- Tonight on "The Proof Is Out There."
What is this morphing, pulsating light?
- It's like plasma
circling around this central sphere.
- [Tony] Is it connected to a set of secret UFO files?
- Even in Guantanamo Bay,
these balls of light
were reported by many of the guards.
- [Tony] Who or what is wheeling this wheelchair?
- Staff members at the hospital
believe that the device
is being moved by the spirit of a deceased patient.
- [Tony] These mystery objects closed an airport.
Are they part of a secret government program?
[jet engine whirring]
- Could we be seeing efforts here
to control the weather,
to weaponize the weather?
- [Tony] It was a gift at the birth of Christ,
but why is myrrh leaking from this religious icon?
- Yeah, I think this is potentially a true miracle
that needs to be reckoned with.
- [Tony] And does new research solve a mystery
behind a syndrome that's plagued the CIA?
- Sound is being weaponized more and more,
and these kind of weapons are only advancing.
[light switch clacking]
- Around the globe are videos-
- Aw, look at that. [onlooker screaming]
- [Tony] photos,
and sounds that defy explanation.
[hand squeaking]
[bag rustling]
[phone clacking]
- [Expert] We don't know where they come from,
who made them or how they operate.
- [Tony] What are they?
- [Expert] Some sort of bizarre mutation.
- [Expert] 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.
- [Onlooker] It's coming towards us.
- [Tony] We'll analyze each one with top experts-
[car crashing]
- It's a credible case,
it's a credible video.
- [Tony] and pass a verdict on what it is.
- This video is clearly faked.
- The proof starts now.
[dynamic music]
Good evening,
and welcome to "The Proof Is Out There."
Cuba has a colorful and complicated political history,
and it turns out its history with UFOs is equally rich.
And now that smartphones have come to the island,
videos of recent sightings
are coming out.
Like this one.
[inquisitive music]
It's 2019 in Havana, Cuba.
A local resident is going about his day,
when he suddenly sees something glowing in the cloudy sky
and starts recording.
An orange ball of light
appears to hover in the gray sky.
It has two dark protrusions,
maybe wings or a saucer shape on either side,
which disappear and reappear
as the amorphous light spins counterclockwise.
[onlooker speaking in foreign language]
- [Tony] This video initially flew under the radar,
until a journalist shared it on the news in 2023,
calling it the closest thing to a UFO he'd ever seen.
But it's certainly not the first UFO over Cuba.
[dynamic music]
- This video actually reminds me
of another alleged incident
that occurred in Cuba in March timeframe of 1967,
where US personnel
were eavesdropping into some of the communications in Cuba,
when we overheard Cuban authorities
scrambling two fighter jets
to intercept an unknown object,
a bogey.
This metallic sphere
was seen by some of these pilots.
And when the pilots tried to interdict,
there seemed to be
some sort of electronic warfare capability,
some sort of ability to damage, if you will,
or hinder the avionics of the fighter aircraft.
- [Tony] The story goes that the flight leader
was prepared to fire on the object,
when suddenly his plane disintegrated.
[transition whooshing]
But this is just one account.
- I can tell you that even in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
there were incidents.
There were these balls of light
were reported by many of the guards.
These reports have been in the US government's hands,
I've personally seen them.
So there's a long history
of Cuba dealing with luminous balls of light
and potentially even UFOs.
- At some point, this thing appears to have wings.
Could it be some kind of high-tech military plane?
Well, the Cuban air force
used to be the most powerful in Latin America,
but that changed when their ally, the Soviet Union,
collapsed in 1991,
leaving only a few obsolete fighter jets flying today.
So our experts will need to consider
some other explanations.
[text clacking]
[inquisitive music]
In 2023, two migrants flew a hang glider
from Cuba to Florida.
Could this be another hang gliding refugee
trying to escape communist Cuba?
- Well, it has the wings,
but if it was an aircraft with this shaped wing,
it has to be moving at a fairly quick speed
in order to stay airborne
and have the lifted knees to stay airborne.
It's not doing so.
It's actually moving extremely slowly through the sky.
- [Tony] Could it then be something we know to hover,
like a pyrotechnic drone?
In 2024, Ukraine began employing so-called dragon drones
to drop molten metal on invading Russians.
- We know, for instance,
that drones have been outfitted as flame throwers,
and yeah, that's pretty dangerous looking,
and they do spew fire, no doubt.
- [Tony] Did Cuba's waning military
toy with this tech back in 2019?
- This arrangement is rotating around.
And if it was fire,
you would actually see
that it looks more random than this.
And besides, if it's a drone,
you'd hear the sound of the motors.
We don't hear that.
- [Tony] So it's floating fairly still
without making a sound,
and producing a rotating light.
We can only think of one thing
that might check all those boxes.
- If we pause it like right here,
you can see that this looks just like
a child's delta-wing kite.
It even has the scallop,
the bottom edge,
like you see on a typical kite.
- [Tony] And as for that rotating light.
- What I think this is is a kite
that's been cleverly arrayed with LEDs.
The LEDs aren't moving,
but the light pattern is moving across a range of LEDs,
like spokes in a wheel.
And so it goes from one spoke to the next,
all the way around the kite.
- [Tony] But hold on,
that kite theory might not fly.
- I don't think this is a kite
because it is not seen to be reacting
with the environment that it is in.
In other words,
it looks like it has its own means of propulsion,
its own means of changing.
And also the eyewitnesses' behavior seem very genuine
as in that they're seeing something unusual,
they don't know what it is,
and they would like to know what it is.
But there's also what comes across
as a little bit of fear in their voices.
- [Child] Ah.
[onlooker speaking in foreign language]
[text clacking]
- Our verdict, genuine UFO.
This was a tricky one.
We like the kite theory,
but then why doesn't it seem to drift with the wind?
It turns out China is also setting up spy bases in Cuba,
so we'll be keeping an eye on the island nation.
Now let's migrate from Cuba to New York.
New York's Seneca Lake
is as mysterious as it is beautiful.
For centuries,
it's been the site of strange booming sounds
known as the Seneca Guns,
and the lake's riddles
aren't limited to scary noises in the air.
As you're about to see,
they also include monstrous sights,
emerging from the water.
[inquisitive music]
Geneva, Upstate New York.
Check out this grainy footage
said to be captured at an unknown date
by an anonymous witness at Seneca Lake.
The camera catches rippling water
as a dark shape moves silently below the surface.
It suddenly bobs into the air
and something like a neck or appendage
appears to stick upwards.
Many believe this video could be proof of a monster
rumored to dwell within the large lake.
- People who have seen the creature
say that it's a greenish black color.
It can range anywhere from 10 to 30 feet long.
Often they are described
as having rows of sharp triangular teeth.
- [Tony] Reported sightings of the Seneca Lake Monster
actually go all the way back to 1899.
- The Captain Herendeen,
skipper of the steamship Otetiani,
saw a strange object in the water.
And as he got closer,
this thing came to life,
and began to turn and swim away
at a very rapid speed.
Ultimately, he rammed it with the steamship,
apparently was such force
that all of the passengers
were thrown off their feet.
- [Tony] According to the story,
this aggressive maneuver
actually killed the mysterious creature.
- They attempted to drag its body on board,
but unfortunately they lost grip of it
and it sunk down into the depths
and the remains were never retrieved.
Now, what's notable
is that this particular account
was very well reported
by local newspapers of the time,
and was actually given a lot of credibility
due to the testimony of the eyewitnesses
that were on board that day.
- [Tony] But if it's dead,
how could sightings continue to this day?
There's a local theory that's very popular
that describes an elaborate system
of underwater caverns or tunnels
that actually connect all 11 of the Finger Lakes
and that potentially there could be a population
of these lake monsters
and they actually utilize these underwater tunnels
in order to travel from lake to lake.
- The Seneca Lake Monster joins a long list
of legendary aquatic creatures
rumored to inhabit the state of New York.
There's Lake Champlain's infamous Champ,
Cayuga Lake's Old Greeny,
Silver Lake's Silver Lake Serpent.
Even the Hudson River has a supposed creature
nicknamed Kipsy.
Can our experts help explain
why these beasts seem to love the Empire State?
[text clacking] [inquisitive music]
Seneca Lake is home to large fish,
like sturgeon, trout and northern pike,
but none of them visually match
what we're seeing here.
Some have suggested that this is nothing more
than a tree branch bobbing in the water.
- When you have biological components
like wood decomposing in a wet, low-on-oxygen environment,
it actually starts a process
where the bacteria will produce an offset of gases,
and that can impact whether or not a log is floating
and its overall buoyancy.
But for this, you'd probably see
a lot more of the object
floating at the surface,
whereas here we're seeing a lot more submerged.
- [Tony] So could this be actual evidence
of the lake's supposed monster?
- I don't see what I would define as a head,
or a tail, or flippers.
I guess that it's part of a sinuous body.
It's not something that's undulating over the surface.
- [Tony] In fact, the entire movement of the specimen
seems questionable.
- Animals might come to the surface to feed,
but this doesn't look like a feeding behavior to me.
Instead, it looks kind of all over the place.
I don't think it's part of a sea monster surfacing,
I think there's else going on here.
- [Tony] Our next step was to put this classic footage
through forensic video analysis.
- The video does appear to be dated,
it doesn't appear to be some sort of emulation.
From other videos I've examined
over the course of my career,
it definitely looks like an eyewitness
that captured something using non-professional equipment.
- [Tony] So it's genuine footage
captured by an analog camera,
such as a camcorder.
But beyond that, we've hit a dead end.
- The video information that was contained
in that original file
has been put into a new file format.
A lot of the information we would need
has been stripped away.
So thus, the verdict on this one is inconclusive.
[text clacking]
- Our verdict,
without any more information
to glean from this footage,
this figure remains unknown.
We can't even determine if it's organic or not.
But belief in the Seneca Lake Monster is strong.
In fact, in 2015,
a law was passed that prohibited trapping
or hunting the beast.
- The term poltergeist
comes from the German words for noisy ghost.
Poltergeist are said to throw and move objects,
make repetitive noises,
and generally cause havoc
in the place they're haunting.
And when they're haunting hospitals,
you can get caught-on-camera moments,
like this.
[inquisitive music]
May 23rd, 2020.
It's evening in the Udon Thani province in Thailand.
A security camera keeps a watchful eye
over a hospital parking lot.
Everything seems calm and secure,
until something truly spooky happens.
An empty wheelchair moves toward the parking lot
on its own.
Then it suddenly stops
and pauses for a second.
This is where things get really freaky.
Let's blow this up for a better look.
Do you see that?
The chair is slowly making little adjustments,
as if an invisible hand
is getting ready to change direction?
The chair pauses,
but then it reverses course.
Some unknown, unseen force
seems to be guiding it carefully toward the camera
and out of frame.
Are we seeing the mischief
of a ghost?
- This would be considered an inanimate ghost.
Inanimate ghosts tend not to seek interaction
with people or witnesses,
but they're fixated,
as ghosts often are,
on a single object.
That may be an heirloom,
it may be the bed where they died.
- [Tony] And when it comes to stories of ghosts
haunting a hospital,
well, maybe we shouldn't be surprised.
- One of the most famous is the Waverly Hills Sanitarium
in Lexington, Kentucky.
It was originally opened in 1910
as an asylum for people suffering tuberculosis.
There are stories of people
said to have jumped out the windows of the sanitarium
upon being frightened
or threatened by ghosts.
There is one case of a nurse in 1932
throwing herself from a fifth-floor window to her death.
And a pair of ghosts has been reported
wandering the fifth floor.
[pensive music]
- [Tony] Now, over in Thailand,
where this wheelchair went rogue,
ghosts and spirits are collectively known as phi.
- According to Thai religious belief,
phi is a life energy
that continues on after we die.
We in the West might call it the soul.
Some sort of a vital life force
that flows through all living things.
- [Tony] Is it the phi
or one of those formally living things
that we're seeing here?
Staff members at the hospital
believe that the device
was being moved by the spirit
of a deceased patient
who had used the wheelchair
during his stay at the facility.
[ominous music]
- Beware, some of these phi spirits
aren't for the weak kneed.
Phi Krasue is a malevolent spirit
that floats at night
with its organs trailing behind.
Phi Am is a ghost
that sits on the chest of a sleeping person,
causing nightmares and even paralysis.
I think I'll stick with Casper.
But what do we have here?
Let's ask the experts.
[text clacking] [inquisitive music]
Has the phi of a former patient
returned to this Thai hospital?
One specific clue may be the key
to unlocking this haunting.
- The things that leap out to me about this are,
at the start of the video,
the back of the wheelchair
is at right angles to its motion,
which suggests to me
that perhaps it's being pushed
by some kind of wind,
because we actually see right in the back here,
we see some plants moving around in the wind.
- [Tony] It's more than speculation.
The day's weather report
backs up the wind theory.
- We do have proof that there were storms in the area.
Winds were about 20 miles per hour,
gusting to about 30.
And it's quite possible that nearby storms
led to that increase in wind speed
that then led to the wheelchair moving.
[inquisitive music]
- [Tony] And the fact that the chair is empty,
that may have lent an invisible helping hand.
- Wheelchairs are very light,
they have very low friction on the bearing
so that they can be pushed very easily.
So it doesn't take very much,
if the brakes are left off,
for it to keep moving,
especially if there's nobody in it.
- [Tony] But what explains the wheelchair
suddenly shifting into reverse.
We're inclined to believe
that the answer is on the ground.
- There is a slight slope towards the parking lot.
It is a natural inclination
for things to roll downhill.
So this rolled downhill towards the parking lot.
It looks like it got stuck somewhere,
so that's what led it to stop.
It only took another strong wind gust
for the wheelchair to move back once again.
[text clacking]
- Our verdict,
wind.
So no hospital ghost this time.
But if you're still hoping to spot one,
good news, that infamous Waverly Hills Sanatorium
in Kentucky,
which shut down decades ago,
now runs paranormal tours for the public.
- In 2023,
a high-altitude spy balloon
originated from China
flew across North American airspace.
The incident put a spotlight
on the secretive Chinese military.
Just what kind of tech do they have,
and what are they using it for?
This next video only deepened that mystery.
[inquisitive music]
September 11th, 2024.
It's around 6:00 p.m. in Fuzhou,
located in southeastern China.
The sun is setting and traffic blares on a busy highway.
But today, it's not the congestion on the roads
that has onlookers mesmerized,
it's what's up in the sky.
[car horn honking]
An anonymous shooter
films roughly a dozen bright spherical lights
that appear to be slowly drifting down from the clouds.
The phenomenon is caught on a second camera,
seemingly from a more remote location
in the countryside.
In both shots, the lights appear to leave long smoky trails
in the sky.
It might look like some kind of training exercise,
but no one from the Chinese government or military
takes responsibility.
The Fuzhou Meteorological Bureau
quickly rules out weather anomaly.
But that doesn't stop people from speculating
about one specific kind of weather phenomenon.
- There is something called a cloud seeding
that countries have done before,
we've experimented with it,
Chinese have experimented with it.
And if you seed the cloud,
meaning you create the right environment
for there to be precipitation,
then you can actually make it rain.
Could we be seeing efforts here
to control the weather,
to weaponize the weather?
- [Tony] Or could these orbs
have more otherworldly origins,
like many speculate about the famous UFOs
recorded by the US Navy?
On the other hand,
some believe those UFOs
are actually Chinese drones.
Could those same drones
be operating across China?
- Coincidentally, on that very same day in Tianjin, China,
a similar event occurred
where locals had reported seeing a UFO,
and it actually forced the closure
of one of the airports in the local areas
because people were reporting
this unidentified flying object
in and around the airspace of the airport.
Could this be something similar
and could this be related?
- Though officials blame the Tianjin incident
on drone activity,
many were skeptical of that explanation.
You can hardly blame them
considering the incident affected the travel plans
of more than 3,000 passengers.
The Fuzhou sighting, on the other hand,
has received no official explanation.
Let's see if our experts can come up with one.
[text clacking] [inquisitive music]
We've heard of flaming fireballs
falling from the sky before.
They're called meteors, right?
But can these be classified that way?
- It's definitely not a meteor
or anything of that nature,
simply because whatever it is
is moving much, much slower.
A meteorite is gonna move at extremely fast pace.
It's something that's only gonna be visible
for seconds at best.
- [Tony] But these objects were visible
for 10 whole minutes.
Does that mean the weather manipulation rumors are true?
- Cloud seeding is only successful
if the clouds contain sufficient moisture,
and in order to seed the clouds,
you have to fly into the clouds.
You're releasing chemical agents
into the clouds themselves.
And so what we're looking at here
seems to be well below the clouds.
So yeah, nothing about this
is consistent with cloud seeding.
- [Tony] So it seems these lights
are neither atmospheric nor artificial.
Could they be UFOs,
like the ones we've been seeing stateside?
- These are multiple lights
that are coming down,
leaving a smoke trail.
UFOs typically don't have any kind of combustion engine,
so it's not typically reported with UFOs
that you see anything like smoke.
- [Tony] But we can think of one thing
that would smoke just like this.
Flares.
- Everything that we see here
with the balls of light falling, under free fall,
the smoke trails behind them,
all of that is consistent with military flares.
Oftentimes they're dispersed in batches.
Military aircraft will employ these
to get a adversarial missile system
to target your flare instead of you.
- [Tony] The question remains, however,
why drop these flares?
And why not disclose
it was the Chinese military dropping them?
- The thing that you need to be considering here
is the fact that,
with the tensions that are going on
between China as well as Taiwan,
and they're ramping up their military missions,
it's very conceivable
that this was a military drop of some flares.
[text clacking]
- Our verdict,
we believe these are likely military test flares.
But the purpose of that mission
and the reason for the continued secrecy
remain a mystery.
The Chinese government has shown no interest
in providing any answers.
- Chinese mythology talks of a young woman named Long Mu
who one day found a mysterious egg
in the Shi River
that hatched into five dragons
with the power to control water and weather.
And while that's just a legend,
there seems to be something strange
ready to hatch right here
in the fresh waters of America.
[inquisitive music]
March, 2021,
Carters Lake, Northern Georgia.
Photographer Kim Stricker,
along with his son, Danny,
are researching underwater habitats
in this man made reservoir
located on the Coosawattee River.
As they swim beneath the surface,
they suddenly find themselves
face to face with something strange.
Several uncanny circular-shaped pods
connected to branches in the murky waters.
Each one appears to have an outer layer
of a skin-like substance
riddled with strange bubble-like formations.
- We saw these creatures,
wondering what the heck they were.
Some of 'em were the size of beach balls.
I had to touch 'em ,
and it was very gelatinous,
it shook like a bowl full of jelly. [laughing]
And a very slimy touch to it.
It was very strange, there's no question,
alien-like.
- There's been a lot of wild speculation online.
Some people have wondered,
could these things be some type of alien eggs?
They look kind of weird
and extraterrestrial in nature.
- [Tony] The idea that extraterrestrials
are planting things in earthly bodies of water
might not be as far fetched as you think.
- Earlier this year,
there was a congressional hearing
in which they featured
a journalist named Michael Shellenberger
Shellenberger, who's actually spoken
to some government whistleblowers,
outline several instances
of credible observations
of what he calls USOs,
unidentified submerged objects.
These are essentially UAPs that are seen under the water.
- Are there any instances where the navy
or other maritime forces
have encountered UAPs
that could not be explained
by known technology
or natural phenomena?
- Yeah, there's actually a number of cases
described in the report
that occur in the ocean.
- [Tony] Shellenberger claimed
one of his sources saw a strange orb
exiting from the ocean's surface,
and it was met by another orb in the sky,
using technology that seemed to defy human physics.
- When you consider how difficult it is
for us to go to some of these locations
deep under the water
and combine that with the fact
that there have been many credible sightings
of so-called USOs,
if extraterrestrials do have a presence on our planet,
the best place for them to hide
would be under the water.
- Who can forget the creepy eggs
from the "Alien" film franchise?
Created by artist HR Giger,
those horrific props
were designed to make us feel uncomfortable.
They were lined with animal guts
to perfect their gross organic appearance.
Some say they look remarkably
like the strange specimens
from our investigation.
But let's see what's hatching in the minds of our experts.
[text clacking] [inquisitive music]
Is there any validity to the idea
that these could be some form of extraterrestrial eggs?
- If you're diving underwater
in a freshwater lake like this,
you wouldn't expect to see a giant glob
that's stuck on a bunch of sticks
like we see here.
And I could see why you would think
this might be alien in nature.
It certainly looks unnatural.
- [Tony] However, according to our experts,
not only is this thing not alien,
it might not even be an egg.
- Typically, whatever the offspring needs
to sustain itself is inside of the egg
and it doesn't really take any help
from the external environment.
Whereas whatever's going on here,
it almost appears as if it's all kinds
of little different individual structures
serving some sort of purpose.
My first thought here
is this looks exactly like a coral,
but not quite,
it almost appears to be jelly-like.
And it's also not really attached to the floor
of the water body,
like we usually see with corals.
So it's a very interesting creature.
- [Tony] Okay, so it is a creature of some kind,
but what the heck is it?
- What we're looking at here
is a really cool type of creature
that's known as a bryozoan,
and these creatures are found
throughout the world's oceans
as well as freshwater environments.
- It's actually made up of millions of little organisms
all bonding together
to serve different purposes.
They can actually get several feet in diameter.
And while it looks like something
you wouldn't want in your swimming pool,
these can actually indicate good water quality.
- Bryozoans are found a lot of times
in areas where humans also are,
like shallow lakes
or around things like docks and marinas.
It's very, very cool.
I might even say it's almost as cool as an alien.
[text clacking]
- Our verdict,
these are the colonial life forms
known as bryozoans.
Fossilized bryozoan colonies
date back almost 500 million years,
making them older than dinosaurs.
Looks like we're safe from an underwater alien invasion,
for now.
- The gift of myrrh has held a special place
in Christianity for centuries,
considered sacred enough to be presented to the baby Jesus
alongside gold and frankincense.
And when it allegedly started leaking from a religious icon,
some considered it a message from the Almighty.
[inquisitive music]
It's summer, 2007, at a Russian Orthodox church
in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Resident priest, Father Nectarios Yangson,
begins noticing a sweet scent resembling roses.
For months, he is unable to locate
the origin of the scent,
until one night when his cat
starts uncharacteristically snipping around
Nectarios's many religious icons,
sacred images that depict holy figures,
events and symbols.
Upon investigating,
he's shocked to find this.
Two of his icons
appear to be dripping a strange liquid.
Take a closer look.
According to Nectarios and his fellow eyewitnesses,
these icons are streaming myrrh.
And the star of the show
is a picture known as the Iveron icon of the Mother of God,
which has a stream that doesn't seem to stop.
- So myrrh itself is a resin
that comes from scoring the Commiphora myrrh wood.
We know it was one of the elements
used to create incense
in the first and second temples in Jerusalem.
And then, of course, we see it in the Three Kings
coming to visit the Baby Jesus,
who they gift with frankincense, gold and myrrh.
- [Tony] Members of the clergy
inspect the icon
and confirm that it is indeed myrrh,
and that there is no visible tube
or mechanism releasing the fluid.
Before long, things of a miraculous nature
seem to happen in its presence.
- Nectarios is praying for his sister,
who's pancreas is not functioning
and who has diabetes.
And it's the next day that she calls him
and says, "My doctor doesn't know how it happened,
but I'm suddenly cured."
- [Tony] After the Russian Orthodox church
declared the icon miraculous,
it was carried from church to church,
escorted like a sacred relic,
drawing crowds wherever it went.
- People talk about the experience
and they all mention
how just being in the presence of the icon
brings them some kind of good feelings and healings
and all of these sorts of things.
If you are a believer,
this really does provide
some kind of proof for you
that miracles are real.
- Frankincense and myrrh
are tree resins used for incense
and natural medicines.
In the time of Jesus,
they were considered precious.
It took a lot of work to make them,
and the tree resins came from exotic lands,
like India and East Africa.
But how much value
should we give to the theory
that this dripping myrrh
is a miracle?
[text clacking] [inquisitive music]
- This is as old as the Bible.
You have an object of reverence
that exhibits some kind of supernatural phenomenon,
like sweating, bleeding of some sort.
Then word spreads
that you can be cured of diseases.
Then long lines appear.
And then you have people walking away
with fabulous amounts of money, [laughing]
because they're charged.
- In the examination of miracles,
it is very important to figure out
whether or not these icons
have been set up as a hoax
in order to fool the faithful
and perhaps lead to financial gain
or some other improprieties.
- [Tony] Scam warning noted.
But in the case of this icon,
no one was ever charged to see it.
Although Orthodox churches
did report an increase in donations
while hosting the item.
While there's no clear evidence of fraud,
claims of cures rely solely on personal testimonies,
not medical documentation.
And unlike other miraculous icons,
like this weeping Mary statue from New Mexico
that was scientifically evaluated
for chambers and hoses,
this icon was only examined
by members of the Orthodox clergy.
- People say, "I'm cured," but is it real?
Is it psychological?
There's no scientific basis to this.
It's all hearsay.
There's no reliable statistics
on any of these incidences.
- [Tony] What is undeniable
is that this icon
is having a profound effect on people.
- One thing we might be seeing
is the power of suggestion.
It's been documented
that sometimes if you believe in a certain cure,
sometimes you will get better.
We sometimes have to realize
that there are placebo effects.
Then the bottom line is,
well, do we think that it's real, fake or what?
Well, the short answer is,
I don't know.
- In order for this to be a hoax
and to be pulled off in such an effective way,
it would require many people to be involved,
and perhaps it would be something of a diabolical plot.
In this particular case,
we have no such proof
that something was happening.
And so for me personally,
I think this is potentially a true miracle
that needs to be reckoned with.
[text clacking]
- Our verdict,
we're going with possible miracle.
Unsurprisingly, our miracle researcher
has more faith than our physicist,
but they both agreed
there's not enough evidence
to prove that this is a hoax.
Like so many of our stories,
there's plenty of room for skepticism
and for belief.
- Are audio waves secretly being used as weapons?
That's the question a growing group of American diplomats,
spies and government employees are asking
after falling ill in Cuba and elsewhere.
They believe they are victims
of covert attacks perpetrated by unknown assailants
using unknown technology.
We've been covering this phenomenon
known as Havana syndrome for years.
It began in late 2016
when several diplomats and other employees
stationed at the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba,
reported concussion-like symptoms
after hearing a strange high-pitched noise.
The associated press later released a recording
which it claimed could be that noise.
[high-pitched ringing]
The sound is a high-pitched whine
that seems to undulate, even rive,
which produces a nails-on-the-chalkboard effect.
Similar attacks are later reported
by US officials in China,
Austria and Russia.
- Over the years, a community of Havana syndrome sufferers
has formed.
It's massive,
and they are demanding answers.
- Marc Polymeropoulos, a senior CIA official,
believes he was targeted one night
while on official business in Moscow.
- This was by far the most terrifying experience.
The room was spinning,
I couldn't stand up without falling down,
I felt nauseous,
I had incredible case of tinnitus
ringing in my ears, a headache.
So I knew something was seriously wrong.
[inquisitive music]
Not only were we subject to an attack,
but I think it's still ongoing.
And that poses a lot of serious questions
for the US government.
- [Tony] If the Havana syndrome
is caused by some sort of sonic weapon,
it wouldn't be the first.
The sonic weapon most commonly deployed today
is the long-range acoustic device,
which has recently been used by police departments
to break up major protests and riots.
- The LRAD system was designed
for crowd dispersal
in a non-lethal way.
[LRAD blaring]
- So, folks, this is scary stuff and very real.
What is that sound
recorded in Havana? [high-pitched ringing]
Did it make US personnel sick,
or was there some other weapon
or force responsible?
Let's ask our experts.
[text clacking] [inquisitive music]
- Even the most recent research
has a fundamental problem,
which is that those who experience Havana syndrome
don't all have the same set of symptoms.
People have different physical symptoms,
they hear a sound,
but they hear it differently,
and that's made it really difficult
to pinpoint what the cause might be.
- [Tony] So, first things first,
that recording released by the AP,
what was it really?
[inquisitive music]
- I've worked in some tropical locations,
and there were times where I would hear
very similar piercing calls.
This sound is produced by a species of tropical cricket
called the Indies short-tailed cricket.
[cricket chirping]
As you can see,
the frequency range is a perfect overlap
and it also has similar harmonic characteristics.
So I'm saying that it is a really clean match.
- [Tony] So the sound is just chirping crickets
coincidentally recorded at the moment
people were getting sick.
Could Havana syndrome have been caused
by a different kind of weapon,
one people can't hear?
Way back in 1962,
an American scientist, Allan Frey,
suggested a microwave weapon
could be used to raise the temperature
inside a person's ear
by a millionth of a degree.
That would be enough
to cause a victim to feel dizzy, nauseous,
or experience pressure in their head.
And get this,
Frey later lectured on the topic
to the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
So could the Russians be behind some new technology?
- While the injuries are consistent
with exposure to microwave weapons,
it's important to know that these type of weapons
are unknown to exist.
- [Tony] And many in the medical community
remain deeply skeptical.
- Mass hysteria is a very real thing
in which we see large groups of people
exhibit physical and physiological symptoms
that have no known medical cause.
And there are many examples of it throughout history.
One very famous mass hysteria event occurred in 1518
in the French Village of Strasbourg, France.
[locals laughing] A woman began dancing
and didn't stop for two weeks straight.
More and more people began to join her,
and eventually as many as 400 people were dancing.
- [Tony] So it was all in their heads?
Before a consensus could form around that explanation,
in January, 2025,
a new bombshell dropped.
- For a long time, a weapon was ruled out
as being the potential cause of Havana syndrome.
But in a recent development,
two US intelligence agencies
say that that theory could actually hold some water.
But both the medical community
and the intelligence community
have studied Havana syndrome at length,
and they're not any closer
to figuring out what's going on.
[text clacking]
- It's a split decision.
Our verdict,
the sound that was alleged to have caused
the Havana syndrome
is an Indies short-tailed cricket,
coincidentally making that noise
at the same time as the attack.
But Havana syndrome itself
is still an unexplained phenomenon.
And that's our show for tonight.
Thank you so much for watching.
And as always, keep those cameras rolling.
[dynamic music]