Phantom Signals (2020–…): Season 1, Episode 5 - The Ghost in the Machine - full transcript

Narrator: A blip on the screen,

A faulty frequency, A relentless hum.

Everyday operations that can go unnoticed

Until a major glitch occurs.

"okay, something weird is going on."

Narrator: But what does
the error really mean?

It's a whole bunch of different
signals and frequencies.

Something is trying to manifest.

If it's not explainable, I
guess you could call it a ufo.

Narrator: And what is the fallout?

There's reports of private
security with machine guns.



They're in a world of trouble

Because they literally
don't know what side's up.

Narrator: In some instances,
it can end in tragedy.

And in others, it can lead to madness.

This is driving me nuts.

Mckinnon: We are a long
way from being able to say

It's unexplainable.

We just don't know the answer yet.

Narrator: We are surrounded
by endless streams of data,

Information bombarding us

From all corners of our known universe,

Sometimes a blip, an inexplicable signal,

Mysterious interference.

1953.



On a cold night in late November,

An unidentified blip

Is picked up by a u.S.
Air force radar station.

It appears out of nowhere,

Flying over lake superior
near the canadian border.

Smerdon: The ground
controller couldn't raise it by radio,

Which is unusual because
they weren't out of radio range.

They scrambled f-89c
interceptor called a scorpion,

Which is a fairly
advanced tracking airplane.

Narrator: Pilot felix moncla
and radar operator robert wilson

Take off from kinross air force base.

They go off on a routine intercept mission.

Smerdon: Our mandate is to
be airborne within five minutes

And to go and climb up

And find that airplane,
intercept it, close on it

And identify it positively.

After we do that, we go home...

Or we shoot it down.

Narrator: As they approach the location

Of the mysterious blip,

Moncla's jet has trouble
locking in on the bogie.

He must rely entirely on ground control

To guide him into the
small target in the vast sky.

At 8,000 feet in altitude,
he starts to close in.

As this object and the
aircraft moved closer together,

It appeared that the two things
just formed one blip or blob.

Kislenko: One of the guys
manning the radar station

Says one blip swallowed the other blip.

And then moncla's blip disappeared.

[ beeps ]

Narrator: Radio communication
from moncla stops.

The radar people were
expecting the aircraft

To come out the other
side or move around it

Or do something.

Narrator: But as ground control waits,

The scorpion never reappears.

That must be horrifying
because your first reaction

Is that the people on
board that plane are dead.

Narrator: The air force
knows it has a problem.

It's been 20 minutes since
the last contact with moncla

And his jet is reaching
the limit of its range.

Search and rescue are launched.

40 minutes after
moncla's plane went silent,

Search and rescue pilot
lieutenant william mingenbach

Picks up what sounds like

The missing pilot's voice on his radio.

[ radio chatter ]

And they recognize him apparently

Because they can recognize his accent,

And so it seems to be moncla.

Narrator: After the transmission
heard by lieutenant mingenbach,

There is total silence.

Moncla and wilson are
never heard from again.

Everything just
disappeared without a trace.

You would expect that
if the plane went down

As a result of a crash,
there would be wreckage.

They find nothing.

Narrator: According
to the official reports,

The unusual target moncla
and wilson were pursuing

Is alleged to be a royal
canadian air force c-47

That drifted 30 miles off course.

Here you have two bases in 1953...

Canadian and american...

That are governing the same airspace

And the shared border across the lakes.

We're allies, but, of course, you know,

That is sovereign airspace
and you want to make sure

Nobody's violating it
and nothing goes wrong.

What makes a bogey a
bogey is there's no identification

That goes along with that blip.

Identification friend or foe, iff,

The transponder has been around

Since the end of the second world war.

If the radar operator
can positively identify

That aircraft, either by iff or by voice,

Then the fighters are scrambled.

Narrator: As the investigation
into moncla and wilson's

Disappearance continues,
canadian pilot gerald fosberg,

Who is believed to be the
unexplained second blip,

Is brought in for interrogation.

He said, "listen, I was,
first of all, not off course.

And second of all, there
was no intercept aircraft."

If the c-47 was the bogey
and it was flying along,

As we say in the business,
fat, dumb, and happy,

According to his navigation
aids, he's on course.

Something tragic happens

Before the scorpion
gets up beside the c-47.

They have a malfunction.

They have to break off the intercept,

Whatever happened.

The c-47 could have kept going,

Not knowing that there was
even an intercept in progress.

Kislenko: So if you
take fosberg at his word,

There is something seriously
wrong with this situation.

Narrator: The canadian
report doesn't corroborate

The u.S. Conclusion that
fosberg was the bogey.

If it's as straightforward
as the american air force

Says it was, then the canadians

Should have very obviously
had the exact same answers.

Narrator: In fact, there
is no report of an incident

Involving any canadian aircraft

In the lake superior area on that date.

And that's where the
trail of questions begins.

The first thing I would
ask is why there was

Only one aircraft scrambled
to do the identification

Because we normally flew in pairs.

If there had been a second aircraft,

It would have seen what happened.

The u.S. Military would
have had a certain stake

In keeping aspects of the secrets.

There was probably a lot
of, shall we say, butt covering.

Hayes: You don't want it getting out

That one of your craft crashed,

And you don't know what made it crash.

Kislenko: The fact that
you don't talk about it

And don't do more exhaustive research,

Of course, people are gonna start to think

That you're covering stuff up.

Even if that part about
the canadian pilot is true,

It still doesn't really go
any ways to explaining

Why this jet disappeared.

If you've got a solid airplane
being merged together

With a ball of light,

That's not something
that happens every day.

So radar people are saying,
"how can we explain this?"

Adve: Radar works by
sending out a radio signal.

If there is a target, the
radio signal hits the target

And comes back to the radar.

We can tell how far the
target is by how long it took

For the signal to go, then come back.

Smerdon: When a fighter
interceptor is scrambled,

They're just given an altitude
and an intercept heading.

And when the radar operator

In the back of the aircraft
locks on to the target,

Then he takes over the intercept,

Maneuvers his pilot to the
position where he can look at it

And identify it with his eyeballs.

Adve: It's not even clear
that we have evidence

That there was a target there.

The ground station could
see this target very clearly,

Seemed to have a lock
on it, did not ever lose it,

But the aircraft did not.

That's a very unusual thing.

If there's actually something up there,

Its radar should be able to see it.

Narrator: Ground control
steers moncla towards the bogey.

He is seen intercepting
the mysterious blip,

And then moncla's signal
disappears without a trace.

Where did the aircraft
go? Did it merge with it?

Was this a portal that this craft went into

And came out on the other
side in another dimension?

We just don't know.

I think there is maybe
some merit to the theory

That moncla and wilson

Did actually intercept
some kind of object in the air

That may have been some
sort of advanced technology.

Kislenko: This is the
era of the u-2 spy plane,

And it does fly very high, very fast

And is specially designed
to not be detected.

There are icbm tests that are going on.

There are high-elevation balloon tests

For both military and scientific purposes.

There are top-secret military programs

Designed to build better,
faster, more important jets.

Narrator: Could an encounter

With a top-secret experimental craft

Be the cause of the plane's disappearance?

I don't think it was an
experimental aircraft

He was chasing.

These experiments would have happened

In much more remote areas of the continent,

Especially if they wanted
to keep it from the russians.

That was a significant political
factor in the united states.

They have a burgeoning cold war, obviously,

With the soviet union.

And that means that
americans are quite paranoid

About things like communist
infiltration, communist plots.

A lot of fears around soviet invasion

Were about the soviets
invading through northern canada.

Narrator: Moncla's plane disappearing

So close to the canadian
border without an explanation

Fed into the overall concern of the times.

Soldiers are trained that
the communist menace exists

And therefore are on guard.

When the kinross incident happens,

They took this very seriously

Because they didn't know what it was.

If it's not explainable

Or it's not positively
identified in other ways,

I guess you could call it a ufo.

Narrator: Coming up...

The kinross incident fits quite squarely

Into the early days of the ufo craze.

Narrator: ...Is the official
story of the disappearance

A smokescreen for a larger conspiracy?

The orchestration of secrecy and cover-up

Became a very, very well oiled machine.

Narrator: November 1953,

A u.S. Air force interceptor
is sent on a mission

To identify an object in the sky,

Only to vanish moments later.

The american government's
attempt to explain this

Just made it stranger.

Seemingly appropriate answers,
people stop asking questions.

I think there were a lot of
people who knew what happened,

Couldn't explain it,

But they knew that there was
some anomalous object up there

That did something to our craft.

The kinross incident fits quite squarely

Into the early days of the ufo craze.

Kislenko: There are already
unprecedented events,

Very secretive in nature
bases which are popping up,

All sorts of strange stuff.

There are lots of films coming out

That featured extraterrestrial invasions.

So, of course, everybody
was on high alert at all times,

Especially when we're
talking about things in the air.

Project blue book was the
u.S. Military's investigation

Into ufos to figure out what they were,

If they posed a threat, where
they might be coming from.

There are supposed to
be authorities that go out

And check and recheck
all of the facts and figures

To map out the possibilities
of alien life coming to earth,

But also to, of course,

Understand what the public is seeing

And thinking at a particular point in time.

Narrator: One incident that
helps intensify the ufo craze

Happens just over a year
before moncla's plane disappears.

On July 19, 1952,

Seven objects are caught on radar

In the prohibited air
space near the white house.

This is something that would
really feed into these fears

Of soviet invasion or
extraterrestrial invasion

If it looks like they're
targeting the president

In the white house, the
center of america's power.

Viggiani: The radar
operator tracked this thing

At 130 miles an hour,

Then eventually at 7,200 miles an hour.

If you fly a normal aircraft
at that kind of speed,

You get a sonic boom.

This does not happen with ufos.

Narrator: Unable to dodge the
public's fascination with ufos,

A statement is made by the u.S. Air force.

Viggiani: They pulled in general
john samford and he supplied

A whole lot of nonsense
for everybody to chew on.

We've been able to explain them as hoaxes,

As erroneously
identified friendly aircraft.

Hayes: The more the government attempted

To explain away ufos or debunk them,

People increasingly see more and more ufos.

However, there have
been a certain percentage

Of this volume of reports

That have been made by credible observers

Of relatively incredible things.

Hayes: A military pilot in terms
of seeing something in the sky

Is more credible than someone

Who has no training whatsoever in that.

Of course, there are theories
that as part of cover-ups,

Certain people were ordered
not to report certain things

Or certain things were
stricken from the record,

And that the men in black
showed up at their doors and subtly

Or otherwise told them
to keep their mouths shut.

Narrator: Could a government
cover-up of a ufo encounter

Explain why there were
no reports of wreckage

From felix moncla's plane?

They had to present any kind of explanation

They could to make
sure that it didn't become,

You know, "pilot gets eaten up by a ufo."

So what do you do?
You create misinformation

And you create other things around it

That create confusion.

Narrator: Is the strange radio transmission

40 minutes after the plane vanished

A military attempt at misdirection?

If somebody is listening in
on moncla's transmissions,

Recording that, resending that is trivial.

Fallah: The real question here is,

Did he hear a specific message?

If he hears specific words
that make a sentence,

That's when you start considering,

Is it a real signal from moncla

Or is it some other type of hallucination?

If you're the pilot that's
been sent up after moncla

To see what's going on,

You're obviously going to
have a higher level of alertness.

When you become more
alert. What you're really doing is

You're just ramping up the volume

On every sensory input
that you're getting at the time.

Now you start trying to
make sense of that noise.

And when you're listening
to noise and you have an idea

For what you want to perceive,

You're more likely to hear it.

Kislenko: And so you're left

With a really unusual proposition.

Is that somehow a phantom signal?

Is the plane somewhere
in limbo? It's weird.

Unless, of course, it
was extraterrestrial crafts,

And there was some kind of weird encounter.

They actually did swallow the plane

And somehow some kind
of transmission got out.

Narrator: Could a government cover-up

Be at the heart of moncla
and wilson's disappearance?

The only reason I think that
moncla's blip disappeared

Was because he hit the water.

He crashed.

Narrator: Contributing to the theory

That moncla's plane crashed are reports

That the pilot suffered
from attacks of vertigo.

Smerdon: Vertigo is a hallucination.

It's usually accompanied
by a sense of spinning.

The orientation of the inner
ear helps you determine

Your orientation to the world...

Upright, laying down, whatever.

If you pull 1, 2, 3g in an aircraft,

The fluid in your inner
ear reacts to these g forces,

And they can set up
some very strange conflicts

Between what the ear is
sensing and what the eye sees.

So when I experience vertigo,
and I experience vertigo a lot

Because of the maneuvers we used to do,

We had to rely on our instruments.

We had to trust them implicitly
because that's all we have.

If he loses control

And goes into maybe perhaps a spiral dive,

He's in the water in seconds.

I don't know if anyone's
ever landed an aircraft

In lake superior and
lived to talk about it.

It's freezing cold.

If you're in that water immersed,

You're going to last half
an hour if you're lucky.

Narrator: If moncla and wilson did crash,

Why hasn't any trace
of the plane been found?

Macdonald: Search and rescue in the '50s

Would have been really limited

To looking at the surface of the water.

If they found something that
was on the surface of the water,

They could deploy divers.

But when an aircraft or some
other object hits the water,

It doesn't generally do a
straight path to the bottom.

It's taking an angle. It's changing.

It could be affected by
waves and sometimes current.

Arama: Lake superior is probably

The most hostile inland lake in the world.

I've been out on a canoe
where the waves could go

From completely docile to 30-foot waves.

The chances of finding
the target under the water

Where you found that
surface debris is very, very slim.

Lake superior is deep
and dark, and a lot of things

Get lost, never get found
because divers can't go down

And find them.

Most of the things that are being found

Are being found using sonar.

Sonar works by using sound
beams that will strike an object,

Bounce back to the receiver

And really build, like,
a 2-d image for you.

And when you're looking at sonar images,

You're looking for lights and shadows.

So objects show up as lights.

And then there's a bit of a shadow

That is behind the objects.

And you can tell approximate size of things

Or height off of the floor
by how long that shadow is.

Narrator: 2006,

More than 50 years after
the plane's disappearance,

Adam jimenez and jim bisset
from the great lakes dive company

Announce their discovery of an f-89

On the bottom of lake superior.

They saw this object,

And the object kind of
looked like an airplane.

And then nearby, the object
was this big, round, disc thing

With something that looked
like a trail off of the back.

And their theory was that
the airplane had hit the object.

So what they're claiming is
this is the wing of an aircraft

And the other one's buried in the sand.

You know, you're not really
seeing any lighted-up areas

Here at all.

You're just seeing shadow.

I would be looking for an object here

That was casting that long shadow.

So I would really be
questioning whether or not

That was an aircraft on a sonar.

So I'm going to flip to the
the teardrop flying saucer here.

What they were claiming is
that the depression in the middle

Was something like a
flying saucer type of shape.

That's a big stretch.

This could be a coil of wire.

This could be, you know,

A gas bubbling coming
out from underneath it.

Just really nothing
definitive about that that says,

You know, flying saucer or saucer at all.

Narrator: On September
22, 2006, jimenez and bisset

Were interviewed on "coast to coast am."

And then almost as
mysteriously as they originated

And provided alleged evidence
of the wreckage, they disappear.

The company that they claim
to work for didn't really exist.

The website that they had
up for a short amount of time

Just sort of went away.

Hayes: Of course, there
are people claiming that this is

Just further evidence of a cover-up.

Macdonald: Dive teams do find things.

You know, if it's something
that wasn't meant to be found,

Certainly the government
can step in and say,

"hey, we don't want you
messing around there."

I don't think they ever
found it, to be honest.

Maybe they realized
that they were going to get

Caught in this lie and
just decided to take off.

Hayes: There are definitely
documented cases of hoaxes

All the way through the
history of the ufo phenomenon.

But in my research, they account for less

Than a percent of all sightings.

I think that most people reporting

Are actually sincere and authentic.

But in this particular case,
they obviously were not.

So to the best of our
knowledge, the craft and the pilots

And the radio operator
just simply vanished.

Narrator: Coming up,
for the past half century,

People around the world have been

Reporting a mysterious hum.

Like, the windows would vibrate.

You almost wonder if
they're going to shatter.

This is driving me nuts, this noise.

Narrator: A strange sound agitates

And haunts across the globe

In places like auckland, new zealand,

Taos, new mexico,

Bristol, England, and windsor, canada.

The hum sounded like a
very low-frequency rumble.

Mike: It resonates through the walls.

You think it's the fridge,
and you turn the fridge off,

And it's still there.

Sonya: Almost like a car

That is playing really loud music.

And you hear that subwoofer noise.

Mike: It actually goes from a
high-pitch volume to a whistle,

And then you get to "boom, boom, boom,"

The low frequency right after it.

Sonya: It's enough to
shake your house at times.

The windows would vibrate.

You almost wonder if
they're going to shatter.

This is driving me nuts, this noise.

Narrator: The hum is
more than just an irritation.

It may actually be making some people ill.

Months ago, my wife was just fuming.

The whole house was vibrating.
It was actually making her sick.

She wanted to get out of here.

Upset stomach, headache,
sore neck, sore shoulders.

Narrator: How can a sound
affect someone's health?

The typical frequency range
of hearing for the human being

Is from 20 to 20,000 hertz.

Typically, the hums
are in the low frequency

Or sub frequencies.

If it's below 20 hertz,
those are the sounds

That people say they can feel it.

Mckinnon: If you've ever been to a concert,

And you've stood right
up against the speakers

And you feel that thumping,

You're not just hearing it
with your ears through the air.

You're feeling it through
the vibration of your bones.

Narrator: The human body
produces frequencies of its own,

Caused by a physiological process,

Like the beating of the
heart and movement of blood.

When an external vibration

Matches the frequency of this process,

It's called a resident frequency.

A lot of the organs in our body

Have resonant frequencies below 20 hertz.

And if you're to excite these organs

Or these bones in your
body and they start to move,

It'd be almost like the
sensation of seasickness.

Narrator: The health
consequences of the hum are varied.

But does it have a
commonality in other aspects?

Mckinnon: The hum is renowned

For having some geographic hot spots,

Places where more people
hear it than other places.

Novak: The question really is, though,

Are these hums the
same or are they different?

So you could have the hum in one region

And there might be a local explanation.

And then somewhere
halfway around the world,

It could be something else.

Some of the locations may be explained

By a very large and historical presence

Of a u.S. Military industrial complex.

Narrator: Taos, new
mexico, is located 66 miles

From los alamos national laboratory,

Originally built for designing
and testing nuclear weapons

During the manhattan project.

Mckinnon: One of the
explanations for the hum

Is it could be nuclear testing.

In geophysical signals,

An explosion looks like a sharp jolt,

But then fades away.

And the bigger it is,
the bigger explosion is.

In order to have enough nuclear explosions

To generate a consistent hum,

We would need to be constantly
setting off nuclear weapons

All of the time.

Taos has been home also to
some very top-secret air force

And cia-related projects
from the 1950s onwards.

So it is quite possible that folks in taos

Are hearing distortions

Along the line of military technologies.

Narrator: The military uses low frequencies

For certain operations,
such as signaling submarines

And sometimes for other,
more harmful purposes.

We have lots of evidence that
sound has been used as a weapon.

In world war ii, at the
siege of stalingrad,

Russian soldiers played very
loud music against germans

In the middle of the night to
disorient and keep them up.

And then in 2017,

Canadian and american diplomats in havana

Were complaining about a frequency,

A sort of vibration sound.

Most of them likened it to the idea

Of a large diesel truck idling.

They were complaining
about disorientation generally,

And some complained
about being violently sick

And some actually were
diagnosed with some brain damage.

So people immediately assumed

That this was some sort
of intelligence operation

Being conducted by either
the cuban government,

By potentially the russian government.

These are countries which, of course,

Are generally adversarial
to western interests.

Narrator: Complicating attempts

To discover the source of the hum

Is the fact that not everyone can hear it.

And the people that don't
hear it do think we're crazy.

Sonya: We definitely heard it.

Two doors down, they heard it,

And the woman across the street heard it.

But the person who lived right beside us

Didn't experience it at all.

Mike: Right now, I'm sitting in the house.

The fridge isn't running.

Furnace isn't running, and I
can hear the hmmmmmmm.

Procter: It's hard to determine
whether or not this is real.

Is this something that is
really a natural phenomenon

Outside of them, or is it something

That's happening with
our brain and interior?

We think of the ear as picking up sounds

And being a passive receiver that hears it.

But in fact, the ear itself produces sounds

That go back to the ear

Called spontaneous otoacoustic emissions.

If frequencies are coming in

And you're producing your
own otoacoustic emission

Coming out there, you're
going to have a cycle

Where you're hearing the
sound that you're producing.

So a normal individual should
just filter out the frequency

Of whatever their own internal
emissions are producing.

But maybe that fails.

Maybe that could be part of the hum.

Narrator: Only 2% of people
worldwide can hear the hum.

Is it possible these people have
some sort of altered perception?

It's possible that the hum
is a sensory transformation,

Which is where you get a
sense in from one sense,

But you misattribute it or
process it as another sense.

You get into this idea of synesthesia,

Where people can start
tasting colors or seeing sounds.

6% or 7% of the population

Have some minor level
of synesthesia somewhere.

Narrator: In windsor, canada,
a facebook group has started

For those who can hear the sound.

The group was able to
help investigators pinpoint

A possible source of the hum.

We had a monitor that we programmed

To send us alerts any time of the day

When a certain frequency
level was detected.

We were able to coincide what we measured

To what people throughout
the city were also reporting

At the same time.

All of the evidence pointed to zug island.

Zug island is a highly industrialized

Part of the detroit
river on the detroit side.

It's got a long history
of several industries,

With the most predominant
and oldest one being u.S. Steel.

The canadian government did reach out,

And while there seemed
to be a lot of goodwill

At the bureaucratic level over in the u.S.,

They just couldn't get
private industry to cooperate.

It was dead silence.

We could not get to the island.

We're not permitted to do
measurements right on the island

Mike: Because we wanted access,

They had to put up different security.

They had to keep us off.

We had both homeland
security and the detroit police

Approach us, and there's reports

Of private security with machine guns.

Narrator: Coming up,

What is it they're doing that is so secret?

Kislenko: The refusal of
anybody associated with zug to talk

Feeds the conspiracy theory.

Narrator: For the past half century,

People around the world have been reporting

A mysterious auditory
phenomenon called the hum.

It feels like it's coming from the ground.

It's enough to shake your house at times.

Leading experts to speculate on its cause.

They may assume that it's something to do

With secret weapons or
malintent by foreign governments.

Narrator: Some residents
of windsor, canada,

Believe their hum is
coming from a steel plant

On nearby zug island.

Looking at all the
potential sources of energy

That could produce something like the hum,

The most obvious was the blast furnaces.

They could be the result of a
process that they were running

Or they're just simply having issues

With their blast furnaces.

We weren't permitted to do measurements.

So while all the evidence points to this,

It's still somewhat circumstantial.

Narrator: A veil of secrecy is
preventing further exploration.

Novak: Perhaps they're doing
something that's classified.

You think that they could
say that... "it's classified.

We can't talk about it."

Sonya: From all over the world,

People have come
specifically to research this hum.

And then they arrive
in windsor, and it's...

It ceases. It stops.

And that's frustrating
because then it makes it look

Like we're out of our
minds and it doesn't exist.

Kislenko: Zug island is one of those things

That always kind of makes me go, "hmm,"

When it comes to any
kind of conspiracy theories.

There's a sort of understandable
curiosity behind zug,

But I don't necessarily
leap right towards the idea

Of there's something secretive going on.

No major steel manufacturer

Is willing to disclose
all of its processes.

However, the sort of mysterious
comings and goings of the hum

And the refusal of
anybody associated with zug

To talk to people obviously
feeds the conspiracy theory.

In order to provide some sort
of misdirection or disinformation,

The more conspiratorial
things you let loose

About whatever the issue is,

The better the level of confusion.

It's sort of part of human curiosity.

Even a little bit of information

About something that's interesting

Or that could have a
little bit of a kick to it,

People are all over it.

Narrator: But the hum isn't
only happening in windsor.

There are hum hot spots all over the world,

Thousands of miles from zug island.

I think we know what's
causing the windsor hum,

Even though we don't have
that smoking gun in front of us.

But then you go to taos, new mexico,

And they don't have that same factory.

So what's going on there?

Narrator: Some theories
suggest that perhaps the hum

Is not a man-made phenomenon.

Mckinnon: The earth is always moving.

It isn't a static thing.

We have hundreds of earthquakes every day,

Most of them too small to feel.

We have waves crashing into the beach.

We have wind blowing the trees.
Their roots move in the ground.

All of these things can create
a pressure wave in the air

That is too low frequency
for humans to pick up,

But we monitor it in
the infrasound network.

Infrasound is defined

As that limit of human hearing and below.

Technically, you shouldn't
be able to hear the sound.

But technically, earthquake acoustic noises

Are also too low to hear.

But we've managed to pick
them up on tape recorders before.

So every now and then,
they go right up above

That 20-hertz limit into the audible range.

Narrator: Could this theory

Apply to some of the hums around the world?

Auckland, new zealand, is
on a tectonic triple junction.

It's got one plate on top,

And it has other plates
going underneath it.

This means it gets a lot of
very, very large earthquakes,

And it also gets volcanoes.

So it could very well be a sound

That could be the source that's going on.

Narrator: The area around taos, new mexico,

Has had six low-magnitude earthquakes

In the past year alone.

But there are other ideas.

Taos is on a layline.

Narrator: Laylines are based
on the much disputed theory

That ancient builders
located their structures

Based on patterns of
invisible lines of energy

Running through the planet.

And we know that ufos tend to congregate

Along those laylines.

Ufos have been reported
to have a sense of vibration

Or hum to it.

Narrator: Still, another theory suggests

That the vibrations are coming

From massive waves
crashing on the ocean floor.

Think about on the bottom of the ocean,

Just eddies and waves hitting the bottom

In a rhythmic kind of way.

And it's just enough

To be able to cause a little hmmmm

That people who have the
sensitivity are picking up.

Narrator: Some of these waves

Can be picked up by seismometers
thousands of miles away.

Mckinnon: The insight lander on mars

Has the world's most
sensitive portable seismometer.

When they were testing
it in central colorado,

They were actually picking
up the sound of the waves

In the atlantic and the
pacific at the same time.

Novak: It's something that could be viable

Because it's great amounts of energy.

And low-frequency sound
at a high-enough energy

Can travel extremely long distances

Because of the long wavelengths.

Narrator: Whether the hums
are all the same or different,

A man-made menace or natural phenomena,

The biggest mystery remains
why so few people can detect it.

For all we know,
there's a small, little gene

That in these people causes their...

Their basilar membrane in their ear

To be able to pick up a sound
at one very low frequency.

Mike: I'm keeping track of all
this on a regular basis, 24/7.

So when somebody finally says,
"well, what proof do you have?"

I've got 17 terabytes of
sound files, handwritten notes.

What do you want to hear?

Narrator: Coming up...

Frustrations were reaching their peak.

Narrator: ...In a quiet canadian town,

Citizens are being plagued
by a strange phenomenon.

This frequency was off the charts.

Now people are starting to get
super nervous because of that.

Narrator: Something mysterious and alarming

Is happening in the parking lot

Of a small-town grocery
store in alberta, canada.

We would have people
who come in and be like,

"I can't unlock my car. I
don't know what's happening."

To vehicles running and not turning off.

They couldn't start their vehicle

If it was the type of vehicle

That had a push-button start in it.

There was also car
alarms that were going off.

They were like, "oh, I
just... I hit the unlock button

And opened up my door
and the alarm went off

And it won't stop."

The first couple of times,
I didn't think anything of it.

It was about the third
time that I was like,

"okay, something weird is going on."

Carstairs is a small town
of about 4,400 people.

Very tight community. We're
the main grocery store in town.

So it's a center of the community.

Nothing ever really happens in carstairs.

So as soon as this happened,

It blew up social media everywhere.

We couldn't believe the amount of people

That were commenting on it.

Narrator: The strange reports alert

The attention of paranormal
investigator melissa wilton.

I have been following

The carstairs key fob
situation from the beginning.

Narrator: Melissa begins
an investigation in carstairs

To find out what could be
causing the abnormal situation.

I am a paranormal investigator

That takes a scientific approach.

We rely on data and evidence

That we collect rather than psychics

And things like that that you
can't verify through science.

And so we use emf detectors

Which measure electromagnetic fields.

Any electricity or energy that's put out

By basically everything in your house.

So your refrigerator, microwave, tv.

So we'll go around and take base readings.

If they spike, it might mean

That something is trying to manifest.

Narrator: While melissa
conducts her investigation

Into the paranormal possibilities,

Finding a solution is
becoming even more urgent

For store staff.

Kennedy: We paid for people
to get their vehicles towed

To a service center
and try to get it resolved.

And once they were off the
lot, it seemed to function fine.

Brown: Stephen and
I decided to test it out.

So in the parking lot,

I would attempt to lock
it and it wouldn't lock.

And then we drive a
quarter mile down the street,

And it would work fine.

We drove the truck all around the town

And tried it in a
variety of different areas

And it all led back to
right around our store.

Definitely there was something
happening in the parking lot.

Narrator: With no
explanation for the crisis,

Speculation increases.

What force is causing key fobs

To fail in the parking lot?

The fob transmits a very, very weak signal.

It's designed to be very close to the car,

And it's designed to be weak

So that your battery
would last a long time.

A malfunctioning piece
of electronics can interfere

With the fob transmission.

It could be any piece of electronics

Within a 200-meter, 300-meter radius.

Melanson: I thought that
it was our automatic door

That had, like, a haywire sensor

That was, like, sending off signals

That was messing with
everybody else in the area.

We also have a security
system within the store.

So people were
speculating that it was that.

So we called in an electrician.

We shut down all of the power to the store

And that didn't have any effect.

It's got to be something, right?

So it's like if you can't immediately

Find a solution to something,

Then your brain starts to wander.

Brown: Some of the theories
that started to come out

Was the american
military might be involved.

And then that led to, of course, aliens.

90% was aliens, that they
were hovering over this area.

I got a phone call where
somebody who very much sounded

Like a radio-show host said,

"hey, is it true

That you guys have
aliens in your parking lot?"

Kappeller: They assumed that
there was a paranormal activity.

There was all kinds of weird talk.

Paranormal activity can
suck energy from electronics

Or batteries in order to try and manifest.

If you're using a video camera,

Something paranormal
might drain the battery

And then you can catch it on film

Because it killed your battery.

Something doesn't want you filming there.

Narrator: With the mystery still unsolved,

The store widens their investigation.

Kennedy: One of our guests
was a shortwave radio operator.

So we had a directional
antenna and a laptop

With a piece of software
on it that read frequencies.

So he came in and he set
that up for us and it showed

That this particular
frequency was off the charts.

Kappeller: As soon as
they saw high frequency

That they never heard of before,

That got people going
on about conspiracies.

It's from aliens to somebody
made a homemade device

And is messing with people.

People were worried
about it affecting them.

You know, like microwaves
can cause cancer type thing.

There was actually people that claimed

They won't even drive
down main street anymore.

They actually take the long route around

To go to the post office.

Narrator: Coming up, with no answers

And a town paralyzed, events
take an even stranger turn.

These two black vehicles pull up,

And gentlemen that are in suits come out,

Carrying weird machines.

I'm like, "alright, something's
up. Something's going on."

Narrator: A mysterious force

Is plaguing the town of carstairs, canada.

Key fobs failing,
vehicles refusing to start

And car alarms wailing for no reason.

Frustrations were, I would
say, reaching their peak.

Narrator: Probes into
the puzzle are launched,

But no answers are found.

Kappeller: Any type of corridor

That they try going down was a dead end.

Now people are starting to get
super nervous because of that.

Narrator: Paranormal
investigator melissa wilton

Is looking into possible
causes for the phenomenon.

So far, I've taken some readings

Of the electromagnetic field levels.

When you have, like,
really high emf levels,

It can cause all sorts of problems.

You never really know for sure

If it's paranormal or
not until we investigate.

Narrator: While melissa

Looks into the potential paranormal causes,

The co-op staff continues
to examine other leads.

Kennedy: We have a rail line
that runs adjacent to our store.

They had placards out saying

That there have been
changes to their radio equipment

That might cause interference.

They had validated for themselves

That their equipment
was not causing the signal.

We looked at the car dealership to see

If there was anything going on there.

Kappeller: I work at two guys auto parts.

It's directly across the street from co-op.

Kennedy: They
disconnected all their batteries

And the problem persisted.

And so they were eliminated
as a possible source.

Narrator: Every local lead is followed

With no answers forthcoming from anyone.

It actually got to the point
where the entire main street

Would all shut down at the exact same time,

Shut everything down, all power,

To see if it was still going on.

Narrator: The co-op staff are baffled

And desperate for answers.

Perhaps a clue can be
found in another incident.

That year at a north carolina restaurant,

Customers were upset
that their car key fobs

Had stopped working in the parking lot.

It was discovered that
a nearby gaming house

Had used a jammer device

To interfere with radio signals
clients were using to cheat.

A jammer is usually a
high-powered transmission

That contains no information.

It's usually just noise.

And as long as the jammer is stronger

Than the desired signal,
your fob isn't going to work.

Narrator: But there are no
gaming houses near carstairs.

So what's causing the fobs to fail there?

Can the unusual
frequency of the parking lot

Be part of a bigger criminal plan?

There was one theory
that came up that potentially

There was thieves out there

That were duplicating
the signal on the fob.

Adve: So you would unlock your car.

That's a transmission the thief records.

And the thief retransmits
that same fob signal.

Your car thinks that
it's you, unlocks itself,

And the thief steals your car.

Narrator: But is it really that
easy to steal a modern car?

Now fobs don't transmit
the same thing every time,

So every time they transmit
something slightly different.

Narrator: Melissa wilton is
concluding her investigation

Into the electromagnetic
fields around the co-op.

While high levels can
indicate paranormal activity,

It could also be the cause
of a different problem.

There's something called the fear cage.

When you have a lot of
electronics around you

All the time that are putting off

These really high emf levels,

They cause people to be
paranoid or to feel afraid.

They're more prone to think
like there's ghosts, demons,

Something like that.

So we have to take that into consideration

When we're investigating.

Narrator: This doesn't appear to
be what's happening in carstairs.

The emf readings were exactly
where I would expect them to be,

Mostly baseline across the board.

They would spike around the door,

Where I would expect them
to, around the open sign,

Which puts off pretty high emf levels.

Some vehicles put a higher
emf levels from alarm systems,

But there wasn't any really crazy spikes

That I couldn't explain.

I covered all my bases,
and I don't think that

I'm going to catch any ghosts

Or anything like that, unfortunately.

Narrator: With paranormal
activity ruled out,

The store staff takes the
inquiry up another level

And calls in the canadian government.

I contacted the ministry of innovation,

Science and technology.

They have some testing equipment

To try to locate the
source of the phenomenon.

Narrator: After combing the neighborhood,

The government agents

Track the signal's
origin to a specific zone,

One that had previously been eliminated.

And all of a sudden,

You see these two black vehicles pull up,

And gentlemen that are in suits come out,

Carrying weird machines.

You know, they're very vague
about what they were doing

Because, of course, you want to ask.

They walked around our entire lot.

And once they zoned
in on it, it was a vehicle.

It was sitting on a trailer
because it needed work done

And the battery was dead.

It was like, "that's impossible.

There's no way."

Narrator: The mechanics
take the vehicle apart,

Searching for the source of the signal.

Kappeller: It took about a day and a half.

And then we finally found
something that we're like,

"hey, this doesn't belong to the vehicle."

The owner of the store, he looked at it,

He said, "that's a jammer."

The police are trying to
find out how fast you're going.

So the jammer is just sending out

This extremely strong signal.

It's like somebody shouting.

So it just overwhelms the radar.

It actually had its own battery backup.

So it was able to continue
running even though the vehicle

Was not able to run.

After it was resolved,

It was just a sigh of relief
throughout the whole store.

Kennedy: We put it out on our social media.

There was still sort
of a little bit of trolling.

"of course, it wasn't you guys.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge." right?

There's always going to be
the conspiracy theorists out there

That's not going to believe
a logical explanation.

You don't realize how many signals

Are going at any one given time.

When you see what just one
signal can do to an entire town,

You realize how powerful that is.