Original subtitles

[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.