Original subtitles

[narrator] Worldwide,

50 billion cameras record our daily lives...

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

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

[woman screaming]

What the hell are we looking at right here?

[man] Check this out.

[whirring]

[narrator] Experts carry out forensic analysis.

of these unusual events.

Wow, now, that's a cracker.

[man] Ohh!

This doesn't make any sense.

There has to be another explanation.

So, what could it be?

[narrator] Coming up, a shower of death.

Could this be molten metal rain

that's somehow falling?

I've been doing weather a long, long time,

and I have never seen anything like that,

nor do I want to.

[narrator] Is this beast

England's legendary vampire cat?

Dozens of their animals brutally slaughtered.

Bizarrely, almost all of them had been completely drained

of their blood.

[narrator] And meet

the most attractive man in India.

Spoons, forks.

They're just sticking to him like fridge magnets.

I mean, what's going on here?

[narrator] Bizarre phenomena.

[gasps] Oh, my God!

[narrator] Mysteries caught on camera.

This is just mind-boggling!

[narrator] What's the truth behind this?

[narrator] Strange Evidence.

[narrator] St. Petersburg, Russia,

May 19th, 2021,

A CCTV camera monitors city residents

as they walk to work.

So, here we have this nice, comfortable day it looks like.

People walkin' around.

Maybe a little rain. You see the umbrellas out.

And then, all of a sudden out of the blue, blam!

[loud rumbling]

[electricity crackling]

You get this massive display of sparks

and fire fallin' to the ground from the sky.

What's goin' on?

[Sarah Cruddas] That is incredible!

It literally looks like it's raining fire.

[narrator] The stunned passersby are engulfed

in a scorching downpour.

Look, I've been doing weather a long, long time,

and I have never seen anything like that, nor do I want to.

-[loud rumbling] -[narrator] The searing droplets explode,

as they hit the road.

[loud rumbling]

This looks absolutely deadly.

Imagine you're just walking down the street,

and all of a sudden it starts raining fire.

You'd panic and run for cover.

And rightly so.

[narrator] People flee and panic

when the relentless assault from above

Of course the big question is,

"What's burning? Where are they coming from?"

[narrator] Physicist Chad Orzel believes

this could be evidence of a lethal downpour

that comes all the way from space.

Could this be molten metal rain

that's somehow falling?

[narrator] In 2021, astrophysicist Xinzhao Chu

made an extraordinary new discovery.

Every day, particles of metal plunge from space,

down through the sky to hit Earth's surface.

This happens more often than we expected.

Over the course of a year, something like 5,200 tons

of metal from space falls onto the Earth.

[whooshing]

You're lookin' at potassium,

you're lookin' at sodium, magnesium.

All of these metals are very reactive metals

that, when they burn, they burn brightly.

[narrator] These metals from space usually burn up

in our planet's upper atmosphere.

But it's possible for metal chunks to fall

to the ground like scalding rain

if the atmospheric conditions are right.

That's not something we usually see on Earth,

but we found planets orbiting other stars

where the temperature is so hot that the rain would be

drops of molten metal.

Astronomers recently discovered a world called

WASP-76 b that has the perfect environment

to rain molten metal.

[narrator] This planet has a much hotter atmosphere

than Earth.

Temperatures soar to over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit,

three times hotter than the lava in a volcano.

Metals vaporize in this intense heat.

Then, on the night side of the planet,

those metals that are vaporized

can coalesce and fall as rain.

[rumbling]

[narrator] Journalist Linda Rodriguez McRobbie

discovers that in 2018 Vladimir Putin's scientists

conducted an experiment

to heat up the ionosphere over Russia.

The ionosphere is

the highest level of atmosphere.

This is hundreds of miles above the surface

of the Earth

We're talking about the edge of space here.

Researchers were able to fire electromagnetic waves

at this very high atmosphere in the sky over Russia.

And what this did was effectively heat up the plasma

in this area.

The effect is potentially dangerous,

especially to Russia's enemies.

[narrator] Russian scientists used radio waves

to blast the sky in five different experiments.

Satellites positioned in space monitored

massive disruption to the plasma above Russia.

One experiment caused a physical disturbance

over an area of 49,000 square miles,

twice the size of Lake Michigan.

Perhaps it was an experiment, experiment that went haywire.

[narrator] Intense heat could turn

the falling metal particles to liquid rain.

[Chad Orzel] Is this what's going on in this video?

Is somebody trying this

and having it go horribly wrong?

[narrator] Russia denied its heating experiment was

an attempt to create a high-altitude superweapon.

But turning atmospheric space metal

into super-hot rain

could wipe out enemy forces in seconds.

This could completely change the balance of power

in global politics.

[narrator] But the Russian experiments

in the upper atmosphere are only able to heat

the ionized gas to an extra 212 degrees.

Hot, but not hot enough.

These aren't capable of producing

what we're seeing in this clip.

[narrator] Explorer George Kourounis believes

we're seeing another type of destructive energy.

[George Kourounis] Looking really closely at this clip,

we can see just a few frames of a very bright flash

before the sparks show up.

[loud rumbling]

And that looks to be a clear indicator

that what we've got going on here is

a very close lightning strike.

And perhaps this shower of sparks is

somehow related to something

that the lightning has struck nearby.

[narrator] In the background of the clip,

it looks like there's a tram

driving through the city center.

David Wallace believes this sizzling shower

may be the result of a lightning bolt

directly hitting the tram line.

So, when you think about the city of St. Petersburg,

it has a massive amount of ground wires

crisscrossing the whole area.

So it's very possible if you have a lightning strike

inside the city, you're going to hit one of these cables.

And that would explain why we're seeing

a shower of sparks that isn't just isolated in one area.

That it stretches all the way across the road.

[narrator] St. Petersburg was once the jewel

of the Soviet Empire and boasted

the largest tram network in the world,

with over 210 miles of track.

But Russian news describes the tram system today

as aging into a state of disrepair.

A tram burst into flames at this exact intersection,

just a few months after this footage was taken.

And a section of overhead wire spontaneously combusted

nearby in 2022.

Russian tram cars are literally falling apart.

I've actually seen a video where a man is riding

one of these trams and where he's standing

there's a hole in the floor.

Now, you have to consider,

if the trams are in this condition

what are the overhead wires like?

[narrator] Electrical engineer David Wallace

believes the shower could've come from the line

that powers the tram.

[David Wallace] There's a possibility that over time,

they're gonna start coming apart,

fraying apart, having strands coming out.

This weakens the wire

and it also gives the added incentive

that if lightning does strike it,

that's just more area for that wire

to explode outward creating more sparks.

So, that would leave from just a simple fizzling

of sparks coming down like a sparkler

to a massive downpour of sparks and molten metal

like we see.

[narrator] Wallace and his team set up

set up an experiment in his lightning lab.

[Wallace] Well, I can set up a configuration

where I have a series of wires ran up in the air,

strike 'em with a lightning bolt,

and see if we get the same type

of explosion and sparks like we see in this film.

It's gonna vaporize this wire that's hanging here,

and we should see a emittance of sparks coming down

like we see in the video.

All right, let's make the shot!

-[narrator] Coming up... -Let's run it up.

[narrator] Has St. Petersburg's tram line

gone off the rails?

It takes only 25 volts to kill a man.

I'm gonna be pushing close to one million.

[narrator] And meet the human cutlery tray.

What could possibly make a human become magnetic.

[narrator] In St. Petersburg, Russia, CCTV captures

a bizarre storm of sparks falling on terrified citizens.

[rumbling]

All right.

[narrator] Electrical engineer David Wallace

wants to simulate a lightning bolt to see if the strike

on the city's outdated tram lines

could've caused this downpour.

Now, when you take into account,

it takes only 25 volts to kill a man.

I'm gonna be pushing close to one million.

So you don't wanna be touching this

when this happens.

All of the voltage and current is gonna come up the tower,

it's gonna come across the top where you see

the, uh, wire connecting to my voltage divider,

down this strand here, through the rod,

into the wire.

-[electricity buzzing] -So, let's line it up.

All right. That's it.

[electricity buzzing]

[explosions]

[narrator] One million volts of electricity

fry the wire, completely destroying it

and sending sparks raining down.

There we go! See. Beautiful shot.

We had the sparks coming off of everything.

Just like what we saw in the video.

[explosions]

[narrator] Local news reports confirm a storm

in St. Petersburg that day.

A lightning bolt could have easily struck

the wire of a street car.

[thunderclap]

As this cloud to ground lightning bolt

hit the wire for this electric trolley car,

it immediately vaporized the metal

because these lightning bolts are so unbelievably powerful.

You're looking at temperatures

that's hotter than the surface of the sun,

you have voltages that can be in the millions of volts,

thousands of amps.

[narrator] The sparks raining down

on the pedestrians would've reached temperatures

of over 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.

I think it's a matter of luck that no one was

seriously injured by this display of fireworks

'cause you don't play with Mother Nature.

You know what, I have chased tornados,

I have driven through hurricanes.

That, electricity, that is really scary.

I don't play with electricity.

[narrator] Now, June 12, 2021...

on a dirt road in Odisha, rural India,

a villager films a man

who seems strangely attractive.

Oh, wow. It just stuck.

That is just weird. It's like his skin is magnetic.

[Liberty Vittert chuckles] People are throwing

silverware at him.

But what is nuts is the silverware

is sticking to his body instead of falling off.

I've never seen anything like it.

[narrator] His name is Rajendra Mohapatra,

an ordinary rickshaw driver,

putting on a seemingly superhuman display.

The villagers look just as amazed as I am.

Spoons, forks.

They're just sticking to him like fridge magnets.

I mean, what's going on here?

[narrator] More and more objects are

stuck onto his body.

Rajendra starts to walk up the path,

but the utensils stay on.

Well, there's clearly no gimmicks that we can see

because it's just his bare skin

and cutlery being placed around his body.

What could possibly make a human become magnetic?

[narrator] Rajendra is as shocked as his neighbors.

[speaking other language]

[narrator] Coming up...

Scientists find Rajendra could be possessed

by tiny magnetic aliens.

One theory states that maybe they arrived via meteorite.

[narrator] And is a maneater stalking

the British countryside?

It looks like somebody's been playing

a real-life game of Jumanji.

[narrator] A villager in Odisha, India,

films Rajendra Mohapatra,

a man who seems to be a real-life Magneto

from the X-Men.

Is this some kind of bizarre medical condition

that's made this man magnetic?

[narrator] Biologist Leslie Samuel finds

an eerie alien invader that could explain

Rajendra's power.

Magnetically-charged substances can

and actually do enter the human body.

[narrator] Magnetosomes are tiny magnetic crystals,

which are found inside microscopic creatures

called magnetotactic bacteria.

Organisms that could have come from another world.

Scientists currently don't understand

why these bacteria have this capability.

They think it might be a holdover

from when these bacteria first appeared on Earth.

One theory states

that maybe they arrived via meteorite.

[whooshing]

It's possible the origin of these bacteria

could be from beyond this planet

The thing that's so fascinating

about these things is that they've recently been

found to be present in the human biome.

These things are part of the very fabric

of how the human gut works.

[narrator] And these alien magnetic creatures haven't

just been found in our stomachs.

Magnet-type crystals have also been discovered

in the brain.

Is it possible that this man has an overabundance

of these magnetically-reactive crystals inside of him?

[narrator] But the tiny magnets

in the bacteria are only powerful enough to allow

the creatures to sense the Earth's magnetic field.

They don't attract metal.

Scientists speculate that they use

their magnetic sense

to navigate through harsh environments.

Even if this man is full

of these magnetic microorganisms,

he'd need to be continuously shocked

by an electric current

to start attracting metal objects.

And to get a spoon to stick,

you'd need a massive amount of energy.

If you were to introduce

an electrifying effect to a human,

to turn them magnetic,

they would be completely fried.

[narrator] Householder reviews the Indian footage

and is reminded of a man in the United States

called Jamie Keeton, whose similar abilities

have fascinated scientists for years.

He also goes by the alias, Can Head.

He's capable of sticking cans and bottles to his head.

[narrator] Keeton led a normal life

until he went to a baseball game one day.

I was tryin' to cool my head down

with a can of pop.

And, uh, as they hit a homerun,

I reached up to grab it and I missed it.

But as I missed it, I was like,

"Where's my drink?" and everybody was laughin'.

And then I realized it was stuck to my head.

[narrator] The can was so stuck,

it took five minutes to wrench it off.

Use both hands.

Scientists believe this stems

from his higher than normal body temperature

that causes his skin's pores to act like suction cups.

[narrator] Engineer Nick Householder wants to see

if human skin can really act like a suction cup.

We frequently use silicone to simulate human skin.

What I've done is modified it

by putting a bunch of holes in it.

Kind of like the pores in our skin.

Now, I only need one more thing

to make this experiment work.

This is a vacuum table.

But with the addition of my silicone sheet,

it will become my suction skin experiment.

[narrator] Pulling air through these silicon pores

should lock objects onto the simulated skin.

Now that I've got it hooked up to the vacuum system

in my workshop, let's see what can hold up.

Can Head is known for holding cans on his head.

but the other videos show cutlery being held

to a human body, so I figure, let's try that as well.

[air hissing]

It holds at 45 and 90.

This is pretty cool.

It goes to show that if your skin did have

a suction ability,

it would be able to hold up these objects.

[air hissing]

[beeping]

[narrator] Human skin normally absorbs

a small amount of oxygen in order to sustain

the uppermost layer of skin cells,

but Can Head Keeton's skin absorbs more than usual.

His oxygen levels are 23% higher than average.

This oxygen boost raises his body temperature

to a hundred degrees

and gives him an array of uncanny superpowers.

Not only is he able to stick objects to his skin,

but his wounds heal faster, he gets sick less,

and ages slower than the average person.

[narrator] But reports say this Indian rickshaw driver

doesn't have Keeton's unique oxygen-guzzling ability.

So his pores don't explain why objects stick to him.

Journalist Liberty Vittert finds another example

of a human with a knack for attracting metal.

who has been studied by doctors.

Malaysian Magnet Man, Liew Thow Lin

Liew was able to hang metal objects

weighing up to four and a half pounds

from his body using no other support

but his own skin.

He was able to pull an entire car

just sticking it to his body.

[narrator] Scientists studied Liew's weird powers

and found he wasn't a human magnet,

but a man with a power to attach objects to his body.

Liew's skin exhibits very high levels of friction

producing kind of a suction effect.

[Nick Householder] He had a very unique skin

that was incredibly sticky.

So, it wasn't just metal that would stick to him,

but also smooth wood or plastic objects.

So this sticky superpower actually turned out

to maybe be genetic because his children

and grandchildren had the same sticky ability.

So, it may be that this guy just has that property.

that things stick to him that don't stick

to other people.

[narrator] If the man has fricative super skin,

it might be something scientists could

study and synthesize in a lab.

Then one day, all of us could benefit.

We may never lose our house keys again.

I think it's really cool to see all the amazing things

that human beings are capable of.

If this is some kind of mutant power,

he's a lucky guy.

[helicopter hovering]

[narrator] Now...

the county of Somerset, Great Britain.

A local couple taking a country walk

spot a large object emerging from the trees.

What the heck is that thing? It's huge!

[narrator] This is Britain, a heavily populated island

that has had no enormous feline predators

since the last ice age.

There is a tail.

You can notice there's a little bit of a tail

-coming out the back. -[woman] It's moving.

Kind of like a cat.

But if it's a cat and it's this big,

from that far away,

I'm thinking it's an enormous cat.

[narrator] This thing looks at least six feet long.

and could weigh up to 220 pounds.

He's stopped and looking around.

I wonder if he knows he's being watched.

It appears as though they got a fair amount of footage,

which I would consider pretty brave.

[narrator] Finally, the creature slinks back

into the trees, leaving the couple terrified

of a monster lurking near their backyard.

This is England where we don't have big cats

roaming around free, so this is quite worrying.

Well, it looks like somebody's been playing

a real-life game of Jumanji.

[narrator] Coming up...

does a mysterious local tombstone hold a clue

to this cat's origin?

[Tony McMahon] It really wasn't a good idea

to make fun of a tiger.

And the tiger broke free and mauled her to death.

Tore her to pieces.

[narrator] And in a city hall corridor,

a political poltergeist tries to take down the mayor.

Something just slammed him into the wall.

There's nothing there.

A British couple in the English county

of Somerset film a mysterious, giant cat

lurking near their yard.

This is the shire, not the Serengeti.

[narrator] Carnivorous cats this size aren't native

to the British Isles.

The footage reminds historian Tony McMahon

of an event that occurred in this rural part

of Western England in the year 1703.

[McMahon] This is a story from English history

that's one of the strangest I've ever heard,

not just because it involves a tiger.

Back in the White Lion Pub in Malmesbury,

you've got a 33-year-old barmaid

called Hannah Twynnoy.

And she's working there as usual

when a circus pulls up and pitches up

right outside the pub.

And for some reason that we can't fathom,

Hannah took to going out of the pub

on her breaks and teasing this tiger

that was part of the circus

that was tethered to the ground by a peg.

Now, the keeper kept warning Hannah

it really wasn't a good idea to make fun of a tiger.

But she kept doing it

like a naughty girl in a fairytale,

and the tiger broke free from its peg

and mauled her to death.

Tore her to pieces.

[narrator] Hannah Twynnoy's mauled remains

are buried in a local churchyard

with a stone recording her strange and savage end.

But history doesn't record what happens to the tiger.

So, did this tiger run into the woods

and its descendants today are terrorizing Western England?

[narrator] Black tigers do occur in the wild,

but they are never as black in color

as the creature in the footage.

And Dustin Growick believes the shape of the animal

in this video proves it's a different type

of ferocious beast.

[David Growick] Looking at the animal in this footage,

we can see a pretty long tail.

In fact, its body shape and the way it moves is

similar in fact to that of a jaguar.

[narrator] The jaguar's the third biggest cat

in the world

with a bite designed to crush the skull of tortoises

and puncture the skulls of mammalian prey

delivering instant brain death to its victim.

These creatures are native only to the Americas.

But Deborah Hyde finds reports of a jaguar-like cat

in this area of England going back

to the middle of the 20th century.

[Deborah Hyde] The sightings sort of started in the '70s,

but they really ramped up in 1983

when a local farmer said that about a hundred

of his sheep had been ripped up by something.

[Steve Potvin] More and more sightings were reported

and most of them seemed to say the same thing,

that there was a large, black cat on the loose.

[Hyde] Now, you could dismiss this as some local legend.

But the government took it quite seriously

and they deployed four royal marine snipers

out for several nights to try and get whatever it was.

[narrator] But the professional soldiers

don't catch the supposed jaguar,

which seems to go to a nearby town

to wreak havoc.

Keepers at the Newquay Zoo arrived in the morning

to find dozens of their animals

brutally slaughtered.

Bizarrely, almost all of them had been completely drained

of their blood.

[narrator] This explosion of jaguar-like attacks

in the sleepy backwaters of England

could be connected to exclusive London stores

that offered zoo animals to go throughout the 20th century.

Up until around the 1960s, high-end department stores

in London sold exotic animals.

So, you could walk into one of these stores

and order a tiger or a lion or a panther,

as well as a cat or a dog.

Apparently, the late President Ronald Reagan

bought a baby elephant in London

at one of these department stores

for a Republican rally.

[narrator] One young socialite Angela McWilliams

purchases a leopard.

She names him Michael

and walks him around the Kensington dog parks

like he's simply an exotic dog breed.

One rather eccentric gentleman used to drive around London

in his Mercedes with his lion next to him.

One aristocrat had a menagerie private zoo

so big that he wrote to his supplier

asking him not to send any more black bears

as he had quite enough.

[narrator] There are over 100 stately homes

in the county of Somerset.

Some have been inhabited by English aristocrats

since just after the Norman Conquest in 1066,

almost 1,000 years ago.

It does make you wonder if it is an escaped big cat

previously from a private collection.

These incredible predators are capable of taking down prey

several times their own size.

Um, and once they've ingested all of that meat,

they can sit back and relax for a couple of weeks

before it's time to eat their next meal.

[narrator] Anyone going for a walk

in this beautiful part of the English countryside

should maybe think about carrying a shotgun.

It is fortunate the people taking this video weren't

any closer because this thing, well, it looks large enough

to be dangerous.

[narrator] Now, Armenia, Colombia.

August 2, 2021.

In the real-life land of Encanto,

in the mayor's office,

a security camera films a nighttime corridor.

Security guard is doing his rounds.

He's got his flashlight.

Kinda looks like he's checking in on something.

Maybe something's caught his eye.

That's quite a nightstick there.

Must be expecting some trouble.

[narrator] Then...

[Rhonda Glover] Oh, my gosh.

It looks like he was just pushed.

[Karen Bellinger] It looks like something

just slammed him into the wall.

But there, there's nothing there.

[narrator] The night watchman tries to get up,

but seems to be restrained

by some unseen, malevolent force.

Nothing in site.

He's on the ground against a wall.

And then he's actually being pulled.

He, he's clearly trying to struggle to free himself,

but something unseen is pulling the guy by the leg.

Oh, my goodness. Now, it looks like he's being dragged.

His arm just was thrown back.

[narrator] His co-workers hear the commotion

and come running.

[Glover] That's gonna be an interesting conversation.

Him trying to explain to them what happened.

What was the force that knocked him over

in the first place?

[narrator] Coming up...

Is this phantom beatdown part of a paranormal plague?

There were reports of a 10-year-old girl

who was tortured and murdered.

And that was the last straw for the bishop.

who said, "You know what?

We've gotta tackle these demons run amuck."

[narrator] And what cause this blast from below

that leaves a New Yorker fighting for his life?

If he'd gone a couple steps further,

he would've been right in the middle

of that fireball.

[narrator] In Colombia, the land of Encanto,

a night watchman is taken down by a seemingly magical force.

The film leaves the town in shock.

[Bellinger] The mayor of this town is so concerned about this event,

he goes onto social media and records a video

[speaking Spanish]

To anyone outside of South America,

it might seem incredible

that a politician would involve himself

in what seems to be a paranormal mystery.

But it's really important to keep in mind

that for Colombians,

the fear would've been really real.

[narrator] Phasmophobia, fear of the supernatural,

is increasingly common in Colombia.

Locals believe black magic workers

can cast encantos, spells or charms.

that conjure evil spirits to harm other people.

A lot of times, you know,

the scenes of murder and things like that,

you'll find things like chicken heads

and chicken feet or organs and things like that.

And I think that's where a lot this mysticism

sort of comes into play.

Things really came to a head when there were reports

of a 10-year-old girl who was tortured and murdered.

And that was the last straw for the bishop who said,

"You know what?

We've gotta tackles these demons run amok."

[narrator] But when George Kourounis sees

the strange movements

of the security guard in the footage,

he is reminded of a violent sickness

that grips some people

in the jungles of Latin America.

There's a tribe called the Miskito people,

and they experience something called grisi siknis.

[Kevin Kasky] There's been hundreds of cases reported

of this grisi siknis.

They've been suffering

from sort of a collective insanity

that almost seems contagious.

[narrator] Sufferers of grisi siknis are gripped

by a delusion that they are being attacked

by an invisible foe.

Many sufferers grab any weapon they can find.

swinging it around them

as if trying to defend themselves

from an unseen attacker.

Their wild movements look similar to the actions

of the security guard in the footage.

There's no evident parasite or any kind of mental illness

that has been discerned

by those who studied these people

to cause this behavior and it's believed to really be

an imitative, cultural practice.

But the Miskito people themselves, they believe

it's gotta be the action of evil spirits.

[narrator] But former FBI agent Rhonda Glover

believes the angle at which the man falls

indicates a different kind of force acting on his body.

[Glover] This is the moment where he starts to fall.

Now, taking a look,

look at how he just kind of falls into the wall there.

Now, there's a difference between being shoved

and in falling.

There's a big difference.

There's a, it's, it's... The force is different.

The way that you might feel

being pushed and then actually falling.

It's a totally different feeling.

This in no way, shape or form, to me, uh,

looks like he's being dragged.

If anything, he's sort of dragging his own feet

um, while he's crawling

to sort of the foot of the stairs over there.

[narrator] Armenia lies on the violent triple junction

of the Pacific, Nazca, and Cocos Techtonic Plates.

It's often rocked by deadly earthquakes.

In 1999, over 60% of the city was reduced to rubble,

and more than one thousand people were killed

in a quake that registered 6.2 on the moment magnitude scale.

The region is still subject to many minor tremors

It could make a person fall to the ground

just like the guard in the footage.

There are literally hundreds of millions of people

who live in this very earthquake-prone region.

And it just becomes part of their everyday life.

[narrator] The superstitious security guard could've

mistaken a small seismic tremor

for an evil encanto cast by a demonic attacker.

But reports show no geological disturbances

were recorded on this day in Armenia.

[Glover] You know, as a law enforcement officer,

I would look for the facts.

You want the facts

'cause you wanna prove your case.

But then there's some things that will show up

that you cannot explain.

This is one of the cases right here.

[narrator] The mayor of Armenia promises

a full inquiry to discover what really happened.

But until that report is finalized,

The force that threw this guard to the ground

remains a mystery.

Whatever you believe about malevolent spirits,

it's pretty difficult

to come up with a convincing explanation

for what is clearly captured in this video.

It is a mystery.

[helicopter hovering]

[narrator] Now...

New York City.

A security camera captures a man

walking towards a store.

This looks like a very normal day.

Nothing really unusual.

There's a little smoke emanating out of the grille.

[narrator] Until...

Wow! Whoa!

He got knocked right off of his feet.

His shirt might've actually caught fire.

But he appears to be okay.

Boy, that was a close one.

[narrator] The man pulls himself up

and staggers away from the flames.

He looks absolutely shell-shocked.

[Orzel] This guys is lucky to be alive.

If he'd gone a couple steps further

or a little bit to his left, he would've been

right in the middle of that fireball.

[narrator] He escapes,

narrowly avoiding the objects falling from the sky.

I can actually see debris landing,

so that the force of that explosion was

quite significant.

Whatever was caught in that explosion,

had gone sky-high.

If this is happening on public sidewalks,

we need to know what's causing them.

[narrator] Coming up...

the deadly, secret substance in New York sewers.

It's been leaking for over 120 years.

How could something on this scale go unnoticed

for so long?

[narrator] A camera in New York City

captures a man caught in an enormous blast

that erupts from under the sidewalk.

[Jeff Wise] Oh, my Lord! Wow! That is incredible.

Right under his feet, this massive explosion.

Flames.

I'm surprised that he wasn't just killed instantly.

[narrator] The blast reminds historian Craig Gottlieb

of a mysterious explosion that rocked the city in 1950.

[Craig Gottlieb] Let me paint the picture.

Massive explosion!

Manhole covers shooting into the sky.

Buildings blowing up. It's anarchy.

-[police sirens] -[narrator] The explosion comes from somewhere

in the city's 6,000 miles of underground sewage tunnels.

The sewage system is blown apart.

Blue flames are erupting from the ground,

shattering literally hundreds of windows.

[narrator] Authorities rule out terrorism

But even after a full investigation,

they can't explain the source of this underground blast.

Total mystery until decades later,

a Coast Guard helicopter's on a routine patrol,

it spots a huge plume of oil leaking into the water

near the scene of the accident.

[Orzel] It turns out that oil was leaking

from a storage facility into the ground under the city,

and something like 17 million gallons

of flammable oil had collected in tunnels.

If you've got that much flammable liquid in place,

all it takes is a spark.

Right? You could have someone, you know,

dropping a cigarette in the wrong place,

or a bad electrical connection,

or a bit of lightning.

Anything at all could set that off.

It makes that whole neighborhood

like a bomb waiting to explode.

[Vittert] It's been leaking for over 120 years.

How could something on this scale go unnoticed

for so long.

[narrator] The Greenpoint oil spill was so expansive,

the flammable liquid is still being cleaned up today.

And according to recent estimates,

at least three million gallons,

the equivalent of four and a half

Olympic size swimming pools, still remain under New York.

So, there remains pockets, who knows, how many or where,

of dangerous chemicals that remain underground

hidden out of sight.

So, everybody's thinking it, I'm gonna ask it.

Is the explosion that we're seeing her on film

part of an oil spill?

An old one that just caught fire?

[narrator] But ex-NYPD image analyst Connor McCourt

discovers the blast happened miles from the Greenpoint area

in the borough of Queens,

and suspects another labyrinth of dangerous tunnels

under the city are to blame.

In New York City, there's a network of cables,

of gas lines, of electricity,

uh, water lines, all kinds of things,

that build up immense amount of pressure

and sometimes result in explosions.

This grid is only accessible via network

of tiny underground tunnels

maintained by specialized engineers.

New York City uses 51 terawatts of electricity

a year.

Massive amount of power is required to light

all those lights of New York City.

And as time goes by,

maybe some equipment deteriorates, uh,

maybe insulation frays,

maybe water gets into the wiring

It can be released with catastrophic effect.

So, you have this tremendous energy

that's released in an unintentional,

unrestricted way.

You get an explosion.

[narrator] Civil engineer Brian Wolshon wonders

if a transformer somewhere in the narrow maze of shafts

could be to blame.

Electrical transformers effectively transfer power

between circuits,

stepping it from one voltage to another.

When flooded with electricity, they can explode.

The electrical grid contains numerous power transformers.

These are devices consisting of coils of wire

that help reduce the voltage

from the extremely high voltages

used in long-distance transmission lines

to the lower voltages that go into houses

and apartment buildings.

Uh, and when these overheat

and get, uh, too much energy in them

they can explode violently.

[explosion]

[narrator] The power company expressed regret

for the incident

but the exact cause of the mysterious blast

has not yet been determined.

Whatever it is, we know that this guy

is extremely lucky to be alive.

So, the next time you're walking

down the sidewalks of New York City,

be careful where you step.