Strange Evidence (2017–…): Season 5, Episode 10 - Mystery of the Face Parasite - full transcript

A man sees a doctor complaining of agonizing facial pain, and when they investigate, they discover a strange parasitic species living deep in the man's nose; footage of the grisly encounter reveals what happened next.

[narrator] worldwide, 36
billion cameras are watching us

on our streets, at work,

and in our homes.

They capture things that seem impossible.

Science says this shouldn't happen.

[woman] do you see that?

[narrator] experts carry out forensic
analysis of these unusual events.

Wow, what a blast!

[people screaming]

this doesn't make sense.

[screams]



there has to be some sort of explanation.

What else is going on here?

[camera whirrs]

[narrator] coming up... [gasps] oh.

[narrator] ...Meet the face invaders.

Don't let there be more.

They're squirming around
inside of his nasal cavity.

It's making me sick just watching it.

[narrator] a ufo gives
birth over a busy airport.

Is it a bird, a plane, or
something from outer space?

[narrator] and in britain,

the beach body you don't wanna get.

Ugh!

[woman] what in the name of god is this?



I would absolutely not want to
run into this thing while it was alive.

[narrator] bizarre phenomena...

Oh, my god! [gasps]

[narrator] ...Mysteries caught on camera...

[woman screams]

what's the truth behind
this strange evidence?

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[narrator] now...

Dien bien phu, north-west vietnam.

July 5th, 2018...

A villager turns up at a clinic

complaining of agonizing pain in his nose.

A doctor moves in for a closer look.

[doctor speaking]

we see this unfamiliar
view from the endoscope.

It's a tiny, tiny little camera

that is actually going
up this gentleman's nose.

And it looks like an alien world.

[narrator] what the doctor
finds is truly horrifying.

Oh, my word.

This is the whole another degree of nasty.

[narrator] something
is alive inside his nose

they're squirming around
inside of his navel cavity.

It's making me sick just watching it.

Oh, hell no. He did not just
pull that out of this man's nose.

And he's going back in for more. Oh, no.

Don't let there be more.

Oh, god, no.

[narrator] a second
gruesome creature is removed

from the man's nasal passage.

Oh!

You can't look away. It is so disgusting.

[ashanti] this is so gross.
I feel so bad for the guy,

and the look on his face when he sees

the thing come out of his nose,

he... He looks disgusted.

[narrator] the invaders are unlike anything

the shocked doctor has seen before.

I don't even want to talk about
this. This is... This is too disgusting.

This takes me out of my comfort zone.

What are these face invaders?

And how did they get there?

[narrator] the man is a farmer

from the dense jungles of vietnam

where american gis fought the vietnam

during the vietnam war
between 1961 and 9875.

[martin] for the people who fought there,

they thought that the viet cong

and the people's army of
vietnam were the big enemies.

But mother nature was an adversary too.

[narrator] after the fighting ends,

some returning soldiers come
home with more than just medals.

Recent studies show that some
veterans are infected with liver flukes

they ingested by eating
raw or undercooked fish.

In the worst cases,

the parasitic worms
feast on the patients' livers,

causing irreparable damage to their
bile ducts and by potentially cancer.

Well, if these kind of animals
are lurking out the jungle,

who's to say that that's not
what got into to this man's body?

[narrator] when biologist
roland kays studies footage,

he thinks it's unlikely that these
horrifying nose invaders are liver flukes.

It's very unusual to see
them in the nasal cavity.

Biologist carin bondar
discovers the stomachs

of the revolting creatures
are visibly bursting with blood...

Sucked out from the
unfortunate villager's nose.

Could this be a blood-sucking leech

that's crawled up the man's nose?

Leeches are kind of a vampire bug.
And they come in all different sizes.

[narrator] over 650 different leech species

lurk in the world's waters.

Some have 10 stomachs, 32 brains,

nine pairs of testicles
and several hundred teeth.

These aquatic parasitic predators

are attracted to any kind
of movement in the water

and have evolved to sense carbon dioxide,

the signature of the presence
of a nearby living creature,

who they target, latch
on to and such their blood.

They secrete an anesthetic

so that the victims may even

feel themselves getting bitten.

And in addition, and anti-coagulant.

And that this means that the rich
blood the leeches are feasting on

will not coagulate or harden up.

It'll just keep on flowing.

[narrator] in 2008, a
65-year-old man in turkey

suffers after being
bitten by a 130 leeches.

They sucked out so much blood

that he required emergency
blood transfusions

to save his life.

So technically it's possible

that a hoard of leeches
could kill somebody.

[kevin] removing them could
mean ripping and tearing flash

as they are taken off.

Think about that one at dinner.

[narrator] but leeches
generally attach themselves

to outer parts of the body.

It's a very rare occurrence when
you find them living in a nasal cavity.

[narrator] doctors discover the man
in the footage lives in a remote village

where drinking water is
taken directly from a river.

Perhaps these leeches were
accidently ingested in a drink of water

and then migrated up into the
nose through the nasal passage.

[narrator] the leeches are probably
from a highly-specialized species

called dinobdella ferox that
purposely seek out their victims' noses.

Dr. Yite lai of the
national taiwan university

deliberately allowed them to enter his nose

to study what would happen.

He even filmed the experiment.

There's some potential danger here
because they could block his airway.

[narrator] dr. Lai found one of the
leeches stayed in nose for 75 days

and grew to 10 times its original size

as it feasted on the
veins on his nasal cavity.

Can you believe that something that big

can sit inside of your face for so long?

[narrator] finally he coaxed the leech out

with a bowl of water held under his nose.

Dr. Lai did his experiment
in laboratory conditions,

checking his health regularly.

The man in the footage

may have a had a less fortunate
encounter with a dinobdella ferox

if doctors hadn't intervened.

This is one lucky man that caught these

while they were still there.

If he has missed 'em,

they could have burrowed
right through his brain.

[narrator] the man who had two leeches
removed from his nose made a full recovery.

Next time he drinks from stream,

he should boil it, filter it

or treat it with an iodine
tablet to kill off any parasites.

Leeches are found on every continent

except for antarctica.

So who knows where
these guys might be hiding.

I will never be able to
lay down my head again,

knowing that somewhere on this planet,

there is a creature that
might crawl up my nose.

These things look like they
could suck a human dry.

[narrator] now...

The town of washington
in northern california...

November 2016...

And underground explorer investigates
a 100-year-old abandoned mine.

[explorer] okay, that's
the portal to the mine.

Let's get in here.

[narrator] the tiny tunnel
hand-dug from solid rock

is barely big enough to stand in,

and penetrates deep into
the side of a remote mountain.

[explorer] I keep hitting my head.

Oop, that was bad.

[narrator] exploring old gold mines

is an extremely dangerous pastime

and should be attempted
by anyone without expertise.

[explorer] yeah, let's
keep going straight ahead.

This is a crumbling gold mine.

Bad things could happen
in there at any time.

Does this guy wanna be buried alive?

[narrator] then... 100 feet in...

[distorted sounds]

[explorer] do you hear that?

Sounds like, uh...

Can you... I don't think you
can hear that on the camera.

[distorted sounds]

do you hear that?

That's a weird noise.

Oh, my goodness, what's that sound?

[distorted sounds]

you're in an abandoned mine,

and you hear demonic whisper,

what do you do?

-[distorted sounds] -[explorer] oh.

The whole point of an abandoned
mine is that nobody else is there.

I would just leave. I... I
would just get out of there.

[explorer] I don't know what that is.

That's crazy.

Dude, run. Don't wonder about it. Just run!

[bleep]

[narrator] fearing for his safety,

the underground explorer
attempts to escape.

[bleep]

coming up... Is this mine also a tomb?

Could serial killers or sadistic truckers

dump bodies at the abandoned mines?

[narrator] and after a nuclear accident,

a monster on a british beach.

I can't even tell if there are
limbs or where they start or stop.

This is really bizarre.

[narrator] in an abandoned gold
mine in washington, california,

an explorer flees for his
life after hearing this sound.

[distorted sounds]

these whispers are actually quite loud.

[narrator] anthropologist debra hyde

discovers the region is scarred
with over 2,800 derelict mines

in a ghoulish legacy.

Mining traditionally has been an
incredibly dangerous enterprise.

And for as many people
that walked out of that mine

with a handful of gold,

there must have been many,
many more who were killed or injured.

[narrator] over 300,000
miners migrate to california

during the gold rush at the 1840s and '50s.

One in five would die within six months.

On August 27th, 1922,

fire breaks out in the argonaut mine,

one of california's biggest gold producers.

3,000 feet underground, 47
miners are caught in the blaze.

Fire expanded, worked its
way through the mine shafts.

When there's no means of escape,

the only thing you could
hope for is a really quick death.

[narrator] many mines in
this area have seen tragedies

and many are said to be haunted.

If you're superstitious,
you could believe that

suffering miners had been down there,

that their souls were
still making these noises

and this is what we've been hearing here.

[distorted sounds]

[narrator] former fbi agent rhonda glover

analyzes the audio. She rules
out animal noises from birds or bats,

and fears the ghostly whispers
could be a person in peril.

Snaking through the u.S.
From california to new jersey

is interstate 80.

There's a stretch where there's a
bermuda triangle of missing persons.

[narrator] the 3,000 mile-long transcontinental
corridor passes through 11 u.S. States.

When it reaches the
derelict mining districts

of nevada and northern california,

the road becomes known as the big lonely.

Hundreds of bodies have been found
discarded near america's highways,

but many others have gone
missing, never to be found.

Could serial killers or sadistic truckers

being using interstate 80 to dump bodies

at the abandoned mines?

[narrator] in 2018,

murderer jerrod william baum
kills two teenagers in utah.

Their bodies are later
found in an abandoned mine

to the south of interstate 80.

Glover wonders if the
sound in the mine shaft

could be a victim of
another of the I-80's killers.

[distorted sounds]

could these creepy sounds be
the last breaths of a dying person?

Could they have been kidnapped,

beaten and left for dead in this mine?

[narrator] but science journalist
john farrow isn't convinced.

[john] these whispers,
they're actually quite loud.

And there's some force behind them.

They don't sound like
someone's last dying whispers.

[distorted sounds]

[narrator] image analyst ben radford

believes the human-like
noise could be caused by rocks

shifting above the rotten wooden beams

as the explorer's footfalls
vibrate and disturb them.

[ben] in an environment
that has these hard surfaces,

you're going to have these echoes.

When you look at the surfaces
the sound's being reflected off of,

it's rocky, it's uneven,

and so you're gonna get different
sound waves reflecting off different parts

and it's gonna be distorted.

[narrator] the weird
acoustics of the mines walls

could be transforming the warning
groans from the mine's rotten timbers

into what sounds like human voices.

With every single step,
there's an ever present threat

of being crushed under hundreds
of thousands of tons of rock.

[distorted sounds]

[explorer] it's... It's really dangerous.

[narrator] unexplained voices
and potentially deadly cave-ins

are just two reasons not to
venture into abandoned mines.

We don't know what this noise was.

It's a mystery still.

But I can tell you I'm not
gonna be the one to go explore it.

[narrator] now...

Ainsdale, northern England.

July 29th, 2020...

A woman walking by the irish sea
is confronted by a horrifying carcass.

Bones sticking out... That's huge.

What on earth could this be?

It made me almost throw up.

I was a little bit scared 'cause I
didn't know if it was definitely dead.

I couldn't tell what it was.

There were three big
bones sticking out at the top.

You could see mangled bits of
skin and what looked like hooves...

It just didn't make any
sense to me whatsoever.

[narrator] it's enormous

and seems to be a hideous
hybrid of more than one creature.

I was looking around it,
it looked like it had hair.

It was black, blue, gray... Just a
mixture of three or four different animals.

It looked like a woolly mammoth.

Could have been an
alien as far as I was aware.

Quite scary to think that
something like that could be out.

I've lived here all my life, I've
come to the beach all the time,

and I've worked here for three seasons,

and this is the strangest thing
I have ever seen in my life.

I couldn't... I still
can't make sense of it.

There are so many things
that are still unexplained.

[narrator] coming up...

Is this monster a victim of
britain's secret chernobyl?

The irish seas are toxic,
celtic, cauldron of radiation,

and who knows what mutated
creatures are swimming around in it?

[narrator] a woman walking on a british
beach finds a mysterious monster carcass.

[woman] what in the name of god is this?

Ugh! Ugh, that's disgusting. Ugh.

Holy smoke. My... That's huge.

[narrator] the beach
blob seems to be made up

of an impossible collection of body parts.

This is the size of a car
with flesh and bone in it.

Who would not be
freaked out by this, right?

Oh, I didn't want to look.

[tony] this frankenstein creature
is a mish-mash of skeleton

of blubbery skin and fat.

I mean it's impossible
to make out what it is.

I can't even tell if there are
limbs or where they start or stop.

This is really bizarre.

I can see horns, I can see
bones, ribs, you can see legs.

[narrator] it seems to
have some of the features

of animals only found on land.

And you get to those bones,
and they split like hooves.

I've seen some creatures that
would make your skin crawl,

that come out of the sea,

that are truly unique but none with hooves.

[narrator] there are farms and
cattle pastures surrounding the beach,

but this isn't a cow or a bull.

It's over 15 feet long.

Twice the length of a
standard farmyard heifer.

Why aren't there crabs and
seagulls all over this thing?

Is there something these
animals know that we don't?

One thing for sure, though,

I would absolutely not wanna
run into this thing while it was alive.

[narrator] the bizarre mash up of
land and marine features on the corpse

reminds anthropologist debra hyde

of a supernatural creature sent
to inhabit seas, rivers and lakes

in the western british isles.

[horse whinnies]

[debra] there have been stories

of a kind of creature which
has been called the water horse.

And the idea is it's a
shapeshifting creature

which can change into a horse.

In the human form, they look
like a handsome young man.

And then when he goes into his horse form,

he sits by still water and
entices people to mount his back.

When you get on the back of a water horse

you can't move. You're glued there.

The water horse will run into the water,

will drown you and you
will become his next victim.

[horse whinnies]

one has to wonder given that
this is such an unholy mess

whether or not the water
horse was in mid shape shift

when it met its end.

[narrator] marine biologist eric hovland

studies the body in detail and is horrified

to find the creature might
have a grotesque mutation.

I'm starting to see what
might be a second head.

Did we get this all wrong?

If we are truly seeing a
double-headed creature,

this is definitely one unique mutation

that we've not encountered before.

[narrator] historian tony mcmahon

discovers a nuclear plant called windscale

a hundred miles to the north

that suffered a terrible
radioactive disaster.

Windscale was producing plutonium

for the british defense industry.

So a huge fire there about 60 years ago.

[explosion]

[narrator] the fire cannot be put
out with water or carbon dioxide.

And it's only one worker's quick thinking

to shut the air supply off to the flames

that saves britain from an
even more apocalyptic explosion.

However, terrible damage
has already been done.

[tony mcmahon] as a result of that fire

a vast amount of radioactive waste ended up

in the irish sea with
calamitous consequences.

So this is one of the
most radioactively polluted

parts of any ocean in the world.

It's like britain's little mini chernobyl.

[narrator] british leader harold
macmillan downplays and classifies

reports on the disaster.

But cow's milk from farms over
300 square mile area is contaminated

with deadly radioactive iodine 131.

Quickly the order comes
for 250,000 gallons of milk

to be dumped into the sea.

But it's not enough.

The iodine 131 dust spreads
across the united kingdom.

Iodine 131 is the radioactive
element that causes thyroid cancer.

Hundreds of people and possibly more

are believed to have
been diagnosed with cancer

as a direct result of that incident.

We know that radioactivity
can cause mutations in dna,

so, of course, that question comes to mind,

is this some horrible mutant

as a result of that disaster.

[tony] the irish sea in
a fact is a toxic, celtic

cauldron of radiation and who knows

what mutated creatures
are swimming around in it.

If that's the case, that hunk of rotting
flesh could be filled with radiation.

Uh, so whoever's filming that should
get out of there pretty much immediately.

[narrator] coming up...

Atomic autopsy. Is this,
one, radioactive monster,

- or, two...
- Looks like we've got some spare parts.

What we're seeing may be
a second smaller organism.

[narrator] and a strange object

spews ufos over mexico city.

Is it a bird, a plane, or
something from outer space?

[narrator] on a british coast
ravaged by a radioactive disaster,

a bizarre beast's body
defies identification.

It didn't look unlike anything
I've ever seen before.

[narrator] but biologist
eric hovland believes

this could be a mangled mammal.

[eric hovland] if we looked closely,

we could see what's
certainly shaped like a skull,

but then perhaps,

those tusks are actually the
jawbones of this cetacean.

By cetacean, I mean a whale.

[narrator] but the strange
features of this creepy carcass

tell us a tragic tale.

There's still some
unexplained mystery here.

Let's say we could reassemble the parts,

put them in the context that
we have ourselves a whale.

Looks like we've got some spare parts.

What we're seeing may be
a second smaller organism

attached to our whale by an umbilical cord.

So this is probably a whale
that's died during childbirth

and both the mother and fetus

have died and washed up on shore.

[jayde lovell] it's possible that the
nuclear radiation that's in the water

would have affected this whale
and that can cause things like,

stillbirth and miscarriage.

[narrator] biologist jayde lovell fears

this is not the end of the
story for the human population

that live by this chernobyl by the sea.

The thing that worries me is

this area is heavily fished
for human consumption.

What is happening to humans
that are also eating these fish?

[narrator] now...

The suburbs surrounding
mexico city airport.

May 22nd, 2009.

A man filming planes captures
something weird arriving.

This passenger plane looks
like it's on a descent to land.

Just business as usual.

And then, bang!

Out of nowhere this
other object just pops up.

[narrator] it's not shaped
like a plane of a helicopter.

And as eyewitness alfredo carerro films,

it starts doing something really bizarre.

All of a sudden there's a
bunch of other little objects

kind of emanating outwardly
from the central object.

[patrick tomlinson]
what the heck is it doing?

It looks like it's dividing
or multiplying somehow.

[amy shira teitel] one unidentified
object in the sky is rude enough.

When it starts deploying
dozens of other smaller ones,

that gets really weird.

It's almost like giving
birth midair or something.

Very strange.

[amy] this thing is so close it has to be

some kind of aerospace violation.

[narrator] the footage could be
dismissed as a trick of the light

or digitally altered.

But another film emerges of the same object

shot by eyewitness pedro hernandez,

shortly after the first
and from a different angle.

Now, the smaller objects are
moving around the larger one.

The second video shows
definite similarities to the first one.

For example, there's an
object and it seems to have

smaller ones coming out on either side.

What we're seeing in these
images almost certainly is not a kite.

Um, it doesn't have
the structure of a kite.

The string is horizontal not vertical.

The objects are all lined up.

It's not characteristic of a
balloon or anything like that.

I have no idea what that could be.

Is it a bird, a plane, or
something from outer space?

[antonio paris] so some
ufo investigators, uh,

have alleged that this
is possibly a mothership

and the mothership is releasing
other surveillance drones

that are part of the mothership
to fly around kind of like scouts

and then they come back
and report to the mothership.

In fact, there have been multiple sightings

that seems to document
very similar phenomenon.

In 1956, a navy transport
air crew flying over the atlantic

reported seeing a cluster of lights
on their way into newfoundland.

The crew was stunned
to realize that the lights

were surrounding a saucer of some kind.

Outlining it over 400-foot across.

But what was telling was
that as soon as they landed,

they were greeted by suited government
officials on their way to debrief them.

It begs the question if these
sightings really are giant flying saucers,

how are they getting past our radar
and early warning systems so easily?

Some people have suggested
that these appear without warning.

That they come teleported
from some other location

or even another dimension.

[narrator] but historian martin
morgan believes this object

isn't an artifact of the war of the worlds

but more likely the war on drugs.

Cartels are becoming
more and more well-armed.

They're moving around with armored cars.

With machine guns, with anti-tank weapons.

And they're beginning
to use drones as well.

They're using drones to
carry drugs over the border

and into the united states.

They can carry 100 pounds
of drugs in a single trip.

One cartel in particular, the cjng,

have been rapidly
expanding their operations.

[indistinct radio chatter]

[narrator] the jalisco new
generation cartel known as cjng,

has taken mexico's notoriously violent

drug wars to the next level.

El mencho is their kingpin.

Also known as "the lord of the roosters,"

thanks to his reported
love of $100,000 cock fights.

El mencho is the most
wanted criminal in mexico.

By September, 2020,

his cartel had seized
control of the drug trade

in 35 us states and most of mexico.

Since 2017,

the cjng has become
notorious for their use of drones

to help conduct their business.

At this point, the cjng is thought to be

supplying up to one third of all the drugs

flowing from mexico into the united states.

Drones are the perfect drug mule.

They're cheap, expendable, and
they'll never talk to the authorities.

[narrator] multiple small drones
deploying from a mothership

are harder to catch than one big drone

carrying a huge haul of drugs.

First in 2011 and then again in 2017.

There seems to be video
footage documenting a mothership

deploying smaller craft.

Both of them happened
over the town of tijuana

right under us-mexico border.

[narrator] alfredo and pedro's
footage is captured in mexico city,

over 1,400 miles south of tijuana,

one of the drug wars frontlines.

But el mencho has recently
expanded into the mexican capital,

and with a history of using
weaponized drones to kill his enemies,

he could be planning a hit.

The potential to use drones
for, uh, nefarious reasons

is nothing new.

Uh, recently in 2018,

uh, the president of venezuela
narrowly escaped an assassination

by a drone.

[narrator] it was an event that
could have inspired the cjng

who are later caught red-handed.

In 2020, mexican police
seized multiple drones

that had been rigged with
explosives and ball bearings.

They were turned into
flying anti-personnel mines.

The nasty part is that
these drones were found

in cardboard boxes and
they were soaked in blood.

It seems that whoever built these
drones may have been their first victim.

[rhonda glover] the
cartels are learning fast.

But they're still using crude explosives

and over-the-counter technology.

What we're seeing here are more advanced.

[narrator] coming up...

Mexico city could be witnessing

aerial tech never seen before.

[patrick] it doesn't have
engine exhaust of anything else

that would make you
think it's another aircraft.

[narrator] and an indian magic wand

that has humans under its spell.

What we're seeing here
should not be happening.

It's defying the laws of physics.

[narrator] multiple witnesses
film a weird mothership like object

disgorging smaller craft
near mexico city airport.

Space journalist amy shira teitel

believes only a super
power would be capable

of unleashing this kind of technology.

The chinese, russian and us military

have all been known to
use drone swarm technology.

[narrator] ai drone swarms
are the future of modern warfare.

Like something out of
the terminator movies,

these flying killing machine

share real-time battlefield information

with the entire swarm

and then react instantly as one unit.

Recently darpa offensive
swarm-enabled tactics

demonstrated the largest use of
drone swarm technology in the world.

Imagine a swarm in the sky of
hundreds of hunter-killer drones

swooping down on you kamikaze style.

For years the mexican government
has been combatting the cartels

with the help of the us government.

Could they now be deploying drone swarms?

[narrator] but even
cutting-edge america drone tech

relies on normal
aerodynamics to achieve flight.

[patrick] it doesn't have
wings or engine exhaust

or anything else that would
make you think it's another aircraft.

There's nothing that easily explains

how this thing could be flying in the air.

[narrator] neither the
mexican or us government

claimed any knowledge of this mothership.

Until more evidence emerges

its identity will remain unknown.

We still don't know what it
was, but one thing's for sure,

we're gonna need more than a
wall to keep these invaders out.

[narrator] now, the ancient city of raipur,

central india.

August, 2018.

Film emerges of a man
with a mysterious object.

It looks like an unassuming
twisted piece of wood.

[narrator] then he puts it in a stream...

[jeff belanger] as it gets into
the water, it starts spinning.

Like a screw and it makes some sense

because the flow of water is propelling it.

[roland kays] then the guy lets go

and the spinning stick
starts moving up river.

Not down river but up river.

How is it moving against the current?

[narrator] the corkscrew shaped object

seems to move deliberately
in a spiraling motion.

[jeff] it's almost like this
thing has a will of its own

to just go up the water against the tide.

[narrator] then, like a
prop in a harry potter movie

the weird wand does
something even stranger.

Whoa!

[jeff] in another part of the clip

it's actually swimming
up a spout from water

he's pouring into a bucket.

How does he do that?

What we're seeing here
should not be happening.

It's defying the laws of physics.

[narrator] priest, wizard and witches

have been using wooden
sticks for thousand of years

to cast their spells.

In the west,

witches were said to favor wood

carved from the ash or hazel tree.

In india,

one plant was thought
to be particularly powerful.

In the hindu faith, there is a legend

of this mythical plant
called the sanjeevani.

Translated this means
"one that gives life."

and in their ancient texts
there are stories and myths

about this plant being used

to bring dead soldiers back to life.

[narrator] stories of its power come
from the fifth century bc ramayana,

one of hinduism's holiest text.

Belief in this mythical plant is so strong

that a northern indian state
has spent teams of botanists

into himalayas searching for it.

The problem is, there's no
plant with this botanic name.

And so scientist had never
been able to find the plant

and test if it actually works.

Many people believe that the
sanjeevani plant really exists.

[narrator] biologist kiki sanford

learns of another extraordinary ability

the plant is said to hold.

One that would suggest the locals in raipur

have finally found this mystical herb.

[kiki sanford] on top of
all of its healing qualities,

locals believe that this strange herb

always travels against the flow of water

and that's how they identify it.

Looking at the video and
judging how it moves in the water,

they might have found it.

What this video could be doing is

proving the miraculous
properties of sanjeevani.

[narrator] coming up...

Could an experiment by nick householder

confirm the apparent mystical qualities

of the magic wand?

We saw it spin a little bit.

Maybe we were seeing it get started.

[narrator] in raipur, central india,

video footage emerges

showing a mysterious magical wand

appearing to bend nature to its will.

He puts it in the water
and it starts spinning

which kinda makes sense with the shape.

But, as it starts going faster,

it's going upstream not down.

I don't understand how it
could be swimming upstream.

It seems to defy the laws of
physics for an inanimate object.

[narrator] engineer nick householder

believes the video could be
an unknown plant of some kind.

And wants to know if this strange
spiraling shape of this bizarre wand

could explain its apparent magical powers.

It seems like nature has evolved
this structure that's capable of

converting flowing water
into forward propulsion

allowing it to swim upstream.

The shape reminds me of
something called an archimedes screw.

A device invented
specifically to move water.

[narrator] archimedes screws
first appear over 2,000 years ago

along the nile and ancient egypt.

This incredible feat of early engineering

shifts water from a low
level to a higher level

using a simple screwing motion.

[beeps]

I'm gonna use a 3d printer
to replicate the object.

It could be possible that the
shape is what is allowing it

to go against the flow of water.

[narrator] householder
filled a large tub with water

and attaches a pump to
simulate the current of the stream

seen in the video.

Let's see if it works.

I don't see anything magical yet.

I wonder if it needs to kinda get
started before it'll really shoot off.

Oh!

We saw it spin a little bit.

Maybe we were seeing it get started

but not enough to propel itself.

[narrator] it seems nick can
get the 3d magic wand to spin,

just not spinning towards the
flow of water coming from the pump.

This experiment shows that

this spiral shape isn't gonna
swim upstream against the current.

It just can't.

It would violate the laws of thermodynamics

and physics as we know it.

Whatever's happening in that video...

...It's not this.

[narrator] householder
believes this footage

of a so-called magic wand

could be intended to deceive.

[nick householder] I think what
we're seeing is probably a fake.

There's likely someone off
camera pulling a thin string

or a piece of fishing
line that causes the root

to shoot upstream instead
of flowing backwards.

[narrator] biologist kiki sanford
discovers other examples

of mystical spiraling roots online.

They claim to be the
cure-all plant, sanjeevani.

People in areas without
access to modern medicine,

and perhaps they're poor or uneducated,

are more likely to to buy
in to these phony cures

because they really don't
have any other options.

[narrator] fake ayurvedic
treatments and practitioners

are a growing problem in india

where modern medicines and health care

can be financially out of reach.

When our doctors have
told us there's no hope,

we don't lose hope until
we've tried everything.

And if that means seeking out some root

or some mythical plant, we'll try it.

[indistinct chatter]

[narrator] every June,
thousands of asthma sufferers

travel to the city of hyderabad

to gulp down live murrel fish.

Stuffed in a yellow herbal paste,

they believe will help
them breathe more freely.

It's administered by
non-medical practitioners

who say that it's a gift from the gods.

[jeff] the scene is just epic.

I mean, you've got people
vomiting in the streets.

Children screaming. It's
just a mayhem all around.

[narrator] even if this video was
filmed as just a harmless prank,

it could be used by others
as an unscrupulous attempt

to part the gullible and
desperate from their money.

Vita-zone. Suppressing
all the medical specialist

and all the hospitals of the globe...

If I'm a snake oil salesman and I
tell you this is the sanjeevani root.

This can swim against the water

with no one touching it.

This is clearly a mythical,
magical, powerful plant.

Who knows what else it can cure.

If you see this video, you
might be ready to buy in.