In Search Of

For thousands of years,

the fear of plummeting into the abyss has haunted mankind.

Documented in the Bible

and other ancient texts,

the specter of being cast into darkness, into a bottomless hole,

has long terrified civilizations across the globe.

And while we're all too familiar

with the devastating fury of Mother Nature,

we remain terrorized by the mysterious forces of sinkholes.

What could a man, who survived one of these deadly chasms,

tell us about their incredible powers?

I heard my brother scream. I opened the door up,

everything in my brother's room was gone--

his TV, his dresser, his bed-- and there was a big hole in the floor.

Probably 15-foot wide.

Thought I heard my brother-- "Jeremy, please help me."

I'm trying to dig and dig, and that was the last time I seen him.

I never thought anything like that would ever happen. Never.

Could our nightmares about sunken depths

take root in the form of sinkholes?

What are these dark, bottomless pits?

And what's really down there?

My search begins now.

My Name is Zachary Quinto.

As an actor, I've played many supernatural characters

that blurred the line between science and fiction.

I'm drawn to the unknown, the otherworldly,

and those experiences so beyond belief,

they call everything into question.

I'm exploring some of the most enduring mysteries

that continue to haunt mankind in search of the truth...

wherever it leads me.

Since humans first roamed the earth,

ancient texts have described savage forces ravaging the land.

Massive chasms opening without warning

and devouring everything on the surface.

From the Bible's Book of Numbers,

where sinners were swallowed by the earth,

to the Mayans, who constructed iconic pyramids over sacred pits

because they saw them as an entrance to the underworld,

to recent events, such as the devastating rifts in Florida,

Guatemala, and Rome.

Some believe sinkholes are a force of nature,

while others speculate that sinkholes are a sign of the end of times,

and perhaps even a gateway to hell.

In fact, many nicknames for these giant chasms

are synonymous with the underworld.

In Turkmenistan, there is even a giant sinkhole that has been on fire

ever since it opened up and devoured the land in 1971.

Locals call it the Gates of Hell.

And in Texas, there's an ancient chasm

aptly called the Devil's Sinkhole,

which plunges a remarkable 400 feet down inside the earth.

It makes me wonder, what could possibly explain

these otherworldly forces?

To get a better understanding of the devastating nature of sinkholes,

I'm meeting with 41-year-old Jeremy Bush,

a Florida resident who survived a trip to hell and back

when the earth seized his family home.

Jeremy.How you doing, sir?

Nice to meet you.Nice to meet you.

Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

Yes, sir.And so, the fenced-in area

that we're looking at back there, that was the footprint of your house?

Yes, sir. Where the highest part of the grass is is where the hole is.

Uh-huh.

They just filled this in, then?They filled it in twice.

A couple months later, it reopened up again and fell in again.

Wow.

Tell me what happened.

I came home from work.

My brother was in his room.

We heard this loud noise. Sounded like a train hit the house.

I heard my brother yell,

scream, so we all ran toward my brother's room.

I went to go open the door and walk in,

and my father-in-law turned the hallway light on.

I noticed everything in my brother's room was gone.

His bed, his dresser, his TV-- everything was gone.

My brother was gone, and there was a big hole.

I wasn't thinking. I just jumped in the hole.

As I'm digging with my hands, I thought I could hear my brother.

"Jeremy, help me."

Next thing I know, I feel a cop

grabbing me by my shoulder, telling me to come on.

He grabs me by my arm and just pulls me out of the hole.

Tells me the hole's still falling in.

Stuff's still falling. It's still collapsing.

There were no forewarnings?No forewarnings at all.

Came out of the blue.And did that hole

continue to grow from that point, or was that the--Yeah.

as I was in the hole.You were in there. Right.

I didn't know what it was until the fire department, everybody showed up,

and the hole collapsed again and took all their equipment down with it.

the whole floor, everything in it.

My main focus was-- "Somebody, please try and save my brother."

Of course. Yeah.

Yeah.

But then they condemned the other houses here?

They tore the other two houses down.

They said the ground was so unstable.

Were you guys able to get anything out? You able to go back in at all?

No. We weren't allowed to go back in at all.

You weren't allowed to go back in at all?No.

Wow.

We had to leave, and we had to find somewhere else to go.

They put us in a house right around the corner.

They popped up and opened up immediately, everywhere around us.

Yeah.You just realize those are everywhere.

Can happen anytime and anywhere.

You know, the earth just opens up

and takes a corner of it and his brother with it.

I mean, it's just so destructive.

Jeremy's tragic story illustrates

the horrific human toll that sinkholes can take.

But what causes these deathtraps

to suddenly open up and swallow people?

Scholars, such as Michael Erevna,

believe ancient texts from around the world may hold the answers.

Sinkholes are in the Old Testament.

The very first occurrence,

Moses approached the wicked men and told them that they were under judgment,

and then he opened up a sinkhole

right underneath them and took their lives.

All their possessions, all their belongings went down in the hole.

Then he closed the sinkhole after he opened it.

In the Bible, the Lord uses pits to punish people.

Isaiah 24:17 and 20, it talks about

being ensnared in the pit with the devil.

The Bible, the Mayan civilization, the Hopi prophecy--

they all seem to be talking about exactly the same thing.

There's a judgment coming through

for our own human behavior--

the dissolving of the earth.

We should expect to see more sinkholes.

They're gonna keep coming, and they're gonna keep getting worse,

getting worse.

Whether sinkholes are truly some kind of biblical prophecy,

no one can say for sure.

What is certain is that these cave-ins have been happening

for millions of years.

And over time,

some of earth's most deadly creatures

have moved into the void left behind.

I've discovered ancient sinkholes across Texas

contain some of the largest Mexican free-tailed bat colonies in the world.

In the southeast,

thousands of hostile American alligators recently claimed

a deep 200-foot sinkhole chamber when it collapsed.

And this is nothing new.

There's evidence of massive creatures from the past

trapped thousands of years ago.

Excavations in Florida

have unearthed giant mastodon bones

that date back nearly 14,500 years,

as well as other ancient fossils.

Could clues inside these ancient sinkholes help us understand them more?

I'm journeying deep inside one of the oldest

and most mysterious sinkholes in America...

to find out for myself.

Ooh. Wow.

My journey to understand more

about the destructive power of sinkholes

has led me to Devil's Den,

a mysterious cavern in Williston, Florida,

that formed over 10,000 years ago.

This is not what I expected.

With the help of geology professor Manoj Chopra,

I want to get a firsthand visual understanding of a sinkhole

from the inside.

I mean, this feels like-- I don'know. This feels like something out of a movie, like--

Something to do with Harrison Ford. Yeah.

Indiana Jones.Right. Exactly.

Indiana Jonesor--This is Indiana Jones.

Totally. So this place is called Devil's Den.

a significant origin to that name?

The temperature in here, as you can see,

is in the 70s-- lower 70s--

and it stays that way the whole year.

Okay. So when it gets cold up there,

the water is quite warm,

and you start to see these steam--

Oh....plumes coming out.

And so, the first people, when they saw the steam coming out,

they thought the devil's breath was coming down.Amazing.

This opened up 9,000 years ago. Uh-huh.

The surface couldn't just support the weight anymore, and it fell in.

So this is about 9,000 years-- Right. This opening is 9,000.

This underground here could be much older.Yeah, much older. Right.

And so, are there discoveries made in these sinkholes?

Caverns this old must contain some keys to the past, right?

We had a case where a large bear

was running over this

and fell right through that.

That was found in this one?

In this one, right here.Wow.

And there are many other animals that have been found.

But this is the largest fossil.

Is it dangerous? I imagine there's

still relative instability around the edges.