Mothman: A Misunderstood Creature! | Expedition X

Ladder number two. Oh my word. Oh boy. This is an endless cave. Pablo graciously agrees to go first. Then it’s my turn to descend.
Okay, down we [Music] go. How was it so far down?
Just like a black 

[Music] hole. Deep inside the mountains of 

northern Spain, archaeologists have made a discovery that could help tell the real story of the legendary warrior king Palio.
So, tell me about these skeletons. Well, you can see them yourselves in the cave.
Yeah. Yeah, they inside the cave. Are they easy to get to? No, not No, of course not. It’s quite a difficult trip.
It’s 3 hours on the ground. 3 hours in in darkness. Yeah. Okay. Well, I would like to meet them. Okay, let’s go. Shall we do it? Let’s go. Come on, let’s do it.
This cave has been preserved from outsiders for centuries, and microbes from the surface could potentially change the ecology inside Lagarma. To prevent that, we change into footwear that’s been sterilized. Properly shaw, we are ready to descend the vertical shaft, which has been outfitted with a ladder. Oh boy, big drop off.
All right, on coming down. Everything in this cave is damp and slick, so we make sure to use harnesses and clip in. One misstep and the drops are lethal. Oh boy, that’s a long way down.
[Music] Okay, I’m down. Okay, now that I’m safely down, Pablo and Jose join me.
Okay, we made it down the ladder. The first ladder? The first ladder? Yeah.
Oh, okay. Great. Okay, let’s go.
First ladder.
How deep is this cave? The answer, very deep. There’s almost a mile of known passages in Lagarma. Pablo’s team has mapped three distinct levels, each with a sheer drop with some chambers that are more than 400 ft underground. Wow, look at the size of this place. Unbelievable.
To keep all of us from getting hopelessly lost, they’ve marked the floor with reflectors to create a narrow path through the dark and winding forest of stone. I mean, look at this place. We hike on into the darkness through one immense cavern after another. Eventually, we find ourselves at the top of another drop where the archaeologists have rigged another ladder. Ladder number two. Oh my word. Oh boy. This is an endless cave. Pablo graciously agrees to go first. Then it’s my turn to descend.
Okay, down we go.
[Music] How is it so far down? Just like a black hole.
Oh, you all right? I’m all right.
This is the third level of Lagarma.
Pablo and Jose lead us further until we enter a chamber dripping with stelactites.
Well, just this is the room I wanted you to see. Oh my word. Look at this place.
Unbelievable. As we enter, the chamber is eerily quiet, like a sanctuary. And then I learn that we’re not alone.
Well, and this is the person I wanted you to meet.
This is a full skeleton. Look at this. We have a full skeleton here. Mhm.
But there are the skeleton. There’s another one up there. Oh, there’s another skeleton right there. Yes. How many of these skeletons are here? There are five in this gallery. Five. And these are from the time of Palio. Yeah.
Yes, they are. The archaeologists have discovered that this chamber is in fact an eerie necropolis. The skeletons have been carefully laid out on the floor, surrounded by broken pieces of stelactites in some sort of burial ritual. Wow. Unbelievable. I’m trying to understand this. People brought these five bodies all the way down here. This whole trip that we’ve made, they came the same way. Only robes and torches.
Ropes and torches. Think about that.
With with torches, how scary this environment would be. They must have felt like they were venturing into the underworld. Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. Why?
This must have been a kind of ceremonial burial in a way, right? Yes, it’s a funerary treatment. Was any clothing found? Was any textiles found? No, it had not been preserved. We did find one thing in the other room. Just a a metal belt buckle. A metal belt buckle. And and and what does it look like? It is made of iron with silver and brass inlays. And it has a a cross. It has a cross. Yes. So these these are Christians. We think so. I mean there’s something very heathen or pagan about this. There are so few burials from the time of Paleo that what we’re seeing here is revvelatory. It’s clear that at this time Christianity existed alongside lingering pagan traditions including some very dark rituals.
for being here over a thousand years.
It’s incredibly well preserved except for one thing. The skull. Where’s the skull? The skull is here, but it has been crushed. Literally smashed down to a powder almost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All of them have their their skulls crushed.
There’s something going on here that feels superstitious. Yes. Mhm. Why? Why crush the skull? Well, probably because they had a fear of these people because they wanted them to not to to to return to return. Revenants. Revenants. You’re talking about vampires. In the Middle Ages, the belief that people could return from the dead as evil spirits was not only common. Urgent measures were taken to prevent it. So-called revenant burials have been found all over the world with the dead buried upside down with stones in their mouths and even with the occasional stake through the heart.
But they’re from the time of Palio.
Yeah. Yeah. But who these five people are, we don’t know. No, we don’t know.
These bodies are an incredible discovery. We don’t know who they were or why they were given such a strange burial, but the fact that things like this were happening shows us that all of the romantic imagery of Palio and his men as squeaky clean Christian heroes isn’t painting a full enough picture of the time. Brent and Hose have been contacted by a park ranger who recently came across stones inside the target zone that he believes are man-made ruins.
This could be a major break, but meeting him will be a journey in itself. We need to travel 120 mi through narot traffic territory to the rangers outpost on the edge of Monte Cuz Biosphere Reserve. But if this lead pans out, we might be able to locate the fabled lost city. We can cut some of the distance to Ephraim’s find by traveling up river. He’s leading us to his site where we’ll camp while we investigate. We steam against the current as millions of gallons of jade colored water flow from the faraway highlands of Mexico. But while the views are stunning, it’s not lost on any of us that with each passing mile, the safety of civilization recedes further behind us. Luckily, we do have directions. So, hypothetically, where are we on this map? We are way up this river. So this is the Lakun River. Yes.
The Lakun River. And we’re what? In like a tributary of that? Yeah. We’re in one of the tributaries. It’s called the Hatate. The Hatate River. Yeah. Okay.
We’re moving along the same river system as Don Diego’s map in the direction of the projected location of Sak Balam. So we’re in a tributary of this river and we’re headed upstream. Yes. So ultimately this is getting us closer to your investigation zone. Yes. Yes. In that point. Okay. And after that, we’re on foot. Desquamos.
And then we go straight to the X, right?
Yeah. It’s just that simple. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Should be home by dinner, I would think.
To find Sak Balam, we have Don Diego’s map and Ephraim’s memory. But we also have other clues. In detailed writings, Nicholas de Valenuela, the Spaniard who conquered Sak Balam, described a number of distinguishing features to help us identify the city. He wrote that Sakbalam is in the northern part of a long narrow valley surrounded by high ridges. Three large wood and thatch structures were set on platforms a top mounds with a 100 smaller house mounds nearby. All helpful if we can find them.
Okay, this is us. All right. Okay.
Laasi. Gracias. Don’t want to lose this. All right, we’re on foot. Here we [Music] go. This is brutal. Okay, so we’ll see how far away these structures are that Ephrain’s taking us to. But in terms of the historical sources, does Venezuela tell us how far the hike is from the river to Sakbalam? He says that the river is about a league and a half from Sak Balam. A league and a half. It’s Jules Fern. What the hell? How far is a league? A league is about 3 miles. Three miles. So, we’ve got a 4 and 1/2 mile trek here. That’s also assuming that we parked our boat right at the closest spot. And And just so I know what’s going to kill me in this jungle. Okay, so we’ve got lots of venomous snakes.
Uh-huh. Fertilances, things like that.
Oh, yeah. Fertilance, coral, some pit vipers. Also, jaguars and panthers.
Okay, great. I love the jaguars. There’s a lot of jaguars. I mean, this is the city of the white jaguar. Sure. Fair enough. At least we’re out of narco territory. Yes. So, there are clandestin air strips all over this park in the national park. Oh, yeah. Okay. I’m sorry I asked. Uh, also tropical diseases, uh, killer bees. Enough, friends. Angry packs of peckery pigs. Good [Music] lord. Hiking here is super challenging.
Not just because the trail is so uneven, but because there are trees here you definitely do not want to touch. Very painful.
Hey, Josh. Yeah, you might want to roll your sleeves down. Why is that? I These are plants that I call tears of sadness.
Does that mean they’re poisonous? Oh, yeah. I mean, you’re going to be itching for weeks. God.
We navigate past the sadness and then move up a slope covered in non-poisonous plants that instead are just trying to strangle us. We swing away for hours, but the foliage is so thick that we’re making slow progress. I mean, there’s not even a hint of a trail in here now. It’s just jungle.
Eventually though, the vines thin out to let us pass, and we emerge into a clearing that causes Brent to stop in his tracks.
Josh, take a look at this valley. Remember I told you that de Valenuela said that Sakalam was in long narrow valley in the northern part surrounded by ridges, right? He even describes a nice breeze which we can feel right now. And we are at the very northern edge of this valley right now.
Yeah. Right. And we’re about how far from the river? Just over a league. So this valley matches that description to a tea. To a tea. So if this is the right location, then somewhere up there underneath all that jungle canopy, there might be a lost city. We might be on the outskirts right now. Okay. Well, now we just got to find it. All right. Let’s All right. Machetes at the ready. Here we go. All right.
Ephraim leads us even further toward the area where he saw evidence of man-made structures. But if Sakbalam is here, it’s well camouflaged. We continue deeper into the humid rainforest and deeper and deeper. And just as I’m about to lay down and expire, I hear words that are music to my ears.
structures. Structure. Hey. Oh, look at this. Oh my word. Wow. Wow. We got stones. Look at this. Yes. Amazing. This is not natural. Look at how squared off that is. Look at how this line extends all the way down there. Yo, give us more right there. Yeah. This is a platform.
We’re on a platform. Yeah. On a platform.
Hey, amazing. This is a platform. To conquer the unforgiving jungle terrain, the Maya had to create level ground.
Stone platforms like this were the foundations for single and multif family homes made of wood and thatch.
Valenuela, when he wrote his report, he actually said that there were about a hundred small house mountains just like this. This might be one of them. Should we try and clear this off? Let’s do it.
Okay, let’s see what else is under here, guys. All [Music] right. These pieces are big. Look at this. Yeah. Yeah.
These shaped stones are all over this area. More stone here. The ground is full of beautiful man-made right angles.
It’s just perfectly square. Look at this. More stone under here. Wow. You could just see stone peeking out everywhere on the jungle floor. There’s a lot more here. Yeah, for sure. The structures that these stones supported for now are a mystery.
But the good news is that where there’s one building platform, there should be [Music] more. We ascend further up the hill at the end of the narrow valley and soon see something that shouldn’t be here.
Hey, stone right there. Yes. Is that man-made? Let’s see.
Look at that. Oh, yeah. These are some cut stones. That’s a cut stone for sure.
Oh, yeah. There’s a natural outcrop down here, but these are definitely cut stones. So, what is this? We’re on a huge slope here. This is a watch tower.
This is a watch tower. Yes. At Sak Balam, watchtowers like this might have ringed the entire city, which may have also helped to keep them hidden. The presence of a defensive structure here may be a sign that we’re close to an important settlement. You can see through the trees. We’ve got a great view of a huge chunk of the valley here.
Right. We’re almost at the edge of this ridge here and you can see everything here. Would there have been multiple watchtowers here? Yes, of course. Uh, the Mayas put fire to communicate with another areas like Lord of the Rings.
Yeah. Right. If somebody sees something in one watchtower, they light a signal.
Somebody else lights a signal and that’s how you alert the perimeter. Yeah. We’re looking for Sak Balam and we found Gondor. That’s right. That’s incredible though. The people of Sakbalam managed to evade the Spanish for over 100 years.
They pulled out all the stops coming up with any defensive measures they could think of. So, this would make sense. All right, let’s keep moving. Come on. All right. Getting better and better.
We trudge further uphill to see if there’s more to find. This looks like more stone here.
Something here. Yeah, for sure.
Something here. Let’s see. Is it natural or I don’t think so. Oh, look at this. This is incredible. This is a tomb. Yes, we found a tomb that may once have held precious Maya offerings or ceremonial jewelry. We’re not the first ones here.
Unfortunately, not. Archaeologists really never are. Right. These are living landscapes. People come here and hunt and pass through and have for hundreds of years. A stone-lined Maya tomb, even a looted one, is a remarkable find and one that leads us to start considering other possibilities.
At this point, there’s a lot of architecture out here. There is no question that there is a community of people out here. No question at all. So, in terms of our sock balam checklist here, we now have a lot going for us, right? Everything we’ve seen so far fits the bill 100%. So, now what? So, now I think it’s time to call in some help.
You’re feeling that good about it? I’m feeling better and better about the fact that this could be the place. And you?
Absolutely. You are? Yes. So I already have a team doing work over in San Christoal. They have a LAR scanner.
There’s also a great archaeologist who specializes in this time period. Some of our guys could bring them out tomorrow.
That’d be amazing. And as for us, what’s our move? We need to find some uh flat ground to come for tonight. Flat ground.
Yeah. I haven’t seen that in a while.
Yeah. Good luck. Good luck.
Somewhere in the waters off Puerto Rico is the wreckage of the Clipper Endeavor.
And while scanning 2,000 ft beneath the surface of the Atlantic is never easy, a raging storm is making tonight’s work especially difficult.
Oh my god, flying fish. The fish just jumped into the boat.
Unbelievable. Hopefully that’s not the only catch of the day. We toss it back and brace for even worse seas, and they don’t disappoint. Waves crash over the bow of our research vessel. Half the crew is throwing up off camera somewhere, and those who aren’t are immobilized by nausea and soaked to the bone. Yet, this experience is another sobering reminder. The Clipper Endeavor’s survivors clutched to a life raft in waves even larger than these while waiting for rescue.
After suffering Poseidon’s wrath for nearly 5 hours, the seas finally abate and the world stops spinning. All right, time to get back into the mix. I head below deck and return to scanning.
Oh, what is that? That That’s not nothing. What is that? They go closer on that. How long is just the bottom piece? About 50 ft.
Width? About 20 ft. It’s in the pocket for the fuselage. This target is long enough and wide enough to be a DC4 fuselage and is casting a sonar shadow that suggests it rises from the ocean floor. We mark it to come back later with the ROV and spend the remainder of the night scanning through the search zone. On the third day, we enter the final lanes of scanning. It starts out like the previous lanes.
[Music] It doesn’t end like them.
Oh, what is that? That looks like it could be the tail of an airplane. What What’s the size of that? Uh, it’s about 35 ft long. Broken into a couple pieces.
Tails how high? 27 ft. How long is just the just the larger piece? Uh, 7 m.
About 25 ft.
Tail. I mean, it’s the one piece that we know for sure separated from the airplane. It should be sitting by itself. Yeah, only one way to know for sure. I would I would love to dive on this. Let’s see what it is. Okay, this is our best hit thus far, and we immediately add it to our list to follow up with the ROV. When we finally complete the search zone a few hours later, we have four solid targets to investigate, including one that resembled the fuselage and another the tail.
I go on deck to welcome the towfish back aboard. Okay, sonar unit is coming up.
We’re going to switch the winch over to the ROV. Get that in the water. Get it down. Check out these targets. Once we verify the data connection, we pair it to our transducer so that we can track its movements to the inch as it descends to the bottom of the Atlantic.
The ROV is released into the water and begins the long dark descent to the possible tail section we discovered in lane 10. ROV is diving. Yeah, we are heading down.
Passing 100 ft. Okay, going down. The descent is slow and careful. Everything below us is an unknown. All right, passing 600. Okay, almost there.
Here we go. Good bottom should be coming out of view pretty soon here. Yeah, we should be coming in any minute now. Here we go.
Okay, we are on the bottom. Wow, look at that.
All right. Well, let’s uh let’s head to the target.
Okay, visibility is not great. Nope.
It’s dark and sandy.
And what’s stamped on that tail livery?
Uh, it’s got the PAAA logo and uh and the registration number, right? N8899.
Seared into your memory. Yes.
It’s a little tough with the topography, too. It’s like these little hills and stuff in front of you. Yeah. It’s just they’re big sand waves.
It seems totally flat when you’re looking at it on that screen going by, but you realize there’s a lot of actual there’s a lot of texture down here, a lot of topography.
[Music] The sonar from our towfish found the target. Now we’re relying on the ROV’s sonar to bring us to it.
Oh, sonar. Was that something? Yeah. No, no. We got something coming up on the sonar here.
Oh. Oh, something there.
What is that?
Is that sand?
Thought it was something solid, but it could be a clay bank.
[Music] Yeah, there it is. Arms going right through. That’s just clay. Yep.
I mean, a big flat surface there reflecting off a sonar. It almost has kind of a curved shape, though. Totally.
Yeah. It’s been sculpted almost like a like, right? Yeah.
But it’s weird. There’s nothing in I mean like just like Yeah.
Heartbreaker. The topography has fooled us into reading a natural sand formation as potentially man-made. So, strike one.
Intriguing target. Not Clipper Endeavor.
No. No. There’s still more out there.
Let’s cut some shutye and we’ll try again tomorrow. Absolutely. All right, Evan. I think we’re going to bring her up. Copy that. Bringing it up.
After hauling up the ROV, we head to our bunks for a few hours of sleep as the boat steams back to our second sonar target. I awake the next morning as the team prepares to redeploy the ROV. And the day starts off with a bang, or should I say a snap.
this way.
Where are we going? Up and over. Up and over. All right.
Something wrong out there. They got a problem out there.
Oh, what happened? Whole tracking pole let go. It broke off. The bracket sheared right there at the attachment.
I’m uh I’m afraid to ask. What does this mean? Uh we don’t have Yeah. Wow. Uh this is basically the transducer for the underwater GPS, right? So, first and foremost, we’ve lost all underwater positioning, which then means we can’t use the ROV. Basically, diving the ROV without this is stumbling around in a dark room with a flashlight, but the room’s the size of Manhattan. We’re done. We’re done. Yeah. This is devastating. After almost a week of scanning and searching with the ROV, we’re unable to continue the investigation or probe any remaining targets.
All right. Well, let’s let’s regroup and get this thing secured to figure out where we go from here. Yep. Russ and ID have spent years using every available piece of evidence to home in on this search zone. And while several targets remain, I’m not sure any of them feel diagnostic enough to be something as large as the Clipper. If you were a betting man, where would you put it now? I was betting it’s in here, right? Do you think maybe it still is? It’s a mystery, Josh. It is a real mystery because having been a part of many searches for Lost Planes, this one feels really findable. Yeah, it it just feels like there’s so much data, you’ve created, I think, such a sensible bounding box here. It just feels like it should be in here. All these voices from 72 years ago are just reaching out and saying this is where it is. Yeah. They want to be found big time. We’re not giving up. We’ll be back.