DESTINATION TRUTH - Ghost Fleet; Japanese River Monster

SyFy - Original Air Date: 9/30/10

The crew goes to the Micronesia check out Japanese WWII ghost wrecks and then to Japan itself to look for Kappa.  Truk Lagoon is a graveyard of WWII ships, patrolled by tiger sharks, and reputed to be haunted.  The team will conduct the "first ever" underwater paranormal investigation.  (Quotes because I have no way of verifying this claim.)  As always, they chat up the locals and hear spooky stories; supposedly, sunken vehicles can be heard running in the deep, 130 feet down.  Into the drink they go, turning up human remains and unexploded bombs, just for fun. They also hear mysterious noises that sound like trucks running.  At night, they check out haunts on one of the local islands and do some night diving, too.  More shadows and sounds, both above & below, ending in the now-standard consult with Grant & Jason from Ghost Hunters.  The spooky underwater sounds prove inconclusive; sounds carry a long way underwater.  A Flir (infrared) hit they determine to be merely a local villager walking by.  The underwatrer engine sounds, though, do sound like an engine, but is it paranormal?  Josh considers their trip a successful expansion of paranormal research.

Kappa, once feared throughout Japan, have become pop-culture icons. But recently, reptilian creatures have been sighted in Japanese rivers. Could the turtle-like Kappa be back?  The DT team samples the local kappa souvenirs and sees what purports to be the bones of a kappa foot.  Then they stay in a micro hotel, with rooms like a double-wide coffin before heading to Tono to check out the rivers.  They spot a giant koi fish, and Josh swims a frigid river to carry across a line to ferry equipment.  Then they set up the usual perimeter and camera traps, 'cause apparently monsters only come out at night, so that's when they always look.  (Point: Any night-hunting creature is gonna see -- and hear -- these guys, and avoid them, long before they can see it.)  They feel something moving in the river, catch something on an IR camera, and frighten some bats in a cave.  In analysis, the video is possibly a rare river otter, and the moving thing Josh felt an eel.  The foot bones are likely from a canine. Thus, the show concludes, the Kappa remains a colorful myth, fueled possibly, by misidentification of known creatures.