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!

[woman screaming]

This doesn't make sense.

There has to be some sort of explanation.

What else is going on here?

[narrator] Coming up, in Thailand,

a trucker hits the road.

Good God, that is terrifying.

This is basically a laser-guided lightning bolt

delivered in a nanosecond.

[narrator] In California,

a muscle memory you'd want to forget.

[man] Oh my God, it won't stop.

I don't know if this guy should call a doctor, or a priest.

[narrator] And in the 18th century,

she was murdered.

In the 21st century, she's back.

[Leslie] Her eyes open

and they're staring right at you.

Isn't she supposed to be dead?

[narrator] Bizarre phenomena...

Oh, my gosh! [gasps]

[narrator] ...mysteries caught on camera...

[girl shrieks]

[narrator] What's the truth behind this strange evidence?

Phuket, an idyllic tropical island in Thailand.

But on August 20th, 2020,

there's trouble in paradise.

[Jeff] A truck is on a street,

the door opens,

and a guy climbs down out of the cab...

And as soon as he touches pavement, kaboom!

He catches on fire.

Did that guy just spontaneously combust?

One minute he's fine, and then bam!

He falls like a sack of potatoes. Boom.

It looks like he's dead.

[narrator] Incredibly, he survives.

But suffers severe burns.

What just happened to that poor man?

[narrator] Mysteriously, a second passenger

then leaves the vehicle unharmed.

Why is the first guy struck down

and the second guy escapes uninjured?

Makes me think some shady stuff

must have gone on

in the front seat of that truck.

[man] There's a lot of questions here

and very few answers.

[narrator] Author Patrick Tomlinson

notes how the first man's body suddenly becomes

rigid as he steps out of the truck.

The way he falls,

and how he's incapacitated instantly

it's like someone hit him with a stun gun.

[narrator] Across the world, over 15,000 security agencies

use electro-shock weapons.

Devices spear victims with a projectile,

delivering a high-voltage pulse of electricity.

The shock disables the body

through painful muscle paralysis.

In February 2019,

a Philadelphia man shocked by security guards

bursts into flames

like the man in the footage.

But Tomlinson spots a crucial difference.

[Patrick] I don't see any wires.

But this could be a new type of energy weapon

called an electrolaser.

The electrolaser's like a super stun gun,

except, it's wireless.

So it can be shot from a much greater distance

and pack a much much bigger punch.

[narrator] An electrolaser is part of a new generation

of non-lethal prototype weapons,

currently under development by U.S. defense contractors.

A laser beam turns the air

into ionized plasma,

through which the laser delivers

a high-voltage charge.

This is basically a laser-guided lightning bolt

delivered in a nano-second.

All you see is a flash, and you're done for.

It would explain

why it only happened when he left the truck.

But then you'd have to ask,

who would want

to do that to a person, and why?

[narrator] State security forces are increasingly turning

to high-tech non-lethal weapons

to enforce law and order.

There are the sonic denial systems

for use in crowd control.

You direct a sonic beam towards people,

and it would excite their inner ear

in such a way that

it would be enough to drive you off.

[narrator] In 2020, in Washington D.C.,

military police considered using a heat ray

against massing protestors.

The Thai government has a history

of deploying the military on the streets

to deal with unrest.

Could this Thai trucker

have been the target

of a new type of electro-shock weapon?

Maybe it should make us a little nervous to think of

governments wanting to super-charge the atmosphere

with hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity.

[narrator] But science journalist Jeff Wise

thinks the way this man bursts into flames

means this can't be the work of an electrolaser.

I think if a stun gun is gonna set you on fire,

it's gonna ignite you where the ground impacts you.

This guy ignites at both ends.

He burst into flames in his hands and at his feet.

[Brian] What we see is that the fire

actually starts in his extremities,

but leaves his clothes virtually untouched.

So clearly, there must be

another source for these flames.

[narrator] When engineer Brian Wolshon

studies the footage further,

he sees a possible clue

under the wheels of the truck.

Just before the truck stops,

you can see something sparking under the tires.

It's like a pulse of energy

has moved through that entire truck.

[narrator] The mystery energy source

appears to be coming from the vehicle itself.

But the two men who were inside it

had very different fates.

Why does the first man burst into flames,

but the second man doesn't?

When he jumps out of the truck, he's fine.

Nothing happens to him.

Clearly, there's something going on

in the cab of that truck,

but it's really not clear what it is.

[narrator] Electrical engineer David Wallace

thinks the sparking tires are evidence

the entire truck has somehow become highly electrified.

You would expect,

"Okay, rubber tires are insulators and you're safe."

But you're not.

These rubber tires will insulate against

maybe 10-15,000 volts,

but once you get above that,

that electricity is trying to go across those tires.

So, here we have a situation,

the entire body of this truck is energized

and that electricity is trying to go to ground.

[narrator] Wallace estimates the truck is charged

with between 20-30,000 volts.

That's up to 15 times

the power of an electric chair,

and enough to jump past the tires, into the ground.

The men inside the cab aren't connected to the ground,

so the electricity doesn't flow through them.

As you see a bird sitting on a transmission line,

the bird does not die.

Since there is no ground point there,

there's no electricity flowing through their body,

but they are in peril.

[narrator] With the tires smoking,

the truck could burst into flames at any moment.

[David] This truck is basically a death trap.

They actually need to get out of here.

But, how are they gonna do it?

I want to recreate the scenario in my lab,

and try and find out

why the first guy actually gets electrocuted,

while the second guy does not.

[narrator] Wallace uses an SUV to represent the truck.

And Bob will stand in as the trucker in trouble.

[David] We've been through a lot together, me and Bob.

He's seen it all.

He's been struck by lightning, we've caught him on fire,

we've blown some of his fingertips off.

He's a trouper though.

[narrator] To start, Wallace wants to find out

why the first man burst into flames and collapsed

the moment he set foot outside of the cab.

[David] Bob here is gonna be the driver.

We're gonna energize the body of this SUV

up to 30,000 volts.

So if he's touching this door,

that means he's energized with 30,000 volts.

In a moment, he's gonna step down

and when he does, we'll see what happens.

All right? Let's charge this baby up.

and see what happens to Bob.

[narrator] Coming up,

can Wallace discover

why this truck scorched its driver?

[David] All right. Take him down.

[narrator] And in a Mexican church,

a real life Sleeping Beauty

filmed waking up after 300 years.

[Greg] Is she coming back from the dead?

The patron saint of zombies.

What's going on here?

[narrator] A Thai man is filmed

being scorched by his own truck.

Electrical engineer David Wallace

has set up an experiment

to try and find out what happened.

All right, so let's crank it up.

Yep.

[narrator] Bob the dummy

is touching a vehicle representing the truck,

which Wallace has charged

with 30,000 volts of electricity.

All right, take him down.

[narrator] Bob is lowered to the floor.

The 30,000 volts surging through Bob arcs

as it jumps to the ground.

We had a sudden flow of current through his body,

an ignition, just like we saw in the video.

[narrator] The charged vehicle and connected dummy

create a strong electric field

powerful enough to ionize the air around them.

The ions create a conductive channel across the air gap

between Bob's feet and the ground,

causing the electricity to flow and sparks to fly.

When the driver got out of the truck,

he created another ground point.

The human body is a very good conductor,

so when this guy touches the ground,

you now have a clear path for electricity to flow

from the truck down to the ground.

At this point, you get to see the sparks around his hands and feet,

as he makes contact.

[narrator] So how did the second man

avoid his co-worker's fate?

He obviously knows

what has happened to the first guy,

and knows the way to avoid this

is he has to jump out,

so he makes no physical contact

between the truck and ground simultaneously

and he is safe.

[narrator] But how did an ordinary truck

become an electric death trap?

Engineer Brian Wolshon spots a clue.

What we see here, in fact, is that

the truck had actually come into contact with an overhead power line.

You can see the exact moment

that it makes contact with the overhanging wire.

[narrator] Thailand's electrical power infrastructure

is dangerously overburdened. In 2019,

a falling power cable strikes and electrocutes

38-year-old Melanie Virasuchar

as she crosses the road.

Incredibly, she survives.

The truck is badly damaged by the high voltage discharge.

The electrocuted man escapes with severe burns

to his arms and legs.

The Thai authorities say they're clearing up

their treacherous tangle of wires,

but until the job's done,

terrible accidents like this could continue to happen.

[Martin] I would be paralyzed with fear

if the truck I was driving ran into power lines.

I don't know that I'd be able to move,

I don't know that I'd be able to try to make a run for it

just 'cause I wouldn't want to get shocked.

As important and vital as electricity is

to our daily lives,

it's also a bit of a caged demon

waiting to break out.

[narrator] Now, Guadalajara,

Mexico's second biggest city.

December 12th, 2012,

a visitor to the city's Catholic cathedral

films a prized relic.

The mysteriously mummified body of a little girl

who is said to have died 300 years ago.

Santa Inocencia.

There's this body encased in a glass coffin

that's like Sleeping Beauty.

[narrator] But then, Sleeping Beauty wakes up.

Her eyes open and they're staring right at you.

Isn't she supposed to be dead?

What's really chilling is,

she seems to be staring knowingly

directly at the camera.

That's crazy. That's unreal.

[narrator] This young girl didn't die peacefully.

She is said to have been brutally murdered.

Having woken up,

is she now hell-bent on revenge?

Is she coming back from the dead?

The patron saint of zombies.

What's going on here?

[narrator] Historian Karen Bellinger

finds local reports that Santa Inocencia

was killed by her own father.

Apparently, she was a young girl

who ran away against her father's express orders

and became Catholic.

[Tony] The story goes that

he was not into her becoming a Christian.

So much so that he stabbed her in the chest

and killed her.

[girl screaming]

The faithful in the area rescued her body

and they venerated her as a saint ever since.

And she's still there in that little dress

in the glass case,

the same clothes she wore

when she was carried to the church

after her death.

[narrator] Legend has it Inocencia's corpse

miraculously remains intact

after three centuries.

Many of her devotees

believe she is what the church calls

an incorruptible.

Incorruptible bodies are unusual.

They don't decompose like normal bodies.

[Tony] A normal person, once we die,

we putrefy, we liquify.

There's just the bones and some bits and pieces.

Somehow, these amazing figures

are spared that fate by their inherent holiness.

Skeptics claim that the church uses embalming

to keep them well-preserved.

But many believe that this is a sign

of some kind of divine intervention.

[narrator] Saint Bernadette of Lourdes

who died in 1879

is one of the most famous incorruptibles.

The French grotto

where she saw a vision of the Virgin Mary

still receives millions of pilgrims a year,

many hoping to be cured of illness.

Italian priest Padre Pio died in 1968,

and his corpse was exhumed 40 years later.

A church statement claimed his body was preserved

and his hands even seemed to be manicured.

So the incorruptibles, who serve as a reminder

of the strength and power of God.

[narrator] Santa Inocencia

is said to have spooked churchgoers

from inside her glass coffin before.

KAREN: Apparently, her hair, her fingernails

have grown overtime,

but this is the first time any such unexpected activity

has been captured on film.

[narrator] Image analyst Ben Radford

examines the apparently miraculous footage

for tell-tale signs of digital manipulation.

As you can see here,

the figure's eyes are closed,

and it's in reasonably good focus.

A minute later, when the eyes open,

it turns very very blurry and unfocussed.

It's amateur footage, it's not really good quality.

It's the sort of thing frankly, that anybody,

any pilgrim going there might have filmed.

[narrator] The jerky footage and low quality camera

would make it hard for someone without sophisticated software

to fake.

[Ben] If this were fake, the fact that

the image is shifting around, and moving around,

would make it very difficult to do.

[narrator] Coming up,

is this a miracle or a magic trick?

It's totally sealed in a glass case,

and that's the part that really gets me.

[narrator] And has the ghost of a murdered inmate

broken into this Brazilian prison?

It looks like,

it's passing through the wall.

[narrator] In a Mexican cathedral,

Santa Inocencia is said to be an incorruptible,

a holy person whose deceased body

does not decay as normal.

Then a tourist captures the moment

this 300-year-old child

seems to come back from the dead

opening her eyes

and staring directly into the camera.

Magician Ben Nemzer wants to know

if the corpse's eye-opening behavior

could be a physical trick.

[Ben] Throughout history,

the Christian church has claimed many miracles

from Jesus resurrecting from the dead

to Moses parting the Red Sea

The authority of the church, in a very real sense,

rests on the concept of miraculous events.

[narrator] The Holy Shroud of Turin

was said to be the cloth Jesus was wrapped in

after the crucifixion,

inexplicably imprinted with his image

including wounds and blood from the crown of thorns.

A lot of people believed for a long time that

this was legitimate.

However, when people did radio carbon dating on it,

scientists found it to be much more recent

than Jesus's birth by over 1000 years.

Who's to say that what we're seeing in Guadalajara

isn't equally a fraud?

[narrator] But Nemzer can see no evidence

of fakery in the footage.

[Ben] To create the illusion that she's opening her eyes,

one of the ways would be adding some sort of

false eyes on top of her eyes.

But she's apparently sealed in a glass case.

And that's the part that really gets me.

I don't think that there's any way

anybody could have tampered with the body.

So I have no idea how it's happening.

[narrator] Biologist Leslie Samuel studies images

of Inocencia's preserved features

and sees signs of cosmetic assistance.

Looking closely at the footage,

the face has kind of a shine on it.

That makes me think

that maybe the body has been preserve

under a coat of wax.

[narrator] Incorruptibles are said to resist

the natural process of decomposition.

But many like St. Bernadette

eventually have wax masks

placed on their faces to improve the effect.

Samuel wonders if Inocencia's face

could be shifting

in the heat of the Mexican sun.

Could the wax covering the face

of Santa Inocencia be melting,

and causing it to look like the eyes are moving?

Examining the records,

the highest temperatures recorded in Guadalajara

is 103 degrees.

[narrator] Wax melts at around 100 degrees.

And waxwork figures

have been known to change when the heat gets too high.

2009, New Delhi, India,

a touring waxwork exhibit of British pop group, The Beatles,

looks like it's had a hard day's night

after it starts to melt

while on display in the city's oppressive heat.

But when biologist, Greg Szulgit,

checks weather records for the day,

he doubts Inocencia is wilting in the heat.

On this particular day that this video was shot,

we know that the temperature was only

75 degrees Fahrenheit,

which should not be enough to melt the wax.

[narrator] The body of Inocencia

has not been recorded opening its eyes again

since this video was taken.

The church has not officially declared the event a miracle,

but neither has it denounced it as a hoax.

And experts are unable to explain what happened.

How Santa Inocencia opened her eyes,

it still remains a mystery.

The faithful will continue to believe

that these objects have enormous sacred power.

Maybe there's some other explanation

that nobody has thought of.

Maybe it will simply remain a mystery.

Until it happens again, we'll never know for sure.

[narrator] Now, Campo Grande, southwestern Brazil.

February 2nd, 2017,

the San Jair Ferreira de Carvalho

maximum security prison,

thousands of criminals are supposed to be on lockdown.

[Ashanti] It's a warm, quiet night.

As routine as it gets

for a maximum security prison in Brazil.

[narrator] But then, guards spot something suspicious

on the outside wall of the cell block.

Something's moving. What is that?

[narrator] A shadowy figure seems to be scaling the wall.

This place is supposed to be impenetrable.

Presumably, everyone is locked up at night.

So, what the hell is that?

I'm not even sure whether it's trying

to get in the prison,

or it's trying to get out.

South America's high security prisons are

some of the most dangerous places in the world.

Then this happens.

[narrator] Social anthropologist, Deborah Hyde,

finds previous reports of paranormal activity

at this prison.

When this footage landed on the internet,

a former employee of the prison came forward.

Fifteen years earlier,

she has seen a very similar thing.

Something she described as a ghost.

She couldn't talk about it at the time

because she would lose her job.

[narrator] Prisons around the world

have reputations for being haunted.

Staff at Alcatraz

say they hear eerie music play.

Inmates in Tihar Prison, New Delhi,

claim they have been slapped by a ghost.

And at Lancaster Castle jail in England,

officers describe seeing a little girl and old woman

stalking the corridors,

witches hanged in the 17th century.

[Deborah] When we think of ghosts,

we think of people who've died before their time,

tortured souls, really.

So, a prison is a great place

for that kind of activity.

[narrator] Prisons in Brazil are said to take

the misery of incarceration to a whole other level.

The country has the third highest

prison population on the planet,

with over 700,000 inmates

crammed into ageing penitentiaries,

designed for around two-thirds that number.

A country that hasn't executed a prisoner

in 150 years,

has created a prison system that is so awful,

that in many ways, it might be worse than death.

Overcrowding is common, often with

hellish conditions. The crush of bodies,

the smell of sweat

and excrement, it would all be overwhelming.

[narrator] Coming up.

Is this a ghost

or a man on a murderous mission?

If I was an inmate, I would be hiding under my bunk.

[narrator] And has this man's leg become a portal

for the paranormal?

Is that what demonic possessions look like?

[narrator] In Brazil,

guards at a maximum security prison

sound the alarm when they spot a suspicious figure

scaling the walls.

Military historian Martin Morgan

studies the broken-down appearance of the cell blocks

in the footage.

He thinks the country's struggling prison system

could explain the presence of the mysterious wall-crawler.

[Martin] The prisoners are ruling these prisons.

With rival gangs on the inside

vying for power,

violence is inevitable.

[narrator] These rivalries often result in brutal riots.

More than 50 inmates are viciously murdered

during a prison riot in Altamira, Brazil,

in 2019.

In the aftermath, they found prisoners

who had been decapitated.

One of these gangs was found kicking around

one of their rivals' heads like a football.

[Martin] Brazilian prisons are notoriously brutal places.

If you're not already a hardcore killer

when you get there,

you better become one fast if you want to survive.

[narrator] Could this creepy wall-crawler

be an inmate on a mission to kill a fellow prisoner?

Or perhaps even a guard?

Seeing a shadowy figure moving around the prison

is the last thing anyone would want to see.

If I was an inmate, I would be hiding under my bunk.

[narrator] But image analyst, Ben Radford,

studies the footage a nd thinks the figure's movements

have an animal-like quality.

When analyzing these sorts of videos,

one important aspect is,

how does it interact with the environment?

One curious thing about this image is that

the creature, whatever it is, seems to have

what appears to be limbs.

It seems to sort of go up and move around.

[narrator] Radford notices

that the weird wall-climbing creature

seems to be on the hunt for something.

Keep in mind that the figure

isn't climbing into an open door or a window,

it seems to be sort of circling around.

One theory is that this might be a trained animal

that might be bringing drugs into the prison.

[narrator] Powerful gangs rely

on a steady supply of contraband.

In 2013, in central Brazil,

prison officers intercept

a cat carrying batteries, a phone

and a saw.

[Liberty] In 2015,

wardens followed a mouse

trained to courier cocaine and marijuana

between cells.

I've heard of a drug mule, but never a drug mouse.

[narrator] Gangs across the world

have been known to draft animals

into their narco empires.

In Colombo, Sri Lanka,

a cartel uses an eagle to deliver drugs to customers.

In Dhaka, Bangladesh,

police capture a pair of macaque monkeys,

they say had been trained to run a whole operation.

The male delivered the product,

while the female handled the money

for their criminal masters.

Brazil has over 70 different primate species,

more than anywhere else in the world,

including brown woolly monkeys,

capuchins and black howlers.

A simian smuggler could sneak in drugs

or even the tools needed

to fuel the grim brutality within.

If someone has trained an animal

to smuggle in weapons and tools,

they could be preparing for a riot

or some sort of a big breakout attempt.

Whatever this animal's bringing in

is something big.

[narrator] Prison investigators' best explanation for the film

is that it's some kind of trained climbing animal

attempting to bring contraband into the prison.

[Ashanti] The guards are unable to determine

what the creature is in this footage.

Whatever that thing was, it's another good reason

to stay out of these appalling prisons.

[narrator] Now, La Puente,

Los Angeles County, California.

August 2017,

a man captures the moment

when some unseen entity

makes his skin crawl.

[Wise] This guy's sitting in his car, and then his

calf just goes haywire.

[man groaning] Oh, my God.

Something begins to move under his skin.

[man grunts]

Oh, my God, that looks painful.

[man groaning]

[Kiki] Listen to him, he's groaning

and crying out.

[man] Oh, my God.

[Wise] You look at the way that his skin is moving around,

it really does seem like something's

about to burst out.

[man grunts]

It's like it has a mind of its own.

[man] It won't stop. [grunts]

I don't know. Maybe it does.

[narrator] The footage is uploaded to the internet.

Author Jeff Belanger finds

that many viewers believe it shows

a supernatural attack.

People believe that evil can possess you,

and in some cases, even take control of you.

[Belanger] Recent polls reveal that

over half of Americans believe

that demonic possession is real.

[narrator] In 2018,

the archdioceses of Indianapolis alone

received 1,700 official requests

for exorcisms.

That same year, the Vatican held an emergency meeting

for 200 priests in Rome

to talk about what to do about this rise

in demonic activity and the need for exorcism.

[narrator] The number of exorcists in the US

has increased by over 500% since 2011.

It's unclear what is behind the sudden surge.

But in 2016,

a 33-year-old woman from Tacoma, Washington,

claims to be possessed.

[Belanger] She started convulsing and writhing around.

She'd even be pulling her own hair out of her head.

But after reading some Bible verses,

she suddenly vomited into a trash can,

and then seemed to be okay again.

[man] Oh, my God. It won't stop.

[narrator] Is the man's convulsing leg

a sign that something sinister is brewing

beneath the surface?

It's like this guy's calf is the gates of hell.

[man groaning] Oh, my God.

[groaning]

I don't know if this guy should call a doctor

or a priest.

[narrator] Coming up.

Is something inside this man's leg?

It looks it's gonna burst out of his skin.

[narrator] And gym equipment has the cops sweating

as it takes on a life of its own.

What kind of force is moving the machine

at that speed?

[man] Oh, my God!

[narrator] In California, a man seems to have

something alive inside his leg,

biting and clenching at his skin,

leaving him in excruciating pain.

[man exclaims in pain]

Biologist Kiki Sanford,

thinks he could have a monster within.

Is there something under there trying to dig its way out?

[man groaning] Oh, my God!

He isn't moving his leg.

Something is moving in his leg

and it's out of control.

It literally looks like

it's going to burst out of his skin!

[groans]

Entomologist Kevin Kasky,

thinks he sees tell-tale signs

of an animal invasion.

When you look at the movement

underneath the skin,

you can see what appears to be long tentacles or legs.

[squelching]

Something parasitic perhaps,

that has gotten in underneath the skin,

and it's tugging and pulling from the inside.

Oh my God! [man exclaims in pain]

[narrator] Parasites can infest us

in many different ways,

and some feed directly on human flesh.

From a parasites point of view,

a human body is like a candy store.

Some eat our organs,

some hitch a ride inside your nose,

some eat our muscles.

[whooshing]

[narrator] In 2018, a 17-year-old Memphis boy,

on a beach vacation in Florida,

feels feverish and complains his skin itches.

Within days, his flesh is ravaged,

and his feet are covered in gaping wounds.

This child was playing in the sand,

having a wonderful time,

not realizing he was surrounded

by parasitic worms.

[narrator] Hook worms lie dormant

in contaminated Earth,

just waiting for someone to step on them.

Humans catch it from skin contact

with dirty sand or soil mixed with animal feces.

There is one kind of hook worm

that is specially adapted to live inside of humans.

It gets into your blood

and then travels to your lungs.

[narrator] Some parasitic worms enter the body

through skin contact,

but others sneak in through your food.

Trichinosis is a condition

caused by eating undercooked meat,

infected with parasitic roundworms.

[Kiki Sanford] Take one bite of bad meat or raw fish,

suddenly you're infected.

[narrator] Once inside a human,

they head for the muscles and start feeding.

And if your flesh becoming worm food wasn't bad enough,

they can also cause a deadly disease,

hammering you with meningitis,

pneumonia and encephalitis.

[coughing]

If whatever this is,

can crawl around under his skin,

maybe it could crawl through his whole body.

[man] Oh, my God! It won't stop. [groans]

[narrator] But physician, Siobhan Deshauer,

thinks this sinister spasm,

could be the man's own body

in an act of agonizing rebellion.

[Deshauer] To me, this looks like

a severe muscle cramp.

This can be quite common

with electrolyte abnormalities.

So, low sodium, low potassium,

magnesium or calcium can cause cramps.

-[man exclaiming] Oh, my God! -[squelching]

The imbalance of salts can cause the muscle to contract spasmodically

and create tremendous amounts of pain.

[narrator] Cramps can effect exercise enthusiasts,

who put excessive strain on their muscles.

Or they can strike without warning

while sitting on the couch.

-[squelching] -[exclaiming in pain]

[narrator] Common muscle cramps can be painful enough,

but this is off the scale.

[man] Oh, my God!

The man who's experiencing this must feel intense pain.

There is danger

even of the muscle fibers tearing.

[narrator] Cramps this bad can be fatal.

In 2019, a 33-year-old British man,

swimming in an Austrian lake,

drowns as cramps in his foot rack his body with pain.

He's found at the bottom of the lake.

A cramp is a sign

that there is something going wrong with your body,

and that you need to slow down, fast.

[camera shutter clicking]

[narrator] Now, Jhansi, northern India,

June, 2020,

police are called to an outdoor gym.

This is a really weird nighttime scene.

You've got men in uniforms

gathered around this gym machine,

which seems to have gone completely mad.

This one machine has just gone haywire.

[clanging]

It looks like it's out of control.

[narrator] The puzzled police officers

can only stand and watch,

apparently too scared to interfere.

This is one creepy video. I mean, the sound alone,

this clicking, clicking, clicking.

It almost looks like a ghost

is raising and lowering the exercise bar.

What kind of force

is moving the machine at that speed?

[clanging]

What it's doing now defies the laws of gravity.

[narrator] Coming up,

is there a secret reservoir of power

causing this spooky swinging?

A source of infinite energy would be like the Holy Grail,

It would change the world!

[narrator] In India, bemused bystanders,

film an outdoor gym that seems to swing without stopping.

Physicist, Athena Brensberger, is intrigued that the machine

doesn't seem to lose any momentum,

as it violently swings,

apparently under the control of some unseen power.

Now this type of equipment

is usually made with pretty heavy steel.

So, for it to continue that motion,

makes you really wonder, what could cause that?

This seemingly, endlessly moving gym equipment

brings to mind

the concept of perpetual motion.

[narrator] The perpetual motion machine

is an ancient idea,

that promises to revolutionize the world.

A machine that runs forever under its own power,

without any fuel.

The idea of perpetual motion has its birthplace

in medieval India,

in the works of a mathematician,

who to conceive of machines that would just move of their own accord, indefinitely.

It's fascinated scientists for centuries,

including the greatest thinker of them all,

Leonardo da Vinci.

Da Vinci tried to device a perpetually turning spit,

which would cook food on its own.

[crackling]

And most notably, a wheel that would never stop turning.

It had 12 parallel channels, all containing a small ball,

which would be set into motion.

The balls would create momentum

to keep the wheel going.

Just imagine a world with perpetual motion,

that would be a total game changer.

We could create a power station with no fuel

or a car that needs no petrol, no diesel.

[narrator] A supply of infinite energy

would instantly solve many of the world's problems.

But the laws of thermodynamics,

did underpin the fundamental principals of physics,

say perpetual motion should be impossible.

[rattling]

[woman] You can't just destroy energy

or create it out of nowhere.

You need to put in energy in order to get out energy.

[narrator] New research into quantum mechanics,

now suggests some form of infinite energy machine

could be a real possibility.

[woman] This is known as zero point energy.

This could change

our entire understanding of the universe.

[narrator] Scientists have found

that at the quantum level of existence,

there is a potentially limitless store

of untapped energy.

Physicist have determined that there is enough energy

in the vacuum of a singular light bulb

to boil all the world's oceans.

[narrator] In 2017, a team of Princeton researchers,

demonstrate the principle in the laboratory

for the first time, using silicon microchips.

Now they have plans to create a machine

to manipulate this quantum energy.

Scaled up, it might be the ultimate

free power source.

As the subatomic energy exists all around us,

even in the depths of space, it could be the key

to unlocking interstellar travel.

We, essentially, could have free energy.

[narrator] But for now, as far as we know,

it has not been released into the wider world.

Zero point energy has been achieved in labs,

under a lot of control. It's not likely

that it happened with this gym equipment,

exposed out in the open.

Something else must be happening here

to create the sustained movement.

[narrator] Biologist, Jayde Lovell,

thinks this free-wheeling device

could be the result of a prank.

Just based on the dangerous way

that this is moving,

it seems like someone

seriously overoiled the machine and its parts.

It's possible that this was a mistake.

Perhaps, someone set this up trying to be funny,

but if a weight machine like this one was tampered with,

it could potentially be lethal.

[narrator] If a prankster over lubricates the mechanism,

friction has massively reduced

and the machine will swing frantically

for a long time after just one push.

But it's no joke when machinery malfunctions.

[indistinct police chatter]

[narrator] In 2015, a man was stabbed to death

by a robot welding machine in Manesar, India.

This gym equipment was supposed to help battle

an ongoing health crises.

An increase in the sedentary lifestyle,

less physical activity,

combined with a higher calorie diet,

means that India is currently going through

an obesity epidemic.

[narrator] There are over a 1000 outdoor gyms

in India's capital city alone,

and the number is growing.

This gym has been put there

to help people to try and be healthier,

but instead, it could become a death trap.

This looks like an accident waiting to happen.

I would not be testing out this gym equipment any time soon.

Anyone can get seriously injured.