WILLIAM SHATNER: Shocking injuries...
...that mirror the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
A deadly disease
which begins with uncontrollable laughter.
And harmful devices implanted into the human body
by extraterrestrials.
Throughout history, tales of inexplicable maladies
to both the body and the mind
have stirred morbid curiosity and palpable fear.
From mysterious wounds that appear
for no apparent reason
to a peculiar madness that compels people
to dance themselves to death,
are these bizarre afflictions
merely fabrications of the mind?
Or could they arise
from unseen forces
that are beyond our comprehension?
Well, that is what we’ll try and find out.
♪ ♪
Every spring, billions of Christians all over the world
gather to observe a solemn day of reverence called Good Friday.
According to Christian tradition,
Good Friday commemorates
the Crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ.
This sacred practice has been performed
for nearly 2,000 years
and involves attending mass,
the veneration of the cross,
and elaborate processions.
While Good Friday is a somber occasion,
the Crucifixion is a pivotal event
that is at the heart of Christianity.
MONSIGNOR STEPHEN ROSSETTI: When you look at the spirituality
of the Christian faith,
the Crucifixion of Jesus is not only a tragedy of death,
it’s a sign of the sufferings of Jesus.
When we think of the Crucifixion today,
we think of Jesus’ wounds when he was crucified,
which includes the holes in the hands,
in the feet, in the side,
we think of the crown of thorns.
So, there are lots of different, uh, types of wounds.
It reminds us of what Jesus suffered for us.
SHATNER: The Crucifixion is clearly a profound cornerstone
of the Christian faith.
But curiously, for centuries,
people have suffered from a rare and disturbing condition
that is connected to the death of Jesus Christ.
This bizarre affliction is known
as stigmata.
Stigmata occurs when an individual
is marked in a physical way
that represents the wounds
that Christ suffered on the cross.
Most commonly, stigmata happens
in what is referred to as the five wounds of Christ,
which is two in the hands,
two in the feet, and one on the side.
MITCH HOROWITZ: Since the Middle Ages,
there have been untold thousands of cases.
In the strictest terms, stigmata,
although they do involve physical suffering,
are considered a blessing, a privilege.
It’s almost as if the stricken individual
is bearing a holy or divine burden.
SHATNER: How can wounds that mirror those of Jesus Christ
inexplicably appear on ordinary people?
It seems to defy all logic.
But perhaps clues about this phenomenon
can be found by examining
the first documented instance of stigmata.
McGOWAN: The first recorded case of stigmata
occurred with St. Francis of Assisi in 1224.
St. Francis went to the mountains of La Verna
to meditate and to pray.
And then suddenly Francis had a vision of a seraphim.
A seraphim is a particular kind of angel,
a fiery angel with six wings.
And the seraphim held in his possession the crucifix.
His wings were wrapped around Jesus on the cross.
And from this crucifix, this image of Jesus,
came forth these rays,
and these rays penetrated Francis
in the form of stigmata.
Francis’ stigmata was incredibly intense.
Nothing like this had ever happened before.
And not only did he have wounds
that were openly bleeding on his hands,
Francis was quite ill after he received the stigmata,
and he died two years later.
Every day of those two years, he did, in fact,
suffer with stigmata.
SHATNER: Accounts of stigmata are both fascinating
and deeply unsettling.
For many Christians,
they are proof of divine forces at work in our world.
But many experts are skeptical
and insist that stigmata
must have a scientific explanation.
ROSIE FALODUN: In terms of stigmata-like symptoms,
there are some medical conditions that have been
attributed to spontaneous bleeding,
but it’s still very much misunderstood.
One of them would be hemathrodosis.
It’s known as bloody sweat
because when the body is under extreme stress,
the sweat glands tend to become more fragile
and can bleed spontaneously.
It typically manifests as droplets of blood on the skin,
most commonly in the forehead, the arms and the legs,
without any apparent physical cause.
So there are instances where conditions
have been attributed to spontaneous bleeding.
But it can’t be said that they are
the exact cause of stigmata.
HOROWITZ: When a proposed stigmata occurs,
the Vatican typically will do everything possible
to account for the healing
within standard medical protocol.
The Vatican disputes, ignores,
or disproves vastly greater numbers
of miraculous claims than it actually validates.
And so, if the Vatican
is able to verify a stigmata,
they are considered miraculous.
SHATNER: Is it possible that a genuine case of stigmata
is an actual miracle, as the Vatican claims?
Many believe that the best evidence
lies in the story of the most famous case in modern history:
the Stigmata of Padre Pio.
Padre Pio was a Capuchin friar
who in 1918 celebrated mass
and immediately afterwards started bleeding
from the hands and feet,
but there were certain peculiarities about it.
It never scabbed over.
And it gave off a very sweet perfume
which is known as the odor of sanctity.
McGOWAN: When Padre Pio was suffering from his stigmata,
he said that the pain was so extreme
that he thought he might die.
He was embarrassed by the blood
and embarrassed to be showing these marks on a regular basis.
And he was always trying to cover them
with the sleeves of his robe
so that people wouldn’t see the blood.
ROSSETTI: The Vatican’s response to great mystics in the Church
has often been to persecute them, at least initially.
They did that with Padre Pio.
They were skeptical.
At one point, they thought they were self-inflicted.
And so they, uh, silenced him.
They basically shut him away in a monastery.
But thousands of people would go to attend his mass
and line up for confession for days.
ANDREW COLLINS: It was not until long after
Padre Pio’s death in 1968
that the Vatican had relented
and saw him as a genuine stigmatist.
He was finally canonized
and beautified by Pope John Paul II.
This was at the beginning of the 21st century.
Now thousands of pilgrims
come from all over Italy and beyond
to venerate at his tomb every month.
And so his memory
is something that is celebrated
by Catholics in every part of the world.
McGOWAN: When we look at cases of stigmata,
it’s a very profound experience
for those people who are suffering,
and we have photographs
of modern stigmatics quite agonized
with the pain that they had.
It’s very fascinating.
Anything that could represent,
uh, a true communion
with the essence of Jesus Christ
is going to be something that people are interested in
and want to understand.
SHATNER: For the moment,
stigmata remains a controversial and captivating affliction
that offers no easy answers.
But in 16th century France,
another condition emerged
that was no less baffling.
It was a disturbing phenomenon
which led hundreds of people
to dance themselves to death.
(woman groans)
SHATNER: This historic city built along the Rhine River
is known for its stunning network of canals,
remarkable medieval architecture,
and the famous astronomical clock
of Strasbourg Cathedral.
But over 500 years ago, in July of 1518,
this town was the site of one of the strangest
maladies in human history.
It’s known as the dancing plague,
and it started when a townswoman named Frau Troffea
spontaneously burst into dance.
Frau Troffea was said to have stepped
outside of her house in the city of Strasbourg
and then began to dance.
And she danced for hours and hours and hours.
And apparently, at first,
eyewitnesses thought that she may have been
trying to irritate her husband,
or that this was some kind of joke.
But then the dance stretched into the evening
and then into the night.
She collapsed.
She got up the next day
and began again.
And at that point, people realized
that a very strange phenomenon
was unfolding here.
PICKNETT: Frau Troffea went on hopping around and dancing
in the heat of the summer, but she wasn’t enjoying it.
She was unfocused, glassy-eyed, dissociated,
and just jerking around and dancing.
And she actually couldn’t stop.
SHATNER: Frau Troffea reportedly
danced for a week straight.
The constant exertion took a toll on her health,
and she was sent to a remote monastery to recuperate.
But strangely, after Frau left Strasbourg,
the dancing didn’t stop.
WALLER: Within about two or three weeks,
dozens more people had been consumed
by this same urge to dance and dance
for hours and days
in an altered state of consciousness.
By the end of August,
perhaps 400 people were all dancing.
In some cases, on and off for weeks.
Their toenails fell off, their feet were lacerated,
their shoes were full of blood.
And then some of them dropped dead.
It was estimated 15 a day dropped dead,
maybe 400 in all over the course of the two months.
It was a terrifying and terrible thing.
What’s so remarkable about these events of 1518
is that we have copies of the memos
sent among the members
of the governing circle of the city.
There are intense debates within the city
as to what is causing this outbreak of dancing.
And they make quite clear,
these people do not want to be dancing.
They are absolutely involuntary.
SHATNER: What could have possibly triggered
such a bizarre and deadly affliction?
At the time, the people of Strasbourg
began to suspect that the dancing plague
was the work
of the devil.
COLLINS: This was something that was seen as a form of possession.
So they started to look
at possible supernatural explanations.
And the first thing that they thought of
was this possibly being instigated
by the devil himself.
And so they tried to purge
every kind of sin from the city.
It didn’t work.
SHATNER: When banning sin failed,
the townspeople wondered if the dancing plague
was not the work of the devil
but rather a Catholic saint
by the name of Vitus.
WALLER: St. Vitus is an important saint
in the late medieval European church.
There was a very strong belief
that there were a number of saints
who could both cure you of a particular disease
and, if you were a sinner,
then they would punish you by inflicting that disease.
St. Vitus was believed
to cause movement disorders,
including compulsive dancing.
So it made complete sense to people at the time
that if anybody was dancing wildly,
it’s because they’d somehow offended St. Vitus.
So what they then do is that they bundle people
into wagons and take them to a shrine
dedicated to St. Vitus
located about 30 miles north of Strasbourg.
Interestingly, they put red shoes on them.
They cover the red shoes in holy oil and holy water,
and they lead them round the shrine in a circle.
And then, we are told, most of the people
recovered their sanity.
So it seems that they cured it
by appealing to the supernatural beliefs
of the people who’d been afflicted.
SHATNER: Was the dancing plague both caused and cured
by a higher power?
While it made sense to people in medieval Europe,
in modern times experts have proposed
a more scientific theory.
They claim that this ghoulish dancing frenzy
was the result of mass psychogenic illness,
or as it’s more commonly known, mass hysteria.
FALODUN: Mass hysteria is when a group of people
are experiencing the same physical symptoms
without a definitive physical cause of those symptoms.
For example, if you’re in a social setting
whereby someone is experiencing a symptom,
you can then believe that that’s also happening to you.
There was an example of a girls’ boarding school
in modern-day what’s known as Tanzania now,
in the 1960s where over a thousand girls
had an outbreak of involuntary convulsions
and uncontrollable laughter.
There can be a host of symptoms for mass hysteria.
However, there’s no definitive scientific answer
for what causes groups to mimic certain symptoms and behaviors.
WALLER: Today the most popular theory
for the 1518 dancing plague
is that this is an example of mass hysteria,
but it’s not always the case
that unusual behavior is mass psychogenic illness.
We’re talking about several hundred people
dancing for days or weeks, some of them dying.
Certainly, medieval peoples had popular theories
that this was direct intervention
from God, saints, or the devil.
And I think that partly it’s because the events
just seemed inconceivable, and so, ultimately,
we will never know what drove this phenomenon.
Was the macabre dance of death
the product of mass hysteria?
Or were the townspeople actually possessed by evil forces?
The truth behind this mystery may be lost to history,
but there’s another strange tale of torment
that has been thoroughly investigated
by modern scientists.
It involves a bizarre condition known
as the laughing death.
SHATNER: This group of tropical islands
located in the southwest Pacific Ocean
is one of the most remote places on Earth.
During the 1970s,
it was discovered that a local tribe, known as the Fore,
was afflicted by a strange and deadly illness.
SCHUTT: The Fore people lived up in the mountains of this island.
There were probably about 36,000 of them
that were spread out across the mountain valleys
in northern, uh, New Guinea.
They lived in 170 different hamlets
with people who spoke six different languages.
When the Westerners started to interact with the Fore,
missionaries and anthropologists found an alarming number
of them were dying of a strange disease
that nobody had really seen before.
One of the symptoms of this disease
is something that is known as pathological laughter.
Inappropriate laughter, giggling.
Major magazines and newspapers
called it laughing death.
SHATNER: At the time, experts estimated that the laughing death
killed 200 Fore people every year.
The Fore called the illness kuru,
which translates to "trembling" in their dialect.
The disease was puzzling to scientists,
who could not determine its cause,
and in 1981, Dr. Robert Klitzman
traveled to Papua New Guinea to try and solve the mystery.
When I went there for the first time,
I wasn’t sure what to expect.
But I learned many things.
Initially, it was called the laughing death,
which is sort of a misnomer.
People did engage in what seemed like laughter,
but it really was sort of uncontrollable expressions
and movements that they had.
Kuru causes a number of symptoms.
It is a neurological disease
somewhat similar to Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s.
The symptoms are loss of muscle control over one’s body,
shaking, inability to walk,
and it has mental symptoms as well.
So people may not be able to control their emotions
or what they say.
The disease was terrifying in many ways.
The symptoms usually, from start to the person’s death,
take about a year. It’s invariably fatal.
The Fore people believed that the disease
was caused by sorcery.
So they believed that a sorcerer would take something
that belonged to you and wrap it around a stone
and bury it and cast a spell on it.
And that may sound ridiculous to some of us,
but they’d say, "That’s just magic."
The world in which they lived was this kind of a world.
SHATNER: Was kuru the result of supernatural forces,
as locals believed?
It’s an intriguing notion,
but doctors eventually suspected that the real culprit
was that the Fore participated in the gruesome practice
of consuming human flesh.
HOROWITZ: When Western anthropologists began to study
some of the communities of Papua New Guinea in the 1930s,
they discovered practice of a ritualistic,
religious-based funerary cannibalism.
The Papua New Guineans who engaged in cannibalism
saw the consumption of the brain
as a way of imbibing that person’s lifeforce.
It was a devotional practice.
KLITZMAN: When they practiced cannibalism, at one feast,
I calculated that there were 56 people present.
53 of whom then died of the disease.
So it was pretty devastating.
Now, every time someone died, they would consume the brain.
I met people, for instance, who would say,
"Well, I ate a foot" or "I ate a hand,"
and they were still alive.
And so the concentration of the kuru
was highest when they would consume the brain.
SHATNER: Perhaps it’s not surprising that eating human brains
is not good for your health,
but how did this practice lead to the bizarre
laughing symptoms of kuru?
Kuru is caused by something called a prion,
an infectious protein that is in all of our brains.
And in roughly one out of every million people or so,
it flips the wrong way.
And when it’s flipped,
it could lead to other proteins
flipping in our brain and forming clumps
that could kill brain cells.
Kuru probably happened because someone
in the Fore group had such a protein flip the wrong way.
And that person was then consumed by other people,
and that led to proteins in their brains flipping.
And when they died, they were eaten,
and the rest is history, continued to spread.
SHATNER: The story of kuru is as fascinating as it is disturbing.
But what’s even more unsettling is that this type of disease
has harmed people not just in Papua New Guinea
but all over the world.
Except we call it mad cow disease.
SCHUTT: In the 1980s,
British cattle became stricken with mad cow disease
because farmers feed them supplements,
and these supplements are made up of dead cows
infected with prion disease.
And then people would consume that.
Eventually, over the course of 15, 16 years,
178 people in the UK died
from what became known as mad cow disease.
FALODUN: Mad cow disease
or neurodegenerative diseases such as kuru
can manifest upwards of 70 years after the ingestion
of some contaminated, um, food or livestock.
And so it’s very unclear as to whether or not
it can happen in the future.
The study of kuru is important for many reasons.
One is, of course, the fact that the symptoms in humans
from eating an infected cow are basically
the same symptoms that we saw with kuru.
So they provided this unique glimpse
on what can cause a disease that’s different
than what anyone had thought before.
The fate of people who fall victim
to the laughing death gives a whole new meaning
to the phrase "You are what you eat."
However, our next story
of inexplicable suffering concerns
not what we choose to consume
but rather what might be surgically inserted inside us
without our knowledge because there are thousands
of individuals who claim
that they were the unwilling recipient
of an alien implant.
SHATNER: A group of experts
from multiple universities
publish a controversial study titled
Unusual Personal Experiences.
The report finds that, according to national polls,
roughly 3.7 million Americans claim
to have been abducted by extraterrestrials,
a phenomenon that is referred to as the UFO abduction syndrome.
But what’s even more startling is that many respondents stated
that extraterrestrials surgically operated on them
and implanted a foreign object into their body.
People who report having implants
have claimed all sorts of physical symptoms.
These implants are not something they want in them.
Some claim very bad headaches from them,
some claim extreme pain at the place
where the implant was inserted in them.
Others will claim incidents of problems
with their vision or their hearing.
Most abductees believe these objects
are used to track them and find them
when they are abducted again.
McMAHON: Skeptics say
these are sometimes shards of glass,
or little bits of metal that have become embedded
for very earthbound, natural reasons--
a result of an injury, a self-inflicted wound.
But medical studies have shown that those who believe
that they have these alien implants inside them
are utterly convinced.
SHATNER: Beyond the pain and terror caused by discovering
an alleged extraterrestrial object lodged inside their body,
many so-called alien implantees
also suffer from an even more disturbing symptom.
They claim these implants have actually invaded their minds.
BILL BIRNES: The most compelling things about some of these
alien implant reports are the fact that the people,
the hosts,
claim they’re hearing voices.
The earliest mentions of alien implants
were as communications devices
for the creatures that come in the night.
They’re getting messages, and they would say,
"I feel as though there’s another person inside of me."
SHATNER: Is it possible that the remarkable claims
of supposed alien implantees are true?
And if so, then what exactly are these mysterious objects
that are being inserted into people’s bodies?
Podiatrist Dr. Roger Leir
publishes a controversial book titled
The Aliens and the Scalpel.
In his extraordinary account, Dr. Leir reveals
that he has surgically removed foreign objects
from several people’s bodies,
and he firmly believes these objects
were extraterrestrial in origin.
Dr. Roger Leir, who is now deceased,
claimed to have extracted
more than a dozen alien implants from subjects.
He was one of very few people with surgical training
who was willing to extract such claimed objects.
BIRNES: He would have patients coming in,
"Doc, Doc, my foot, there’s something wrong with it."
When he X-rayed it, he would see these strange objects in there,
and the patients would tell the story
of encountering a strange presence.
What Roger discovered is that, in these alien implants,
the body not only did not reject the object
but made it a part of the body.
No artificial object on this planet acts like that.
SHATNER: In 2013, Dr. Leir contacted
acclaimed documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell.
The doctor wanted to give Corbell unprecedented access
to film his 17th implant removal surgery.
The resulting documentary
is aptly titled Patient Seventeen.
CORBELL: Dr. Roger Leir called me,
and first thing in my mind is,
I thought this was absolute
woo-woo, untangible, ridiculous, ridiculous stuff.
But he says, "Look, I would not have spent
"this much time and effort and money
"and my blood, sweat and tears on this
"if there wasn’t something to it.
Just film a surgery."
So I brought my camera, I went in.
And what really struck me
was, here’s a guy,
he’s about to get on that operating table
and have his body cut open
to remove a foreign body,
and he doesn’t know what it is.
And I don’t know what he was looking to find other than,
"Hey, maybe there’s an implant made by an alien
that’s in my leg."
Because Patient 17 did have abductive experiences.
CORBELL: After the implant removal surgery,
Dr. Roger Leir wanted to give me
a kind of autonomy on my investigative work
on what it is that he cut out of this man’s leg
by sending it myself to a national laboratory,
getting the raw data, and then reporting that in.
When we got that analysis back,
the isotopic ratios,
which are kind of a good measuring stick
or barometer for things that are
not terrestrially found on Earth,
they were off the charts,
indicating that it was non-terrestrial,
not forged here on Earth.
I can tell you that as a fact
that when you get a sample that reads like that,
it’s worthy of further investigation.
BIRNES: The more we come aware of the presence
that there are UFOs in our skies,
the more we realize that it is quite likely
that there are millions of people on this planet
walking around with alien implants in their feet,
in their hands, have no knowledge of it.
For what purpose? We don’t know.
Could millions of people
have been implanted with alien devices
and not even know it?
Wow. It’s a fascinating theory.
But there’s a much older mystery
that’s no less intriguing.
It concerns an ancient nobleman
who attempted to heal his numerous ailments
with the power
of magical stones.
SHATNER: Atop Salisbury Plain
stands arguably the most iconic ancient structure in the world.
Stonehenge.
Constructed around 3100 BC,
this enigmatic monument
has captured our collective imagination for centuries.
But what most people don’t realize
is that this Stonehenge landscape is also
a massive graveyard.
Throughout the area,
thousands of ancient skeletons have been recovered.
And apparently many of the deceased
suffered from devastating afflictions.
The area around Stonehenge is absolutely littered
with people who have got all sorts of traumas,
from the mundane through to some very serious conditions.
It’s very clear that many of them had
physical injuries that had gone on-- broken arms,
all the usual range of things.
For example,
one of the skeletons of those people,
on his left knee, the kneecap is missing.
There was some kind of trauma.
The second thing which is obviously
wrong with him is that there is an abscess
on his jaw which must have been excruciating in life.
Also, what we can see from recent studies of DNA
is that around about the time that Stonehenge was being built,
there was a plague circulating in the area.
So we have to think of the prehistoric past
that we’re talking about around Stonehenge
as something which is actually very dangerous.
People dying, people being hurt
through these different illnesses
and plagues and diseases.
SHATNER: It’s easy to assume that so many people buried near Stonehenge
suffered from numerous ailments because
they simply lived in ancient times
and did not receive proper medical care.
But according to archaeologists,
the truth may be far more intriguing.
In 2008, an important discovery was announced
regarding Stonehenge.
There was a discovery of a mass of skeletons
buried in the region,
and 50% of these skeletons discovered
had come from somewhere else.
So what does this tell us?
They came here for something.
It’s possible that Stonehenge
could have been used as a healing site,
a type of temple for healing.
SHATNER: Did ancient people travel to Stonehenge
in order to be healed?
And if so, what made them think
that coming to this mysterious monument
would cure them?
Some say the answer can be found
by examining the stones themselves
and, more specifically,
what are known as the bluestones.
DARVILL: Around Stonehenge, the outer structure is made
from essentially local stones.
That’s the things we often see.
But inside Stonehenge,
we have these bluestones.
They’re called bluestones because they do
have a kind of a bluey-greeny color to them
and they also have white spots inside them.
We’ve got a number of strands of evidence which support the idea
that these stones were being used for healing.
One of them is that we know from scientific studies
that those stones come from Southwest Wales,
in what we know as the Preseli Hills.
It’s about 140 miles or so as the crow flies from Stonehenge.
The stones in the Preseli Hills
must have been considered special in some way.
Because we can trace back through folklore accounts
of people using water in association with the stones
to help promote healing.
And so Stonehenge was a place of healing, I’m sure.
We shouldn’t, though, compare it to a modern hospital.
Because medical science back then
was much more to do with belief.
It was much more to do with faith.
Stonehenge was all about using belief,
using the power of the bluestones
as the means by which health care was dished out, as it were.
SHATNER: For some, the idea that ancient people
constructed a massive stone monument
for mystical healing purposes may sound far-fetched.
But the profound truth is that,
for thousands of years,
human beings have journeyed far and wide
in search of miracle cures,
and millions of people continue to do so today.
If you want to make sense of Stonehenge
as a healing place, think of Lourdes in France,
where people still come even today
looking for a cure from the Virgin Mary.
Now, you imagine in the Bronze Age,
you would come to Stonehenge to touch the stones,
to say a prayer.
It was the last hope
that they can cure whatever ailment it is
that’s killing them.
McGOWAN: These ancient cultures, particularly in Britain,
were immersed in the traditions
of believing in the power of nature.
And certainly something as majestic as these stones
would be something that could have an energy
that could potentially help them.
SHATNER: It’s fascinating to think that 5,000 years ago
the ancient people of Britain
may have gone to Stonehenge as a last resort
to heal afflictions they didn’t understand.
And curiously, there’s a bizarre malady
occurring in Portugal
that even modern scientists can’t comprehend.
Only, this condition doesn’t harm the living,
but rather the dead.
SHATNER: While there are many bizarre afflictions
which attack the living that are utterly confounding,
surprisingly, in this historic and picturesque city,
the same can also be said
for the deceased.
There’s a law in Portugal
that people who are buried
must essentially be exhumed after a few years,
when they’ve decomposed, and whatever remains
is crushed down into a box
and then placed into a wall.
The reason for that
is that there’s a shortage of space
in cemeteries in Portugal.
Here’s the weird thing:
half the bodies brought up have not decomposed.
Uh, many of them have, in effect, come up mummified.
Now, that’s odd because Portugal is a fairly warm, hot country.
You’d expect bodies to decompose faster.
So why the bodies are remaining mummified
and refusing to decompose is something of a mystery.
SHATNER: What could possibly cause so many dead bodies
to be turned into mummies?
It’s a disturbing conundrum,
and, in fact, this phenomenon isn’t limited to Lisbon.
Throughout Portugal, families are unfortunately
discovering that the remains of their loved ones are being...
abnormally preserved.
The fact that bodies are not decomposing
in Portugal is distressing for the people
who are having to dig them up
and then answer the question,
"Well, now what do we do with them?"
If you can’t crush them up and put them in a box,
because they refuse to decompose, what do you do?
Put them back in the ground again?
So this really is a hugely traumatic event
for families who’d lost sons, fathers, mothers, and daughters.
SHATNER: For now, the people of Portugal
continue to worry about the remains
of their dearly departed.
But if history is any indication,
human beings will keep looking upon bizarre afflictions
with both fascination and dread,
as we have for centuries.
PICKNETT: In the 19th century,
millions of people flocked to freak shows
to ogle people with all sorts of bizarre afflictions.
And I think the same mentality is still there
in human beings to some extent.
We think, "How can these people possibly live
with these extraordinary things wrong with them?
How can they bear it?"
And then most of all, we think,
"Awfully glad it’s not us."
HOROWITZ: There’s a mixture of fear and titillation
around our fascination with bizarre ailments.
We’re worried about what might happen to us
and at the same time we’re relieved
that it hasn’t or hasn’t yet.
So we like to dip our toe into circumstances
that remind us of our mortality,
of our fragility,
of what could happen to us but hasn’t.
Perhaps what’s so unsettling
about strange tales of torment
is that it’s unclear how, when, or why
inexplicable afflictions strike.
From harrowing accounts of stigmata
to the disturbing dance of death,
these maladies serve as a chilling reminder
that we could be vulnerable
to enigmatic and harmful forces
that we don’t fully understand.
And at any moment,
we might fall victim to troubling conditions
that remain... unexplained.
CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY A+E NETWORKS