Original subtitles

Tonight, on "The Proof Is Out There".

We're hunting Bigfoot on the bayou.

Could this footage show an actual Sasquatch in Louisiana?

We are hunting UFOs on a country road.

Some believe these are self-replicating alien drones.

We're hunting for miracles in a vial of blood.

This ancient saint's blood is changing

from solid to liquid before our very eyes.

And we're hunting sea monsters on the beach.

Could this possibly be

a body part of the legendary kraken?

Around the globe are videos.

What are those things?

It's moving.

Photos and sounds that defy explanation.

We don't know where they come from,

who made them, or how they operate.

What are they?

Some sort of bizarre mutation.

What's exciting is nobody really knows.

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.

I'm Tony Harris,

and as a journalist for more than 30 years,

I've followed the facts where they take me.

Now, I'm bringing that spirit of investigation

to the world's strangest sounds and images.

We'll analyze each one with top experts.

It's a credible case, it's a credible video.

And pass a verdict on what it is.

This video was clearly faked.

The proof starts now.

Good evening and welcome to "The Proof Is Out There".

Let's talk Bigfoot, people.

Now, when you think of the legendary beast,

you're probably thinking of a deep forest,

and not the bayou, but our first story shows

that there may be a Bigfoot living just 35 miles

from the Big Easy.

Honey Island, Louisiana,

sometime in the late 1970s.

Retiree Harlan Ford has been documenting wildlife out here

with his Super 8 camera

and telling stories about monstrous,

hairy hominids he's encountered.

Today, he may have just captured the proof.

A large, bipedal, uniform colored creature,

about a hundred yards away from Harlan's vessel,

strides between the trees.

Let's take a better look.

We can see the strange, two-legged figure lumbering

through the thick swampland.

And while it's hard to tell

without any further visual reference,

some witnesses claim this creature

could be a monstrous eight feet tall

and could weigh up to 500 pounds.

Author Dana Holyfield is Harlan's granddaughter,

who discovered this footage of what's known

as the Honey Island Swamp Monster

after it had been locked away for decades.

Growing up as the granddaughter

of the local monster hunter,

to me, it was like that's just a normal thing.

But it wasn't until I got older and grew up

that my grandmother would come out with this big box,

and it was all his wildlife photography,

and that's when we saw this eight millimeter film.

It was interesting to see

that he actually probably got closer

than what any of us really knew.

While reported theories

about the beast started spreading in the 1960s,

indigenous folklore that dates back hundreds of years

has described a hideous creature known to stalk this swamp,

looking to capsize vulnerable boats

and drag victims underwater

where it would feast on their flesh.

And for those who think the Southern swamps

are no place for a Bigfoot,

field researcher, Cliff Barackman believes

it's actually a perfect habitat.

It is over 70,000 acres.

Most of it is government protected.

There are many nooks and crannies

that people just do not go into.

This could only be one of two things.

A Sasquatch in the wild,

or a person pretending to be a Sasquatch in the wild.

There are no other options.

When the French colonists first settled in Louisiana,

they brought along some of their own monster mythologies,

legends like the rougarou, a human cursed

to haunt the Louisiana swamps as a wolf headed creature.

It was said to hunt down wayward Catholics

who broke the rules of Lent.

Let's see what our experts think about this bayou beast.

Could this just be a misidentification

of an animal typically found in the area, like a black bear?

Wildlife biologist Stephanie Manka doesn't think so.

It seems to be walking pretty easily on its hind legs

and black bears, they can walk on their hind legs,

but it's not as effortless

as it appears to be in this video.

This is definitely not a black bear.

Professor of anatomy and anthropology,

Jeff Meldrum, approaches this footage cautiously.

There are a couple of frames that suggest

a figure with something of a forward lean,

but it's kind of challenging

to identify any real, anatomical detail.

Even based on what he can see,

Meldrum wonders about a key ingredient missing

from this creature's exterior, a pronounced coat of hair.

The detail that's present in the video

does not give a real good view

of what would be a hair covering.

Hair would certainly be advantageous

in terms of protecting it from the coarse vegetation,

and insects, and so forth.

It also gives a natural sort of camouflage to the degree

that an animal of this size and behavior would need.

It is widely believed that all Sasquatches

have hair instead of fur,

which is why, similar to other primates,

it doesn't frequently shed or molt.

But without a clear view of hair,

Meldrum can't rule out clothing or a costume.

Plus, Meldrum questions why,

if Harlan was lucky enough to get this elusive creature

on camera, would he film for such a short time?

I would think that an intrepid hunter

would be motivated to pursue and investigate further,

and make the discovery of the century.

So it leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Our verdict, unknown humanoid.

Without further evidence, our findings remain inconclusive.

But Harlan Ford's granddaughter

is still convinced this film is genuine,

and the number of Bigfoot sightings

in Louisiana continues to increase.

Now to something else trending up,

we see UFOs in all shapes and sizes on this show,

but lately, we've been noticing a real spike in spherical UFOs.

Many of these sightings were captured

by US military cameras,

and this next puzzling video also purports

to show something spherical interacting

with American jet fighters.

Should the Pentagon be alarmed?

January 10th, 2023.

A video clip captioned, "Nothing to see here,"

uploads to social media and goes viral.

The video appears to show a dark colored,

low flying, spherical object passing over

a remote country road.

Suddenly, two fighter jets scream toward the object

in hot pursuit as the object disappears.

Let's see that again.

The sphere looks to be only about 15

to 20 feet off the ground,

which would make it much smaller in size

than the fighter jets.

As journalist, MJ Banias, is quick to point out,

spherical UFOs are more relevant now than ever.

The '50s had flying saucers,

the '90s had black triangles,

we live in the era of the sphere UFO.

There was a hearing in April of 2023 where Sean Kirkpatrick,

who runs the Pentagon's UFO office,

presented to Senate a graph

between the dates of 1996 and 2023,

and 52% of all UFO sightings

that the AARO office has been investigating

were made up of spherical or orb-like UFOs.

While not every orb sighting is this dramatic,

they can still be quite puzzling.

Case in point, this footage from December 19th, 2022.

Rad Muradpejohi is in Mountains Edge, Nevada,

driving home from work,

when he spots something unusual in the sky.

He pulls over to record it.

The video shows a perfectly circular,

dark colored object hovering high up above a house.

It was a pretty large, spherical,

definitely spherical like, black dot in the sky.

It didn't really have any gloss, it didn't reflect any light.

Unlike the orb in the first video,

this sphere is completely, eerily still.

Just kind of suspended up there in the air.

No propulsion, no engine, no noise.

So what are these spheres?

Many seem too small to carry occupants,

so are they perhaps some kind of alien probe?

If so, there may be a surprising reason

why we're seeing so many.

With this uptick in spherical sightings,

there's been a lot of internet chatter about

this sort of science fiction object

called a von Neumann probe.

John von Neumann was a mathematician

and physicist who speculated an advanced civilization

could explore by creating probes

that build even more probes from common materials

found on moons and planets throughout the galaxy.

von Neumann posited that if an interstellar species

wanted to essentially map out a star system

or distant planets, one probe could replicate itself

as it traveled through space.

Now, while more than half of UFOs are reported

as round or spheres, they don't all look or act the same.

We'll turn it over to our inner circle

to investigate these two very different sphere sightings.

Physicist, Dr. Michio Kaku,

thinks this viral UFO video is actually too down to Earth.

The sphere is located very close to the ground.

Usually these encounters take place

high up in the atmosphere,

and so there's something suspicious here.

However, aviation expert,

Tim McMillan, says there's a certain logic

to a probe flying this low.

The object that is flying extremely low level,

it's flying underneath the kind of envelope

that radar would be operating at,

because of how low altitude it is,

it's small size, and it it's relatively slow speed,

But it's that speed that has astronomer

and video effects designer, Marc D'Antonio,

crying foul.

Let's watch that again.

'Cause see how it's moving through the sky, kind of slow,

and the jets are going way fast.

Now hold on, if they were going that fast,

they should have caught up to it very quickly,

But we didn't see them catch up to it.

Not only can't the jets catch the orb,

but the orb suddenly disappears from sight.

There is one way it could happen,

and that is if this object wasn't there at all

and was generated later.

I have to say, unfortunately,

I don't believe it was a real video.

That first video may seem too good to be true,

but what about Rad's video?

D'Antonio thinks he's found the answer by simply spotting

what the eyewitness seems to have missed.

Down the bottom here,

you can see there's this little protrusion sticking down, okay?

And it doesn't show until you actually run the video

and see the video in motion, then you can see it,

like right there, is a perfect shot of it,

you see this little tiny thing sticking down.

I think that we're looking at a tethered balloon.

Our verdict, the first video is a clever product of CGI.

In fact, when we did a little digging,

we were able to trace it back to a visual effects artist.

As for Rad's video, we agree with D'Antonio,

we're most likely looking at a balloon.

So these two spheres weren't genuine UFOs,

but many others remain unexplained,

as does the recent uptick in sightings.

Important discoveries and inventions

often come about purely by chance.

The strikable match, penicillin,

and even good old Viagra were discovered,

more or less, accidentally.

This next discovery may top them all.

It was made on a beach by a dog

and, well, you just have to watch.

October 2022,

it's a beautiful spring day in North Queensland, Australia

and Afri Gregory is walking her dogs on the beach.

As she passes by some of the lovely scenery,

she records this.

Warm, crystal clear waters, (bleep) mint.

Long, beautiful beaches, (bleep) mint.

Incredible views surrounded by mountains and nature,

(bleep) mint.

Yes, the scene sure is mint.

And for anyone not born in Australia this century,

that means cool.

But after one of the dogs starts sniffing

at something on the shoreline, Afri's video changes tone.

Giant, random animal part washed up on the beach,

(bleep) mint.

Let's run that back again.

Afri has stumbled upon something truly shocking.

It's fleshy, smooth,

and nearly the size of her whole leg.

I had absolutely no idea what it was.

Thought, if there's something that's like that

washing up on the beach,

there's something that's out there in that ocean

that could potentially just be five times

the size of what I'm seeing here.

Journalist, Erin McCarthy,

has been following this story since

the initial TikTok was posted.

Some have theorized that what we are looking at here

is actually a part of a sea monster,

specifically the kraken.

There are a number of historical accounts

about kraken attacks.

The French naturalist, Pierre Denys de Montfort,

described a kraken attack off the coast of Angola.

The sailors actually succeeded in cutting off

the kraken's arms and tentacles using swords and hatchets,

and then they had an artist create a depiction of the attack

that they placed in a chapel to St. Thomas in France.

While the kraken was thought to be a giant octopus,

others wonder if this could be part

of a different cephalopod, the elusive giant squid.

People didn't think they were real

until a specimen washed up on the beach

in Newfoundland in 1878.

These creatures are wild.

Their eyes are 10 inches in diameter

and their tentacles can grow to 65 feet long.

Giant squid specimens have actually washed up

in New Zealand recently,

so we know that they are in this area.

Giant squid can make very clever use of their tentacles.

They can lock them together, weave them into a claw shape,

even in one instance, a noose.

But is that what we're looking at here?

Our experts are on the case

and they're not about to get suckered.

Wildlife biologist, Floyd Hayes,

thinks he might be able to rule out some of our theories.

A lot of people on the internet think this could be

a part of the legendary Kraken,

such as the tip of a tentacle.

Cephalopod mollusks, which includes squids and octopuses,

they have long tentacles that have a series of suckers

on them that help them grasp these objects.

However, we're not seeing any suckers

on that appendage there.

Cephalopod suckers have chemical receptors

that allow them to touch, taste, and smell all at the same time.

And an average octopus can have over 2,000 of them.

However, with no visible, noticeable suckers,

marine biologist, Shea Steingass,

spots a clue that points to a different species altogether.

If you look at it, it actually looks like it's

a little bit bloody on the inside,

and that means it's probably from a mammal

or some other kind of vertebrate.

Cephalopods don't actually have blood,

they have a circulatory system that relies on water.

So what are we looking at here?

Well, the answer might make you blush.

What we're seeing here is just a portion

of the male reproductive tract of a whale,

or just part of the penis.

Unbelievably, blue whales,

which again, are the largest animals on the planet,

can have penises that extend 10 to 12 feet.

It's possible that these appendages actually have

a place in cryptid and seafaring lore,

and that's because in many cases they may have been mistaken

for things like the kraken, or a giant squid,

or even a sea serpent.

And that's because they are these linear organs

that are tapered at the end,

and there's a few instances where humans might see these,

but it's very rare.

Yes, you heard that right.

Many scientists think sightings

of sea monsters actually might be penises of mating whales,

also known as dorks, sticking out of the water.

So, often when whales are breeding, it is pretty violent.

You will see these organs protruding

above the surface of the water in a way

that maybe looked like an enormous sea creature

that is raising its head out of the water.

This organ has been entirely removed

and there's a series of cuts throughout it,

so that to me means it could be something

like a boat propeller collision

or maybe even just it was a dead whale

that was floating on the surface.

Okay then, our verdict,

we're pretty sure this is a whale's penis,

likely severed from its body

by some unidentified object or creature.

And yes, we could be making

all kinds of juvenile jokes here,

but we won't, and you're welcome.

Generally, when people think of ocean sounds,

they think of something relaxing.

The marine noises in our next story are anything but.

Let's see why an entire commercial fishing team

was shaken by what they heard echoing across the waves.

August 2021, the North Atlantic Ocean.

A Massachusetts fishing vessel makes its way

through the night when the crew begins

to hear an eerie noise.

One of the fishermen pulls out his camera and records this.

The camera pans across the black ocean.

Then, the haunting screams

of something off in the distance.

When the video hits social media,

the first obvious theory was a whale song.

But many questioned if such sounds could ever be heard

this clearly above the water.

Journalist, Eric Grundhauser,

says others speculated that it was

the cry of the legendary Sirens of Greek myth,

whose song could seduce sailors to their doom.

With only 5% of our oceans having been fully explored,

is it possible that Sirens of Greek myth are still out there

on some lonely, craggy rock, waiting to be discovered?

Another theory posits that we might be hearing

the sound of a haunted ghost ship,

and this isn't just a fisherman's tale.

Ghost ships are a popular legend,

versions of which you can find all over the world.

In October 1931,

a 230 foot cargo ship called the SS Baychimo

became trapped in ice off Alaska.

22 men were rescued, but 15 volunteered to stay behind,

hoping it would break free and they could save it.

These brave men were never seen again, but the Baychimo was.

The workers thought that the Baychimo had sunk,

but a few weeks later, some hunters actually

spotted the Baychimo floating off the coast of Skull Cliff.

Some six months later,

a dog sled crew actually saw the Baychimo in the sea ice.

The abandoned ship had broken free of the ice.

It stayed afloat for decades,

scaring the locals wherever it went.

The ship was last seen in 1969

when it was spotted by some coastal residents.

Could the sound in this video actually be the haunted sounds

of the ghost ship Baychimo floating somewhere nearby?

When it comes to ghost ships, nobody beats Japan.

For the past several years, hundreds of boats

filled with rotting corpses have mysteriously washed up

on western Japanese shores.

Spooky, right?

Items found on board led investigators

to believe these boats belong to defectors

or desperate fishermen from North Korea,

all of whom lacked the proper supplies to survive.

Let's see what our experts think about this oceanic oddity.

Forensic audio analyst, Rob Maher,

quickly rules out any human sound.

Even a trained opera singer would have trouble making

a frequency this high from the soprano range.

Oh my God.

So, he decides to test the sound

against something more mechanical,

exploring a possibility that perhaps they were hearing

another ship, or even their own.

Comparing the sound to examples

of hydraulic machinery on a ship,

we have some similar frequency characteristics

and some plausible connection between the two.

But we don't see an example that exactly matches,

so we can't really guarantee

that the sound in the example recording

is from a mechanical source.

But before we say it's a mythical Siren...

Oh my god.

Marine biologist, Shea Steingass

brings the conversation back to whales,

but not in a way you might expect.

Alaska is known as a biodiversity hotspot for whales.

What I think we're hearing here has only been documented

in a couple dozen individuals of humpback whales,

specifically in Alaska, and I think this might be

an example of collaborative feeding.

Collaborative feeding

is when whales use vocalizations and bubbles

from their blow holes to trap and stun fish for feeding.

But how can this be heard above water?

The frequency of sound doesn't actually change

between water and air, so we can hear noises

and they would sound the same to us on land

or on a boat as they do in the water.

To double check this theory,

we had Rob Maher run humpback whale sounds

through his spectrogram, and sure enough...

The recordings with a hydrophone underwater

of the humpback whale have very consistent frequency

with what's observed in the example recording.

And characteristics of the sound seem to match up.

Our verdict, our experts agree

what we are hearing is a very rare example

of humpback whale vocalizations,

but that doesn't mean there aren't any ghost ships

or Sirens out there, so make sure you're prepared

to batten down those hatches.

Lions, and tigers, and sharks, oh my.

These apex predators are supposed

to be at the top of the food chain.

So when we find footage of a shark falling prey

to a mystery predator, it's time to dive in deep.

May 2015, Exuma Sound in the Bahamas.

A small group of sharks is seen swimming

around an enclosed area at the bottom of the sea,

but then it turns into a fight for survival.

A shark tail flails from just out of frame.

Moments later, a thrashing beast spins into view.

Let's zoom in a bit and slow this down

so we can see what's happening through the stirred up sediment.

A creature that looks straight out of a sci-fi horror flick

has latched around the shark's head.

After several moments of struggle,

finally the shark appears to go limp,

predator turned prey.

So what is this thing attacking sharks on the sea floor?

Field researcher, Cliff Barackman has some ideas.

We can see here that it looks

like a giant isopod of some sort.

The isopods are arthropods,

but imagine a pill bug on steroids times a thousand.

They have seven sets of legs,

and the front two legs are used for grappling prey

and bringing it up to their layered jaws.

But Barackman feels it's not a perfect fit.

Giant isopods are known to grow

to about a maximum of 16 to 20 inches at most,

but the average shark is somewhere

between five and seven feet.

So how large is this animal?

So he does a deeper dive

on other known sea dwellers.

The largest known arthropod is Jaekelopterus.

It grew up to eight feet long

and it is in the family of sea scorpions.

These were voracious predators.

These creepy creatures were said

to cannibalize smaller members of their own species,

so they likely could have also devoured a person

and certainly a shark on the smaller side.

Jaekelopterus were more than just scavengers,

they were hunters.

Anything that swam

or moved in front of them was likely game.

Okay, so this Jaekelopterus

seems a likely match,

but Barackman says there's a catch.

These sea scorpions are thought

to have gone extinct at the end of the Permian era,

which was millions of years

before the dinosaurs even evolved.

But it seems like a very reasonable presumption to think

that there are some species down there

that are thought to have gone extinct long ago.

According to some researchers,

we have only explored 5% of our global oceans,

but if that's what it's like,

I say we leave the other 95% alone.

For now, let's see if our experts can

make sense of this unsettling video from the sea floor.

First we ask our resident marine biologist,

Dr. Shea Steingass, if this could be an animal

we thought was extinct.

Turns out, there's some precedent.

The Monoplacophora was rediscovered

in 1952 in Costa Rica

after only having been seen in the fossil record

up to 375 million years ago.

The Monoplacophora a type of small mollusk

with a cap like shell that lives at the bottom of the ocean.

It first emerged around the same time

as Barackman's giant sea scorpion,

but Steingass has doubts that a rediscovered Jaekelopterus

is what we're seeing here in the Bahamas.

If we were to think about the idea

of this being a Jaekelopterus,

what we would expect is to see kind of a tapered,

complex body form,

but what I see here is something that's really round

and looks a bit like a semicircle or an oblong circle,

so it's got a fusiform body,

meaning it doesn't have any really defined appendages.

To Steingass, it looks like

the other arthropod in our lineup.

What I see here to me strongly resembles

a deep sea isopod,

and these are incredible animals

that actually have extremely strong, claw-like legs,

and they have mouth parts

that can essentially rip prey to pieces.

That still leaves the issue that it seems

to be the wrong size, but Steingass has a solution.

We have to think about scale here,

assuming that this is up to a 20 inch isopod,

that does give us a little bit of size reference

for what we're seeing here

in terms of the shark that it's attacking.

Biologist and shark enthusiast,

Dr. Floyd Hayes, agrees.

It all comes down to the type of shark.

When we freeze the frame here,

we can see that there is a keel on the side of the base

of the caudal fin or tail,

and that indicates that this is a dogfish.

They are relatively small sharks,

typically two to three feet at the most.

It's much more vulnerable to predation

by a giant isopod.

Our verdict, this is a particularly motivated,

some might say "hangry" member of the giant isopod species.

And let's just consider ourselves lucky

that the eight foot long sea scorpion died out

long before we humans walked the Earth,

or swam in its oceans.

We haven't talked much about mummies on this show,

and now it's time to right that wrong.

Thanks to the discovery of a mysterious mummy

from before the time of Christ,

it is so perfectly preserved, some are wondering

if something supernatural might be the reason.

1968, Changsha, China.

Construction workers digging

an air raid shelter unsuspectingly stumble across

what appears to be a massive tomb.

Archeologists discover over 1,000 noteworthy artifacts,

including toiletries, carved wooden figures,

and this, a perfectly preserved mummy of a woman

with a full head of hair

and skin that is still soft to the touch,

all of her organs still intact.

The corpse was found inside three nesting coffins,

wrapped with layer upon layer of silk fabric

and submerged in a strange liquid.

And get this, experts believe this body

is more than 2,000 years old.

Researchers have determined that this corpse belongs

to a Chinese noble woman

from the Han Dynasty known as Lady Dai.

Historian, Gary Todd, has been studying this

confounding find for almost 20 years.

Lady Dai left behind a body that's unique in the world.

And this is definitely one of the greatest

archeological discoveries in the world.

That still doesn't explain the mysterious,

pristine condition of this ancient cadaver.

Field researcher, Ken Gerhard,

wonders if Lady Dai could be the product

of an ancient preliminary version of cryogenic freezing.

There are some scientists who think that

by freezing living organisms at very low temperatures,

that they could be suspended indefinitely

and reanimated and brought back to life at a later time.

Just recently,

scientists were able to resurrect a worm

that had been frozen in the Siberian permafrost

for more than 46,000 years.

There is a substantial amount of evidence

that the ancient Chinese were very familiar

with the benefits of ice

and low temperatures in preserving food,

and perhaps employed a form of cryogenics

in order to preserve living beings like Lady Dai.

One final theory suggests

that perhaps Lady Dai is simply proof

the ancient Chinese perfected the art of mummification.

Lady Dai's remains have been found

in this very strange, mysterious liquid,

and it's believed that the acidic nature actually helped

to preserve her by killing bacteria and other organisms.

If so, this was an exceptional mastery

of mummification skills.

Fun fact, the ancient Chinese believe

that jade has protective qualities to prevent

a body's decay and keep away bad spirits.

Royalty were buried in special suits

cut from the precious stone.

However, when these sarcophagi were discovered centuries later,

all that was left inside were dust

and the ashes of crumbled skeletons.

Let's see why our experts think

this unique noble woman could have lasted so long.

So could Lady Dai's corpse be the result

of some primitive form of cryogenics?

Archeologist, Ed Barnhart, is cold on the idea.

This environment, it's cold, but it's also humid.

Cryogenics takes much more in the way

of constant temperature and very low freezing

at the initial cryogenic freezing part.

In fact, when modern bodies

are cryogenically frozen,

they are initially frozen in temperatures

as low as 238 degrees Fahrenheit to limit molecular motion

and to preserve the body's tissue

in a state of suspended animation.

Barnhart also points out that even today,

despite reviving those amazing worms

with their relatively simple physiology,

a more complex organism, like a person,

is still not able to survive

long periods of suspended animation, at least not yet.

As of today, the technology

to actually revive someone has yet to be created.

Emergency medicine physician, Ed Hope,

explores Lady Dai's mummification process.

We know she was wrapped in 20 layers of silk,

that silk will deprive any oxygen to the bacteria

that may be breaking the body parts down.

The burial chamber was underground 12 meters,

and this would also help preserve the body.

And as for that strange liquid

Lady Dai was submerged in...

There's some evidence that this liquid does help,

because around about 300 kilometers away,

we found another mummy.

In 1974, the 2,200 year old remains

of Sui Xiaoyuan were found in a similar state

of preservation floating in a similar liquid.

There's no conclusive evidence

of how this liquid got into the coffin

or what it's comprised of, but it's very likely

that it's slowing the decomposition process

and keeping it well preserved.

Our verdict, unidentified liquid.

While we know that the key to Lady Dai's preservation

was the liquid she was found in,

where it came from and what it is remains a mystery.

One thing, however, is certain,

that Lady Dai doesn't look a day over 2,000 years old.

Whenever some remarkable bit of good fortune comes our way,

we're tempted to call it a miracle.

But does God ever really make the impossible possible?

One church doesn't just say so,

it says it has proof and some very old blood.

It's September 2018 in Naples, Italy,

during the Feast of San Gennaro,

also known as Saint Januarius.

The Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary

is thronged with people fixated on the bishop

holding the silver reliquary.

Inside are two ampules or vials,

containing what is said to be the blood of Saint Januarius.

It's centuries old and this is what it normally looks like.

But check out what happens

when the relic is turned on its side.

The crowd immediately cheers

as the centuries old hardened blood flows back into liquid.

Christopher Simonetti was there.

There is a grand affirmation

where the people are just appreciative

of this manifestation of turning the solid into liquid.

There's a sense of their doom happening

in the greater community if this miracle doesn't take place.

This tradition dates back

to when Saint Januarius was martyred by the Romans

for his Christian beliefs in the 4th century.

There was a persecution of Christians

carried out by Emperor Diocletian.

And Saint Januarius went to visit a friend who was in jail

and was himself arrested.

They beheaded him on September 19th, 305 AD.

According to tradition, after the beheading,

a local woman collected his blood in the two ampules

that are securely stored to this day.

It then coagulated to a hardened state.

And it wasn't until a thousand years later in 1389

that the blood is said to have once again

turned to a liquid state.

Today, this ceremonial ritual

happens three times a year.

When the blood liquifies, it's a sign of good fortune.

And when it doesn't, it's seen as a bad omen.

Some of the good events include

a visit from the Archbishop of New York in 1978,

and 2015 when Pope Francis came to visit.

Some of the bad omens include the tens of thousands

who died of plague in 1527,

and then in 1980 when another 3,000 people

died from an earthquake.

Today, one of the vials is nearly empty,

because King Charles III took some of its contents

to Spain in the 1700s.

But the mystery of what causes this

coagulated substance to liquify remains.

Is the blood of Saint Januarius a miracle or a gimmick?

Let's see what our experts say.

First, Dr. Ed Hope analyzes if this blood is even real.

The church won't let anyone open the vial

to find out what's in there.

There have been some tests done on the outside

by shining light in, what we call spectroscopy,

and they confirm that there is evidence

that there is some hemoglobin in there,

so the protein that is in your red blood cells.

So this substance probably contains

at least some real human blood,

but is it possible for it to literally melt?

One of the theories is that when the ampule

is removed from its chamber and placed near candles,

that it's the temperature change

that is causing the change in state.

But actually with clotted blood,

I don't think that's enough temperature

to be able to induce that change.

Yet there's another hypothesis proposed

by Italian chemistry professor, Luigi Garlaschelli.

Thixotropy.

Thixotropy is the property a chemical has

that the more stress you apply to it,

the less viscous the material is.

In simple terms, the more you stir or shake a liquid,

the easier it is to pour.

With a thixotropic material,

a gel becomes more fluid as you apply more force to it.

It's like how wax becomes liquid when a candle burns,

because the molecules of the solid candle

start to spread out and flow more freely as it melts.

Garlaschelli's team actually created fake blood,

which demonstrated what we see here

in terms of reacting to movement.

And they did this using only compounds

that were available in the 14th century.

So could this be a thixotropic gel

rather than congealed blood?

We asked our expert miracle researcher, Michael O'Neill,

who witnessed this event in person.

He says, not so fast.

Now with thixotropic gels, it depends on the concentration

or how the solution was made,

but those are only good for 2 to 10 years.

The vial related to Saint Januarius

has been liquefying for centuries.

As long as no scientific investigation is allowed

on the actual liquid, we may never know.

Is this a true miracle

or is there some other mystery at play?

Our verdict, for now, we're going to call this

a possible miracle.

Sure, there's always a chance this is a centuries old hoax,

but it's unlikely fake blood would still have

the qualities of a thixotropic gel after all this time.

And that's our show for tonight.

If you have proof of anything wondrous,

please send it our way and keep those cameras rolling.