- Tonight, on "The Proof Is Out There".
Is this grisly photo proof spontaneous combustion is real?
- If it was real, then it can happen to anyone at any time,
which is a pretty scary thought.
- [Tony] Is this proof that a famous UFO shape
from the past has returned?
- [Witness] This is crazy.
- This is not your average sight in the night sky.
- [Tony] An out of control SUV
barely misses a man of the cloth.
- If this is not a miracle in action, I don't know what is.
- [Tony] And remember that Chinese spy balloon
over Montana?
Did this woman discover something even more alarming?
- I was in shock, I wasn't sure what I was witnessing.
(dramatic music)
- [Tony] Around the globe are videos.
- [Witness] What are those things?
- [Witness] It's moving.
- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.
(electric static whirring)
- [Kathy] We don't know where they come from,
who made them or how they operate.
- [Tony] What are they?
- [MJ] Some sort of bizarre mutation.
- [Marc] What's exciting is nobody really knows.
- Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.
- I'm Tony Harris and as a journalist
for more than 30 years,
I've followed the facts where they take me.
Now, I'm bringing that spirit of investigation
to the world's strangest sounds and images.
We'll analyze each one with top experts.
- It's a credible case, it's a credible video.
- [Tony] And pass a verdict on what it is.
- This video was clearly faked.
- The proof starts now.
(dramatic music)
Good evening and welcome to "The Proof Is Out There".
We're starting with a classic story
of spontaneous human combustion.
It's not uncommon for grass clippings, fertilizer,
or mulch to spontaneously catch fire
when exposed to the right elements.
But is it possible for the same thing to happen
to a human being?
Check this out and a warning to all of you.
Some of the footage we're about to show
is not for the faint hearted.
July 2nd, 1951, St. Petersburg, Florida.
At roughly 8:00 AM, landlady Pansy Carpenter
arrives at Mary Reeser's apartment
with a telegram.
Kids, that's what people used for instant messages
before you were born with a smartphone in your hand.
She finds the metal doorknob to be uncomfortably warm
to the touch and calls the police.
When firefighters enter the unit, they discover this.
The remnants of a fire with a pile of ashes
where Reeser's easy chair used to be.
Within it, they find the chair's coil springs,
part of Reeser's spine, her left foot, and her skull.
Even more baffling, the rest of Reeser's apartment
was essentially untouched by the flames.
As this strange story spreads, people started referring
to Mary as the "Cinder Woman".
- This was a pretty well-known case when I was a kid
and it kind of baffled my mind
as to how somebody could randomly burst into flames.
A theory called spontaneous human combustion.
- [Tony] Spontaneous combustion,
the idea that sometimes people just explode,
has been a reoccurring headline since this strange case
first popularized the idea.
- When something inside the body,
whether it's chemicals
or some other force, gets to a temperature
that triggers the individual to catch fire.
All of the heat that is generated that allows a person
to catch flame is inside them.
- [Tony] Alleged cases stretched back
at least to the Victorian era,
when Charles Dickens included such an event
in his book, "Bleak House".
Dickens said that part wasn't fiction.
- [MJ] Dickens pointed back to history saying,
listen, there's many cases on record
where individuals have seemingly burst
into flames just on their own.
- [Tony] Banias also points
to a much more recent example out of Ireland.
- In 2010, a gentleman by the name of Michael Faherty
was found in his home burned to death.
The coroner on the case, for the first time,
issued the verdict in a official report
that this individual died as a result
of spontaneous human combustion.
And much like the Reeser case,
his home did not experience any other fire damage.
- [Tony] So if spontaneous human combustion might be real,
how and why could such a thing occur?
- Some people believe in the vibrational theory,
that says that the subatomic particles
that make us up are constantly moving around
and if they move around with too much speed,
that friction can create heat
and lead to spontaneous human combustion.
And others think that due to increased alcohol consumption
or some forms of diet an individual's
acetone levels can build up in their body and their blood,
and that is what catches fire,
burning them from the inside out.
- [Tony] Acetone is a flammable substance
usually found in products like paint remover,
but small amounts can be found in the human body.
Could this spark a fire within the body?
Well, an anthropologist from the University
of Pennsylvania claims that Mary's skull, reportedly found
intact and slightly shrunk like this one,
is just more proof that the heat did in fact
come from inside Mary's body.
Let's see what our experts think.
(tense music)
Physicist Matthews Szydagis
shoots down the vibrational theory
of spontaneous combustion.
- This is a pseudoscientific notion with no basis
in known physics, chemistry, or biology.
Where would this energy come from?
Energy cannot be created or destroyed.
It can only change form.
So, this mystical, woo-vibrational energy
needs to come from somewhere.
- [Tony] And as for one's acetone levels leading
to a potential biological explosion,
Szydagis says that's highly improbable.
- None of those chemicals could be present in large
quantities without causing toxicity.
The amount of acetone that the human body would need
in order to explain spontaneous human combustion cases
would be poisonous.
- Emergency medical physician Dr. Ed Hope
agrees that the idea of spontaneous human combustion
is a bit farfetched.
- Even though we have the fuel for our body
to potentially burn, you don't have a heat source
to actually get the fire going in the first place.
They're either smoking a cigarette or near a fire,
or near a fireplace, and that's the more obvious culprit.
- [Tony] But then, how does that explain
the strange small area of burn in these cases,
where the surrounding objects
and furniture remained untouched by the flames?
- There is a theory called the "Wick Effect",
and it's best understood if we think about a candle.
So, you have solid paraffin with a wick in the middle,
and as the flame burns, it melts the paraffin,
turns it into liquid paraffin,
which is drawn up into the wick, which fuels the flame,
which further burns the candle down.
Now as grotesque as it is, the human body is kind of
like an inside out candle, so our clothes
around the outside become the wick.
The wax in our case would be the fat in our body,
and that further sustains the flame.
We know from reports that Mary weighed
around about 170 pounds,
a fair amount of fat tissue there in order to fuel the fire.
- [Tony] And since, like a candle,
the wick effect is such a slow, contained burn,
the flames stay contained without spreading.
So how did Mary even catch fire in the first place?
- According to Mary's son,
every night, she took some sleeping tablets,
she had a cigarette, and she changed into her nightgown.
So it's likely that the hot ash from the cigarette
had fallen nearby and because she was so sedated,
she would've not noticed
and that caught fire to something nearby,
possibly a newspaper.
And sadly, she actually died from the smoke inhalation
and then her nightgown would've set on fire
and the wick effect would've taken hold
and burnt her body.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, the wick effect.
We agree with the experts
that the "Cinder Woman's" fate was due
to a mix of cigarettes, pills, and her sleeping attire.
Although that doesn't account for the death
of Michael Faherty, whose cause of death
is still legally ruled a case
of spontaneous human combustion.
Now, let's hop the globe over to Australia,
which is responsible for quite a few
of our stories over the years.
The country's UFO history stretches back to 1868,
when a man claimed to see an arc floating in the sky.
And if our next story is any indication,
it's possible another intergalactic vessel
has made a trip down under.
September 27th, 2021.
It's about 8:00 PM in Sydney, Australia.
Diana Lexa is walking home from the park
with her daughter when a flash in the night sky
catches her attention.
- [Tony] Her video shows a strange, glowing object.
No, not that wiggling lens flare,
but the luminous shape beyond it.
On camera, it almost looks stationary,
but firsthand accounts say this thing
is zipping across the sky.
Diana isn't sure what to think.
- At first, I'm like, maybe it's some sort
of like, police helicopter or something like that, you know,
and then I zoomed in on it.
- [Tony] Look again as Diana zooms in.
It's a massive, boomerang shaped object
with a bright light on its front apparently guiding it.
- And I noticed it was like some strange,
like, triangle thing.
It was like blinking, but it doesn't look like a helicopter.
- [Tony] The boomerang is actually a classic UFO type.
- Typically, they're much larger than other UFOs.
One of the more famous UFO cases involving a boomerang shaped UFO
occurred in the early 1980s in the Hudson Valley.
For several years, there were multiple UFO sightings
in the same area, and the most famous one occurred in 1983
where people reported that there was this really large,
V-shaped object flying over Hudson Valley.
According to the local press in the time,
hundreds of people witnessed this object.
- [Tony] This Australian boomerang was also reported
by multiple witnesses,
and they shouldn't hold their breath
for an answer from their government.
- Unfortunately, Australia made some nasty headlines in 2011
where they came out basically admitting
that all their UFO reports had gone missing.
And ultimately, when a government misplaces stuff,
it's gonna come off sounding fishy, especially when it comes
to UFOs, because UFOs have such a long history
of coverup and conspiracy.
- In late 2000, Australia's military stopped accepting UFO
sighting reports altogether.
Witnesses are now directed
to take their issues to the police.
Luckily for Diana, she has our experts on her case.
(tense music)
We begin by asking Rich Hoffman,
of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies,
if this could simply be a conventional craft.
- There's no lighting whatsoever
that you would find on an aircraft on this.
Typically, you have navigation lights that have to be a red
and green light and you might have a white blinking light
on it and this has none of those kind of characteristics to it.
- [Tony] Then, could this be another
in a long line of boomerang UFOs?
- UFOs don't use combustion engines.
They're just objects that can maneuver around the sky
without leaving any kind of exhaust out the back of them.
Here's clearly something with an exhaust pattern.
- [Tony] Upon closer examination,
we see what he means.
This object doesn't appear
to be a solid boomerang shaped craft as much
as it does a single bright point flanked by two clouds.
So we turn to video effects designer and astronomer
Marc D'Antonio to ask,
could this be an atmospheric phenomenon?
- Certainly, this is not a weather phenomenon of any kind.
Clouds don't have bright
hotspots in the middle of 'em like this.
I'm sure that there are some clouds
that could look like a boomerang,
but they change moment to moment.
This thing remains the exact same shape pretty consistently,
and it's moving too quickly, so it takes it out of the realm
of logic to say it might be a cloud.
- [Tony] Then what does that leave us?
Hoffman has an idea.
- The fact that it's boomerang shaped
is typical to what we see in the exhaust patterns
out of the bottom of rockets.
- [Tony] And D'Antonio did some digging
for "The Proof Is Out There" and solved it.
- This is actually a rocket launch from the Chinese.
It was a launch of a satellite using a Long March rocket
and you're watching a plume
of exhaust coming out from behind the rocket.
- [Tony] The launch of Shiyan-10,
the classified Chinese satellite,
occurred roughly two hours
before Diana's sighting and about 5,000 miles away.
- Then you might think, how could someone down in Sydney,
Australia see a rocket launch that comes out of China?
Well, when you launch something up into the sky,
it's going to be visible for thousands of miles.
The higher up in the sky it goes, the easier it's gonna be
to see from a longer distance.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, this was a Chinese rocket
launching a satellite into orbit,
though the purpose of the satellite
remains a state secret.
Going off eyewitness accounts alone,
we can't say for certain if rocket launches explain
other boomerang UFO sightings.
But if you ever see one for yourself, be sure
to take the video and check for news of recent launches.
- According to a Baylor University survey,
more than half of adults believe they have been protected
by a guardian angel during their lifetime.
This next video is so intense,
you very well might be convinced
divine intervention was involved.
It's October 2022 in Milford, Ohio.
Just after 8:30 in the morning,
an 87-year-old, semi-retired priest who asked not to be named
is on his way to church to deliver Catholic mass,
but he's also on a collision course with near disaster.
It happened so fast,
I think we should slow it down and take another look.
Check out how the SUV,
driven by an unnamed teen, hits two thin poles
and a "No left turn" sign.
It somehow becomes airborne, just clears the priest's
white Hyundai, then lands bumper first in a parking lot.
Meanwhile, the priest's car drives off without a scratch.
Milford police chief Jamey Mills says
the incident came as a shock.
- The first thought that ran through my head was,
I hope no one is injured.
- [Tony] The black SUV ends up crashing into a building,
but the police have no idea
it nearly broadsided the priest's car, perhaps fatally,
until they checked the footage
that was captured by a security camera.
- We didn't know he had leaped over another vehicle.
This was an absolute miracle.
It's unbelievable that no one was injured or killed.
- [Tony] The priest later says he didn't even know an SUV
had flown over his car.
So, author Alexis Brooks wonders if it's possible
he was being watched over by a guardian angel.
- It could be the dust that's being kicked up
by the speed of the SUV,
but what I see here is something akin to wings.
It could be that the wings
of the angel were literally lifting up this SUV
in order to avoid what could have been a fatal collision.
- [Tony] Brooks says the Bible speaks
of God commanding angels to guard the faithful.
- The presence of guardian angels
have been replete throughout history.
One that is known to many,
particularly in the Christian faith, is that of
Saint Michael, or Archangel Michael.
He's known as the warrior angel and a protective angel.
- [Tony] And this is not the first time
we've possibly seen divine intervention during an accident.
We previously showed you this scary clip
of a father just narrowly saving his kids
from being run over by an out of control car
outside a bike shop in Indonesia.
- You've got to question the nature
of reality when something like that happens.
So I happen to think we could put
that in the angelic intervention column.
(choir singing)
- Now, get ready for this.
The Ohio accident happened on the feast day
of the guardian angels,
when Catholics recognize the protective role
of these heavenly beings play in our lives.
So, what should we believe about the priest
and his holy Hyundai?
Could God be at the wheel?
(tense music)
Catholic miracle investigator Michael O'Neill
considers that this near miss could be a result
of angelic intervention.
- It's common practice for Catholics to seek out
the protection of saints and angels in their travel.
St. Christopher is the patron saint of motorists.
Our Lady of Loreto, the patron saint of aviators.
And while we can't definitively say
that this is a guardian angel here,
we have a Catholic priest on his way
to say mass in the feast day of the guardian angels.
Seems like a clear cut case, in my opinion,
of something that might be a miracle.
- [Tony] But is there any chance
this could all just be explained away with science?
Theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku investigates.
- This is a miracle made possible by the first law
of thermodynamics, the conservation of energy.
First, the black car comes in from the side
at a certain energy.
That energy, the kinetic energy of motion is then converted
to the energy of being thrust into the air
because it hit that rail.
So the energy of motion turns into gravitational energy
and then the car simply moves away as a consequence.
- [Tony] But since this all seems so perfectly timed,
could it actually just be a Hollywood style stunt?
Yes, it happens.
In 2023, this pilot was charged
with staging his own plane crash just for clicks.
- There are people who might say that this was a stunt
for the internet, but perhaps signing up an 87-year-old,
retired priest to be a driver in a close call like this one,
I don't think that's really gonna happen.
- [Tony] And Kaku says the circumstances
of the crash fully rule out something intentional.
- The driver in the black car, a kid had an epileptic fit,
and so that's why he lost control of the car.
I think what we are looking at is a miracle.
According to the laws of physics,
everything had to be just right and that's what happened.
(tense music)
- This video was one crazy ride.
Our verdict, this is a possible miracle.
If one of the world's top physicists just said so,
we're in no position to contradict him.
Maybe it was just good luck or maybe an angel intervened.
We won't argue with whatever you choose to believe.
- Strange sounds terrorizing entire communities
seem to be a growing trend.
Several years ago, residents of a small suburb in Oregon
were tortured by a still unexplained whistle
they claimed was driving them insane.
In our next story, a new sound is disturbing the peace.
Only this time, in the outer boroughs of the Big Apple.
Brooklyn, New York, November 2022.
Mo Hussein is walking home at night when he hears
a mysterious sound echoing through his neighborhood
of Fort Green.
Using his camera phone, he records this.
(resonant droning)
- What is that sound?
- [Tony] And according to Mo, this noise has been going off
and on, haunting residents for over a year.
- It's driving me (bleep) crazy.
It's the type of sound
that kind of reels into your head slowly,
hour after hour, until finally you kind of jump up
from your desk and you say, "Oh my God, what is that sound?"
It made it difficult to sleep
and it definitely caused headaches.
- [Tony] Out of desperation, Mo and his neighbors
call the city, but the sound would mysteriously turn off
anytime officials showed up to investigate.
- The timing of the occurrence of the hum
led a lot of people to believe that it was some sort
of construction equipment
that could hopefully be turned off.
- [Tony] But with no clear answers
from any city representatives,
another theory emerged based on the hum's
potential frequency.
- [Eric] There's a phenomenon, the "Worldwide Hum",
that can be heard by certain people all over the world.
It's been reported to cause symptoms including nausea,
headaches, dizziness.
- [Tony] Some people theorize that the worldwide hum
is tied to underground gas pipelines.
This map created by hum sufferer
and mechanical engineer Steve Coalhouse
shows the overlapping proximity of hum reports
and pipeline locations.
But while the Brooklyn pipeline has been in the works,
it is far from finished.
So, Grundhauser explores a more frightful theory,
one involving sonic weapons.
- In 2016 in Havana, Cuba,
members of the U.S. Embassy staff
woke up in the middle of the night to a loud piercing sound
that caused dizziness, vertigo, and nausea.
- [Tony] Although Cuba denied any responsibility
for this sound and its effects,
later dubbed "Havana Syndrome", a recent study claims to show
brain abnormalities in all the people who heard this noise,
leading many to believe it was a sonic weapon.
- Similar symptoms have been reported by hundreds.
Some have even said thousands of U.S. spies
and diplomats all over the world.
(resonant humming)
- This strange hum hasn't been Brooklyn's only audio oddity.
Several years ago, residents of Brooklyn Heights
started to hear a mysterious high pitched chirping noise
around Cadman Plaza Park.
It turned out that was coming from a state-of-the-art,
pest repelling sound machine
sitting out on someone's balcony.
Could something so simple be what's plaguing Ford Green?
We'll let our experts sound off.
(tense music)
We checked in with forensic audio analyst Robert Maher,
who compared the Brooklyn hum with a recording claimed
to be the sound of the Havana Syndrome.
(high-pitched buzzing)
- The Havana sound has a very high frequency,
but the recording in Brooklyn, the lower frequency
of this is nothing like the Havana tone.
- [Tony] Some experts concluded that the Havana sound,
at least that one recording of it,
was just local crickets anyway,
but that still doesn't explain what could be
behind this infuriating hum in Brooklyn.
Maher thinks he has an idea.
- It's reminiscent of what is referred to as
a "Helmholtz Resonance", and this is the resonance
that you hear if you blow over the top
of a pop bottle or a jug.
(bottle whistling)
With this sound that is heard in Brooklyn,
the amplitude tends to vary up and down,
which to me is an indication
that this might be a resonance effect
like wind blowing through a railing
or a building that might cause this continuous,
resonant quality sound.
(resonant humming)
(bottle whistling)
- [Tony] Solid structures like steel railings
or metal bars contain molecules
that vibrate at a frequency specific to their makeup.
And when hit by something like high winds,
the "Helmholtz Resonance" can kick in.
- You may amplify existing small vibrations
turning them into larger ones.
The Brooklyn Hum can just be blamed on some sort
of wind tunnel effect towards structures
that can wiggle back and and forth
at just the right frequency to create this annoying sound.
- It's driving me (bleep) crazy.
(tense music)
- While we agree with our experts
that the Brooklyn hum is most likely a product
of resonance created by the wind,
we still don't know exactly which structure
the sound is coming from.
Our verdict, partially unexplained sound resonance.
Meanwhile, the people of Fort Green have started
a petition to stop the mysterious noise.
They hope making noise of their own
will yield some well-earned peace and quiet.
- Everyone loves a good treasure hunt
and some believe the mysterious stones in this next story
could unlock the secret location of untold riches.
Do we have your attention?
It's 2004 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Third generation treasure hunter Dan Dillman
is at the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum
where he's been granted special access
to view some artifacts
that have long been a family obsession.
These photos show replicas of a set
of rectangular slabs known as the Peralta Stones.
They're each 18 inches wide and 12 inches tall.
One is known as the Horse Stone, or the Priest Stone,
and features a horse on one side and a priest on the back.
A second, the Trail Map Stone, features
what looks like a pictorial map.
The third has a recessed heart that's filled
with a separate, heart-shaped stone.
This heart tablet seems to connect with the trail map.
- I first heard about the Peralta Stone tablets
from my grandfather and uncles when I was just a little kid,
sitting at the kitchen table, talking about treasure stories.
And my grandfather and uncles truly believe
that these were real stone maps that led to some place.
- [Tony] Anthropologist Kathy Strain says
the story goes that the original tablets were found in the
1940s in Arizona.
- Police officer Travis Tumlinson
was near Apache Junction, Arizona
and he just stepped out of the car
to stretch his legs and he found these stones
buried in the dirt next to where he was parked.
- [Tony] This heart-shaped insert was apparently found
later by someone who went back to search the area.
- The prevailing theory is that these stones
will tell the way to get to the Lost Dutchman Mine.
Now, Lost Dutchman Mine is believed
to be on some land in the Superstition Mountains.
In 1748, the land was granted
to a Mexican cattle-bearer named Don Miguel Peralta.
It is said that there was a gold mine on that property,
but he rarely ever went to it.
- [Tony] In the 1870s, German immigrant Jacob Waltz
supposedly found the location of the mine
and spent years filling his saddlebags with gold.
Dutchman was a common American term
for a German in the 1800s from the Anglicized version
of the German word Deutsche.
- [Kathy] It's possible that these stones
led him to find the mine,
but it's also possible that he's the one that authored these
to help him remember where the mine was.
- [Tony] A number of searchers have mysteriously died
or gone missing while hunting for this gold,
and that only adds to the superstition
that surrounds these peaks.
- We continue following the information
that we've gleaned from the Peralta Stone maps
and we believe they lead to some of the greatest treasures
this world has ever known.
- The Superstition Mountains are renowned
for more than just a legend of the Lost Dutchman Mine.
Some Apaches believe a hole leading
to the underworld is located there.
What can our experts discover about this
legendary search for treasure?
Let's put them on the hunt.
(tense music)
Archeologist Dr. Ed Barnhart
first deciphers what the stones say,
starting with the Priest Stone.
- One of the tablets has a text that in Spanish says,
"Look for the map," which strikes me as a little odd
considering these tablets are supposed to be the map.
On the flip side, we have what's called the Horse Tablet,
and then there's text again in Spanish saying,
"The horse of Santa Fe, I graze north of the river,"
which people have taken to be some sort of cryptic
directions to the mine.
One of the troubles I have with
that particular text though is that horse, caballo,
is misspelled.
- [Tony] Barnhart adds that on the Heart Stone,
there appears to be a date, 1847,
the last year Arizona was a part of Mexico.
But what about the symbols on the other tablets
like the so-called Trail Map Stone?
- The trail map itself
seems to be kind of squiggly lines.
There's no place where it begins
or ends, so it's very difficult to discern
how you would use it as a map.
- [Tony] So who carved these stones?
Barnhart says it's unlikely the German prospector Waltz
would've been literate in the 1800s,
much less having education to be able
to write words in other languages.
And more importantly, he says the stones reveal
two completely different levels of carving skill.
- [Ed] The stones appear to be carved
by two different authors.
One is a much better artist than the other.
- [Tony] NASA geologist Dr. Bob Anderson agrees
there seems to be two separate artists
and he says they performed their work in different centuries.
- The carvings that you see on the two sandstone ones,
which are the map, are pretty legitimate
of what you would find in the 1840s and 1850s.
These rocks are scattered all over Arizona
and they were used as markers
to show people where you want 'em to go.
The horse, on the other hand,
and the heart appear to be totally different.
That heart symbol is probably much more recent.
I would say probably in the 1940s or 1950s.
These two rocks that are carved later do not belong
to the same puzzle that the first two do.
(tense music)
- So, we're left a bit puzzled by these stones.
Our verdict, the Trail Map Stone and the Heart Stone
might be legitimate 19th century marker stones,
but the heart-shaped insert and double-sided Horse
or Priest Stone are likely fakes from the 20th century.
And since they're not part of the same set,
it's unlikely they reveal the hidden spot
of a treasure trove.
- On February 1st, 2023,
a Chinese spy balloon was spotted over Billings, Montana.
It traveled over much of the United States
before the U.S. Air Force shot it down over the Atlantic.
The incident made international headlines,
but just two days later,
another lesser known incident occurred over Montana.
Was it a balloon or something else?
February 3rd, 2023, Billings, Montana.
Military veteran Dolly Mills-Moore
is finishing up her workday when out of the corner
of her eye, she sees something zoom past her window.
Check it out, there's what looks like a trail of smoke
pointing toward the ground,
as if something has crashed or been shot down.
Several seconds in, a flash fills the sky.
She's not sure what to think.
- I was in, you know, shock.
I wasn't sure what I was witnessing or videotaping.
(ehtereal music)
- [Tony] But she suspects it has something to do with
that Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon,
spotted over Billings just two days earlier.
- I just kind of thought, what the heck?
Holy crap, here we go again.
What else is happening here in Montana?
- Journalist MJ Banias says
the heightened state of paranoia sweeps Dolly's video
into virality.
- People started to ask natural questions.
Is this another balloon?
Is something happening, are we being attacked?
The next day, the U.S. Air Force shot down
a Chinese intelligence gathering balloon.
- [Witness] They shot it!
- [MJ] Over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina.
Shortly after that, over several days,
multiple other objects were spotted
and ultimately shot down.
- [Tony] A total of three UFOs are shot down
by the U.S. government.
So did Dolly capture a fourth?
It wouldn't be Montana's first clash with UFOs.
Malmstrom Air Force Base in Cascade County
famously contended with strange airborne lights in 1967.
- [MJ] In the Malmstrom case,
we have guards outside the facility.
Suddenly this red light appears over the base
and one by one, the nuclear missiles
start getting turned off.
So the launch capability was removed
and the entire system died.
- [Tony] Have those inexplicable UFOs returned?
As you can imagine, the U.S. Air Force shooting down
three unidentified objects in a matter of days
caused quite a buzz among UFO believers.
And get this, when Air Force General
Glen VanHerck was first asked about the shoot downs,
he refused to rule out extraterrestrial involvement.
But what will our experts say about this incident?
(tense music)
We head first to aviation expert Tim McMillan to ask,
could this be a spy balloon getting shot down?
He notes that the City of Billings didn't report the crash
of any such object at the time of the video,
nor did the Air Force.
- The US military denies that this is related to any type
of shoot down.
And in order to have a contrail of that nature,
you have to have some type of combustion processes going on.
Balloons do not have any of these features.
- [Tony] So could it be a UFO getting shot down?
- I don't see anything that's otherworldly
about this video whatsoever.
In fact, the exact opposite.
We see something that is extremely consistent
with a vapor trail or contrail from an aircraft
burning off jet fuel
that creates these clouds of condensation.
- [Tony] As for the sudden uptick in UFO,
particularly UFO shoot downs,
we can likely blame enhanced radar.
U.S. officials confirmed that they boosted
radar capabilities and more closely scrutinized
U.S. airspace in the days following
the Chinese spy balloon incident, which likely led
to the increased detection of regular old, airborne clutter.
- Nothing that I see in this video appears
to be inconsistent with a normal contrail
that would be expected from a conventional aircraft,
even though it appears to be going down.
I think that's just an artifact
relative of where you're filming it.
But in reality, it's traveling the curvature of the Earth.
- [Tony] But if it is just a regular, plain contrail,
why don't we see these things all the time?
Meteorologist Juan Hernandez considers the conditions.
- February 3rd, 2023, was a fairly chilly day
in Billings, Montana.
When we look at the satellite view,
clouds covered much of the sky,
which tells me that there is enough humidity
that allowed for the development of contrails.
Well, that leads me to believe that the exhaust
coming out of an airplane is releasing water vapor.
The water vapor freezes fairly quickly
and then creates a cloud.
- [Tony] That doesn't explain the big flash in the sky,
but Hernandez has an idea.
- During cloudy conditions, if you move the camera one way
or another, the newer cameras will try
to adjust for brightness.
And I think that's what we're looking at here.
That bright flash that we saw was the camera
trying to correct for the changes in lighting.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, plain contrail, likely unrelated
to the spy balloon that passed overhead days earlier.
But we're grateful for Dolly's vigilance, nonetheless.
- Finally tonight, let's talk about fairies.
You might think they're just mythical beings.
You might think they're harmless and well-intentioned,
but this video might be proof
that you're wrong on both counts.
January 2022, Clacton, UK.
A family holidaying at a caravan park
is seeking repose inside their home,
while an infrared security camera records the exterior.
The next morning while checking the motion trigger device,
they see this.
A strange, winged creature flutters
from underneath the porch
and toward the camera before flying away.
Let's take another look.
As we slow this down and push in,
let's freeze it right there.
The figure seems humanoid in appearance
with the exception of the wings, of course.
Once posted, this clip immediately went viral,
prompting many people to claim
that this is photographic evidence of a real-life fairy.
- There's something about the way that this thing moves
that doesn't track like an insect,
and people think this was a fairy.
- [Tony] According to McCarthy,
the fact that this video is from the UK
plays right into the fairy legend.
- There's a long history of fairies in the UK.
They were actually first written about in the 13th century
and from pop culture, we're kind of used to this image
of a cute, little sprite that just brings joy.
But that's not what fairies have always been depicted as.
In fact, some people believe that they are ghosts
or spirits, fallen angels or demons.
- [Tony] In fact, the fairy mythos includes all sorts
of nefarious, tiny creatures, like Scotland's redcaps,
murderous, little men with sharp claws
and teeth who would mop up the blood
of their victims using their hats.
- They're not the kind of creatures you would wanna
run into in a dark forest at night.
That said, we of course have the tooth fairy,
who comes and visits children
and plucks their teeth out from under
their pillows after they've lost them
and leaves them a little treat in return.
What does she do with the teeth though?
Makes you wonder.
- Some people have suggested
that the reason the tooth fairy leaves money under pillows
for lost teeth is connected to the Norse Vikings
who would pay gold coins for children's teeth,
fashioning them into necklaces they would then wear
for good luck on the battlefield.
Let's see what kind of luck our experts have
when it comes to cracking this case.
(tense music)
We went to forensic video analyst, Michael Primeau,
to see if this video was even real.
- The way the infrared technology is producing
a reflection onto that object,
it doesn't look like layering to me.
It looks like something is flying in this area
that the infrared is detecting
and the video is trying to capture as best that it can.
And this would be very difficult to fake
because the infrared technology is something that we can't see.
- [Tony] So according to Primeau, this video is legit,
but that doesn't mean it's not misrepresenting
the object's size.
- As you can see here, there's a trail, if you will,
of this object shape behind it.
This is a common symptom of motion blurring
and these are essentially errors in the way
that the file is being created.
What we're seeing here may actually be misrepresenting
the size of the object as well.
- [Tony] We next brought the video to biologist Floyd Hayes.
- As you can see, this little creature here
looks a lot like Tinker Bell.
However, we're not really seeing much in the way
of a head or the arms.
We're seeing legs, but we're not really seeing feet there.
So it doesn't look quite as humanoid
as we might expect with a fairy.
- [Tony] In fact, it's actually the shape of this creature
that leads Hayes to believe
it's something a little more common.
- What I'm seeing here is in between the two wings,
there are two antennae that are sticking out
and that tells me that
this is an insect rather than a fairy.
And because it has long legs,
I believe this is an orthopteran insect,
of the order orthoptera, which includes crickets,
grasshoppers, and katydids.
So, I think this is just a grasshopper
that was on the ground and as it flew up toward the light,
it passed in front of the camera.
Although the large marsh grasshopper's body length
is less than two inches,
it looks larger when it extends its wings
and it dangles its legs downward.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, grasshopper.
The video is legit and Hayes's expert observation
leads us to believe this is just a flying insect
eager for its 15 minutes of fame.
But we'll keep one eye open on the foggy moors
hoping to catch a glimmer of that fairy glow.
And that's our show for this evening.
Thank you so much for watching.
Send us your unexplained videos
and remember to keep those cameras rolling.
(dramatic music)