them to do some kind of operation to remove.

So he lives the rest of his life

with a bullet in his head.

LAYNE: Some of the people who knew Bierce say that

this brain injury caused him to become strange.

It caused him to start seeing the world in a more morbid way.

And after his experience in the Civil War,

he wrote very memorable short stories

that were filled with the supernatural.

SHATNER: Ambrose Bierce is best known

for writing short stories that involve

paranormal incidents and strange disappearances.

One intriguing story

that he wrote for the San Francisco Examinerin 1888

was titled "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field."

HAWKES: "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field"

was about an Alabama farmer who one day

was taking a walk across the field...

...when he just disappeared.

He was gone.

And years later, his wife would say that she could hear

his voice from time to time,

but he wasn't there.

In the story, Ambrose Bierce was trying to show us

that this man traveled interdimensionally

to another place.

SHATNER: Bierce's stories hinted at alternate worlds

and parallel dimensions

and helped to pioneer the science fiction genre.

But in December of 1913, Bierce, who by then

was one of America's most prominent literary figures,

left the country.

He headed south of the border

because he wanted to witness the Mexican Revolution

taking place at the time.

LAYNE: He's 71 years old

when he crosses the border

to supposedly join Pancho Villa,

the great revolutionary of Mexico.

He writes one letter in particular

to his niece Laura, and he says,

"Goodbye. If you hear of my being stood up

against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags..."

- MAN: Fire! - [gunshots]

"...please know that I think it's a pretty good way

"to depart this life.

Affectionately yours, Ambrose."

SHATNER: While in the city of Juárez,

Bierce joined Pancho Villa's army as an observer.

He then followed the army south

as far as the city of Chihuahua.

On December 26, 1913,

Bierce sent a letter to a friend,

which he ended cryptically by saying:

"As for me, I leave tomorrow

for an unknown destination."

The eccentric author was never heard from again.

After writing about people who disappear,

Bierce himself disappeared

like a character in one of his own stories.

There are eyewitness reports of Ambrose Bierce dying

all over Mexico at different times

separated by years.

McNEILL: We have a plethora of different stories

of people reporting that he was executed,

of people reporting that he died of illness,

of people reporting where and when they last saw him

and who he was with.

All we know is that he was gone.

SHATNER: Reports of Bierce's death

would continue to surface for years after his disappearance.

But for many, these stories are not as convincing

as the idea that Bierce traveled south

not to join in a civil war

but rather to visit a remote location

that had captured his dark imagination.

An area known as

the Zone of Silence.

One of the more popular theories about his disappearance

is that he follows Pancho Villa into this mysterious area

called the Zone of Silence, which was locally known

as a place where people vanish,

where there are odd occurrences.

GANDER: When Bierce takes that trip to Mexico,

if he wasn't killed along the way,

he would have passed through the Zona del Silencio.

The Zona del Silencio-- it's known as a place

that's full of meteorites.

There's a lot of magnetite in the rock around,

which people say makes it certain

that radio waves don't travel out of there.

The modern ranchers and cattlemen that live in the area

have lots of stories to tell about strange lights in the sky,

even strange encounters with individuals in the desert,

and it is indeed mysterious.

SHATNER: Curiously, if you trace the route

that Bierce traveled with the Mexican army,

it appears that he was headed directly

for the center of the Zone of Silence.

But what was he hoping to find?

HAWKES: We don't really know what happened to Ambrose Bierce.

The theory is that Bierce, within the Zone of Silence,

may have discovered or mastered

supernatural methods of traveling

from one place to another

and may have transported, as in his stories,

to an interdimensional space,

never to be heard from again.

Is Ambrose Bierce

buried in some unmarked grave south of the border?

Or, perhaps more intriguingly,

did Ambrose Bierce even die at all?

There are some who even suggest

that he was accidently transported

into another dimension.

Sounds preposterous, huh?

Well, for those who are familiar with the Bermuda Triangle,

it's a question that is not as crazy

as it may seem.

SHATNER: A squadron of Navy torpedo bombers,

collectively known as Flight 19,

takes off for what is supposed to be a routine training mission

over the Atlantic Ocean.

LIEFER: It was five U.S. Navy TBM patrol bombers

that were flying on basically

a, uh, practice navigation mission.

It was the last flight

that was required by the cadets before graduation.

The flight leader said that both of his compasses

on board his aircraft weren't operable.

[alarm buzzing]

Well, the chances of both compasses going bad

at the same time is just extremely remote.

And there was also confusion

between the flight leader and the student pilots

about which way they should be going.

SHATNER: All five planes experienced equipment malfunctions,

and then all five disappeared from radar.

Their last communication consisted of

nothing but eerie static.

KAKU: This is unprecedented.

Navy crewmen in airplanes

simply disappear off the face of the Earth.

Now, of course, hundreds of theories have been proposed.

The most logical theory is the weather.

Perhaps there was a sudden hurricane

that came out of nowhere,

and people got confused.

And, as a consequence, they dove right into the water.

But the record and the data is sparse,

and that's because our technology, our sensors,

were very primitive back then.

So there is a chance that 100 years from now,

we'll still be debating what happened.

SHATNER: The disappearance of Flight 19

is just one of the many mysterious vanishings

that have taken place in that part of the Atlantic Ocean.

An area that is now known as

the Bermuda Triangle.

Airplanes, boats and people have just disappeared

for as long as we've been keeping records of travel

through that area.

And it's been very much a mystery of:

"Is there something special about it?"

Do the characteristics of the Bermuda Triangle

make it a unique or, uh, individual body of water?

In-in some ways, yes.

You go from Bermuda,

1,000 miles southwest to Florida,

you go about 1,000 miles over to Puerto Rico,

and then you go back 1,000 miles north to Bermuda.

That is almost a perfect isosceles triangle.

DENNIN: The Bermuda Triangle area,

because you're right near the jet stream...

...you do have extremes of weather and ocean conditions.

All of these will interact

with the electromagnetic field of the Earth.

And so it's definitely a possibility

that you have some sort of magnetic anomaly.

When you think about possible reasons that people

have weird experiences in the Bermuda Triangle,

that could be a potential cause.

SHATNER: When Flight 19 disappeared in 1945,

there were many theories,

but none of them could completely explain

the strange incidents that continued to occur

in this mysterious area.

Then, in 1970,

a young aviator happened to fly through the Bermuda Triangle

and had no choice

but to face the forces that exist there.

But this time, the pilot lived to tell the tale.

Pilot Bruce Gernon is flying his small plane

100 miles off the coast of Miami.

I've made several hundred flights

flying in the area of the Bermuda Triangle.

But this time, I found myself surrounded

by this strange storm.

There was only one exit that I could find,

and I call it a tunnel vortex

because these small puffs of clouds formed

around the walls of the tunnel,

and it was rotating slowly counterclockwise,

and it was probably 700 feet wide when I entered it.

I didn't want to do it, because I've been taught not to fly

through horizontal tunnels between storms.

But it was so critical that I decided

that I would go ahead and do it.

SHATNER: Bruce experienced some terrifying moments,

but, fortunately, he was able to make it

out of the tunnel alive.

But when he looked at his flight readings,

he realized that his escape

was even more incredible than he thought.

GERNON: When I entered the tunnel vortex,

my navigational instruments said that I was 100 miles

east of Miami.

I was in the tunnel for three minutes and 20 seconds.

And when I reached the other end,

I ended up right over Miami Beach.

So it only took three minutes and 20 seconds

to fly 100 miles.

So I realized, right at that point,

that something unexplainable had just happened.

SHATNER: 100 miles?

In only three minutes and 20 seconds?

Bruce's plane would have to have been traveling

1,800 miles per hour

to cross that distance in such a short amount of time,

a speed that his small plane

was not even remotely capable of.

Does Bruce's flight suggest that the disappearances

that take place within the Bermuda Triangle

are the result of time and space being somehow altered?

I believe that Flight 19 experienced the same type

of phenomenon of the tunnel vortex

that I experienced.

They didn't know their position,

and so you get totally confused

and end up in a graveyard spiral and crash into the sea.

I was just fortunate because I didn't get confused.

If someone doesn't believe what I experienced,

I like to say to them

the only way to discover

the limits of the possible

is to go beyond them into the impossible.

And that's what I did.

SHATNER: Are the strange occurrences

that take place within the Bermuda Triangle

proof that we don't understand our planet

as well as we think?

It's an intriguing possibility.

But if there are locations on Earth

that cause bizarre vanishings,

should we try to investigate those places?

Or are we better off avoiding them

at all costs?

SHATNER: Photographer Charles McCullar

hikes around the rim of this picturesque body of water.

But what starts out as a simple walk through nature...

quickly turns tragic.

ERATO: Charles planned a two-day excursion to Crater Lake

to snap winter photography.

But he trudged out through the park entrance

and was never seen again.

SHATNER: Authorities tried for months to find Charles with no luck.

It wasn't until nearly two years later

that they got a break in the case

when his body was found in a remote part of the park.

The most baffling aspect of the Charles McCullar case,

besides the way that the remains were found,

was where the remains were found.

It's about 14 miles from the park entrance,

so he would have had to trudge over

105 inches of new snow,

with some areas having 20-foot snowdrifts,

14 miles to a remote part of the park.

So how did Charles get that far into the park?

LAYNE: The weird part that lingers with his story is:

how did his human remains end up so far away

from where he was, and why were they found

so long after the fact of his disappearance?

Search teams had been looking for him

from the week he disappeared.

SHATNER: The idea that someone could hike 14 miles

in eight feet of snow

is a little hard to imagine.

But, on the other hand, Crater Lake has been the site

of similarly inexplicable occurrences for centuries.

ERATO: Crater Lake is a hotbed

for stories about paranormal activity

and just supernatural occurrences.

There are stories of people vanishing,

and it ties back to local native tribes

that have lived in the area thinking that it was

basically the location for the devil on the planet Earth.

SHATNER: Is it possible for a place like Crater Lake

to be imbued with some kind of dark power?

The native people of that area

had a largely sacred understanding

of that particular body of water.

And when we have a place, a geographic location,

that's recognized as powerful,

when individuals approach that area, unknowing--

or disrespectful, perhaps, even--

of the power that's there,

the story never ends well.

ERATO: When someone vanishes in the wilderness,

we have a lot of modern-day technology that's used

in the recovery to go find people,

and it works most of the time,

but what drives public fascination about

a lot of these mysteries are the vanishings

where none of that technology seems to work.

We have all this stuff at our disposal,

and it turns up nothing.

And nobody can explain why.

So what do you think about these bizarre vanishings?

Could they all be the result of tragic accidents?

Foul play?

Or might extra-dimensional forces be at work?

Well, in any case, it's safe to say that

these mysterious disappearances

force us to challenge our preconceived notions

about what we believe is fact,

what we believe is fiction

and what we're willing to accept as being simply...

unexplained.

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