DESTINATION TRUTH - Haunted Lost City & Thunderbird

SyFy - Original Air Date: 10/21/09

From a lost Incan city to Alaska, Josh and the DT crew are out looking for answers again.  The "lost" city in Peru is very remote, and the locals claim it's haunted.  The crew has the usual adventures with the locals, culminating with the team's burros getting spooked, a cameraman hurt, and the locals refusing to venture any closer to the city.  Despite this, the crew locates the ruins and sets up base camp and the usual camera surveillance setups.  That night, they hear strange noises and find a mysterious tunnel system, which Josh almost falls into.  After chasing noises, but not catching them, the crew returns to the US to analyze their data.  They hear a mysterious EVP, and call in the Ghost Hunters crew (again -- Notice a pattern here?).  But, the results remain inconclusive.

Next, the team goes to Alaska looking for the legendary thunderbird -- described as a mix of bird and reptile.  Recently, a pilot and his 6 passengers all claim to have seen the creature, which has a reported wingspan of up to 30 feet.  The pilot describes it as larger than an eagle, and others claim to have seen the thing, too.  Team DT charters a plane to go up and take a look, but see no thunderbirds -- though they do spot the native village (town) where most of the sightings have taken place.  The bird, apparently, is not averse to the chilly temperatures, which drop well below zero.  The team triangulates the local sightings and sets up a base camp and camera traps, hoping to catch the supposedly nocturnal creature.  (They build a fire to keep warm in the frigid night.)  Amid snapping branches -- which I think is probably explained by snow -- the crew comes to feel they were "buzzed" by something near the treetops.  (The winter landscape looks amazing in their night vision cameras.)  They spot a strange thermal hit on one of the cameras, flying through the sky, then chase something through the woods.  While they're doing that, something takes the bait from their traps.  They take the evidence back to LA for analysis and to show it to experts.  The IR camera image is too far off to identify, and the creature that took the bait was just a close-up blur.  The expert suggests a Stellar Sea Eagle, migrating over from Japan, is a likely suspect. Josh notes that size of objects in the air is notoriously difficult to determine (see recent Balloon Boy flap), so a rare eagle seems a good explanation.

In the end, it's sad that DT didn't get better evidence, but it was a fun ride anyway -- as usual.