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Speaker 1: American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews and his expedition team were

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Speaker 1: getting restless. It was May nineteen twenty two, and the

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Speaker 1: men were in Erga, the capital city of Mongolia that

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Speaker 1: would later be renamed Ulamberta. Their goal was a meeting

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Speaker 1: with Mongolia's newly established prime Minister, the Aal kans Kuttak

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Speaker 1: dam dim Bazaar, in the hope of being granted a

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Speaker 1: permit to conduct an archaeological expedition in the heart of

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Speaker 1: the Gobi Desert. It was a fragile time in the

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Speaker 1: newly independent state. Only the year before, Mongolia had undergone

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Speaker 1: a revolution that left it in a precarious position, teetering

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Speaker 1: between the influence of the Soviet Union and Chinese governments,

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Speaker 1: with much in sand security among the new ruling powers

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Speaker 1: over whom they could trust. There had even been reports

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Speaker 1: that white men found in the region were being captured

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Speaker 1: and horribly tortured. One rumor told of a man being

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Speaker 1: skinned alive. So Andrews could have been forgiven for feeling

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Speaker 1: a little nervous when he finally received an invitation to

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Speaker 1: speak with Prime Minister dam dim Bazar. After making his

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Speaker 1: way to the Mongolian Parliament. It was ushered into a

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Speaker 1: back room, where he found Premier dam Dimbazar and a

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Speaker 1: group of his officials sitting together in somber silence. Some

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Speaker 1: pleasantries were exchanged before Andrews tentatively began his pitch for

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Speaker 1: the permits when dam Dimbazar held up his hand for

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Speaker 1: Andrews to stop. As the Prime Minister explained to Andrew's interpreter,

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Speaker 1: he was more than happy to grant Andrews's permission to

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Speaker 1: conduct his expedition, but only if he did something for

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Speaker 1: him in return, of course, said Andrews in reply, what

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Speaker 1: do you need? And so damn Dimbazar made his request

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Speaker 1: that while Andrews and his team were out searching for

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Speaker 1: ancient artifacts in the desert, they also spend some time

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Speaker 1: trying to capture something for him. For centuries, people of

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Speaker 1: the Gobi Desert had told extraordinary tales of a strange

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Speaker 1: creature that was said to be headless, legless, about two

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Speaker 1: to five feet long, and resemble approximately the intestines of

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Speaker 1: a cow. It was also rumored to spit a corrosive

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Speaker 1: yellow saliva and generate blasts of electricity so strong they

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Speaker 1: could kill a full grown camel. Some said it was

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Speaker 1: so poisonous that merely to touch it meant instant death.

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Speaker 1: The creature reputed to live in the most desolate parts

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Speaker 1: of the Gobi Desert, and they called it Allegrei or Hi, or,

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Speaker 1: as it came to be known in English, the Mongolian

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Speaker 1: death worm. You're listening to unexplained, and I'm Richard McLain Smith.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back. If ever there was a man on which

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Speaker 1: to model the movie character Indiana Jones, it was Roy

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Speaker 1: Chapman Andrews born in eighteen eighty. The American explorer, adventurer,

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Speaker 1: and naturalist would eventually become the director of the American

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Speaker 1: Museum of Natural History, But in the nineteen twenties, Andrews

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Speaker 1: was on a quest to find the earliest evidence of

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Speaker 1: human life. Andrews was a proponent of the out of as,

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Speaker 1: the theory of humanity's origins, in which it's believed the

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Speaker 1: earliest humans emerged from the present day region of Asia

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Speaker 1: as opposed to Africa. Neither the Mongolian Prime Minister nor

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Speaker 1: any of his officials had ever seen the so called

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Speaker 1: Intestine worm for themselves, but as Andrews listened to them,

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Speaker 1: conferring with his interpreter, he could tell from the look

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Speaker 1: on their faces that they all very much believed it existed.

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Speaker 1: Damn Dim Bazaar, for one, said he knew a man

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Speaker 1: who had seen it, while a cabinet minister reported that

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Speaker 1: a cousin of his late wife had also witnessed the

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Speaker 1: strange creature. The assembled dignitaries had practical instructions for Andrews.

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Speaker 1: When he found one of the deadly worms, he must

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Speaker 1: be sure to handle it with long steel forceps they

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Speaker 1: set so as not to come into direct contact with

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Speaker 1: the creature. They also advised that he should wear dark

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Speaker 1: glasses to neutralize the disastrous effects of even looking at

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Speaker 1: such a poisonous creature. For six years, from nineteen twenty

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Speaker 1: two to nineteen twenty eight, Andrews led several ventures known

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Speaker 1: as the Central Asiatic Expeditions to search for the earliest

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Speaker 1: human remains in Mongolia and the Gobi Desert. During these expeditions,

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Speaker 1: Andrews and his team found many previously unknown fossil specimens,

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Speaker 1: including the first scientifically recognized dinosaur eggs, But what they

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Speaker 1: didn't find was a Mongolian death worm or any evidence

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Speaker 1: that they even existed. However, writing in his nineteen thirty

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Speaker 1: two book The New Conquest of Central Asia, Andrews conceded

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Speaker 1: that if the faith in its existence was not so

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Speaker 1: strong and widespread among the Mongolians, and if everyone did

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Speaker 1: not describe the animal exactly the same way, I would

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Speaker 1: believe it to be an idle myth. It would be

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Speaker 1: another ten years or so before stories of the death

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Speaker 1: worm emerged once more from out of the Gobi Desert,

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Speaker 1: when sometime in the nineteen forties, Russian paleontologist Ivan Yefromov

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Speaker 1: heard some locals talking about it while he was there

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Speaker 1: looking for fossils of his own. Yefromov dabbled in writing

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Speaker 1: science fiction, and the Mongol tales he heard inspired him to

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Speaker 1: write a story called Olgoi Korkoy, a Russian version of

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Speaker 1: the worm's Mongolian name. In this fictional tale, his worms

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Speaker 1: could grow around five feet long and had the power

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Speaker 1: to kill people from a distance. It was just a

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Speaker 1: short story, but it was a harbinger of more to come,

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Speaker 1: because giant, lethal desert worms were destined to loom large

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Speaker 1: in science fiction over the coming decades. In the late

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, an emerging author by the name of Frank

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Speaker 1: Herbert traveled to Florence, Oregon, in the United States and

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Speaker 1: visited the Oregon Dunes, where the largest expanse of coastal

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Speaker 1: sand dunes in North America rise to heights of up

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Speaker 1: to five hundred feet. There, Herbert's interest in deserts was sparked,

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Speaker 1: and in a letter to his literary agent, he wrote

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Speaker 1: that he was impressed by the idea of how moving

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Speaker 1: junes might be able to swallow whole cities, lakes, rivers,

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Speaker 1: and highways. He went on to write what became the

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Speaker 1: award winning epic series June, one of the world's best

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Speaker 1: selling science fiction novels. The saga revolves largely around the

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Speaker 1: uncompromisingly arid planet Oracus, which is inhabited by enormous deadly worms.

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Speaker 1: Another version of deadly fast tunneling desert worms appeared in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety comedy horror film Tremours. Unlike the deathly

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Speaker 1: serious June series set on alien worlds, Tremours, with its

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Speaker 1: tongue in cheek black humor, was set in the Nevada Desert.

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Speaker 1: The idea for the story came to the writers S. S.

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Speaker 1: Wilson and Brent Maddock while they were producing a series

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Speaker 1: of educational safety videos for the US Navy. Climbing a

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Speaker 1: large desert boulder to get some footage from a high

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Speaker 1: vantage point near one of the desert naval bases, they

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Speaker 1: asked each other, what if there was something that wouldn't

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Speaker 1: let them leave the rock? They were on something like

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Speaker 1: a shark, they thought, but on land. Like Frank Herbert,

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Speaker 1: the writers of Tremors envisaged monstrous tunneling worms, highly sensitive

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Speaker 1: to the slightest vibration and hungry for human flesh. Explanations

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Speaker 1: of what inspired the creation of the monster worms have

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Speaker 1: included whales, dragons, and even giant nematodes. What's not recorded

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Speaker 1: is whether Herbert or the Tremor's team had ever come

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Speaker 1: across stories of the Mongolian death worm, but one young

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Speaker 1: Czechoslovakian man called Ivan mccurla most certainly had born in

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Speaker 1: Bohemia in nineteen forty three in what is now part

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Speaker 1: of present day Czech Republic. Mccurlo had read all about

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Speaker 1: the accounts of Broyd Chapman Andrews, and even Yefhramov's fictional

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Speaker 1: tale about the supposedly deadly Mongolian worms. It sparked a

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Speaker 1: childhood fascination with legendary creatures that never left him. At

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Speaker 1: the age of sixteen, mcurla moved to Prague, where he

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Speaker 1: studied mechanical engineering and zoology and electronics before deciding to

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Speaker 1: pursue his longtime hobby of cryptozoology more seriously. Ivan mccurla

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Speaker 1: organized expeditions to unsuccessfully search for the Lockness Monster, the

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Speaker 1: Tasmanian tiger, and the so called elephant bird of Madagascar,

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Speaker 1: and authored numerous books on cryptozoology, but what he became

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Speaker 1: best known for was his passionate quest to find the

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Speaker 1: Mongolian death worm. In one nineteen eighty seven book about

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Speaker 1: the land and legends of the Gobi Desert, macurla described

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Speaker 1: how the creature was said to live near water sources

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Speaker 1: in the western or southern part of the country, only

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Speaker 1: coming to the surface after rainfall, and that when it

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Speaker 1: travels under ground, it creates waves of sand on the

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Speaker 1: surface by which it can be detected. At the time,

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Speaker 1: macurla was unable to see this for himself due to

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Speaker 1: the Communist era travel restrictions in both Czechoslovakia and Mongolia.

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Speaker 1: That all changed one November in nineteen eighty nine, when

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Speaker 1: the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, which had ruled unopposed for forty years,

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Speaker 1: were suddenly swept aside. Now free to travel, Macurla, along

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Speaker 1: with photographer friend Eerie Scubian, and a doctor called YadA Procopec,

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Speaker 1: made their fur expedition to the Gobi Desert the following year.

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Speaker 1: It was a difficult trip. There were still official restrictions

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Speaker 1: on travel within the country and practical difficulties getting to

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Speaker 1: the remote parts of the Gobi Desert that the worm

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Speaker 1: was said to inhabit. Despite the severe lack of transport infrastructure,

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Speaker 1: with no buses and barely any roads, macurl eventually managed

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Speaker 1: to convince someone to drive them into the southern Gobi.

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Speaker 1: Once there, his team began collating eyewitness accounts. One after another.

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Speaker 1: Locals gave eerily similar accounts of a creature they described

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Speaker 1: as looking like a cow's intestine filled with blood, usually

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Speaker 1: about half a meter in length and as thick as

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Speaker 1: an average male's thigh. Another strange but consistently described trait

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Speaker 1: was how the creature had no eyes, nostrils, or mouth,

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Speaker 1: making it difficult to tell its head from its tail.

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Speaker 1: It was also reported to move strangely unlike ordinary worms

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Speaker 1: by rolling or squirming sideways. One night, after befriending a

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Speaker 1: couple of Mongolian nomads after a few bottles of vodka,

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Speaker 1: the Czech team were treated to more unsettling details about

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Speaker 1: the alleged worm. The nomad said that it not only

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Speaker 1: spits an acid, corroding anything it touches, but that this

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Speaker 1: substance turns everything yellow. The color yellow they set attracted

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Speaker 1: more worms. Once, they claimed, a young boy was playing

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Speaker 1: outside with a yellow boar when there was a sudden

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Speaker 1: disturbance in the sand around him. Moments later, a giant

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Speaker 1: word broke through the surface and stopped to regard the boy.

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Speaker 1: Untroubled by its appearance, the boy was said to have

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Speaker 1: been killed instantly when he tried to touch it. When

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Speaker 1: the parents allegedly came across the tragic scene, they found

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Speaker 1: a disturbingly large trail in the sand that led away

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Speaker 1: from their sun. In anger, they followed the trail until

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Speaker 1: they too came across the worm, only to both then

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Speaker 1: also be killed by it. One elderly woman local to

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Speaker 1: the same area explained that when the worm wanted to

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Speaker 1: kill someone, it would move half its length out of

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Speaker 1: the sand and inflate a bubble over its exposed body,

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Speaker 1: from which it squirted its deadly poison. Sadly for Ivan mccurla,

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Speaker 1: he and his team failed to find a death worm

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Speaker 1: on their expedition. Three years later, however, maccurla returned to

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Speaker 1: Mongolia for a follow up trip. Over the course of

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Speaker 1: eight weeks, he and his team used explosives to blast

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Speaker 1: holes in the desert to try and scare the worms

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Speaker 1: out of hiding, but still they found nothing. Then, on

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Speaker 1: a visit to a Buddhist monastery, things got a little scary.

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Speaker 1: That afternoon, maccurla was approached by a monk who knew

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Speaker 1: all about his expedition. As they sat in the quiet temple,

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Speaker 1: the hot air thick with the smell of incense, the

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Speaker 1: monk told mccurla that the Algoy Korkoy was a creature

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Speaker 1: of supernatural evil and that he was endangering his life

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Speaker 1: searching for it. That night, as mccurla slept night mayish

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Speaker 1: images of the giant worm flashed through his unconscious mind.

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Speaker 1: He woke up with a start to find his back

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Speaker 1: covered in blood filled boils procopec. The expedition's doctor became

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Speaker 1: alarmed when Over the next few days, even more hemotoments

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Speaker 1: appeared on mccurler's body, and he began to show signs

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Speaker 1: of heart failure. This incident was captured in a TV

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Speaker 1: documentary the teammate called The Sand Monster Mystery, which aired

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Speaker 1: on Czech television in nineteen ninety three. Thankfully, mccurla went

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Speaker 1: on to make a full recovery and undaunted, in the

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Speaker 1: summer of two thousand and four, he launched what would

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Speaker 1: be his third and final expedition to find the Mongolian

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Speaker 1: death worm. This time he enlisted the help of Pilot. Together,

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Speaker 1: they filmed great swathes of the goby's vast expanses via

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Speaker 1: a video camera attached to an aircraft, as well as

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Speaker 1: using night vision goggles to search in the dark, but

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Speaker 1: yet again, the team failed to find any evidence of

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Speaker 1: the worm. In an interview on Prague TV after this final,

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Speaker 1: unsuccessful expedition, mccurla seemed resigned to never finding the creature.

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Speaker 1: He said that for many years he believed the creature

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Speaker 1: could be a zoological reality, but after his most recent experiences,

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Speaker 1: he began to suspect that it might in fact be

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Speaker 1: some kind of psychological phenomenon. Instead a hallucination, perhaps brought

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Speaker 1: on by the extreme heat of the Gobi Desert. The

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Speaker 1: following year of two thousand and five, it was time

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Speaker 1: for a British team to have a crack at finding

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Speaker 1: the worm. As the director of the Center for Forty

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Speaker 1: in Zoology or c f SAID, a cryptozoological club based

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Speaker 1: in Exeter in the southwest of England, Richard Freeman was

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Speaker 1: no stranger to quests for mysterious creatures. A lifelong fan

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Speaker 1: of doctor who he'd been a zookeeper and head of

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Speaker 1: reptiles at a major UK zoo for a while before

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Speaker 1: also being drawn into the world of crypto zoology, Freeman

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Speaker 1: relished the search of animals that mainstream biologists believed were

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Speaker 1: legendary more extinct. His past expeditions included hunts for the

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Speaker 1: Cupa cabra, a blood drinking nocturnal creature from Puerto Rico,

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Speaker 1: and the Orang pendeck, a supposed ape man said to

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Speaker 1: live in unexplored valleys in Sa Martra. Now he had

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Speaker 1: assembled a small team of fellow c f SAID members

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Speaker 1: to go to Mongolia with him. Arriving in Mongolia's capital, Ulambatar,

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Speaker 1: the team headed south towards a remote area of the

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Speaker 1: Gobi Desert region covering over eight thousand square miles called Noyan,

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Speaker 1: where many reported sightings of the death worms had come from.

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Speaker 1: As they drove, Freeman looked out at the jeep's window,

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Speaker 1: transfixed vast fields of sand dunes merged with gravel plains

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Speaker 1: that seemed to stretch into infinity, appearing like giant mirrors.

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Speaker 1: Due to being coated with the mineral mica. The surrounding

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Speaker 1: cliffs were so red they seemed to be on fire.

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Speaker 1: As the party traveled deep into the south, they met

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Speaker 1: and interviewed around twenty four apparent eyewitnesses, who all had

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Speaker 1: stories of seeing the giant death worm. As both explorers

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Speaker 1: Chapman and mccurlor had noted before them, descriptions of the

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Speaker 1: worm were remarkably consistent. Almost all the witnesses claimed to

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Speaker 1: have seen it, lying on the ground, motionless, being about

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Speaker 1: two feet long and as thick as an arm, with

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Speaker 1: scaly skin. All believed it to be extremely poisonous. One

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Speaker 1: elderly man named Luvsandorsch claimed to have seen it back

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two. It was traveling across the desert

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Speaker 1: one day when he saw what he first thought was

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Speaker 1: a human arm lying on top of the sand. It

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Speaker 1: was only when he got closer that he noticed it

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Speaker 1: was moving. It was a large wormlike creature, he said,

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Speaker 1: that kept changing colour to match its surroundings. He said

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Speaker 1: they were thought to live underground in soft sand, and

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Speaker 1: that they were able to generate an electrical charge, but

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Speaker 1: they weren't around as much as they used to be.

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Speaker 1: A woman named Sukh took Freeman's team to a location

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Speaker 1: near the border with China and a forest of sacks,

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Speaker 1: all a strange shrubby drought tolerant plant which grows in thickets.

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Speaker 1: It was there she said that she supposedly saw a

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Speaker 1: brownish gray worm about half a meter in length writhing

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Speaker 1: within the plants, before disappearing among the roots of a tree.

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Speaker 1: The team found numerous burrows in the area, assumed to

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Speaker 1: be made by rodents, which they surmised might be an

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Speaker 1: excellent food source for the death worms. But no sooner

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Speaker 1: had they begun to set traps to catch the rodents

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Speaker 1: and worms, an enormous sandstorm rose up in the distance

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Speaker 1: that quickly descended, shredding their tents to confetti and forcing

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Speaker 1: them to leave the area. After moving on from the

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Speaker 1: forest of Saxel, Freeman's expedition met with an old ex

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Speaker 1: army colonel named Hervu, who still lived near an abandoned

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Speaker 1: military base called ovoutin Autreat years ago when he was

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Speaker 1: a soldier. Hervu set out on a motorbike patrol just

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Speaker 1: as the desert sun was beginning to set. At some point,

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Speaker 1: he apparently came upon what he thought was a busted

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Speaker 1: old tire on the ground, all coiled up, but as

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Speaker 1: he got closer, he realized it wasn't a tire at all,

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Speaker 1: but some kind of weird worm like creature. For half

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Speaker 1: an hour, Urzu watched it as it lay there, unmoving,

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Speaker 1: the light glinting off its scaly skin, still wet from

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Speaker 1: recent rain. Eventually, he rushed off to get his camera,

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Speaker 1: only to find on his return that the creature had gone.

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Speaker 1: That night, the ex colonel took Freeman and his team

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Speaker 1: to the site of the encounter, where they camped, laying

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Speaker 1: out rodent traps and laboriously digging holes in the dirt.

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Speaker 1: They sank bucket traps, hoping to lure in a death worm,

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Speaker 1: but the traps caught nothing. Again, the team moved on,

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Speaker 1: this time to a nearby oasis rich in wildlife, where

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Speaker 1: they met with a woman named could Youuenger. Back in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, could Youuenger was out walking with her

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Speaker 1: grandfather when he called her over to look at something again.

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Speaker 1: It was a brownish forty centimeter long wormlike creature with

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Speaker 1: no discernible head or tail. She didn't remember much else

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Speaker 1: about it, other than that she was very frightened of it.

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Speaker 1: Once again, Freeman's team set out bucket traps to try

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Speaker 1: and catch the creature, but as they started digging holes

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Speaker 1: around the oasis, Freeman gazed up to see a small

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Speaker 1: dust devil beginning to grow about a mile away. His

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Speaker 1: interest turned to consternation as the small dusty vortex rapidly

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Speaker 1: grew larger, then began barreling directly toward them. When it hit,

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Speaker 1: the fierce winds and blowing dust engulfed the entire camp,

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Speaker 1: smashing and scattering everything in their path. The wind was

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Speaker 1: so strong that at one point Freeman saw one of

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Speaker 1: their Mongolian drivers flying past him, horizontally hanging on to

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Speaker 1: a billowing tent as it was swept out into the desert.

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Speaker 1: Thinking back to Ivan mccurlur's hunch, that perhaps the worms

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Speaker 1: were in fact some kind of psychological phenomenon. It was

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Speaker 1: as if something didn't want them to discover the truth.

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Speaker 1: After a month in Mongolia, the Center for Fortian Zoology

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Speaker 1: expedition was over, and there was no specimen or even

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Speaker 1: sighting of a death worm to show for their efforts. However,

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Speaker 1: Richard Freeman believed that the trip had been good for

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Speaker 1: one thing, namely, that it confirmed his suspicions about the

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Speaker 1: creature's true identity. I don't think it's a worm at all,

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Speaker 1: he said later. Instead, he had come to believe it

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Speaker 1: was in fact some kind of limbless burrowing reptile, either

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Speaker 1: a giant member of an already known group of reptiles,

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Speaker 1: or a worm lizard. Worm lizards are also known as Amphisbinians,

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Speaker 1: named after Anfisbinia, a mythical Greek serpent with a second

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Speaker 1: head on its tail. They're one of the most mysterious

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Speaker 1: and poorly studied groups of reptiles, neither snakes nor lizards.

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Speaker 1: Most known species of this primitive group are found in

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Speaker 1: Africa and South America, but they also occur in the Caribbean, Mexico,

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Speaker 1: the Middle East, and even Florida. With tails that resemble

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Speaker 1: their heads. Worm lizards range anywhere from ten to seventy

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Speaker 1: centimeters long and have rings of scales that wrap around

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Speaker 1: their bodies meat eating predators. They search for prey underground burrow,

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Speaker 1: going through soil and loose sand, with strong, reinforced skulls

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Speaker 1: and muscular bodies. Specimens of worm lizards can be found

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Speaker 1: in museums all over the world, including the British Museum

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Speaker 1: of Natural History, eerily suspended in large jars of alcohol

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Speaker 1: to preserve them. ID cards list them as coming from

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Speaker 1: places like Guyana, the West Indies and Buenos Aires, but

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Speaker 1: specimens in museums are not always what they appear to be.

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Speaker 1: For nearly two hundred years, a mysterious giant gecko sat

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Speaker 1: in a storage area at the Natural History Museum of

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Speaker 1: Marseilles in France. No one knew anything about it, although

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Speaker 1: the style of taxidermy pointed to it having been collected

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Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties. Larger than any gecko known today,

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Speaker 1: its main body was well ow for a foot long,

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Speaker 1: while its tail was another two feet long. On top

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Speaker 1: of that, it had always been thought to come from

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Speaker 1: New Zealand, but in twenty twenty three. Professor Matthew Heineke,

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Speaker 1: a herpetologist a specialist in reptiles and amphibians, applied the

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Speaker 1: latest DNA analysis to a sample taken from the specimen's

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Speaker 1: FEMA and compared the results with a data set of

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Speaker 1: the entire gecko family tree. It turned out that the

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Speaker 1: giant gecko was not from New Zealand at all, but

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Speaker 1: instead closely related to geckos found today in New Caledonia,

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Speaker 1: an island in the southwest Pacific Ocean, a good seven

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles east of New Zealand. Could it

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Speaker 1: be that the Mongolian death worm has, in actuality already

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Speaker 1: been found, Perhaps decades ago Russian herpetologists, out hunting for

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Speaker 1: snakes in the Gobi Desert unwittingly caught one and added

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Speaker 1: it obliviously to their reptile collections. Is it out there now,

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Speaker 1: lurking suspended in alcohol in a dusty jar, somewhere unidentified

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Speaker 1: and long forgotten in the dark, cavernous basement of some

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Speaker 1: former Soviet era museum. That question, and the true identity

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Speaker 1: of the Mongolian death worm, for the time being at least,

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Speaker 1: remains unexplained. This episode was written by Diane Hope and

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Speaker 1: produced by me Richard McLean Smith. Diane is an audio

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Speaker 1: producer and sound recordiced in her own right. You can

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Speaker 1: find out more about her work at Dianhope dot com

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Speaker 1: and on Instagram at in the sound Field. Unexplained as

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Speaker 1: an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain Smith.

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Speaker 1: All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are

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Speaker 1: also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book

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Speaker 1: and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can

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Speaker 1: purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.

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00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:25,480
Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get

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Speaker 1: your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with

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Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on

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00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own

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Speaker 1: you'd like to share. You can find out more at

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Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com and reach us online through Twitter

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