Speaker 1: American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews and his expedition team were
Speaker 1: getting restless. It was May nineteen twenty two, and the
Speaker 1: men were in Erga, the capital city of Mongolia that
Speaker 1: would later be renamed Ulamberta. Their goal was a meeting
Speaker 1: with Mongolia's newly established prime Minister, the Aal kans Kuttak
Speaker 1: dam dim Bazaar, in the hope of being granted a
Speaker 1: permit to conduct an archaeological expedition in the heart of
Speaker 1: the Gobi Desert. It was a fragile time in the
Speaker 1: newly independent state. Only the year before, Mongolia had undergone
Speaker 1: a revolution that left it in a precarious position, teetering
Speaker 1: between the influence of the Soviet Union and Chinese governments,
Speaker 1: with much in sand security among the new ruling powers
Speaker 1: over whom they could trust. There had even been reports
Speaker 1: that white men found in the region were being captured
Speaker 1: and horribly tortured. One rumor told of a man being
Speaker 1: skinned alive. So Andrews could have been forgiven for feeling
Speaker 1: a little nervous when he finally received an invitation to
Speaker 1: speak with Prime Minister dam dim Bazar. After making his
Speaker 1: way to the Mongolian Parliament. It was ushered into a
Speaker 1: back room, where he found Premier dam Dimbazar and a
Speaker 1: group of his officials sitting together in somber silence. Some
Speaker 1: pleasantries were exchanged before Andrews tentatively began his pitch for
Speaker 1: the permits when dam Dimbazar held up his hand for
Speaker 1: Andrews to stop. As the Prime Minister explained to Andrew's interpreter,
Speaker 1: he was more than happy to grant Andrews's permission to
Speaker 1: conduct his expedition, but only if he did something for
Speaker 1: him in return, of course, said Andrews in reply, what
Speaker 1: do you need? And so damn Dimbazar made his request
Speaker 1: that while Andrews and his team were out searching for
Speaker 1: ancient artifacts in the desert, they also spend some time
Speaker 1: trying to capture something for him. For centuries, people of
Speaker 1: the Gobi Desert had told extraordinary tales of a strange
Speaker 1: creature that was said to be headless, legless, about two
Speaker 1: to five feet long, and resemble approximately the intestines of
Speaker 1: a cow. It was also rumored to spit a corrosive
Speaker 1: yellow saliva and generate blasts of electricity so strong they
Speaker 1: could kill a full grown camel. Some said it was
Speaker 1: so poisonous that merely to touch it meant instant death.
Speaker 1: The creature reputed to live in the most desolate parts
Speaker 1: of the Gobi Desert, and they called it Allegrei or Hi, or,
Speaker 1: as it came to be known in English, the Mongolian
Speaker 1: death worm. You're listening to unexplained, and I'm Richard McLain Smith.
Speaker 1: Welcome back. If ever there was a man on which
Speaker 1: to model the movie character Indiana Jones, it was Roy
Speaker 1: Chapman Andrews born in eighteen eighty. The American explorer, adventurer,
Speaker 1: and naturalist would eventually become the director of the American
Speaker 1: Museum of Natural History, But in the nineteen twenties, Andrews
Speaker 1: was on a quest to find the earliest evidence of
Speaker 1: human life. Andrews was a proponent of the out of as,
Speaker 1: the theory of humanity's origins, in which it's believed the
Speaker 1: earliest humans emerged from the present day region of Asia
Speaker 1: as opposed to Africa. Neither the Mongolian Prime Minister nor
Speaker 1: any of his officials had ever seen the so called
Speaker 1: Intestine worm for themselves, but as Andrews listened to them,
Speaker 1: conferring with his interpreter, he could tell from the look
Speaker 1: on their faces that they all very much believed it existed.
Speaker 1: Damn Dim Bazaar, for one, said he knew a man
Speaker 1: who had seen it, while a cabinet minister reported that
Speaker 1: a cousin of his late wife had also witnessed the
Speaker 1: strange creature. The assembled dignitaries had practical instructions for Andrews.
Speaker 1: When he found one of the deadly worms, he must
Speaker 1: be sure to handle it with long steel forceps they
Speaker 1: set so as not to come into direct contact with
Speaker 1: the creature. They also advised that he should wear dark
Speaker 1: glasses to neutralize the disastrous effects of even looking at
Speaker 1: such a poisonous creature. For six years, from nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: two to nineteen twenty eight, Andrews led several ventures known
Speaker 1: as the Central Asiatic Expeditions to search for the earliest
Speaker 1: human remains in Mongolia and the Gobi Desert. During these expeditions,
Speaker 1: Andrews and his team found many previously unknown fossil specimens,
Speaker 1: including the first scientifically recognized dinosaur eggs, But what they
Speaker 1: didn't find was a Mongolian death worm or any evidence
Speaker 1: that they even existed. However, writing in his nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: two book The New Conquest of Central Asia, Andrews conceded
Speaker 1: that if the faith in its existence was not so
Speaker 1: strong and widespread among the Mongolians, and if everyone did
Speaker 1: not describe the animal exactly the same way, I would
Speaker 1: believe it to be an idle myth. It would be
Speaker 1: another ten years or so before stories of the death
Speaker 1: worm emerged once more from out of the Gobi Desert,
Speaker 1: when sometime in the nineteen forties, Russian paleontologist Ivan Yefromov
Speaker 1: heard some locals talking about it while he was there
Speaker 1: looking for fossils of his own. Yefromov dabbled in writing
Speaker 1: science fiction, and the Mongol tales he heard inspired him to
Speaker 1: write a story called Olgoi Korkoy, a Russian version of
Speaker 1: the worm's Mongolian name. In this fictional tale, his worms
Speaker 1: could grow around five feet long and had the power
Speaker 1: to kill people from a distance. It was just a
Speaker 1: short story, but it was a harbinger of more to come,
Speaker 1: because giant, lethal desert worms were destined to loom large
Speaker 1: in science fiction over the coming decades. In the late
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, an emerging author by the name of Frank
Speaker 1: Herbert traveled to Florence, Oregon, in the United States and
Speaker 1: visited the Oregon Dunes, where the largest expanse of coastal
Speaker 1: sand dunes in North America rise to heights of up
Speaker 1: to five hundred feet. There, Herbert's interest in deserts was sparked,
Speaker 1: and in a letter to his literary agent, he wrote
Speaker 1: that he was impressed by the idea of how moving
Speaker 1: junes might be able to swallow whole cities, lakes, rivers,
Speaker 1: and highways. He went on to write what became the
Speaker 1: award winning epic series June, one of the world's best
Speaker 1: selling science fiction novels. The saga revolves largely around the
Speaker 1: uncompromisingly arid planet Oracus, which is inhabited by enormous deadly worms.
Speaker 1: Another version of deadly fast tunneling desert worms appeared in
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety comedy horror film Tremours. Unlike the deathly
Speaker 1: serious June series set on alien worlds, Tremours, with its
Speaker 1: tongue in cheek black humor, was set in the Nevada Desert.
Speaker 1: The idea for the story came to the writers S. S.
Speaker 1: Wilson and Brent Maddock while they were producing a series
Speaker 1: of educational safety videos for the US Navy. Climbing a
Speaker 1: large desert boulder to get some footage from a high
Speaker 1: vantage point near one of the desert naval bases, they
Speaker 1: asked each other, what if there was something that wouldn't
Speaker 1: let them leave the rock? They were on something like
Speaker 1: a shark, they thought, but on land. Like Frank Herbert,
Speaker 1: the writers of Tremors envisaged monstrous tunneling worms, highly sensitive
Speaker 1: to the slightest vibration and hungry for human flesh. Explanations
Speaker 1: of what inspired the creation of the monster worms have
Speaker 1: included whales, dragons, and even giant nematodes. What's not recorded
Speaker 1: is whether Herbert or the Tremor's team had ever come
Speaker 1: across stories of the Mongolian death worm, but one young
Speaker 1: Czechoslovakian man called Ivan mccurla most certainly had born in
Speaker 1: Bohemia in nineteen forty three in what is now part
Speaker 1: of present day Czech Republic. Mccurlo had read all about
Speaker 1: the accounts of Broyd Chapman Andrews, and even Yefhramov's fictional
Speaker 1: tale about the supposedly deadly Mongolian worms. It sparked a
Speaker 1: childhood fascination with legendary creatures that never left him. At
Speaker 1: the age of sixteen, mcurla moved to Prague, where he
Speaker 1: studied mechanical engineering and zoology and electronics before deciding to
Speaker 1: pursue his longtime hobby of cryptozoology more seriously. Ivan mccurla
Speaker 1: organized expeditions to unsuccessfully search for the Lockness Monster, the
Speaker 1: Tasmanian tiger, and the so called elephant bird of Madagascar,
Speaker 1: and authored numerous books on cryptozoology, but what he became
Speaker 1: best known for was his passionate quest to find the
Speaker 1: Mongolian death worm. In one nineteen eighty seven book about
Speaker 1: the land and legends of the Gobi Desert, macurla described
Speaker 1: how the creature was said to live near water sources
Speaker 1: in the western or southern part of the country, only
Speaker 1: coming to the surface after rainfall, and that when it
Speaker 1: travels under ground, it creates waves of sand on the
Speaker 1: surface by which it can be detected. At the time,
Speaker 1: macurla was unable to see this for himself due to
Speaker 1: the Communist era travel restrictions in both Czechoslovakia and Mongolia.
Speaker 1: That all changed one November in nineteen eighty nine, when
Speaker 1: the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, which had ruled unopposed for forty years,
Speaker 1: were suddenly swept aside. Now free to travel, Macurla, along
Speaker 1: with photographer friend Eerie Scubian, and a doctor called YadA Procopec,
Speaker 1: made their fur expedition to the Gobi Desert the following year.
Speaker 1: It was a difficult trip. There were still official restrictions
Speaker 1: on travel within the country and practical difficulties getting to
Speaker 1: the remote parts of the Gobi Desert that the worm
Speaker 1: was said to inhabit. Despite the severe lack of transport infrastructure,
Speaker 1: with no buses and barely any roads, macurl eventually managed
Speaker 1: to convince someone to drive them into the southern Gobi.
Speaker 1: Once there, his team began collating eyewitness accounts. One after another.
Speaker 1: Locals gave eerily similar accounts of a creature they described
Speaker 1: as looking like a cow's intestine filled with blood, usually
Speaker 1: about half a meter in length and as thick as
Speaker 1: an average male's thigh. Another strange but consistently described trait
Speaker 1: was how the creature had no eyes, nostrils, or mouth,
Speaker 1: making it difficult to tell its head from its tail.
Speaker 1: It was also reported to move strangely unlike ordinary worms
Speaker 1: by rolling or squirming sideways. One night, after befriending a
Speaker 1: couple of Mongolian nomads after a few bottles of vodka,
Speaker 1: the Czech team were treated to more unsettling details about
Speaker 1: the alleged worm. The nomad said that it not only
Speaker 1: spits an acid, corroding anything it touches, but that this
Speaker 1: substance turns everything yellow. The color yellow they set attracted
Speaker 1: more worms. Once, they claimed, a young boy was playing
Speaker 1: outside with a yellow boar when there was a sudden
Speaker 1: disturbance in the sand around him. Moments later, a giant
Speaker 1: word broke through the surface and stopped to regard the boy.
Speaker 1: Untroubled by its appearance, the boy was said to have
Speaker 1: been killed instantly when he tried to touch it. When
Speaker 1: the parents allegedly came across the tragic scene, they found
Speaker 1: a disturbingly large trail in the sand that led away
Speaker 1: from their sun. In anger, they followed the trail until
Speaker 1: they too came across the worm, only to both then
Speaker 1: also be killed by it. One elderly woman local to
Speaker 1: the same area explained that when the worm wanted to
Speaker 1: kill someone, it would move half its length out of
Speaker 1: the sand and inflate a bubble over its exposed body,
Speaker 1: from which it squirted its deadly poison. Sadly for Ivan mccurla,
Speaker 1: he and his team failed to find a death worm
Speaker 1: on their expedition. Three years later, however, maccurla returned to
Speaker 1: Mongolia for a follow up trip. Over the course of
Speaker 1: eight weeks, he and his team used explosives to blast
Speaker 1: holes in the desert to try and scare the worms
Speaker 1: out of hiding, but still they found nothing. Then, on
Speaker 1: a visit to a Buddhist monastery, things got a little scary.
Speaker 1: That afternoon, maccurla was approached by a monk who knew
Speaker 1: all about his expedition. As they sat in the quiet temple,
Speaker 1: the hot air thick with the smell of incense, the
Speaker 1: monk told mccurla that the Algoy Korkoy was a creature
Speaker 1: of supernatural evil and that he was endangering his life
Speaker 1: searching for it. That night, as mccurla slept night mayish
Speaker 1: images of the giant worm flashed through his unconscious mind.
Speaker 1: He woke up with a start to find his back
Speaker 1: covered in blood filled boils procopec. The expedition's doctor became
Speaker 1: alarmed when Over the next few days, even more hemotoments
Speaker 1: appeared on mccurler's body, and he began to show signs
Speaker 1: of heart failure. This incident was captured in a TV
Speaker 1: documentary the teammate called The Sand Monster Mystery, which aired
Speaker 1: on Czech television in nineteen ninety three. Thankfully, mccurla went
Speaker 1: on to make a full recovery and undaunted, in the
Speaker 1: summer of two thousand and four, he launched what would
Speaker 1: be his third and final expedition to find the Mongolian
Speaker 1: death worm. This time he enlisted the help of Pilot. Together,
Speaker 1: they filmed great swathes of the goby's vast expanses via
Speaker 1: a video camera attached to an aircraft, as well as
Speaker 1: using night vision goggles to search in the dark, but
Speaker 1: yet again, the team failed to find any evidence of
Speaker 1: the worm. In an interview on Prague TV after this final,
Speaker 1: unsuccessful expedition, mccurla seemed resigned to never finding the creature.
Speaker 1: He said that for many years he believed the creature
Speaker 1: could be a zoological reality, but after his most recent experiences,
Speaker 1: he began to suspect that it might in fact be
Speaker 1: some kind of psychological phenomenon. Instead a hallucination, perhaps brought
Speaker 1: on by the extreme heat of the Gobi Desert. The
Speaker 1: following year of two thousand and five, it was time
Speaker 1: for a British team to have a crack at finding
Speaker 1: the worm. As the director of the Center for Forty
Speaker 1: in Zoology or c f SAID, a cryptozoological club based
Speaker 1: in Exeter in the southwest of England, Richard Freeman was
Speaker 1: no stranger to quests for mysterious creatures. A lifelong fan
Speaker 1: of doctor who he'd been a zookeeper and head of
Speaker 1: reptiles at a major UK zoo for a while before
Speaker 1: also being drawn into the world of crypto zoology, Freeman
Speaker 1: relished the search of animals that mainstream biologists believed were
Speaker 1: legendary more extinct. His past expeditions included hunts for the
Speaker 1: Cupa cabra, a blood drinking nocturnal creature from Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: and the Orang pendeck, a supposed ape man said to
Speaker 1: live in unexplored valleys in Sa Martra. Now he had
Speaker 1: assembled a small team of fellow c f SAID members
Speaker 1: to go to Mongolia with him. Arriving in Mongolia's capital, Ulambatar,
Speaker 1: the team headed south towards a remote area of the
Speaker 1: Gobi Desert region covering over eight thousand square miles called Noyan,
Speaker 1: where many reported sightings of the death worms had come from.
Speaker 1: As they drove, Freeman looked out at the jeep's window,
Speaker 1: transfixed vast fields of sand dunes merged with gravel plains
Speaker 1: that seemed to stretch into infinity, appearing like giant mirrors.
Speaker 1: Due to being coated with the mineral mica. The surrounding
Speaker 1: cliffs were so red they seemed to be on fire.
Speaker 1: As the party traveled deep into the south, they met
Speaker 1: and interviewed around twenty four apparent eyewitnesses, who all had
Speaker 1: stories of seeing the giant death worm. As both explorers
Speaker 1: Chapman and mccurlor had noted before them, descriptions of the
Speaker 1: worm were remarkably consistent. Almost all the witnesses claimed to
Speaker 1: have seen it, lying on the ground, motionless, being about
Speaker 1: two feet long and as thick as an arm, with
Speaker 1: scaly skin. All believed it to be extremely poisonous. One
Speaker 1: elderly man named Luvsandorsch claimed to have seen it back
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two. It was traveling across the desert
Speaker 1: one day when he saw what he first thought was
Speaker 1: a human arm lying on top of the sand. It
Speaker 1: was only when he got closer that he noticed it
Speaker 1: was moving. It was a large wormlike creature, he said,
Speaker 1: that kept changing colour to match its surroundings. He said
Speaker 1: they were thought to live underground in soft sand, and
Speaker 1: that they were able to generate an electrical charge, but
Speaker 1: they weren't around as much as they used to be.
Speaker 1: A woman named Sukh took Freeman's team to a location
Speaker 1: near the border with China and a forest of sacks,
Speaker 1: all a strange shrubby drought tolerant plant which grows in thickets.
Speaker 1: It was there she said that she supposedly saw a
Speaker 1: brownish gray worm about half a meter in length writhing
Speaker 1: within the plants, before disappearing among the roots of a tree.
Speaker 1: The team found numerous burrows in the area, assumed to
Speaker 1: be made by rodents, which they surmised might be an
Speaker 1: excellent food source for the death worms. But no sooner
Speaker 1: had they begun to set traps to catch the rodents
Speaker 1: and worms, an enormous sandstorm rose up in the distance
Speaker 1: that quickly descended, shredding their tents to confetti and forcing
Speaker 1: them to leave the area. After moving on from the
Speaker 1: forest of Saxel, Freeman's expedition met with an old ex
Speaker 1: army colonel named Hervu, who still lived near an abandoned
Speaker 1: military base called ovoutin Autreat years ago when he was
Speaker 1: a soldier. Hervu set out on a motorbike patrol just
Speaker 1: as the desert sun was beginning to set. At some point,
Speaker 1: he apparently came upon what he thought was a busted
Speaker 1: old tire on the ground, all coiled up, but as
Speaker 1: he got closer, he realized it wasn't a tire at all,
Speaker 1: but some kind of weird worm like creature. For half
Speaker 1: an hour, Urzu watched it as it lay there, unmoving,
Speaker 1: the light glinting off its scaly skin, still wet from
Speaker 1: recent rain. Eventually, he rushed off to get his camera,
Speaker 1: only to find on his return that the creature had gone.
Speaker 1: That night, the ex colonel took Freeman and his team
Speaker 1: to the site of the encounter, where they camped, laying
Speaker 1: out rodent traps and laboriously digging holes in the dirt.
Speaker 1: They sank bucket traps, hoping to lure in a death worm,
Speaker 1: but the traps caught nothing. Again, the team moved on,
Speaker 1: this time to a nearby oasis rich in wildlife, where
Speaker 1: they met with a woman named could Youuenger. Back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, could Youuenger was out walking with her
Speaker 1: grandfather when he called her over to look at something again.
Speaker 1: It was a brownish forty centimeter long wormlike creature with
Speaker 1: no discernible head or tail. She didn't remember much else
Speaker 1: about it, other than that she was very frightened of it.
Speaker 1: Once again, Freeman's team set out bucket traps to try
Speaker 1: and catch the creature, but as they started digging holes
Speaker 1: around the oasis, Freeman gazed up to see a small
Speaker 1: dust devil beginning to grow about a mile away. His
Speaker 1: interest turned to consternation as the small dusty vortex rapidly
Speaker 1: grew larger, then began barreling directly toward them. When it hit,
Speaker 1: the fierce winds and blowing dust engulfed the entire camp,
Speaker 1: smashing and scattering everything in their path. The wind was
Speaker 1: so strong that at one point Freeman saw one of
Speaker 1: their Mongolian drivers flying past him, horizontally hanging on to
Speaker 1: a billowing tent as it was swept out into the desert.
Speaker 1: Thinking back to Ivan mccurlur's hunch, that perhaps the worms
Speaker 1: were in fact some kind of psychological phenomenon. It was
Speaker 1: as if something didn't want them to discover the truth.
Speaker 1: After a month in Mongolia, the Center for Fortian Zoology
Speaker 1: expedition was over, and there was no specimen or even
Speaker 1: sighting of a death worm to show for their efforts. However,
Speaker 1: Richard Freeman believed that the trip had been good for
Speaker 1: one thing, namely, that it confirmed his suspicions about the
Speaker 1: creature's true identity. I don't think it's a worm at all,
Speaker 1: he said later. Instead, he had come to believe it
Speaker 1: was in fact some kind of limbless burrowing reptile, either
Speaker 1: a giant member of an already known group of reptiles,
Speaker 1: or a worm lizard. Worm lizards are also known as Amphisbinians,
Speaker 1: named after Anfisbinia, a mythical Greek serpent with a second
Speaker 1: head on its tail. They're one of the most mysterious
Speaker 1: and poorly studied groups of reptiles, neither snakes nor lizards.
Speaker 1: Most known species of this primitive group are found in
Speaker 1: Africa and South America, but they also occur in the Caribbean, Mexico,
Speaker 1: the Middle East, and even Florida. With tails that resemble
Speaker 1: their heads. Worm lizards range anywhere from ten to seventy
Speaker 1: centimeters long and have rings of scales that wrap around
Speaker 1: their bodies meat eating predators. They search for prey underground burrow,
Speaker 1: going through soil and loose sand, with strong, reinforced skulls
Speaker 1: and muscular bodies. Specimens of worm lizards can be found
Speaker 1: in museums all over the world, including the British Museum
Speaker 1: of Natural History, eerily suspended in large jars of alcohol
Speaker 1: to preserve them. ID cards list them as coming from
Speaker 1: places like Guyana, the West Indies and Buenos Aires, but
Speaker 1: specimens in museums are not always what they appear to be.
Speaker 1: For nearly two hundred years, a mysterious giant gecko sat
Speaker 1: in a storage area at the Natural History Museum of
Speaker 1: Marseilles in France. No one knew anything about it, although
Speaker 1: the style of taxidermy pointed to it having been collected
Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties. Larger than any gecko known today,
Speaker 1: its main body was well ow for a foot long,
Speaker 1: while its tail was another two feet long. On top
Speaker 1: of that, it had always been thought to come from
Speaker 1: New Zealand, but in twenty twenty three. Professor Matthew Heineke,
Speaker 1: a herpetologist a specialist in reptiles and amphibians, applied the
Speaker 1: latest DNA analysis to a sample taken from the specimen's
Speaker 1: FEMA and compared the results with a data set of
Speaker 1: the entire gecko family tree. It turned out that the
Speaker 1: giant gecko was not from New Zealand at all, but
Speaker 1: instead closely related to geckos found today in New Caledonia,
Speaker 1: an island in the southwest Pacific Ocean, a good seven
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles east of New Zealand. Could it
Speaker 1: be that the Mongolian death worm has, in actuality already
Speaker 1: been found, Perhaps decades ago Russian herpetologists, out hunting for
Speaker 1: snakes in the Gobi Desert unwittingly caught one and added
Speaker 1: it obliviously to their reptile collections. Is it out there now,
Speaker 1: lurking suspended in alcohol in a dusty jar, somewhere unidentified
Speaker 1: and long forgotten in the dark, cavernous basement of some
Speaker 1: former Soviet era museum. That question, and the true identity
Speaker 1: of the Mongolian death worm, for the time being at least,
Speaker 1: remains unexplained. This episode was written by Diane Hope and
Speaker 1: produced by me Richard McLean Smith. Diane is an audio
Speaker 1: producer and sound recordiced in her own right. You can
Speaker 1: find out more about her work at Dianhope dot com
Speaker 1: and on Instagram at in the sound Field. Unexplained as
Speaker 1: an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain Smith.
Speaker 1: All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
Speaker 1: also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book
Speaker 1: and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can
Speaker 1: purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with
Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own
Speaker 1: you'd like to share. You can find out more at
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com and reach us online through Twitter
Speaker 1: at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com Forward
Speaker 1: Slash Unexplained Podcast