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.

[woman] Do you see that?

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

Wow, what a blast!

[people screaming]

This doesn't make sense.

[screams]

There has to be some sort of explanation.

What else is going on here?

[camera whirrs]

[narrator] Coming up...

[gasps] Oh.

[narrator] ...meet the face invaders.

Don't let there be more.

They're squirming around inside of his nasal cavity.

It's making me sick just watching it.

[narrator] A UFO gives birth over a busy airport.

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

[narrator] And in Britain,

the beach body you don't wanna get.

Ugh!

[woman] What in the name of God is this?

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

[narrator] Bizarre phenomena...

Oh, my God! [gasps]

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

[woman screams]

What's the truth behind this strange evidence?

[narrator] Now...

Dien Bien Phu, north-west Vietnam.

July 5th, 2018...

a villager turns up at a clinic

complaining of agonizing pain in his nose.

A doctor moves in for a closer look.

[doctor speaking]

We see this unfamiliar view from the endoscope.

It's a tiny, tiny little camera

that is actually going up this gentleman's nose.

And it looks like an alien world.

[narrator] What the doctor finds is truly horrifying.

Oh, my word.

This is the whole another degree of nasty.

[narrator] Something is alive inside his nose

They're squirming around inside of his navel cavity.

It's making me sick just watching it.

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

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

Don't let there be more.

Oh, God, no.

[narrator] A second gruesome creature is removed

from the man's nasal passage.

Oh!

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

[Ashanti] This is so gross. I feel so bad for the guy,

and the look on his face when he sees

the thing come out of his nose,

he... he looks disgusted.

[narrator] The invaders are unlike anything

the shocked doctor has seen before.

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

This takes me out of my comfort zone.

What are these face invaders?

And how did they get there?

[narrator] The man is a farmer

from the dense jungles of Vietnam

where American GIs fought the Vietnam

during the Vietnam War between 1961 and 9875.

[Martin] For the people who fought there,

they thought that the Viet Cong

and the People's Army of Vietnam were the big enemies.

But mother nature was an adversary too.

[narrator] After the fighting ends,

some returning soldiers come home with more than just medals.

Recent studies show that some veterans are infected with liver flukes

they ingested by eating raw or undercooked fish.

In the worst cases,

the parasitic worms feast on the patients' livers,

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

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

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

[narrator] When biologist Roland Kays studies footage,

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

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

Biologist Carin Bondar discovers the stomachs

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

sucked out from the unfortunate villager's nose.

Could this be a blood-sucking leech

that's crawled up the man's nose?

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

[narrator] Over 650 different leech species

lurk in the world's waters.

Some have 10 stomachs, 32 brains,

nine pairs of testicles and several hundred teeth.

These aquatic parasitic predators

are attracted to any kind of movement in the water

and have evolved to sense carbon dioxide,

the signature of the presence of a nearby living creature,

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

They secrete an anesthetic

so that the victims may even

feel themselves getting bitten.

And in addition, and anti-coagulant.

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

will not coagulate or harden up.

It'll just keep on flowing.

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

suffers after being bitten by a 130 leeches.

They sucked out so much blood

that he required emergency blood transfusions

to save his life.

So technically it's possible

that a hoard of leeches could kill somebody.

[Kevin] Removing them could mean ripping and tearing flash

as they are taken off.

Think about that one at dinner.

[narrator] But leeches generally attach themselves

to outer parts of the body.

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

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

where drinking water is taken directly from a river.

Perhaps these leeches were accidently ingested in a drink of water

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

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

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

Dr. Yite Lai of the National Taiwan University

deliberately allowed them to enter his nose

to study what would happen.

He even filmed the experiment.

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

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

and grew to 10 times its original size

as it feasted on the veins on his nasal cavity.

Can you believe that something that big

can sit inside of your face for so long?

[narrator] Finally he coaxed the leech out

with a bowl of water held under his nose.

Dr. Lai did his experiment in laboratory conditions,

checking his health regularly.

The man in the footage

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

if doctors hadn't intervened.

This is one lucky man that caught these

while they were still there.

If he has missed 'em,

they could have burrowed right through his brain.

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

Next time he drinks from stream,

he should boil it, filter it

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

Leeches are found on every continent

except for Antarctica.

So who knows where these guys might be hiding.

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

knowing that somewhere on this planet,

there is a creature that might crawl up my nose.

These things look like they could suck a human dry.

[narrator] Now...

The town of Washington in Northern California...

November 2016...

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

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

Let's get in here.

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

is barely big enough to stand in,

and penetrates deep into the side of a remote mountain.

[explorer] I keep hitting my head.

Oop, that was bad.

[narrator] Exploring old gold mines

is an extremely dangerous pastime

and should be attempted by anyone without expertise.

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

This is a crumbling gold mine.

Bad things could happen in there at any time.

Does this guy wanna be buried alive?

[narrator] Then... 100 feet in...

[distorted sounds]

[explorer] Do you hear that?

Sounds like, uh...

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

[distorted sounds]

Do you hear that?

That's a weird noise.

Oh, my goodness, what's that sound?

[distorted sounds]

You're in an abandoned mine,

and you hear demonic whisper,

what do you do?

-[distorted sounds] -[explorer] Oh.

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

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

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

That's crazy.

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

[bleep]

[narrator] Fearing for his safety,

the underground explorer attempts to escape.

[bleep]

Coming up...

Is this mine also a tomb?

Could serial killers or sadistic truckers

dump bodies at the abandoned mines?

[narrator] And after a nuclear accident,

a monster on a British beach.

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

This is really bizarre.

[narrator] In an abandoned gold mine in Washington, California,

an explorer flees for his life after hearing this sound.

[distorted sounds]

These whispers are actually quite loud.

[narrator] Anthropologist Debra Hyde

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

in a ghoulish legacy.

Mining traditionally has been an incredibly dangerous enterprise.

And for as many people that walked out of that mine

with a handful of gold,

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

[narrator] Over 300,000 miners migrate to California

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

One in five would die within six months.

On August 27th, 1922,

fire breaks out in the Argonaut Mine,

one of California's biggest gold producers.

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

Fire expanded, worked its way through the mine shafts.

When there's no means of escape,

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

[narrator] Many mines in this area have seen tragedies

and many are said to be haunted.

If you're superstitious, you could believe that

suffering miners had been down there,

that their souls were still making these noises

and this is what we've been hearing here.

[distorted sounds]

[narrator] Former FBI agent Rhonda Glover

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

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

Snaking through the U.S. from California to New Jersey

is Interstate 80.

There's a stretch where there's a Bermuda Triangle of missing persons.

[narrator] The 3,000 mile-long transcontinental corridor passes through 11 U.S. states.

When it reaches the derelict mining districts

of Nevada and Northern California,

the road becomes known as The Big Lonely.

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

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

Could serial killers or sadistic truckers

being using Interstate 80 to dump bodies

at the abandoned mines?

[narrator] In 2018,

murderer Jerrod William Baum kills two teenagers in Utah.

Their bodies are later found in an abandoned mine

to the south of Interstate 80.

Glover wonders if the sound in the mine shaft

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

[distorted sounds]

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

Could they have been kidnapped,

beaten and left for dead in this mine?

[narrator] But science journalist John Farrow isn't convinced.

[John] These whispers, they're actually quite loud.

And there's some force behind them.

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

[distorted sounds]

[narrator] Image analyst Ben Radford

believes the human-like noise could be caused by rocks

shifting above the rotten wooden beams

as the explorer's footfalls vibrate and disturb them.

[Ben] In an environment that has these hard surfaces,

you're going to have these echoes.

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

it's rocky, it's uneven,

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

and it's gonna be distorted.

[narrator] The weird acoustics of the mines walls

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

into what sounds like human voices.

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

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

[distorted sounds]

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

[narrator] Unexplained voices and potentially deadly cave-ins

are just two reasons not to venture into abandoned mines.

We don't know what this noise was.

It's a mystery still.

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

[narrator] Now...

Ainsdale, Northern England.

July 29th, 2020...

a woman walking by the Irish Sea is confronted by a horrifying carcass.

Bones sticking out... That's huge.

What on earth could this be?

It made me almost throw up.

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

I couldn't tell what it was.

There were three big bones sticking out at the top.

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

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

[narrator] It's enormous

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

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

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

It looked like a woolly mammoth.

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

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

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

and I've worked here for three seasons,

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

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

There are so many things that are still unexplained.

[narrator] Coming up...

Is this monster a victim of Britain's secret Chernobyl?

The Irish seas are toxic, Celtic, cauldron of radiation,

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

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

[woman] What in the name of God is this?

Ugh! Ugh, that's disgusting. Ugh.

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

[narrator] The beach blob seems to be made up

of an impossible collection of body parts.

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

Who would not be freaked out by this, right?

Oh, I didn't want to look.

[Tony] This Frankenstein creature is a mish-mash of skeleton

of blubbery skin and fat.

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

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

This is really bizarre.

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

[narrator] It seems to have some of the features

of animals only found on land.

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

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

that come out of the sea,

that are truly unique but none with hooves.

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

but this isn't a cow or a bull.

It's over 15 feet long.

Twice the length of a standard farmyard Heifer.

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

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

One thing for sure, though,

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

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

reminds anthropologist Debra Hyde

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

in the western British Isles.

[horse whinnies]

[Debra] There have been stories

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

And the idea is it's a shapeshifting creature

which can change into a horse.

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

And then when he goes into his horse form,

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

When you get on the back of a water horse

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

The water horse will run into the water,

will drown you and you will become his next victim.

[horse whinnies]

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

whether or not the water horse was in mid shape shift

when it met its end.

[narrator] Marine biologist Eric Hovland

studies the body in detail and is horrified

to find the creature might have a grotesque mutation.

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

Did we get this all wrong?

If we are truly seeing a double-headed creature,

this is definitely one unique mutation

that we've not encountered before.

[narrator] Historian Tony McMahon

discovers a nuclear plant called Windscale

a hundred miles to the north

that suffered a terrible radioactive disaster.

Windscale was producing plutonium

for the British defense industry.

So a huge fire there about 60 years ago.

[explosion]

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

And it's only one worker's quick thinking

to shut the air supply off to the flames

that saves Britain from an even more apocalyptic explosion.

However, terrible damage has already been done.

[Tony McMahon] As a result of that fire

a vast amount of radioactive waste ended up

in the Irish Sea with calamitous consequences.

So this is one of the most radioactively polluted

parts of any ocean in the world.

It's like Britain's little mini Chernobyl.

[narrator] British leader Harold Macmillan downplays and classifies

reports on the disaster.

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

with deadly radioactive iodine 131.

Quickly the order comes for 250,000 gallons of milk

to be dumped into the sea.

But it's not enough.

The iodine 131 dust spreads across the United Kingdom.

Iodine 131 is the radioactive element that causes thyroid cancer.

Hundreds of people and possibly more

are believed to have been diagnosed with cancer

as a direct result of that incident.

We know that radioactivity can cause mutations in DNA,

so, of course, that question comes to mind,

is this some horrible mutant

as a result of that disaster.

[Tony] The Irish Sea in a fact is a toxic, Celtic

cauldron of radiation and who knows

what mutated creatures are swimming around in it.

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

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

[narrator] Coming up...

Atomic autopsy. Is this, one, radioactive monster,

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

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

[narrator] And a strange object

spews UFOs over Mexico City.

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

[narrator] On a British coast ravaged by a radioactive disaster,

a bizarre beast's body defies identification.

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

[narrator] But biologist Eric Hovland believes

this could be a mangled mammal.

[Eric Hovland] If we looked closely,

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

but then perhaps,

those tusks are actually the jawbones of this cetacean.

By cetacean, I mean a whale.

[narrator] But the strange features of this creepy carcass

tell us a tragic tale.

There's still some unexplained mystery here.

Let's say we could reassemble the parts,

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

Looks like we've got some spare parts.

What we're seeing may be a second smaller organism

attached to our whale

by an umbilical cord.

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

and both the mother and fetus

have died and washed up on shore.

[Jayde Lovell] It's possible that the nuclear radiation that's in the water

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

stillbirth and miscarriage.

[narrator] Biologist Jayde Lovell fears

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

that live by this Chernobyl by the sea.

The thing that worries me is

this area is heavily fished for human consumption.

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

[narrator] Now...

The suburbs surrounding Mexico City airport.

May 22nd, 2009.

A man filming planes captures something weird arriving.

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

Just business as usual.

And then, bang!

Out of nowhere this other object just pops up.

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

And as eyewitness Alfredo Carerro films,

it starts doing something really bizarre.

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

kind of emanating outwardly from the central object.

[Patrick Tomlinson] What the heck is it doing?

It looks like it's dividing or multiplying somehow.

[Amy Shira Teitel] One unidentified object in the sky is rude enough.

When it starts deploying dozens of other smaller ones,

that gets really weird.

It's almost like giving birth midair or something.

Very strange.

[Amy] This thing is so close it has to be

some kind of aerospace violation.

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

or digitally altered.

But another film emerges of the same object

shot by eyewitness Pedro Hernandez,

shortly after the first and from a different angle.

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

The second video shows definite similarities to the first one.

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

smaller ones coming out on either side.

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

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

The string is horizontal not vertical.

The objects are all lined up.

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

I have no idea what that could be.

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

[Antonio Paris] So some UFO investigators, uh,

have alleged that this is possibly a mothership

and the mothership is releasing other surveillance drones

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

and then they come back and report to the mothership.

In fact, there have been multiple sightings

that seems to document very similar phenomenon.

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

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

The crew was stunned to realize that the lights

were surrounding a saucer of some kind.

Outlining it over 400-foot across.

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

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

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

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

Some people have suggested that these appear without warning.

That they come teleported from some other location

or even another dimension.

[narrator] But historian Martin Morgan believes this object

isn't an artifact of the war of the worlds

but more likely the war on drugs.

Cartels are becoming more and more well-armed.

They're moving around with armored cars.

With machine guns, with anti-tank weapons.

And they're beginning to use drones as well.

They're using drones to carry drugs over the border

and into the United States.

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

One cartel in particular, the CJNG,

have been rapidly expanding their operations.

[indistinct radio chatter]

[narrator] The Jalisco New Generation Cartel known as CJNG,

has taken Mexico's notoriously violent

drug wars to the next level.

El Mencho is their kingpin.

Also known as "The Lord of the Roosters,"

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

El Mencho is the most wanted criminal in Mexico.

By September, 2020,

his cartel had seized control of the drug trade

in 35 US states and most of Mexico.

Since 2017,

the CJNG has become notorious for their use of drones

to help conduct their business.

At this point, the CJNG is thought to be

supplying up to one third of all the drugs

flowing from Mexico into the United States.

Drones are the perfect drug mule.

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

[narrator] Multiple small drones deploying from a mothership

are harder to catch than one big drone

carrying a huge haul of drugs.

First in 2011 and then again in 2017.

There seems to be video footage documenting a mothership

deploying smaller craft.

Both of them happened over the town of Tijuana

right under US-Mexico border.

[narrator] Alfredo and Pedro's footage is captured in Mexico City,

over 1,400 miles south of Tijuana,

one of the drug wars frontlines.

But El Mencho has recently expanded into the Mexican capital,

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

he could be planning a hit.

The potential to use drones for, uh, nefarious reasons

is nothing new.

Uh, recently in 2018,

uh, the president of Venezuela narrowly escaped an assassination

by a drone.

[narrator] It was an event that could have inspired the CJNG

who are later caught red-handed.

In 2020, Mexican police seized multiple drones

that had been rigged with explosives and ball bearings.

They were turned into flying anti-personnel mines.

The nasty part is that these drones were found

in cardboard boxes and they were soaked in blood.

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

[Rhonda Glover] The cartels are learning fast.

But they're still using crude explosives

and over-the-counter technology.

What we're seeing here are more advanced.

[narrator] Coming up...

Mexico City could be witnessing

aerial tech never seen before.

[Patrick] It doesn't have engine exhaust of anything else

that would make you think it's another aircraft.

[narrator] And an Indian magic wand

that has humans under its spell.

What we're seeing here should not be happening.

It's defying the laws of physics.

[narrator] Multiple witnesses film a weird mothership like object

disgorging smaller craft near Mexico City airport.

Space journalist Amy Shira Teitel

believes only a super power would be capable

of unleashing this kind of technology.

The Chinese, Russian and US military

have all been known to use drone swarm technology.

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

Like something out of the Terminator movies,

these flying killing machine

share real-time battlefield information

with the entire swarm

and then react instantly as one unit.

Recently DARPA OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics

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

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

swooping down on you kamikaze style.

For years the Mexican government has been combatting the cartels

with the help of the US government.

Could they now be deploying drone swarms?

[narrator] But even cutting-edge America drone tech

relies on normal aerodynamics to achieve flight.

[Patrick] It doesn't have wings or engine exhaust

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

There's nothing that easily explains

how this thing could be flying in the air.

[narrator] Neither the Mexican or US government

claimed any knowledge of this mothership.

Until more evidence emerges

its identity will remain unknown.

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

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

[narrator] Now, the ancient city of Raipur,

central India.

August, 2018.

Film emerges of a man with a mysterious object.

It looks like an unassuming twisted piece of wood.

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

[Jeff Belanger] As it gets into the water, it starts spinning.

Like a screw and it makes some sense

because the flow of water is propelling it.

[Roland Kays] Then the guy lets go

and the spinning stick starts moving up river.

Not down river but up river.

How is it moving against the current?

[narrator] The corkscrew shaped object

seems to move deliberately in a spiraling motion.

[Jeff] It's almost like this thing has a will of its own

to just go up the water against the tide.

[narrator] Then, like a prop in a Harry Potter movie

the weird wand does something even stranger.

Whoa!

[Jeff] In another part of the clip

it's actually swimming up a spout from water

he's pouring into a bucket.

How does he do that?

What we're seeing here should not be happening.

It's defying the laws of physics.

[narrator] Priest, wizard and witches

have been using wooden sticks for thousand of years

to cast their spells.

In the west,

witches were said to favor wood

carved from the ash or hazel tree.

In India,

one plant was thought to be particularly powerful.

In the Hindu faith, there is a legend

of this mythical plant called the Sanjeevani.

Translated this means "one that gives life."

And in their ancient texts there are stories and myths

about this plant being used

to bring dead soldiers back to life.

[narrator] Stories of its power come from the fifth century BC Ramayana,

one of Hinduism's holiest text.

Belief in this mythical plant is so strong

that a northern Indian state has spent teams of botanists

into Himalayas searching for it.

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

And so scientist had never been able to find the plant

and test if it actually works.

Many people believe that the Sanjeevani plant really exists.

[narrator] Biologist Kiki Sanford

learns of another extraordinary ability

the plant is said to hold.

One that would suggest the locals in Raipur

have finally found this mystical herb.

[Kiki Sanford] On top of all of its healing qualities,

locals believe that this strange herb

always travels against the flow of water

and that's how they identify it.

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

they might have found it.

What this video could be doing is

proving the miraculous properties of Sanjeevani.

[narrator] Coming up...

Could an experiment by Nick Householder

confirm the apparent mystical qualities

of the magic wand?

We saw it spin a little bit.

Maybe we were seeing it get started.

[narrator] In Raipur, central India,

video footage emerges

showing a mysterious magical wand

appearing to bend nature to its will.

He puts it in the water and it starts spinning

which kinda makes sense with the shape.

But, as it starts going faster,

it's going upstream not down.

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

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

[narrator] Engineer Nick Householder

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

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

could explain its apparent magical powers.

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

converting flowing water into forward propulsion

allowing it to swim upstream.

The shape reminds me of something called an Archimedes screw.

A device invented specifically to move water.

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

along the Nile and ancient Egypt.

This incredible feat of early engineering

shifts water from a low level to a higher level

using a simple screwing motion.

[beeps]

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

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

to go against the flow of water.

[narrator] Householder filled a large tub with water

and attaches a pump to simulate the current of the stream

seen in the video.

Let's see if it works.

I don't see anything magical yet.

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

Oh!

We saw it spin a little bit.

Maybe we were seeing it get started

but not enough to propel itself.

[narrator] It seems Nick can get the 3D magic wand to spin,

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

This experiment shows that

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

It just can't.

It would violate the laws of thermodynamics

and physics as we know it.

Whatever's happening in that video...

...it's not this.

[narrator] Householder believes this footage

of a so-called magic wand

could be intended to deceive.

[Nick Householder] I think what we're seeing is probably a fake.

There's likely someone off camera pulling a thin string

or a piece of fishing line that causes the root

to shoot upstream instead of flowing backwards.

[narrator] Biologist Kiki Sanford discovers other examples

of mystical spiraling roots online.

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

People in areas without access to modern medicine,

and perhaps they're poor or uneducated,

are more likely to to buy in to these phony cures

because they really don't have any other options.

[narrator] Fake ayurvedic treatments and practitioners

are a growing problem in India

where modern medicines and health care

can be financially out of reach.

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

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

And if that means seeking out some root

or some mythical plant, we'll try it.

[indistinct chatter]

[narrator] Every June, thousands of asthma sufferers

travel to the city of Hyderabad

to gulp down live murrel fish.

Stuffed in a yellow herbal paste,

they believe will help them breathe more freely.

It's administered by non-medical practitioners

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

[Jeff] The scene is just epic.

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

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

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

it could be used by others as an unscrupulous attempt

to part the gullible and desperate from their money.

Vita-Zone. Suppressing all the medical specialist

and all the hospitals of the globe...

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

This can swim against the water

with no one touching it.

This is clearly a mythical, magical, powerful plant.

Who knows what else it can cure.

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