Original subtitles

- Tonight on The Proof is Out There.

What did one mayor of a small town capture?

- These creatures can kidnap children.

You just don't want them around.

- [Tony] Everyone agrees

it's a classic 1960s photograph, but is it a UFO?

- What's depicted appears to be genuine.

What's interesting about this photo

is the directionality of light.

- [Tony] What is this creature

that showed up on a family farm?

- No one has ever seen anything like this.

Perhaps this is a type of evolution.

- [Tony] This haunted hotel inspired "The Shining."

Was one of its ghosts captured on camera?

- Guests have reported seeing the ghost

of the chamber maid, of cold spots in the rooms.

- [Tony] And is there an otherworldly explanation

behind these spinning fish?

- Congressman Tim Burchett stated that he believes

there are alien bases beneath our oceans.

[dramatic music]

- Around the globe are videos,

[woman screaming]

photos,

and sounds that defy explanation.

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

who made them, or how they operate.

- [Tony] What are they?

- [Michael] Some sort of bizarre mutation.

- [Ed] 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.

- [Kate] It's coming towards us.

- [Tony] We'll analyze each one with top experts.

- 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 and welcome to The Proof is Out There.

Roswell, New Mexico went down in UFO history in 1947

when the US military allegedly recovered

a flying saucer that crashed there.

That case has been debated for decades.

But did you know another flying saucer

was caught on film 20 years later in the very same state?

It's March, 1967 in Las Cruces, New Mexico,

about 150 miles as the crow flies from Roswell.

An unnamed student from New Mexico State University

is photographing land formations for his geology class

when he spots something unusual about 500 yards away.

He aims his four-by-five camera across the landscape

and snaps this.

The photo centers on a round, metallic object

which appears to hover just above a low hill,

between two rock crags.

To this day, the photo is revered

as one of the classic snapshots of a flying saucer,

in this case, rotated on its side.

The United States had recently been a hotbed

for UFO sightings.

And for New Mexico, it all began

with one history-making headline, RAAF,

which stands for Roswell Army Airfield,

captures flying saucer on ranch in Roswell region.

- And flying saucer sightings took the country by storm.

Between 1947 and 1960,

an estimated 6,500 sightings of UFOs were registered.

- [Tony] Some were photographed,

like this one in New Jersey in 1952,

and this one over Germany in 1954,

but most weren't,

and it's possible a lot of sightings

were just people being influenced by all the press.

And then a funny thing happened.

People mostly stopped seeing UFOs

in the shape of flying saucers.

By the sixties, oval shaped UFOs began to be reported,

and in the decades since, people have seen triangles,

orbs, and even cigars.

The diversification of UFO shapes

has been increasing ever since, but why?

- Some people believe that the different types of UFOs

are actually from different alien civilizations.

- [Tony] That's what makes this photo,

a flying saucer sighting

years after flying saucers fell out of fashion,

especially intriguing.

- This photo was taken in 1967,

seven years after that big craze died,

which has some people wondering, could it be more credible

because it was after all of the sightings

and after the big UFO craze ended?

- With all these different UFO shapes,

some have even suggested these are simply trends

of alien spacecraft design,

similar to the way our cars have changed style

over the decades.

But is this 1960s saucer the real deal?

Our experts dish out some insight.

[suspenseful music]

Whenever we see a UFO photo this good,

we first need to consider if it's too good to be true.

- What's interesting about this photo

is the directionality of light.

So, using one of our tools,

we're able to kind of demonstrate

the consistencies and inconsistencies in the shadows.

- [Tony] The sunlight appears to strike the scene

from the upper left, casting shadows to the lower right.

So we'd expect to find the UFO's shadow on the ground,

right about here, but we're not sure this is it.

- Some people have suggested

that you can actually see the shadow of the object,

but I'm familiar with the landscape in New Mexico

and these are just creosote bushes

that grow everywhere in the desert.

- So although what's depicted appears to be genuine

in this digital version,

the authenticity is considered inconclusive.

- [Tony] Could that missing shadow

indicate that the UFO is farther away,

maybe something large floating beyond this hill?

- It doesn't make sense, when you look at this object,

why it's got this fuzziness down here,

and it looks very much like it's in the wrong focal plane.

It looks like the focal plane is farther toward these rocks,

which are in focus,

and closer objects are gonna be a little out of focus.

- [Tony] That means this UFO

isn't something far away and large,

it's something close and small, but what?

- Let's assume it was a thrown object.

What was it?

Well, that looks remarkably like a hubcap to me.

And if so, that would be silver,

which is consistent with the reflections off of this,

compared to reflections elsewhere.

- [Tony] The issues with shadows

have us leaning hard into hoax,

but only thing is, our experts aren't sure how they did it.

- It's very difficult, like if you had a pie plate

and you wanted to throw it in the air

and get a good photograph of it,

you're gonna see more signs of a blur

because of the movement that it's doing.

- Our verdict, unexplained hoax.

Much like this alleged UFO, we are up in the air.

It could be a thrown hubcap

captured at just the right moment,

or it could be the work of a pro.

Either way, we doubt it's the real deal.

So if you know anything about this photo

that we haven't mentioned, please let us know.

We investigate plenty of tall tales on this show,

but with reported sightings

of goblins, gremlins and fairies,

we have our fair share of little legends too.

Just take a look at this.

March, 2023,

Huasca De Ocampo, Mexico, just northwest of Mexico City,

Mayor Francisco Flores calls a press conference.

Standing alongside two men, he announces

that these workers have made a stunning discovery

in one of the warehouses in the town, this.

It's a decomposed creature

that appears to be about 10 to 12 inches in length,

and its present condition suggests

that it's been dead for some time.

Take a closer look.

This creature seems to have a humanoid shaped head,

with two arms, two legs, a tail,

and those ears, they almost look kind of pointed.

What is this thing?

The mayor publicly declares that this could be the fetus

of a goblin-like creature from Latin American lore.

- A duende is a local legend.

Duende translates in Spanish

to something like dwarf or goblin,

usually described as small creatures,

maybe a half a meter tall, with pointed ears,

kinda human-like, but definitely not human

in any sort of way.

They're mischievous, they're gonna play pranks on you.

They can kidnap children.

You just don't want them around.

- [Tony] However, just like the mischievous gremlins

in fairies of European lore,

duendes can also be helpful to humans.

- One of the most famous duende stories

happened in the Colombian rainforest,

when a plane crashed in 2023.

Four children went missing,

ranging in age from 11 months old to 13 years old.

- [Tony] Authorities feared the worst,

as the small children remained missing for 40 days

inside a jungle filled with jaguars, snakes,

and armed drug smugglers.

- They enlisted a local shaman, who drank yage,

and while he was in his hallucinogenic trance,

he saw visions of a duende who had negotiated

for the return of the children,

and within a few days, the children come out of the jungle,

back to the village.

How did they survive

in the Colombian rainforest for a month?

- [Tony] It makes sense this creature was found

specifically in Huasca De Ocampo,

as that town is officially recognized

by the Mexican government for its rich tradition

of supernatural entities.

- Could it be that goblins are lurking

in the vicinity of this small Mexican town?

- Duendes seem to be popping up all over.

In another episode, we investigated a supposed duende

hanging out in a tree in Costa Rica.

We determined that one was just a misidentified bird.

But what about this one?

[mysterious music]

Here's the problem.

Even if we take legends of duende literally,

this specimen doesn't match up.

- They're described as being short, human-like creatures

that have wide owl eyes.

We don't see big owl eyes.

And what catches my eye is this long tail.

Humans do not have tails.

We do have a sacrum and a coccyx, which is our tailbone

and thought to be the remnants of tails from our ancestors,

but no human has a tail that long.

In addition, we can look at the hands.

Humans have fingers that separate.

I think these look like paws more than they look like hands,

and I don't see evidence of an opposable thumb.

- [Tony] And as far as the arms themselves.

- The distinctive anatomy of that hind leg

is in full concert with the anatomy of the upper extremity.

So these are legs rather than arms.

They provide support rather than manual dexterity.

- [Tony] That's an important clue,

along with the round, oversized head.

- Both humans and other animals are born with head sizes

that are larger in proportion to the rest of the body.

This is because the brain grows

much quicker than the rest of the body.

So this structure to me looks much more

like what we would expect in a animal like a cat or a dog.

- This is almost certainly just a poor kitten

that died, perished, and now was found

after it was quite desiccated,

dried out and virtually mummified.

- Our verdict, this is most definitely the remains

of an unfortunate kitten.

It would seem there could have been some monetary motivation

behind this misidentification.

You see, this town is actually famous

for a museum dedicated to duendes.

That could explain why the mayor himself

held a press conference over this little critter,

and even placed it on display in the museum.

- In movies like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

or "Independence Day," our first contact with aliens

seems to be with scout craft that come to check us out

and then report back to a larger mothership.

Could that idea be based on reality?

It's January 13th, 2024 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

After an evening hike with her husband,

artist Kate Vasseur is returning home

when something catches her eye in the night sky.

- I saw this orb kind of in the sky.

It was just white, and it descended towards earth,

and as quickly as it came,

it just shot back up and then went away.

Then all of a sudden, just saw all these lights,

and they were just kind of hovering there.

- [Tony] Kate takes out her phone and captures this.

- [Tony] A bar of shimmering lights

floats idly in the air behind some trees.

Each light appears to be glowing

in different colors and patterns,

but the entire shape seems to gain speed

as it moves across the sky.

- It was the weirdest thing.

We just looked at each other

and just couldn't believe what we had just seen.

- [Tony] But as it turns out,

Kate isn't the first in her area

to experience such a sighting.

- In early 2021, residents reported seeing

a string of lights in the sky.

Many people posted their photos and videos,

and a lot of them looked a lot like Kate's video.

- [Tony] This photo shows one large light

with other small ones.

That's important, because remember,

before Kate took the main video we're talking about,

she saw a smaller light shoot into the sky and disappear.

What does it mean?

- All of this taken together

kind of sounds like the typical UFO sighting

of a mothership.

This is a UFO form where there's kind of a base ship

and it will release or have other smaller craft

that go away from it and then come back.

- [Tony] If the whole idea

sounds too much like science fiction,

keep in mind that actual scientists

are giving it serious thought.

In 2023, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb

and former Pentagon physicist Sean Kirkpatrick

co-authored a paper which reasoned

that an artificial interstellar object

could potentially be parent craft

that releases many small probes

during its close passage to earth.

Is what we see in Charlotte

some sort of dispatch point

where motherships release and recapture their probes?

- There's no obvious explanation of what it is.

So what are these lights,

and why do they seemingly keep showing up in Charlotte?

- Here's a copy of that paper

written by Avi Loeb and Sean Kirkpatrick.

In it, they speculate that the mothership

might send probes to earth

for the purpose of scientific exploration.

So did Kate witness one of these motherships

and its exploratory probe?

First, we ask if this could be some kind of drone,

like the late 2024 sightings that plagued New Jersey.

- You can see that it's making a slow movement,

kinda like a straight line.

Then you have it slowly making what appears to be a turn.

It's actually angling up those lights as if it were banking.

That's not how drones maneuver through the atmosphere.

- [Tony] The object also appears to be moving steadily.

No signs of instantaneous acceleration,

like that made by famous UFOs like the 2004 Nimitz Tic Tac.

- This is making banking turns,

moving slowly across the sky.

We're not seeing a change in direction,

we're not seeing instantaneous acceleration,

we're not seeing anything of that nature.

- [Tony] Then what are we seeing?

The key clue may be, not in the motion of the lights,

but their color.

- If you notice, as it flies through,

once in a while you're gonna see

the red light showing through.

You saw it through the trees there.

There it is again. You see it there.

What are those?

Well, in the FAA mandated lighting manual for aircraft,

the left side of your plane

is gonna have the red light on it,

and the right side's gonna have a green light.

We also have a belly strobe on the bottom.

- [Tony] Adding up the lights and how they are moving,

it seems, this is no mystery at all.

- This has all the appearance of being an aircraft

coming in for an approach,

making banking turns, moving slowly across the sky.

- [Tony] It's that banking angle

that makes the spacing of the lights look unfamiliar,

and therefore less easily identifiable

as the shape of a commercial aircraft.

- The bottom line is,

I think this is a plane on approach to Charlotte Airport.

- Our verdict,

this is just a commercial airplane.

But admittedly, there is still the mystery

of the bright orb Kate says she witnessed

before she started filming.

We'll keep chasing down clues ourselves,

and let you know if we get any updates.

- Genetic mutations are crucial to the evolutionary process.

They help species develop new traits,

and adapt to changing environments.

But sometimes, those mutations go wrong, horribly wrong.

And when people start playing God...

Well, check this out.

November, 2018.

It's a normal day on this small farm

in Sultan Kudarat, in the Philippines.

Farm owner Josephine Repique

is preparing to help one of her livestock give birth,

as she's done many times before.

But when she performs a cesarean section

on a goat pregnant with twins, she finds this.

While one twin appears perfectly normal,

the other is anything but.

It's larger and more rotund, with pale skin

and a waxy, reflective sheen all over its body.

The hairless animal even appears to have a navel,

just like a tiny human.

Take a closer look.

Despite being birthed by a goat,

its large, puffy face and snout

have both the media and online spectators

calling this a strange hybrid

that's half-animal and half-human.

- People come from all over the place to come look at this.

What is the creature?

No one has ever seen anything like this,

and people come up with all sorts of farfetched ideas

as to what this thing could be.

- There are a number of states around the US

that have legends of a terrifying goat man.

One in Maryland says that a local scientist

transformed himself into a terrifying hybrid creature

after a DNA experiment gone wrong,

and now, he stalks the woods,

and attacks anyone unlucky enough to cross his path.

- [Tony] As far out as that probably is,

there was a verified attempt

to create a human-animal hybrid.

- In the 1920s,

there actually was a Russian and Soviet biologist

by the name of Ilya Ivanov

and he was quite a successful scientist,

but he also became obsessed with something rather gross,

which was, he thought that there should be

a human-ape hybrid.

So he tried to inseminate chimpanzees and orangutans.

Fortunately, none of these animals became pregnant.

- [Tony] Today, scientists are experimenting

with growing organs in animals

that can be used for human organ transplants,

and beyond the lab, there are some interspecies hybrids

that have occurred naturally.

- There have been polar bear-grizzly hybrids,

called pizzlies.

And there's even a zonkey, which is a zebra-donkey.

Is this just an accident?

Is this just happenstance?

I don't know.

But we are seeing it more regularly in the natural world.

- The Chimera was a legendary monster

with the head of a lion, the tail of a snake,

and the body of a goat.

But chimera also refers to real life organisms

that contain two different sets of DNA.

It can even happen in humans,

potentially causing two different eye colors,

two different skin tones, even two different blood types.

But let's see what our experts think

about this potential genetic anomaly.

[mysterious music]

Is it possible that this creature is a half-human hybrid?

- Now, while this animal might look a little bit human

in appearance, I think it's really important to note

that humans cannot cross breed with goats.

It's just not genetically possible.

- Even though they're both mammals,

there's a big genetic distance between them.

- [Tony] But wait a minute.

We know that it's possible for some species to interbreed.

- Wolves and dogs, lions and tigers, and horses and donkeys.

Those species are already genetically

really similar to each other.

Humans and their closest relatives, like chimpanzees,

share almost 99% of the same DNA,

but even then we could not cross breed.

- [Tony] Then could this be some type of genetic experiment

gone awry?

- I highly doubt this is a genetic experiment.

Genetic work conducted by scientists

is typically conducted in a controlled lab setting.

This is a Filipino farm.

It's not where you would expect to see

genetic experimentation.

- [Tony] Then the question remains,

what exactly are we looking at here?

- To me, this appears to be some sort of weird birth defect.

It has siblings right next to it that came out unaffected.

Whereas that one, something is obviously very off.

- It's really bizarre looking.

Even in my years of experience,

I've never seen anything that looks like this.

- Our verdict, we agree with our experts

that this is neither the work of bad science nor the devil,

just some sort of birth defect that we can't identify.

And as far as we can tell,

recent sightings of the Maryland Goat Man

have been few and far between.

But folks still think he's out there somewhere.

The Stanley Hotel in Colorado

is known for inspiring the Overlook Hotel

in Stephen King's classic novel, "The Shining,"

and for good reason.

Ghost encounters have been reported there for decades.

Everything from shadowy figures and disembodied voices,

to what was captured in the photo you're about to see.

November 21st, 2009, Estes Park, Colorado.

Krissy Head is staying at the Stanley Hotel for a wedding.

While taking a hotel tour,

she passes a friend sitting in a hallway

and stops to take a picture.

On a first look, there's nothing out of the ordinary here.

Krissy's friend is sitting on the left.

But just take a look to the right.

Behind the woman walking toward the camera

is the spectral outline of another woman

seemingly turning the corner.

You can see what looks to be a face, hair, and an arm.

She also appears to be wearing a long dress.

But the thing is, during an interview

with a paranormal investigator, Krissy says,

that ghostly woman was not there.

- [Krissy] I don't remember anybody else

coming around the corner.

But it's very clear to me,

I see the outline of a woman's body,

and I think I noticed it

when we were going back through photos

later that night on my camera.

- [Tony] That ghostly female figure

is just the latest potentially paranormal encounter

in the long and eerie history of the Stanley Hotel.

- Since its opening in 1909,

multiple guests have reported ghostly phenomena,

such as cold spots in the rooms,

a feeling like they get poked or shoved

by some sort of unseen figure.

- [Tony] But the hotel's most well-known paranormal story

involved perhaps its most famous guest, Stephen King.

- When Stephen King and his wife Tabitha

stayed at the Stanley,

the hotel was being closed up for the winter season.

They were the only guests that night in the dining room.

And if that weren't creepy enough, Steven had a nightmare

that night in room 217 which involved a fire hose

that was coiled up in the corridor outside his room

uncoiling itself and chasing after his five-year-old son,

events that you'll see in "The Shining."

King's nightmare was not the only paranormal event

to take place in room 217.

Residents and guests have reported

seeing the ghost of Elizabeth Wilson,

the chamber maid who was blown

from the second to the first floor by an explosion

in that room in 1911.

- Ghost hunters try to detect spirits with an EMF meter.

It measures fluctuations

in the surrounding electromagnetic field,

the theory being that spirits

might be made from electromagnetic energy

or interact with these fields in some way.

But can a ghost be captured in photographs?

Let's see what our experts say.

First, how can we explain our mystery figure in the hallway?

For one thing, we can take a closer look.

- There's a number of other things going on in this image.

We see in the background,

these lights are all kind of blurred

and they're stretched out,

and this mirror which is stretched out in this direction.

So everything is smeared in that direction,

probably because of the motion of the camera

'cause it's flashed, plus a slightly longer exposure.

- [Tony] In other words, objects in the foreground

that are closer to the camera's flash, like Krissy's friend,

appears sharp.

But objects farther away from the flash,

like this woman walking toward the camera, get blurred,

especially if the camera moved.

- We see here this woman's head has a shadow behind it,

kind of a dark shadow, also stretch out in that direction,

which makes you think that, is this perhaps an actual dress,

or could it be just the shadow of her sweatshirt here?

And if we look down here, her leg actually kind of matches

with her hand here on the edge of her shorts here.

So is this actually a ghostly leg,

or is this just a little bit of a camera artifact

from the motion of the camera and her hand?

The most likely thing to me

is that it's just an artifact of the camera

and it just happens to look like a person.

- [Tony] There's another issue with the ghost theory.

Krissy said she didn't see it

when she took the photo in the hall.

That suggests the apparition is invisible.

So how could any camera capture it on film?

- If an object is truly transparent,

you can't actually photograph it.

You need light to bounce off of it

and enter the device you're using

to capture an image of that.

There's just too much blurriness in this photo

due to a lack of focus, due to motion,

either of the individuals being photographed,

the camera itself, or both.

I think that all of these much more mundane explanations

make it so that we don't need to jump

to any paranormal explanation here.

- Our verdict, camera distortion.

We agree with Mick West.

No ghosts here, just a person distorted by motion,

distance, and the lighting.

But if anyone out there is planning

a stay at the Stanley anytime soon, a word of advice.

If you scare easy, avoid room 217.

- The line between legend and history

often gets blurred over time.

Stories get embellished, documentation gets lost.

But sometimes, researchers make a find

that proves a myth might be real.

And in this case,

the proof was found at the bottom of a well.

1938, Sverresborg Castle in central Norway,

a team of archeologists is excavating a well

on the grounds of this 12th century landmark,

the first medieval castle in Norway.

Digging down through layers of stone,

they're more than 20 feet underground

when they suddenly find this.

A partial skeleton is embedded in the mud.

A closer look reveals a torso and spine,

with most of the ribcage still visible,

along with one of the hip bones.

But before any serious study can be done,

world War II interrupts.

Nearly 80 years later, a new excavation turns up more bones,

including a left hand and a skull.

- We could see on the skull

that there is a heavy trauma on the back right side.

It was fresh when he fell in or was thrown into the well.

But we can't say for certain what actually killed him.

- [Tony] Now, this story takes a really cool twist,

because in this case, what science can't answer,

local legend can.

- Almost immediately, they connect these bones with a story

from a book called Sverres Saga,

which is about King Sverre, in Norway,

from the 12th century.

It discusses all of his wars, his battles,

his heroic speeches.

- [Tony] Among the tales from this text

is a rival clan's siege on Sverresborg Castle

in the year 1197.

- There's one line in the saga where it says,

they took a guy who was already dead,

and threw him in the well and covered him with rocks.

- [Tony] Some people don't buy that he was already dead.

An even weirder theory

is that something in the well killed him,

a troll, called a Brondmand, said to live in wells.

- The Brondmand often carries a crook.

So if a child, or maybe even an adult,

is leaning too far over the well,

they'll take the crook and pull them into the well

so that they die.

Legends are generally based upon the fears of the populace.

And there are cases where people fall into wells and die.

So could this be proof that the legends were true?

- This would not be the first medieval legend

to have a shred of truth.

Some claim that Merlin,

the famous wizard of a Arthurian legend,

is based in part on the medieval Welsh poet and prophet

Myrddin than the Wild.

Could our Wellman legend also be based in reality?

Let's ask our experts.

First, could our Wellman have been a victim

of the well-dwelling monster known as the Brondmand?

The issue there is that if the Brondmand had really existed,

it would have made life almost unlivable for everybody.

- If you do not have a pure water source,

it would be extremely difficult in these times.

You're not gonna survive,

because everything depends on it,

your crops, your animals, the people.

So I think the Brondmand is more or less used

to scare children from hanging around wells.

- [Tony] So could our Wellman be the dead body

mentioned in the Sverres Saga?

- The skeleton does come from about 900 years ago,

just when that saga was written.

And we've done DNA studies on the skeleton,

which do show that this person was of Danish descent,

with blonde hair, blue eyes.

The DNA shows that he was part of the invading force

who came from another area some distance away.

- [Tony] In other words, the forensic findings

confirm the line from the Sverres Saga

about a man from a rival clan being tossed into a well

during the siege on King Sverre's castle.

But why would anybody do this?

According to the text of the Sverres Saga,

it was a grisly but effective war tactic,

and the evidence matches.

- If this was a person who already died,

throwing a body down in the well

would definitely pollute that water

and get the people who were using it sick,

and eventually they could invade the keep.

That's certainly a cold and mercenary hypothesis,

but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

- Our verdict, true story.

The Wellman is no myth.

The forensic examination backs up the story

that's told in the Sverres Saga.

On this show, we often ask whether the folklore of

ancient or so-called primitive cultures might be real.

In this case, the answer is yes.

- Fish tend to be quiet creatures,

but they do communicate in their own way.

Using specific movements,

they say things to other fish,

like, this is my coral,

or, follow me to food.

But lately, some fish off the coast of Florida

had been moving very strangely.

What are they trying to say?

It's October 6th, 2023 in the Florida Keys.

Gregg Furstenwerth is out for a night dive

when he sees something peculiar in the water.

A distressed pinfish is spinning over and over

in upside down circles.

- I just know that I was recording

something odd at the time,

and then I decided to ask people around me

if they had ever seen the behavior before,

but nobody had any answers.

- [Tony] On subsequent dives,

Gregg observes the same behavior again and again.

- I was noticing it in a vast array of species.

My wife and I recorded 78 species that were impacted.

Oh, no.

- [Tony] From pinfish, to mangrove snappers,

to Goliath groupers,

these fish aren't just spinning for fun,

they're spinning until it kills them.

- Look at that. That's a baby Goliath.

That one took about two and a half hours

to die in front of me,

and that's a protected species,

which really set me to, this is a serious problem.

- [Tony] Gregg and his observations make national news,

drawing attention to the deepening marine mystery.

- Probably of greatest concern is the smalltooth sawfish.

It's very endangered.

And sure enough, just a month after this video was taken,

marine biologists identified

over 20 of the smalltooth sawfish

had been inflicted by whatever's going on here.

- [Tony] What's causing all this?

Some wonder if it could involve some aquatic alien activity.

- In January, 2025, Congressman Tim Burchett

actually said that he believes

there are alien bases beneath our oceans.

As ridiculous and improbable as that may sound,

we as humans have actually been working

on creating underwater bases.

Currently we have the Aquarius Reef Base,

which, as a scientist, I absolutely love.

This was established to host researchers

to conduct experiments,

and researchers there are referred to as aquanauts.

- [Tony] If aliens are also operating underwater,

what does that mean for the animals living there?

- People are suggesting that perhaps frequencies,

or other more sinister things,

might be affecting fish in the estuaries.

Fish have something called a lateral line,

so they can feel vibrations.

The lateral line is actually what enables fish

to school together,

because one slight change in one fish

is felt on their side by all the other fish in the school

and they can navigate accordingly.

That means fish are very much more sensitive

to vibrations in their environments.

- We also know that human craft can harm sea life.

For decades, research studies have suggested

a link between navy sonar and whale beachings.

Could something like that be what we're looking at here?

Let's ask the experts.

The spinning fish phenomenon is certainly strange,

but is it underwater-alien-base strange?

- The Florida Keys are a really populated area,

and I would expect,

if there were something incredibly strange

harming animals,

we would also see it in things like manatees, birds,

and even reptiles.

This phenomenon, whatever it is,

seems to be directly linked to fish.

- [Tony] And we can rule out sonar for a similar reason.

- We would see dozens if not hundreds of animals

on the surface of the water.

For example, in September of 2002,

there was a mass stranding

of beaked whales in the Canary Islands,

and this was directly tied to sonar activities.

- [Tony] Instead, this may tie back

to a major marine heat wave

that hit the Florida Keys in summer 2023.

- In the tidal zone along these areas,

water got to above a hundred degrees,

which is equivalent to a hot tub.

And these warm temps can make things like pathogens,

and parasites, and bacteria, and viruses,

reproduce even more quickly.

- Scientists determined there is a higher concentration

of dinoflagellates in the water.

This species is a single celled organism

that normally lives on the bottom of the ocean,

but warmer temperatures have caused it

to go higher up in the water column,

and these can produce neurotoxins.

- [Tony] That was the consensus,

but then something happened.

The behavior recurred,

this time in places without high levels of dinoflagellates.

- The reality is, there's a lot going on

that we don't totally understand,

and the only way we're gonna be able to

a hundred percent define what's going on here

is through molecular sequencing and diagnostics

of both the fish and whatever's affecting it.

- Our verdict, unexplained.

We think toxins can affect fish behavior,

but the more recent reports of spinning fish

make us question their role here.

Meanwhile, a 2004 ban on military sonar

surrounding the Canary Islands

led to a major reduction in whale beaching there.

Let that be a lesson to all of us.

That's our show for tonight.

Thank you so much for watching.

And as always, keep those cameras rolling.

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