Original subtitles

- Tonight on "The Proof Is Out There."

Could these clothing stains prove two fishermen were

abducted by aliens for hours that they can't remember?

- There are many instances when there is some type of

an alien abduction experience where missing time occurs.

- [Tony] Five UFOs hover near a US military base.

- If ETs wanted to study our military,

this would be the place to do it.

- [Tony] What kind of creature was photographed

walking by this river?

- Is this being phasing between dimensions?

- [Tony] And how can this zombie insect keep crawling?

- That's crazy. It's walking along.

This thing should not be alive.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] Around the globe are videos.

- [Observer] What are those things?

- [Bystander] It's moving.

- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.

[dramatic music]

- [Woman] We don't know where they come from,

who made them or how they operate.

- [Tony] What are they?

- [Man] Some sort of bizarre mutation.

- [Expert] 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.

[car crashes]

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

- [Tony] And pass a verdict on what it is.

- This video was clearly faked.

- The proof starts now.

[dramatic music]

Good evening everyone and welcome to

"The Proof is Out There."

Stories of UFO abductions are pretty common,

but forensic evidence

that corroborates such accounts is much harder to come by.

So when two self-proclaimed victims

of alien abduction claim to have proof,

you know we have to take a look for ourselves.

It's August 2014 in Salt Fork State Park, Ohio.

Two men are out fishing at night when suddenly their lives

are changed forever.

Tom Wertman, the state director of Ohio's Mutual UFO Network

or MUFON say these photos of

what they were wearing may hold the

clues to what they went through.

- Roughly about 10:30 they saw a light coming

across the sky to the north.

An hour later, another set of lights comes by

and about 1:30 in the morning they heard this extremely

shrill woman's cry coming from across the lake.

At that point, the 43 year old sitting in the lawn chair

watching his fishing pole, the 19 year old,

he's baiting his hook.

The next thing you know, the 43 year old gets

his cell phone out and it's 5:19 in the morning.

He has no idea what happened between 1:30 and 5:19

and the 19 year old is still up baiting his hook

over three and a half hours later.

- [Tony] Author Jason Martell says the bewildered men

then make a break for it,

but that's when things get really weird.

- Stunned in disbelief, they started to just

grab all their belongings, change their clothes,

and as the older man changed his clothes,

he was also noticing his shirt was inside out.

- It's as if his clothes have been taken off

and put back on incorrectly

and they say they have no idea where these stains came from.

The men believe these dirty shorts

and tops might carry evidence that they are victims

of an alien abduction.

If that's the case, their lost time would not be surprising.

- There are many instances when there is some type

of an alien abduction experience where missing time occurs.

A very similar feature happened with the Betty

and Barney Hill case.

- [Tony] The Hill couple famously forgot two hours

while driving on a New Hampshire road one night in 1961.

With the help of hypnosis,

they later recounted being examined and probed by aliens.

- In many of these experiences of lost time,

there are physical attributes that also take place.

Sometimes the clothes are put on wrong.

A shirt is inside out.

- Betty and Barney Hill were left

with stopped watches, scuffed shoes and a ripped dress.

Is the clothing of the Ohio fishermen proof

of a similar encounter?

[dramatic music]

Okay, I know what you're thinking.

Dirty clothes

and a shirt turned inside out doesn't sound all that weird

coming back from a camping trip.

Still the men claim they were so disturbed

that they stayed home for weeks afterward.

Perhaps our experts can shine a light

on this mysterious blackout.

[eerie music] [graphic whooshing]

First we ask emergency medicine physician, Dr. Ed Hope,

if there's any explanation for the experience

of lost time reported here.

- When people blackout

or lose consciousness medically we think

of something happening either with the heart

or something with the head.

What's unusual in this case is that both

of them blacked out at the same time,

which kind of rules out a lot of these causes.

- [Tony] And what about the clothing?

Astronomer, Marc D'antonio says,

an industrial chemist put it under spectroscopic analysis.

- One of the findings in the clothing

of both these two gentlemen

and in Betty Hill's clothes was carboxylic acid.

- [Tony] Carboxylic acid salt is found

in food additives,

some pharmaceuticals and soap.

It's not rare, but Tom Wertman argues that the placement

of this otherwise ordinary chemical is

what makes it noteworthy.

- [Tom] Betty Hill's dress was brand new

and it was in the lower part of the skirt

where you would normally never associate that type

of a chemical with.

- [Tony] And the chemist found the Salt Fork.

abductees clothes were similarly affected.

- She found it on the pockets

of their like cargo shorts in areas

that you would normally never find

that type of a chemical at.

- [Tony] Yet there might be a simple explanation.

What if they were carrying hygiene products

or medication in their pockets?

Well, Wertman points to areas

of pinkish discoloration on both sets of garments,

which might hold an even bigger clue.

- The areas that discolored on Betty Hill's dark blue dress

were around like the lower part of the skirt area,

and this is where she was claiming that

aliens were grabbing at her.

[creepy music flourish]

On the gentleman from Salt Fork,

the blue jacket had a pink cast to it,

so maybe something was touching that jacket.

- [Tony] Tom was so compelled by the Salt Fork incident,

he went there looking for additional physical evidence.

- And as I'm walking the area,

I hit a spot about a hundred yards from where they were

and I looked down and I was standing in a perfect

circle of dead grass.

So I took samples from that region

and also control samples around the whole region.

- [Tony] Tom got the samples analyzed

and the findings once again appeared anomalous.

- One position was much higher iron content

than all the rest of the areas.

That area was the circle I was standing in.

- Does it mean that possibly there's some type of connection

to iron and alien spacecraft?

We can't say no,

but one case doesn't prove anything.

[eerie music] [graphic whooshing]

- Our verdict, if you take them at their word,

this remains an unexplained case of lost time.

We can't be sure whether it was caused by an alien abduction

or something else altogether.

Unfortunately for these two anonymous men,

they may never know for sure where those hours went.

[graphic whooshing]

Now, another UFO case, this one not from the woods

but from the desert.

With the establishment of the Pentagon's

All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office or AARO,

it's clear the government is becoming more aware

and worried about UFOs, especially

around military targets like this one.

Take a look.

April 20th, 2021.

It's a quiet crystal clear evening in the skies

over a marine base near 29 Palms, California,

in the Mojave Desert,

until multiple reports suddenly come in

of a strange set of lights appearing in the sky.

The base's night vision cameras capture this.

[dramatic music]

Five orbs are hovering in a curved formation in the sky.

They each contain a small bright spot in the center

surrounded by a glowing aura.

- It appears to be showing some type of a arc

of connected lights, but is this one object

or is it a collection of orbs staying in formation?

- [Tony] What's unusual about this sighting

is that the people who reported it

aren't your average bystanders.

- Reportedly over 50 people actually witnessed

this strange phenomenon,

a group of marines who are all very familiar

with different types of aerospace technology,

military aircraft.

Yet to them they were fascinated enough

to say it caught their eye and it was truly bizarre.

- [Tony] So if this isn't anything recognized

by local military personnel, could it be extraterrestrial?

Turns out it's not the first time alleged ETs

have been reported near a military base.

In 1967 guards outside Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana

reported seeing a strange red light over the facility.

The light appeared to be a hovering, oval-shaped craft

about 30 to 40 feet in diameter.

Then without explanation, one by one,

the nuclear missiles became disarmed.

So was something similar happening over 29 Palms?

- I think we have enough of a framework there to say

that trained military personnel found this

to be a fascinating object

and to me that would merit further investigation.

[graphic whooshing]

- Because this video was recorded

by a military infrared camera,

we can presume it hasn't been doctored,

but what is it that we're seeing here?

What could be behind those big balls of light?

Time to ask our experts to illuminate us.

[suspenseful music] [graphic whooshing]

We begin with military aviation expert Tim McMillan.

- From first impression, you get the idea

that these five lights are

connected to a single object.

This could be some type of triangular craft

that has these five lights in different points,

but I don't see the control surface as the wings.

It's traveling much too slow

so we can really easily rule out airplane.

- [Tony] We took the video to Rich Hoffman

of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies.

After incidents like those over other bases like Malmstrom,

is it possible extraterrestrials really are monitoring

our military capabilities?

Hoffman doesn't see a match, at least not in this case.

- Throughout history, we've had a lot of military bases

that have had UFO reports near them

and what we've seen from just all those sheer cases is

it's almost on the scale of surveillance.

What's curious is these lines that are going up there,

these would indicate some sort of trail that's being left

behind them and you don't see that on UFO reports.

- [Tony] Instead of UFOs, McMillan sees a clue

that brings these objects back down to earth.

- Looking at the smoke

and vapor trail that's being left behind them,

you see that these are actually independent points of light

and they appear to be in a free fall dependent on gravity.

And the fact that these are moving slow like this leads me

to believe that what we're looking at here is actually the

deployment of illumination flares that are providing light

for some type of ground forces, coordinated activity.

- Illumination flares, they're very, very bright

and they're often, quite often, reported as UFOs.

[eerie music] [graphic whooshing]

- Our verdict. This isn't a UFO attracted to our military.

These are just illumination flares,

but keep an eye out for other unexplained objects

around military bases just in case the extraterrestrials

are keeping an eye on us.

- Bolivia is known for its multitude of mountains,

its abundance of alpacas and its cornucopia of coca fields.

Well now we can add aliens to that list.

August 2023, a group

of hikers are traversing Bolivia's scenic Rio Pilcomayo

near the city of Tarija.

One member of the party stops to take some pictures

and ends up capturing way more

than the breathtaking scenery.

It appears these unsuspecting hikers were not alone.

Pushing in on the image we see a thin,

nearly translucent figure walking along the riverbank.

It seems to be around four feet in size

walking in a strange, inhuman gait.

Eerily the creature's dead hollow stare seems

to be directed straight at the photographer.

Many internet sleuths believe this photo helps prove

the existence of the infamous grays, the most common type

of alleged alien reported by abductees.

- What first caught my attention is it definitely looks very

humanoid in respect to other aliens that we've seen,

like a short gray with a bulbous head

or some type of bipedal humanoid entity

and it falls in line with other beings

that have been reported under either alien abduction

or some type of a scenario

where an alien has been seen usually near

some type of a flying craft.

[creepy music]

- [Tony] Martell singles out a sighting from 1978

that occurred in this very same region

where many eyewitnesses claim

to have seen a cylindrical spacecraft crash

into the side of a mountain.

- Now for South America, this was equivalent

to a Roswell-type event.

Hundreds of witnesses saw this

and even more heard a sonic-like explosion.

[plane explodes]

- [Tony] Witness reports of this incident claim

the impact was so violent it threw people to the ground

and shattered nearby glass windows.

- And you have to wonder if events like this speak

to why we might be seeing entities like this walking

around in this location.

[graphics whooshing]

- Bolivia is also home to the mysterious ancient ruins

of Puma Punku thought by some to be as many

as 17,000 years old.

Others believe the intricacy

of the stone cutting could be the work

of an advanced technology possibly from another world.

Could our photo be connected?

Let's see what our experts think.

[mysterious music] [graphics whooshing]

First, could someone in a costume be trying

to pull a fast one?

Biologist Stephanie Manka doesn't think so.

- It doesn't seem like it's a actual person in a costume

doing a hoax because the body is too thin,

the limbs are too thin to be a person.

- [Tony] However, she isn't convinced

that this photo is concrete proof

of an extraterrestrial species like the grays.

- Grays are described as grays for a reason

because they are the color gray

and this one appears to be translucent, so it doesn't fit

with the definition of what people see.

According to the accounts that people have said about grays,

there's been no mention of light bending

or other sort of advanced camouflage used by the grays.

- [Tony] Manka also questions

the authenticity of the image.

- What I personally think happened is

that somebody realized these kind of look like legs

and then doctored the photos and added the top part of it.

- [Tony] To follow up on Manka's doubts,

we brought the image to our forensic video analyst,

Michael Primeau.

- So the absence of the shadow of this object in the area

that it was captured on on the shoreline

as well as the absence in that reflection

of the body of water beneath it is peculiar.

- [Tony] And while believers of this image claim

the lack of shadows and reflections could be aspects

of some alien cloaking technology,

Primeau believes this picture has definitely been

altered in some way.

- So we take a look at the information within the picture,

take a deeper dive to try

to see if we can detect any evidence of alteration

or manipulation, and there's a test

that we run called jpeg ghosts

that will show us evidence of recompression.

You can see a dip in the compression data.

This valley shows that the image has been processed

and the quality has been reduced at least one time.

- [Tony] So does that mean it's a fake?

Unfortunately, Primeau can neither confirm nor deny.

- The challenge becomes with this picture

because it's been recompressed,

we simply don't know if the area in question

on the creature was added or removed

because this amount of recompression was introduced,

it changed all of those pixel regions.

It stripped the VIN number from the vehicle

before it was painted, so to speak.

We can't verify one way or the other,

but I have my concerns with this picture.

[mysterious music] [graphics whooshing]

- Our verdict. We're going with suspected hoax.

Although there isn't enough technical data to confirm,

we agree with our experts that there's

definitely something dubious about this photo,

but rest assured if there are aliens wandering the mountains

of Bolivia, we'll find them soon enough.

- Ever since George A. Romero's 1968 classic,

"The Night of The Living Dead,"

the world has been obsessed with zombies.

They're frightening, kind of fun

and totally fictitious, right?

Well, that's what we thought,

but could this next video prove

that real zombies do in fact walk and crawl among us?

June 2020, Ignalina, Lithuania,

one homeowner is out in their garden

enjoying the summer warmth when they notice a few dead

insects in the grass, a fairly standard sight,

but upon further inspection, things get downright creepy.

One of the cockchafer bugs is moving despite being hollowed

out on the inside.

Crawling through the grass all on its own

with a gaping hole in its abdomen,

this bug seems like "The Walking Dead" in real life.

Field researcher Ken Gerhard wonders if this beetle is

among many in the animal kingdom able to cheat death.

- So, in nature there are occasionally

remarkable instances of animals suffering horrific injuries

and then defying all biological laws

and living on for a brief period of time.

I think the best example of this is something known

as self-amputation.

An example would be a lizard's tail breaking off

and they're actually able

to regenerate these appendages at a later time.

We wonder if this relates to this particular film.

How is it that this insect has endured such a horrific

injury and yet it continues to survive?

- [Tony] Some commenters had another theory in mind.

- There's also been speculation that this may be the work

of a fungus known as Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis

or cordyceps,

the fungal neuro infection

that turns the world's population into zombies

in the popular show "The Last Of Us."

It's actually a mushroom

that releases its spores into different types of insects

and the spores actually grow

and replicate inside of the insect

and ultimately they release chemicals

into the animal's brain that essentially

turn them into zombies.

It manipulates their thought process

and causes them to climb up into trees

to drop more of these spores.

It sounds like science fiction,

but as we can see in this video,

this actually may be a fungus that is capable of taking over

and reanimating dead tissue.

[dramatic music]

- This isn't the first time we've taken a look

at undead wildlife on this show, like this fish seemingly

with no head at all that was filmed swimming

through a lake in Bangladesh.

While we were able to reach scientific conclusions

with those cases,

will our experts have the same luck

with this zombified critter?

[mysterious music] [graphics whooshing]

Is this beetle exhibiting its ability to cheat death

by regenerating its insides?

Wildlife biologist Floyd Hayes says to regenerate anything,

an animal must first be able

to eat the nutrients necessary to grow.

- This animal is missing almost all of its internal organs,

which means it's not going to be able to digest

and process food.

- [Tony] So how on earth is this bug still kicking?

- This particular beetle belongs to the genus melolontha

which is native to Europe,

and it is attacked by two different species of fungi

of the genus cordyceps.

- [Tony] Bingo.

Hayes says the missing insides are a telltale sign

of this fungal invasion.

- [Hayes] You get spores that break through the exoskeleton,

get into the interior of the insect,

and then they digest the internal organs

until there's only the exoskeleton and the brain.

- [Tony] But if you think that makes it a zombie,

wildlife biologist Stephanie Manka says

there's one important distinction.

- This fungus is not resurrecting

animals from the dead.

There is activity still going on in the brain.

There are electrical connections going between its limbs.

At this point it doesn't have much longer

until it's going to climb a tree

and a fungus will protrude out of it

and release its spores to infect other insects.

- [Tony] In other words, it's not dead,

just almost dead.

But cordyceps can still bend insects to its will.

Do humans have anything to worry about?

- People naturally wonder could this happen to humans?

It would take a lot of mutations to be able

to jump to humans.

It's reasonable to believe that it would take millions

of years or more to adapt to do this to human beings.

- [Tony] Part of that reason is the high temperature

of the human body,

which prevents the fungus from multiplying

as it does in insects with their lower body temperatures.

For now, fungi for the most part are friends.

- There's actually benefits

to humans taking cordyceps in capsule form,

including reducing inflammation, improving heart health

and improving your immunity.

So we shouldn't be afraid of fungus just because of this.

[mysterious music] [graphics whooshing]

- Our verdict?

This is the work of ophiocordyceps unilateralis

or the zombie ant fungus and it's called that for a reason.

It has evolved over millions of years to infect the bodies

of insects and it might be just as long

before we need to be worried about our own zombies.

- They say dogs experience the world differently from humans.

Their senses of smell and hearing

are far better than ours.

But a recent video has people wondering if these superpowers

go far beyond their noses and ears.

On a sweltering July day in 2020, UK residents,

Meg Oxtoby and Jeff Parlett are on a hike

with their trio of Hungarian Vizslas

unaware of what they're about to witness.

- We were walking along just having a chat

like we normally do,

and then we noticed that the dogs were not moving.

[mysterious music]

- [Tony] At first, this looks like a photograph,

but keep watching.

The camera starts moving

and yet the dogs all appear to be frozen in their tracks.

- We couldn't believe it.

You could see the leaves moving and all the bushes,

but the dogs were completely still.

- I'm telling you, we are not freezing

or slowing down this video.

You can tell by the shrubbery right here

that it's moving in the wind.

Now check out how this dog has his leg raised

and tail curled

and this other dog is frozen in mid step.

Look, it seems impossible to maintain balance like that.

The three vizslas stay in that position

for four whole minutes

before resuming their normal dog activity.

- We were completely gobsmacked

- [Tony] And it doesn't end there.

Since Meg and Jeff had their canine conundrum,

we've come across another story

of animals inexplicably freezing.

In late November 2023, Brianna Lindsay went out

to feed her chickens at her Tampa, Florida home

when this happened.

- It's grub time.

What the fool!

What is happening right now?

I was so confused.

I was like, there were so many thoughts running in my head.

I'm like, "Why are they freezing?"

The trees are still moving, so time is still relevant.

My mind was just blown I couldn't move.

- [Tony] The hens remained frozen in place

for more than two minutes

before finally skittering off

when Brianna's husband opens the door.

- Nick, what the?!

Oh my God!

After posting that video, I just wanted people to see

what I saw because I'm like, "What is this?"

Is this a glitch in the Matrix?

And a lot of seasoned chicken owners are like, "It's a hawk."

And then my husband actually did his own research.

He's like, "Wait a minute, there's a hawk outside?"

- [Tony] In this case, experts believe

the chickens froze

because of a survival mechanism that kicked in

after they spotted the hawk.

But vizslas laws are hunting dogs, a predator, not the prey.

So what's up with them?

Ancient cultures from the Greeks to the Romans

to Koreans all have myths about dogs having

supernatural abilities.

The Mayans believed that dogs known

for being great swimmers swam the souls

of the dead across a shadowy lake to the afterlife.

Forensic investigator Chase Kloetzke wonders

if something like that is at work here.

- Are there like forces somehow making

them stop like that?

It seems like a theory is

that dogs have a spiritual side almost.

They sense things like earthquakes, illness,

even death sometimes.

- [Tony] Recent studies have explored

whether dogs have some sort

of sixth sense to communicate telepathically.

Meg and Jeff concur, their dogs seem

to have some kind of canine ESP.

- They knew what they were all doing

and they knew how long to stay still for.

So it's just amazing

how they can communicate without actually speaking.

That side of it is kind of magical really.

[dramatic music] [graphics whooshing]

- Ugh, that was me trying to freeze for just five seconds.

It's impossible. I'm too twitchy.

So forget about four whole minutes.

It's clear these dogs can do some amazing things, right?

But can they really freeze themselves in mid step?

Let's take the video to our experts.

[dramatic music] [graphics whooshing]

Zoologist Roxy Furman considers whether a supernatural force

may have terrified the dogs into a form of paralysis.

- Dogs definitely do freeze when they're afraid,

so there could be something that's made them scared,

but there's nothing else in their body language

that indicates fear.

Their ears are up. Their tail's up.

Vizslas are hunting dogs,

but I don't think that they can be that still

for the entire duration of a four minute video

without kind of any movement.

It looks like it's been edited in some way to me.

- [Tony] Compare this other video of hunting vizslas

with Meg and Jeff's.

You can see these other dogs don't maintain their posture

as well or as long, so maybe Roxy's right.

Meg and Jeff's dog video can't be real.

- So there are apps

that can be downloaded on these mobile devices

that can animate certain areas

of a picture while preserving other areas frozen in time.

Although these apps can deceive a viewer,

we found no evidence to support

that this file was manipulated or slowed down

or frozen in any way.

- [Tony] So this is, in fact, real.

Biology professor Floyd Hayes believes

this is just the product of centuries of breeding.

- This is a behavior that is selectively bred

for in several breeds of dogs,

although it is reinforced in dogs by training.

In fact, they actually can be trained to lift a paw

up off the ground when they're pointing.

- [Tony] Hayes may be onto something here.

At the end of the video we do see the dogs unfreeze

as soon as a bird flies away.

But here's the catch, Meg and Jeff say

they have never trained their dogs to behave like this.

- And we teach 'em, you know, sit and stay.

But this, this was something on a completely different scale

and something that I can't see being

taught to 'em whatsoever.

[mysterious music] [graphics whooshing]

- Our verdict, this is still an animal anomaly.

These three vizslas really did freeze in place

for four minutes, and if Meg

and Jeff truly didn't train them to do this,

how they stopped time is still a doggone mystery.

- You know, we often analyze videos

that at first look like one thing then turn

out to be something different.

In this next story, the closer you look,

the creepier and crawlier it gets

March 2021, Tha Taphao, Thailand.

A person is walking along when they stumble upon

a cryptic sight and pull out their phone.

No, someone didn't just drop a designer chain necklace.

This formation appears to be made up

of hundreds if not thousands of tiny worms.

They've formed a large braided circle out of their own bodies

and they're in constant movement crawling steadily

in a clockwise direction.

Science fiction writer Benjamin Percy,

witnessed a similar formation while walking his dog

near his home in Minnesota.

- I'd never seen anything like it.

It at first appeared to be a snake about the size of my arm

and then I begin to think it's something otherworldly.

They appeared to be these sort of translucent worms

that had a kind of wave-like motion.

It had this kind of hypnotic surging effect.

- [Tony] Journalist Erin McCarthy believes

this slithering, slimy circle calls to mind

an important mythical creature.

- For me, this brings to mind the Ouroboros,

a snake eating its own tail,

which symbolizes the endless cycle of death and rebirth.

- [Tony] So give us some rope here.

Could this living ring be signaling something similar

to that tail-eating snake?

- Throughout the animal kingdom

there are examples of creatures sensing things

that are about to occur well

before humans are even aware that anything is happening.

The widespread occurrence

of animals traveling in circles like this has led some

to theorize that maybe the end of the world is coming.

[animals squealing] [graphics whooshing]

- What can worms teach us about the

circle of life and death?

Well, perhaps quite a bit.

Take a planarian flatworm,

which has unlocked the secret of regeneration.

If you cut off its head, it grows a new one.

Simultaneously, its severed head grows a new tail.

But are these worms regenerating anything

within their circle?

Let's ask the experts.

[dramatic music] [graphics whooshing]

Wildlife biologist, Dr. Stephanie Manka says,

it's not uncommon for smaller creatures

to form something called superorganisms.

Take ants for example.

- Some ants will form, in times of flooding, a raft

by entangling their bodies together so

that they can all survive together.

- [Tony] And ants aren't the only ones

to exhibit this type of behavior.

Aquatic salps are another example.

- Salps are a group of tunicates which are closely related

to vertebrates and they often form colonies.

Smaller individuals link into a chain

and that way they're able to stay afloat in the water more

easily rather than sinking to the bottom.

- [Tony] Hayes thinks that's

what these worms are actually up to.

- So there are two potential advantages

for them traveling together in a group.

One of them is they look like a larger organism,

like a snake, which can help deter predators.

Another one is they're laying down a path

of slime on the ground and on each other

and they could travel on that slime more easily than if each

one is traveling alone in a dry environment.

- [Tony] But then why this ring-shaped formation?

Manka says there may be a connection between

what we're seeing here

and what's known as an ant death spiral.

- Ants have trails that leave pheromones,

so they end up creating a trail that has a circle

and they keep following the pheromones,

which reinforces the circle even more

and it leads to a death spiral

because they don't ever leave the trails

and they just end up starving.

- [Tony] But as Hayes looks closer,

another clue emerges.

These worms might not even be worms.

- Although these look like worms

they're actually the larvae of fungus gnats

and when they're ready to pupate, they travel in a group

to a suitable location.

- [Tony] That's likely what we saw

with Benjamin's worm serpent.

But with the circle,

our experts say these creatures have basically created

a real-life Ouroboros, the tail-swallowing snake.

- What happened here is probably the lead larvae in making

a turn saw the larvae from the back

and thought that they needed to catch up

and then that created the circle

because they're programmed to follow each other.

- The individuals think they're going somewhere

when in fact they're going nowhere.

Eventually they become exhausted and they die.

They don't know better to kick off in a different direction.

[mysterious music] [graphics whooshing]

- Our verdict, these are fungus gnat larvae

and like Ouroboros they also represent the circle of life

and death, in this case their own.

- Finally tonight, throughout history, all kinds

of strange things have fallen from the sky.

Dead birds, fish, even frogs.

But what about alien slime?

You never know what you'll find when you

start poking around.

It's October 2014 near Romney, West Virginia.

Diane Wingett is checking the blueberry

and raspberry patches at her weekend property when she sees

something strange and alerts her husband Randy.

- [Randy] There's some kind of jelly fungus here at the base

of our raspberry bushes.

It's just really weird.

It looks like crystals, but it's soft jelly.

- [Tony] Diane points out a large pile of what appeared

to be gelatinous and translucent small blobs.

- [Randy] I suppose that's a rare delicacy.

Someone's gonna come here.

- [Diane] It's not caviar. [laughs]

Not fish eggs, but it's cold.

- [Tony] Randy and Diane say they have no idea

what the strange substance is or how it got there.

When they come back to the property the following week,

the substance has vanished.

- It seemed obvious it must have come from the sky.

The way that it landed and the position it was in.

- We experience a lot of flyovers by military

and commercial flights, so we thought, well maybe.

Maybe that was it.

Maybe it was something from a airplane.

- [Tony] The couple posts the video online

seeking answers and a few years later they receive a note

that changes everything.

- We got a letter in the mail from a lady in Yakima

and she explained to us what it was.

She said, it's been around for centuries.

It's called star jelly.

- [Tony] Star jelly, a mystical substance long rumored

to come straight from the stars

- According to folklore.

star jelly are actually pieces of celestial bodies,

whether they be meteors or nebula that have come apart

and fallen to earth.

It typically disappears not long after it's been deposited.

- [Tony] McCarthy says

star jelly stories date back hundreds of years.

- In the 14th century, medieval physician John of Gaddesden

actually mentioned star jelly in his medical writings.

- [Tony] And this is not the only odd thing that's said

to have fallen from the sky.

In a previous story we told you about birds dropping down

from above in Chihuahua, Mexico

and tales of plagues of frogs sent from heaven

by God go all the way back to biblical times.

And even though people have claimed since the Middle Ages

that star jelly appears after meteor showers,

McCarthy says some other ideas about its origin

are more down to earth.

- Some have said that maybe this is a fungi

that we're looking at or maybe it's the anal secretion

of an animal or maybe it's unfertilized frog spawn

that had been eaten and then regurgitated by a predator.

[graphics whooshing]

- We've told you before about one famous case

of star jelly from 1994

where gelatinous rain fell in Oakville, Washington.

People nearby complained of flu-like symptoms

and several pets that encountered the goo even died.

Lab work couldn't identify the substance,

but maybe our experts will have better luck this time.

[mysterious music] [graphics whooshing]

This clearly doesn't look like the remains

of a fallen bird, fish or frog, but could it be their spawn?

This is quite a big pile,

but some species of frogs can lay up

to 30,000 eggs at a time.

Could that be the answer?

- It has a lot of qualities similar to frog eggs,

like it looks gelatinous or jello like.

And when you look in it,

you can see like little specks too,

and frog eggs have a center area that's darker.

What throws me off is that it's kind of jagged.

Frog eggs are more circular in shape

and it's not in a pond or a wetland area.

It's in somebody's yard and this area seems dry.

- [Tony] Then perhaps this is a more primordial

form of life known as slime mold.

These unusual organisms defy all attempts at categorization.

- They're not fungus, not plants, not animals.

It depends on the species,

but they can look like lots of different things.

They can look similar to fungus,

they can look similar to like algae.

They can aggregate into larger groups,

but they still look quite different than

what we're seeing in this picture.

- [Tony] So maybe this substance

does actually come from the star.

- Meteors are a chunk of rock

that are coming towards the earth.

Something like this would not stand a chance making it

through the atmosphere.

And think of stars, think of the sun,

extreme sources of energy.

This is jelly on the ground.

It's not releasing energy, it's just a gelatinous substance.

- [Tony] Then what could this gross goo possibly be?

Hernandez says there's another hypothesis based on a similar

substance discovered in 2012, in Dorset England.

- The explanation to that was it was a sodium polyacrylate

that was used for agricultural purposes.

Given that it is an extreme absorbent of water, it's able

to retain that water for crops to be able to grow.

- [Tony] Diane tells us that a few months

before finding this substance,

she puts some polymer crystals in the yard to help

with water retention, but she doubts that's what this is.

- When that got wet, it was round not cubed,

so I knew it wasn't what I put in the ground.

[mysterious music] [graphics whooshing]

- Our verdict, we're calling this an unidentified goo.

It could be related to the water storing crystals

that Diane had used earlier in the year,

but the details don't seem to match up.

Meanwhile, scientists haven't identified any DNA

in similar substances found around the US.

And that is our show for tonight.

Thank you so much for watching.

As always keep those cameras rolling.

[dramatic music]