Original subtitles

Imagine a bolt from the heavens that really raises hell.

This ball of fire comes down,

and it is just splintering pews

into these tiny pieces of wood.

People were killed.

One man is thrown so hard against one of the pews that he dies.

Or a strange shower from the sky that leaves an entire town stunned.

Weird little sticky threads

are descending by the millions over the entire region.

From what people describe,

these things that are falling look kind of like pasta.

How about getting carried away by a giant flying monster?

She jumps off that porch

and runs toward him.

And she manages to swap it across the neck.

These are the encounters from above so strange,

so unnerving, they are truly unbelievable.

War fills the sky with all kinds of things.

Smoke, fire, parachutes, falling metal.

But over Italy,

one unit runs into something that doesn't show up on any radar.

It's late in World War II,

and the Nazi war machine is just crumbling.

The Allied forces are destroying German forces

all across Italy.

The main goal of the Allies at this time

is also to try to take out as many ammunition stockpiles

that the Third Reich has built up.

Including one particular target,

a heavily guarded ammunition cache

in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy.

They're about to start their bombing run when the flight crew sees something

outside the aircraft's windows that stuns them.

What they report seeing...

is a monk in his brown robes

floating outside with his arms spread.

And it's at this very moment

that the bomber begins to experience

all kinds of mechanical difficulties.

Their controls don't respond, their instruments go dead,

and most importantly, they can't release their bombs.

They now can't complete their mission,

so the only thing they could do

is turn around and go back to base.

Back on the ground, their account is met with skepticism,

especially from one of the Allied Air Force commanders,

General Bernardo Rossini,

who decides to join the next mission.

They are in the air.

They are closing in on San Giovanni Rotondo.

And as they get there, again, in front of their plane...

is the monk with his arms raised.

Once again, things start to go haywire in the aircraft.

The bomb seemed to release themselves early

so that they land harmlessly in the forest.

The planes simply turn themselves around,

and they fly back to base.

It's an experience Rossini can't shake.

So he begins searching for an explanation.

It turns out that the weapons cache that the Allies were targeting

on this bombing run

was very close to a local monastery

by the name of Santa Maria Delle Grazie.

Now this was actually a tactic that was used by the Nazis.

They would take their weapon stockpiles

and place them near landmarks like monasteries and churches

to use them basically as shields.

Rossini and a couple of his men go to the monastery,

and they walk into the courtyard, and they see a group of monks.

And one of them turns around to see

who's walked into the courtyard,

and Rossini recognizes him.

That's the monk I saw floating in the sky.

He's not just any monk.

He's Padre Pio, a local superstar among the faithful.

Padre Pio is known for two things:

healing the sick and having signs of the stigmata.

That's this phenomenon where a very pious person

will suffer pain in his hands and his feet and in his side

that mimic the wounds of Christ during the crucifixion.

Padre Pio walks up to Rossini

and tells him, "Ah, so you're the one that was trying to kill us."

And according to Catholic records,

as soon as General Rossini recognizes Padre Pio

as the monk who was in front of his plane,

General Rossini was a Protestant, but he drops to his knees

and converts to Catholicism on the spot.

Miracle or wartime myth?

The results are hard to ignore.

What we do know for a fact is that all across the Italian Peninsula,

there are numerous monasteries, towns, villages,

cultural landmarks that are hit and decimated

by these Allied bombing runs,

except for this town of San Giovanni Rotondo

and this small monastery.

They remain unscathed.

Not every visit from above is a blessing.

Centuries before the events in Italy,

one English church experiences something

far more devastating.

It's October 21st, 1638 in Widecombe-in-the-Moor

in England,

and the faithful are all crammed

into St. Pancras Church on Sunday morning.

And we should also note that there is a raging thunderstorm

outside of the church.

This is a big storm. The biggest, really, in memory.

It's so loud from the noise of the storm outside

that people have trouble hearing the choir singing.

Sunday service continues

until there's this massive crack of thunder

and what is described as a giant ball of fire

bursts down through this granite tower.

And it is just splintering pews

into these tiny pieces of wood,

tossing people to the side.

You have this stampeding,

panicked congregation just rushing to get out.

People were killed. One man is thrown so hard against one of the pews

that he dies.

Another is thrown up against the wall.

Besides the fact that there are dozens of people

injured in this event,

there are also reports

that say that there are some people

whose clothes are just instantly burned off,

and they are left standing in this church completely nude.

And they are unharmed as far as everyone can see.

In the days that follow,

some parishioners claim the storm wasn't the only force at work

inside the church that day.

There's a colorful legend that's passed around

by the locals in that on the day in question,

before it happens,

at the back of the church,

a tall man dressed in black appears.

And the parishioners have never seen this man before.

And some of them claim that this is in fact Satan himself.

One of the stories that starts to emerge, at least by legend,

is a local gambler, Jan Reynolds,

made a deal with the devil

to trade his soul for earthly riches.

But the deal said that the devil can only take his soul

if he's caught sleeping in church.

And on this Sunday, Reynolds is rumored

to have a hangover when he falls asleep in church.

The devil himself comes to collect his due.

The entire encounter is documented a few weeks later

in a pamphlet that's called

"A True Relation of Those Sad and Lamentable Accidents

Which Happened in the Parish Church of Widecombe."

It's a bit of a mouthful, and in shorthand,

villagers referred to it as the devil's thunderstorm.

Obviously the legend grew in dimensions as years passed,

but the fact is,

ball lightning did catastrophic

and fatal damage

to the Church of St. Pancras in 1638.

St. Pancras Church is still there,

and the damage has long since been repaired.

But, of course, local legend persists.

So locals will tell you

that when there's a big thunderstorm,

you will sometimes feel energy inside the church

and maybe a slight whiff of sulfur.

If there's a lesson to be learned,

perhaps it's that if you're going to make a deal with the devil,

it's best not to doze off in church.

Coming up, a mysterious flying man

sends the internet and the FAA into a frenzy.

It is a federal crime.

Who is this mysterious jet pack daredevil?

There are no leads. There is no evidence of any equipment.

There are no pings on radar.

They have nothing to go on.

Hollywood knows a thing or two about flying men.

Usually they're green screened, insured,

and take union lunch breaks.

But in 2020, Los Angeles gets one that doesn't come with stunt wires

or an explanation.

Runway 21, cleared for takeoff.

Cleared for takeoff 2-1, 6510.

It is a clear day on August 30, 2020.

An American Airlines flight

is approaching Los Angeles International Airport.

3-0 at seven, runway 2-1, cleared to land.

And at a height of about 3,000 feet,

air traffic control receives

one of the strangest messages it's ever gotten.

So your first reaction might be like,

"Wow, that's some really kooky and foolish daredevil."

But here's the thing.

There's no known jet pack that can get a person up to 3,000 feet.

Jet pack technology, honestly, is not very good.

Even the most modern jet pack technology

is really only designed

to take people up a few hundred feet.

Impossible or not, something is buzzing

around LA's crowded airspace,

creating quite a commotion in the panicked tower.

If you're somebody that's flying this jet pack near LAX

or any airport in the United States, it is a federal crime,

which is why you had the LAPD involved,

which is why you had the FBI involved,

to try to figure out who is this mysterious jet pack daredevil?

Just a couple months after that first sighting,

China Airlines reports that they have spotted a person in a jet pack

as they're making their approach into LAX.

And they're seeing this at 6,000 feet,

which is even more impossible.

We heard him and we're definitely looking.

Only in LA.

There are no leads.

There is no evidence of any equipment.

There are no pings on radar.

They have nothing to go on.

Over the course of time from 2020 to 2022,

there are five sightings of the Los Angeles jet pack man,

with the final sighting happening June 2022.

Jet pack reported at 3,000 feet.

After this latest incident, jet pack man is never seen again,

and investigators remain baffled

as to who or what jet pack man was.

To this day, the case still remains open.

Jet pack man may have disappeared without a trace,

but the next sky phenomenon leaves something behind

all over the streets of Italy.

It's a beautiful, crisp day in Florence, Italy,

and a great day for calcio Italiano,

which translates to "Italian soccer."

Ten thousand fans are packed into the stadium.

Everyone is excited.

Suddenly, out of nowhere,

this loud, rowdy crowd goes stone silent.

Players on the field stop and look straight above.

Then some murmuring in the crowd becomes shouting

as 10,000 fans point to the sky.

A gigantic, flat, silver, circular object

floats slowly over the stadium.

Some witnesses claim to see multiple objects.

People are in shock at what they're seeing.

What's really remarkable about this

is that this sighting goes on for 15 minutes.

This is an eternity.

Most UFO sightings, people see lights darting by very quickly.

For 10,000 people to be looking into the sky

and seeing something for more than 15 minutes,

that's incredible.

Within hours, reports of strange flying objects

spread far beyond the stadium.

Witnesses in and around Lucca

describe shining pure white shapes

moving erratically and pausing midair.

In Siena, they see more egg-shaped crafts.

But the strangest part of the mass sighting

is what starts raining down afterward.

Weird, little, sticky threads

are descending by the millions over the entire region.

From what people describe,

these things that are falling look stringy,

kind of like pasta.

Like angel hair pasta, if we're being technical.

And rooftops in Florence are reportedly covered in this stuff,

but it just dissolves and disappears within an hour.

While most attempts to salvage samples are unsuccessful,

a local journalist, Giorgio Batini, has better luck

and manages to get the mystery substance to a lab.

When the scientists do a spectrographic analysis of this,

they discover that this material

contains lots of four elements:

boron, silicon, calcium, and magnesium.

This strange combination of elements is often found

in space-age ceramics and heat shields.

To UFO believers, that sounds like proof.

But one scientist suggests something way creepier.

James McGaha is a former US Air Force pilot turned astronomer.

He's also a firm UFO skeptic.

He says that the angel hair

is not some otherworldly substance

dumped onto Italy by UFOs.

It's spiders.

Millions of spiders using their webs to migrate.

Sometimes their webs can combine,

and they form these big globs,

and they can get to altitudes of up to 14,000 feet.

Sunlight could create that glittery white, silverish metallic look

that people reported seeing.

There's one big hole in McGaha's theory.

Where are all the spiders?

There are zero reports of people being covered

by creepy crawlies from the sky.

The other hole is that spiderwebs are made of completely different

compounds than what these strands were made of.

So the source of the angel hair is still unexplained today,

but it's, like, a little bizarre

that it's the same day that 10,000 people looked up

from their soccer game to see a UFO.

One thing is certain in Italy,

nothing gets in the way of a good soccer game.

After the UFOs vanish and the angel hair stops falling,

the match resumes.

The winner?

Fiorentina 6 to 2.

So the visitors caused an upset that day in more ways than one.

Coming up, strange beings from above play catch and release

with a couple of fishermen.

And then these three humanoid figures take the men.

Once they're aboard this ship,

Parker loses consciousness almost immediately.

But Hickson says that he was awake

through what was next.

On a calm October night in Mississippi,

two men settle in to fish hoping to catch dinner.

Instead, they claim something else catches them.

It's October 1973,

and two Pascagoula ship builders,

Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker,

have snuck away to enjoy a little bit of night fishing on the river.

Now, their expectations are modest.

They wanna have a few beers, swap some stories,

and hopefully catch a speckled trout.

Hickson casts his line into the water,

but Parker's not even paying attention to the water.

He's trying to fumble a live shrimp onto his hook.

Suddenly, a loud, strange hum cracks the silence.

So the men spin around to see what's making the noise.

They say they witnessed two blue glowing orbs

hovering a couple feet over the shoreline.

They notice that it seems to be a craft.

A 40-foot-long football-shaped aircraft of sorts,

10 feet high.

And as they start to fixate on what it is,

they notice a square portal of sorts begins to open up.

As the two men try to take all this in,

something comes out of the craft.

And it's not speckled trout.

The men are watching in shock.

Three humanoid beings

emerge from this opening

and begin hovering towards them.

They're human in form but look much stranger.

They have a metallic elephantine skin.

Frozen in fear, the pair soon realizes

this is much more than an extraterrestrial meet and greet.

It's an abduction.

They lift them up and float them to the opening of this craft.

Once they're aboard this ship,

Parker loses consciousness almost immediately.

But Hickson says that he is awake,

and he recounts being scanned

by what appears to him to be like an eye-like device

that kind of hovers all around them.

Hickson estimates the whole ordeal took about 30 minutes.

And then these three humanoid figures take the men...

and deposit them back on the shore.

Parker starts to vomit uncontrollably and Hickson tries to steady Parker.

But both men say they were dazed, disorientated.

The monumental scale of the bizarreness

of what just happened to them is starting to slowly sink in,

and they know they need to report this phenomenon to someone.

Hearts pounding, the frantic fisherman

stumble to their truck and hightail it to the local sheriff.

The sheriff, Fred Diamond,

isn't really expecting much to happen this particular evening,

but then two men enter the sheriff's station.

They're amped up, and they desperately want

to tell the sheriff this interesting story.

All I can tell you is there was two men

came in the sheriff's department approximately 8:30 or 9 o'clock.

They were all excited and upset.

The sheriff hears them out, and they break down

everything that has just happened to them.

And the sheriff takes in every detail.

And when they're done, he administers a sobriety test.

But the two fishermen are stone-cold sober.

Still convinced this is a hoax, Diamond tries a different tactic.

Sheriff Diamond walks out of the interrogation room,

but he secretly turns on a tape recorder

because he thinks that they're gonna let their guard down

and I'm gonna catch them in the act, I'm gonna find out

that they're trying to pull off this pretty fantastic hoax.

But when the sheriff plays back the tape,

he doesn't hear the sound of laughter or pranking.

What he hears is two extremely traumatized men

reliving what happened to them.

The cops don't know what actually happened to these guys,

but at this point, they do believe that they're sincere

and that Parker and Hickson really do believe

what happened to them.

It's rumored the sheriff's office leaks the story

because within 72 hours,

Parker and Hickson become front-page news.

Some source of light came from the inside.

It was just almost blinding.

It was the most shock I've ever had in my life.

So Hickson and Parker start getting all this media attention.

They even have to take a lie detector test to prove their story, and they pass.

At one point, they even agreed to hypnosis,

and their story remains consistent.

Hickson actually seems kind of okay with talking about it.

He actually writes a book about it.

He appears on this show called To Tell the Truth.

Parker, on the other hand, kind of shuts down.

He wants nothing to do with the spotlight.

Calvin Parker, he doesn't break his silence at all until 2018,

when he states the trauma of what happened to him

on that night has resulted in crippling PTSD

and two open heart surgeries.

Some encounters from above leave people paralyzed with fear.

This next one leaves a mother ready to throw down.

It is a beautiful summer evening in 1977

in Lawndale, Illinois,

and Marlon Lowe, who is 10 years old,

is out in the backyard playing with a ball.

As little Marlon is playing with his ball in his backyard

having a great time, he doesn't notice the giant looming shape that's just above.

Marlon's not paying attention.

His mom, Ruth, is paying attention, and she sees what's happening.

So she jumps off that porch and runs toward it.

Ruth sees one of these creatures

swoop in with its giant talons

and actually grab Marlon up off the ground.

He gets airborne.

Ruth is running up on this thing.

She manages to swap it across the neck,

which causes this giant bird to drop her son.

A shocked and rattled Ruth Lowe reports the encounter

to local police and game wardens.

Ruth describes a giant bird with black feathers

and a white ring around its neck.

She says that it has a curved beak like a raptor,

and its size is about five feet from head to tail.

Its wingspan, she describes as being the length of an automobile.

The story hits the local paper,

and within days, it spreads across the country.

When the story explodes all throughout the media,

people are fascinated,

especially the comparison

between the supposed super raptor that swooped up Marlon

and a Native American legend known as the Thunderbird.

All the local native people of the area

talk about these Thunderbirds,

giant raptors of enormous size.

These stories are ancient.

They go way back to before

any Europeans ever colonized North America.

For many Indigenous people, if they saw a Thunderbird of any sort,

maybe they're destined to be healers.

Maybe they're destined to be warriors of some sort.

It's a life-changing thing to put eyes on a creature like this.

After the story goes national,

one photojournalist heads to Illinois

hoping to find out if the legend could actually be real.

CBS sends A.J. Huffer to get some photographs

of these giant kid-stealing birds.

He decides what he's gonna do is go out to Lake Shelbyville,

which is just a little ways south of Lawndale.

Huffer is out on the water with his 16-millimeter film camera,

and what he captures is footage

of these two very enormous bird creatures.

It's certainly a big, black raptor.

But is it the same one?

The angle is such that there's not enough perspective

or comparison to really figure out the size of the birds from the footage.

The local wildlife officials and the police, they say,

"No, no, these are probably just turkey vultures."

But Ruth knows what she saw,

and she is adamant that this is no turkey vulture.

Thunderbird sightings continue across the Midwest and beyond.

While experts argue over whether they're seeing vultures,

condors, or something else,

witnesses stand firm.

They know what they saw,

and they say it's still flying.

Coming up, another flying monstrosity takes to the skies.

They see a creature flying after them.

It follows them around corners, swooping over treetops,

then dive-bombing them towards the top of the car.

In November of 1966,

most of America was worried about communists, nuclear war,

or even the dawn of the new hippie movement.

But the good folks of West Virginia

had something much scarier to contend with.

On November 14th in Salem, West Virginia,

Newell Partridge watches television in his living room

when his TV set goes berserk.

A herringbone pattern appears on the screen,

and then it emits a high-pitched whining sound.

Newell has a German Shepherd named Bandit,

and Bandit is going bananas.

It is barking, it is howling, it is acting agitated,

and it is hyper-focused on the front door.

So he gets a flashlight, and he opens the door,

and he looks outside,

and he plays the flashlight across the yard.

When he sees two glowing red orbs

nine, twelve feet off the ground,

which he describes as being like bicycle reflectors.

The door is open, so Bandit makes a beeline

towards those red, glowing eyes,

barking all the way.

Bandit just runs off into the darkness.

And then his barking stops.

At that moment, the two red eyes vanish.

He will never see this dog again, alive or dead.

The next night, a similar encounter unfolds

100 miles away in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

Roger and Linda Scarberry are out in their car

for a ride with two of their good friends.

There is an abandoned TNT factory in the area,

and that's where a lot of teenagers hang out.

While cruising by a number of cement bunkers,

Roger notices something's creeping out into the road in front of them.

Roger describes this figure as vaguely humanoid in shape

with two red, glowing eyes where the head should be

and large folded wings behind its back.

As this creature gets close to the car,

it unfurls its wings and kind of lurches at them.

Roger panics.

He slams on the gas, the car screeches away,

approaching speeds, he says, of a hundred miles an hour.

According to the witnesses in the car,

they see a creature flying after them in the vehicle and keeping up with them.

But it's not flapping its wings. It's just gliding.

They say it follows them around corners,

swooping over treetops,

then dive-bombing them towards the top of the car.

Finally, when the car reaches the brightly lit outskirts of Point Pleasant,

it gives up the chase.

At that point, they go immediately to the Mason County Sheriff's Office

to describe what has just taken place.

Roger shows deputies this actual physical evidence

of long scratch marks carved into the roof of his Chevy.

The sheriff is as skeptical as Roger's insurance agent probably is.

Nonetheless, their report enters the public record.

The cops may roll their eyes at these guys,

but you know who doesn't?

Local reporters.

They hear, "man-sized flying creature attacking people,"

and they know they've got a headline.

Allegedly, a local copy editor

inspired by the comic book villains of the day

coins a name that sticks:

Moth Man.

As news spreads,

it's clear this is far from an isolated incident.

In the coming months, there are over 100 Moth Man sightings.

Point Pleasant, West Virginia, becomes a circus.

Reporters come, lookie-loos come in, hunters come in, police officers.

Everyone is there hoping to catch a glimpse of Moth Man.

As the circus grows, one voice cuts through the clutter:

investigative journalist John Keel.

John thinks he's gonna zip into Point Pleasant

and like do a week of work and then pop out and write it up,

but instead, he ends up staying an entire year.

John Keel meticulously records the date,

time and location of every Moth Man sighting,

and almost all of them are concentrated around Point Pleasant.

Once people start lining these reports up,

things get unsettling fast

because this isn't just a local phenomenon.

There are stories like this from all over the world.

And it turns out people have been talking about

this kind of thing for a long time.

Before the name Moth Man is introduced,

cultures around the world tell stories about these huge winged creatures,

not as monsters, but as omens.

Warnings in the sky.

In the plains and Great Lakes Indigenous traditions,

these kinds of sightings and occurrences happen

before things like floods or earthquakes or disasters.

For the people of Point Pleasant,

those stories take on a chilling relevance in late 1967,

near one of their most important landmarks.

The Silver Bridge links West Virginia to Ohio.

And locals claim to have seen strange lights

and dark shapes in the sky above the bridge.

On December 15, 1967,

it is jam-packed with commuters.

At 5:04 p.m.

there is a loud metallic crack.

The entire span of the 1,750-foot bridge

drops into the river below.

Rescue boats immediately go to the aid of these people

that have fallen into the water in their cars.

But there is ultimately a sad end.

Forty-six people die in this tragedy.

The disaster devastates the community.

Then, just as suddenly as they began,

Moth Man sightings stop.

No more reports of flying winged creatures.

No more glowing eyes.

After all his investigative work,

John Keel eventually comes to the conclusion

that Moth Man isn't a cryptid.

It's not an animal or a biological entity.

It is an omen, an omen of impending disaster.

And he outlines his theory in his book,

The Mothman Prophecies.

It's not just about the Moth Man but an elaborate complex web

of conspiracy and paranormal activity

centered in this small West Virginia community.

These days, the Moth Man brings tourists instead of terror.

Every September, Point Pleasant hosts a Moth Man festival

featuring panel discussions, a Moth Man pageant,

and even Moth Man burgers.

Mm.

Coming up, bizarre blobs from above

blanket a small Arkansas town.

When they go outside, they don't see natural weather phenomena.

Instead, they see all these black lumps.

More and more of them are falling from the sky,

hitting the ground with a sickening thump.

It's New Year's Eve 2010 in Beebe, Arkansas.

That means fireworks, champagne, and a countdown to midnight.

But when the clock strikes twelve,

it's not confetti that falls from above.

It's something much stranger.

Shane Roberts and his daughter Alex

are enjoying a quiet New Year's Eve at home.

In fact, they're already in bed.

About a half hour before midnight,

they wake up because they hear thumping on the roof.

Shane assumes that this is a hailstorm of some sort,

but if it is hail, it's big hail.

Record-setting hail.

By now, Shane's daughter, Alex, is awake as well,

and so they make their way out to the front yard to see

what all that noise was.

But when they go outside, they don't see natural weather phenomenon.

Instead, they see all these black lumps

covering their front yard like a giant blanket.

He walks over to one of these lumps

and he sort of nudges it with his toe to see what it is.

And it's a dead bird.

Specifically, a red-winged blackbird.

And across one section of town,

there are hundreds still dropping from the sky.

People are freaking out,

and they're blowing up the 911 switchboard

because they're getting pelted with dead birds,

and they understandably think the world is ending.

I myself would probably pack up and move.

The first few calls, the police maybe get that and think

it's some kind of a prank.

When police captain Eddie Cullum leaves the station to go

and see the situation for himself,

he finds the streets littered with hundreds of dead birds.

By dawn, the body count is more than 5,000,

all within a one-mile radius.

The birds are everywhere.

You literally can't drive down a road without squishing a few of them.

As crews in hazmat suits collect thousands of bird corpses,

the residents of Beebe want to know what caused this.

The official explanation is that local fireworks

celebrating New Year's Eve scared the flock of birds.

So in mid-flight, they started hitting each other,

hitting walls and trees and other obstacles.

But the locals don't really buy it

because they say that they've had fireworks every year,

and this has never happened before.

Another problem is if it were the fireworks,

why is it only one species of bird,

the red-winged blackbird,

and not a whole bunch of types of birds?

At a loss, investigators suggest an ultra-rare weather anomaly.

So a new explanation emerges.

An atmospheric microburst.

When there are very high thunderheads in the sky,

you can get this colossal downdraft,

a sledgehammer of air

that is descending from thousands of feet.

Microbursts are powerful enough to take out an aircraft,

which means they're certainly powerful enough

to take out a flock of birds.

Whatever the real cause, investigators seem off the hook

when life in Beebe returns to normal,

at least until the following New Year's Eve.

Bird bodies are falling on Beebe again.

There are certain New Year's traditions

that we can all hold as sacrosanct,

but I think it's safe to say that "dead bird falling from the sky" tradition

is probably not one.

So if this incredibly rare atmospheric microburst

is responsible for the first bird fall, what about now?

Has the same very rare weather event

happened exactly a year later?

None of this makes sense

To the devout Christians in Beebe,

this sounds kind of similar to the story in Exodus

when God sends plagues upon the Egyptians.

Some people in Beebe worry that this is a sign

of a coming apocalypse.

In fact, the police captain, Eddie Cullum, says,

"For all the doomsdayers, this was the end of the world."

Whether explained by science or superstition,

the bird falls leave a lasting fear.

And in Beebe, that fear lingers right up to midnight

on December 31, 2012,

as the town wonders if it will happen again.

They brace themselves, and lo and behold...

...there is no massive bird death that New Year's Eve,

and there continues to be no massive bird death

in any of these subsequent New Year's Eves.

Which is probably a relief to both the residents

and the cleanup crews.

Coming up, a runaway blimp leaves an entire Navy base

scrambling for answers.

The engine and radio are both in perfect working order.

It certainly doesn't look like they were forced to abandon the ship.

None of it really makes any sense.

In the summer of 1942, the West Coast is on high alert,

fearing another airborne attack like Pearl Harbor.

But what appears over the San Francisco Bay area

one August morning doesn't look like a threat.

Looks like a complete mystery.

It's the morning of August 16, 1942,

and residents of Daly City on the San Francisco Peninsula

are seeing something weird.

It appears to be a Navy blimp

floating very low across town.

It's a common enough sight along the West Coast

because they're used to patrol for German and Japanese submarines.

The important thing about these blimps

is that they can stay in the air longer than your typical aircraft.

They can stay afloat for about 60 hours,

which means they can stay in the air longer

and have a much longer patrol for any potential enemy ships

or submarines that might be making their way to the West Coast.

But this blimp isn't off searching for submarines.

It's floating so low that it's dragging cables

as it kind of floats over Daly City.

On the ground, groups of civilians grab cables

and begin to wrestle this blimp,

which has "L-8" emblazoned on its side,

down to the ground,

eventually bringing it to a safe landing in the middle of a residential street.

After the crowd wrestles this blimp to the ground,

they rush to the gondola thinking that they're gonna have to get inside

and rescue the crew because they're probably hurt.

But when they get inside, there's no crew.

There's nobody in there.

So right away, this crowd is like, "Something's amiss."

They call the Navy.

Turns out the Navy's been frantically looking for L-8 for hours,

after missing crew members Ernest Cody and Charles Adams

went radio silent while investigating a suspicious oil slick over the Pacific.

They think that maybe there was some sort of

mechanical failure, but when they take a look closely,

it turns out that the engine and the radio

are both in perfect working order.

And it certainly doesn't look like

they were forced to abandon the ship.

The parachutes are where they're supposed to be.

The life raft is sitting right where it's supposed to be.

It looks like they were just operating the way they should.

For days, search crews comb the coast and find nothing.

No debris, no bodies, no answers.

So at this point, speculation runs wild.

Did they fall out of the blimp when trying to investigate the oil slick?

Was one guy falling out and the other guy, the second man,

trying to help him?

Some think that maybe a Japanese submarine surfaced

and somehow captured them.

There's even crazier speculation that maybe it was a murder-suicide.

There's been some talk of maybe a love triangle,

that Cody was having an affair with Adams' wife or something like that.

None of it really makes any sense.

The military investigates all the crazy possibilities.

And after months, they are no closer to understanding

what happened to Cody and Adams and how the L-8 became a ghost blimp.

The strange case remains a mystery for decades,

until 2009 when a new theory turns the focus

back on the blimp itself.

An amateur sleuth named Otto Gross

has been investigating the L-8 disappearance,

and Gross claims to have gained access

to Department of Defense records.

One of the documented items that actually is recovered from the L-8

is a suitcase that is filled with all these classified documents.

Now the government still won't reveal what is in these documents,

but Gross has a theory.

He speculates that they were testing out a new form of radar,

but during the test, something malfunctioned.

Potentially, this technology used maybe microwaves.

We know what microwaves do.

They heat water, right?

Maybe this device is badly designed,

the microwaves leak into the cabin,

they start to feel the heat,

for some reason can't turn it off,

and so their only hope for escaping this heat, they jump.

While the fate of the L-8's crew may remain a baffling mystery,

the ship herself lived to fly another day.

After the war, the L-8 is returned by the Navy to Goodyear,

who uses it to fly above sporting events until 1982.

And fortunately, for all future crews of the Goodyear blimp,

there are no reported mysterious disappearances.

The sky has always been a source of wonder,

fear, and mystery.

And whether these stories were caused by aliens,

ancient creatures, mass panic, or something else entirely,

they all leave us with the same feeling

that the world may be far stranger than we think,

and sometimes truly unbelievable.