DESTINATION TRUTH - Spirits of Easter Island & the Moa

SyFy - Original Air Date: 4/21/10

Are the giant heads of Easter Island haunted?  Is a supposedly extinct giant bird lurking in the New Zealand hinterlands?  (Moi and Moa, get it?)  Josh and crew head into the Pacific to check out these rumors.  Apparently, if you are not accepted by the Easter Island spirits, you can be in deep trouble; so Josh has to drink a potion concocted by a local shaman.  He & Ryder go on a quest to find the plant to brew the tea (looking like a day trip to Shutter Island) and hope it will help them find the spirits.  As usual, they'll be poking around at night and setting up the usual camp & perimeter cameras and stuff.  They spot a "crazy glow" and race off into the rain and darkness to find it, but encounter only a fallen Moi.  While there, a team member suddenly feels like he's being touched by a hand, and quickly strips off his clothes to reveal... nothing.  Another team member imagines someone calling his name.  Then, while looking for EVPs in a cave, they hear a strange, roaring "voice."  More moans follow, and other team members think they see bare legs running through the landscape.  Later, they review the mysterious evidence, but find no explanation for lights or moans (which seemed to set off their EMF meter, too).  Guess that tea worked.

From giant stone heads to giant birds, the team heads to New Zealand's south island where, lately, people claim to have seen the Moa - which has been extinct for 400 years.  Could a giant (12' tall) dino-bird be lurking in the deep forests and glacial fields?  Josh looks at the bones of the bird in a museum, and the curator describes the birds as using their feet to attack and gouge people hunting them.  They talk to a witness with a fuzzy photo and head into the fiordlands.  Yeah. It looks like the Lord of the Rings.  Poking around on the glaciers, Josh takes a bad slide downhill, but is fortunately saved by his companion and a lifeline.  No Moa, though.  Eventually, at lower altitudes, they do the usual camp and look around in the dark thing.  Josh confesses he would be Aragorn if this were LOTR, and Ryder claims Legolas.  Spotting something on the FLIR, Josh runs through the forest to try and catch it, which results in another scary tumble.  They then hear strange bird sounds and find some small animal bones and feathers and large footprints.  With all that, they head back to the US to analyze.  The bird call is rare, but not from the Moa; nor are the feathers.  The bones are from small mammals, and the footprints are unlikely Moa, though clearly from a large bird.  Josh speculates that it's possible that some tiny population of smaller Moa (not the 12-foot kind) may survive in remote regions.

It's been another fun "season" (whatever that means on SyFy; about 8 episodes, I think), but despite the fun of the chase, few monsters to be had.  As to Truth... Well, I guess not finding anything is truth, too, though maybe not the truth most viewers are hoping for.  How long can they not find monsters before they run out of monster to not find?  Tune in next season to find out.