All language subtitles for Strange.Evidence.S07E06.Indias.Fireball.Mountain.1080p.MAX.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-BETHELL_track3_[eng]

[narrator] Worldwide,
45 billion cameras record

our daily lives in our hands,

in our cars and in our homes.

They capture things
that defy explanation.

What the heck
is going on here?

[man 1] Check this out.

[narrator] Experts carry out
forensic analysis

of these unusual events.

Wow. Now, that's a cracker.

Ohh!

This doesn't make any sense.

There has to be
another explanation.

So, what could it be?

[narrator] Coming up,

the legend of a lost
atomic bomb

on the roof of the world.

It's like retina
burning bright.

It's like looking
directly at the sun.

[George] Is it possible that
this mountainside explosion

is somehow related
to one of these

lost chunks of plutonium
in the Himalayas.

[narrator] In California...

Oh, my God!

[narrator]
...what lies beneath
the suburban front yard?

I mean,
how far down did this kid go?

[narrator]
And as China advances
in the space race...

There's a weird column
of light up in the sky.

[Tim] Well, we're looking
at some sort of portal,

things we've never seen
that we read about
in science fiction.

[narrator]
Bizarre phenomenon...

Oh, my God!

[narrator]
...mysteries caught on camera.

This is just mind-boggling.

[narrator]
What's the truth behind this?

Strange Evidence.

Now, Uttarakhand,
Northern India.

2020,

a villager captures
a moment of horror.

My goodness.

[whistles]

It's huge.

And it looks...

it looks worrying.

[narrator]
It's as though a second sun

has burst out of the mountain.

It is pulsing,
is pulsating out

from this sort of central
kind of fire.

And there's this amazing
sort of blazing white light.

It's like nothing
I've ever seen before.

It's like
retina-burning bright.

It's like looking
directly at the sun.

[narrator]
Locals are terrified

as the mysterious explosion
angrily intensifies.

I would not be
standing there.

I am out, y'all.
Time to go.

[David]
You got to ask yourself,

"What the heck
is going on here?"

[narrator]
The location of the blast

reminds journalist
Amy Shira Teitel

of one of the Himalayas
most terrifying mysteries.

Not the Yeti or
the Lost City of Shangri-La,

but a 1965
Cold War spy mission

that went disastrously
wrong.

India teamed up
with the United States

to erect
these monitoring posts
in the Himalayas

to keep an eye
on what was going on
with China.

[narrator] This was a time
of high tension.

China, just a year earlier,

had tested its first
nuclear weapon,

and the West was anxious
to prevent a surprise attack.

[George] These instruments
were designed to detect

any nuclear activity across
the mountain range in China.

But these instruments
had to be powered
by something,

and in this case, plutonium.

[narrator] In October 1965,
a team of climbers

haul a 125 pounds
of plutonium-powered kit
up mountain Nanda Devi,

the second highest mountain
in India.

[George]
This is an insane plan.

The peak is over 25,000 feet.

How that idea went
from someone's brain
to actually becoming

a thing is mind-boggling.

But this is the Cold War.

Extreme measures were taken.

[narrator] Plutonium
is a great substance
for powering equipment,

but it's one of the most
dangerous elements on earth.

Tiny plutonium particles,

if released large in the lungs
can destroy the cells

inside the body, leading
to cancer and lung disease.

And just hours
into the dangerous expedition,
disaster strikes.

[Craig] And then what happens?
Surprise. A blizzard hits.

[George] And in order
to save themselves,

they had to abandon
all of their equipment

at high altitude on a ledge,
including the plutonium.

When the team returned
the next spring,

they went to go find it...

and it was nowhere to be seen.

[narrator] The lost plutonium
is now a ticking time bomb.

[Craig] So, since the 1960s,
villagers believe firmly

that these devices
are still out there
buried in the snow.

[narrator]
Then in February 2021,

a glacier on Nanda Devi
breaks away.

The valleys below flood
with meltwater carrying rocks

and other material
down from the peak.

Could these plutonium
batteries have been
carried with melting snow,

and could they have then
reacted somehow,
60 years later?

[narrator]
But electrical engineer
David Wallace

believes that while
these plutonium batteries
are a deadly menace,

they wouldn't erupt
with the ferocity
seen in the video.

You know, there are various
types of plutonium.

Now, you have the very
explosive ones
that you use in bombs,

you have ones that you use
in the nuclear power plant,

and then you have
the different
type of plutonium,

the isotopes
which are used in batteries.

Now these battery isotopes
are going to be

very much less volatile
and would not generate

the explosion like
you would see in this video.

That leads us to think, okay,

there is something else
going on here.

[narrator] Wallace thinks
the blazing ball of light

may be a result
of India's reliance

on the dangerous slopes
of the Himalayas
for its power.

[David] You notice
that the weather is not good.

Very cloudy.

It looks like
it's a heavy rain,

possibly hail falling down
in the area.

If you have power lines
getting blown
around by the wind,

where you have the voltage
flowing through it,

you can have the possibility

of the two lines
touching each other,

and when they do,
they create an electrical arc

leading
to catastrophic failure.

Any time you have
an electrical power line

that gets broken,

that electricity
sort of has to go somewhere

and it tends to arc,
and spark.

[narrator] Wallace wants
to investigate

if a power line arc
could have caused
the explosion in the clip.

He constructs
two replica power lines
in order to see

if he can produce
an electrical arc.

What we have here is a rod

that is going to be
mimicking a transmission line

or a high voltage line.

[narrator] This hot stick
will represent
the other transmission line.

When Wallace touches the rod
with the hot stick,

he will generate a surge
of 40,000 volts
of electricity.

[David] So in a moment,
I will take the hot stick
and approach the line.

And you should draw
an arc between these two
and we'll see what happens.

All right. Lights off.

[narrator] Wallace uses
a smoke machine

to recreate the cloudy
conditions in the clip.

All right.

Here we go.

[narrator] Coming up,

did a landslide create
an electric apocalypse?

[David] You got to understand,
this is extremely dangerous.

[narrator] And in California,

a deadly secret beneath
an ordinary front yard.

[Tylor] Kid just falls
straight through it.

And... and... and you wonder
what... what's happened here?

What... what's going on?

[narrator] In the Himalayas,
a man films
a bizarre ball of light

blazing above his village.

Electrical engineer,
David Wallace,

thinks a power line arc
may be to blame.

He has set up an experiment

to see if the color of an arc
matches the blinding light
in the footage.

Here we go.

So, here we have around
40,000 volts of electricity

jumping through the air
through my stick.

That 40,000 volts is enough
to kill you on the spot.

[narrator] Wallace
doesn't produce an explosion,

but does create
an electrical arc

with similar colors
to the blast in the footage.

So now, granted,
what we have demonstrated here

is nowhere near the size
of the arc

that we saw
on the video from India.

Now,
we also have to understand
that on my set up,

I'm running about
40,000 volts.

In India, a transmission line
can carry anywhere

from 115 to 500,000 volts.

And you may have
thousands of amps.

If you get an arc
in these conditions,

it's going to be tremendous.

It's going to be huge.

It's enough to actually
melt the metal.

So, we demonstrated
what we saw,
but in a much smaller scale.

[narrator] Electricity lines
cross the Himalayas.

India has a population
of over 1.4 billion people

and their energy needs
mean valleys

have to be dammed high
in the mountains.

Over 30% of India's
thermal power

and 52% of hydropower
comes down from the Himalayas.

And India
is not necessarily known

for their first class
power grid.

[narrator] Uttarakhand,
where this video was shot,

had 972 landslides in 2020

and experiences over
3,700 extreme weather events
every year,

which destroy
the delicate wires and poles

that contain huge amounts
of raw power.

Scientists at NASA estimate
that thanks to climate change,

landslides
in Himalayan regions

will increase by up to 70%
before the end of the century.

More of these
lethal power blasts
are inevitable.

[Linda]
The power arc on the scale

that we're seeing
in this video

would have been incredibly hot
and incredibly bright.

I certainly hope that
no one was nearby

when this happened

because something like
that on that kind of scale,

that would be incredibly
dangerous.

[narrator]
Now, Southern California.

September 24th, 2021,
4:28 p.m.

A security camera films
as two brothers,

play in the front yard
of their family home.

They're playing catch
or they're playing
with the ball, I think.

And it looks like
there's a dad
and maybe a little sister.

[narrator] One of the boys
seems to discover

something mysterious
on the ground.

His brother soon follows.

Two of them
gathered together.

They seem to be testing it
or probing it in some way.

[narrator] And then...

[Dean screaming]

Oh, my God!

He went straight down
into it.

The kid just drops.

I mean that poor father.

[narrator] Tyler Bloss,
the boy's father,

desperately tries
to rescue his son,

while his daughter
screams in terror.

My son just disappeared
into the ground.

I mean,
how far down did this kid go?

[Tyler] I tried to reach down
to see if I could reach him.

I wasn't sure
if I'd be able to.

[Jeff] The kid just
falls straight through it
like he was not even there.

It's almost invisible.

And... and you wonder
what... what's happened here?

You know, what's going on?

[narrator] Engineer
Brian Wolshon

believes this boy
hasn't fallen
into a sinkhole or a cavern,

but some kind of deliberately
constructed underground space.

What I'm seeing here
is the hole that opens
is very round.

It's very uniform.

So it looks like
it's not something

that is a naturally
occurring hole.

[George] It looks as though
he may have broken

through some secret
underground tunnel.

[narrator]
And Southern California
is notorious

for its secret tunnels
created by criminals

to bring misery
to the United States.

Many times these tunnels
are used to transport people.

However, these tunnels
were constructed

in the first place
to transport drugs
across the border.

[narrator] United States
border protection

have discovered
over 200 illicit tunnels

beneath the US-Mexico border
since 2003.

[George]
About 90% of the cocaine

that gets smuggled into the US
every year

comes from Colombia
via Mexico.

And one of the most
efficient ways
to smuggle drugs

from Mexico
to the US is underground

through a series
of interconnected tunnels.

[narrator]
Many of these passageways

are the work of one man,
Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

[George] El Chapo
was the king of the tunnels.

His tunnels were next level.

We're not talking just digging
in the dirt with a shovel.

Oh, no.

His tunnels could avoid
ground penetrating radar

from police by being 70 feet
or more underground.

Some of them
had various hydraulically
controlled trap doors.

Like, this was sophisticated.

[narrator] US authorities
are astounded

by the engineering prowess
of El Chapo's
million dollar tunnels

featuring arched ceilings
that help distribute

the pressure of the Earth
above to prevent collapse.

One official actually
described them

as something
out of a James Bond movie.

[narrator] Most drug tunnels
are built by slave laborers,

ordinary Mexican men
tricked into backbreaking

underground labor
for months at a time.

Digging is said to move
at a speed of just
16 feet a day.

After the tunnel is finished.

The workers are often shot.

In January 2020,

US border guards
uncover the longest suspected

drug tunnel ever found
between the two countries

emerging here
in Southern California.

It went from Tijuana, Mexico,

and extended 4300 feet
into a warehouse in San Diego.

But it wasn't just a tunnel.

It had an electric
rail system.

It had air vents.

It had drainage.

The authorities have likely
only found

a fraction of the tunnels
that are actually out there.

Who knows how many are buried
under the desert?

[narrator]
But former CIA agent
Tracy Walder is unconvinced.

[Tracy] The entrances
to these tunnels

were typically
very well concealed.

They would usually be inside
of a warehouse

or inside of a private home.

They wouldn't typically
be in the front yard
of a private residence.

[Dean screaming]

[Tracy]
I just don't think that

that's what we're looking
at here.

[narrator] Coming up,

what's lurking
in this front yard deathtrap?

You, of course, could drown.

But there's also the risk
of bacterial infection.

You can asphyxiate,
because it's a low
oxygen environment.

[narrator] And a city comes
to a halt as a portal
seems to open above it.

[Craig] This is...
There's clearly
something there.

But what is it that

they're staring
at up in the sky?

[narrator] In California,
a home security camera

captures the moment
a young boy is swallowed

by a strange hole
in the ground.

Science journalist, Jeff Wise,

notices the ground's movement
just before the collapse.

There's this kind
of a softness or a,

a yielding of the surface.

It's not the terra firma,
the hard,

solid earth
that it looks like.

[narrator]
This could be a death trap

that's lurking in millions
of American yards.

So, it might be that
what happened,

this kid was jumping
up and down

on the surface or the hatch

to an old abandoned
septic tank.

[Brian]
So, in simple terms,

we can think
of a septic system

as a series of large
concrete boxes

that basically
take the outflow

of wastewater
from a home

and let things separate
and filter out.

[George]
Before a lot of these houses

were connected to the actual
sewer systems of the city.

Many people had septic tanks.

Many of those septic tanks
were abandoned,

just left to sit,

because it's expensive
to extract these things

and pull them
out of the ground.

So, it's certainly not
out of the question.

There could be an abandoned
septic system

in someone's front yard.

[narrator]
With a septic tank.

It's not the fall
that kills you.

It's the contents
padding your soft landing.

[George]
You, of course, could drown.

But there's also the risk
of bacterial infection.

You can asphyxiate,

because it's a low oxygen
environment.

[narrator] In Texas in 2004,

a two-year-old girl is killed

when she falls
into an abandoned septic tank

just a few feet from her home.

The same week in New Jersey,

a 92-year-old woman dies
after plunging 15 feet

into a cesspit
behind her house.

These deadly hidden holes
are common
in the United States.

Sanitation experts believe
there could be

up to 60 million
abandoned septic tanks

buried in the backyards
of homes across the country.

Each one could be a disgusting
and deadly trap.

[Jeff] The kid, fortunately,
seems unharmed.

He was lucky.

[Dean] When my dad pulled me
out of the hole,

I felt like relieved

that I wasn't in there
anymore,

because I was freaking out.

Like I'm in a hole
and I don't know
what's happening.

[Tyler] We were completely
shocked to find the hole,

I guess, advice I would give
to other homeowners

purchasing homes
would be to make sure

you get a septic inspection
if you have a septic system.

[Dean screaming]

It could have been disastrous.

We're... we're so thankful,

everything worked out
the way it did

and we're grateful that he...

he didn't have a scratch
on him.

It's a miracle.

[narrator]
Now Shenyang, China.

September 8th, 2021...

early evening.

Commuters heading home
stop in their tracks

to film an eerie sight

towering above them
in the sky.

What is this?

[Chad] I have no idea.

I'm not sure
what we're looking at.

[Tim] Yeah. I mean,
this... this looks like

something out
of a science fiction movie.

There's a weird column
of light up in the sky.

[narrator] Whatever it is,

appears to have
bright tentacles
bursting from its core.

[George] You know,
this is fascinating.

It looks like
there's this giant
luminous jellyfish

in the sky over China.

And it almost has a look
of a glowing staircase

that leads up
into the heavens.

[Chad] This is...
There's clearly
something there.

But what is it that
they're staring at up
in the sky?

[narrator]
Physicist Chad Orzel wonders

if this could be a Chinese
attempt to create
a door between realities.

[Chad] When it's zoomed in,

it looks kind of like a hole
in the sky,

like some,
some sort of gateway
to somewhere else.

[Tim] Are we looking
at some sort of portal?

Things we've never seen
that we read about
in science fiction.

[narrator] China is competing
with America
in a new space race.

In 2021, it successfully
landed a rover on Mars.

But China's ambitions appear
to go beyond

mere conventional rockets
as a way of journeying
into the cosmos.

They appear to be
harnessing quantum physics.

There are a lot of physicists

they really believe
these are not just
whacko ideas,

but they're real science
that can explain

how something
could get across

the universe very quickly.

[narrator] In 2017,
China makes
an announcement that,

if true, shakes
the foundations of reality.

It says one of its satellites

successfully beams pairs
of entangled photons

to two separate locations

more than 700 miles
apart down on Earth.

These photons appear
to exchange information
instantaneously,

faster than
the speed of light.

It could be the first step
towards a doorway

from one point
in the universe to another.

The holy grail
of intergalactic travel.

[Michio]
There could be a shortcut
through space and time,

allowing you to go faster
than the speed of light.

Take a sheet of paper...

Take a sheet of paper
and fold it,

and fold it such that
two points come together.

Two distant points
on the sheet of paper

are now folded together
into one,

so that if you were to go
through the fold,

you would instantly wind up
on the other side
of the universe.

That's what a gateway,
a wormhole, would look like.

[narrator]
The fastest American rocket

would take 73,000 years

to reach planets orbiting
our nearest foreign star,

Proxima Centauri.

Chinese astronauts
beamed through a wormhole

could arrive
on other worlds instantly,

colonizing the galaxy
in a human lifespan.

[Tim] And the scary part
is we don't know

what they're doing.

And I guarantee you
it's not going to be in some
report in Scientific American.

It's going to be hidden
for a long time.

We may not know it
until it's too late.

[narrator]
But if a Chinese laboratory

was unleashing a wormhole,
it'd be incredibly dangerous

to deploy it
in the middle of a city.

[Chad] The kind of energy
you need to create a wormhole

would require
a particle accelerator

that's vastly bigger
than anything

we've ever built on Earth.

So these wormholes
are a staple of science
fiction travel,

but they're well beyond
anything our civilization

can hope to do at this point.

[narrator] Coming up,
is this weird column of light,

a portent of danger
for the people of Shenyang?

People suffer
from heart disease,

lung cancer, strokes and even
neurological disorders.

[narrator]
And in the Philippines,

a hairy horror on a beach
in paradise.

Oh, wow... Whoa.

[narrator] In Shenyang, China,

a man films a mysterious
ladder of light

leading to a bizarre plume.

Engineer Brian Wolshon
finds a threat

in the city's atmosphere
that could explain
this bizarre vision.

Historically, Shenyang has had
some of the highest levels

of pollution measured
anywhere in China.

[narrator] Pollution readings
in the city have soared

to 50 times the safe limit.

Residents can breathe
in up to 1400 micrograms

of fine particulate
matter a day,

the equivalent of smoking
60 cigarettes.

And the pollution produced
by this fossil
fuel-chugging city

kills at least
16,000 people a year.

One of the biggest
contributors

to air pollution here is coal.

This part of China relies
heavily on coal

for industrial purposes
and home heating systems.

And when coal smoke
gets into the air

and people are exposed
to fine particulates
over long periods of time,

they can develop
some serious health problems.

People suffer
from heart disease,

lung cancer, strokes and even
neurological disorders.

[narrator] This sinister smog
can reduce visibility levels

to just 300 feet
and has an eerie effect

on Shenyang's buildings,

as it shrouds them
in thick, toxic clouds.

The air in Shenyang
it's so thick was smog

that at times buildings
become obscured to the point

where even the neon signs

that are attached
to the facades

look as though
they're suspended,

almost levitating
in mid-air.

Maybe the apparition
that we're seeing in this clip

is some sort of distortion
in the atmosphere

that's caused
by these very high levels
of pollution.

[narrator]
But science journalist
Sarah Cruddas believes

this weird effect
could have been caused

by a rare break
in the smog
that saturates the city.

We've got thick cloud
and then we've got some

breaks in the cloud
and perhaps the...

the sun is just
at the right place,

so, it's actually
reflecting light
on this building below.

And then you've got the light
shining through

and it's basically a hole
in the cloud,

which looks incredible.

And then by sheer coincidence,

it's perfectly aligned
with this high rise building.

If you were a few blocks
to the left

or a few blocks to the right,

all of these elements
would never have combined

exactly perfectly the way
we're seeing here.

We spent much of our lives
looking straight ahead,

but it really does pay off
from time to time

to look up to the skies,

because every now
and then we're treated

to a beautiful spectacle
of nature.

[narrator]
Now, Siargao Island,
the Philippines.

January 26, 2021.

It's late evening.

A group of fishermen
are heading home

when they film
a bizarre body on the beach.

[people speaking
in foreign language]

Oh! Woah!

Oh. Wow!
It's pretty big.

Oh! What is that?

[narrator]
These men are used to finding
all kinds of sea creatures,

but this is like nothing
they've ever seen before.

It looks like a carcass.

You can see
what clearly look like ribs.

And the part
they're specifically poking

with the stick appears
to maybe be the skullcap.

[narrator] It's jet black,

even its bones,
though it isn't burned.

And even stranger,

the men spot
something clinging
to what remains of its skin.

These local fishermen noticed
that something's
not quite right.

There's something on it
that looks like hair.

[people speaking
in foreign language]

[Eric] I can't understand
what they're saying,

but I can understand
that they're saying "What?"

What exactly is this?
What are we looking at?

[narrator] Coming up,
is this beastly body
of warning sign

of a massive earthquake.

[Dustin] It's got to be
something extraordinary

to bring a creature

from the deep sea
up to the shore.

[narrator]
And on an English hillside,

a boy films four ghostly
white figures.

What the hell is that?

In Britain,
this is where they keep
the criminally insane.

[narrator] In the Philippines,

fishermen discover the remains
of a strange sea creature.

What is all over this animal?

Is that something
natural occurring
or something unnatural?

[narrator] Marine biologist
Eric Hovland

believes the black coloring
may be a stain
from a terrible accident.

The blackening.

It reminds me of the animals
that get caught
in an oil spill.

Could this have been
the fate of this creature
as well?

Unfortunately,
large scale oil spills

are relatively common
in and around the Philippines.

In 2006, an oil tanker
sunk off the coast

of the Philippines
during a violent storm,

releasing
half a million liters of fuel
into the water.

It was the worst spill

in the history
of the Philippines
as yet recorded.

[narrator] Thick black sludge
smothers over a 100 miles
of coastline,

killing thousands
of marine animals in the area.

And the Filipino government
makes a bizarre plea

to the public
after this spill,

a plea that could explain
this beast's weirdest feature.

The government asked people
to help by sending their hair

and they bring it together
into these booms

to sort of help keep the oil

in one place
until they can suck it up.

It seems crazy,
but human hair actually
absorbs oil really well.

So obviously, hair salons
are a great place
to get this hair from, right?

So they sweep it up
off the floor

and send it off to help
with the oil slick,

but also prisoners.

And I'm not sure
if they had much say
in the matter.

So, going back to the video,

could this be the result
of the oil spill

and its subsequent cleanup?

[narrator] But zoologist
Roland Kays

sees other creatures
on this carcass that could
rule out an oil spill.

[Roland] The thing is,
when fish get covered in oil,

they're kind of preserved.

You don't see maggots
eating oil infected fish

and you see maggots
on this thing.

So, I'm thinking maybe
it's not from an oil spill.

[narrator]
Biologist Kelly Price

suspects this mysterious
marine creature

could come from a deep sea
dwelling species

rarely seen by humans.

[Kelly] So, what this could be
is an anglerfish.

Anglerfish are one
of my freaky favorites.

[narrator] The Bathyal Zone,
also known
as the midnight zone,

because no sunlight
ever reaches it,

begins 3300 feet beneath
the surface of the ocean...

this is the hunting ground
of the anglerfish.

They attract prey
with a lantern-like light

that dangles from their heads
powered by bacteria.

We do know that anglerfish
can grow up

to about three feet in size,
like what we see in the video.

[narrator] And these creatures
are hairy.

The angler fish is covered
in hundreds of sensitive

strand like antenna,
which allows them
to detect the movement

of prey in the pitch
black world they inhabit.

If this is a rare example
of an anglerfish

washed up on shore,

it's not a good sign
for Filipinos.

A pending earthquake
could be potentially

responsible
for rocking the world

of one of these
deep sea creatures

and presenting it
on their beaches.

[narrator] The Philippines
has over 250 volcanoes

and suffers 600 earthquakes
a month.

Most are small,
but big ones can be deadly.

It's got to be something
extraordinary

to bring a creature
from the deep sea
up to the shore.

[narrator] In 2018,
researchers in the seas

of the Philippines recorded

the deepest underwater
volcanic explosion

ever nearly three miles below
the surface of the ocean.

Another similar blast
could have brought
this monster onto dry land.

These creatures
spend their entire life

the deepest depths
of the ocean,

and when they die,
they sink to the bottom.

So, it's incredibly rare
and improbable to see one

on the surface
or let alone on a beach.

[narrator] An anglerfish
would explain the hairs,

but not the mysterious
unnaturally black bones.

The fishermen in the video
end up burying the beast

because they're overwhelmed
by its sickening stench.

Whether it was an angler fish
or not,

locals fear
what might come next.

Life in the deep sea
is strange enough.

So, when one of these
creatures

rarely washes up
on our beaches,

it is quite a sight to behold.

[people speaking
in foreign language]

[narrator]
Now, Surrey, a county
in the south of England.

August 1st, 2020.

It's early evening.

A group of friends
are walking in the hills.

So, this looks
just like a normal day
in the British countryside.

Nothing seems
really out of the ordinary.

[narrator]
Suddenly one of the boys

captures something emerging
in the distance.

What... What...

[gasps]

Oh.

What the hell is that?

[narrator] Four identical
looking hooded figures

moving in an unnerving
procession.

They're walking single file

across the camera
in front of us

and about 300 yards
in the distance,

slowly moving methodically,
one behind the other.

Hooded figures,
generally not good news.

[narrator] Coming up,

are these followers
of a pagan cult

about to make
the ultimate sacrifice?

[Karen] There's what's known
as the Wicker Man,

a gigantic effigy
of a man stuffed

with living people
and set alight.

[narrator] In England,
a young man films

four white ghostly figures
walking in procession
up a hill.

Their peculiar clothing
reminds historian,
Karen Bellinger,

of a blood thirsty cult
that held these islands

in the grip of terror
2000 years ago.

What I'm thinking looking
at these people

is maybe they're somehow
connected to Druidic rites.

[narrator]
Druids were the high priests
of prehistoric Britain.

When the Romans arrived
in 43 A.D.,

they were shocked
by the priests' thirst
for bloody human sacrifice.

There's one practice
that was very well publicized,

and that was the creation
of what's known
as The Wicker Man.

A gigantic effigy
of a man stuffed

with living people
and set alight.

Now, these were typically
criminals

or other enemies
of the Druids.

[Tony]
The most important dates

in the Druid calendar
was Lammas Day
on the 1st of August.

Guess when this video
was recorded?

The 1st of August.

[narrator]
But according to the Roman
historian Tacitus,

the blood-soaked
Druidic religion

was stamped out by the legions
in a ruthless purge

in the year 61 A.D.,
almost 2000 years ago.

Anthropologist Dustin Growick
looks at the bizarre costumes

and connects
the mysterious figures

to a notorious
British institution
that lies nearby.

Broadmoor is the real life
Arkham Asylum, and in Britain

this is where they keep
the criminally insane.

[narrator] Broadmoor
Criminal Lunatic Asylum

opened in 1863
as a secure hospital

for housing the country's
most depraved killers.

Escape is supposed
to be impossible.

But in 1952,
serial killer John Straffen,

escapes from Broadmoor
while on cleaning duties.

Within hours,
he kills a five-year old girl.

Straffen is recaptured
on the same day.

[Linda] And in 1981,
double murderer, Alan Reeve,

escapes the institution
by scaling an 18 foot wall

using a grappling rope
he made himself.

After he scaled the wall,

Reeve was picked up
by his then girlfriend,

Pat Ford, and they managed
to evade all the roadblocks

and actually make it
all the way to Amsterdam.

But it wasn't long
before Reeve killed again,

and he ended up in jail there.

[narrator] In 2014,
Broadmoor officials announce

that they will decommission
an alarm system

made up of 13 sirens
in the local area,

replacing it with social media
and news alerts

in the event of an escape.

Locals are shocked.

So, it's possible
that if someone had escaped,

people wouldn't know.

Are these four
hooded figures somehow
related to Broadmoor?

Could they possibly
be escaped patients?

[narrator] In 2011.

Broadmoor reveals
that it is taking

on a pagan priest
in its chaplaincy

as an audit of inmates

had found a number
had turned to Britain's

old pre-roman religion,
the faith of the Druids.

If these are psychiatric
patients,

who have turned
their back on society,

it could be very worrying.

[narrator] No escaped patients
were reported on the day

the footage was shot
and after the figures

disappeared from view,
they were not seen again.

Who they were
or what they were doing

remains a troubling mystery.

When you see a group
of hooded figures like this,

especially draped
in white, like they are,

you can't think
that this is gonna end well.

This is not a good scene.