Many people have heard of the Mongolian Death Worm.  This mysterious giant worm creature is actually called Olgoi-Khorkhoi, and it reportedly lives in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.  Some reports cite it at two to five feet long – other versions have it as large as a house.  The crawling cryptid is said to be able to kill human victims from a distance, either by poison or by tranmitting high-voltage electrical charges (depending upon which unreliable source you choose to believe). 

The Gobi Desert is adjacent to the Tarim Basin – and the legends may be from the same sources, as well.  Here is the version often told in the late 19^th Century:

Somewhere in the Tarim Basin desert country there is a valley strewn with stones that shine at night.  It is infested by deadly worm-like snakes which can spring as high as the hump of a camel from the ground.  These monsters sleep among the rocks during the daytime, but they emerge and attack anyone who enters the valley during the night, which is the only time when these stones can be distinguished from ordinary pebbles.  The men who wish to collect these stones enter the valley at night on camel-back first sew fleeces, with the wooly side outward, all over their camels, and they cover their bodies up to the waist, as well.  They carry a hollow reed and a bag of powdered charcoal, and when they see a luminous stone, they place one end of the reed over it and pour a handful of charcoal down the tube, so that when they return during the daytime to gather the stones, they may be able to identify them.  Yet, even with such precautions, the deadly snake-worms have claimed many lives in the night desert.