From the bizarre ruins of a sunken Chinese city to a local lake besieged by ghosts, here
are ten of the creepiest things you won’t believe were found underwater!
10: The Ruins of Lion City With a name like Lion City, you know it has
to have a terrifying past!
And it does, because if you’re willing to go for a quick dive, you can see a town that
was destroyed in the name of progress.
The ancient ruins of Lion City can be found submerged in Qiandao Lake, China.
It’s also called Thousand Island Lake, stemming from the fact there are over 1000 islands
throughout the body of water.
The lake itself was created in 1959, when the government flooded the valley at the base
of Five Lion Mountain to feed the new hydroelectric station.
Over 290,000 people were forced to relocate because 1300 villages were submerged.
The most amazing is the city of Shi Cheng, also known as Lion City.
Its roots go back to the Tang Dynasty in 621 AD, making it roughly 1400 years old.
There are over 265 submerged arches throughout the city, five city gates, and it is right
now undisturbed at the bottom of the manmade lake.
It's in basically the same shape as it was when the flooding happened, and even before
that, preserved in all its ancient glory.
But what happened to the residents?
Well, they were forced out of their homes, and had to resettle elsewhere.
I can tell you one thing, it was not a pleasant experience for any of them.
I’m sure some valuables were left behind in the rush to uproot their lives and move
out of the way of the new manmade lake.
However, the only way to see the creepy remnants of the city is by diving down and swimming
through the ruins.
It’s an experience that only comes once in a lifetime, making you feel like an underwater
Indiana Jones.
9: USS Grayback A missing submarine from World War Two has
been found after 75 years at the bottom of the ocean.
It's the USS Grayback, and it was an American submarine that went missing during the war,
only to be found decomposing under the waves of the East China Sea.
The disappearance happened in 1944 after the submarine was attacked by Japanese aircraft.
All 80 crew members were lost, but now the submarine has been rediscovered thanks to
an underwater exploration project off Okinawa in Japan.
The reason the sub had been missing for so long is that the coordinates had been mistranslated,
missing a single digit.
This had prevented crews from finding the submarine up until now.
What's left of the submarine is kind of creepy.
It's covered in barnacles and sea creatures and it looks like a lost ghost ship.
The families of the men who went down with the submarine have been informed of its discovery,
which has allowed some people to gain much-needed closure.
But perhaps the creepiest part about the submarine is that all 80 bodies are undoubtedly still
locked inside the metal hull.
The sub has not been retrieved and probably won't be, but if it's ever opened, someone
is going to find the skeletal remains on the crew – and it won’t be pretty.
8: Underwater Island In case you thought that every island in the
world had been discovered already, you were wrong!
Google Maps has recently detected a very strange island beneath the surface of the Arabian
Sea in the shape of a bean.
This one might not be as creepy as it is weird, but the plain fact is that nobody is sure
what this bean-shaped thing is.
It's been called an underwater island, and it has been brought to the attention of the
local University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies, who can’t seem to figure it out either.
It looks to be around 3 miles (5km) long.
It could be an underwater island that nobody knows about, or it could be some kind of sunken,
bean-shaped UFO!
Or it could be the remnant of an ancient civilization that was submerged by an earthquake or a tsunami.
What if an alien ship fell out of the sky and got stuck underwater?
It’s unlikely, but you just never know!
7: Walking Underwater A scientist in Australia has discovered a
beetle that can walk underwater upside down.
It's one thing to be a beetle and to walk across the surface of the water, it's something
altogether bizarre to be able to walk upside down on the surface of the water, submerged!
According to Live Science, there are 1200 species of animals that can walk across water
without so much as breaking a sweat.
It's usually small insects like spiders that can do this, seeing as walking across water
is a pretty delicate operation that takes a lot of finesse.
It's the more minute creatures that are able to accomplish this amazing feat.
John Gould was researching frogs in the Watagan Mountains when he made the shocking discovery.
John is a researcher at Australia's University of Newcastle.
He's the first one to videotape an insect walking upside down in the water.
Even more amazing is that John claims the insect is able to rest on the underside of
the water, like resting upside down on a horizontal mirror.
The way it does this is equally fascinating.
The creepy beetle traps air bubbles along its abdomen and legs which provide just enough
upward force to keep the creature pushed against the water’s surface while still being submerged.
We don't know why the beetle does this yet, though the act probably keeps it safe from
any would-be predators.
It’s like it’s hiding in plain sight, but it seems to me that fish would come along
and snap up these impressive insects!
6: Underwater Mummy In the waters of lake Michigan, the mummified
body of a man from Iowa named Dirk Kann has been found after 13 years submerged.
To make his mummified remains even creepier, he was discovered still wearing his diving
gear and an empty oxygen tank.
Dirk disappeared in September of 1999 while exploring a shipwreck 225 feet (70m) below
the surface of the water.
But the dive went wrong.
Dirk and his friend Greg Olsen had to share oxygen from Dirk’s tank, but there wasn't
enough for both of them as they swam towards the surface.
Dirk never made it out and officials spent years trying to uncover his body.
It took 13 years, and finally he has been found almost perfectly preserved thanks to
the cold temperature and extreme pressure at the bottom of the lake.
Dirk's family is relieved to finally have his body back, though for them, the unexpected
retrieval of his body reopened old wounds.
5: Toxic Waste An underwater drone has revealed a horrifying
toxic waste dump off the coast of Los Angeles.
For decades, there have been stories that chemical companies in Southern California
used to dump their toxic waste into the local waters.
It was never confirmed until now, when a group of marine researchers used drones to find
the incriminating evidence.
They discovered over 27,000 metal barrels resting at the bottom of the ocean, almost
all of them filled with poisonous substances.
This place looks like something from an apocalyptic underwater hell, with toxic waste barrels
spread across the lifeless landscape roughly 3000 feet (900m) deep.
The barrels were discovered between the Santa Catalina Islands and the coast of LA.
In this small patch of ocean, there are over 100,000 pieces of debris, with most of them
probably being waste receptacles.
The whole place is polluted and to be honest, beyond saving.
It will probably take tens of thousands of years for all of this toxic waste to degrade
into materials that aren’t dangerous to all living creatures.
It's not only creepy, it’s disturbing.
The basin offshore was a dumping ground for decades, starting in the 1930s when companies
began to accumulate industrial waste and needed somewhere to dump it.
It likely went on until 1972 and beyond, even defying the Ocean Dumping Act.
Do you think the government should spend time trying to figure out which companies violated
the law and prosecute them?
Or do you think it’s not worth worrying about, and we have more pressing problems
in the world today?
Tell me your thoughts in the comments section below.
Then remember to subscribe to American Eye if you haven’t already for more intense
videos!
4: An Egyptian Shipwreck A creepy Egyptian shipwreck has been discovered
in the Mediterranean Sea, dating back to around 2200 years ago.
The shipwreck was discovered buried under about 15 feet (4.5m) of ocean clay.
It was once a military vessel, docked at the ancient city of Heracleion on the northern
tip of Egypt.
The city fell into the sea in the 2nd century BC after it was decimated by earthquakes.
The city literally fell sideways into the sea, and it wasn't until recently that archaeologists
began excavating this mysterious underwater site.
According to the archaeologists involved with the project, the ship probably sank because
a temple collapsed and its huge stone blocks fell on it during the earthquake.
It was these huge blocks that kept the shipwreck pinned to the bottom of the sea, allowing
it to slowly be covered over with muck.
And it's not the only creepy discovery here either.
This place is basically the Egyptian Atlantis, believed to be the city in which Cleopatra
was actually inaugurated and where she may have lived in a sprawling palace.
The issue with finding treasure here is that everything is covered in mud and deeply submerged,
making visibility quite low for archaeological divers.
3: Glurpo the Underwater Clown There is nothing on this planet creepier than
a clown – and there is nothing worse than an underwater clown.
Meet Glurpo, the freakiest thing underwater anywhere.
He was the only underwater clown in the world and we are thankful for that.
The history of the clown goes back to the 1950s and the Aquarena Springs amusement park,
famous for its bizarre attractions.
They had underwater ballerinas, creepy clowns, and even a swimming pig.
The park opened in 1950 and then closed in 1996, with people remembering this strange
place as one of the wackiest attractions in all of Texas, a place where underwater nightmares
were born.
Nobody really knows where Glurpo came from.
He showed up at the park one day and became part of it.
He was an aquatic jester who entertained kids.
But as the times changed, so did Glurpo.
His role was filled by many different actors, and through the years he went from being a
clown to a witch doctor in an attempt to keep things current.
He vanished from the park a bit before 1996, probably because nobody liked clowns anymore.
And even though Glurpo is long gone, he lives on in the traumatic memories of the local
Texans who were kids when they saw the creepy clown doing his underwater stunts.
2: Lake Lanier Ghosts Legend has it that Lake Lanier in Georgia
is plagued by one or more ghosts.
The place is allegedly haunted, with one of the most famous ghosts being a dead woman
who stalks the lake in a blue dress, wading through the water with her arms outstretched,
reaching for swimmers from her watery grave.
Even creepier than that, some have claimed that while swimming in the lake, they've heard
spirits calling to them from deep below.
Lake Lanier is in the foothills of the Georgia mountains, northeast of Atlanta and a popular
recreation spot for the long weekend.
According to CNN, the lake was made in the 1950s when the local valley communities were
flooded.
These communities contained a single cemetery, and this is why some people believe the man-made
lake is cursed.
Plus, since 1994, at least 200 people have died swimming here, adding even more lost
souls to the lake’s dark and morbid history.
It seems like it’s clearly haunted to me.
What do you think?
1: The Giant Hunter New footage has revealed for the first time
a hunting kraken.
It's not a legendary kraken like from Greek mythology, but it is the closest thing to
it that we have on Earth.
The video was taken by a team of researchers using a specialized camera known as Medusa.
The camera utilizes red illuminators and bioluminescent lures to trick giant squids into getting close.
The lure is actually known as an E-Jelly, and it imitates the glow of a jellyfish.
This is meant to attract the squids.
It was the first time the lure was used, and it worked amazingly.
Scientists were able to capture the best footage that the world has ever seen of a giant squid,
and the squid was even hunting.
Depending on who you ask, the giant squid is the scariest and creepiest thing in the
entire ocean.
They can grow to around 60 feet (18m) long and have long tentacles that are so strong
they could probably rip all your limbs off at the exact same time like a pack of dogs
ripping apart a doll.
But these beasts are elusive.
Scientists have never even caught a live one.
This is the closest they’ve ever come to seeing a live squid in action, and the footage
is pretty alarming.
It looks like the ocean is even scarier than we thought!
Which of these discoveries creeped you out the most?
Let me know in the comments and thanks for watching!
Be sure to hit subscribe for even more great videos from American Eye!