by Josh Gates
In Los Angeles, the long process of postproduction results in a unique series in SciFi’s lineup. The show combines the investigative elements that fans of the immensely popular Ghost Hunters franchise already love but places those investigations in a totally different context; the final product is a fast-paced mash-up of travel, comedy, myth, and mystery.
A month before we’re scheduled to air, I’m sitting at home watching Kevin Costner’s award-winning performance in Waterworld on SciFi. For those who managed to miss this cinematic gem, it’s basically about a guy with gills who drinks his own pee and occasionally clubs Jeanne Tripplehorn with an oar. There are also people on Jet Skis. At any rate, the movie goes to commercial, and I’m suddenly looking at a montage of myself. I do a full-spit take into my ficus plant and then sit bugeyed while a deep-voiced announcer plugs Destination Truth. At the end of the commercial, a snappy logo pops up and everything. It’s surreal. Beyond surreal. I even sit through the last act of Waterworld to see if it happens again.
The show premieres on June 6, 2007. It’s one of the only SciFi shows ever positioned in the ten o’clock hour that holds on to a large percentage of Ghost Hunters’ impressive audience. We’re a hit! In response, the Channel orders more episodes, but unfortunately, Neil declines to produce the show himself. It sounds like there should be a juicy story here, but there really isn’t. Neil and the Channel just can’t reach an agreement. It’s a huge loss to me, since Neil seems like the only person I know who’s crazy enough to pull this series off. His departure also means that we have to re-staff from top to bottom. I part ways with Carter, Eric, and the rest of the first-season team. It’s bittersweet and feels a lot like starting over.
The Channel recommends that I meet with a producer named Brad Kuhlman, who worked with SciFi two years prior on a series called Master Blasters and had recently executive-produced 1,000 Places to See Before You Die for the Travel Channel. He’s the owner of a burgeoning production company called Ping Pong Productions that he runs with his best friend and business partner, Casey Brumels.
Brad and I arrange to meet at a restaurant in Hollywood. I arrive first, get a table, and nervously watch the door. I feel like I’m on a blind date, worried that Carrot Top is about to show up. After all, running around the world searching for monsters is a pretty close-quarters business, and it’s really important to do it with people that you like and respect (or, at the very least, can tolerate). Brad steps in a few minutes later, and I have a hard time sizing him up. On one hand, he valets an obnoxiously huge Lincoln Navigator outside and is sporting hipster sunglasses and trendy sneakers. On the other hand, he seems completely down-to-earth. I sense that he’s just as unsure of what to make of me, and we do our best to not scare each other off in the first few minutes. As it turns out, he’s a great guy. By the time our entrées arrive, we’re chatting like friends. He’s experienced, funny, listens well (a quality I lack, so I always admire it in others), and has a genuine passion for travel.
A few days later, we meet again at a Borders bookstore, this time with Casey. I have no idea why we choose this location. Casey is significantly taller than Brad, with blond hair and a big, goofy smile. He’s also immediately likable. It’s easy to see why they’re friends. Casey seems similarly engaged by the project, and it’s clear that everyone is on board to work together. We sit amidst the paperbacks, spitballing potential locations for the second season and how best to evolve the show.
If there’s one thing of which I’m unconvinced, it’s whether these two understand just how hard D.T. is to make. They’re both a bit cavalier about the whole thing at first; more than anything, they seem to think that it’s going to be a lot of fun. Which it is, of course, but mostly in the way a plane crash is fun to reminisce about after you survive it. I do my best to explain the unique challenges of Destination Truth and to let them know how exhausting it is to film. I explain that the production is basically nonstop. Every aspect of our travels is filmed, and there’s little time to rest. The accommodations are crappy, the food is worse, and the dangers are real. They grin and nod, unmoved by my gloomy prophecies. Ah, well. It doesn’t really matter, I suppose. They’ll both find out the truth soon enough. I just hope they pack something warm.
9: The Death Worm
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Outer Mongolia, 2007
* * *
Despite once controlling the largest land empire in history, the great Mongol dynasty that once flourished has long receded, and the Mongolian people have been in something of a rut for the last seven hundred years. But now, finally free from the shackles of Manchurian and Soviet control, the frontier city of Ulaanbaatar is in the midst of an industrial revolution. Home to about a million people, the city cradles half the population of this sprawling country. Cranes and girders stretch up from the crowded, dusty streets. A new culture is emerging that’s modern, stylish, and robust. But the evolution is slow. Infrastructure is lacking, the food is just plain awful, and the nightlife leaves something to be desired. Believe me, this is not the world’s next spring break hot spot. Beyond the bounds of the city, the roads quickly decay and give way to the vast Gobi Desert, where the trappings of the modern world haven’t yet infringed on centuries of traditional existence.
Swerve. I’m jolted awake as we skid around another washout in the road. A cloud of dust flies through the headlight beams and over the windshield. We left Ulaanbaatar at three a.m. We’ve been driving south for almost twenty hours, and my knees can’t take much more abuse against the dashboard. Here, there is no road to follow, and the Land Rover carves an undulating ribbon of sand around the steep ravines and ancient, dried-up riverbeds. I’ve taken a break from driving and can hardly keep my eyes open as I stare at the GPS receiver, which is crudely duct-taped to the windshield. We’ve run out of daylight and are now depending on satellites to guide us to Dalanzadgad. Our new camera operator, Erica, and our audio technician, Ponch, both shift around in the back, bundled in down jackets to stave off the frigid cold leaching in through the dark windows. The rest of the car—almost every square inch—is occupied by equipment and supplies. Batteries, cables, duffels, and hard cases sit democratically alongside bags of beef, salami, peanuts, and bottles of water. I can hear the external tanks of benzene sloshing around on the roof rack above me, next to a spare set of tires.
We were supposed to arrive hours ago, but the convoy is slower than expected. In the two vehicles behind us, I assume that Brad, Casey, our new field producer, Araceli, and our tech manager, T-Bone, are suffering an uncomfortable welcome to their tenure on Destination Truth. The GPS glows out another course correction as we turn our wheels into the smooth grooves of a rutted track, the remnants of some abandoned road to nowhere. I drift off to sleep.
As I’m the only member left from the original team, the past months have been filled with endless new responsibilities. In some ways it’s been much easier. I’ve been newly integrated as a producer and have taken a leading role in shaping our stories and destinations. On the other hand, as I look out at the frigid tundra of Mongolia, I’m realizing that I now have no one to blame for this awful drive but myself.
The Death Worm, known locally as Olgoi-Khorkhoi, is a nasty cryptozoological creature rumored to reside somewhere in these endless sands. The name translates as “intestine worm,” owing to its long, segmented shape. Described as vividly red, the animal measures somewhere between three and five feet long. Details on its offensive abilities are varied and confusing, but the Worm is widely rumored to spit some sort of deadly acid at prey and dispence an immense electric charge when provoked. The attributes are so outlandish that it might hardly seem worth the effort to mount a search.
What makes this creature intriguing, though, is the breadth of belief in its existence. Even though Mongolia is one of the least densely populated nations on earth, residents scattered across more than 600,000 square miles of desert are universally versed in tales of the Death Worm. This is a narrative that has transcended distance and t
ime, passed down for generations.
The earlier part of the day was fascinating. Every so often we’d see a small cluster of yurts, the ghostly white outlines of these circular tents dotting the monotonous canvas of sand. We stopped in several of these nomadic enclaves to interview herders. It was hard to stomach the heated goat’s milk or the salted meats that were presented to us, but offerings from people whose resources are so limited are not to be dismissed. They urged us to sit on the floor and warm ourselves around the tent’s central stove. Firelight, it seems, is a universal kindle for storytelling, and as we huddled by the embers, legends gently glowed to life. They vividly recounted tales of the Olgoi Khorkhoi, even whispering the creature’s name for added theatrical effect.
My head eventually cracks against the window, and I come awake fully. We’ve stopped. I peer through the frosted glass and see nothing but the void. The driver opens his door as an electrifying rush of cold overtakes the car’s interior. I pull my parka around me and hop out into the darkness, swearing under my breath. The cars behind are stopping as well. Doors open and the crew steps out to stretch their stiff legs. The hood of our Land Rover is propped up, and I can see that one of the drivers is trying to fix the stripped wiring on a headlamp.
I also notice something much more troubling: the rest of our local escorts are carefully studying a map, bewildered. Our main guide, Zanjan, who has been driving the second vehicle in the convoy, looks dead on his feet. He opens a canteen of water and, despite the subfreezing temperature, pours it over his head, waking himself up. I glance over at Brad, who looks beyond horrified.
“Zanjan, where the hell are we?” Brad demands.
“Close. We’re close,” Zanjan quietly replies.
“How close, Zanjan?” I say, now studying the map for myself.
“Maybe another two or three hours,” he admits.
This is not the answer for which the group is hoping. An eruption of protestation follows, but it’s for naught. We are where we are, and it is what it is, a common mantra on Destination Truth. We use the rooftop canisters to top off the fuel supply, climb back into the Land Rovers, and carry on.
The final push is a blur to me. I fall asleep for seconds at a time, vivid images and flashes of dreams spraying across the inside of my eyelids. We bash through ditches and lurch over rocky hills for what seems like an eternity. The ordeal comes to an end at about two a.m. when the few, dim lights of the southern city of Dalanzadgad appear in the distance. A full twenty-two hours of off-road driving has left the entire team silent and sore.
We shuffle into a bleak-looking cement building that serves as a local hotel. Behind the desk are two young kids, both shitfaced, one cross-eyed. They’re almost too loaded to check us in. I just walk behind the desk, snag a key off a hook, and shuffle upstairs into my chilly room, where I immediately collapse.
The sun rises entirely too soon, and I wake up feeling like I’ve been worked over by a baseball bat. At seven a.m. I limp downstairs, hunting for breakfast, and notice one of the kids from the front desk sitting alone in the kitchen chugging his morning Sapporo. Breakfast of champions. Outside, daylight reveals a grid of drab city streets that converge at a crumbling, dried-up fountain. The only residents I bump into are a few cows that pause to regard me with indifference as they amble through the center of town. There are entirely too many buildings here, considering the lack of people, which gives the place a feeling of abandonment. It’s like I just wandered into a George Romero movie.
We conduct a series of interviews with townspeople (once we find them), meeting one man in a surreal bar called The Gobi Bear. The walls are lined with bear masks and glass cases filled with dried bear dung. The bartender is playing checkers with himself, and there’s even a poster of Christina Aguilera holding her boob and giving the finger. The bar immediately jumps to number four on my list of world’s best watering holes (the current standard-bearer is a beach bar in Zanzibar with a chained monkey behind the counter that tries to bite customers).
The residents here are no less impassioned storytellers than their nomadic brethren, and we repeatedly hear that there have been sightings of the Worm in abandoned ruins to the west. We set off deeper into the desert to pursue the most recent accounts.
We leave the town in a trail of dust, driving past primordial rock formations and through vast valleys of sand, traversing the deserts between here and the distant town of Gurvantes, more than two hundred kilometers away. We eventually come across another group of yurts where a herder and his wife emerge in thick fur hats and old, colorful robes.
They invite us inside a tent so welcoming that it’s worth enduring the smell. A few snorts of the nomad’s snuff help to banish the cold. I share a meal of sheep guts with their seven-year-old daughter and her elderly grandmother. The warmth they exude starkly contrasts the icy weather around them. Though their entire world is contained within the sloping domain of this simple tent, these nomads are so full of character and pride. They carry themselves like royalty, the deep lines on their faces the beautiful evidence of lives spent hard at work.
Today they’re moving their home for the winter. We head outside, and I watch in amazement as the family breaks down their large, semi-rigid structure in less than thirty minutes flat. Every member of the family joins in the work. The seven-year-old hauls support poles, Mom breaks down the stove, Grandmother gathers up the heavy rugs, and Dad loads up the back of a Soviet-era truck. They will escort their material possessions across the desert to a winter camp offering better protection against the coming snows. The backbreaking work is enough to shame any American family who argues over taking out the trash.
While the last of their cargo is being tied down, the father tells me that, since I’m here hunting creatures, he wants to show me the remains of a “monster” that he’s discovered nearby. The man leads us up a rise in the sand to a seemingly anonymous spot. There, I crouch down and see that he’s camouflaged a patch of earth with a sand-covered tarp. I help him pull away the fabric and am confronted with an amazing sight: the fossilized skeleton of a dinosaur. We excavate part of the skull and jaw of what looks like some sort of raptor, although I can’t be sure. Our efforts are interrupted by the honking horn of the fully loaded transport truck below. We leave the remains in place, to be reclaimed by the shifting sands and lost again in time.
Eventually we make it to the ruins where the Death Worm is said to reside. The area is abandoned now but was once a thriving Buddhist community destroyed under Communist rule. Today it is merely an open expanse framed by a few crumbled buildings and a steep rise in the distance. A frozen river bisects the plains, and a few small yurts will serve as our accommodations for the night.
The investigation that follows is one of the hardest and most miserable in Destination Truth history. After all, this is a newly formed team with little experience operating a unique set of equipment. Everything is trial and error. Mostly error. Plus, the conditions are so bitterly cold that even the most basic tasks seem to take forever. As with most of our investigations, a base camp is established; it serves as our surveillance hub. From this central point, cameras are strung out into the field to observe the perimeter and detect motion. Sweep teams are dispatched with powerful night-vision scopes and high-tech thermal imagers to conduct a more focused search.
On this particular night, nothing wants to work. The video cables are nearly frozen solid, the thermal imager is uncooperative, and our many batteries are quickly sapped by the cold, causing one piece of equipment after another to shut down. The good news is that the team is up to the challenge, and we do our best to get the job done.
We cover every inch of the site, sending teams along and across the frozen river and through every derelict block of buildings. We take soil samples, send cameras down holes, and carefully look for material evidence. We find little to support a case for the creature. By now it’s clear to me that the story of the Death Worm is simply an heirloom, a legend carefully handed down like a gr
andfather’s pocket watch. By two a.m. our last battery freezes to death, and the rest of us aren’t far behind. Our tech manager performs solemn funerals for several hypothermic pieces of gear; it’s time to call it quits.
We retreat into the three yurts, which are alarmingly cold. Brad invites me over to his tent, where Casey has found a few bottles of the local “Chingis Vodka,” but I’m too tired to celebrate. Plus, the thought of driving all the way back to Ulaanbaator with a hangover seems like a fate worse than death.
The central stove in my yurt is stoked with a few scraps of wood, but most of the fuel comes in the form of hardened cow shit. The dung burns but doesn’t give off much heat, which is why it’s so damned freezing in here. I load the patties into the furnace and choose a cot along the wall. Along with a few thin blankets, I find a discolored old sleeping bag labeled “Navajo Basic.” I shiver inside of its paltry lining, realizing that what I really need is an “Eskimo Deluxe.” Our medic and my current roommate, Ray, is snoring, and next door I can hear Brad, Casey, and Araceli laughing and drinking. It’s a good sign. This night would have broken some people. I stare at the ceiling for a while, listening to the crackling stove and watching the firelight dance off the slanted wooden beams. Eventually I drift off to sleep, only to be startled awake hours later by the firm grasp of cold. I shuffle over to the stove, which is dead. The entire bucket of dung has vanished. A smile crosses my face as I realize that Brad and Casey must have robbed me in the night. I consider returning the favor as I step out into the darkness, but seeing as their chimney is almost out of smoke, there’s probably not much left to steal.
