- Tonight on "The Proof is Out There":
a classic UFO case out of Kansas
with glowing evidence that even had the sheriff convinced.
- [Tony] A classic piece of Bigfoot footage
from a known Sasquatch hotspot.
- [Tony] A man with super human neck strength.
- Of all of the body parts for bending a metal bar,
the neck is one of the most fragile.
- [Tony] And what's that in the sky
on a collision course with a jetliner?
Even the experts can't say.
- This stumped me. I've never seen anything quite like it.
(dramatic music)
- Around the globe are videos.
- What the heck is this? - It's moving.
- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.
(hand buzzing)
(dramatic music continues)
- [Commentator 1] Is it some kind of unidentified object?
- [Commentator 2] What's exciting is nobody really knows.
(plane roaring) - [Tony] What are they?
- [Commentator 3] Some sort of bizarre mutation.
- 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."
When a car tears out, it leaves behind skid marks.
But what does a UFO leave behind?
We're going back more than 50 years for this first one,
and what's been called some of the most
credible UFO evidence of all time.
November 2nd, 1971.
It's evening in the small town of Delphos, Kansas.
16 year old Ron Johnson is on his family farm
when he suddenly sees a bright
mushroom shaped spacecraft hovering nearby.
Johnson runs to his parents and they return just in time
to see the craft disappearing in the sky.
But back on the ground they find this.
Where the UFO allegedly hovered is an eight foot wide ring
with a whiteish crust around the edge.
And take a closer look, it looks like this ring is glowing.
Harlan Enlow was one of the first law enforcement officers
to arrive on the scene.
- It was a eye-opening surprise.
Here's this white dry ring,
looks like a big donut sitting in the middle of a mud field.
We took statements and we photographed it
and we took actual soil samples.
- [Tony] Ron's mother Irma Johnson tells Harlan
she touched the white substance
and instantly her fingers became numb.
Meanwhile, two other eyewitness reports of the UFO
that night are soon confirmed,
leading Harlan to only one conclusion.
- [Harlan] I am 100% convinced that an incident happened.
The story the family told us was credible.
- [Tony] But it doesn't end there.
Journalist MJ Banias says when it comes
to reported UFO landing sites,
these strange sightings are not unique to Kansas.
- We have multiple cases
that show UFOs landing on the ground.
One of the most famous cases was out of the 1980s
in France, in Trans-en-Provence,
where a gentleman was farming in his field
when he saw this large disk like object
take off into the sky and again,
it left impression marks as to where it was landed
as well as some burn marks on the ground.
(tone whooshing)
- With a 21 page soil report,
the Delphos, Kansas UFO is considered
one of the most lab studied UFO cases in history.
So you'd think if it was possible to explain this ring,
it would've been done by now, but no dice.
Well, we got our experts here to give it another try.
(suspenseful music)
We begin with Astronomer
and Video Effects Designer Mark D'Antonio.
- UFOs have been traditionally associated with heat,
meaning this might have been ash,
but there wasn't an excess of carbon ash
that I could see in the chemical report.
Some of the elements were hydrophobic in nature.
- [Tony] It's that hydrophobicity
that tells Physicist Dr. Matthew Szydagis something's up.
- The term hydrophobic means water repellent.
Most soil really needs water.
That's how plants grow.
- [Tony] This photo taken of the Delphos soil sample
about 20 years after the incident
shows a drop of water repelling off it.
So there seems to be something amiss in the soil,
but is it really glowing?
D'Antonio thinks there's an explanation in the camera.
- It looks brighter on the film
precisely because it's a brighter soil
compared to the darker soil,
and the camera tries to balance the light.
- [Tony] But Szydagis says a camera artifact
doesn't explain further research from the soil report.
- We have physical deposited evidence
that the samples still have the same glowing property today,
which is absolutely mind blowing to me.
- [Tony] The evidence is leaning alien,
but Geologist Dr. Bob Anderson thinks
what we're looking at is natural,
a mix of an unknown organism in water,
creating a froth of bacteria.
- I realize that this area is pretty conducive
to this kind of thing so I don't believe
it has anything to do with a UFO.
I think it's a natural phenomena
of groundwater interaction in biology.
It's a gas that's being released by that bacteria.
- [Tony] But what about the numbness in the mother's hand?
Dr. Anderson thinks he can explain that too.
- The mother, got her hand burnt a little bit
by touching that ring.
That usually happens if you have an acid.
It wouldn't surprise me to something
got into the groundwater.
My gut feeling is is that there was something buried
in that area that was manmade/chemical,
which would not show up on those 1970 soil surveys.
- [Tony] But still why the ring shape?
Dr. Szydagis points to another popular theory
that we're looking at a so-called fairy ring.
They're typically formed by fungus
feeding on decomposing matter in the soil.
The fungus then grows from the center
outwards to form a ring.
- Fairy rings are also known
to have a hydrophobic effect on the soil.
So this does appear to be a partial explanation
that knocks out one or two features
but doesn't seem to fit the entire story.
(tone whooshing)
- From a fairy ring to a possible UFO landing
and even acidic soil.
There were just so many conflicting theories here,
plus all those credible witnesses.
Our verdict is that this is simply
an unexplained phenomenon.
Before you get any ideas to investigate,
you should know that the family eventually
buried the ring to discourage curious trespassers.
But if you ever come across one yourself,
you know who to call. (suspenseful music)
Now from strange circles on the ground
to strange noises in the air,
they can occur pretty much anywhere.
But when they pipe up deep inside a mine
that's been abandoned for years
and are attributed to dead people,
you know we're gonna investigate.
(suspenseful music)
2016, a pitch black stormy night in Wiluna, Australia.
A professional mine explorer who goes by the name of Frank
has descended deep into the Waldeck goldmine,
a 150 year old pit situated
in one of the region's many canyons.
He rolls camera throughout the expedition
when suddenly and unexpectedly.
- [Frank] Do you hear that? (eerie whispering)
- [Tony] He hears something eerie from a dark tunnel.
We can make out what sounds like whispers.
(eerie whispering)
It seems to be multiple people
speaking to each other in a hushed tone.
(eerie whispering continues)
- [Frank] That is definitely creepy. Let's get outta here.
(ominous music)
- [Tony] Over six million online viewers
have watched this trying to decipher
what this explorer encountered.
Author Alexis Brooks presents some theories.
- I've seen this a dozen times,
each time I get creeped out just thinking about
going into a place like this, but when the sounds emerge,
it becomes extraordinarily chilling.
(eerie whispering)
(ominous music)
Western Australia is mineral rich,
so the mines in that area were very prolific,
particularly going back to the 1800s.
At the time mining was very, very risky,
and unfortunately over the years
a lot of miners died.
(ominous music)
- [Tony] In fact, we did some digging.
In 1902, an explosion at Mount Kembla Mine
claimed the lives of 96 men alone.
That's just one mine of hundreds
spanning all across the continent.
- And so the question becomes,
with so many lives lost over a long period of time,
could these mines simply be haunted?
- [Tony] This wouldn't even be the first time
a mining disaster has led to some spooky happenings.
(ominous music)
- Take the Milford Mine disaster
in Crosby, Minnesota in 1924
in which 41 miners sadly lost their life.
There are many people that have gone to that mine
and reported hearing eerie sounds and footsteps, et cetera,
and it could be that's what we're hearing
here in the Waldeck Mine. (eerie whispering)
- [Tony] Brooks explains that this could be
an example of a ghost occurrence
known as a electronic voice phenomena or EVP.
- EVP is something that has been practiced for many years
in which a device like a tape recorder
tries to pick up discarnate voices.
It was even said that Thomas Edison prior to his death
was working on an apparatus to be able to pick up
these discarnate sounds.
Souls that have not fully realized their deaths,
are trying to contact the living,
are trying to still interface with the physical world.
And in the case of the Waldeck Mine, if they died there,
may be reliving the moment over and over again.
(eerie whispering)
- [Tony] Or could there be something else
in the darkness making these noises?
- There is what is called the Booie monster
in Booie, Australia where a group of boys
were in sort of a cavern atmosphere
and they claim to have witnessed
a two-legged sort of bipedal creature.
Might we construe the Booie monster
with what we heard over in Waldeck.
(eerie whispering)
- After professional bushmen set out in search
of the Booie monster in 1954 and turned up nothing,
authorities reached the conclusion
that those kids must have just spotted a kangaroo.
But whatever Frank heard was no hopping marsupial.
What could have been making that bone chilling sound?
Let's have a listen to what our experts think.
(suspenseful music)
- You'll see that there is a parallel channel
along the main channel for air to get in there.
That's pretty common in caves,
and he's in there during a rainstorm
and so what you're hearing there
is the wind and water combination
running through the air shaft. (eerie whispering)
- [Tony] But Soundscape Ecologist Dr. Ben Gottesman
respectfully disagrees.
- We're interested in comparing it to water in a cave,
but when we're listening we hear
that these are apples and oranges that we're comparing.
(water dripping)
We've got sounds of water droplets, you know,
hitting and reverberating in this cave,
which doesn't line up with what we see in Waldeck Mine.
(eerie whispering)
(rain falling)
This is not a match.
- [Tony] So could these sounds be produced
by a human or a ghost?
- [Ben] The frequency characteristics
are quite similar to human whispers.
(eerie whispering)
(people whispering)
It's a really strong comparison.
- [Tony] But Gottesman man also has his doubts
that these sounds came from a ghost
or even the Waldeck Mines for that matter.
- We should pay special attention to these differences
in volume which relate to these differences
in sound pressure level
because normally sound pressure level
gets doubled as you have the distance to the source.
- [Tony] The phenomenon is known as the inverse-square law,
which states that the intensity of sound
increases by approximately six decibels
whenever you have the distance to the sound source,
which is just a mathematical expression of the fact
that the closer you get to a sound, the louder it is.
- What we see here is he takes like one step
and it gets way louder.
Then he takes like six steps
and it doesn't get that much louder.
Then he backtracks a few steps and it stays the same.
- [Tony] According to the inverse-square law,
if we're taking six steps closer to the sound,
the increase in volume should be significant, but it isn't.
- It doesn't match cleanly
with how sound normally travels away from a source.
There's a good chance that this is edited,
adding in whispered sounds
to create what truly is haunting and quite dramatic.
(tone whooshing)
- So there you have it.
We're going to call this a hoax.
Dr. Gottesman was able to rule out water and whispers
in the Waldeck Mine that night,
and while we're going to say these sounds are fake,
we can also say I'm never going down there ever.
Please. (dramatic music)
- This next bit of footage has earned a special place
in the pantheon of big foot sightings.
Many professional bigfoot hunters give it credence,
but is it really proof of the legendary creature?
You be the judge.
(suspenseful music)
It's June, 2001 and Jim Mills,
the leader of a youth group called Campus Life
has taken his students on their annual backpacking trip
to the Marble Mountains of Northern California.
Their hike starts off ideally with picturesque weather,
but things quickly take a turn
and that's when they begin rolling this video.
- [Jim] If as we wonder up into the trees a little bit,
there's a brush here.
- [Tony] Off the trail, they first discover
what appears to be a makeshift hut
constructed from small trees and large branches.
They seemingly have been torn down and broken.
Then one of the young hikers spots
what looks like a creature off in the distance
on the hill high above them.
- Oh my word. - Oh!
- That is... - Doesn't even look
like a person. - It does not
look like a person. - It doesn't look like-
- [Tony] He paces back and forth
while keeping a keen eye on the hikers.
- I'm the first one that points to it
and I say, "Hey look, it's up there,
Bigfoot's coming down right now."
And you know we knew that that's Sasquatch area.
(ominous music)
You could tell it was bigger than it looked.
- Witnesses who make the case
that this is the Marble Mountain Bigfoot
point to a couple of features,
and let me bring it to the telestrator here.
The first thing they point to
are these disproportionate arms,
one arm distinctly longer than the next.
They also pointed to his size.
They said the creature stood
between seven and eight feet tall.
They swear that what they saw on this day
was the Marble Mountain Bigfoot.
(suspenseful music)
Field Researcher Cliff Barackman dismisses
a lot of the alleged Bigfoot footage he sees, but not this.
- The Marble Mountain wilderness area in Northern California
is not very far away from the most famous
of all Bigfoot locations, Bluff Creek.
- [Tony] In 1967, a series of giant controversial footprints
were found by a crew building a road
into an extremely remote wilderness area in Bluff Creek.
(slide whooshing)
The family of a man named Ray Wallace
later claimed Wallace made them as a practical joke.
But what about that hut?
For several years of research group
known as the Olympic Project has been studying
a series of nests in Washington state
they suspect to have been made by a Sasquatch.
The nests are said to resemble structures made by gorillas.
Could that be what we're seeing here?
- All apes, including humans, make nests.
So maybe this is some sort of structure
that Sasquatches might make. - [Tony] He says the figure,
though recorded at some distance,
has some tell tale characteristics.
- This figure is walking down the slope with no backpack,
one color head to toe, strange body proportions,
kind of high shoulders,
height estimates based on the recreation
from the investigators that I personally know,
put it between seven and eight feet tall.
Whatever that is on the hill, it is very large.
That could very well be a Sasquatch.
(dramatic music)
- The Marble Mountains are home to 47
alleged Bigfoot sightings,
with the earliest going back to 1850.
So is it possible this is home to more creatures
than previously discovered?
To find the answer, we turn to our experts.
(suspenseful music)
Forensic Video Analyst Michael Primeau
explores whether this video has been altered to deceive.
- The video has not been heavily compressed
to reduce or degrade the video.
My personal opinion is that these events
did transpire the way that they appeared.
- [Tony] Given the authenticity of the footage,
Biologist Dr. Floyd Hayes
takes note of that nesting structure.
- This looks like a shelter that was designed
by some sort of a creature.
The limbs appear to have been torn directly off of the tree,
but it definitely appears to have been organized
to some extent by intelligent animals.
- [Tony] Then Hayes spots a detail
a lot of folks missed.
- It looks like we have a string
that's dangling there as well as a red cable of some sort.
- [Tony] A string, which means Bigfoot ties knots
or a person made this shelter, that seems more likely.
But what about the creature on the rim?
Anatomist Dr. Jeff Meldrum says the figure
doesn't look like a hiker, at least not at first.
- There didn't appear to be the normal accoutrements
that you usually see on someone
who's hiking in the back country.
- [Tony] Then he focuses on the torso.
Bigfoot, he says, are always reported to have thick chests.
- Their torsos are very barrel shaped.
These are creatures that are evolved
to muscle their way through the environment
rather than think their way through.
- [Tony] But not this figure.
- You just don't get that impression,
nor is there exceptional mass,
anything to suggest a really large body.
- [Tony] Meldrum also notes the creature's gate.
Look here, you can see it's far from sure footed.
- [Jeff] It seems to be choosing its footing
rather gingerly as if it isn't entirely at home
in that environment.
It looks like a human walking off trail.
- [Tony] Meldrum also disagrees with Barackman's assessment
that the figure is eight feet tall.
He says the long distance and the low camera angle
make height calculation difficult.
- My impression is that it is of human size.
It doesn't strike me as a very large heavy creature.
I could say it was a five and a half foot
or a six and a half foot individual.
- [Tony] Now it sure looks like the creature
has extra long arms, too long for a person,
but Meldrum says there's a reason for that.
- I believe this is a figure that is wearing a hoodie
and at one point actually both hands go up.
It appeared to adjust the hoodie.
- [Tony] So was this all an elaborate hoax?
- Given the long distance
at which they're observing this creature,
I think it's an honest mistake and this can often happen
with people that see humans in the distance
and can mistake 'em for a Bigfoot.
(tone whooshing)
- Our verdict, we think this is a person
wearing a hoodie with extra long sleeves.
While our experts agree that isn't Bigfoot in the video,
they both concede there are vast portions
of the Marble Mountains that remain rarely trekked.
So if Bigfoot does exist,
it certainly could be living there.
For hundreds of years,
the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights
has had a deep spiritual meaning
for Canada's Aboriginal Inuit people,
often involving the lives of the departed
and a belief that souls of the dead dance in the Aurora.
But now another strange light phenomenon
has been documented in Canada that as far as we know
is not part of any native traditions.
So our question, what is it?
(suspenseful music)
January, 2017, North Bay, Ontario, Canada.
It's 2:00 a.m. and TJ Elzinga
is woken up by his son's crying.
Then after putting him back to bed,
Timmy looks out the window and sees this.
Take a closer look.
A row of multicolored beams of light
stretch across the horizon,
shooting down from the sky into the ground.
TJ ventures outside in the sub-zero temperatures
for another view.
- Oh my goodness.
It was almost like something out of "Star Trek"
or something like "Scotty, beam me up"
and I was very confused as to what I was seeing.
And I've never seen this before in my life.
(suspenseful music)
- [Tony] Now you might be thinking
this is the fabled Aurora Borealis,
which is visible in the Great White North
about 240 nights a year,
but that phenomenon looks like this,
not these clearly defined beams of light.
Writer Eric Grundhauser agrees
that these are unlike any phenomenon he's ever seen.
- You see something in the sky like this.
It's not unreasonable to think
that some people would think that they're UFOs.
- [Tony] The phenomenon is somewhat reminiscent
of these mysterious lights spotted above
Montreal's hotel Bonaventure
in a now famous 1990 UFO sighting.
That's still unexplained.
Could this be a similar anomaly?
- So this is not something anyone would expect.
I think that most people would
see these as an unnatural phenomenon.
(static crackling)
- Now, when I first saw these lights,
I figured it could be some manmade art installation
like the famous Tribute in Light
at Ground Zero in Manhattan.
But before we commit to any theory,
let's let the experts illuminate us.
(suspenseful music)
Could these light beams be a hoax?
- Upon investigation of the way
that the camera captured this information,
this shutter speed value is consistent
with what we would refer to as nighttime photography
or long exposure.
The images are authentic.
The images haven't been photoshopped in any way.
Nothing was detected that suggests
that they were fabricated or created.
- [Tony] Next we go to Astronomer
and Video Effects Designer Mark D'Antonio.
- Is it a martian invasion, is it alien attack?
I know that people said that this was some kind
of big UFO hovering in the sky,
but there really isn't any structure visible,
and you would think if it was that close
where you would actually see some kind of structure.
- [Tony] So if these lights aren't alien in nature,
could they be manmade?
- [Mark] Maybe it's a a spotlight like you see
when they try to announce a new car dealership opening.
But there's a problem with that.
A spotlight would stay at a relatively tight beam
and then it would fade out.
But we see that these lights,
they start off nice and sharp and as they climb,
they kind of feather into the night sky.
So this looks markedly different from a spotlight.
- [Tony] D'Antonio rules out anything manmade.
So are we looking at a natural phenomenon?
We take that question to Meteorologist Juan Hernandez
and he points to an uncommon
and rarely photograph phenomenon called light pillars.
- Light pillars are a phenomenon characteristic
of cold climates.
Oftentimes when he have below freezing temperatures,
we have ice crystals that are suspended in the atmosphere.
Those ice crystals are in the shape of hexagons,
so they're hexagonal ice crystals
that act as a mirror where light is reflected
towards the surface.
It might seem like there's a beam of light
coming from the surface of the earth,
but in reality it's actually an optical illusion.
- [Tony] But while a light pillar can be generated
by the sun, it turns out it's primarily
our modern city lighting that causes them
and their different colors.
- It just depends on what the light source is.
If it's a light post or if it's something
coming from a residence or a building.
Due to the differences in the sodium vapor
within the lamps themselves,
we're able to get distinct colors such as the blue hues,
we're able to get the orange hues or even the yellow hues.
(suspenseful music)
- Our verdict, light pillars.
These rare phenomena have been spotted around the world
on cold winter nights from Wyoming to Sweden,
even the Antarctic.
But conditions have to be just right
for this rare phenomenon to occur.
In most instances when light pillars form
temperatures are minus 10 to 20 degrees fahrenheit,
if not colder.
So if you go out looking for them,
don't forget your coat.
- As hip hop greats "The Wu-Tang Clan"
famously advised: "Protect your neck!"
The human neck has 20 muscles that help with head movement
and chewing, but if you exercise them enough,
could they become stronger than steel?
(suspenseful music)
July, 2018, Rostov-on-Don, Russia.
A large bearded man is filmed kneeling down
and crossing himself
surrounded by a pile of bricks and kettle bells.
As the video continues,
a second man takes an 18 millimeter steel rod
and holds it to the kneeling man's neck.
Then- (contestant grunting)
the bearded man appears to bend the rod
using only his neck.
He stands and triumphantly bows to the crowd's applause.
(audience applauding)
Author Alexis Brooks says it looks like the man
has pulled off an incredible feat.
- Of all of the body parts that we could use
to do something as mind boggling as bending a metal bar,
the neck is probably one of the most fragile.
- [Tony] Brook says his skills evoke
an ancient martial arts tradition from East Asia.
- Shaolin monks spend a lifetime honing their skills
at doing superhuman feats that seem beyond imagination.
In one case, the Shaolin monks have a spear between them.
They were able to bend it into a U shape
without any sign of pain whatsoever.
But clearly physics defying.
(soft music)
- [Tony] Brooks believes that
for these Buddhist practitioners,
it's really about mind over matter.
- [Alexis] It's about physical discipline,
but it's also about the ability to harness energy
or what they call chi.
This is a field that exists all around us
and it's a field that can be harnessed
to be able to do some of these inexplicable feats.
- It's thought that martial artists
develop their ability over time
through progressive injury and resistance
just as bodybuilders develop muscle.
(contestant grunting)
So is this Russian man
harnessing chi to bend this bar to his will?
(suspenseful music)
It's actually not the first time
someone has tried to bend a metal bar with their neck.
A circus strong man showed off his skill
with a steel rod in 1961,
but he used the back of his neck, not the trachea,
and did most of the actual bending
after taking the bar off his neck.
So how did this Russian athlete
pull off this feat without choking?
Let's ask the experts.
(tone whooshing)
Forensic Video Analyst Michael Primeau
first analyzes the video to see if it could be fake.
- When the audio channel was analyzed,
we found there were fragments of the audio
that were preserved, one grunt from that event.
(contestant grunting)
But the next one in time was not.
So we know that this audio information was changed,
but doing a macroblock analysis,
no evidence of CGI was detected with the bar itself.
- [Tony] So could this man actually
have superhuman neck strength?
Theoretical Physicist Dr. Michio Kaku
suggests it's possible to build up your neck muscles,
but says that still might not be enough.
- You might be able to train your neck
to do much better than the average person,
but under no circumstance could a human being
withstand the force of an iron rod bent around their neck.
That's due to the cross-sectional
area of the muscle.
That's what gives you the strength.
But as far as the muscle tissue itself and the bone,
pretty much identical for most humans.
- Kaku says the neck is one of the weakest
and most vulnerable parts of the body
because it's largely unprotected.
(contestant grunting)
So could there be more to this feat than meets the eye?
- The key is the rod itself.
Most materials have a critical point
at which buckling takes place.
The rod has been pre weakened, perhaps by heat,
by acid chemicals, or simply by being bent.
And they got it to the point where an ordinary person
like this could make the whole thing buckle.
- [Tony] Adding heat, chemicals, or stress to metal
can change the physical and sometimes chemical properties
of the material to increase its deductibility
and reduce its hardness, making it easier to bend.
And Kaku says there was one more key element
that makes this whole trick work.
- The assistant is very important
'cause he knows exactly how much pressure to apply
and exactly where to bend it,
'cause if he bends in in the wrong place,
then you could really damage his vocal chords.
(dramatic music)
- The verdict, this is more like a magic trick
using a weakened metal bar
than a true feat of strength.
However, the Russian bodybuilder has clearly trained
for this performance and can likely pull it off
much easier than most.
As for your neck,
it's better to just use it to keep your head on straight.
Statistics show that up to 80% of all aviation accidents
can be attributed to human error.
However, rarely are they caused by planes
colliding with other jets.
So what are the chances that one might bump
into an interstellar craft?
November, 2021, Henderson, Nevada.
It's about 4:00 a.m. and practically everyone
is asleep except for Jason Sirosi
who was squeezing in one last hour of star gazing
from his backyard (suspenseful music)
when he suddenly sees this.
Two groups of lights are seen in the sky
appearing to narrowly miss colliding with each other
by mere seconds. (suspenseful music)
Look closely. On the right is clearly a jetliner.
But what does that strange T-shaped formation
of objects on the left?
Jason doesn't have an answer
and can't believe what he's seeing.
- [Tony] But as shocking as this near miss seems,
Author and Blogger Amy Teitel says
it may be part of a larger pattern.
- In 2021, an American Airlines pilot
made headlines when he radioed the ground
saying that he saw a UFO out of his windshield
somewhere over New Mexico.
- [Tony] But if Jason's video is a UFO
attempting to get near or closely examine a jet,
the question for investigators is why?
(suspenseful music)
- Ufologists don't believe
that there's any firm theory on why UFOs
would target commercial airliners.
But many UFOs sightings seem to be related to military jets
or some kind of military technology.
One of the earliest comes from 1967.
American intelligence was listening in on communications
from Cuba where the pilot said at 33,000 feet
that he saw a bright glowing disc out of his window.
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- What's going on here?
We've seen a lot of UFO videos before in various shapes
and patterns: orbs, triangular, circular, cigar,
but this T formation, let alone getting on video
what looks like a near collision, is new to us.
Will it stump our experts?
We asked them to weigh in.
(suspenseful music)
Rich Hoffman of a Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies
has been studying UFOs for decades.
Does he think this object is from another world?
- It doesn't typically match what we think of as a UFO.
It doesn't make any apparent strange motions
like advanced speed or instantaneous taking off.
- [Tony] That doesn't mean it's not a UFO,
but that if it is, it's not acting like others.
Still, could they just be two planes passing?
Passenger jets are mandated to have lights
all over the craft, including ones for taxiing,
landing, wing tips, and blinking anti-collision lights.
But Hoffman's not seeing that here.
- It's a close match for an aircraft going across,
but the lighting pattern on it
and the fact that it doesn't have the blinking lights
aircrafts are supposed to have,
the object itself stumped me.
I've never seen anything quite like it in my investigations.
We rarely have ever get something that looks like a T.
- [Tony] Next we turn to Aviation Expert Tim McMillan.
If it's not a plane, could it be a satellite?
In 2019, SpaceX launched a global network
of satellites providing internet coverage
from space called Starlink.
They operate in groups called constellations
and today there are over 2000 in orbit.
- Starlink is a long string of lights in the night sky.
Starlink satellites are connected together,
but we wouldn't be seeing a T-formation.
- [Tony] Does the location play into the mystery?
Jason shot this footage less than 100 miles
from the notorious Area 51.
- [Tim] So now we are in the general area
that secret aircraft do fly,
but at the same time it doesn't match up
with what we should be seeing
if it was, you know, a fixed wing aircraft,
a drone, or a rotary ring helicopter.
And why would you do a really irregular light pattern
on your top secret aircraft?
- [Tony] Although not convinced it's any airplane,
McMillan does see a clue which leads him to a theory
that may explain why there appears to be a near collision.
- When you're looking at the aircraft that passes by it,
we see the contrail from it.
So we can see that this aircraft
is moving within the atmosphere,
but we're not seeing the same atmospheric effects
with our T object.
That means that the object in our T-formation
is higher than whatever is the aircraft flying below it.
- [Tony] McMillan's theory is that this object
is miles up in space but not a satellite.
- If I had to give my most likely explanation,
it's possibly the International Space Station.
It's roughly 250 miles above the Earth's surface.
You've got the big panels that are extended out
and so the lights that we are seeing,
the sun could be reflecting on that portion
as it passes over.
- This one has us stumped.
So we did some digging and based on tracking data,
it appears the ISS wasn't passing over Nevada
at the time the video was shot.
Our verdict, we're gonna go with genuine UFO.
We just can't identify it.
And for sure, Jason's experience proves one thing.
If you keep looking up,
there's no telling what you'll find.
- Do you like doing mazes?
Scientist say solving a maze can stimulate
the part of the brain responsible
for memory and learning.
But this next story involves a puzzle
whose origins are unknown.
Some believe whoever made it came from over the sea
or even outer space.
(suspenseful music)
Take a hike in the remote mountainous area
outside Hemet, California,
and you might come across a stone surrounded by barbed wire.
Come closer and you'll find this.
A large rounded boulder with a strange carving on its face.
It's 24 inches squared
and looks like an ancient drawing of a maze.
It consists of two rectangular boxes,
one inside of the other.
In the space between the two is a series of parallel lines
forming this geometric pattern.
A rancher first discovered this stone in 1914
while surveying his property.
It's since been fenced off to protect it.
Archeologists have authenticated the maze as a petroglyph
from up to 2000 years ago based on artifacts found nearby.
Yet journalist Eric Grundhauser points out
this is one maze there's no way to solve.
- There's no entry point that actually goes to an end point.
So it seems to be a sort of esoteric design.
- [Tony] Grundhauser says some think the petroglyph
also resembles another now notorious symbol, the swastika.
(suspenseful music)
- Prior to its popularization
as a symbol for the Nazi party,
the swastika as a design has actually been used
in a number of cultures throughout the world.
It has had many meanings, especially in Chinese Buddhism.
- [Tony] In Buddhism, the symbol represents
the Buddhist footprints,
and in Hinduism and other Eastern religions,
it's a sign of prosperity and good luck.
Since no one knows who created this petroglyph,
some speculate that a possible connection
with ancient China is the key.
- There is a theory that the 15th century
Chinese Admiral Zheng He who put together a fleet
to explore the Pacific Ocean,
ended up making it to the shore of California
and that the Admiral and some Buddhist monks
actually came inland and left these carvings along the way.
- [Tony] However, since the design is so unusual,
others have a different idea about how it got there.
(suspenseful music)
- Given that the carving does not seem to denote
any sort of image or symbol
that we are immediately familiar with,
some believe that it's possible that aliens created this.
- Supporters of this theory point out
how the design of the petroglyph is similar
to that of the circuitry on a computer chip.
They say this connects to how some ancient cities
like Teotihuacan, Mexico appear from above
to be laid out like a computer circuit board
with two large processor chips.
So could these be prototypes of computer technology
built by advanced ancient alien civilizations?
(suspenseful music)
What's most puzzling about this ancient maze glyph
is that it's found in the middle of the desert
far from the trading hubs on the coast.
It also doesn't seem to say anything specific.
So figuring out the intention behind the peculiar design
is a real challenge.
Our experts may have some insider insight.
(suspenseful music)
Anthropologist Kathy Strain analyzes the images
to see if they reveal any telltale signs
of the carvings being made by ancient alien visitors.
- I wouldn't expect this to be created by aliens
because it's not precise.
- [Tony] We recreated the symbol and she's right.
You can see how most of the lines are subtly curved
rather than being perfectly straight.
This rules out lasers or other high tech tools
that you'd expect extraterrestrials to use.
(suspenseful music)
So could this design be associated
with Chinese Buddhist art
as suggested by the tales of Admiral Zheng in his voyages?
- [Kathy] This petroglyph is located pretty far away
from the ocean and there are no villages,
there's no other thing to tell us that in the 15th century,
a Chinese ship came to the coast of California
and came 100 miles inland to create this petroglyph.
- [Tony] So if Chinese explorers didn't carve this,
was it the local native people?
- One of the older cultures long before contact
is the Kumeyaay people.
Along the coast where this culture lived
are other examples of maze-like petroglyphs.
We call it the Rancho Bernardo Style.
And these are diagnostically similar.
We know this culture was trading back and forth
perhaps even 100 miles inland.
So that is probably the best possibility.
- Based on the other ones that we know
that are in about 120 mile radius,
I believe that they are boundary markers
that denote whoever's territory that was.
(suspenseful music)
- Our verdict, the Hemet Maze Stone was likely created
by an indigenous group
that would've lived in the area many centuries ago,
possibly the Kumeyaay.
But the petroglyphs meaning and purpose
still remain mysteries.
And that's our show for tonight.
Thank you for watching and by all means,
keep trying to solve life's many puzzles,
and keep those cameras rolling.
(suspenseful music)