JOSH GATES: A church in western Germany guards the bones
of a slain rebel princess...
and her flock of followers.
While deep in a mystical Japanese forest...
the spirit of a dragon dwells inside a cave
of fire and ice.
MAN: Wow. WOMAN: That's amazing.
GATES: And off Japan's eastern shores,
a different kind of beast has hijacked an entire island.
[ Cats meowing ]
I'm Josh Gates.
I've traveled millions of miles
and explored over 100 countries.
Lost city, here I come.
And my favorite destinations
have epic tales to tell.
These are the stories
and the secrets
of those legendary locations.
Legendary locations come in many shapes and forms,
from natural wonders to man-made marvels,
but some of the world's most memorable places
are the ones that connect us to a higher power.
♪♪
The churches, mosques,
temples, shrines, and their respective rituals
are what link people to their faith
and their history.
In Cologne, Germany, is a quite church
with a legendary history -- it's the kind of place
where you're never truly alone with your prayers.
That's because this basilica is filled to the brim
with bones.
[ Beeping noises ]
♪♪
The city of Cologne is church central,
with the highest density of churches north of the Alps,
but there's one place of worship in town
that stands out among the rest.
[ Bell tolls ]
This is the basilica of Saint Ursula.
It was built in the 11th century and is named
after a woman whose life and death are steeped
in a legend that seems beyond belief.
♪♪
[ Speaking foreign language ]
TRANSLATOR: The holy Ursula, she was an outstanding woman.
We cherish her very much.
TRANSLATOR: We have her in our hearts.
We like coming here to pray for her.
GATES: The legend goes like this.
Back around 300 AD, a young princess in Britain
named Ursula was presented
with a slew of potential suitors,
many of them pagan.
But being an independent 4th-century Christian woman,
Ursula was having none of it.
She never wants that, she wants to be free,
and she's convincing her parents to do a pilgrimage to Rome.
GATES: And on that trip to Rome, Ursula would have
no shortage of travel companions thanks to her 11,000
devoted handmaidens.
Eleven thousand handmaidens? Yikes!
That's excessive.
[ Choir singing ]
GATES: Ursula had a vision...
...that she and her ladies-in-waiting
were destined to be martyred and become
the virgin brides of Christ, so they set off
on a journey to Rome to pursue their fate.
And unfortunately,
they found it
when they encountered a mob of Huns from Central Asia.
And they did not want to get married to the Huns,
and so they were all killed for their Christina faith.
[ Heavy breathing ]
[ Screaming ]
GATES: One by one, the spurned Huns
cut the virgins down.
[ Screaming ]
♪♪
Ursula last of all...
...with an arrow through the heart.
Fast forward to the 12th century.
Thousands of bones are found next to the church.
Believing that these are bones connected to the legend
of Saint Ursula, the locals expand the building
with a room to house and honor the relics.
They call it the Golden Chamber.
There are those, however, who doubt the authenticity
of the story.
In the 1960s, the Catholic church even stripped Ursula
of her sainthood, but her story has never
officially been disproven, so now,
I've arranged for bone expert, Anna Marschner, to meet
the exhibit's conservationist and perform
a forensic inspection of the bones
for the very first time.
So let's go in. [ Door creaks ]
♪♪
Wow, this is beautiful.
No, never.
GATES: Legend has held that these bones, skulls,
arms, ribs, legs, and feet
belonged to the 11,000 women who were murdered
when they refused to relinquish their virginity
and their religion to the invading Huns.
While the church is willing to let Anna inspect the bones,
removing them is off-limits, so instead,
she'll have to conduct a photo analysis of the remains.
[ Camera shutter clicks ]
GATES: And before long, one of the shots reveals
an important clue.
What do we have here?
I just want to check out this one.
And now I have a picture of the pelvis.
It's like a nice v shape.
Could be maybe a male one whereas we have some
which are a bit more u-shaped.
Probably a female one.
So we have a nice mix of everyone here.
GATES: That could be evidence that this isn't
the resting place of the 11,000 virgins,
but a relic found along the lower wall
might tell a different story.
♪♪
What really is very interesting to me
is this particular skull.
GATES: A skull that might just reveal the truth
behind this legendary location.
[ Dramatic music ]
GATES: In a basilica in Cologne, Germany,
a room known as the Golden Chamber
is said to display the bones of a legendary 4th-century princess
and her 11,000 slain handmaidens.
I've asked archeologist, Anna Marschner,
to examine the remains for evidence
that the legend could be true, and she may have just found it.
What really is very interesting to me
is this particular skull.
GATES: The holes on the back of this skull
are wounds that are consistent with the story
that Hun warriors used arrows and swords
to slay the princess and her convoy.
MARSCHNER: This could be a direct sign for the legend
of Saint Ursula and her martyrs,
so this is actually evidence for it.
GATES: For those who attend this church to worship Ursula
and for the city of Cologne itself, whose coat of arms
honors the legend with 11 tears,
standing for the 11,000 virgins, the value of these relics
is beyond question.
So what is your personal opinion about this chamber?
I think it's a treasure.
♪♪
Make no bones about it -- a massive collection
of 1,700-year-old corpses isn't your typical treasure.
But for true believers, it's a priceless link
to their faith, and in my travels,
I found that most countries have their own unique
and seemingly unusual spiritual beliefs.
♪♪
Take, for example, Japan,
hands-down one of my favorite places on Earth.
As outsiders, we've heard a lot about this country,
and much of it is true.
It can be crowded, sometimes crazy,
and it's a veritable feast for every one of the senses.
Mm.
Oh, he's still -- he's still got some fight left in him there.
But there are locations in Japan so mystical,
so deeply spiritual, they cast a spell over visitors,
making them believe in legends of ghosts, monsters,
and portals to other worlds.
And at the base of Mount Fuji, there's one place
that may even hold actual proof that these myths
are more than legend.
[ Beeping noises ]
The sun sets over central Japan
and the peak of majestic Mount Fuji.
At the foot of Fuji,
Shugendo masters at the Asama Shrine
conduct a ceremony to communicate
with the area's nature spirits, also known as kami.
The ceremony culminates with a dramatic fire ritual
intended to make peace with Mount Fuji itself,
which has been known to have a nasty temper.
Mount Fuji rumbles on the regular,
making those who live in its shadow nervous
that the big one could be just around the corner,
not to mention that it's been over 300 years
since the last eruption, an enormous blast
that spewed ash hundreds of miles in all directions.
But it was that deadly destruction that sprouted
a sea of trees known as the Aokigahara Forest.
Since the mid-20th century, it's also had
another name -- the Suicide Forest --
a final destination for those seeking to shuffle off
this mortal coil.
But for those among the living, Aokigahara is believed
to be a passageway to the spirit world.
♪♪
Japanese culture professor, William Reed, has brought
research assistant, Chloe Ramirez, to Aokigahara
to investigate reports of mysterious activity.
I've arranged for them to speak with Kyochi Watanabe,
a local musician whose family has owned a home
in this forest for generations.
Kyochi claims to have had an otherworldly experience here.
He's asked to meet them near the Narusawa Cave,
where he begins to tell his tale.
Ten years ago, Kyochi started renovating his family's
home here in the forest when his life
suddenly took a turn for the worse.
REED: He started having trouble with his friends.
His band broke up.
GATES: And it gets even more serious
when it starts to affect his health.
So they found just a beginning of a bit of a cancer. Mmhm.
GATES: But then a friend and spiritual medium
told Kyochi that he was the victim
of something far deeper than lousy luck.
It turns out Kyochi broke rule number one
of Japanese home renovation -- he forgot to perform
the customary purification ritual on his house.
Classic Kyochi, and as a result,
he angered the kami that lives in the Narusawa Ice Cave
located on his property.
REED: His friend saw a black dragon,
like, behind him.
GATES: To appease the black dragon spirit,
Kyochi erected a small shrine near the cave entrance,
made the requisite offerings, and pretty much promised
not to screw up again, and guess what?
[ Speaking Japanese ]
He got together back with his friends,
things started to go very well. Oh!
[ Speaking Japanese ] The cancer, that went away.
So actually... Wow!
That's amazing. That's the kind of story
we came to hear about, yeah. Yeah.
GATES: Ever since his reversal of fortune,
Kyochi makes a daily ceremonial offering
to the black dragon spirit inside the ice cave.
♪♪
Would it be possible to see the cave?
Ah. [ Speaking Japanese ]
[ Speaking Japanese ] Ah, let's go. Yeah.
GATES: William and Chloe descend into the 70-foot-deep cave
into what the Japanese consider a gateway to another world...
and a realm of the unknown.
GATES: At the foot of Japan's rumbling Mount Fuji,
deep inside the legendary Aokigahara Forest,
local, Kyochi Watanabe, is treating visitors
to a rare look inside a cave he believes
is inhabited by a black dragon spirit.
This cave used to be a lake.
When the nearby volcano erupted 1,100 years ago,
it dumped massive amounts of lava.
As that lava cooled, a gas bubble inside burst
and hardened into this 500-foot-long circular tube
of volcanic rock.
This cave was essentially created by fire,
which makes what they're about to see next
a stunning contrast.
Wow. Yeah, it's gorgeous.
[ Speaking Japanese ]
This is the fire,
because the volcanic lava, and the ice.
GATES: The ice is groundwater that stays frozen year-round
thanks to a relatively constant air temperature down here
that hovers around 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's really cool. Isn't that cool?
Yeah, fire and ice. Fire and ice -- balance of opposites.
Very spiritual, yeah. Mmm.
GATES: This balance found in the cave represents
the dragon itself, a volatile spirit that,
once appeased, becomes a fierce protector.
Thank you very much -- we really appreciate it.
Arigato gozaimasu .
GATES: Just like this cave of fire and ice,
Japan itself is a fascinating land of contradictions.
Despite being a world leader in cutting-edge technology,
the nation has deliberately maintained its deep
connection to ancient myths, and sometimes those myths
creep into the modern world in unexpected ways.
Our next legendary location
is about 250 miles to the northeast --
it is also, perhaps, the one place on Earth
that I will never get to see,
and that's because I am totally allergic to it.
Yeah, it's gonna be a hard pass for me on any place
called Cat Island, but I still wanna see it
in all its feline glory, so when my cat-obsessed friend
Sundai was looking for a new blog post idea,
I knew just where to send her.
[ Beeping noises ]
GATES: It's early morning in Japan's Ishinomaki Bay,
and social media star, Sundai Love, known
for her lifestyle blog and her obsession with cats,
is heading to one of the most bizarre places on the planet,
Tashirojima, or Cat Island.
LOVE: Oh, very nice boat!
GATES: Sundai's brought along a friend of hers,
Tomo Kayama, a self-described Cat Island fanatic.
For what she's aiming to do today,
Sundai will need Tomo's ex-purr-tise.
Sundai's having an online cutest cat contest --
sure, why not? Winner gets, I don't know,
a ball of twine and a laser pointer.
Tashirojima is a one-square-mile island
that today is home to less than 100 humans...
Ah!
...but about six times as many cats.
[ Cats meowing ]
[ High-pitched ] So cute!
[ Cats meowing ]
GATES: But it wasn't always this way.
From the 1600s to the 1800s, nearly 1,000 people
lived here, most working in the silk industry,
and the only critters they had to contend with
were mice, but mice are bad news
for silk production, so cats were brought in
to solve the problem.
Not long after stepping ashore, Sundai gets to work snapping
and posting her feline photos.
[ Cat meowing ]
[ Camera shutter clicks and beeping noises ]
GATES: It's hard for me to not imagine what
the cats are thinking about this.
This one's like, [ Boston accent ] "Hey, bro, I didn't sign up for this."
[ Cat yowling ]
[ Normally ] The other one's like,
[ Boston accent ] "You heard about Sully, right?"
He went viral -- he's got, like, a million hits
on YouTube -- it's wicked pissa."
[ Normally ] Yeah, I don't know why they have Boston accents.
I'm just trying to relate to this thing somehow.
Let's, uh, let's get back to the cats.
♪♪
Sundai and Tomo continue up the path
toward a shrine dedicated to...
what else, cats.
Cats are believed to be spiritually soothing
and have become symbols of good luck,
which brings visitors to the island
and benefits the economy.
Let's go find my cat!
Cute!
[ Camera shutter clicks and beeping noises ]
He's a ham.
Oh, you're good at it -- you're good.
GATES: And it turns out the cats are getting something out of the deal, too.
Ohayo gozaimasu .
[ Cats meowing ]
Breakfast. Oh. Breakfast. Breakfast.
Does he feed them every morning?
TRANSLATOR: Hundreds of cats show up throughout the day,
and it is my honor to feed them.
GATES: As the cat population here grew over the centuries,
the cats began relying on fishermen for food,
and given their success at killing the mice,
the locals seem happy to oblige.
They only eat fresh fish. Fresh.
Oh, you got you some bougie kitties.
TRANSLATOR: The cats bring peace and prosperity
to our island so deserve only the best.
[ Cat screeching ]
GATES: But that warm and fuzzy feeling is not shared by all.
There are just too many of them nowadays.
They eat my garden patch,
so when they come, I pick up stones and throw them at them.
Well, you hate the cats, and the cats also hate you.
[ Laughs ]
GATES: Sundai and Tomo move on,
collecting their final set of photos.
[ Laughing ] It's good. [ Camera shutter clicks ]
Look up, kitty. Look up. So cute!
[ Camera shutter clicks ] I hear you!
GATES: And then the time comes to announce
the big winner.
Ahhhhh! [ Laughs ] Yeah!
GATES: On a remote island in Japan where cats
outnumber people six to one, cat enthusiast,
Tomo Kayama, and social media star, Sundai Love,
are about to find out which cuddly creature
will be crowned Japan's next top cat model.
In third place,
in second place,
and the winner is...
Ahhhhh! [ Laughs ] Yeah!
Got the most likes.
Wow, over 100, that's great!
Yay! Thank you so much!
GATES: The pair heads off to find the lucky cat.
[ Speaking Japanese ]
Ah! There he is.
Kitty, you won!
GATES: The big winner gets a big hug from Sundai.
All right, all right, I'll admit it.
The cats are pretty cute... from afar...
but I'm more partial to this little guy.
He comes with less attitude, he's more loyal,
and 100 percent less sneezing.
Isn't that right? Muwah.
Oh, you're so cute.
The world is filled with locations that are
legendary for their spirituality,
but as we've seen, these places sometimes
take unusual forms.
A collection of bones brings peace to the faithful.
A forest with a bleak reputation
reveals subterranean wonders,
and a remote island has become a meditative
feline shrine.
I'm Josh Gates -- travel adventurously,
and I'll see you next time on "Legendary Locations."