Original subtitles

[narrator] Worldwide, 50 billion cameras record our daily lives,

in our hands, in our cars, and in our homes.

-[cat meows] -[narrator] They capture things that defy explanation.

-[explosion] -[women screaming]

What the hell are we looking at right here?

[man] Check this out.

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

Wow. Now that's a cracker.

-[explosion] -[man gasping] Oh.

-[loud crashing] -[women screaming]

This doesn't make any sense.

-[engine revving] -There has to be another explanation.

So, what could it be?

[woman screaming]

-[dramatic music playing] -[narrator] Coming up,

An undersea explosion.

Could it be some sort of industrial disaster?

Azerbaijan could be hiding something.

[explosion]

[narrator] Matt Kutcher blasts open the truth.

-Hit it! -[explosion]

[narrator] In Chicago, a 100 foot long object...

-[woman] What is that? -[narrator] Hangs in the air.

Maybe we weren't supposed to see that.

[narrator] And in Thailand, people worship a pickled pixie.

Oh, my goodness me.

It's disgusting. What do they think it is?

[narrator] Bizarre phenomena.

[gasps] Oh, my God.

[narrator] Mysteries caught on camera.

This is just mind boggling.

[narrator] What's the truth behind this?

Strange Evidence.

-[sinister music playing] -[narrator] Now, a coast of Azerbaijan,

a former Soviet Republic on the Caspian Sea.

July 4th, 2021.

Early evening.

A man films a flame flashing over the water.

[dramatic music playing]

Woah. Look at that.

[explosion]

What is going on?

[narrator] A colossal fireball is rising up in the nearby Caspian Sea.

Literally, the entire night sky is lit up.

[narrator] Locals react to the towering 1,600 foot inferno,

-as high as the one World Trade Center. -[people screaming]

This must be terrifying for the people watching.

-[dramatic music playing] -[people screaming]

The amount of heat this must be giving off is insane.

I have never seen anything like that.

[explosion]

What's happening?

[narrator] Azerbaijan is home to over ten million people.

-But is run by one family, -[camera shutter clicking]

headed by Ilham Aliyev and his wife, Mehriban.

In 2003, President Aliyev took over control over Azerbaijan from his father.

Now, the family itself had controlled the country for 30 years,

-and at this point, it doesn't look like... -[bagpipes playing]

...they are about to lose that control anytime soon.

[narrator] Amnesty International have accused

Aliyev's government of authorizing suppression of free speech,

-and the torture of his political opponents. -[man screaming]

-[explosion] -[narrator] When this blast rocks the nation's coastline,

Aliyev blames it on an erupting mud volcano.

-[pensive music playing] -[narrator] Journalist Linda Rodriguez McRobbie,

looks at the local geology.

[Linda] Azerbaijan has one of the highest concentrations

of mud volcanoes on the planet.

In fact, nearly half of the world's mud volcanoes are in this area.

[bubbling]

[narrator] A mud volcano is very different from a traditional volcano.

[Nick] What's happening is that the heat from the earth's core

is heating water deep underground.

And that water mixes with the sediment and the minerals around it,

creating a mud that shoots up out of the ground rather than lava.

[narrator] Lava from normal volcanos come out of the earth at over 2,000 degrees.

But mud volcanoes rarely get hotter than just 200 degrees.

[bubbling]

Matt Kutcher is a Hollywood pyrotechnics and ballistics expert,

with over 30 years of experience.

[explosion]

[narrator] He wants to find out if Aliyev's mud volcano explanation

for this fireball is plausible.

This is more about a gas's release, right?

Super-heated water mixed with mud.

In that mud, there is a lot of methane.

[narrator] The Caspian is the world's largest inland sea.

And geologists have found over 292 trillion cubic feet

of natural gas beneath its brackish waters.

We are gonna bubble up through the ocean some kind of ignition,

whether its minerals rubbing together,

maybe it's lightning.

Whatever it is that ignites that methane.

Let's go see if we could recreate this.

So, in the way I see it,

I think this is gonna represent the ocean, right?

Filled up with water, ready to go.

Now we need pressure. Gas pressure.

So we will fill up this cylinder here. We'll release the valve.

The gas enters through this hose into the bottom of this,

in the same way the mud volcano works.

It will go to the surface, surface of this tank.

This coil here, this will be the ignition system.

[narrator] All that's missing is the mud for this volcano.

[Matt] Push it in there, Jason.

Nice. All right let's put one more in there.

If one's good, two's better.

All right. After that one, we are good.

[narrator] Kutcher fills the tank with methane,

pressurized to 80 PSI to mimic an underground gas reservoir,

before retreating to a safe distance.

All right, son. One mud volcano, no waiting.

-Hot and ready? -Hot and ready.

Okay. On my count. In three, two, one. Hit it!

[explosion]

[narrator] When the pressurized methane is released,

it expands and violently moves to the surface.

[laughs]

-Now, that's a mud volcano, right? -Check it out.

Little mud in your eye, huh? A little mud in the eye.

[dramatic music playing]

Well, when that methane got released, it certainly blew up, huh?

[Jason] Definitely did.

[Mark] But look at how it split it open, right?

So you could imagine that if the gas is under the ocean...

-Yeah. -...and the gas comes

and tries to get to the surface,

like they're describing the mud volcanoes do,

it expands, and one big boom, huh?

-Tada. -Tada.

[narrator] A slow motion video compares and shows a small flame,

but nothing like the fireball seen over the coast of Azerbaijan.

[Mark] I think what we see here is a mud volcano for sure,

it just didn't ignite.

So even though the gas is released from the bottom of the ocean,

if it's not ignited, there is no fireball.

[narrator] Engineer Nick Householder believes the colors in the flames,

could be evidence of a reckless attempt to fix a disaster.

Every type of element burns with a different color,

and if we look closely at this flame, it's a very clear orange flame

and that corresponds to hydrocarbons, things like gasoline and oil.

So to me, my intuition says that's some form of oil or gas fire.

[narrator] The Caspian Sea region

is one of the oldest oil producing areas in the world,

with access to a massive 48 billion barrels of oil.

The Aliyevs own a big chunk of this industry,

-inherited from the former Soviet Union. -[camera shutters clicking]

Could we be looking at some sort of industrial disaster?

Former Soviet states have a terrible track record

when it comes to industrial disasters.

From Chernobyl to the gigantic

gas pit that's been burning for 50 years

in Turkmenistan.

[pensive music playing]

[narrator] The footage reminds military expert, Carlo Munoz,

of a dangerous stunt pulled by the Soviets in 1966 in Uzbekistan,

on the opposite side of the Caspian.

[Carlo] This natural gas fire had been burning for three years.

The Soviets had no idea how to put it out.

[water splashing]

[Nick] The Soviets came up with the most extreme

possible way to put the flames out.

The Soviets bored holes 5,000 feet down into the Earth,

lowered a 30 kiloton nuke down into it, and detonated it.

[explosion]

[Nick] And it worked.

The immense pressure wave created by the bomb,

put out a fire that they were unable to extinguish any other way.

[narrator] It seems incredible,

but if someone tried to secretly staunch a gas leak by exploding a nuclear bomb,

it would be devastating for the Caspian Sea,

and the millions of people that live by its shores.

Azerbaijan could be hiding something.

[narrator] But the fire that followed the explosion, burned for eight minutes,

and military historian, Martin Morgan,

sees no tell-tale after-effects of a nuke.

You are not seeing a shock wave at all.

You are not seeing any sort of significant blast effect.

You are just seeing a fireball that goes on and on and on.

[explosion]

[narrator] Coming up, Ilham and Mehriban Aliyev, the ultimate bad neighbors.

I automatically ask myself, what kind of new weapon could they been working on?

[narrator] And a flying paper clip seems to bend reality

When we think about things in the sky, we look for wings and engines,

but this object clearly has none of them.

So, how is this in the sky at all?

[narrator] A man films a pillar of flame,

roaring over the coast of Azerbaijan.

Data Scientist Liberty Vittert

wonders if it could be linked to the nation's first family's military aspirations.

The Azerbaijani military is pouring billions of US dollars

into their weapons' arsenal.

[narrator] Azerbaijan is targeting its next door neighbor, Armenia,

over disputed territory.

In 2020, the Azeris unleash a terrible attack on Armenia,

after accusing its enemy of firing rockets over the border.

The Azeris began a campaign of launching missiles against their opponents.

[missile firing]

The military fired missiles indiscriminately,

and often times into civilian areas.

[narrator] By the end of the six week conflict, 5,000 people are dead.

Martin Morgan investigates if the explosion in the cliff,

could be a prelude to another terrible attack.

When you see a big flaming pyre out in the middle of the Caspian Sea,

it's impossible to resist the temptation

to connect the fire with some sort of weapons system.

Azerbaijan has already flexed its military muscle in the past.

So when I see an explosion like this,

I automatically ask myself what kind of new weapon could they be working on?

[narrator] A test run of a new unknown weapon out at sea

could strike fear into Aliyev's enemies.

[Martin] The whole thing is just served up

to, I guess, scare the hell out of Armenian people. Is that what's going on?

[narrator] Aliyev's regime in Azerbaijan

continues to insist the blast was caused by a mud volcano.

But in a region as volatile as the Caspian,

nationalist aggression and psychological gamesmanship

can never be ruled out.

[Martin] This is what post-colonial post Cold War conflict looks like.

We have now been forced into exploring the possibilities

of conventional explosions of greater and greater destructive capacity.

And that's a reality that we now live with here in the 21st century.

[sinister music playing]

[narrator] Now, Chicago.

October 6th, 2021.

It's 5:00 p.m.

Aiyana Taylor is on the roof of her apartment block with her son,

when they spot a bizarre object in the sky.

[Aiyana] What is that?

It was completely black,

and it had this small, circular shape on the top,

and then four, kind of like, legs hanging from it,

and kind of like, knobs on the legs.

It was really bizarre.

That's... That's weird, very, very odd.

[sinister music playing]

It's certainly an unusual shape, almost like a bent paper clip.

And it's just hovering there.

It would look like it was just kind of hanging.

I have never seen anything like that before in my entire life.

[Aiyana] Not normal at all.

[boy] I don't know if I should be concerned or not.

[Amy] This is not a normal shape to see in the sky.

So, what are we actually looking at?

[narrator] It's at least 100 feet long,

but has no visible means of lift or propulsion.

[Amy] When we think about things in the sky, we look for,

kind of, classic engineering features

like wings and engines,

but this object clearly has none of them.

So, you wonder, how is this in the sky at all?

[narrator] Coming up,

rumors of Chicago's secret launch pad hiding in plain sight.

What happened to terminal number 4?

Does it still exist as a secret terminal for stealth aircraft?

[narrator] And, are these remains proof of a giant sea serpent

that terrorized the armies of Greece and Rome?

It takes chunks out of those forces, terrifying

the soldiers who've never seen anything like this in their lives.

[narrator] In Chicago,

a woman films an unidentified flying paperclip.

[Aiyana] What is this?

[narrator] Chicago O'Hare airport is nearby.

A passenger hub that processes over 30 million passengers a year.

But former FBI agent Rhonda Glover finds rumors

that there is something secret and strange going on behind the airport's public facade.

Chicago O'Hare has four terminals.

[Rhonda] Terminal number four existed until 1993,

when it mysteriously disappeared

and it was replaced by terminal number five.

What happened to terminal number four?

Does it still exist as a secret terminal for stealth aircraft?

[narrator] Since then,

strange events have been reported in the sky above the airport.

[Tim] So, there was an incident at the Chicago O'Hare airport.

There were people outside who saw some type of craft.

And some say it was a slow spinning disc.

People were reporting this large object.

The thing is, you've got a lot of pilots around,

so if pilots are seeing things that they cannot explain,

then you need to pay attention.

[Rhonda] They said they saw it hover for a few minutes,

then it shot off

and punched a hole in the sky.

[narrator] A bizarre object spotted over

one of the busiest skies in America should've been cause for alarm.

But officials of the Federal Aviation Administration

insisted no investigation was needed.

The multiple experienced air crew who reported it

were told that they had merely misidentified normal weather phenomenon.

[Carlo] Now this just raises a lot of questions.

Is it because that this object could actually have been

some sort of top secret stealth aircraft that the military was working on?

[narrator] Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku

wonders if the object in the clip

could be part of a cutting edge military experiment.

This thing looks like it's being held up by rope of some sort.

There is the offbeat possibility

that maybe the craft that holds everything up

is invisible.

[Carlos] U.S. military has invested in actual cloaking technology

which would render an aircraft essentially invisible.

[narrator] Scientists have been experimenting with cloaking technology

in which light bends around a unique reflective shield,

concealing the object behind it.

[Amy] Scientists have developed

a sort of invisibility skin made of gold.

Basically, what it does is, refracts the light in a way

that renders this object invisible to a human observer.

[Carlos] The U.S. military could be testing highly dangerous aircraft

in areas that are highly-populated across the United States.

[narrator] The U.S. government has performed secret military experiments

on American towns and cities.

Their populations used as unwilling human Guinea pigs.

In the 1960s,

the military covertly released the bacteria Bacillus subtilis

into subway stations in Chicago and New York.

The passengers were unsuspecting lab rats.

[Rhonda] The army secretly released this bacteria

to test the vulnerability of passengers

in the event of a biological attack.

[narrator] In 1964,

the government carries out more sinister experiments.

But this time, the threat comes in the sky.

Oklahoma City was subjected to 1200 sonic booms.

The idea was to test the public's ability to withstand

loud noises from the air.

[narrator] The ultimate experiment with an invisibility cloak

would be to fly above an area with millions of people,

like Chicago.

But over 2500 normal passenger jets fly over the city everyday.

So, the risk of one of the planes

unwittingly crashing into an invisible aircraft

would be incredibly high.

Could this be a test to see if an invisible aircraft

could fly over a city without being detected?

[narrator] Chicago authority say they have no idea

what the unidentified flying paperclip was.

But if it was a dangerous military test flight,

the people of the city deserve to know.

It's possible there was a cloaking experiment in Chicago,

and they had equipment malfunction.

Who knows? Maybe we weren't supposed to see that.

[narrator] Now,

the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Greece.

February 2017.

Vacationers enjoy the surf and sunshine,

while 2700 feet below the surface,

a remote operated vehicle scours the seabed for oil.

Then...

What on earth is that?

And it's just going and going and going.

[narrator] The operator sends the machine's metal claw towards the object.

Here we go. We're going in for...

Oh, whoa!

It just powdered. Disintegrated.

I did not expect that.

This isn't something fresh. It has been decomposing and is super fragile,

so that it just explodes into a cloud of dust when you touch it.

[narrator] These are the remains

of an extraordinarily long skeleton.

But of what?

When you look at the rover arm there,

you gotta think, this is definitely as big as 100 feet long.

[narrator] It's the same length as the largest whales.

But this is not a whale.

A whale's vertebrae has a series of bones

known as transverse processes protruding from it.

The skeleton in the clip does not.

The shape of these vertebrae make me think it could be possibly a snake or a fish.

However, all the snakes that actually live in the ocean are pretty small.

And this looks a lot bigger.

Is it possible that this is a skeleton of something much older?

[narrator] In Greek mythology,

the hero Perseus fights Cetus, a sea monster that demands human sacrifice.

And archaeologist Karen Bellinger finds ancient records of Romans

fighting monsters that resemble

the size and shape of this serpentine skeleton.

[Karen] One such encounter is from 256 B.C.

It was in the middle of the first Punic War

fought between Rome and Carthage,

which is modern day Tunisia.

[narrator] Roman consul Marcus Atilius Regulus

leads the attack on Carthage.

And he is with his troops just on the shore of the River Bagradas.

As Regulus' troops try to cross the river,

an enormous sea serpent comes out of the river to menace them.

[hissing]

[Tony] The serpent is described as having been 120 feet long.

So, comparable to that skeleton that we see in the video.

And it takes chunks out of those forces, terrifying

the soldiers who've never seen anything like this in their lives.

Regulus decides to bring in a giant bolt thrower

and finally manage to subdue this creature.

They snap its spine.

The hide of this creature was put on display in a temple,

and it was visited far and wide, by people

who wanted to see the proof of this amazing exploit.

[narrator] The serpent becomes known as the Bagradas Dragon.

But its true identity remains a mystery.

About 150 years later, the skin seems to disappear

from wherever it was being exhibited,

and we never hear about it again.

Could the serpent that attacked the Romans at Carthage

be the same creature that we're seeing in this video?

[narrator] Coming up,

is this skeleton proof that the Roman legions fought a prehistoric predator?

There's all kinds of different species that have survived

through the KT extinction event and are still alive today.

[narrator] And, a family driving through a cemetery...

[woman] Oh, what was that?

Just... [bleep]

...detects poltergeist pedestrians.

That's gotta shake you.

Is the car seeing something that we can't?

[narrator] In the Mediterranean,

a deep sea probe films a 100-foot long monster skeleton

that seems to match reports of a beast

said to have fought the Romans during the war with Carthage in 256 B.C.

[Tony] So, we're seeing what looks like a spine,

but it's like no creature I've ever seen.

And there's something very strange down there.

[narrator] Biologist Roland Kays investigates if it's possible

this could be proof of a prehistoric predator.

We know that the KT extinction event wiped out most of the large animals on land.

[narrator] Sixty six million years ago,

an asteroid strike plunged the Earth into darkness,

destroying the food chain and wiping out over 75% of all species.

But scientists now believe half of all marine ecosystems survived the devastation.

[Eric] Water is usually protective.

Just a few feet can protect you from a gunshot.

So, imagine miles deep in the ocean,

protecting you from the strike of a meteor.

There's all kinds of different species, some of them quite big,

like turtles, crabs and even sharks,

that have survived and are still alive today in the oceans.

[narrator] The largest prehistoric fish we found evidence of

is the Leedsichthys.

A terrifying creature so large,

early fossil hunters mistook it for a stegosaurus.

These monsters weigh 45 tons.

Seven times heavier than an elephant.

This is no fossil,

but a skeleton of a creature that died in the recent past.

Are there species in the ocean that have survived the mass extinction event?

Perhaps the deep oceans offered a refuge to this anomaly.

[narrator] If this turns out to be a prehistoric survivor

that preyed on the people of Greece and Rome,

it's a discovery that could re-write classical history.

But until scientists return to the site to investigate,

the origin of this super-sized skeleton remains a mystery.

Let's hope this isn't the end of the story.

There may be means to still bring that material

onto the ROV and into the lab for analysis,

so that we can get further evidence

of what we're truly seeing here at the bottom of the sea.

[narrator] Now,

Merced County, California.

December 26, 2021.

It's early afternoon.

A woman and her family drive through Winton Cemetery.

Their car is powered by the latest software technology.

So, clearly, what I see is a display that has certain sensors

that give it the ability to sense objects that are ahead.

[narrator] But then, among the gravestones...

[woman] Oh, what was that?

[man] Holy [bleep].

[narrator] The car's visual sensors

seems to detect something invisible to the human eye.

What in the world...

Looks as though a person has popped up.

So the car is detecting something that looks like a person,

outside the vehicle.

But there's nothing there.

[narrator] As the family drive through the cemetery, more ghostly figures appear.

[woman] Oh, my God!

That is so scary.

-Look, it's right there. -[woman 2] I saw.

[narrator] There's even a dog.

[woman 2] What is a dog doing here?

-Go-- -[man] It has to be a hell hound.

It's terrifying to think there might be something there.

That's gotta shake you.

Is the car seeing something that we can't?

[narrator] Winton cemetery was established in 1907,

it is the final resting place for over 7000 human bodies.

Locals say it's haunted by a strange blue light

that flashes around the graves.

But no human figures have been reported...

[woman 1] Oh, what was that?

[narrator] ...until now.

The claim that the dead can make their presence felt via technology

is not a new one.

In 2002, a man named Frank Sumption

reportedly created a radio receiver

that facilitates discussion and communication between the living and the dead.

[indistinct radio chatter]

Even computers have allegedly been haunted.

[narrator] In 1984, a man named Ken Webster

starts finding mysterious files on his BBC microcomputer.

They contain messages claiming to be from a man called Thomas Harden,

who says he lived in the 16th century.

There is no satisfactory explanation for the bizarre messages,

written in Old English,

on a home computer that had no access to the internet.

[Liberty] Like, how creepy is that?

It just doesn't make any sense at all.

[narrator] Coming up...

Are driverless cars taking us on a highway to hell?

[Nick Householder] Maybe these invisible people are a warning

that this technology isn't necessarily as safe as we think it is.

[narrator] And in Thailand,

locals worship a grotesque creature in a container.

[Karen] It's disgusting.

It's grey. It's gelatinous.

I don't know what it is, but it's creepy.

[narrator] In Merced County, California,

a family driving through a cemetery

find ghostly figures on their vehicle's display screen.

-[woman] Oh, what was that? -[man] Oh [bleep].

That's interesting, because this sensor

is picking up a person in front,

but there's nobody actually there in real life.

[man] It has to be a hellhound.

[narrator] Engineer Brian Wolshon finds the car in the clip,

uses cameras and ultrasonic sensors

to map the landscape around it.

What's interesting about this particular clip,

is that the sensors of the vehicle,

that are there actually to assist the driver in picking up information,

are picking up the presence of people, it appears,

that really are not visible apparent.

So, there will be people who will look at this

and say that this is clear evidence of paranormal activity.

[narrator] But engineer Nick Householder

thinks there are ghosts in the machine,

not ghouls in the graveyard.

What I think is happening is that there's some kind of glitch in the system.

The car is detecting an object that it thinks is a person,

probably something that's plentiful in a graveyard,

like a gravestone.

Autonomous vehicle technology is very new,

so we're still working out the kinks.

[narrator] Car computers use machine learning to detect objects.

Millions of images are fed into the AI

which then uses algorithms to learn how to identify potential hazards.

Nick Householder wants to test if a glitch in the car's computer

may be causing it to mistake objects in the graveyard for people.

He sets up a replica of the system that's inside the vehicle in the clip.

[Householder] What I've got here is a camera connected to a computer

that is processing the images that it sees.

The way the system works

is it takes in visual imagery and tries to classify it against an internal database

to determine what it's looking at.

And then the car makes decisions based on what it can see.

Let's do a quick demonstration to see how this technology works.

[narrator] Householder positions himself in front of the camera,

so the AI can detect and identify him.

When I'm in the computer's view,

it draws a bounding box around me.

It recognizes that I'm an object

and it wants to know what kind of object am I?

So it classifies me based on a table of information that it stored

from being fed thousands and thousands of images.

But every once in awhile,

it'll make a mistake.

I've got something here in the shop

that sort of approximates a tombstone,

and let's see if we can replicate what we're seeing.

You can see here,

that the computer is detecting this shape as a tombstone.

It thinks that, "You know, that looks right.

That's what a tombstone should look like."

But even something as simple as a rotation of the object,

changing the way that it comes into frame, or maybe how it's lit,

can confuse the computer.

We can trick the system into thinking it's something else.

[narrator] Just one small adjustment to the tombstone

has thrown the system off.

Like the computer in the clip,

this computer system is now mistaking the gravestone for a person.

[Householder] I think this explains what we're seeing in the footage.

The computer is trying to classify the object it sees in the graveyard,

but a self-driving car isn't necessarily designed to drive around in a graveyard.

It's looking at the objects around them and classifying them

as what it thinks its best guess is about what it's seeing.

In this case, it's people.

[narrator] Modern cars have an average of 40 separate computers on board.

Drivers are increasingly taking a back seat,

as they perform functions that used to be carried out by humans.

Brian Wolshon finds reports of other in-car computer sensors failing,

with tragic consequences.

It's possible to have a sensor malfunction,

and not pick up

the presence of pedestrians who really are there.

Then we have big problems.

[sirens wailing]

[narrator] Phoenix, Arizona, 2018,

Forty-nine-year-old Elaine Herzberg

becomes the first person to be killed by a self-driving car.

[Householder] She was attempting to cross the road,

when she was struck by a self-driving vehicle

moving at 43 miles an hour.

And earlier this year, two men in Texas were also killed,

when their driverless vehicle drove off the road and struck a tree.

[narrator] Worldwide, there are over 30 million cars

with autonomous capabilities on the roads today.

In the U.S.,

six fatalities have occurred after drivers using autopilot crashed their vehicles.

Is it wise to be using this technology,

when clearly, technical malfunctions can occur.

[Householder] These types of technologies are using more and more

machine learning and artificial intelligence.

It's, uh... It's a pretty scary scenario.

[narrator] Now,

Thailand.

Udon Thani Province,

April 27th, 2018.

A bystander films, as villagers gather around a large class container,

given pride of place and raised on a stool.

These people are kind of mesmerized by whatever's in that bottle.

It's almost as though they're praying

to whatever it is that's in the jar.

[narrator] Then we see it.

Oh, my goodness me.

Oh, that is a terrible sight.

It's disgusting.

It's grey. It's gelatinous.

I don't know what is is but it's creepy.

They seem to be worshiping it, whatever it is.

[narrator] It's a jumble of limbs and skin,

dominated by three elf-life ears.

Why are these people gathered around venerating this thing?

What do they think it is?

[narrator] Coming up,

is this jar of horrors a sickening sacrifice?

The Kumon Thong supposedly is the trapped spirit of a child

in the body of a stillborn baby.

[narrator] Or a yucky lucky charm.

I don't think you want to put this dead creature on a keyring.

[narrator] In Udon Thali province, Thailand,

a man films villagers as they worship a grotesque object in a far.

The clip reminds archeologist Karen Bellinger,

of a sickening local practice.

There's one tradition that... that this creature kinda reminds me of,

and... and that's the Kumon Thang.

The Kumon Thang supposedly is the trapped spirit of a child

in the body of a stillborn baby.

[narrator] In Thailand, some superstitious people

believe possessing a specially-prepared corpse like this

will bring them magical powers.

The ritual to create the Kumon Thang

involved a witch doctor

drawing out and even roasting, the body,

and then coating it with gold leaf.

[narrator] Worshippers place the Kumon Thang in a shrine

and present it with food and gifts, just as in the footage.

It's a ritual first practiced over 600 years ago.

This spirit brings good luck, wealth and happiness.

But failure to keep it happy,

and it will unleash poltergeist-like creatures

to exact a terrible revenge.

While the origins of this practice were in stillborn

human babies.

Fortunately today, the practice generally involves dolls.

[narrator] But zoologist Roland Kays

finds this thing in a jar is no doll.

I'm not seeing arms and hands and fingers here,

I'm seeing legs and hooves.

This has gotta be some kind of animal.

It probably died before it was born,

and we can see it's really deformed.

[narrator] Kays counts eight legs and three ears,

on what appears to be two heads that've merged into one.

These are conjoined pig twins.

This happens early in pregnancy,

when either one embryo fails to split into two,

or you have two embryos that accidentally fused together.

You can have one head with two bodies,

one body with two heads, different combinations of arms and legs.

And you can imagine,

in most of these cases, it doesn't work out very well for the embryo,

and they often are stillborn.

So what happened to cause this dire mutation in this pig?

Could it have been something in the environment?

[narrator] Science journalist Steve Potvin suspects this beast in the bottle

may be the result of dangerous agricultural practices in Thailand.

Farmers are resorting to tactics to try and maximize their yields.

So using more things like pesticides and insecticides.

So with the ever-increasing use of pesticides and insecticides,

it's been suggested that maybe this could be leading to a higher rate of mutations.

[narrator] Thai farmers lost over 50% of their crops to the voracious insects

that infest Southeast Asia before they started using pesticides on their fields.

This pig embryo died in 2018,

when the Thai countryside was swimming in chemicals.

The pesticides and fertilizers end up throughout the tissues of these animals.

And even if they aren't mutated on the outside,

their tissues contain a lot of these chemicals,

and therefore, the chemicals end up on our dinner plates as well.

Of course, humans are also mammals,

so we are also at risk to exposure to these chemicals.

[narrator] The conjoined piglets may have had bad luck

during their brief existence,

but these villagers believe the pickled pair

now have the magical power to bring good fortune.

The Thai people are, as a culture, very superstitious.

And they tend to see meaning in the world around them in all sorts of forms.

Uh, one being, a belief in lucky numbers.

[Tony] They use this creature, apparently,

to help them pick lottery numbers

and, in particular, the number 13.

Because it has two heads, three ears, eight legs,

and if you add that up, that comes to 13.

This is a kinda creepy, morbid equivalent of the kind of rabbit's foot,

that you might carry around with you.

Only I don't think you want to put this dead creature on a keyring.