Strange Evidence (2017–…): Season 5, Episode 4 - Omen of Satan's Crown - full transcript
A bizarre explosion is captured that morphs into a sinister black ring of smoke above a California football stadium; experts investigate and uncover an underground network of Satanists with connections to a string of modern-day terrorist plots.
[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.
[man] do you see that?
[narrator] experts carry out forensic
analysis of these unusual events.
Wow, what a blast!
This doesn't make sense.
There has to be some sort of explanation.
What else is going on here?
[narrator] coming up...
What's inside this woman's bulbous bump?
You half expect something to come
ripping out of her stomach, at any minute.
[narrator] are there satanic
terrorists at work in america?
There are devil worshippers in this town
and they're looking to make some mischief.
[woman] it actually looks
like the crown of satan.
[narrator] and, as jesus turns
the other cheek in mexico...
Oh, my goodness.
[narrator] ...David wallace
builds his own possessed doll.
Poor doll will never be the same again.
[narrator] bizarre phenomenon...
Oh, my god... [gasps]
[narrator] ...Mysteries caught on camera...
What's the truth behind this...
Strange evidence?
Santa clara, in california's bay area.
August 16th, 2020, 7:50 a.M.
Rochelle fernandez films
as a strange noise fills the air.
-[rochelle] well, I think he's
like, the angel... -[explosion]
[bleep]
I think something fell.
-[narrator] then... -[rochelle gasps]
[bleep]
[narrator] a sinister dark
presence rises from the ground
right next to a major sports stadium.
[rochelle] I'm uploading this to
youtube in case it's the last thing I do.
[narrator] the eyewitness
fears that something diabolical
might be behind this
mysterious ring of smoke.
[rochelle] it looks like
the crown of satan.
[narrator] it's devilish
appearance leaves experts baffled.
This is mighty weird.
It really looks like it's
lucifer's crown ascending.
[rochelle] oh, my god.
It looks like an anti-halo.
It looks like a dark, brooding halo.
[jeff] as the saying goes,
"there's no smoke without fire."
I think what we're looking at is
most likely some kind of explosion.
So it really make me
wonder, what is going on here?
Is there some force that
is shaping this smoke?
[narrator] former cia
agent, tracy walder, believes
this evil-looking explosion's
proximity to the football stadium
is an important clue.
-[explosion] -[bleep]
[rochelle] oh, [bleep] that's the stadium.
This stadium opened in
2014 and seats 68,000 people.
[narrator] venues packed
full of families and sports fans
might attract madmen with murder in mind.
Like stadiums around the world
and any place where you get
groups of people congregating,
it's gonna be a target
for many terrorist groups.
-[explosion] -[all clamoring]
[narrator] in 2015, the
stade de France in paris,
was targeted by suicide bombers
during an international soccer match.
In 2017, an islamic
extremist detonated a bomb
at the manchester arena,
ariana grande concert,
killing 23 people.
[narrator] historian, tony mcmahon,
looks for potential
perpetrators of a stadium blast,
and believes the eyewitness
may have hit the nail on the head.
[rochelle] it looks like
the crown of satan.
This area of california
really is devil worship central.
In the 1960s, somebody called anton
lavey founded the church of satan,
and not long afterwards, people
were reporting hearing strange chanting,
all sorts of devilish practices.
[narrator] another local devil worshipper
had his sight set on causing
large-scale havoc and carnage.
One prominent satanist who came
from this area was the late jack parsons.
He combined the occult
with quantum physics.
He believed that he
could control the weather,
but also had a penchant
for playing with explosives.
[narrator] walder wonders
if modern day devil devotees
are taking a page out of parson's playbook,
and could be aiming to
bring hellfire terror to california
with trademark satanic explosions.
There are devil worshippers in this town,
and they are looking to make some mischief.
[narrator] satanic terrorism is
undoubtedly a real present day danger.
It's reported that devil
worshippers in norway,
were behind the destruction
of 50 churches in the country.
A satanist in london, harry vaughn,
was caught posting
bomb-making manuals in 2020.
Football stadiums in america
are often used for
christian worship gatherings,
making them potential
targets for a satanic killer.
These people with their deranged beliefs
can cause actual, real
mayhem in the physical world.
[narrator] journalist, jeff
wise, finds a satanic cult
called the order of nine angles,
sweeping up misfits and
loners in american suburbs.
Like a demonic isis,
it bombards them with messages to
embark on fiery anti-christian crusades.
[jeff] and if you're a neighbor, you
might harbor legitimate concerns.
They're gonna set off
some kind of explosion.
-[explosion] -[bleep]
[rochelle gasps]
[narrator] but physicist, chad
orzel, spots a detail in the clip
that seems to rule out
a terrorism scenario.
This explosion took place
at 7:50 in the morning
when there was nobody in the stadium.
So this is unlikely to be a terror attack.
[rochelle] look at that.
[narrator] physicist, athena
brensberger, examines the footage
for clues to this sinister smoke's source.
[athena] as it rises up
into the atmosphere,
there's this strong
concentration of a circle
that stays really dark.
[narrator] brensberger believes,
the distinctive ring shape
is the key to solving the mystery.
[athena] from an engineering perspective
it looks like it came out of some
type of pipe or a cylindrical object,
because of the fact that
it's shaped like an "o."
[narrator] jeff wise
discovers that on game day
the stadium consumes more
electricity than 2,000 homes combined.
Cylindrical transformers
surround the stadium.
[jeff] one of the things it could be,
is an explosion of a substation.
[narrator] electricity arrives in
substations at dangerously high levels.
Up to 750,000 volts.
Metal coils and magnetic
fields within transformers
convert this high voltage
to a lower voltage electricity.
[jeff] there's a lot of electrical
energy in a substation
and if the equipment fails,
it can really fail catastrophically
and create an explosion.
-[explosion] -[bleep]
[rochelle gasps]
[bleep]
[narrator] matt kutcher is a hollywood
pyrotechnics and ballistics expert
with over two decades experience.
He wants to find out if
an exploding transformer
could form this spooky smoke ring.
What we're gonna have to do
is to see if a transformer
that's completely malfunctioned
makes this kind of effect.
Inside the transformer is a mineral oil
that's trying to keep the transformer cool.
Sometimes it fails.
And when it fails, it explodes.
And when it does, it sends
that oil straight up into the air.
And that oil burning and rolling
is what's gonna create that ring
that we see flying through the sky.
And that's what we're gonna test.
[narrator] kutcher creates a scaled replica
of a transformer outside the stadium.
[matt] so we're basically replicating
the actual diameter and shape
and size of the transformer.
And we're adding roughly the same
amount of petroleum product to it.
Let's go ahead and start to pour.
[narrator] kutcher will also replicate
the massive electrical discharge
that would be seen
in a transformer failure.
Obviously, we don't
have the entire power grid
to make a massive spark of electricity.
So we're gonna have to add
our own little bit of electric spark
with this explosive.
Now that we've got the oil inside,
the petroleum based product
inside the motor, yeah?
We'll go ahead and place
the explosive, get clear
and see if we can make that ring appear.
[narrator] kutcher gets
ready to unleash hellfire.
Here we go. One attempt
at a ring of satan, gentlemen.
[narrator] coming up...
Can matt make a circle of hell?
Three, two, one... Action!
[narrator] and, what's
growing inside this woman?
If she's pregnant,
she's having the freakiest
baby known to man.
[narrator] a demonic ring
rises above the californian sky.
[rochelle] it actually looks
like the crown of satan.
[narrator] engineer and
pyrotechnics expert, matt kutcher,
believes a faulty power
transformer might be the cause
of this weird circle of hell.
Inside the transformer is a mineral oil
that's trying to keep the transformer cool.
And sometimes it fails.
And when it fails, it explodes.
[narrator] and he's created
an experiment to test his theory.
-All right, so are you ready? -I'm ready.
Let's try to blow a transformer.
Three, two, one... Action!
[narrator] the charge
ignites the transformer oil,
sending a massive fireball into the air.
The team holds their breath
as they wait to see if a ring forms.
[matt] it's starting to ring.
The ring of satan, ladies and gentlemen.
[narrator] side by side we can see
the ring of smoke created by kutcher
matches santa clara's crown of satan.
[matt] to me, it's clear it was
a transformer that exploded.
It gave us this eerie smoke ring
that went up into the sky.
[narrator] physicist, athena brensberger,
believes a lightning strike
caused the transformer to explode.
When this footage was taken,
it was during one of the worst
storms ever seen in the bay area.
-[explosion] -[bleep]
[rochelle] oh! [bleep]
[narrator] the average
us substation transformer
contains 45,000 gallons of mineral oil.
When lightning strikes,
this oil turns into a high
pressure explosive vapor
that tears the transformer open,
spreading shrapnel and a 2,000
degree fireball over a wide area.
[david] I've worked for
a transformer company
and we had one of them
that when it exploded,
we actually found parts
one mile away from there.
[narrator] anyone caught in the blast
zone is likely to be broiled and shredded.
-[explosion] -[bleep]
[rochelle] oh! [bleep]
[narrator] if this transformer
explosion by the stadium
had occurred later on a game day,
there could have been
hundreds of casualties.
You get to a point where if substations
are exploding, it's killing people,
this is a terrible state to be in.
[rochelle] oh, my god.
[narrator] now, anshun,
in the rural province of southwest china.
August, 2020.
Footage emerges of a chinese
woman with a belly full of trouble.
[karen] this is sort of
physically painful to watch.
It's this grossly distended belly
on a teeny-tiny asian woman.
Her stomach is so large and the
skin looks stretched so thin over her,
it almost looks like she's about to burst.
[george] you can see these blue veins
like spiderwebs coursing
their way across her abdomen.
[narrator] the woman's
name is huang guoxian.
She is 36 years old, a
mother of two children,
and her lump makes up more
than a third of her total body size.
And is still growing.
I've seen plenty of people
with big tummies in my time,
but really, this is something else.
[greg] it almost looks like
something from a horror film.
You half expect something to come
ripping out of her stomach, at any minute.
[narrator] explorer, george kourounis,
thinks the cause of the bulbous bulge
could be a problematic pregnancy.
This doesn't look like a woman who
has just a regular large pregnancy.
If she's pregnant,
she's having the freakiest
baby known to man.
[narrator] the average baby
weighs around seven pounds,
but freakishly big babies
have been born before.
The biggest was delivered in ohio in 1879.
The largest baby ever
born that we have on record
was a boy named babe.
He was 22 pounds and 28 inches long.
His mother, anne bates,
apparently gushed out
six gallons of fluid when her water broke.
With that enormous baby, you
have to take into consideration
that the parents, both parents,
were nearly eight feet high.
[narrator] babe's mom and pop were
two victorian era circus performers,
anna henning swan and
martin van buren bates,
a hero of the american civil war.
They were the tallest
couple ever to get married.
She was 7'11 ", he was 7'9".
But this woman in china,
she's tiny she's petite.
A baby the size of babe being
born to a woman that small
just doesn't make genetic sense.
[narrator] and the lump inside her
stomach, weighs over 44 pounds,
twice as heavy as babe.
There's no way that she's going to
be giving birth to a baby that large,
even if her husband was
the tallest guy in the nba.
[narrator] but petite women
have given birth to multiple babies.
In 2009, nadya suleman from fullerton,
california, earned the nickname octomom,
when she became the first woman
ever to give birth to eight babies
that have survived into infancy.
But even octomom's eight babies
only had a combined weight of 20 pounds.
If she's pregnant, I wonder
how man kids she's carrying.
[narrator] but examination
of guoxian's medical records
indicates the swelling
began over two years ago.
Ruling out pregnancy,
and indicating something very
troubling is growing inside her.
[amy] doctors have no idea what's going on.
If you don't know what the issue
is, you don't know how to treat it.
But that also means you don't know
how to deal with the potential
of it spreading to other people,
which makes the whole
situation very serious.
[narrator] coming up...
Historians find a deadly curse
plights this woman's village.
Is it possible that this woman was poisoned
by the dead?
[narrator] and, is jesus watching you?
Statues don't do that.
At least they're not supposed to.
[narrator] a woman with a
grotesquely swollen belly
appears on film in china.
Historian, tony mcmahon,
suspects that a local tradition
might have caused
huang guoxian's condition.
There's a practice in this area
where they put their dead
into log-shaped coffins
and pile them up in caves in the hillsides,
and these bodies then rot, decompose
releasing the spirits, they
believe, into the heavens.
[narrator] this burial rite
occurs on an industrial scale.
In one cave alone, there's more than
500 coffins stacked one atop the other
in various stages of decay.
[narrator] the caves are formed
by water coming out of the rock.
These springs become streams
that flow down into the rivers
passing hundreds of towns and
villages on their way to the sea.
If any of these bodies
have infectious diseases,
could this come out of those bodies,
go into the water supply and
cause what we're seeing here?
Is it possible that this woman
was poisoned by the dead?
[narrator] but no similar reports
of mysterious stomach swellings
have been recorded in the region.
If water poisoning were the
cause of this strange stomach,
it would stand to reason that
she wouldn't be the only one
presenting with these
really weird symptoms.
[narrator] scientists continue to conduct
numerous tests on huang guoxian.
Their best guess is, she has
some sort of rapid cancerous growth.
But it isn't behaving like
a typical malignant tumor.
They are unable to determine
what caused this condition,
and they fear she will have
to live with it into old age.
[karen] the most disturbing
thing about this footage
is how does anybody propose
to alleviate the situation?
If this appalling thing could happen to
this woman, it could happen to anybody.
It's a medical mystery
that needs to be solved.
[narrator] now, tepito,
a suburb of mexico city,
the biggest metropolis in north america.
March 2010, 3:57 a.M.
A security camera watches
a set of religious icons...
[man] so this is a spooky scene.
It's nighttime and this
camera is filming this shrine.
[steve] looks like it's on a mantelpiece
and there's a small-figured
jesus on the cross.
It's really intense. It's almost like
something from a horror movie.
You expect something to jump out at you.
[narrator] then, the figure of
jesus seems to come to life.
Oh, my goodness.
Did that head just move?
Oh, my god!
The head moved!
The figure depicting
jesus is moving its head.
[narrator] local people believe
this video is a divine message.
But experts suspect that something
more sinister might be at work.
Statues don't do that. At
least they're not supposed to.
There's some force here,
interacting, causing this thing to move.
So what is going on?
[narrator] image analyst, ben radford,
turns his attention to the other
figures on the shrine in the film,
and notices another odd movement.
The other thing that
happens in this video is that
this taller figure to the left
moves just slightly to the right,
towards the viewer,
so then it looks like that.
It's a subtle shift but
it's a noticeable one.
[narrator] social
anthropologist, deborah hyde,
recognizes the second moving statue
is a symbol of the dark
side of modern mexico.
The larger figure, which looks
like a sort of a skeletal woman
that's the figure of santa muerte,
who is a kind of angel of death.
[narrator] today, santa muerte worship
is said to be the fastest
growing religion in the americas,
with over ten million
followers in mexico alone.
[deborah] this new religious
movement has accompanied people
who engage in all
sorts of illegal activities.
People who have to accommodate themselves
to the idea of death
and violence every day.
[narrator] former fbi agent, rhonda glover,
thinks this shrine was set
up and filmed deliberately
to send out a sinister message.
[rhonda] the cult of santa muerte
is something that's been
developed through the drug gangs
to project fear and bring about control.
So, maybe the drug cartel's
created this video as a trick
to terrify the locals.
[narrator] santa muerte is the drug
cartel's patron saint and goddess
rolled into one.
The cartels have turned death, torture and
human sacrifice into a part of their business.
We're hearing cases of children
finding dismembered bodies
on their way to school.
It's not even an uncommon sight to
see bodies strung up from bridges.
So now there's this growing presence of
death and fear brought about by the narcos.
[narrator] the purpose
of these grisly murders
is not just to win territory from rivals,
it's to inspire terror and awe
in the mexican population.
Faking supernatural
events could very well be
a new psychological tactic by the narcos.
[narrator] the film of
christ and santa muerte
mysteriously moving on a shrine
could shock locals into believing
in the power of the
drug lords' favorite saint.
They're smart. They understand the grip
that religious iconography has on people.
So could be that they're trying to
capitalize on that as much as possible.
This could be a new
front to the narco wars.
[narrator] but author, patrick tomlinson,
believes if the cartels were behind this,
we'd be witnessing something far bigger.
The cartels are known for their very
public displays of violence and death
to instill fear in the population.
But this is taking place in a private
home in the middle of the night.
I think this is probably too
low key to be the narcos.
Someone or something else is responsible.
[narrator] coming up...
Is this a miracle or a prophecy of doom?
This is a bad situation.
You're living in a place that's
fixing to become a blazing inferno.
[narrator] and, the crawling dead.
Are zombie insects stalking missouri?
This thing should be dead and motionless.
Yet, here it is crawling along.
[narrator] eerie cctv footage
captures a figure of christ on the cross
turning his head to face us.
Electrical engineer, david wallace,
looks for a rational explanation
for this bizarre movement.
He believes lethally dangerous
flaws in the local power supply
could be behind this.
In mexico, what they have
is a scenario where the city
is fed through high voltage power lines,
and they have the lines running everywhere.
Now, if a person wants to get some power,
what he does is, take a
little line with a hook on it,
connect it to that line, you got
power coming into your house.
Free power.
But the problem with this, if you
do it wrong, you become dead.
You get electrocuted.
[narrator] mexicans use electricity
to light up their religious displays.
It's common in latin countries to have
electrically powered statues and shrines.
From neon virgins to flickering candles.
It's possible that we have figurines
that actually have wires running through.
And if you get this over voltage or
over currents flowing through your wires
it's gonna heat up, causing
materials inside the figurines
to heat up and possibly start melting.
[narrator] wallace wants to know if
dangerously overheating electrical wires
is what is causing the statue of
jesus to behave as though it's alive.
So here we have a copper wire that we're
going to be using to generate the heat.
I'll just bring our figurine into place.
So here we have our thermal imager,
which we'll use to determine
how much heat's being generated.
[beeps]
okay, let's start raising the current.
Let's see if we can get
a little heat going here.
All right, we're starting to
go up there. It's 80 degrees.
Right, 90 degrees.
-Bump it up. -[clattering]
all right let's go up a little quicker.
[beeping rapidly]
we're starting to see a little smoke
come off of the surface.
The temperature's up.
Yep, there it goes. We're
starting to get a little melting.
So here we are at 500
degrees, look at this.
Our head is starting to droop
down. The plastic is melting.
Look right here.
We actually got some burn
marks, a little bit, on the material,
but the whole area is soft.
It's melted down, the head is drooped.
Poor doll will never be the same again.
So if this is the case that you have,
where you actually got faulty wiring
that can cause dolls to
melt inside your house,
this is a bad situation.
You're living in a place that's
fixing to become a blazing inferno.
[narrator] wallace's experiment
might explain how christ's head turns,
but it can't explain how the figure
of santa muerte shifts on the shrine.
And for many locals, this eerie
footage continues to be seen
either as proof of religious miracles
or perhaps a warning of divine retribution.
[steve] I'll be honest,
if the angel of death
was shifting like that in my house,
I'd be burning my house down.
[narrator] now, jefferson city, missouri.
September 1st, 2017, 8:30 a.M.
Local resident, forrest lindsey,
spots something disturbing
emerging from the undergrowth.
When you look closer at this bug,
it's completely hollowed out.
There's no internal organs,
there's nothing that can
justify why it's moving.
[narrator] without a heart pumping
blood or trachea to breathe,
the creature is still somehow
walking across the ground.
This is gross and
fascinating at the same time.
It's literally a zombified cicada.
[roland] this thing should
be dead and motionless.
Yet, here it is crawling along.
How can this be?
[narrator] a cicada
body, like a human body,
contains a heart, breathing
apparatus, and a digestive system.
All thought to be vital for life.
With all these gone, the
cicada is still somehow
operating it's legs and moving forward.
[leslie] in this clip, you can
see that the head still is intact.
Which suggests that
the brain is still functional.
[narrator] brains are the
most complex part of the body,
both, in insects and in humans.
Brains use 20% of all the energy taken in,
and need a constant supply of
oxygen and glucose to function.
And it appears that in a lab,
as long as the brain gets
these two vital ingredients,
it seems to be able to live by itself.
Scientists can actually make brains
work, without the body even being present.
[narrator] in April, 2019,
connecticut scientists revived the brains
of 32 pigs, four hours after they died,
even though the pigs bodies had been
chopped up in a new haven slaughterhouse
and turned into meat.
Which is sort of starting to give us
a new and a different understanding
about what exactly does it mean to be alive
and what does it means to be dead.
[narrator] if pig's brains can survive
when their bodies are nothing but bacon,
and as this footage appears to show,
an insect can survive with just a head,
scientists are asking if human brains
can successfully be removed from one body
and placed inside another new body.
A brain transplant.
[leslie] for this operation to be
successful, the brain has to remain alive,
while it's waiting to be
switched to the other body.
But many are skeptical that
the brain in a jar can remain alive.
But this footage, it seems to show that
it might actually be possible.
[narrator] but a brain in a
different body could go insane
from the chemical imbalances it encounters,
transforming the host
into a rampaging beast
driven by an uncontrollable psychotic rage.
Critics of the surgery, warn that there
could be really terrible consequences,
and that the pain and suffering
might be worse with a new body
than they were with their original one.
[narrator] coming up...
Did the thing that ate this bug
keep it's brain alive on purpose?
The insect has been totally
taken over by something terrifying.
[narrator] and, has a creepy cave
crawler escaped from an underground vault?
Just imagine all the lights go out, you're
trapped in that cave with that thing.
And it can see in the dark.
[man] do you see that?
[narrator] a cicada is filmed
apparently alive and walking,
despite its body missing
its internal organs.
[narrator] biologist, carin
bondar, believes this insect's brain
might have been horrifically hijacked.
[carin] the body shape of the
cicada is still relatively intact
it's possible it's been
eaten from the inside out.
[narrator] the cicadas in jefferson
share their surroundings with one of
the world's most sinister parasitic fungi,
known as massospora.
The parasitic fungus eats
away at the cicada's abdomen,
creating a large mass of fungal spores.
[narrator] the fungus
feasts on the internal organs
but leaves the brain intact to
do the fungus's horrific bidding.
Male cicadas that are
infected with this fungus,
become kind of like undercover zombies
with a very sinister plan.
The males that are
infected with the fungus.
Do specific female wing flick movements,
so that when unsuspecting
males arrive to mate with them,
they get infected with the fungus instead.
The insect has been totally
taken over by something terrifying.
What we're seeing here is
known as active host transmission,
where the parasite controls the brain,
and thus, the entire body of the host,
and ends up using this
zombified body as transportation.
[narrator] the movement
we see in the footage,
is not the cicada miraculously walking
despite the loss of
all its internal organs.
It's the fungus instructing the
brain to pull on its leg muscles,
jerkily piloting the
remains of the creature,
towards a new victim.
At this point, the cicada no longer exists.
It is simply, a zombie of
the fungus that's controlling it.
My fear is that, if this
condition exists in bugs,
can it make its way to humans?
[narrator] scientists don't know
exactly how the fungus controls the brain,
but it could do it by
creating an hallucination
in the dying mind of the cicada
that alters its perception of reality.
[roland] scientists have
been studying this parasite,
and in a terrifying revelation,
have found that the zombifying chemicals
that causes this unnatural
behavior in the cicadas,
is psychoactive in humans
and actually can cause hallucinations.
[narrator] all of the
reality we experience,
is an illusion.
An approximation of the world
fed to us by our five senses
and then interpreted by the brain.
If a malevolent fungus
took over our brains,
it could twist the hallucination
to make us see the world
in a completely different way.
A way that serves its
ends, rather than ours.
This is potentially terrifying news.
Because, if humans come
in contact with the fungus,
scientists really don't
know what will happen.
Any world-changing
pandemic could begin this way.
The zombie apocalypse is
something we usually leave
to the science-fiction world in the movies.
But, this video shows,
it could really happen.
[growls]
[narrator] now, dachstein
krippenstein, in europe's austrian alps.
June 20th, 2009.
Deep in the woods of dachstein, austria.
[pants] we got to go all the way up there.
[narrator] an adventurous
american tourist and his wife,
are exploring the
dachstein giant ice cave...
These tourists are enjoying their holiday,
just checking out the magnificent cave.
- [man] cool or what?
- [woman] I'm getting...
[man] down too far.
[narrator] ...When they
have a chilling encounter.
[woman] [bleep] what is that?
[man] do you see that?
It's climbing up the wall!
[deborah] it's kind of
difficult to make out.
This looks like a humanoid-type creature,
except it's a very peculiar color.
It's sort of iridescent glowing
bluey-whitey kind of a color.
[lindsay] I've never seen something
move so quickly up a steep surface.
Whatever it is, that thing is strong.
[narrator] it's not a frog, it's not a bat.
They'd be immobile in the ice.
What is this strange creature?
Where did it come from?
[man] oh, my god!
Just imagine, all the lights go out,
you're trapped in that
cave with that thing.
And it can see in the dark.
[man] where'd it go?
[narrator] coming up...
Are local legends of a
flesh-eating ice-monster true?
[lyle] it is said to be
part dragon and part cat.
All the most cunning and vicious animals,
all rolled into one.
[narrator] american tourists
encounter an eerie creature,
scaling the walls of a
frozen austrian cave.
These ice caves are located thousands
of feet above sea-level in the alps.
Their passageways are
dominated by huge blocks of ice,
formed naturally, as water
seeps from the mountains above
and freezes in the
cold air of their caverns.
Behind the walls of ice,
are hundreds of miles of rock tunnels,
leading deep under the mountains.
Most of which, have never been explored.
These ice caves are referred to
as the gateways to hell.
And maybe, it's not surprising,
maybe local people have gone
in there and simply not returned.
Maybe they've had an
accident or they've drowned.
[narrator] or, as this footage suggests,
encountered something
unknown, living in the cave.
[tony] caves are rather
like the deepest oceans,
of places which are in
effect the last frontiers
for us to find new life forms
that we know nothing about.
[narrator] in 2016, croatian scientists
discovered 30 new species of animals
living in the caves in the
sibenik-knin national park.
[ashanti] when you think about the
kinds of things that could live in a cave,
over time, they could absolutely
evolve and become something else.
[man] [bleep] what is
that? Do you see that?
[narrator] in 1981, an entirely
new species, the remipede,
is discovered in a cave in the bahamas.
It shocked scientists
because it's a venomous killer,
able to take down prey
much larger than itself.
And when we look at this footage
and see this curious
thing climbing up the wall,
maybe our ancestors had a point,
that they knew that caves could
be where terrifying being resided.
Could this be the first footage
of an undiscovered species?
[narrator] social
anthropologist, deborah hyde,
finds there are reports of
a terrifying unknown animal
said to live in the caves
of these mountains.
There's a local legend of a
creature called the tatzelwurm,
which means claw-worm.
[narrator] descriptions
of the tatzelwurm vary.
But it's often said to have clawed legs,
a cat-like head,
and is extremely aggressive towards humans.
All the most cunning and vicious animals,
all rolled in to one.
[snarls]
in one account, a man was
said to have died of a heart attack,
after he was confronted
by two tatzelwurm s.
[narrator] reports of tatzelwurm
encounters go back centuries.
But they may not be mere legends.
In 1954, a swiss photographer,
claimed to have captured a
photo-image of one of these creatures.
[narrator] while the creature
captured in the footage
doesn't match any of the reported
descriptions of the tatzelwurm,
local folklore suggests these caves
are home to other mysterious creatures.
To locals, who already
know about the tatzelwurm,
you can see why a creature
like this scaling the wall,
would be interpreted in that light.
[narrator] but when
image-analyst, ben radford,
zooms in on the weird wall climber,
he focuses on the limb movement,
and doubts it's any kind of beast.
So, here's where we first
start seeing the creature.
And it appears to be climbing
the walls of this ice cave.
So, if it really is an animal,
its doing an amazing
job of climbing this ice.
No four-limbed creature
can climb ice like that.
Almost like gollum in lord of
the rings or something, sort of...
Give this sort of lurching thing.
So, the figure appears to be human-like.
It seems to be human.
[tony] it almost moves like a mountaineer.
You know, grabbing on to the
rocks as it goes with all limbs.
But, why would someone risk their
life to scale the walls of this ice cave?
[man] oh, my god!
[narrator] the ice in the dachstein
cave increases over the winter months,
and then melts away slightly in the summer.
Rock tunnel entrances
concealed behind the ice walls
emerge briefly at this time of year.
They would make a perfect
hiding place for looted treasure.
[tony] during the closing
stages of world war ii,
the nazis squirreled away a
massive amount of gold bullion
and also art treasures, into caves
and into tunnels and mountains.
And could it be that
what we're seeing here,
is somebody who's moving around,
looking for some of that treasure.
[narrator] the nazis stole over $600
million in gold from across europe.
And many historians believe they
hid large quantities of it in this region,
which ss leader, heinrich himmler,
described as their alpine fortress.
[martin] germans are
known to have hidden things,
all of the gold bullions
from the reich's bank,
and a massive pile of artwork.
There's still missing art,
there's still missing gold,
and those things might
be found in the rocks.
This cave system is intricate and huge,
and it's exactly the kind of place
that the nazis would've stored
away their stolen treasure.
[narrator] but many who have
ventured deep into these alpine caves,
have met a grisly end.
In February, 2019,
a hungarian climber
went missing in the alps.
[man screams]
[narrator] it wasn't until
August of the same year,
that his crushed body was
discovered deep inside an ice cave.
Experts fear that a similar fate
might await this cave crawler.
[ashanti] this cave is huge,
and these tourists are standing
on the very edge of a cliff.
So, if this person falls,
they're going to plummet at least 100-feet.
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.
[man] do you see that?
[narrator] experts carry out forensic
analysis of these unusual events.
Wow, what a blast!
This doesn't make sense.
There has to be some sort of explanation.
What else is going on here?
[narrator] coming up...
What's inside this woman's bulbous bump?
You half expect something to come
ripping out of her stomach, at any minute.
[narrator] are there satanic
terrorists at work in america?
There are devil worshippers in this town
and they're looking to make some mischief.
[woman] it actually looks
like the crown of satan.
[narrator] and, as jesus turns
the other cheek in mexico...
Oh, my goodness.
[narrator] ...David wallace
builds his own possessed doll.
Poor doll will never be the same again.
[narrator] bizarre phenomenon...
Oh, my god... [gasps]
[narrator] ...Mysteries caught on camera...
What's the truth behind this...
Strange evidence?
Santa clara, in california's bay area.
August 16th, 2020, 7:50 a.M.
Rochelle fernandez films
as a strange noise fills the air.
-[rochelle] well, I think he's
like, the angel... -[explosion]
[bleep]
I think something fell.
-[narrator] then... -[rochelle gasps]
[bleep]
[narrator] a sinister dark
presence rises from the ground
right next to a major sports stadium.
[rochelle] I'm uploading this to
youtube in case it's the last thing I do.
[narrator] the eyewitness
fears that something diabolical
might be behind this
mysterious ring of smoke.
[rochelle] it looks like
the crown of satan.
[narrator] it's devilish
appearance leaves experts baffled.
This is mighty weird.
It really looks like it's
lucifer's crown ascending.
[rochelle] oh, my god.
It looks like an anti-halo.
It looks like a dark, brooding halo.
[jeff] as the saying goes,
"there's no smoke without fire."
I think what we're looking at is
most likely some kind of explosion.
So it really make me
wonder, what is going on here?
Is there some force that
is shaping this smoke?
[narrator] former cia
agent, tracy walder, believes
this evil-looking explosion's
proximity to the football stadium
is an important clue.
-[explosion] -[bleep]
[rochelle] oh, [bleep] that's the stadium.
This stadium opened in
2014 and seats 68,000 people.
[narrator] venues packed
full of families and sports fans
might attract madmen with murder in mind.
Like stadiums around the world
and any place where you get
groups of people congregating,
it's gonna be a target
for many terrorist groups.
-[explosion] -[all clamoring]
[narrator] in 2015, the
stade de France in paris,
was targeted by suicide bombers
during an international soccer match.
In 2017, an islamic
extremist detonated a bomb
at the manchester arena,
ariana grande concert,
killing 23 people.
[narrator] historian, tony mcmahon,
looks for potential
perpetrators of a stadium blast,
and believes the eyewitness
may have hit the nail on the head.
[rochelle] it looks like
the crown of satan.
This area of california
really is devil worship central.
In the 1960s, somebody called anton
lavey founded the church of satan,
and not long afterwards, people
were reporting hearing strange chanting,
all sorts of devilish practices.
[narrator] another local devil worshipper
had his sight set on causing
large-scale havoc and carnage.
One prominent satanist who came
from this area was the late jack parsons.
He combined the occult
with quantum physics.
He believed that he
could control the weather,
but also had a penchant
for playing with explosives.
[narrator] walder wonders
if modern day devil devotees
are taking a page out of parson's playbook,
and could be aiming to
bring hellfire terror to california
with trademark satanic explosions.
There are devil worshippers in this town,
and they are looking to make some mischief.
[narrator] satanic terrorism is
undoubtedly a real present day danger.
It's reported that devil
worshippers in norway,
were behind the destruction
of 50 churches in the country.
A satanist in london, harry vaughn,
was caught posting
bomb-making manuals in 2020.
Football stadiums in america
are often used for
christian worship gatherings,
making them potential
targets for a satanic killer.
These people with their deranged beliefs
can cause actual, real
mayhem in the physical world.
[narrator] journalist, jeff
wise, finds a satanic cult
called the order of nine angles,
sweeping up misfits and
loners in american suburbs.
Like a demonic isis,
it bombards them with messages to
embark on fiery anti-christian crusades.
[jeff] and if you're a neighbor, you
might harbor legitimate concerns.
They're gonna set off
some kind of explosion.
-[explosion] -[bleep]
[rochelle gasps]
[narrator] but physicist, chad
orzel, spots a detail in the clip
that seems to rule out
a terrorism scenario.
This explosion took place
at 7:50 in the morning
when there was nobody in the stadium.
So this is unlikely to be a terror attack.
[rochelle] look at that.
[narrator] physicist, athena
brensberger, examines the footage
for clues to this sinister smoke's source.
[athena] as it rises up
into the atmosphere,
there's this strong
concentration of a circle
that stays really dark.
[narrator] brensberger believes,
the distinctive ring shape
is the key to solving the mystery.
[athena] from an engineering perspective
it looks like it came out of some
type of pipe or a cylindrical object,
because of the fact that
it's shaped like an "o."
[narrator] jeff wise
discovers that on game day
the stadium consumes more
electricity than 2,000 homes combined.
Cylindrical transformers
surround the stadium.
[jeff] one of the things it could be,
is an explosion of a substation.
[narrator] electricity arrives in
substations at dangerously high levels.
Up to 750,000 volts.
Metal coils and magnetic
fields within transformers
convert this high voltage
to a lower voltage electricity.
[jeff] there's a lot of electrical
energy in a substation
and if the equipment fails,
it can really fail catastrophically
and create an explosion.
-[explosion] -[bleep]
[rochelle gasps]
[bleep]
[narrator] matt kutcher is a hollywood
pyrotechnics and ballistics expert
with over two decades experience.
He wants to find out if
an exploding transformer
could form this spooky smoke ring.
What we're gonna have to do
is to see if a transformer
that's completely malfunctioned
makes this kind of effect.
Inside the transformer is a mineral oil
that's trying to keep the transformer cool.
Sometimes it fails.
And when it fails, it explodes.
And when it does, it sends
that oil straight up into the air.
And that oil burning and rolling
is what's gonna create that ring
that we see flying through the sky.
And that's what we're gonna test.
[narrator] kutcher creates a scaled replica
of a transformer outside the stadium.
[matt] so we're basically replicating
the actual diameter and shape
and size of the transformer.
And we're adding roughly the same
amount of petroleum product to it.
Let's go ahead and start to pour.
[narrator] kutcher will also replicate
the massive electrical discharge
that would be seen
in a transformer failure.
Obviously, we don't
have the entire power grid
to make a massive spark of electricity.
So we're gonna have to add
our own little bit of electric spark
with this explosive.
Now that we've got the oil inside,
the petroleum based product
inside the motor, yeah?
We'll go ahead and place
the explosive, get clear
and see if we can make that ring appear.
[narrator] kutcher gets
ready to unleash hellfire.
Here we go. One attempt
at a ring of satan, gentlemen.
[narrator] coming up...
Can matt make a circle of hell?
Three, two, one... Action!
[narrator] and, what's
growing inside this woman?
If she's pregnant,
she's having the freakiest
baby known to man.
[narrator] a demonic ring
rises above the californian sky.
[rochelle] it actually looks
like the crown of satan.
[narrator] engineer and
pyrotechnics expert, matt kutcher,
believes a faulty power
transformer might be the cause
of this weird circle of hell.
Inside the transformer is a mineral oil
that's trying to keep the transformer cool.
And sometimes it fails.
And when it fails, it explodes.
[narrator] and he's created
an experiment to test his theory.
-All right, so are you ready? -I'm ready.
Let's try to blow a transformer.
Three, two, one... Action!
[narrator] the charge
ignites the transformer oil,
sending a massive fireball into the air.
The team holds their breath
as they wait to see if a ring forms.
[matt] it's starting to ring.
The ring of satan, ladies and gentlemen.
[narrator] side by side we can see
the ring of smoke created by kutcher
matches santa clara's crown of satan.
[matt] to me, it's clear it was
a transformer that exploded.
It gave us this eerie smoke ring
that went up into the sky.
[narrator] physicist, athena brensberger,
believes a lightning strike
caused the transformer to explode.
When this footage was taken,
it was during one of the worst
storms ever seen in the bay area.
-[explosion] -[bleep]
[rochelle] oh! [bleep]
[narrator] the average
us substation transformer
contains 45,000 gallons of mineral oil.
When lightning strikes,
this oil turns into a high
pressure explosive vapor
that tears the transformer open,
spreading shrapnel and a 2,000
degree fireball over a wide area.
[david] I've worked for
a transformer company
and we had one of them
that when it exploded,
we actually found parts
one mile away from there.
[narrator] anyone caught in the blast
zone is likely to be broiled and shredded.
-[explosion] -[bleep]
[rochelle] oh! [bleep]
[narrator] if this transformer
explosion by the stadium
had occurred later on a game day,
there could have been
hundreds of casualties.
You get to a point where if substations
are exploding, it's killing people,
this is a terrible state to be in.
[rochelle] oh, my god.
[narrator] now, anshun,
in the rural province of southwest china.
August, 2020.
Footage emerges of a chinese
woman with a belly full of trouble.
[karen] this is sort of
physically painful to watch.
It's this grossly distended belly
on a teeny-tiny asian woman.
Her stomach is so large and the
skin looks stretched so thin over her,
it almost looks like she's about to burst.
[george] you can see these blue veins
like spiderwebs coursing
their way across her abdomen.
[narrator] the woman's
name is huang guoxian.
She is 36 years old, a
mother of two children,
and her lump makes up more
than a third of her total body size.
And is still growing.
I've seen plenty of people
with big tummies in my time,
but really, this is something else.
[greg] it almost looks like
something from a horror film.
You half expect something to come
ripping out of her stomach, at any minute.
[narrator] explorer, george kourounis,
thinks the cause of the bulbous bulge
could be a problematic pregnancy.
This doesn't look like a woman who
has just a regular large pregnancy.
If she's pregnant,
she's having the freakiest
baby known to man.
[narrator] the average baby
weighs around seven pounds,
but freakishly big babies
have been born before.
The biggest was delivered in ohio in 1879.
The largest baby ever
born that we have on record
was a boy named babe.
He was 22 pounds and 28 inches long.
His mother, anne bates,
apparently gushed out
six gallons of fluid when her water broke.
With that enormous baby, you
have to take into consideration
that the parents, both parents,
were nearly eight feet high.
[narrator] babe's mom and pop were
two victorian era circus performers,
anna henning swan and
martin van buren bates,
a hero of the american civil war.
They were the tallest
couple ever to get married.
She was 7'11 ", he was 7'9".
But this woman in china,
she's tiny she's petite.
A baby the size of babe being
born to a woman that small
just doesn't make genetic sense.
[narrator] and the lump inside her
stomach, weighs over 44 pounds,
twice as heavy as babe.
There's no way that she's going to
be giving birth to a baby that large,
even if her husband was
the tallest guy in the nba.
[narrator] but petite women
have given birth to multiple babies.
In 2009, nadya suleman from fullerton,
california, earned the nickname octomom,
when she became the first woman
ever to give birth to eight babies
that have survived into infancy.
But even octomom's eight babies
only had a combined weight of 20 pounds.
If she's pregnant, I wonder
how man kids she's carrying.
[narrator] but examination
of guoxian's medical records
indicates the swelling
began over two years ago.
Ruling out pregnancy,
and indicating something very
troubling is growing inside her.
[amy] doctors have no idea what's going on.
If you don't know what the issue
is, you don't know how to treat it.
But that also means you don't know
how to deal with the potential
of it spreading to other people,
which makes the whole
situation very serious.
[narrator] coming up...
Historians find a deadly curse
plights this woman's village.
Is it possible that this woman was poisoned
by the dead?
[narrator] and, is jesus watching you?
Statues don't do that.
At least they're not supposed to.
[narrator] a woman with a
grotesquely swollen belly
appears on film in china.
Historian, tony mcmahon,
suspects that a local tradition
might have caused
huang guoxian's condition.
There's a practice in this area
where they put their dead
into log-shaped coffins
and pile them up in caves in the hillsides,
and these bodies then rot, decompose
releasing the spirits, they
believe, into the heavens.
[narrator] this burial rite
occurs on an industrial scale.
In one cave alone, there's more than
500 coffins stacked one atop the other
in various stages of decay.
[narrator] the caves are formed
by water coming out of the rock.
These springs become streams
that flow down into the rivers
passing hundreds of towns and
villages on their way to the sea.
If any of these bodies
have infectious diseases,
could this come out of those bodies,
go into the water supply and
cause what we're seeing here?
Is it possible that this woman
was poisoned by the dead?
[narrator] but no similar reports
of mysterious stomach swellings
have been recorded in the region.
If water poisoning were the
cause of this strange stomach,
it would stand to reason that
she wouldn't be the only one
presenting with these
really weird symptoms.
[narrator] scientists continue to conduct
numerous tests on huang guoxian.
Their best guess is, she has
some sort of rapid cancerous growth.
But it isn't behaving like
a typical malignant tumor.
They are unable to determine
what caused this condition,
and they fear she will have
to live with it into old age.
[karen] the most disturbing
thing about this footage
is how does anybody propose
to alleviate the situation?
If this appalling thing could happen to
this woman, it could happen to anybody.
It's a medical mystery
that needs to be solved.
[narrator] now, tepito,
a suburb of mexico city,
the biggest metropolis in north america.
March 2010, 3:57 a.M.
A security camera watches
a set of religious icons...
[man] so this is a spooky scene.
It's nighttime and this
camera is filming this shrine.
[steve] looks like it's on a mantelpiece
and there's a small-figured
jesus on the cross.
It's really intense. It's almost like
something from a horror movie.
You expect something to jump out at you.
[narrator] then, the figure of
jesus seems to come to life.
Oh, my goodness.
Did that head just move?
Oh, my god!
The head moved!
The figure depicting
jesus is moving its head.
[narrator] local people believe
this video is a divine message.
But experts suspect that something
more sinister might be at work.
Statues don't do that. At
least they're not supposed to.
There's some force here,
interacting, causing this thing to move.
So what is going on?
[narrator] image analyst, ben radford,
turns his attention to the other
figures on the shrine in the film,
and notices another odd movement.
The other thing that
happens in this video is that
this taller figure to the left
moves just slightly to the right,
towards the viewer,
so then it looks like that.
It's a subtle shift but
it's a noticeable one.
[narrator] social
anthropologist, deborah hyde,
recognizes the second moving statue
is a symbol of the dark
side of modern mexico.
The larger figure, which looks
like a sort of a skeletal woman
that's the figure of santa muerte,
who is a kind of angel of death.
[narrator] today, santa muerte worship
is said to be the fastest
growing religion in the americas,
with over ten million
followers in mexico alone.
[deborah] this new religious
movement has accompanied people
who engage in all
sorts of illegal activities.
People who have to accommodate themselves
to the idea of death
and violence every day.
[narrator] former fbi agent, rhonda glover,
thinks this shrine was set
up and filmed deliberately
to send out a sinister message.
[rhonda] the cult of santa muerte
is something that's been
developed through the drug gangs
to project fear and bring about control.
So, maybe the drug cartel's
created this video as a trick
to terrify the locals.
[narrator] santa muerte is the drug
cartel's patron saint and goddess
rolled into one.
The cartels have turned death, torture and
human sacrifice into a part of their business.
We're hearing cases of children
finding dismembered bodies
on their way to school.
It's not even an uncommon sight to
see bodies strung up from bridges.
So now there's this growing presence of
death and fear brought about by the narcos.
[narrator] the purpose
of these grisly murders
is not just to win territory from rivals,
it's to inspire terror and awe
in the mexican population.
Faking supernatural
events could very well be
a new psychological tactic by the narcos.
[narrator] the film of
christ and santa muerte
mysteriously moving on a shrine
could shock locals into believing
in the power of the
drug lords' favorite saint.
They're smart. They understand the grip
that religious iconography has on people.
So could be that they're trying to
capitalize on that as much as possible.
This could be a new
front to the narco wars.
[narrator] but author, patrick tomlinson,
believes if the cartels were behind this,
we'd be witnessing something far bigger.
The cartels are known for their very
public displays of violence and death
to instill fear in the population.
But this is taking place in a private
home in the middle of the night.
I think this is probably too
low key to be the narcos.
Someone or something else is responsible.
[narrator] coming up...
Is this a miracle or a prophecy of doom?
This is a bad situation.
You're living in a place that's
fixing to become a blazing inferno.
[narrator] and, the crawling dead.
Are zombie insects stalking missouri?
This thing should be dead and motionless.
Yet, here it is crawling along.
[narrator] eerie cctv footage
captures a figure of christ on the cross
turning his head to face us.
Electrical engineer, david wallace,
looks for a rational explanation
for this bizarre movement.
He believes lethally dangerous
flaws in the local power supply
could be behind this.
In mexico, what they have
is a scenario where the city
is fed through high voltage power lines,
and they have the lines running everywhere.
Now, if a person wants to get some power,
what he does is, take a
little line with a hook on it,
connect it to that line, you got
power coming into your house.
Free power.
But the problem with this, if you
do it wrong, you become dead.
You get electrocuted.
[narrator] mexicans use electricity
to light up their religious displays.
It's common in latin countries to have
electrically powered statues and shrines.
From neon virgins to flickering candles.
It's possible that we have figurines
that actually have wires running through.
And if you get this over voltage or
over currents flowing through your wires
it's gonna heat up, causing
materials inside the figurines
to heat up and possibly start melting.
[narrator] wallace wants to know if
dangerously overheating electrical wires
is what is causing the statue of
jesus to behave as though it's alive.
So here we have a copper wire that we're
going to be using to generate the heat.
I'll just bring our figurine into place.
So here we have our thermal imager,
which we'll use to determine
how much heat's being generated.
[beeps]
okay, let's start raising the current.
Let's see if we can get
a little heat going here.
All right, we're starting to
go up there. It's 80 degrees.
Right, 90 degrees.
-Bump it up. -[clattering]
all right let's go up a little quicker.
[beeping rapidly]
we're starting to see a little smoke
come off of the surface.
The temperature's up.
Yep, there it goes. We're
starting to get a little melting.
So here we are at 500
degrees, look at this.
Our head is starting to droop
down. The plastic is melting.
Look right here.
We actually got some burn
marks, a little bit, on the material,
but the whole area is soft.
It's melted down, the head is drooped.
Poor doll will never be the same again.
So if this is the case that you have,
where you actually got faulty wiring
that can cause dolls to
melt inside your house,
this is a bad situation.
You're living in a place that's
fixing to become a blazing inferno.
[narrator] wallace's experiment
might explain how christ's head turns,
but it can't explain how the figure
of santa muerte shifts on the shrine.
And for many locals, this eerie
footage continues to be seen
either as proof of religious miracles
or perhaps a warning of divine retribution.
[steve] I'll be honest,
if the angel of death
was shifting like that in my house,
I'd be burning my house down.
[narrator] now, jefferson city, missouri.
September 1st, 2017, 8:30 a.M.
Local resident, forrest lindsey,
spots something disturbing
emerging from the undergrowth.
When you look closer at this bug,
it's completely hollowed out.
There's no internal organs,
there's nothing that can
justify why it's moving.
[narrator] without a heart pumping
blood or trachea to breathe,
the creature is still somehow
walking across the ground.
This is gross and
fascinating at the same time.
It's literally a zombified cicada.
[roland] this thing should
be dead and motionless.
Yet, here it is crawling along.
How can this be?
[narrator] a cicada
body, like a human body,
contains a heart, breathing
apparatus, and a digestive system.
All thought to be vital for life.
With all these gone, the
cicada is still somehow
operating it's legs and moving forward.
[leslie] in this clip, you can
see that the head still is intact.
Which suggests that
the brain is still functional.
[narrator] brains are the
most complex part of the body,
both, in insects and in humans.
Brains use 20% of all the energy taken in,
and need a constant supply of
oxygen and glucose to function.
And it appears that in a lab,
as long as the brain gets
these two vital ingredients,
it seems to be able to live by itself.
Scientists can actually make brains
work, without the body even being present.
[narrator] in April, 2019,
connecticut scientists revived the brains
of 32 pigs, four hours after they died,
even though the pigs bodies had been
chopped up in a new haven slaughterhouse
and turned into meat.
Which is sort of starting to give us
a new and a different understanding
about what exactly does it mean to be alive
and what does it means to be dead.
[narrator] if pig's brains can survive
when their bodies are nothing but bacon,
and as this footage appears to show,
an insect can survive with just a head,
scientists are asking if human brains
can successfully be removed from one body
and placed inside another new body.
A brain transplant.
[leslie] for this operation to be
successful, the brain has to remain alive,
while it's waiting to be
switched to the other body.
But many are skeptical that
the brain in a jar can remain alive.
But this footage, it seems to show that
it might actually be possible.
[narrator] but a brain in a
different body could go insane
from the chemical imbalances it encounters,
transforming the host
into a rampaging beast
driven by an uncontrollable psychotic rage.
Critics of the surgery, warn that there
could be really terrible consequences,
and that the pain and suffering
might be worse with a new body
than they were with their original one.
[narrator] coming up...
Did the thing that ate this bug
keep it's brain alive on purpose?
The insect has been totally
taken over by something terrifying.
[narrator] and, has a creepy cave
crawler escaped from an underground vault?
Just imagine all the lights go out, you're
trapped in that cave with that thing.
And it can see in the dark.
[man] do you see that?
[narrator] a cicada is filmed
apparently alive and walking,
despite its body missing
its internal organs.
[narrator] biologist, carin
bondar, believes this insect's brain
might have been horrifically hijacked.
[carin] the body shape of the
cicada is still relatively intact
it's possible it's been
eaten from the inside out.
[narrator] the cicadas in jefferson
share their surroundings with one of
the world's most sinister parasitic fungi,
known as massospora.
The parasitic fungus eats
away at the cicada's abdomen,
creating a large mass of fungal spores.
[narrator] the fungus
feasts on the internal organs
but leaves the brain intact to
do the fungus's horrific bidding.
Male cicadas that are
infected with this fungus,
become kind of like undercover zombies
with a very sinister plan.
The males that are
infected with the fungus.
Do specific female wing flick movements,
so that when unsuspecting
males arrive to mate with them,
they get infected with the fungus instead.
The insect has been totally
taken over by something terrifying.
What we're seeing here is
known as active host transmission,
where the parasite controls the brain,
and thus, the entire body of the host,
and ends up using this
zombified body as transportation.
[narrator] the movement
we see in the footage,
is not the cicada miraculously walking
despite the loss of
all its internal organs.
It's the fungus instructing the
brain to pull on its leg muscles,
jerkily piloting the
remains of the creature,
towards a new victim.
At this point, the cicada no longer exists.
It is simply, a zombie of
the fungus that's controlling it.
My fear is that, if this
condition exists in bugs,
can it make its way to humans?
[narrator] scientists don't know
exactly how the fungus controls the brain,
but it could do it by
creating an hallucination
in the dying mind of the cicada
that alters its perception of reality.
[roland] scientists have
been studying this parasite,
and in a terrifying revelation,
have found that the zombifying chemicals
that causes this unnatural
behavior in the cicadas,
is psychoactive in humans
and actually can cause hallucinations.
[narrator] all of the
reality we experience,
is an illusion.
An approximation of the world
fed to us by our five senses
and then interpreted by the brain.
If a malevolent fungus
took over our brains,
it could twist the hallucination
to make us see the world
in a completely different way.
A way that serves its
ends, rather than ours.
This is potentially terrifying news.
Because, if humans come
in contact with the fungus,
scientists really don't
know what will happen.
Any world-changing
pandemic could begin this way.
The zombie apocalypse is
something we usually leave
to the science-fiction world in the movies.
But, this video shows,
it could really happen.
[growls]
[narrator] now, dachstein
krippenstein, in europe's austrian alps.
June 20th, 2009.
Deep in the woods of dachstein, austria.
[pants] we got to go all the way up there.
[narrator] an adventurous
american tourist and his wife,
are exploring the
dachstein giant ice cave...
These tourists are enjoying their holiday,
just checking out the magnificent cave.
- [man] cool or what?
- [woman] I'm getting...
[man] down too far.
[narrator] ...When they
have a chilling encounter.
[woman] [bleep] what is that?
[man] do you see that?
It's climbing up the wall!
[deborah] it's kind of
difficult to make out.
This looks like a humanoid-type creature,
except it's a very peculiar color.
It's sort of iridescent glowing
bluey-whitey kind of a color.
[lindsay] I've never seen something
move so quickly up a steep surface.
Whatever it is, that thing is strong.
[narrator] it's not a frog, it's not a bat.
They'd be immobile in the ice.
What is this strange creature?
Where did it come from?
[man] oh, my god!
Just imagine, all the lights go out,
you're trapped in that
cave with that thing.
And it can see in the dark.
[man] where'd it go?
[narrator] coming up...
Are local legends of a
flesh-eating ice-monster true?
[lyle] it is said to be
part dragon and part cat.
All the most cunning and vicious animals,
all rolled into one.
[narrator] american tourists
encounter an eerie creature,
scaling the walls of a
frozen austrian cave.
These ice caves are located thousands
of feet above sea-level in the alps.
Their passageways are
dominated by huge blocks of ice,
formed naturally, as water
seeps from the mountains above
and freezes in the
cold air of their caverns.
Behind the walls of ice,
are hundreds of miles of rock tunnels,
leading deep under the mountains.
Most of which, have never been explored.
These ice caves are referred to
as the gateways to hell.
And maybe, it's not surprising,
maybe local people have gone
in there and simply not returned.
Maybe they've had an
accident or they've drowned.
[narrator] or, as this footage suggests,
encountered something
unknown, living in the cave.
[tony] caves are rather
like the deepest oceans,
of places which are in
effect the last frontiers
for us to find new life forms
that we know nothing about.
[narrator] in 2016, croatian scientists
discovered 30 new species of animals
living in the caves in the
sibenik-knin national park.
[ashanti] when you think about the
kinds of things that could live in a cave,
over time, they could absolutely
evolve and become something else.
[man] [bleep] what is
that? Do you see that?
[narrator] in 1981, an entirely
new species, the remipede,
is discovered in a cave in the bahamas.
It shocked scientists
because it's a venomous killer,
able to take down prey
much larger than itself.
And when we look at this footage
and see this curious
thing climbing up the wall,
maybe our ancestors had a point,
that they knew that caves could
be where terrifying being resided.
Could this be the first footage
of an undiscovered species?
[narrator] social
anthropologist, deborah hyde,
finds there are reports of
a terrifying unknown animal
said to live in the caves
of these mountains.
There's a local legend of a
creature called the tatzelwurm,
which means claw-worm.
[narrator] descriptions
of the tatzelwurm vary.
But it's often said to have clawed legs,
a cat-like head,
and is extremely aggressive towards humans.
All the most cunning and vicious animals,
all rolled in to one.
[snarls]
in one account, a man was
said to have died of a heart attack,
after he was confronted
by two tatzelwurm s.
[narrator] reports of tatzelwurm
encounters go back centuries.
But they may not be mere legends.
In 1954, a swiss photographer,
claimed to have captured a
photo-image of one of these creatures.
[narrator] while the creature
captured in the footage
doesn't match any of the reported
descriptions of the tatzelwurm,
local folklore suggests these caves
are home to other mysterious creatures.
To locals, who already
know about the tatzelwurm,
you can see why a creature
like this scaling the wall,
would be interpreted in that light.
[narrator] but when
image-analyst, ben radford,
zooms in on the weird wall climber,
he focuses on the limb movement,
and doubts it's any kind of beast.
So, here's where we first
start seeing the creature.
And it appears to be climbing
the walls of this ice cave.
So, if it really is an animal,
its doing an amazing
job of climbing this ice.
No four-limbed creature
can climb ice like that.
Almost like gollum in lord of
the rings or something, sort of...
Give this sort of lurching thing.
So, the figure appears to be human-like.
It seems to be human.
[tony] it almost moves like a mountaineer.
You know, grabbing on to the
rocks as it goes with all limbs.
But, why would someone risk their
life to scale the walls of this ice cave?
[man] oh, my god!
[narrator] the ice in the dachstein
cave increases over the winter months,
and then melts away slightly in the summer.
Rock tunnel entrances
concealed behind the ice walls
emerge briefly at this time of year.
They would make a perfect
hiding place for looted treasure.
[tony] during the closing
stages of world war ii,
the nazis squirreled away a
massive amount of gold bullion
and also art treasures, into caves
and into tunnels and mountains.
And could it be that
what we're seeing here,
is somebody who's moving around,
looking for some of that treasure.
[narrator] the nazis stole over $600
million in gold from across europe.
And many historians believe they
hid large quantities of it in this region,
which ss leader, heinrich himmler,
described as their alpine fortress.
[martin] germans are
known to have hidden things,
all of the gold bullions
from the reich's bank,
and a massive pile of artwork.
There's still missing art,
there's still missing gold,
and those things might
be found in the rocks.
This cave system is intricate and huge,
and it's exactly the kind of place
that the nazis would've stored
away their stolen treasure.
[narrator] but many who have
ventured deep into these alpine caves,
have met a grisly end.
In February, 2019,
a hungarian climber
went missing in the alps.
[man screams]
[narrator] it wasn't until
August of the same year,
that his crushed body was
discovered deep inside an ice cave.
Experts fear that a similar fate
might await this cave crawler.
[ashanti] this cave is huge,
and these tourists are standing
on the very edge of a cliff.
So, if this person falls,
they're going to plummet at least 100-feet.