Plot
Sam (Samantha) Peters is a journalist working for the science magazine "Uncharted". She works as a reporter in excavations all over the world. Her latest trip was in Indonesia (from Secret Files 2), where local archaeologists discovered an ancient temple complex in the jungle. She was kidnapped by armed people, got free by Max and now she has to bring help by informing the Indonesian authorities. The terrorists caused a volcanic eruption and captured Max as he was fleeing the eruption. Half of the island is now set ablaze and Sam, starting from offshore Bali, Indonesia, has to escape from the island and bring help from the mainland.
Using Max's inflatable boat, she goes to the mainland and, after had finished her report of the island's incident, she then sent a helicopter to pick Max up from the island, but it was too late and Max was captured by the armed men long ago. Sam then returns to Hamburg, Germany, and her editor sends her to the Humboldt University Biological Institute in Berlin to meet with a Professor Hartmann, the leader of a research group and Sam's magazine is one of the sponsors of his Africa expeditions. She has an appointment with the Professor and afterwards she is flying off to Africa with him. Arriving outside the University, she learns that the Professor has already left for the expedition in Africa and Sam doesn't know where exactly it is located.
After entering the Professor's office, she discovers that he left in a hurry and finds a fax message sent to him from his colleagues, writing that they have discovered a previously unknown lifeform in the Ashanti region surrounding lake Bosumtwi, in Ghana, which is actually a meteorite crater and it's the newest impact crater on the Earth's surface. There is an endemic ecosystem of flora and fauna around the lake as there are vague descriptions of animal plant varieties which are supposed to be unique and hitherto unknown. Sam sets off for Ghana and reaches the expedition's base camp on the shore of the lake, but finds it totally abandoned.
In a laptop she finds that the Professor has been pursuing for years his theory concerning the influence of viruses on the changes of the genome and in the lake his colleagues had found a type of snail that did not seem to be native to fresh water and that the snail's genome might have been changed rapidly by eating algae which contained some viruses found in the lake and made the snail adapt to its new environment. They also considered that the viruses might not be of earthly origin, but they may stem from the meteorite which created the Bosumtwi lake. Then the expedition was attacked at night by something unknown and those native among the participants of the expedition claimed to be an Ashanti legend of vampire-like beings roaming in the jungle and hunting people. After that, the expedition members sought refuge in a nearby Christian mission.
Sam falls to sleep for the night but she is awaken by voices in the jungle. She gets up and notices several beings with red eyes looking at her from the trees. She scares them away with the help of her camera's flash and waited awake until sunrise. She reaches the Christian mission and meets a nun (Sister Maria). The nun says that Sam can't see the members of the expedition as they are very ill with something very contagious and that the Professor himself was taken by the beings. Apparently the nun knows something more about the local Ashanti legends, so Sam shows her the picture taken from her camera and the nun says that the being pictured is an Asanbosam and that they live in caves in the area and hunt people at night to drug them in their caves and drink their blood. Sam pressures her to reveal the location of the caves and the nun does so and also gives Sam a diary written many years ago by Father Samuel containing his study of the legend.
In the diary it is narrated that for many years before, there were people in the area having had the same symptoms of the unknown disease (fever, cramps, yellowing of the skin) and that the Asanbosam carry the disease (which obviously passed on to all of the expedition members in the course of their attack) and also that the Asanbosam will only attack what they believe to be intruders on their territory. Father Samuel saw an Asanbosam at night, but the latter didn't attack him, as he didn't consider Father to be a threat, and left, and Father Samuel found the courage to follow him to the caves. In the entrance he saw inscriptions, made by old shamans, where it was described how to make a healing concoction, so to make someone immune to the disease, as to cure it in someone who already was ill by it. The concoction involves the burning of certain ingredients in a pot near the entrance of the caves and cleanse oneself in the smoke of the mixture, before entering the caves.
Sam finds the entrance to the caves, makes the healing concoction and enters. After passing a labyrinth, she finds the Professor surrounded by several of the Asanbosam. She drives them off, again with the help of her camera's flash, and saves him. Two days later, back in the Christian mission the Professor explains that for many years the natives Ashanti were trying to fend off aggressors from their land. A shaman then realized that they wouldn't be able to succeed to this forever, so one day he picked off some children having the best potential to be warriors, locked them (himself included) in the local caves, trained them for years and was feeding them with the algae found in the neighboring lake. As the children were growing up, they were mutating and changing physically to adapt, so much to living in the caves, as to be exceptional warriors. Professor Hartmann says that the children's sole purpose was just to keep intruders at bay and not annihilate them, and that he doesn't think that they've killed anyone actively. The disease which they carry (and they are immune at) is something that he cannot explain. He says that it may be a further defense mechanism.
On one hand there is the fact that it is within everyone's rights to do his best to protect his property, his land, etc. in the name of survival. On the other, is the moral ethics of the children having been mutated in order to achieve this goal (to have their tribe protected). Sam is then given a choice to publish her findings, or not. If she publishes the findings, she becomes famous and rich and gets a sailboat, but many people arrive in the area (tourists, journalists, activists, authorities, military) and the Asanbosam get captured. Eventually they release one of them in his native environment and declare the area as protected. If not, the area remains undisturbed, but she gets fired and attends Max and Nina's wedding, leading into the events of Secret Files 3 .
Ghana is a West African country in Africa, along the Gulf of Guinea.
Mount Erebus is the second-highest volcano in Antarctica, the highest active volcano in Antarctica, and the southernmost active volcano on Earth. It is the sixth-highest ultra mountain on an island, and the second-highest in Antarctica. It has a summit elevation of 3,794 metres (12,448 ft). It is located in the Ross Dependency on Ross Island, which is also home to three inactive volcanoes: Mount Terror, Mount Bird, and Mount Terra Nova. The mountain was named by Captain James Clark Ross in 1841 for his ship, the Erebus.
Ambrym is a volcanic island in Malampa Province in the archipelago of Vanuatu. Volcanic activity on the island includes lava lakes in two craters near the summit.
The Legend of Tarzan is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation, based on Tarzan from the novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the character's original creator who appears in one episode of the series. The series is also based on Disney's 1999 animated feature film Tarzan by Walt Disney Pictures and aired initially on the Disney's One Too block on UPN. However, reruns were broadcast shortly after on Toon Disney.
The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story is a best-selling 1994 nonfiction thriller by Richard Preston about the origins and incidents involving viral hemorrhagic fevers, particularly ebolaviruses and marburgviruses. The basis of the book was Preston's 1992 New Yorker article "Crisis in the Hot Zone".
Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle is a 1975 French/Belgian adult animated comedy film. It is a parody of the 1932 film Tarzan the Ape Man directed by cartoonist Picha and Boris Szulzinger. The film was the first foreign-animated film to receive an X rating in the United States.
The Lost World is a 2001 British made-for-television film adaptation of the 1912 novel of the same name by Arthur Conan Doyle, directed by Stuart Orme and adapted by Tony Mulholland and Adrian Hodges. It was filmed at various locations on the West Coast of New Zealand. The 145-minute film was divided into two 75-minute episodes when broadcast on BBC One on 25 and 26 December 2001, receiving 8.68 million and 6.98 million viewers respectively. Bob Hoskins played Professor Challenger and was supported by James Fox, Peter Falk, Matthew Rhys, Tom Ward and Elaine Cassidy.
Imperial Moon is a BBC Books original novel written by Christopher Bulis and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Fifth Doctor, Turlough, and Kamelion.
Mel Burton is a fictional character from the British television soap opera Hollyoaks, played by actress Cassie Powney. She made her first appearance during the episode broadcast on 23 September 2003. Powney joined the cast along with her twin Connie Powney, who plays Mel's twin sister Sophie Burton. They auditioned for the roles six months after deciding they should stop putting themselves forward for twin roles. Mel was introduced along with Joe Spencer and Robbie Flynn, as new students attending Hollyoaks College. The character's family were introduced a month later. Mel is characterised as being clever, introverted and more controlled than her sister.
Secret Files: Tunguska is a 2006 graphic adventure video game developed by German studios Fusionsphere Systems and Animation Arts and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo DS, Wii, iOS, Android, Wii U and Nintendo Switch. The game is the start of the Secret Files trilogy, with a sequel, Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis, being released in 2008.
The Land Unknown is a 1957 science fiction CinemaScope adventure film about a naval expedition trapped in an Antarctic jungle. The story was allegedly inspired by the discovery of unusually warm water in Antarctica in 1947. It stars Jock Mahoney and Shirley Patterson and was directed by Virgil W. Vogel. The film's low-budget special effects include men in dinosaur suits, puppets and monitor lizards standing in for dinosaurs.
Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, originally released as Sam & Max: Season Two, is an episodic graphic adventure video game by Telltale Games based on the Sam & Max comic book series created by Steve Purcell. It is a sequel to Telltale's previous Sam & Max game, Sam & Max Save the World, and was originally released as five episodes for Microsoft Windows over the course of late 2007 and early 2008, before being ported to other platforms in the following years. A remaster of the game by Skunkape Games was released in December 2021 for Windows, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One, and in September 2022 for PlayStation 4.
Blood Monkey is a 2007 American direct-to-video natural horror film produced by RHI Entertainment and directed by Robert Young. It aired on various video on demand channels, before officially premiering in the United States on the Syfy Channel on January 27, 2008. Filmed in Thailand, it is the first film in the Maneater Series produced under an agreement with Syfy.
Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis is a graphic adventure video game developed by Fusionsphere Systems and Animation Arts and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows, Wii, Nintendo DS, iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch. It was unveiled at the 2007 Leipzig Games Convention. A sequel, Secret Files 3, was released in 2012 to close out the main Secret Files trilogy.
MAX: A Maximum Ride Novel is the fifth book in the Maximum Ride series, written by James Patterson. The book was released on September 15, 2009. MAX was published by Little, Brown and Company.
Christian Köberl is a professor of impact research and planetary geology at the University of Vienna, Austria. From June 2010 to May 2020 he was director general of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. He is best known for his research on meteorite impact craters.
Famous Five is a 2012 German children's film. Directed by Mike Marzuk, it is a film adaptation of The Famous Five series by Enid Blyton, which is based primarily on the 1947 book Five on Kirrin Island Again.
Secret Files 3 is a graphic adventure video game developed by Animation Arts and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch. It is the third and final installment of the Secret Files trilogy.
"Touch of Death" is a two-part crossover event between Hawaii Five-0 and NCIS: Los Angeles that aired on CBS. The event began on April 30, 2012, with the Hawaii Five-0 episode "Pa Make Loa" which is Hawaiian for "Touch of Death." It continued on May 1, 2012, with the NCIS: Los Angeles episode "Touch of Death". Scott Caan, Daniel Dae Kim, Chris O'Donnell, and LL Cool J appeared in both parts of the event as Danny Williams, Chin Ho Kelly, G. Callen, and Sam Hanna, respectively. The episodes both received mostly positive ratings and received high viewing figures in multiple countries.
Jungle Drums is a 1937 Australian radio serial by Maxwell Dunn. It was his first radio drama and was very popular, launching his career.
