- Tonight, on The Proof Is Out There.
A mysterious light zigzags across the night sky.
What does one of the world's most famous UFO hunters
have to say about it?
- The movement of this object is confounding.
- [Tony] Did Ukrainian soldiers record a massive UFO?
- There have been a lot of strange objects
in the skies of Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began.
- [Tony] What did an investigator searching
for the Ark of the Covenant find?
- Perhaps the Ark itself had the ability to conduct
electricity through the angels on top.
- [Tony] We investigate the mysterious phenomenon
of earthquake lights.
- This is one of the best examples that I've ever seen.
- [Tony] And could this be the cry
of a cannibalistic monster?
[loud roar resonates]
- What would you do if you heard this scream in the woods?
[loud roar resonates]
- Around the globe are videos,
[recorder screaming]
photos,
and sounds that defy explanation.
[electronic whirring]
- [Expert] 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.
- [Witness] It's coming towards us.
- [Tony] 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.
A young company called Enigma Labs has
quickly become the largest global UFO data bank,
with hundreds of thousands of UFO reports cataloged
on its platform,
and when they shared this one video shot
near a secretive government facility,
we knew we had to investigate.
September 30th, 2023.
It's just past midnight in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
and Brandon Pendleton is in his backyard
enjoying the cool evening air.
That's when he sees a light out of the corner of his eye.
Luckily, his surveillance camera is
already trained on the sky and it records this.
A bright light emerges
in the bottom right corner of the footage.
It shoots up in a straight line, then stops suddenly.
For more than two minutes, it hangs in place,
indistinguishable from the stars surrounding it.
At last, it begins to move again,
this time zooming to the left
before making a 180-degree turn
and exiting the frame.
Brandon says he set up the sky-monitoring camera
just two months prior,
when he heard Pentagon whistleblower
David Grusch's groundbreaking testimony.
- I was informed in the course of my official duties
of a multi-decade crash retrieval
and reverse engineering program.
- I haven't always been a believer in UFOs.
This incident changed my perspective, I would say,
pretty significantly,
but also made me want to lean on the science side
a little bit more to try to figure out what's going on.
- [Tony] To do that, Brandon submits his footage
to Enigma Labs,
where it catches the eye of writer and researcher
Alejandro Rojas.
- I couldn't figure out what it was.
It intrigued me so much
that I decided to send it around to other researchers.
- [Tony] It wasn't just the motion of the object
that raised eyebrows,
it was the location.
- Tennessee, looking back historically,
they have over 4,000 reports that have been documented.
Chattanooga is one of the top cities
for sightings where we've got over 100 sightings
in our catalog in Chattanooga.
- [Tony] In fact, that trend goes back decades.
- 1973 was kind of a hot time for UFOs
in the Tennessee River Valley area.
In fact, it was so common
that you had mothers reporting seeing these things
on a regular basis.
You have local reports from law enforcement
that describe these things that move erratically in the sky.
There's even a report about a farmer who encountered
two luminous balls of light
that seemed to almost be toying with him
and then immediately shoot up into the sky and disappear.
- [Tony] And there may be a reason
for the long-running local phenomenon.
- We know that Oak Ridge Laboratory
is about 90 miles away.
This is a highly sensitive research center
that the US government uses to test
sometimes its newest and latest inventions.
- [Tony] Even more suspicious,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is
managed by the Battelle Memorial Institute.
In the 1950s, the US Air Force contracted
Battelle to investigate UFOs
in an effort known as Project Stork.
But many have speculated
that their contractual involvement with UFOs
goes further and involves reverse engineering.
- Is it possible this could be
some sort of test aircraft or test technology?
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory was founded in 1943
as a research facility for the top secret Manhattan Project,
which produced the world's first atomic bombs.
Is this video evidence that it could now be part
of the secret government UFO reverse engineering program
David Grusch described,
or will our experts find a more mundane explanation?
[tense music]
This object's movement, and at times, lack thereof,
immediately rules out a few potential explanations.
- What makes it unusual is
the fact that it's just stationary.
That's unusual 'cause it's not consistent
with normal aircraft.
I mean, a helicopter can hover
like what we're seeing this point of light do,
but at the same time some of the movement is
just not typical of what I would think
a helicopter would do aerodynamically
as it's ascending.
- [Tony] Then could this really be
a secret aircraft launched out of Oak Ridge?
The thing is, unlike say Area 51,
Oak Ridge is not the best spot
for testing a reverse engineered UFO.
- What we do know about Oak Ridge National Laboratory is
it is a facility that's actually run
by the Department of Energy,
not the Department of Defense.
They don't produce or test aerospace platforms
that we're aware of.
So I would say that this object
that we see here being
something coming from Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
probably pretty unlikely.
- [Tony] So it's not coming from Oak Ridge,
but maybe it's headed there.
Remember the New Jersey drone sightings of 2024?
Some of those drones were seen near secure government sites.
Could this be the same kind of thing?
- Everything that I see here
in terms of its movement is
very consistent with a quadcopter, rotary ring drone.
The way that it hovers for roughly two minutes
and then begins to move to the left
and then you see what appears to be an arc.
All of those movements,
it screams quadcopter to me.
- If I had more details and more information
and I could test it out,
then I could go into looking at other explanations,
but it completely matches everything that a drone can do.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, this looks like a quadcopter drone.
Now, Brandon himself has experience flying
consumer-grade drones and he says that's not what he saw,
but we're going with our experts, at least for now.
The question is, who was flying it?
A harmless hobbyist, local law enforcement,
a rival military?
That remains a mystery.
Now let's turn to a UFO sighting from overseas.
The last century of warfare has seen the rise of radar,
the invention of the atomic bomb,
and an influx of UFOs over combat zones.
In World War II, US airmen nicknamed them Foo Fighters.
In modern war zones, soldiers just hit record.
[artillery bangs]
February 2024, the Ukrainian armed forces have
been defending their country from a Russian invasion
for two years.
Soldiers from the 406th Battalion are
operating a Mavic quadcopter drone
from an undisclosed location
when they spot something unfamiliar on the horizon.
An oblong UFO appears on the drone's video feed.
Their equipment indicates the object could be
approximately 30 miles away,
meaning this thing must be massive.
As the drone zooms in on the anomaly,
the soldiers seem confused, even nervous.
- Picture it.
You're at war, monitoring the skies
and you see this thing looming in the distance.
Watch as we magnify here
and you can see just how imposing that object looks.
It's broad, flat,
and by all appearances, completely static.
It raises two urgent questions.
How is this thing flying and who's flying it?
The video makes headlines,
but this isn't the first UFO case in the region.
- There have been a lot of sightings of strange objects
since February of '22 when the full-scale invasion began.
In January of 2023,
the governor of Russia's Rostov region,
a man named Vasily Golubev,
posted on his Telegram that the Russian military
spotted a round object
flying at about 1.5 miles above ground level.
So what was decided was
to essentially shoot it down.
- [Tony] In fact, UFOs like these,
released by investigative journalist Jeremy Corbell,
have been popping up so often in war zones
that the US government is paying attention.
- In 2023, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office
or AARO,
which is the Pentagon's kind of in-house
UFO research task force,
they released a heat map.
- [Tony] That heat map illustrates UFO hotspots
across the globe.
There are a number of them in the United States,
which AARO attributes to collection bias.
We have more sensors here,
so we've cataloged more sightings here.
What's notable, however, are
the clustered sightings around nuclear detonation sites
like Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
and ongoing conflicts.
- There seems to be a larger cluster of UAP sightings
near or around war zones.
There's a lot of people out there who think
that this correlation is
evidence of some sort of intelligence monitoring
active combat zones.
- In 2015, Edgar Mitchell,
the sixth man to walk on the Moon,
claimed that military officials had
witnessed UFOs flying over White Sands Missile Range,
where the world's first nuclear bomb was detonated in 1945.
So are aliens really keeping tabs
on mankind's military might,
or is this video evidence of something closer to home?
[tense music]
First, could the object be
closer than 30 miles and therefore smaller?
Turns out there's something called
a kamikaze drone being used in Ukraine.
It's what's known as a loitering munition.
- The term loitering munition gives
the impression of some type of stationary drone
that just hovers there,
waiting to pounce on a target.
But in reality, a loitering munition works
under the same principles as any type of drone or aircraft.
So it's, in effect, a flying bomb,
and when it sees a target,
it goes into kind of a kamikaze mode or terminal mode.
But it's still a plane, it's still gonna look like a plane.
- [Tony] What about wingless craft like a blimp?
- [Tim] Blimps are used in a variety of fashions
for surveillance purposes,
reconnaissance purposes,
security perimeter purposes,
anti-air defense.
- [Tony] But today's blimps aren't like
the Led Zeppelin album covers of yesteryear.
- Older blimps tended to be this more narrower shape though,
and newer blimps tend to be much more rounded
and this doesn't look like one of these newer blimps.
- [Tony] If it's not any kind of conventional aircraft,
what does that leave?
- One very likely and plausible explanation
for what we're looking at here is
this is potentially a superior mirage.
These can create some pretty wild optical illusions.
It appears as if maybe
a ship over water is floating in the air,
buildings are floating,
but all this is an optical illusion.
- [Tony] A superior mirage is the result
of temperature inversion.
That is, when cool, dense air sits
beneath warmer air,
bending the light downward
and creating the illusion of an image above the true object.
But interestingly, that might not be what's happening here.
- So if there was something down below,
there was like a little hill or something like that,
then you could get a copy of what's down below.
But we can overlay the image from the video
and we can see we can get a kind of a rough match
between the fields and the roads.
If it was something like a mirage,
it would have to be raised up above the horizon
and it's difficult to see
how this could actually be a mirage,
especially as the landscape around this area is so flat.
- [Tony] And without a large object
like a boat or hill to be visually warped
by a temperature inversion,
there can be no mirage.
- It's maybe not as far away as they think it is,
so perhaps not quite as big as they think it is,
but I don't actually know what this is.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, this is a genuine UFO.
Not even our expert debunker, Mick West,
could take down this bogey.
So until we get more information,
remember to check your six.
- You know, most people think
a nice hike through the woods is a great way to relax,
and usually it is,
unless the surrounding sounds of nature include
a terrifying roar from something unseen.
Just listen to our next story.
It's a brisk January day in New Brunswick, Canada.
An avid hiker, Keltan Edgett, is walking in the forest.
Suddenly, a strange sound in the distance sends him hiding
behind a fencem
where he pulls out his phone and records this.
- [Keltan] What the (bleep) was that?
[loud roar resonates]
- [Tony] We hear a monstrous roar
coming from beyond the trees.
It lasts for seconds,
then repeats.
[loud roar resonates]
- It makes sense that an unknown sound like this
that is big and scary
could be from a Sasquatch.
Sasquatches are known to make
long, loud vocalizations,
and this is fantastic Bigfoot habitat.
- [Tony] In fact, this area in particular is famous
for reports of the bizarre.
- [Cliff] Moncton, a city up in New Brunswick,
is an epicenter for these sorts of things.
There have been numerous road crossings
which have multiple witnesses riding in the car
while the Sasquatch runs across the road.
- [Tony] But the Sasquatch may not be alone.
There's another legendary creature
rumored to exist in Canada.
- One of the prevalent subjects of mythology
in the Algonquin cultures is the Wendigo,
a malevolent, evil spirit that is associated with winter.
Because it is thin, it looks like it's starving,
it's emaciated, it is a giant,
and it is out to get you because humans are food.
- [Tony] According to the Algonquin legend,
the Wendigo spirit would possess
any human who dared to taste human flesh,
transforming them into a tall, lanky creature
with glowing eyes.
A person who encounters a Wendigo then risks
being devoured or even transformed into one.
Now, it's worth noting that some experts argue
the Sasquatch and Wendigo are connected.
- It is my opinion that the source of the Wendigo myth
is a Sasquatch surviving the winter.
Chimpanzees, for example, are known to raid human settlements
when food is very difficult to get,
and Sasquatches, being eight foot tall
and starving to death in northern climates,
would certainly go after humans.
[loud roar resonates]
- Tales of the Wendigo have evolved over time.
Originally, the Algonquin suggested
they were possessed humans.
European settlers later infused part of the werewolf legend,
but what remains constant is that they're big,
they're scary, and they're hungry.
Let's see what our experts think about this potential predator.
[tense music]
We begin by testing the theory
that this could be a potential Sasquatch
by comparing it to howls
recorded in Columbiana County, Ohio in 1994,
which many Bigfoot researchers consider
an authentic Bigfoot vocalization.
[loud roar resonates]
- The New Brunswick wail has much more noise
and much more of a moan quality
that isn't present in the possible Bigfoot recording.
It does not appear to me that this would be a good match.
- [Tony] Okay, then what if this is
just a person pulling a hoax?
[loud roar resonates]
[loud howl resonates]
- The human sound examples have more of a pitched quality.
It does not appear likely to me
that the New Brunswick recording is attributable to a human.
- [Tony] Then what about other animals in the area?
- In New Brunswick, there are many animals
that may produce vocalizations.
One example might be a lynx.
[lynx howls]
[loud roar resonates]
And the lynx recording has
a very similar frequency range, duration,
and long, drawn-out, kind of raspy quality to it.
- I think this is a lynx, which are located in this area
and they can make some really strange,
almost like screaming sounds.
[lynx howls]
And it sounds especially haunting
because it's echoing throughout the forest.
[loud roar resonates]
[tense music]
- Our verdict, Keltan definitely recorded something wild,
but in this case, it was a lynx.
And while the lynx may not be
as fantastical as a Sasquatch or Wendigo,
it is a fearsome predator unto itself,
known to take down much larger prey
such as coyotes and even reindeer.
- On this show, we love to discuss abnormal creatures,
but every now and again, we like to take a look
at perfectly normal creatures behaving abnormally.
And this next video certainly qualifies.
July 2024,
Shenyang, China.
A unique storm event brings
the largest rainfall this city has seen
in more than 70 years.
And while most people take cover from the torrential downpour,
one section of the city is about to get jumping.
[water splashing]
[witness shouts]
- [Tony] In the middle of the massive rainstorm,
dozens of large fish repeatedly leap into the air,
bouncing back and forth.
The footage goes viral,
and theories roll in.
One is part of a growing narrative
that fish and other animals on the planet
are starting to fight back.
Some marine biologists believe
these animals may be retaliating
against human-caused pollution,
citing a surge in killer whale attacks on yachts,
fishing boats, and sailboats,
as well as a recent wave
of sea lion assaults on beachgoers in California.
Are these fish the next to strike back?
- There are numerous instances of fish being violent.
For example, in the Amazon,
the arapaima have actually drowned two men
and injured numerous others.
Carp have been seen jumping onto boats
and really frightening people in the Midwest
and it does make people wonder if nature is fighting back.
- [Tony] Others speculate that there's
some kind of weird science going on with these fish.
- In 2015, the US and Canada both approved
genetically modified salmon.
They grow twice as big and twice as fast.
Some people have dubbed these to be Frankenfish.
So you wonder when you see things like this,
are these genetically modified fish?
China is the world's biggest consumer of seafood,
so it's entirely possible
that they would be looking into genetic modification.
- Some people wonder why you would
genetically modify fish in the first place.
Proponents of the idea argue
it's a cost-effective way to increase
nutritional value, while helping to reduce
the spread of disease and contaminants.
Could that explain this bizarre behavior?
[tense music]
- This video was shot in China, where we know they have
a rich history of genetically modifying organisms,
but most of their genetic testing is actually on salmon.
This appears to be a video of carp,
so not a species typically known
for genetic modification,
and they don't seem to be any bigger
or doing anything that would give them
any sort of advantage.
- [Tony] So then, is it possible that these carp are acting out
in some new form of aquatic aggression?
- I personally know researchers that have
bit by arapaima jumping into their boats,
or we always hear about orcas attacking boats,
but carp aren't necessarily known
to be aggressive by any means.
In a lot of the instances
where you hear about fish attacking
or jumping into boats, are actually just an accident.
- [Tony] It would appear that
whatever's happening in this footage
is more likely a defensive reaction.
- These animals are clearly panicked.
It seems like they're trying to actually escape
something rather than chase it.
- [Tony] According to our experts,
the X factor here is the unique weather conditions.
- What I think is happening here is
that this dramatic rain is
actually overstimulating these fish.
This was a rain event that was
the worst of its kind in over 75 years.
Because the rain drops are coming from all directions,
they don't actually know how to respond.
So instead of swimming away,
they're just leaping into the water
to try and escape what they think is some kind of vibration.
- [Tony] And there's an interesting reason
they're all jumping out of the water at the same time.
- We've all seen a school of fish move in unison
and that's because of these amazing components
called the lateral line.
A lateral line runs along the body of a fish
and is a series of very sensitive pores
that can actually sense changes in water pressure.
It is an automatic response
rather than based on seeing or hearing.
This rainstorm might be
a little bit like an earthquake to them,
setting off a kind of chain reaction
where the entire population is now leaping out of the water.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, it appears there's nothing strange
or nefarious at play with these jumping fish.
It's just a school of carp, overstimulated
by a once-in-a-lifetime weather event.
Let's hope they got some well-deserved rest
and relaxation once the storm subsided.
- The Ark of the Covenant is a storied holy relic
that's been sought after for centuries,
and not just by fictional characters like Indiana Jones.
So when two people in different corners of the world
both claim to have found it,
you know we had to investigate.
2012, Rennes-le-Château, France.
An archeological dig in a cave has
explorers tunneling through rock
when they come across something shocking.
Partially buried in the rock is a large chest
with wood paneling and an ornately decorated lid.
Those behind the discovery declare this
to be the Ark of the Covenant,
the sacred vessel said to carry the stone tablets inscribed
with the 10 Commandments.
Scripture tells us the Ark was originally held
in the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.
- In the context of the Bible,
the temple was destroyed in the year 586 BC
by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon,
and after that, we have no written record
of where the Ark of the Covenant was.
- [Tony] So maybe it was moved to what's now France.
But there's a problem.
This isn't the first time
someone has claimed they've discovered the Ark.
Three decades earlier in 1982,
another seeker, the late Ron Wyatt,
was exploring the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem,
a location that some believe is where Jesus was buried
after his crucifixion.
Ron's wife, Mary, and daughter, Michelle,
recall the incident.
- He was climbing on his belly
and shining his flashlight down through the rocks,
and he saw some gold,
and just a big old stone case,
and he says, "The Ark of the Covenant is in there."
- [Tony] This blurred photo
is the only recorded glimpse of the object,
which Ron said was the Ark of the Covenant.
He claimed his view was blocked
by the presence of angels at the site.
- I think that this is something
that God doesn't want anybody messing with at all.
You can see the shape of angel wings
and heads and things like that.
He just could not get a decent picture.
- [Tony] Then, Ron allegedly makes
a second discovery while gathering evidence.
- He looked up and he saw black material coming down
from a crack in the ceiling
and he said that when he saw that,
he realized what happened there,
that the blood of Jesus had come down
and went down through that crack
and went on to the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant.
- My father always said that he was led by God
to all of these discoveries
because he was willing, he was willing to do it.
- [Tony] Okay, but these images are far from definitive.
Is there any other evidence to support Wyatt's claims?
- How did he know it was the blood of Jesus?
He claimed it only had 23 chromosomes.
He said there was only 23 chromosomes
out of the 46 that should have been there,
implying a divine father and a human mother.
- At the end of that great movie,
"Raiders of the Lost Ark",
the Nazi soldiers opened the Ark
and their faces melt because of the power inside.
Is there any power in these discoveries,
or like the movie, are they just works of fiction?
[tense music]
First, how do Ron Wyatt's claims hold up under scrutiny?
- The claim was that Jesus' blood
only had 23 chromosome 'cause he's only half human,
but there's no paperwork to back any of this up.
There's no lab report.
He also didn't even have
a photograph of the Ark of the Covenant
with this blood-like substance on it.
And so there's nothing you can look at
that shows that he even had a sample,
let alone had a sample tested.
- [Tony] And when it comes to Wyatt's discovery of the Ark...
- He only has a photograph that's very blurry
that he says is because an angel had shown up
and it blurred the photograph,
and so there's nothing at all to back up his story.
- [Tony] Now, pivoting to the alleged Ark found in France,
if it looks familiar,
maybe it's because biblical descriptions of the Ark
tell us it was a large wooden chest,
about four feet by two feet by two feet,
with a gold-plated exterior
and golden angels adorning its top,
a lot like the one seen in the Spielberg movie.
- They do show what looks
very much like Indiana Jones' version
of the Ark of the Covenant,
but this sort of thing is pretty simple.
You can buy replicas like that on eBay.
I mean, on its face,
this story is very difficult to believe.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, we agree with our experts
that the so-called Ark found in France is a hoax.
As for Ron Wyatt's unproven claims,
it's clear that while some believers accept this discovery,
until we see more evidence,
we can't say what we're looking at.
- If you're a fan of science fiction,
you've probably come across the concept
of a hive mind before.
Based on real-life beehives,
it's the idea that under certain circumstances,
multiple beings can function
as a single consciousness.
Could UFOs behave in the same way?
This video might have the answer.
October 30th, 2017.
It's a crisp autumn morning
in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada.
Before the crack of dawn,
Andrea Bragg and her husband are driving into work
when they see something strange in the sky.
A swarm of small, yellow lights pepper the sky.
They appear to be moving together in formation,
their motions smooth and intentional.
- There's a lot of people within the UFO community
that believe UFOs operate much like insect swarms do.
They function on a sort of hive mind system.
- [Tony] The individuals involved in this hive mind
would have no free will,
instead functioning only as parts
of a stronger, smarter whole.
In fact, rockstar turned UFO investigator Tom DeLonge
takes it one step further.
He believes these hive-minded aliens
are soulless cogs in a machine,
worshiping their technology
and intentionally leaving traces of it on Earth
to turn us humans into cogs too.
That could be what's really behind
alleged UFO crash landings here on Earth.
By this theory, Roswell and similar incidents
weren't accidents.
They were planted alien technology.
Or is this UFO flock from right here on Earth,
albeit with some genetic alterations?
- In recent years, scientists have been
actually utilizing genetic cloning
and manipulation to essentially create
bioluminescent animals.
And this has been done
for the purpose of research into diseases.
- [Tony] In nature, bioluminescence is
the production of light by living organisms
due to chemical reactions inside their bodies.
But now, it's not just in nature.
- Researchers would take
this green fluorescent protein
and insert it into the genetic structure
of whatever gene they were trying to alter.
If that animal would glow,
it would be indicative of the fact
that the experiment was successful.
Some people have speculated after watching this video
that perhaps these are
some sort of genetically modified birds that are glowing.
- If these are escaped lab animals,
it wouldn't be the only time.
In November 2024, 43 monkeys
broke out of a South Carolina bioresearch facility.
Luckily, they were all safely recaptured
in the following months.
Are these also lab specimens on the loose,
or a swarm of hive-minded UFOs?
Let's ask our experts to shed a little light.
[tense music]
Let's tackle the UFO theory first.
- It is certainly within the realm of possibility,
but highly unlikely.
It really doesn't display
any of the characteristics of UFO incidents:
instantaneous acceleration, or hypersonic velocity,
or low observability, of transmedium travel.
They don't seem to be displaying
any type of beyond next generation technology.
- [Tony] But what about current generation technology?
Drone swarms have become more ubiquitous
and more sophisticated in recent years.
In 2024, a Chinese company set a new world record
with this spectacle
coordinating more than 10,000 drones with a single computer.
- Drones typically will have
kind of almost an irregular spacing
because they're making an image out of something.
This is very random, very kind of chaotic.
- [Tony] Could these be glowing animals after all?
We couldn't find any record of animals
escaping from a lab in Alberta.
So, we consider if there could be
a more natural explanation.
- I think the best guess here is
that these are actually snow geese migrating,
which is a certain type of geese found in that region
that has a very bright white stomach
and tends to fly in similar patterns like we're seeing here.
These bright white stomachs are
known to be able to reflect light.
- [Tony] But where exactly is the light coming from?
- I think the simplest explanation is
that it's being lit by this building here
or another building nearby that's like this building.
This is probably some type of grow house
like a greenhouse
where we have, use artificial lights to simulate the sun.
These grow houses are notorious for light pollution.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, this is an enormous gaggle
of migrating geese reflecting that greenhouse glow.
But a recent study found that Alberta
is the third largest UFO hotspot in all of Canada.
So even though these weren't UFOs,
there's likely something going on in the skies
above our northern neighbors.
- For centuries, people have reported
strange lights in the sky during earthquakes.
Scientists can't agree why they happen or what they are,
but now we have video
that might finally solve the riddle.
January 8th, 2022,
Qinghai Province, China.
It's a tranquil scene in the early morning hours
when a nearby CCTV camera captures this.
An explosive light appears
from beyond the distant mountains.
A moment later, an earthquake begins,
measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale.
Another angle catches three more lights
flashing on the horizon
and this justifiably frightened cat.
These strange, distant flashes might be
something called earthquake lights.
- These are lights that are sometimes seen in the sky
during or even before an earthquake.
They were predicted decades ago
and studied by Dr. Friedemann Freund,
who was actually laughed at for years
until cameras actually captured evidence of his hypothesis.
- [Tony] And that's because until recently,
earthquake lights were not well documented anywhere
but in folklore and mythology.
One of the earliest accounts dates back to 373 BC,
when the Greek cities of Helike and Boura were
destroyed by an earthquake,
accompanied by a phenomenon described
as immense columns of fire.
But without proof, such accounts were dismissed
as hearsay or stress-induced delusions.
- Now that we're beginning to understand this,
maybe we need to reevaluate some myths and legends
and maybe people were telling the truth
and were not simply hysterical during an earthquake,
but were actually witnessing a natural phenomenon.
- [Tony] And while some still try
to explain away this phenomenon,
this footage suggests something strange
and seismic is happening here.
- [Matthew] To me, this is one of the best
and cleanest examples of earthquake lights
that I've ever seen.
- Back in 2021, we investigated
a bizarre aerial light show in Mexico City
during a 7.0 magnitude earthquake.
Our experts could not explain that phenomenon.
Will the same hold true for this video from China?
Let's shake it up.
[tense music]
First, a burning question.
is this burst of brightness in the sky just lightning?
- The weather stations anywhere close to this location
did not have a single mention of a thunderstorm.
In fact, it was clear skies.
We can confidently rule out
that this was due to any kind of lightning
that caused an explosion off in the distance.
- [Tony] Okay, but what about a manmade cause?
- There are quite a bit of transformers in the area.
It might be hard to fathom
just how bright a transformer explosion might be,
but the same thing happened in New York City in 2018.
The explosion was seen miles and miles away.
If we can see that,
we can certainly see a transformer explosion
from this massive earthquake.
- [Tony] Still, not all our experts agree.
- This area is about 20 to 30 miles in diameter
on that screen.
And so the idea that a single transformer caused
that huge flare-up is probably impossible.
- [Tony] The strongest theory might be
the one the ancients first proposed,
that indeed, the lights are caused by the earthquake itself.
- When you have an earthquake,
rocks break and there are a lot of gases
that are trapped inside these rocks.
And so when they break, those gases escape.
So the question is when these gases escape,
why do they glow?
- [Tony] Scientists think it could be
because those gases are getting ionized.
That happens when certain rocks are
stressed during an earthquake
and electric charges within them are activated.
These charges are then released into the atmosphere,
in turn triggering our light show.
- And that's why sometimes you see blue gas,
because of the nitrogen that's in the atmosphere.
Sometimes you see orange or yellow,
that's radon in the atmosphere.
- [Tony] That theory makes sense.
But without testing the atmosphere
for evidence of ionized nitrogen or radon,
it's just that, a theory.
- It's really hard to know exactly what's going on.
We do know that there are minor charges
that happen underground,
but that's only a theory
and really has not been observed.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, for now, we're going with
unexplained phenomenon.
Our experts are divided between potential earthquake lights
and a possible transformer explosion.
But if there's an intrepid viewer from this part of China
who knows for sure, please illuminate us.
And that's our show for tonight.
Thank you so much for watching, and as always,
please keep those cameras rolling.
[dramatic music]