Dark Matters: Twisted But True

Episode Synopsis

RADIO WAVES OF DEATH: Nikola Tesla was a genius with a plan to send electricity through the air. But as his behavior grew increasingly eccentric throughout his life, his financial backers abandoned him. Desperate to sell his ideas, he suggested that not only could his technology be the ultimate weapon of war, but that he had tested it. Was Tesla responsible for devastating a remote area of Siberia ninety years ago? HOW TO MAKE A ZOMBIE: Harvard scientist Wade Davis became obsessed with cracking the secrets of the Zombie. His journey led him to the island of Haiti where he tracked down a man with something few of us possess; his own death certificate. Digging down into the dark world of the voodoo sorcerer, Wade Davis believed he had uncovered the science that explained the zombie legend. But had he? JEKYLL VS. HYDE: You've probably never heard of Horace Wells, but he may have saved your life. In the 1840s Wells tried to invent anesthesia using laughing gas. But failure transformed him into an object of ridicule. Desperate to salvage his reputation, Wells experimented with a new drug, Chloroform. He had no idea of its addictive and hallucinogenic effects. In a drug-fueled madness he disfigured a woman with acid. He ended his own life without ever discovering that he had been acknowledged by his peers as the inventor of anesthesia.