Destination Truth (2007) s01e05 Episode Script
Mamlambo and Tokeloshe
On this episode of Destination Truth, Josh travels to South Africa to locate a giant man-eating river monster.
Do you think it's going to eat me? What was that? Something just moved camera three! There! Right over there! Right over there! What is that right there? Oh, my God, look! Then Josh hunts a pint-sized beast that's been tormenting local villagers.
I want to find a Tokoloshe.
Tokoloshe? Tokoloshe.
No! But will the creature take the bait? That bottle just moved.
I'm Josh Gates.
My travels have taken me to the most exotic and mysterious places on Earth.
I've seen some unexplainable things which have raised some strange questions.
Now, I've pulled together a crack team armed with the latest technology to search for answers.
I'm not sure what's out there waiting for me, but I know what I'm looking for.
The truth.
While everyone has heard of the Loch Ness Monster up in Scotland, when I read in the Reuters wire service that South Africa supposedly has its own Nessie, my investigator antennas immediately went up.
What I found out, though, is that in South Africa this isn't some friendly creature attracting tourists and hawking t-shirts, but a reported river monster, said to have taken the lives of seven villagers.
It's called the Mamlambo, which roughly translated, means "brain sucker.
" It sounds like a bad monster from a John Carpenter movie, I know, but because of the number of deaths and the widespread panic in the villages near the Mzintlava River, a South African agriculture minister ordered a task force put together to hunt down the creature.
An African safari hunting down a brain-sucking river monster.
Hemingway, eat your heart out.
The plan was to interview local eyewitnesses to learn as much as we could about the Mamlambo before hitting the bush using our high-tech tracking equipment to find physical or audio-visual evidence of the creature.
The team and I packed up and caught the next flight to South Africa and Durban, the country's busiest port.
We touched down and headed to meet with a zoologist who could provide us with a map of where these sightings had occurred.
Farther up north into the villages and see what you can find.
With the map Dr.
Midgley had given us, we hit the road to the Mzintlava River, giving us a chance to see all the wildlife Africa has to offer.
When we stopped to look at a rhino, though, we learned that Neil had forgotten one thing for our journey into the African plains.
Did your fuel light just come on? Yes, it did.
Where do you think you're gonna get gas from out here? I don't know.
Why didn't you tell us that we were running low on gas? It just went down.
It just went down.
There's a rhino outside the car.
Yes, hello, we're in the park, we're on our way up to Hilltop as we speak.
We're almost out of petrol.
Do you guys have any gas? Diesel.
Petrol? Diesel? It needs to be diesel.
I'm sorry, it closes at 5:00? We're gonna there in 15 minutes.
We're gonna be there in 15 minutes.
Can you keep it open? I accept full responsibility.
This is all my fault.
If we run out, I will walk through the game reserve with the live animals.
That is such a lie.
That is That is such a lie.
With the sun dropping quickly, the vultures licking their chops, and the rhinos getting testy, I had my fill of the circle of life and was happy to get some gas and get back on the road to the Mzintlava River and the village where several people have reportedly been drowned by the monster.
We stopped just outside of the village to meet with a game ranger to find out why the government had commissioned him to hunt the Mamlambo and what signs to look for while searching for the river monster.
You were commissioned a few years ago to go and find this creature in the river.
Well, the minister of agriculture at the time, in the Eastern Cape, had heard that there was this monster in rivers and deep pools.
The reports were that their eyes were sucked out and they were drained of their blood.
So, people believed that it was this particular monster, which had supposedly a head of a horse and the body of a fish, and comes out when there's a tornado, very often attributed.
Right.
Monsters are supposed to come out of those rivers when you have these big storms, and they think that's the revenge of the river monsters.
So do you think there's a possibility that there is some sort of large animal living in these rivers and in these deep pools that these people are seeing? We haven't found any fossil records, we haven't found any bones of those type of animals, but I'm not saying that it's impossible that that sort of animal exists.
I mean, we're still finding mammals and reptiles and so forth to this day.
We learned two things that night, that natives see storms as a sign of the Mamlambo's presence, and that there is no Marriott in the middle of South Africa.
Eventually, though we found a hotel in Kokstad, and I am using the word "hotel" loosely.
We got a couple of beds.
There's electricity here which is kind of a rarity.
It's running off a generator which goes off in an hour, so in an hour we will be in the dark.
But we have bread, and a couple of beds, and what else do you need? These are my pants that supposedly are bug-proof.
Bugs can't bite through these pants somehow.
The other amazing thing about them is that they're also girl-proof.
It keeps bugs and women out.
But before the generators turned off, we got to experience first-hand that wild and crazy Kokstad nightlife you've been hearing so much about.
We even got to try some local delicacies.
I think it might be goat.
I think it might be not going in my stomach.
The food, as it turned out, wasn't that bad.
The dancing, well, that's a different story altogether.
The next morning, we met with our local translator and arrived at the Mamlambo village.
She says she got a lift through the taxi, and as she got in she saw this thing behind the bridge there.
So in the area of the bridge that connects the two villages? Yes.
And how big was it? She says it's taller than us.
Taller than us? Yeah.
And you think it's very dangerous? It is dangerous.
Go to the chief.
So that's where we're going.
Chief Jojo.
Hello, sir.
So if I was going to try to look for this creature, where would I look? Does he think that's what's going to happen? Do you think it's going to eat me? We headed to the bridge that the chief had told us about as it seemed the best place to set up our surveillance and find any evidence of the Mamlambo river monster's existence.
This is definitely the spot.
This seems like a nice, deep portion of the river here.
We got a good sandbar we can set up on.
It seems kind of ideal, yeah? So we should set everything up.
This is a great little bank that comes out here, we can set up the cameras there facing in both directions and get a pretty good view of this section of the river.
The zoologist said that slower moving sections or deeper sections would be more likely that a creature would be living in, so it picks up a little bit down here, so this seems just perfect in here.
I think we can set up cameras looking either way Yeah, for sure.
Set it up.
So we broke out our surveillance cameras and audio gear to track any odd movements in the water that could be the Mamlambo.
Do you guys realize that Neil just left us here? Can I tell you I secretly hope it rains really hard, because I think that would look great.
Cut to That was close.
What do you think? Yeah, don't worry, we can fit it.
As long as we fit everything in there Look up.
And us? Supposedly the Mamlambo comes out during storms, and these definitely looked like storm clouds to me.
I think there's Not good.
I mean, we're out in the middle of The middle of a river with a ton of electronic equipment with no shelter and no car.
We've got shelter.
We'll be fine.
Hey, if the storm comes, maybe the Mamlambo will come like the ranger said.
I think if the storm comes, we're all in a bad spot, is what I think.
One camera upstream.
Okay.
Okay.
Two cameras upstream, this bank and this bank.
Camera out here, camera down there.
Okay.
Okay.
So we'll see how far this cord can reach.
Maybe bank, bank What was that? You know, something just jumped out of there.
Oh, my God! It appears to be traveling toward us.
What is that right there? Good God! Eric, in the tent, come on! We'd just started to set up our surveillance for our South African river monster investigation when Lindsay surveilled something with her own eyes.
Maybe bank, bank What was that? What was what? Something jumped out of that.
Oh, my God, look.
Over there.
No, really.
See where that big ripple is? Yeah, what is that? You know, something just jumped out of there.
It appears to be traveling toward us.
Oh, my God.
Literally jumped out of there.
Literally traveling towards us.
You didn't see the head pop out of there? What is that right there? This tornado that's coming toward us? Do you see it? In the tent, in the tent, in the tent.
Come on.
In the tent? Eric, in the tent, come on.
Eric, in the tent, come on.
What's What's Neil's number? Where are you? I'm inside a tent in the middle of a lightning storm.
It's terrible here right now.
We're getting drowned.
This can't be safe for the crew, so just get back here as soon as you can.
Here's the thing, though, we're about 20 minutes away from being completely solvent in here, like it's gonna come up through the floors.
And I also think this embankment we're sitting on is gonna saturate.
So we need to get out of here.
Good God! God almighty! All right.
I'm gonna get out.
Okay.
Is that Neil? You take the Bullard, I'll take some of these cases up toward the road.
Carter! Come on, let's get out of here.
Neil's here, he's trying to back the van up! God! Big lighting strike right there.
Come on, guys, let's go! Come on, we're getting out of here, seriously.
We need to get out of here soon.
And those are getting closer and closer.
Big lightning strike right there.
I'm not having you guys get hit by lightning, let's go.
Look out.
Neil, do you want to bid adieu to your tent or do you wanna take it? Forget it, just leave it! God! That's close! Take the tarp.
Okay, come on, everybody in the car! Carter, let's go! If thunderstorms are a sign of angering the Mamlambo, then I for one will never make a Yo Mamlambo joke again.
They'll say that In the morning, they're gonna find the tent and they're gonna be, like, "The snake ate six more!" The tent didn't survive the storm, but luckily we did.
And the next morning I showed the local kids that I hadn't been killed by the river monster because I had a few tricks up my sleeve.
No! No! Dry and alive, we went to meet with Nothoback, a woman whose friend hadn't been as lucky, and who she claimed was dragged below the surface of the water by the Mamlambo.
What did you see? We just call her.
Did he say how big the creature was? How many people have died in the river? Nothoback then took us to her friend, Luiso, who claimed to have actually seen the creature drown the victim in the water.
He saw this creature with his own two eyes? He says the head looked very like a horse's.
So what did the body look like? He says it looked like a fish.
And was he very afraid when he saw this? He says it was very frightful.
And where does he think the best place is for me to look? What part of the river has the most sightings? He told us he'd seen the creature only days before in a river bend a kilometer away.
So that's where we had to go.
Good news is there's no rain clouds tonight.
Oh, my God.
Big lightning.
Some people say the Mamlambo's attracted to lightning storms.
Wait.
What's that? There's like a head moving in the water.
Look! We'd been lucky enough to not only have survived the South African storm of the century, but to find an eyewitness who claimed to have seen the Mamlambo river monster only days earlier.
So we headed to the spot along the Mzintlava River where we'd have the best chance of capturing evidence of the underwater beast using our tracking equipment.
You guys wanna know the good news or the bad news? The good news.
Good news is there's no rain clouds tonight.
That's very good news.
Bad news is, we're using one of the two of you for bait.
Actually, the chief said that we should completely avoid getting in the water at all costs.
Because of the Mamlambo? That and there are thousands of parasites all along the river, and I am not sure you wanna hear what the parasite does.
But it crawls up your urethra.
And it has, like, a set of teeth on it and it crawls up inside your urethra and then lodges itself in your urethra.
Sounds good.
Hey, Linds? Yeah? Do you have the wiring for the cameras? I think what we'll do is, we'll put one right there Okay.
Two across, and one faced over that way.
Okay.
And we got about probably half an hour or so before sunset, and we should keep the angles low on them so it's just picking up the surface of the water really.
Okay.
Okay.
Maybe like nothing above the surface of the rocks there.
If an enormous river monster comes out of this water, what's our plan of attack? We all keep shooting.
That's what I like to hear.
Since swimming in the river was almost as dangerous because of parasites as of the Mamlambo, we needed to figure out a way to get the camera out in the water in our stead.
What do you think would float the best? The big case, yeah.
Our best option was to attach a camera to one of the camera cases and then float it out into the middle of the river.
We also attached the fishfinder sonar unit to the side of it to detect any living creature swimming around it.
It was a good plan, only we needed to figure out exactly how to get the case out in the river without it just floating away.
It's like how they did Chrissie from Jaws.
The girl that gets eaten in the beginning? Take a big weight that's fixed on the bottom of the river, with a loop in it.
Right? We throw that as far as we can.
Then we loop through this, this line, and that allows us to pulley out deeper into the river.
If that makes any sense.
And you have to get this rock in the middle of the water? That's the problem.
Is that I picked a rock that's too heavy.
That'll do.
All the sightings in the past month had been on this stretch of river and they all seemed to occur at night, so hopefully we'll be able to capture something on the cameras if we wait.
We have all four cameras up and running.
Camera one is about 30 feet up the river pointing to the north, camera two is here at the base camp pointing directly across the river where we can see camera three, which is itself pointed up the river to the north.
And camera four pointed toward the south end of the river.
I feel like we're like in the middle of nowhere.
Yup.
We are.
The middle of nowhere, South Africa.
The middle of nowhere, South Africa, on the edge of a dark river on a dark night looking for a river monster.
You know, I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been a really good sea monster movie.
Goonies.
Goonies is not about a sea monster.
Anything on the sonar, Eric? No, nothing yet.
I'm just happy we're not getting hit by lightning.
It's a welcome change.
Knock on wood.
Just don't jinx it, we said that last night.
Oh, my God.
Not again.
Well, there's the Mamlambo signal.
Everybody be on alert.
Lindsay, you keep an eye on the cameras, I'll just take the headlamps and just walk around and see what I can see.
All right, get them up.
A storm off in the distance this way, which, after last night, obviously we're keeping a very close eye on.
And Big lighting.
But it's a sign of the Mamlambo, so let's see what I can find in the infrared binoculars.
Hold on.
Thought I saw something.
Never mind.
Lot of lightning.
Let's head back to camp.
The good news is that some people say the Mamlambo is attracted to lightning storms, so all we can do is wait.
Just keeps on moving Wait.
What's that? There's like a head moving in the water.
Look! Something just moved camera three! Carter, come here! There! Right over there! Right over there! Right there, do you see it? What was that? The bad news is we got lightning in the distance, the good news is that the Mamlambo is supposedly attracted to storms, so we might see a South African river monster yet.
Wait.
What's that? There's like a head moving in the water.
Look! It's on camera two right next to that rock.
No, that, my friend, is a frog.
See how it climbs up over the rock? Do you think it has the head of a horse and the body of a fish? I'll get back to you on that.
It looked big to me.
Cut the tape.
You think I'm crazy.
So many people agree that they saw something big.
Over the last 10 years a lot of people have disappeared and washed up, eaten or mutilated in this river.
It's certainly That's certainly real.
There's a real fear of this river.
They just don't wanna mess with it.
Hold on a second.
Look Something just moved camera three! Carter, come here! Carter, come here! There, right there! Right over there! Lindsay, you have a light? Come here.
Hand me the binoculars.
Right there, do you see it? What was that? The whole case moved, like there was something under it that nudged it.
Could have been the frog? No, the camera went up in the air! I'm not seeing anything in the binoculars.
Whatever it was, it's gone now.
All right, let's play it back and take a look at it.
Right there.
I mean, that's a big move.
Look at that.
It moved so much.
I mean, the entire case moves around so much.
Let's see.
I mean, something just knocks it! Something's out there swimming by it or coming up underneath it.
Let's pull up camera two.
It doesn't just get knocked, it gets lifted off the water.
Look at the light, see it goes up in the air.
If you look here it looks like something white.
You see it? Yeah, right there.
Roll it back.
Right Watch.
Right here.
There.
See? Yes.
It looks like something goes by the camera.
What is that? I don't know.
With no more strange sightings that night, come morning we packed up and headed to Durban to ship our footage to a biologist to find out what he thought might have brushed past our camera.
Before leaving South Africa, though, I wanted to investigate one of the country's most notorious mythical creatures, the Tokoloshe.
Predominantly seen in Zulu regions of the country, the Tokoloshe has found its way into the mainstream media in several famous South African murder trials, where defendants claimed they had killed someone believing they were the Tokoloshe.
And one court was so convinced by the defendant's testimony about his Tokoloshe encounter, they decided not to call an expert witness to refute his claims.
Reportedly it's a flesh-and-blood creature that also has the ability to manifest itself in ghost form.
So the first thing I had to do was to find out what exactly a Tokoloshe was from the local eyewitnesses so I knew what I was looking for before setting up an investigation, using our equipment to determine once and for all if this South African night crawler really exists.
I decided to meet with a local sanguma, a Zulu spiritual guide who could perhaps give me some details into what the Tokoloshe is and what he likes to eat.
Uh, she had a patient that came with a child, and the child said, "At night there's this short man.
"He comes, he's got a long beard and then he asks for food.
" Amasi, especially.
Amasi? Amasi.
What is amasi? It's sour milk.
The Tokoloshe, that's what it asked from the child.
"Can you give me amasi?" How do you catch a Tokoloshe? How can you catch something like that? Because it's like wind.
Sometimes, sometimes it can just be wind.
The sanguma explained that not only are there many people in this region scared of the Tokoloshe and actively avoid encounters with it, they also refuse to discuss its very existence, fearing retribution.
It's kind of like talking about the Yankees in Boston.
And either way, it didn't look like our investigation was gonna be a walk in the park.
We moved further into rural South Africa and closer to areas where the Tokoloshe had reportedly been seen in the past.
We hired an interpreter to communicate with the locals.
It's very nice to meet you.
And very nice to meet you, too.
So you're gonna be translating for us today? Yes.
What do you speak besides English? English and Zulu.
And Zulu.
I speak no Zulu.
Yeah.
I speak everything.
Okay.
So you are critical.
You're critical.
Yes.
We headed to a local market to pick up the Tokoloshe bait that the sanguma had recommended, sour milk, which surprisingly grocers in South Africa carry in bulk.
Best before the 20th of February.
It's curdled milk.
What happens to the It's already bad milk.
Why is there a "best before" date on it? I didn't need help translating the expiration dates of the well-expired milk, but I did need help finding Tokoloshe eyewitnesses.
Do you know about the Tokoloshe? They haven't seen one.
They haven't seen one? No.
Do they know anyone who's seen one? He says yes and then he says no.
Yes and then no? Mmm-hmm.
Do you know anyone who has seen a Tokoloshe? You've got this wacky t-shirt with this, like, Tron baby on it.
Where did you get that? Where can I find the Tokoloshe? You guys, you know what you guys are? You guys are like The Rat Pack.
Dean, Sammy, you're Frank.
Yes.
And I got some bad news for you, man.
You're Joey Bishop.
It's a tough break, but you got nice eyes.
Are you scared of Tokoloshe? Yes.
Can you come here for a minute? We're interested in speaking to someone about the Tokoloshe.
Nothing.
Tokoloshe? Tokoloshe? Tokoloshe.
No! No? No.
I want to find a Tokoloshe.
No? I was beginning to think that maybe the reason there were so few sightings was because everyone seemed to be doing everything they could to avoid the Tokoloshe, including discussing the creature with me.
And either way, I wasn't going to let the tongue-tied locals or needle in a haystack logistics deter me from getting to the bottom of this.
And thankfully, after a long day of searching backcountry roads, we finally got a lead on an eyewitness who was supposed to have had first-hand contact with the Tokoloshe.
Only getting someone to tell us the whereabouts of this eyewitness came at a price.
And what did this woman want for such valuable information? Money? Camera gear? One night alone with a strapping young American truth-seeker? Sweets.
She wants sweets.
Sweets.
Yeah.
No, she just wanted candy.
This is a Bar One Toffee Crisp and this was going to be my dinner.
Okay, that's fine, that's for you.
But it's for you.
She said the eyewitness was close.
Let's go! Let's go! So up the trail we went.
And I learned two things on that hike.
One, apparently in Zulu, close means way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, and two, that my translator, while not afraid of the Tokoloshe, was afraid of almost every other animal on the planet.
Why do you hate dogs? Yeah, me I hate those I hate reptiles.
Reptiles? You hate reptiles? You hate spiders, you hate dogs, you hate cats I hate I hate everything.
You hate everything.
Okay, you know what she just said? She just said What? What? "You taking a photo of me, you're gonna give me money.
" I just gave her a Toffee Crisp bar.
I thought that was her payment.
Three miles and two candy bars later we reached the eyewitness who could give us the 411 on the Tokoloshe.
So she's telling me that if we go back to where the Crocodile place Yeah.
That's the only places where we can get the Tokoloshe.
What'd she say? What if he kills you? Does she think that he will kill me? Yes.
If I go to his house? Yes.
Why would he kill me for going to his house? They're scared.
They're scared.
Mmm.
Apparently the reason she was so scared was that the only person she knew who had physical contact with the Tokoloshe was a local named Crocodile, who dabbles in the black arts and doesn't like foreigners.
Just what I need, a guy who could actually shrink my head for making a shrunken head joke.
And we met a few eyewitnesses who had heard of you, and some of them were kind of scared of you.
They were very scared of you.
Right! You are right.
I'm happy about that.
Why? Why are they scared of you? Okay.
I can take this to any place in the world and put it around your house, you practice bad magic, you lose your child.
Just like that.
With this.
So you're saying that this can kill people? Yeah! It can! Crocodile was like one of those bad guys from Scooby-Doo, complete with a sinister snicker.
And just as I was about to head back to the Mystery Machine for some Scooby Snacks, the doctor pulled something out of his private stock.
The most compelling evidence of the Tokoloshe we'd seen so far.
Tokoloshe.
Wow.
This is a place where Tokoloshe has been seen before.
I'm picking up something now.
Yeah, I just saw something on camera three.
Do you see that? Yeah, that's freaky.
Josh.
Are you anywhere near the entrance to the barn? I was about ready to throw in the towel on our South African Tokoloshe interview with a guy the locals called Crocodile when he pulled out a piece of evidence I hadn't expected to find in his shed o'creep.
Tokoloshe? Can I see the container? Yes.
So this is the fat of Tokoloshe? Mmm-hmm.
What I had in my hands was a vial of what Crocodile claimed was congealed Tokoloshe fat.
I couldn't wait to declare this at customs.
But even more important than this piece of evidence, he gave me the name of the location that the Tokoloshe supposedly calls home, the nearby kingdom of Lesotho.
So, the next morning, the team and I once again hit the road.
All right, so we're in Underberg, which is just on the edge of Drakensburg here.
There's no way that our van's gonna make it over this pass.
They won't let us go without a four-wheel drive vehicle.
So I got this guy lined up, he'll take us over.
We just need to load any equipment and camera bags, anything we need for the day into the 4x4.
So, Wilson, you're gonna take us up over the Sani Pass.
Yes.
And, uh, what's the road like? Mmm, it's bad, but It's a bad road? Yeah.
But it's okay? We'll make it? Yes.
You're sure? We can.
Sure, sure.
You've done it before? Yes.
How many times? Okay, so it was Wilson's first time driving up a notoriously deadly road over the Northern Lesotho mountains.
But it was an exciting ride.
He didn't come up with any information when I asked about the Tokoloshe, but at the same time he didn't freak out, crash the truck, and kill us all, so, you know, I just count my blessings.
So here we are at the border control between South Africa and Lesotho.
Uh, we have to get our passports stamped here to exit South Africa, and then it is an eight-kilometer drive to the border of Lesotho.
And, uh, in that eight kilometers we go up over 1,000 meters, way up into this pass, you can see the cloud line up there, we're going up into that, and then we'll be in the Kingdom of Lesotho.
Going over the high mountain ridge, we got to enjoy the spectacular views and enjoy a pint at the world-famous Sani Top Chalet.
Here we are in the highest pub in Africa.
This is a very famous bar where many people have come.
Including, of course, Darth Vader.
I guess this used to be a favorite watering hole of his.
And before you could make a bad Jedi mind trick joke, we were back on the road to Lesotho.
The Tokoloshe's supposed home sweet home.
Hello, are you a Tokoloshe? Most often, the Tokoloshe is seen by children.
And if this guy is what they're seeing, parents of South Africa, lock up your kids.
Getting as far away from the masked weirdo guy as we could, we were happy to finally arrive in the Kingdom of Lesotho, our final destination.
It was truly a surreal place where it seemed like anything could happen.
When we started our investigation in South Africa, the Tokoloshe seemed like something in a galaxy far, far away.
But up here in the drinking haunts of Darth Vader, this creature that was harder to find than J.
D.
Salinger, finally seemed like it might be within my grasp.
Nice to meet you.
I'm Josh.
It's all about who you know, and luckily that Scooby-Doo bad guy from before had hooked us up with a local translator to help us get to the bottom of the Tokoloshe sightings.
People of Lesotho! I am running for president! Have any of them ever seen a Tokoloshe? Yes.
And just like that, we had finally found a Tokoloshe witness willing to help us find the creature.
What he has said is, during the night, he was just a boy, when he was asleep, the Tokoloshe was on his bed.
Tokoloshe was on your bed? Yes.
And was he very afraid? Yes.
What did the Tokoloshe look like? Is he sure that it was not a monkey? Yes.
It was very strong.
Very dangerous and very strong.
Choked you.
So this area over here was where he saw the Tokoloshe.
One of the guys I spoke with said it tried to choke him in the night, and some of the workers that work with the sheep used to sleep here and they used to keep sheep in here, and they've totally abandoned use of these structures, because they say that the Tokoloshe has come and tried to attack them.
They won't even go near it, so they're obviously certain that after dark something happens here.
All right, let's do it.
Let's go.
This is a place where Tokoloshe has been seen before.
A family who used to live here, they saw a Tokoloshe here stealing food and, uh, the family has since abandoned this area.
So we set out the bait the Tokoloshe is specifically reported to favor, sour milk.
And then set up our infrared cameras and Bullard Thermal Imaging System to see who or what would show up after dark.
If I'm going to catch a Tokoloshe, this is the way to do it.
Are you guys all set up? Yep, we're all a go.
Everything's recording.
Okay, I'm gonna take the laser thermometer into the barn and see if I can pick up a heat signature on something.
Okay.
Okay? Let me know if anything goes in front of the cameras.
So, this is an infrared non-contact thermometer.
Essentially it measures, um, heat coming off of an object.
I know that the general surroundings here are fairly cool, and if this thermometer, if the laser on this bounces off anything that gives off heat, I'll detect it and it can show me, um, anything organic that might be here.
The temperature reading is fairly consistent.
If we see any radical fluctuations it's a good indication that we're not alone in here.
This whole area feels really creepy.
You know, uh, that kid had a very terrifying experience here with something that I can't explain.
So, um, it's definitely a very unsettling place to be.
Certain places have different energies and this place just feels very Just feels very creepy.
Well, the barn is creepy, but no heat signatures off anything.
So you guys stay on the cameras, I'm gonna take the laser thermometer, sweep the perimeter, see if I can pick up anything around the barn.
Okay.
Have your walkie on, okay? Okay? Yeah.
Will do.
Got it.
Not picking up anything on the thermometer, but I think I'm hearing something moving around the perimeter.
Wait, I just saw something on camera three.
Did you see that? Hold on, hold on.
I'll play it back.
Wait, play it back.
You see that? Yup.
It's like a shadow or something.
That's freaky.
There it is again.
Look at that.
I know, I know.
I see What is that? I have a temperature increase in this area, so I think I might be imaging something inside the trees here.
I'm picking up something on the thermometer now, it's getting warmer and warmer.
It's at 65, 66, 73, 81.
Gets really close! Whoa! Did you see that? What was that? That bottle just moved.
Playback.
Play that back.
Playback, let's see.
That bottle just moved! No joke.
There it is again! I know, I know.
I see Look at that.
What is that? I have a temperature increase in this area, so I think I might be imaging something inside the trees here.
I'm picking up something on the thermometer now, it's getting warmer and warmer.
It's at 65, 66, 73, 81.
Gets really close! Josh, hey, are you anywhere near the entrance to the barn? No, I'm nowhere near that I'm way over by the tree line.
You should definitely come back here.
We're getting some here on these cameras.
Will do.
I'll be back soon.
I'm gonna track this reading.
Over here.
I don't know where it went, I lost it in the trees.
I'm coming back to base camp.
What was it? I couldn't see anything out there.
You guys found something on the monitors? Yeah, yeah.
You should come take a look at it for sure.
Come on over.
That's really weird.
I wish it was I wish the camera was just tilted a little bit to the left, we'd get a better view of it.
Maybe an animal walked by? I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, it seems like a shadow definitely gets cast just on the left of the camera.
Oh, yeah.
Nothing conclusive, but But creepy.
Oh, my leg's falling asleep.
Did you guys just see that? What? No.
That bottle just moved.
Playback.
Play that back! Playback, let's see.
That bottle just moved! No joke.
Right there, you see it? Yes.
Yeah.
It moves! Play it back again.
But it moves significantly.
For sure! That's weird.
That's really weird.
I mean, how is that a Tokoloshe? I don't know.
I mean, you know, one of the people we talked to, we said, "How do you catch a Tokoloshe?" They said, "How do you catch the wind?" I think a lot of people believe the Tokoloshe is something that can't necessarily be seen.
Some people described it as only being able to be seen by children.
You know, we know it's attracted to milk and the milk is moving, so Whoa! What was that? Did you see that? Play that back! Let's rewind that back, let's check that out.
That's the same bottle! Yeah.
Yes.
It's the same camera! That's so weird.
That's really weird.
It's like this strange glow that just appears right around the milk container.
It's right on the milk bottle.
It's nowhere else in there.
That's strange.
The fact that the bottle physically moves and we can actually visually see a glow around it, is completely unexplainable to me, so I want to go back in there, take the laser thermometer, see if I can get any sort of readings on or around the bottle.
Okay.
All right? No abnormal readings here.
Camera four looks all right, nothing obstructing the lens, which might account for the glow we saw.
Okay, so there's nothing unusual in terms of heat signatures around the bottle, but looking at the bottle, it's definitely tilted over.
But there's no unusual readings around at all.
I don't know what to make of it, I really don't.
I mean, I'm seeing it happen, I'm seeing a cloud of light around it that I have no explanation for.
I mean, you got me, I don't know.
We should certainly take the Tokoloshe fat back to be analyzed.
I don't know if you can somehow get that through customs.
And we can try to have that analyzed, 'cause certainly that looks like fat to me, from something.
And as to this video stuff, I just don't know what to make of it.
I mean, it's certainly weird.
So we took our video surveillance tapes and Tokoloshe fat back to the States for further analysis.
Our first stop was U.
C.
Davis to meet with an expert who could tell us if our Tokoloshe fat was really gremlin DNA or not.
What we're looking at here is That's our sample.
This is our sample.
Right.
And this is the sequence that we were able to obtain for it.
What we have here is gallus gallus isolate.
This is saying 100%, so it's 100% accurate.
And so the results are Chicken.
Chicken? Mmm-hmm.
It's chicken fat? Yup.
100%? 100%.
Unfortunately, our only piece of physical evidence turned out to be a piece of chicken.
And our video surveillance, while interesting, was inconclusive.
But no thoughts as to what that could possibly be? I have no idea.
So we've got two mysteries on our hands.
So while I can say that there are some creepy goings-on in that shack in Lesotho, as for the Tokoloshe himself, I'd say there's more myth and superstition there than truth.
We then headed back to Los Angeles to meet with a fisheries biologist to go over our Mamlambo footage and see if he had any ideas as to what could be out in the Mzintlava River terrorizing locals.
Camera gets sent down, comes back up, and then you can see the moonlight there on the edge, and sort of drifts back out towards the center of the river where it's darker.
Yeah.
I think I saw what you were talking about.
This right here.
Yeah.
Underneath the surface of the water there.
Right.
That to me looks like, uh, the skin of a crocodile.
That looks like the skin of a crocodile to you? Yeah.
I mean, I'm just looking at this hatch mark, and you can tell that it's kind of got a rounded shape on it just by the way it's coming out of the water, or coming closer to the surface of the water.
Yeah, it looks like crocodile skin.
I would imagine a creature swimming near it, saw it, could be food, so they nudge it, and see what it is.
While Dr.
Hovey's crocodile theory could explain what we saw on our surveillance cameras that night, it doesn't necessarily explain the creature that Lindsay saw with her own eyes.
Nor the scores of eyewitness accounts from the villagers who swear that what they saw had a head shaped like a horse's.
Plus, I wonder if it's more than chance that our two encounters just happened to coincide with violent storms, the exact conditions specified by locals to accompany the presence of the Mamlambo.
So while I can't say that I'm convinced that what is responsible for these stories in South Africa is an uncatalogued creature, I can say that I hope that whatever is out there in the Mzintlava River is caught so the locals no longer have to live in fear of their native waters.
As for myself, I had to depart my native soil for the exotic lands and creatures waiting for me out there in the unexplored regions of the world.
Do you think it's going to eat me? What was that? Something just moved camera three! There! Right over there! Right over there! What is that right there? Oh, my God, look! Then Josh hunts a pint-sized beast that's been tormenting local villagers.
I want to find a Tokoloshe.
Tokoloshe? Tokoloshe.
No! But will the creature take the bait? That bottle just moved.
I'm Josh Gates.
My travels have taken me to the most exotic and mysterious places on Earth.
I've seen some unexplainable things which have raised some strange questions.
Now, I've pulled together a crack team armed with the latest technology to search for answers.
I'm not sure what's out there waiting for me, but I know what I'm looking for.
The truth.
While everyone has heard of the Loch Ness Monster up in Scotland, when I read in the Reuters wire service that South Africa supposedly has its own Nessie, my investigator antennas immediately went up.
What I found out, though, is that in South Africa this isn't some friendly creature attracting tourists and hawking t-shirts, but a reported river monster, said to have taken the lives of seven villagers.
It's called the Mamlambo, which roughly translated, means "brain sucker.
" It sounds like a bad monster from a John Carpenter movie, I know, but because of the number of deaths and the widespread panic in the villages near the Mzintlava River, a South African agriculture minister ordered a task force put together to hunt down the creature.
An African safari hunting down a brain-sucking river monster.
Hemingway, eat your heart out.
The plan was to interview local eyewitnesses to learn as much as we could about the Mamlambo before hitting the bush using our high-tech tracking equipment to find physical or audio-visual evidence of the creature.
The team and I packed up and caught the next flight to South Africa and Durban, the country's busiest port.
We touched down and headed to meet with a zoologist who could provide us with a map of where these sightings had occurred.
Farther up north into the villages and see what you can find.
With the map Dr.
Midgley had given us, we hit the road to the Mzintlava River, giving us a chance to see all the wildlife Africa has to offer.
When we stopped to look at a rhino, though, we learned that Neil had forgotten one thing for our journey into the African plains.
Did your fuel light just come on? Yes, it did.
Where do you think you're gonna get gas from out here? I don't know.
Why didn't you tell us that we were running low on gas? It just went down.
It just went down.
There's a rhino outside the car.
Yes, hello, we're in the park, we're on our way up to Hilltop as we speak.
We're almost out of petrol.
Do you guys have any gas? Diesel.
Petrol? Diesel? It needs to be diesel.
I'm sorry, it closes at 5:00? We're gonna there in 15 minutes.
We're gonna be there in 15 minutes.
Can you keep it open? I accept full responsibility.
This is all my fault.
If we run out, I will walk through the game reserve with the live animals.
That is such a lie.
That is That is such a lie.
With the sun dropping quickly, the vultures licking their chops, and the rhinos getting testy, I had my fill of the circle of life and was happy to get some gas and get back on the road to the Mzintlava River and the village where several people have reportedly been drowned by the monster.
We stopped just outside of the village to meet with a game ranger to find out why the government had commissioned him to hunt the Mamlambo and what signs to look for while searching for the river monster.
You were commissioned a few years ago to go and find this creature in the river.
Well, the minister of agriculture at the time, in the Eastern Cape, had heard that there was this monster in rivers and deep pools.
The reports were that their eyes were sucked out and they were drained of their blood.
So, people believed that it was this particular monster, which had supposedly a head of a horse and the body of a fish, and comes out when there's a tornado, very often attributed.
Right.
Monsters are supposed to come out of those rivers when you have these big storms, and they think that's the revenge of the river monsters.
So do you think there's a possibility that there is some sort of large animal living in these rivers and in these deep pools that these people are seeing? We haven't found any fossil records, we haven't found any bones of those type of animals, but I'm not saying that it's impossible that that sort of animal exists.
I mean, we're still finding mammals and reptiles and so forth to this day.
We learned two things that night, that natives see storms as a sign of the Mamlambo's presence, and that there is no Marriott in the middle of South Africa.
Eventually, though we found a hotel in Kokstad, and I am using the word "hotel" loosely.
We got a couple of beds.
There's electricity here which is kind of a rarity.
It's running off a generator which goes off in an hour, so in an hour we will be in the dark.
But we have bread, and a couple of beds, and what else do you need? These are my pants that supposedly are bug-proof.
Bugs can't bite through these pants somehow.
The other amazing thing about them is that they're also girl-proof.
It keeps bugs and women out.
But before the generators turned off, we got to experience first-hand that wild and crazy Kokstad nightlife you've been hearing so much about.
We even got to try some local delicacies.
I think it might be goat.
I think it might be not going in my stomach.
The food, as it turned out, wasn't that bad.
The dancing, well, that's a different story altogether.
The next morning, we met with our local translator and arrived at the Mamlambo village.
She says she got a lift through the taxi, and as she got in she saw this thing behind the bridge there.
So in the area of the bridge that connects the two villages? Yes.
And how big was it? She says it's taller than us.
Taller than us? Yeah.
And you think it's very dangerous? It is dangerous.
Go to the chief.
So that's where we're going.
Chief Jojo.
Hello, sir.
So if I was going to try to look for this creature, where would I look? Does he think that's what's going to happen? Do you think it's going to eat me? We headed to the bridge that the chief had told us about as it seemed the best place to set up our surveillance and find any evidence of the Mamlambo river monster's existence.
This is definitely the spot.
This seems like a nice, deep portion of the river here.
We got a good sandbar we can set up on.
It seems kind of ideal, yeah? So we should set everything up.
This is a great little bank that comes out here, we can set up the cameras there facing in both directions and get a pretty good view of this section of the river.
The zoologist said that slower moving sections or deeper sections would be more likely that a creature would be living in, so it picks up a little bit down here, so this seems just perfect in here.
I think we can set up cameras looking either way Yeah, for sure.
Set it up.
So we broke out our surveillance cameras and audio gear to track any odd movements in the water that could be the Mamlambo.
Do you guys realize that Neil just left us here? Can I tell you I secretly hope it rains really hard, because I think that would look great.
Cut to That was close.
What do you think? Yeah, don't worry, we can fit it.
As long as we fit everything in there Look up.
And us? Supposedly the Mamlambo comes out during storms, and these definitely looked like storm clouds to me.
I think there's Not good.
I mean, we're out in the middle of The middle of a river with a ton of electronic equipment with no shelter and no car.
We've got shelter.
We'll be fine.
Hey, if the storm comes, maybe the Mamlambo will come like the ranger said.
I think if the storm comes, we're all in a bad spot, is what I think.
One camera upstream.
Okay.
Okay.
Two cameras upstream, this bank and this bank.
Camera out here, camera down there.
Okay.
Okay.
So we'll see how far this cord can reach.
Maybe bank, bank What was that? You know, something just jumped out of there.
Oh, my God! It appears to be traveling toward us.
What is that right there? Good God! Eric, in the tent, come on! We'd just started to set up our surveillance for our South African river monster investigation when Lindsay surveilled something with her own eyes.
Maybe bank, bank What was that? What was what? Something jumped out of that.
Oh, my God, look.
Over there.
No, really.
See where that big ripple is? Yeah, what is that? You know, something just jumped out of there.
It appears to be traveling toward us.
Oh, my God.
Literally jumped out of there.
Literally traveling towards us.
You didn't see the head pop out of there? What is that right there? This tornado that's coming toward us? Do you see it? In the tent, in the tent, in the tent.
Come on.
In the tent? Eric, in the tent, come on.
Eric, in the tent, come on.
What's What's Neil's number? Where are you? I'm inside a tent in the middle of a lightning storm.
It's terrible here right now.
We're getting drowned.
This can't be safe for the crew, so just get back here as soon as you can.
Here's the thing, though, we're about 20 minutes away from being completely solvent in here, like it's gonna come up through the floors.
And I also think this embankment we're sitting on is gonna saturate.
So we need to get out of here.
Good God! God almighty! All right.
I'm gonna get out.
Okay.
Is that Neil? You take the Bullard, I'll take some of these cases up toward the road.
Carter! Come on, let's get out of here.
Neil's here, he's trying to back the van up! God! Big lighting strike right there.
Come on, guys, let's go! Come on, we're getting out of here, seriously.
We need to get out of here soon.
And those are getting closer and closer.
Big lightning strike right there.
I'm not having you guys get hit by lightning, let's go.
Look out.
Neil, do you want to bid adieu to your tent or do you wanna take it? Forget it, just leave it! God! That's close! Take the tarp.
Okay, come on, everybody in the car! Carter, let's go! If thunderstorms are a sign of angering the Mamlambo, then I for one will never make a Yo Mamlambo joke again.
They'll say that In the morning, they're gonna find the tent and they're gonna be, like, "The snake ate six more!" The tent didn't survive the storm, but luckily we did.
And the next morning I showed the local kids that I hadn't been killed by the river monster because I had a few tricks up my sleeve.
No! No! Dry and alive, we went to meet with Nothoback, a woman whose friend hadn't been as lucky, and who she claimed was dragged below the surface of the water by the Mamlambo.
What did you see? We just call her.
Did he say how big the creature was? How many people have died in the river? Nothoback then took us to her friend, Luiso, who claimed to have actually seen the creature drown the victim in the water.
He saw this creature with his own two eyes? He says the head looked very like a horse's.
So what did the body look like? He says it looked like a fish.
And was he very afraid when he saw this? He says it was very frightful.
And where does he think the best place is for me to look? What part of the river has the most sightings? He told us he'd seen the creature only days before in a river bend a kilometer away.
So that's where we had to go.
Good news is there's no rain clouds tonight.
Oh, my God.
Big lightning.
Some people say the Mamlambo's attracted to lightning storms.
Wait.
What's that? There's like a head moving in the water.
Look! We'd been lucky enough to not only have survived the South African storm of the century, but to find an eyewitness who claimed to have seen the Mamlambo river monster only days earlier.
So we headed to the spot along the Mzintlava River where we'd have the best chance of capturing evidence of the underwater beast using our tracking equipment.
You guys wanna know the good news or the bad news? The good news.
Good news is there's no rain clouds tonight.
That's very good news.
Bad news is, we're using one of the two of you for bait.
Actually, the chief said that we should completely avoid getting in the water at all costs.
Because of the Mamlambo? That and there are thousands of parasites all along the river, and I am not sure you wanna hear what the parasite does.
But it crawls up your urethra.
And it has, like, a set of teeth on it and it crawls up inside your urethra and then lodges itself in your urethra.
Sounds good.
Hey, Linds? Yeah? Do you have the wiring for the cameras? I think what we'll do is, we'll put one right there Okay.
Two across, and one faced over that way.
Okay.
And we got about probably half an hour or so before sunset, and we should keep the angles low on them so it's just picking up the surface of the water really.
Okay.
Okay.
Maybe like nothing above the surface of the rocks there.
If an enormous river monster comes out of this water, what's our plan of attack? We all keep shooting.
That's what I like to hear.
Since swimming in the river was almost as dangerous because of parasites as of the Mamlambo, we needed to figure out a way to get the camera out in the water in our stead.
What do you think would float the best? The big case, yeah.
Our best option was to attach a camera to one of the camera cases and then float it out into the middle of the river.
We also attached the fishfinder sonar unit to the side of it to detect any living creature swimming around it.
It was a good plan, only we needed to figure out exactly how to get the case out in the river without it just floating away.
It's like how they did Chrissie from Jaws.
The girl that gets eaten in the beginning? Take a big weight that's fixed on the bottom of the river, with a loop in it.
Right? We throw that as far as we can.
Then we loop through this, this line, and that allows us to pulley out deeper into the river.
If that makes any sense.
And you have to get this rock in the middle of the water? That's the problem.
Is that I picked a rock that's too heavy.
That'll do.
All the sightings in the past month had been on this stretch of river and they all seemed to occur at night, so hopefully we'll be able to capture something on the cameras if we wait.
We have all four cameras up and running.
Camera one is about 30 feet up the river pointing to the north, camera two is here at the base camp pointing directly across the river where we can see camera three, which is itself pointed up the river to the north.
And camera four pointed toward the south end of the river.
I feel like we're like in the middle of nowhere.
Yup.
We are.
The middle of nowhere, South Africa.
The middle of nowhere, South Africa, on the edge of a dark river on a dark night looking for a river monster.
You know, I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been a really good sea monster movie.
Goonies.
Goonies is not about a sea monster.
Anything on the sonar, Eric? No, nothing yet.
I'm just happy we're not getting hit by lightning.
It's a welcome change.
Knock on wood.
Just don't jinx it, we said that last night.
Oh, my God.
Not again.
Well, there's the Mamlambo signal.
Everybody be on alert.
Lindsay, you keep an eye on the cameras, I'll just take the headlamps and just walk around and see what I can see.
All right, get them up.
A storm off in the distance this way, which, after last night, obviously we're keeping a very close eye on.
And Big lighting.
But it's a sign of the Mamlambo, so let's see what I can find in the infrared binoculars.
Hold on.
Thought I saw something.
Never mind.
Lot of lightning.
Let's head back to camp.
The good news is that some people say the Mamlambo is attracted to lightning storms, so all we can do is wait.
Just keeps on moving Wait.
What's that? There's like a head moving in the water.
Look! Something just moved camera three! Carter, come here! There! Right over there! Right over there! Right there, do you see it? What was that? The bad news is we got lightning in the distance, the good news is that the Mamlambo is supposedly attracted to storms, so we might see a South African river monster yet.
Wait.
What's that? There's like a head moving in the water.
Look! It's on camera two right next to that rock.
No, that, my friend, is a frog.
See how it climbs up over the rock? Do you think it has the head of a horse and the body of a fish? I'll get back to you on that.
It looked big to me.
Cut the tape.
You think I'm crazy.
So many people agree that they saw something big.
Over the last 10 years a lot of people have disappeared and washed up, eaten or mutilated in this river.
It's certainly That's certainly real.
There's a real fear of this river.
They just don't wanna mess with it.
Hold on a second.
Look Something just moved camera three! Carter, come here! Carter, come here! There, right there! Right over there! Lindsay, you have a light? Come here.
Hand me the binoculars.
Right there, do you see it? What was that? The whole case moved, like there was something under it that nudged it.
Could have been the frog? No, the camera went up in the air! I'm not seeing anything in the binoculars.
Whatever it was, it's gone now.
All right, let's play it back and take a look at it.
Right there.
I mean, that's a big move.
Look at that.
It moved so much.
I mean, the entire case moves around so much.
Let's see.
I mean, something just knocks it! Something's out there swimming by it or coming up underneath it.
Let's pull up camera two.
It doesn't just get knocked, it gets lifted off the water.
Look at the light, see it goes up in the air.
If you look here it looks like something white.
You see it? Yeah, right there.
Roll it back.
Right Watch.
Right here.
There.
See? Yes.
It looks like something goes by the camera.
What is that? I don't know.
With no more strange sightings that night, come morning we packed up and headed to Durban to ship our footage to a biologist to find out what he thought might have brushed past our camera.
Before leaving South Africa, though, I wanted to investigate one of the country's most notorious mythical creatures, the Tokoloshe.
Predominantly seen in Zulu regions of the country, the Tokoloshe has found its way into the mainstream media in several famous South African murder trials, where defendants claimed they had killed someone believing they were the Tokoloshe.
And one court was so convinced by the defendant's testimony about his Tokoloshe encounter, they decided not to call an expert witness to refute his claims.
Reportedly it's a flesh-and-blood creature that also has the ability to manifest itself in ghost form.
So the first thing I had to do was to find out what exactly a Tokoloshe was from the local eyewitnesses so I knew what I was looking for before setting up an investigation, using our equipment to determine once and for all if this South African night crawler really exists.
I decided to meet with a local sanguma, a Zulu spiritual guide who could perhaps give me some details into what the Tokoloshe is and what he likes to eat.
Uh, she had a patient that came with a child, and the child said, "At night there's this short man.
"He comes, he's got a long beard and then he asks for food.
" Amasi, especially.
Amasi? Amasi.
What is amasi? It's sour milk.
The Tokoloshe, that's what it asked from the child.
"Can you give me amasi?" How do you catch a Tokoloshe? How can you catch something like that? Because it's like wind.
Sometimes, sometimes it can just be wind.
The sanguma explained that not only are there many people in this region scared of the Tokoloshe and actively avoid encounters with it, they also refuse to discuss its very existence, fearing retribution.
It's kind of like talking about the Yankees in Boston.
And either way, it didn't look like our investigation was gonna be a walk in the park.
We moved further into rural South Africa and closer to areas where the Tokoloshe had reportedly been seen in the past.
We hired an interpreter to communicate with the locals.
It's very nice to meet you.
And very nice to meet you, too.
So you're gonna be translating for us today? Yes.
What do you speak besides English? English and Zulu.
And Zulu.
I speak no Zulu.
Yeah.
I speak everything.
Okay.
So you are critical.
You're critical.
Yes.
We headed to a local market to pick up the Tokoloshe bait that the sanguma had recommended, sour milk, which surprisingly grocers in South Africa carry in bulk.
Best before the 20th of February.
It's curdled milk.
What happens to the It's already bad milk.
Why is there a "best before" date on it? I didn't need help translating the expiration dates of the well-expired milk, but I did need help finding Tokoloshe eyewitnesses.
Do you know about the Tokoloshe? They haven't seen one.
They haven't seen one? No.
Do they know anyone who's seen one? He says yes and then he says no.
Yes and then no? Mmm-hmm.
Do you know anyone who has seen a Tokoloshe? You've got this wacky t-shirt with this, like, Tron baby on it.
Where did you get that? Where can I find the Tokoloshe? You guys, you know what you guys are? You guys are like The Rat Pack.
Dean, Sammy, you're Frank.
Yes.
And I got some bad news for you, man.
You're Joey Bishop.
It's a tough break, but you got nice eyes.
Are you scared of Tokoloshe? Yes.
Can you come here for a minute? We're interested in speaking to someone about the Tokoloshe.
Nothing.
Tokoloshe? Tokoloshe? Tokoloshe.
No! No? No.
I want to find a Tokoloshe.
No? I was beginning to think that maybe the reason there were so few sightings was because everyone seemed to be doing everything they could to avoid the Tokoloshe, including discussing the creature with me.
And either way, I wasn't going to let the tongue-tied locals or needle in a haystack logistics deter me from getting to the bottom of this.
And thankfully, after a long day of searching backcountry roads, we finally got a lead on an eyewitness who was supposed to have had first-hand contact with the Tokoloshe.
Only getting someone to tell us the whereabouts of this eyewitness came at a price.
And what did this woman want for such valuable information? Money? Camera gear? One night alone with a strapping young American truth-seeker? Sweets.
She wants sweets.
Sweets.
Yeah.
No, she just wanted candy.
This is a Bar One Toffee Crisp and this was going to be my dinner.
Okay, that's fine, that's for you.
But it's for you.
She said the eyewitness was close.
Let's go! Let's go! So up the trail we went.
And I learned two things on that hike.
One, apparently in Zulu, close means way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, and two, that my translator, while not afraid of the Tokoloshe, was afraid of almost every other animal on the planet.
Why do you hate dogs? Yeah, me I hate those I hate reptiles.
Reptiles? You hate reptiles? You hate spiders, you hate dogs, you hate cats I hate I hate everything.
You hate everything.
Okay, you know what she just said? She just said What? What? "You taking a photo of me, you're gonna give me money.
" I just gave her a Toffee Crisp bar.
I thought that was her payment.
Three miles and two candy bars later we reached the eyewitness who could give us the 411 on the Tokoloshe.
So she's telling me that if we go back to where the Crocodile place Yeah.
That's the only places where we can get the Tokoloshe.
What'd she say? What if he kills you? Does she think that he will kill me? Yes.
If I go to his house? Yes.
Why would he kill me for going to his house? They're scared.
They're scared.
Mmm.
Apparently the reason she was so scared was that the only person she knew who had physical contact with the Tokoloshe was a local named Crocodile, who dabbles in the black arts and doesn't like foreigners.
Just what I need, a guy who could actually shrink my head for making a shrunken head joke.
And we met a few eyewitnesses who had heard of you, and some of them were kind of scared of you.
They were very scared of you.
Right! You are right.
I'm happy about that.
Why? Why are they scared of you? Okay.
I can take this to any place in the world and put it around your house, you practice bad magic, you lose your child.
Just like that.
With this.
So you're saying that this can kill people? Yeah! It can! Crocodile was like one of those bad guys from Scooby-Doo, complete with a sinister snicker.
And just as I was about to head back to the Mystery Machine for some Scooby Snacks, the doctor pulled something out of his private stock.
The most compelling evidence of the Tokoloshe we'd seen so far.
Tokoloshe.
Wow.
This is a place where Tokoloshe has been seen before.
I'm picking up something now.
Yeah, I just saw something on camera three.
Do you see that? Yeah, that's freaky.
Josh.
Are you anywhere near the entrance to the barn? I was about ready to throw in the towel on our South African Tokoloshe interview with a guy the locals called Crocodile when he pulled out a piece of evidence I hadn't expected to find in his shed o'creep.
Tokoloshe? Can I see the container? Yes.
So this is the fat of Tokoloshe? Mmm-hmm.
What I had in my hands was a vial of what Crocodile claimed was congealed Tokoloshe fat.
I couldn't wait to declare this at customs.
But even more important than this piece of evidence, he gave me the name of the location that the Tokoloshe supposedly calls home, the nearby kingdom of Lesotho.
So, the next morning, the team and I once again hit the road.
All right, so we're in Underberg, which is just on the edge of Drakensburg here.
There's no way that our van's gonna make it over this pass.
They won't let us go without a four-wheel drive vehicle.
So I got this guy lined up, he'll take us over.
We just need to load any equipment and camera bags, anything we need for the day into the 4x4.
So, Wilson, you're gonna take us up over the Sani Pass.
Yes.
And, uh, what's the road like? Mmm, it's bad, but It's a bad road? Yeah.
But it's okay? We'll make it? Yes.
You're sure? We can.
Sure, sure.
You've done it before? Yes.
How many times? Okay, so it was Wilson's first time driving up a notoriously deadly road over the Northern Lesotho mountains.
But it was an exciting ride.
He didn't come up with any information when I asked about the Tokoloshe, but at the same time he didn't freak out, crash the truck, and kill us all, so, you know, I just count my blessings.
So here we are at the border control between South Africa and Lesotho.
Uh, we have to get our passports stamped here to exit South Africa, and then it is an eight-kilometer drive to the border of Lesotho.
And, uh, in that eight kilometers we go up over 1,000 meters, way up into this pass, you can see the cloud line up there, we're going up into that, and then we'll be in the Kingdom of Lesotho.
Going over the high mountain ridge, we got to enjoy the spectacular views and enjoy a pint at the world-famous Sani Top Chalet.
Here we are in the highest pub in Africa.
This is a very famous bar where many people have come.
Including, of course, Darth Vader.
I guess this used to be a favorite watering hole of his.
And before you could make a bad Jedi mind trick joke, we were back on the road to Lesotho.
The Tokoloshe's supposed home sweet home.
Hello, are you a Tokoloshe? Most often, the Tokoloshe is seen by children.
And if this guy is what they're seeing, parents of South Africa, lock up your kids.
Getting as far away from the masked weirdo guy as we could, we were happy to finally arrive in the Kingdom of Lesotho, our final destination.
It was truly a surreal place where it seemed like anything could happen.
When we started our investigation in South Africa, the Tokoloshe seemed like something in a galaxy far, far away.
But up here in the drinking haunts of Darth Vader, this creature that was harder to find than J.
D.
Salinger, finally seemed like it might be within my grasp.
Nice to meet you.
I'm Josh.
It's all about who you know, and luckily that Scooby-Doo bad guy from before had hooked us up with a local translator to help us get to the bottom of the Tokoloshe sightings.
People of Lesotho! I am running for president! Have any of them ever seen a Tokoloshe? Yes.
And just like that, we had finally found a Tokoloshe witness willing to help us find the creature.
What he has said is, during the night, he was just a boy, when he was asleep, the Tokoloshe was on his bed.
Tokoloshe was on your bed? Yes.
And was he very afraid? Yes.
What did the Tokoloshe look like? Is he sure that it was not a monkey? Yes.
It was very strong.
Very dangerous and very strong.
Choked you.
So this area over here was where he saw the Tokoloshe.
One of the guys I spoke with said it tried to choke him in the night, and some of the workers that work with the sheep used to sleep here and they used to keep sheep in here, and they've totally abandoned use of these structures, because they say that the Tokoloshe has come and tried to attack them.
They won't even go near it, so they're obviously certain that after dark something happens here.
All right, let's do it.
Let's go.
This is a place where Tokoloshe has been seen before.
A family who used to live here, they saw a Tokoloshe here stealing food and, uh, the family has since abandoned this area.
So we set out the bait the Tokoloshe is specifically reported to favor, sour milk.
And then set up our infrared cameras and Bullard Thermal Imaging System to see who or what would show up after dark.
If I'm going to catch a Tokoloshe, this is the way to do it.
Are you guys all set up? Yep, we're all a go.
Everything's recording.
Okay, I'm gonna take the laser thermometer into the barn and see if I can pick up a heat signature on something.
Okay.
Okay? Let me know if anything goes in front of the cameras.
So, this is an infrared non-contact thermometer.
Essentially it measures, um, heat coming off of an object.
I know that the general surroundings here are fairly cool, and if this thermometer, if the laser on this bounces off anything that gives off heat, I'll detect it and it can show me, um, anything organic that might be here.
The temperature reading is fairly consistent.
If we see any radical fluctuations it's a good indication that we're not alone in here.
This whole area feels really creepy.
You know, uh, that kid had a very terrifying experience here with something that I can't explain.
So, um, it's definitely a very unsettling place to be.
Certain places have different energies and this place just feels very Just feels very creepy.
Well, the barn is creepy, but no heat signatures off anything.
So you guys stay on the cameras, I'm gonna take the laser thermometer, sweep the perimeter, see if I can pick up anything around the barn.
Okay.
Have your walkie on, okay? Okay? Yeah.
Will do.
Got it.
Not picking up anything on the thermometer, but I think I'm hearing something moving around the perimeter.
Wait, I just saw something on camera three.
Did you see that? Hold on, hold on.
I'll play it back.
Wait, play it back.
You see that? Yup.
It's like a shadow or something.
That's freaky.
There it is again.
Look at that.
I know, I know.
I see What is that? I have a temperature increase in this area, so I think I might be imaging something inside the trees here.
I'm picking up something on the thermometer now, it's getting warmer and warmer.
It's at 65, 66, 73, 81.
Gets really close! Whoa! Did you see that? What was that? That bottle just moved.
Playback.
Play that back.
Playback, let's see.
That bottle just moved! No joke.
There it is again! I know, I know.
I see Look at that.
What is that? I have a temperature increase in this area, so I think I might be imaging something inside the trees here.
I'm picking up something on the thermometer now, it's getting warmer and warmer.
It's at 65, 66, 73, 81.
Gets really close! Josh, hey, are you anywhere near the entrance to the barn? No, I'm nowhere near that I'm way over by the tree line.
You should definitely come back here.
We're getting some here on these cameras.
Will do.
I'll be back soon.
I'm gonna track this reading.
Over here.
I don't know where it went, I lost it in the trees.
I'm coming back to base camp.
What was it? I couldn't see anything out there.
You guys found something on the monitors? Yeah, yeah.
You should come take a look at it for sure.
Come on over.
That's really weird.
I wish it was I wish the camera was just tilted a little bit to the left, we'd get a better view of it.
Maybe an animal walked by? I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, it seems like a shadow definitely gets cast just on the left of the camera.
Oh, yeah.
Nothing conclusive, but But creepy.
Oh, my leg's falling asleep.
Did you guys just see that? What? No.
That bottle just moved.
Playback.
Play that back! Playback, let's see.
That bottle just moved! No joke.
Right there, you see it? Yes.
Yeah.
It moves! Play it back again.
But it moves significantly.
For sure! That's weird.
That's really weird.
I mean, how is that a Tokoloshe? I don't know.
I mean, you know, one of the people we talked to, we said, "How do you catch a Tokoloshe?" They said, "How do you catch the wind?" I think a lot of people believe the Tokoloshe is something that can't necessarily be seen.
Some people described it as only being able to be seen by children.
You know, we know it's attracted to milk and the milk is moving, so Whoa! What was that? Did you see that? Play that back! Let's rewind that back, let's check that out.
That's the same bottle! Yeah.
Yes.
It's the same camera! That's so weird.
That's really weird.
It's like this strange glow that just appears right around the milk container.
It's right on the milk bottle.
It's nowhere else in there.
That's strange.
The fact that the bottle physically moves and we can actually visually see a glow around it, is completely unexplainable to me, so I want to go back in there, take the laser thermometer, see if I can get any sort of readings on or around the bottle.
Okay.
All right? No abnormal readings here.
Camera four looks all right, nothing obstructing the lens, which might account for the glow we saw.
Okay, so there's nothing unusual in terms of heat signatures around the bottle, but looking at the bottle, it's definitely tilted over.
But there's no unusual readings around at all.
I don't know what to make of it, I really don't.
I mean, I'm seeing it happen, I'm seeing a cloud of light around it that I have no explanation for.
I mean, you got me, I don't know.
We should certainly take the Tokoloshe fat back to be analyzed.
I don't know if you can somehow get that through customs.
And we can try to have that analyzed, 'cause certainly that looks like fat to me, from something.
And as to this video stuff, I just don't know what to make of it.
I mean, it's certainly weird.
So we took our video surveillance tapes and Tokoloshe fat back to the States for further analysis.
Our first stop was U.
C.
Davis to meet with an expert who could tell us if our Tokoloshe fat was really gremlin DNA or not.
What we're looking at here is That's our sample.
This is our sample.
Right.
And this is the sequence that we were able to obtain for it.
What we have here is gallus gallus isolate.
This is saying 100%, so it's 100% accurate.
And so the results are Chicken.
Chicken? Mmm-hmm.
It's chicken fat? Yup.
100%? 100%.
Unfortunately, our only piece of physical evidence turned out to be a piece of chicken.
And our video surveillance, while interesting, was inconclusive.
But no thoughts as to what that could possibly be? I have no idea.
So we've got two mysteries on our hands.
So while I can say that there are some creepy goings-on in that shack in Lesotho, as for the Tokoloshe himself, I'd say there's more myth and superstition there than truth.
We then headed back to Los Angeles to meet with a fisheries biologist to go over our Mamlambo footage and see if he had any ideas as to what could be out in the Mzintlava River terrorizing locals.
Camera gets sent down, comes back up, and then you can see the moonlight there on the edge, and sort of drifts back out towards the center of the river where it's darker.
Yeah.
I think I saw what you were talking about.
This right here.
Yeah.
Underneath the surface of the water there.
Right.
That to me looks like, uh, the skin of a crocodile.
That looks like the skin of a crocodile to you? Yeah.
I mean, I'm just looking at this hatch mark, and you can tell that it's kind of got a rounded shape on it just by the way it's coming out of the water, or coming closer to the surface of the water.
Yeah, it looks like crocodile skin.
I would imagine a creature swimming near it, saw it, could be food, so they nudge it, and see what it is.
While Dr.
Hovey's crocodile theory could explain what we saw on our surveillance cameras that night, it doesn't necessarily explain the creature that Lindsay saw with her own eyes.
Nor the scores of eyewitness accounts from the villagers who swear that what they saw had a head shaped like a horse's.
Plus, I wonder if it's more than chance that our two encounters just happened to coincide with violent storms, the exact conditions specified by locals to accompany the presence of the Mamlambo.
So while I can't say that I'm convinced that what is responsible for these stories in South Africa is an uncatalogued creature, I can say that I hope that whatever is out there in the Mzintlava River is caught so the locals no longer have to live in fear of their native waters.
As for myself, I had to depart my native soil for the exotic lands and creatures waiting for me out there in the unexplored regions of the world.