DESTINATION TRUTH - Bhutan Yeti

SyFy - Original Air Date:

After finding a yeti print in a previous expedition to Nepal, Josh Gates and company head out to look for the monster again, this time in Bhutan -- which has an actual nature reserve dedicated to help the possibly mythical creature survive.  They talk to the locals, nearly run into a rare fire ceremony with their car, and see some reputed yeti bones.  Then they head into the wilds to find the creature.  They chase sounds across several rickety bridges and get a brief thermal image.  They then move deeper into the countryside to continue their search.  There, they climb across rugged rocks and poke into narrow caves.  They see something on the thermal camera and chase it up a hill and across a chasm on an ancient tram... in the dark.  But they're stopped by a deadly chasm river, and have to head back home.

The vertebrae seem to have come from an Asian black bear.  The hair sample turns out to be from some large primate, with a previously unknown DNA sequence.  Despite this exciting evidence, I have to conclude that the thermal hits were either nothing unusual, or too blurry to make out what they were -- as they are not mentioned in the show's wrap-up.  A good "mid-season" finale for DT, which remains the strongest of the monster- and ghost-hunting shows.

DESTINATION TRUTH - Werewolf & Arica Monster

Syfy - Original Air Date: 10/28/09

Josh and team go looking for Werewolves in Romania and dinosaurs in Chile.  The werewolf hunt starts with a very cool simulation that my friend Linda Godfrey might enjoy.  Taking a train deep into Transylvania, the crew check with local folks and check out local wolves before heading into the field.  Poking around in some caves, they find some "human" bones and strange fur, which they bag.  They then arrive at the area marked by a white cross -- really -- where werewolves have been recently sighted.  In the woods, they find strange footprints, hear howling, and see glinting eyes in the darkness.  After one of the crew takes a bad fall, and another falls sick, they head back home to analyze what they've found.  The prints they found seem to be from wolves, though one is much larger than a normal wolf.  As yet, though, they've no proof of an actual werewolf.

The Arica is a three-toed dinosaur-like creature living in a remote Chilean desert.  After talking to the locals who claim to have seen the fast, 3-toed beast, they ATV out into the desert, and there they find some strange, 3-toed prints.  They poke through the rocky and hazardous canyons at night, and find a partially eaten canine paw.  Strange sounds, lead them through a dangerous night chase, but they find nothing.  The prints, it turns out, are from an actual dinosaur -- iguanadon (though not recent), but the dinosaur expert suggests the locals are seeing a rare, ostrich-like bird called a rhea.  Again, a fun chase, but no actual monsters for Destination Truth.

MYSTERYQUEST - Stonehenge

History Channel - Original Air Date: 12/2/09

The show tries to look into the ancient rituals of Stonehenge - including possible human sacrifice - and whether the circle was a temple of the dead.  They bang some drums and find the stones echo the drumbeats back.  They speculate that the ritual sounds of Stonehenge may have had a hypnotic effect on those in the ceremony -- an effect contributed to by torches, which may have pulsed in time with the drumbeats, too (because of the sonics).  They also speculate that a body found with arrowheads may have been executed by ritual firing squad - though there is little other evidence of this.  In the end, this was an interesting experiment, but little more.