Original subtitles

- You know, I've been around for a while.

Met some interesting people.

Done some crazy things.

So, you just might think that there's not much

that can take me by surprise.

You'd be wrong.

The world is full of stories.

Science and things that amaze and confound me.

Every single day, incredible mysteries that keep me

awake at night.

Some, I can answer.

Others just defy logic.

Does the human body contain inexplicable mysteries?

Beyond the reach of medical science.

In Arkansas, a sky diver plummets to the earth

from over 11,000 feet.

(screaming)

And, somehow, survives.

How?

In New York, a man is vaporized as he lies in bed.

Can humans spontaneously combust?

- I've been through fires before, too,

but nothing like that.

- [William] And in England, a young girl becomes

super charged with electricity.

Is she a walking power grid?

- She wouldn't touch me if she was switching

the light switch on because

a jolt of electricity would go through her.

- Yeah.

It's a weird world.

And I love it.

(mysterious music)

The human body.

Remarkable, isn't it?

Well this one is, anyway.

Just a candid shot of me at the beach.

But this is what we all look like underneath.

Unless you believe in reincarnation,

we only get one of these.

But do we really appreciate just how incredible

these things that carry us around are?

Or do we take them for granted?

You see, many believe that we are more than just

skin and bones.

That there's things going on inside us that modern medicine

may never be able to explain.

Is it true? (objects falling)

Do you think they can help me with my indigestion?

(banjo music)

October 9, 2005.

Siloam Springs, Arkansas.

- [Rick] Hi, what's your name?

- You know my name.

Adrenaline junkie Shayna Richardson, 21,

is about to attempt her first solo skydive.

- (laughing)

- [Rick] Alright, Shayna.

- [William] Shayna's husband, Rick West was also

her jump instructor.

- I was very confident that she was well prepared for this.

- [William] Rick has a helmet camera

- Hi Shayna.

to capture Shayna's jump.

Together, they will free fall

from an altitude of 11,000 feet,

more than two miles high.

At first, things go great.

- We exited the plane well.

And she did a perfect dive.

- [William] Rick and Shayna are plummeting to earth

at terminal velocity.

120 miles per hour.

After 30 seconds of free fall, Shayna pulls the ripcord.

- And as you see in the video, I say

"Woo! Good job, Shayna!

"Yeah, that's my girl."

And I had no idea at this time,

that she was in any kind of trouble.

Until I look up.

- [William] What Rick sees fills him with horror.

On her very first jump, his wife's

main parachute has failed.

Desperate, Shayna releases it and tries her reserve.

- And then her reserve didn't work out so well.

- [William] Unable to help, Rick realizes he is watching

what will be his wife's final moments.

- Shayna is spinning out of control.

(Rick yelling on footage) Shayna!

- [William] 8,000 feet from the ground,

Shayna's reserve parachute is tangled.

She is now plummeting uncontrollably towards the ground

at over 70 feet per second.

- Panic sets in.

(Rick yelling on footage) Shayna!

She kept spinning and kept spinning and spinning.

And the closer and closer we get,

I'm seeing cars, semis, the road, buildings,

she was heading right into.

(Rick yelling on footage) Shayna!

- [William] Helpless, Rick can only watch as Shayna spins

toward certain death.

- It was horrible for me.

It was just a sickening feeling.

(Rick yelling on footage) Shayna! Shayna!

- [William] To Rick's horror, Shayna slams directly

into a parking lot.

- I was sure she was dead or going to be dead really quick.

As soon as I landed, I turned the camera off.

And I was just trying to get to her in time.

To tell her that I love her and I'm sorry.

She was actually laying in a pool of blood.

Her bottom lip had been busted, peeled out, split.

Above her nose was wide open.

You could almost see the bone.

- [William] But something miraculous has happened.

- I really did firmly believe that I was going to die.

- [William] Despite smashing into asphalt

from a height of two miles,

Shayna is somehow alive.

- My face hit a split second before the rest of my body did.

The doctors described my facial fractures

as kind of an egg shell effect.

(splattering)

I broke, pretty much every bone in my face.

My ocular sockets, my sinus cavity.

I knocked out the front five teeth in my mouth.

So they had to completely rebuild my face.

I broke my pelvis in three places.

I broke my right leg.

- [William] Shayna's doctors can't comprehend how

she survived her fall.

But then their jaws drop even lower.

Shayna's not the only survivor.

- The very first thing I remember hearing from the doctors

was about the baby.

- [William] Unknown to both Shayna and Rick,

she's pregnant.

Miraculously, both mother and baby survived.

Their son, Tanner, is now five.

Somehow, this remarkable story has a happy ending.

But the doctors are still trying to figure it out.

- The doctors in that hospital just said "This is amazing.

" This is a miracle. I don't understand."

- [William] So how are Shayna and her unborn child

able to survive such an unbelievable fall?

What had happened that saved their lives?

Doctor Chris Hart is an expert

in aviation accident investigation.

He's extensively studied Shayna's accident.

And has reached a controversial conclusion.

- I think the way she hit the ground is critically

important for why she survived.

- [William] It's believed that Shayna

face planted into the ground.

But Hart disagrees.

- Looking at the video, I don't believe

she hit the ground face first.

Clearly, she's at about a 45 to 60 degree angle.

So when she finally makes contact with the ground,

she contacts feet first, then legs, then side,

and then finally head.

The injuries to her pelvis and to her legs

are very common when someone lands feet first.

If it's a head first injury, you typically don't

see those types of injuries.

- [William] Hart believes that the angle of Shayna's fall

was critical to her survival.

As it enabled her to inadvertently perform a

skydiving safety technique.

- I think just the laws of physics dictated that

the way her body hit was very similar to

a parachute landing fall.

The parachute landing fall is a technique

for improving the odds of surviving a hard landing

without injury.

The technique is essentially to distribute the force

of impact over five body points.

You start with contacting on the balls of the feet.

And then the calves.

Then the thighs.

Then the hips.

And then the side of the back.

You can think of the parachute landing fall

as almost being like a bumper on a car.

The head is what you want to protect.

The body acts as the shock absorber.

- [William] But what about the damage to Shayna's face?

How could a successful parachute landing fall

have resulted in such horrific injuries?

- Even though she didn't hit face first,

her body was traveling at a very high rate of speed.

She sustained injuries to every part of her body

that hit the ground.

Her face was probably the last thing to hit the ground.

But it was still moving fast enough to cause

some pretty serious injuries.

Given her lack of training, it's very fortunate

that Shayna executed what was very similar

to a parachute landing fall.

Had she not done that, she almost certainly

would have perished.

She should consider herself very fortunate.

- [William] Did the accidental execution of the

parachute landing fall save Shayna's life?

Or is the explanation beyond the understanding of science?

- She was exempt from the laws of gravity.

- [William] 21 year old Shayna Richardson

experiences every skydiver's nightmare.

When her parachutes fail, she slams into the ground

from 11,000 feet.

But amazingly, Shayna survives.

How?

Sophy Burnham is an author.

She believes Shayna's survival was,

quite literally, a miracle.

- To me, her survival is incomprehensible.

Except by divine intervention.

It had to be the hand of an angel.

She was exempt from the laws of gravity.

- [William] We've all heard of angels.

But, let's just make sure we're on the same page as Sophy.

- The angels are messengers of the divine.

And they can come in any form.

They come to the innocent.

To people whose work is not yet finished on this

plane of existence.

Angels save people from possible death in

any way that it can be done.

Sometimes it's by deflecting a bullet.

And sometimes it's by preventing a car accident.

They can change all the physical laws of the universe.

- [William] No doubt they do good work,

but how exactly did an angel save Shayna?

- It is not difficult for me to believe that an angel

carried Shayna down.

Or broke her fall.

So that she would not fall as swiftly

as she should have.

- [William] It's an interesting theory.

But is it supported by scientific proof?

- Lots of times, miracles occur

with scientific explanations.

And are just as miraculous.

I don't think that science and miracles

are mutually exclusive.

And I think that there

is a spiritual dimension that we live in

as fish live in water.

I am sure that some people completely

dismiss the idea that an angel could

save Shayna's life.

And I think that it's very important

for some people to believe that they are in control.

We don't want

to be so completely at the mercy

of fate and fortune,

that there's nothing that we can do.

I would not try to dissuade somebody

from that position.

If it's important to him.

But to me, I would need very very

strong proof of something that happened.

(laughing) Like she pulled a third parachute

out and came down.

I would need very strong scientific proof.

I can't imagine what would have happened

if an angel had not saved Shayna that day.

There would have been her body

splattered over the parking lot

in a gory, bloody, disgusting,

horrible, horrible accident.

It would have been ghastly.

- Wow, this in incredible.

Instead of being splattered all over the parking lot,

Sophy thinks an angel swooped down

at the last moment

somehow taking hold of Shayna

breaking her fall.

Could this really be possible?

Regardless of your beliefs, one has to admit

that Shayna's story is miraculous.

But could a guardian angel

have slowed Shayna's fall?

Sparing her life and the life of her unborn son.

And if so, don't they deserve some thanks?

- There is no evidence that guardian angels exist.

There is no empirical evidence for it.

Okay, it's just people trying to put meaning

onto things they don't understand.

It's the 21st century, we need to move on.

- [William] John Leach is a survival psychologist with the

Norwegian Armed Forces.

He believes the key to Shayna's survival lies in a theory

that's far more down to earth.

- If a person is falling without a parachute,

after about 12 seconds, they'l reach the

maximum rate of descent.

And it doesn't matter how long they're falling for,

they will stay at 120 miles an hour.

If Shayna had hit the ground at normal terminal velocity

of 120 miles an hour, she'd of had a very

small chance of surviving that.

Especially on the sort of ground that she hit.

Now there are cases of people who have survived

from terminal velocity.

But usually, it's because they've gone into soft ground,

they've gone into mud, they've gone into snow,

they've gone into trees.

So there's something that has actually

decelerated their speed at the last minute.

- [William] But if her chances of surviving were so low,

how is it that Shayna and Tanner are still with us?

- You can see from the video, that although the parachute

was malfunctioning, it wasn't completely dysfunctional.

In other words, it was still acting as a sort of

parachute and providing a degree of drag.

So, instead of hitting the ground at 120 miles an hour,

which is terminal velocity for somebody travelling

without a parachute, she hit the ground

at 50 miles an hour according to the records.

- [William] Was Shayna's survival connected to how fast

she hit the ground?

Or did something else save her?

- Age plays a role in survival for various reasons.

And a number of studies involving analysis, for example,

road traffic accidents at different speeds,

shows that one of the best ages for surviving an impact

of 50 miles an hour, is Shayna's age.

So, somewhere between the late teens and early 20's.

- [William] For Leach, the final factor in Shayna's survival

is the angle of impact.

Though, with a very different take

to Dr. Chris Hart.

- I don't think she'd be should be deploying

any parachute landing technique.

The parachute was moving her into a more

horizontal position and the injuries that she sustained

is consistent with that type of impact on the ground.

The fact that she hit the ground more or less

horizontally rather than on her head or

through her feet also increased her chances of survival.

- [William] For Leach, the combination of a

partially effective parachute, Shayna's age,

and landing almost flat to the ground,

is enough to leave her battered,

but still breathing.

- All these factors together, all contribute to her

chances of surviving.

So there's nothing miraculous about it,

it's straight forward physics.

- I did jump one more time when Tanner

was six weeks old, I went and jumped again.

I did a tandem jump.

I landed, took my gear off, grabbed my son,

and I haven't been back up.

I love the sport.

I love the thrill of it.

But, my kids give me a much greater thrill.

And I don't have it in me anymore, I can't do it.

- [William] Can Shayna's remarkable survival be

explained by physics?

Or did divine intervention play a part?

Was she saved by a higher power?

Or did she just get lucky and deploy

the parachute landing fall?

For now, it will remain a head-scratcher

that's most definitely weird ...

or what.

In upstate New York, a man is incinerated in his own bed.

With no plausible explanation,

investigators are left with a terrifying question.

Can we spontaneously combust?

- When someone is cremated, there's probably

more remains after that cremation

than there was at this incident.

- [William] You know, fire

is a wonderful thing.

We've harnessed its power in so many ways,

we'd be lost without it.

It does everything from keeping us warm

to one of my favorites,

cooking up a storm (laughing).

Well that's if you can get it started, of course.

The thing about fire,

is that -- ah ha --

as well as being our friend,

it can be our worst enemy.

Does anyone smell anything that, uh --

(explosion)

In 1986, college student Ray Harland

was visiting his father Jack,

a coroner in New York state,

when the phone rang.

(phone ringing)

It would lead them on the most

mysterious and bizarre journey of their lives.

- My dad owns a local funeral home.

And he was also the county coroner.

They just said that there was an unattended death.

And one of us always went with him

to help him with removals.

- [William] The deceased is a 58 year old retired fireman,

George Mott.

When Ray and Jack arrive at Mott's house,

everything seems normal.

- It was just a typical home in the back roads

of the Adirondacks.

- [William] But nothing has prepared the Harlands

for what they find inside.

The first words out of the State Trooper's mouth

to my dad was "I don't think you're going

" to need your stretcher for this one."

- [William] Entering the house, Ray and Jack

notice something that tells them

this is no ordinary death.

- There was a thin black film covering everything.

It was like a dust powder.

It was strange because it looked like

there was a fire but there's nothing really charred.

- [William] Where is George Mott?

As they move deeper into the house,

they're about to make a shocking discovery.

- When we walked into the bedroom,

we could see where Mr. Mott was laying.

In my lifetime growing up in the funeral home,

I've probably seen over a thousand bodies

in various conditions.

And I've been to fires before too

and never nothing like that.

There was a perfect outline of his body

burned into the mattress.

And the only thing that was left of him

was his head, a few ribs, and his right foot.

Everything else was gone.

- [William] What happened to George Mott?

The charred remains suggest he died in a fire.

But this was no ordinary blaze.

- Usually in a fire, the whole body remains.

We never see parts of the body missing.

To put it into perspective,

when someone is cremated for five to six,

sometimes seven hours,

there's probably more remains after that

cremation than there was at this incident.

- [William] It's a baffling and gruesome mystery.

George Mott has been incinerated

to a fine powder.

But somehow, the objects around him

are not even singed.

Including a canister of matches only inches away.

But how?

Remarkably, all over Mott's house,

there is evidence that this was a fire

unlike any other.

- [Ray] Everything plastic was melted, the case on the TV

was distorted and the telephone was melted

to a ball of plastic.

- [William] It's an incredible puzzle.

What sort of heat or fire could vaporize a man

and melt plastic, but not burn the house down?

- The firemen thought it was a gas leak

underneath his bed.

But if there was a gas leak and it was fire,

there would have been a lot more burning.

They had never found a gas leak.

- [William] It's left to Ray to offer a theory.

- I mentioned human spontaneous combustion.

And everybody looked at me like I was crazy.

- [William] Spontaneous human combustion, or SHC

is a bizarre and weird phenomenon in which

a person instantly bursts into flames

for no apparent reason.

Amazingly, there have been 40 other cases

of SHC documented in the last century.

- To that point, I don't think anybody in that room

has heard of it.

And everybody almost had the same reaction,

"Spontaneous combustion? What is that?"

- [William] The investigation into George Mott's death

failed to reach a conclusion.

But Ray Harland has no doubt what happened.

- I still believe that it was spontaneous combustion.

Because there is no other explanation.

This is what I saw.

- Now, this is weird, or what.

We know heavy metal rock termers

spontaneously combust all the time.

But an innocent, harmless man, minding his own business

in bed and then poof, he goes up in smoke.

I mean, what's going on here?

Are any of us safe?

Oh no!

Not again!

(explosion)

Was George Mott a victim of SHC?

Can a human simply ignite and burn

without any external cause?

- Spontaneous human combustion is amazing, bizarre, horrific

Given all that, it still happens.

- [William] A man is incinerated by a

bizarre, inexplicable fire.

Is his death proof that people can just

spontaneously catch fire?

- We have spent more than three decades

looking at this incredibly weird phenomenon.

And our conclusion is absolutely,

categorically, yes it does happen.

- [William] Larry Arnold is a writer.

He's dedicated himself to the study of SHC.

He came to scene of the George Mott conflagration.

- To be at the scene of one of these remarkably

rare and phenomenal events is eerie.

Its unearthly.

We look at the person who used to be there

and we are looking at something

burned more completely than after seven hours

at several thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

The George Mott fire scene is incredibly complex.

And very puzzling.

Even to someone such as ourselves who has looked at

scores of cases that seem to emulate

the kind of fire that consumed Mr. Mott.

Something burned up Mr. Mott more completely

than can be accomplished in a crematorium.

His body burned through his bed,

actually pushed the mattress springs into a V.

Burned through the boarding underneath the mattress,

burned through the floor boards,

and into a crawlspace below.

There is no heat or flame damage directly above

the point of combustion that consumed Mr. Mott.

We could touch the ceiling.

It was about seven or eight feet high.

Not a scorch mark of any kind on the ceiling

directly above the point of combustion.

In most fires, heat rises.

We would expect to see a lot of heat

and flame damage above the bed.

Zero.

Throughout the house, there was a nonsensical

pattern of melted plastics

or not melted plastics.

It's baffling to us to this day.

And we spent a lot of hours as did the county officials

investigating this fire scene.

- [William] But if Mott self immolated,

how did it happen?

Arnold believes the answer can be found in something

so tiny, you can't even see it.

- We wondered how much energy it takes to

cremate someone like George Mott

under natural conditions.

And if there could be a particle that would have

that amount of energy contained within it.

So we pulled up a theory from quantum physics,

crunched the numbers.

You come up with a particle that is incredibly small.

Much smaller than an atom.

But it has an energy level which is humongous.

- [William] Arnold calls these

subatomic particles pyrotrons.

He believes they may be tiny,

but they pack a punch.

- It's so small that it can pass through

three dimensional matter almost unimpeded.

Perhaps through galaxies without ever striking something.

- [William] But according to Arnold, when the pyrotron

does connect with something physical,

the results are catastrophic.

- On rare occasion, luck runs out,

happenstance happens, and in those conditions,

when the pyrotron with its incredible high energy

impacts something inside a human being, reposit.

The end result is spontaneous human combustion.

In essence, a human Hiroshima effect.

A thermonuclear explosion, if you will, in the body.

- [William] Is spontaneous human combustion

the result of a pyrotron colliding with a particle

inside the human body?

Did George Mott die from a free collision of physics?

- There simply is no plausible way

by any chemical mechanism known

that the body could just suddenly

burst into flames.

And proceed to be destroyed.

- [William] Joe Nickell is an investigator of the paranormal

and a firm believer that spontaneous human combustion

is a myth with a rational explanation.

- I looked at 30 historical cases.

From the 18th century throughout the 20th century.

And in every case, I could find a plausible

source for the ignition.

For example, the famous case in America

of Mary Reeser in 1951 in St. Petersburg, Florida.

She burned up in a very unusual way.

Sort of one of the classic cases.

But when she was last seen,

and this was left out of some of the stories,

she was wearing flammable night clothes

sitting in a big stuffed chair, smoking a cigarette.

Having taken two Seconal sleeping tablets.

And planned to take two more sleeping tablets

before going to bed because

she was having trouble sleeping.

Now, it's kind of a no brainer to suggest that

she caught on fire by dozing off and

dropping her cigarette.

Yes, yes, there are other mysteries.

Why did her body burn so thoroughly and why were--

We take those one at a time.

And in these cases,

you can't just have a simple minded,

one size fits all explanation.

And say, "Oh yeah, that's just this".

No, you have to actually look at the facts in a

particular case and look at the physics.

Because there are no two quite alike.

The most logical explanation for the George Mott fire

was a canister of matches, sitting on, of all places,

his oxygen enricher unit.

He had either been somewhere to light a stove or something.

And a spark could have gotten onto his clothes.

- [William] But how could a spark or a cigarette

burn a human body to the extent seen in SHC cases?

- In the forensic literature is something

known as the wick effect.

And that is, if you think of a wick in a candle.

The wick is not doing much burning.

The wick is simply a conduit.

Now, if you think of the human body as sort of

a candle inside out, the body has a lot of fat.

It's very flammable.

- [William] Sounds horrific.

How can become a human candle?

- The clothing acts as a kind of wick.

In which, once the body begins to burn,

that body fat can be absorbed by clothing, mattress.

And that begins this cyclical process

in which the body burns, releasing more body fat,

to destroy still more of the body, to release more.

Its the wick effect that's helping this burn

in a very efficient way.

There's never a big fire when the body burns in this way.

It's not a huge inferno.

The results afterwards may look like that's what happened.

But what actually happened is just that the body burned

very slowly and very efficiently

where the body fat was.

In the torso, the upper thighs.

You'll often find limbs or other body parts

that are not burned.

For pretty obvious reasons.

They don't have as much body fat.

Even a lean person has a significant amount of body fat.

So, while this isn't an explanation for all burning deaths,

it's a relevant factor in some of the unusual cases.

Because it can explain why, over a period of several hours,

a fire is progressing, and attacking and burning a body.

which is actually supplying the fuel

for its own destruction.

- [William] But if your clothes catch fire,

you simply put them out, right?

- In some cases, the person may have had

a seizure or heart attack.

In other cases, they may have been lying asleep.

And smoldering material near them first started burning,

creating a lot of smoke.

And they may have died of smoke inhalation.

And never woken up.

- [William] Nickell believes that his theory

can explain the almost complete lack

of fire damage around the body.

- Since there's never a big fire here,

nearby objects are not going to be burned.

Just as you can sit just inches away from a campfire,

and toast a marshmallow and not be burned,

the same is true with this wick effect.

- [William] But does this explain the other

objects that were melted throughout George's house?

- The heat, of course is gathering and rising.

Objects above a certain line will be melted

because the heat is accumulated there.

And in the Mott case, there was soot all over.

There is usually a sooty deposit if there's a lot

of organic material being burned.

- [William] For Nickell, the answer is clear.

- If science knows anything about spontaneous

human combustion, it is that it doesn't exist.

It's difficult to prove a negative,

but we don't have to.

There just in no evidence.

To say it's unlikely does not do justice

to how very very very far fetched this idea is.

The George Mott case was a mystery.

I would consider it, basically, a mystery solved.

- [William] Does Nickell's theory prove that SHC

does not exist?

Can these horrific deaths be

explained by the wick effect?

- We have tried to conduct those experiments ourself.

We know others in the forensics field who have done so.

They can't replicate these fire scenes under controlled

scientific conditions.

It doesn't work for us.

And it did not work for the local investigators

in Essex County.

This is an example of individuals making up facts,

creating stories, generating hypotheses without foundation

to explain away something that they don't

otherwise want to confront.

Spontaneous human combustion is

amazing, bizarre, horrific,

given all that, it still happens.

- [William] So is spontaneous human combustion real?

It's a debate that will continue to rage.

One thing we do know for certain, though,

it's definitely weird ...

or what.

A British woman reports an ability

that defies science.

Can she harness electrical power?

- The possibilities of things going wrong

are just mind blowingly frightening.

- You know, when it comes to medicine,

there's very little modern science can't explain.

Oh my God!

What is that disgusting thing in there?

Oh.

Sometimes we come across things that are

not only inexplicable, they send a shiver

down your spine.

Or in the case of our next story,

a million volts through your hand.

Whoa! (electricity)

Weird?

Oh!

Or what?

Growing up in London, England,

Debbie Wolf thought she was a normal child.

- I think when you're a small child,

you don't realize you're different from anyone else.

But my mum got it pretty quickly, I think.

- [William] Shortly after Debbie turned four,

her mother noticed that there was

something rather unusual about her daughter.

- My mum noticed hot spots of problems.

It was just the era of everyone had walkmans.

And I'd drain the batteries.

And light bulbs seemed to be quite vulnerable.

My mum wouldn't touch me if she was

switching the light switch on.

Because a jolt of electricity would go through her.

- [William] Incredibly, it seems this tiny girl had somehow

become super charged with electricity.

But what could cause this weird phenomenon?

For Debbie and her family, it's just the start of

a bizarre, and literally shocking ordeal.

- Every time I'd walk past the telly,

the channels would start changing,

the volume would go up or down,

or it would switch off.

I was always excluded from the lounge

when the football was on cause my dad

didn't want me changing the channels.

- [William] Incredibly, when Debbie interacts with anything

electrical, havoc ensues.

She fries appliances, drains batteries.

And explodes light bulbs.

And as she gets older, the condition gets worse.

- There's one particular occasion that I remember.

I can't have been more than about six.

We went to the shop.

One of my mum's favorite shops.

And as we went past each street light,

it went off and on and off and on as we passed them.

- [William] Remarkably, Debbie's electrical power

grows with every step.

By the time they arrive at the shop,

things are getting out of control.

- They had these metal rails

where the clothes were displayed.

And, for some reason, that seemed to spark me.

So much so that I could touch it

and you'd see sparks and hear the crack of the spark.

So my mum tried to herd me away from that.

- [William] But her mom doesn't act fast enough.

(electricity)

Debbie's touch electrifies the entire store,

blowing the fuses and plunging it

into complete darkness.

Terrified of her young child's weird power,

Debbie's mom rushes her from the shop.

- My mum made rules about what

I was allowed to do and not allowed to do.

Because it was disruptive.

- [William] What happened to Debbie Wolf?

Could she be cured by medicine?

Or did she need an electrician?

Sadly, her condition hasn't gone away.

Over three decades later, she's still suffering.

- I've affected everything.

I lost a job in a nightclub because,

every time I walked past the DJ box,

the music would go off.

My house is just like a graveyard of electrical goods.

And I've usually got a TV or something sitting in my drive

waiting to be taken to the dump.

I go through an extraordinary amount of kettles

and toasters and TVs.

So I tend to buy second hand TVs.

And it is expensive and inconvenient.

And I'm not always welcome in people's houses.

I don't know from day to day what's going to work

and what isn't.

Which is quite annoying.

When the fridge is defrosting in the morning.

So, basically, my house is just on a short life span.

The thing I hate most to do, but I have to do it anyway,

is flying.

I just hate flying.

The fear of being able to stop a plane in midair.

And having it drop out of the sky.

No, no, no.

Because the possibilities of things going wrong

are just mind blowingly frightening.

(electricity)

- [William] Is Debbie somehow generating

lethal amounts of electricity?

If so, how?

And why?

Incredibly, she isn't the only one suffering

from this bizarre affliction.

Thousands of others have it too.

And it's even been given a name.

Street Light Interference Syndrome.

Those who have it are called sliders.

What are sliders and where do they get

their super charged powers?

Are they a threat to themselves or even us?

Bill Beaty is an electrical engineer.

He thinks he can explain sliders.

I first heard about this in the '80s and

I started wondering are they some kind of

electric generator.

- [William] Could sliders like Debbie actually be generating

their own electricity?

How could she do it?

Beaty thinks her power could be an extension of

something we've all experienced.

- Of course, if you scuff on the rug and touch

a doorknob and and you hear that little click,

that's static electricity.

The effect is caused by your body being charged.

- [William] Rubbing your feet steals negatively charged

electrons from the carpet.

With each step, you steal more electrons.

And develop more of a negative charge.

Something easily detected with a volt meter.

- If I scuff on the rug, watch what happens.

I'm scuffing my shoe, and they're all turning

on and off.

(stomping)

This is me moving my shoe up and down on the carpet.

There's some more over there.

(stomping)

So a science fair project for kids,

little transistor voltage detector.

So if you were an electric human, you wouldn't have to

scuff on the carpet.

So if I could stand perfectly still and wait long enough

for my charge to go away.

It's gone again.

So it leaked away here.

I would be turning the light on and off.

If my body charged up by itself.

So, I am not an electric human, oh well.

(electric zap)

- [William] But could this build up enough charge

to affect a street light?

Beaty believes sliders could generate

large amounts of static electricity

in another way.

- There's one thing that humans do

which might explain this.

And that's breathing.

- [William] Every day, humans take over 25,000 breaths.

Remarkably, Beaty thinks it's possible we can steal

a few electrons from the air

each time we breath in,

and eventually, super charge our bodies.

- If you can charge you body up by breathing,

you have this invisible field of voltage around your body.

That can affect electronic devices.

Even from a few feet away.

- [William] But if everyone breaths air,

why would only a few people like Debbie,

turn into human lightning rods?

- There's a chance that it could be a virus

that hasn't been discovered yet.

There are a few viruses that are not like the flu or colds.

Instead, when you catch it, there's almost no change.

And then your body easily fights it off.

If it's communicable, then you'd think that there'd

be lots of electric humans.

Or you'd get it for a while and then it's be gone again.

But this sounds more like it might be something

that's a symbiotic thing

that maybe you're born with it.

And you can't give it to other people.

- [William] Could some yet to be discovered virus

alter the lungs of sliders just enough to

strip electrons from the air and

turn them into super charged humans?

Or is Beaty's theory a few connections short of a circuit?

- I was attracted to it because it's weird.

But the vast unstudied collection of weird things,

some of those are real.

And those are Nobel Prize discoveries.

- So, let me get this right.

Sliders have an innate ability to wreak havoc

on electrical goods.

Especially street lights, right?

And one guy thinks the reason they can do this

is there's a virus going around that can super charge

your body as you breathe.

(takes a breath and blow it out)

Nothing.

(blows breath)

Can't we come up with a better explanation?

I mean, when it comes to electrical faults, isn't it just

a matter of some dummy doing something stupid?

(electrical zap)

So, do sliders really have the power

to generate electricity?

- The phenomena to me is not a real phenomena at all.

- [William] Around the world, hundreds of people

called sliders claim to have the ability

to interfere with electricity.

Do they have a science baffling super power?

Lee Colville has studied sliders for five years.

He thinks he's found another way to explain the phenomenon.

- It's highly improbable anyone could generate

enough electricity to affect a street lamp.

We're talking about millions of volts here,

as with a lightning bolt and obviously

a very high current flow.

Basically, if anyone could generate that amount

of electricity, that would kill them.

The current flow itself would kill them.

And probably fry them and they'd be blowing cars up.

So, therefore, it's very unlikely.

The most plausible explanation is pure coincidence.

- [William] But how could pure chance

explain the incredible effect that sliders have

over electrical devices like street lamps?

- Most people are not aware of how the street light works.

Or what happens when a street light malfunctions.

Here we have a common example of a street lamp.

Which is a high pressure sodium lamp.

- [William] Many street lights use

powerful sodium light bulbs.

When they get old, they don't just burn out.

Or even flicker light fluorescent bulbs.

Instead, they begin a process called cycling.

- It will turn off.

When it cools down, it will come on again.

Obviously, it will get too hot.

Then it will cool down again.

Come back on again.

Cycling on and off periodically.

- [William] If someone walked under a cycling

street lamp at just the right moment,

they could think they turned it off.

But what about Debbie Wolf?

She made a whole street go haywire.

- A row of lamps that's probably installed

at the same time.

So, chances are, if one is faulty,

you're going to find another one that's faulty.

All on the same row.

- [William] Do faulty street lights explain this mystery?

What about all the other electrical gadgets that

sliders like Deborah destroy?

- Static electricity, it's as mundane as that.

If you've got someone with very dry skin,

you could build up quite a large voltage.

And by touching any electrical appliance,

it could discharge and cause damage

to sensitive components.

- [William] Are sliders just mistaking static electricity

and coincidence for super powers?

- There is no reason to be frightened of

spending time around alleged slider.

Because the phenomena to me is not a real phenomena at all.

- [William] So, is this the end of the mystery?

Maybe not.

Suwan Jayasinghe is a mechanical engineer

who was intrigued by Debbie's story.

A person being able to produce energy

or harness energy is much like the X-Men.

So, it kind of provoked my interest.

- [William] He's come up with a remarkable new theory

to explain what is happening.

- I'm a bit skeptical that the body alone can generate

enough energy to knock off electrical street lights.

But Debbie's body could absorb energy from around us.

And release it in the form of an electrical pulse.

- [William] Instead of creating electrical energy,

could Debbie actually be sucking it up from

the world around her?

- Electricity plays quite an important role

in our human body.

Theoretically, one could possess the ability to

store electricity through their bodies

just like a capacitor.

- [William] Capacitors are common in all electronics.

They are used to gradually soak up excess electricity.

And then discharge it in a flash.

Could Debbie be a human capacitor?

- Her body may possess molecules that are able to

harness this power.

- [William] To prove his theory, Jayasinghe has

conducted tests designed to try and stimulate Debbie

into releasing an electrical charge.

Using an oscilloscope, an instrument which measures

voltage, he compares her output to someone with

a normal charge.

- And what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you

some images and see if we are able to simulate

some electricity.

Okay?

- [William] Debbie seems to become most electric when

she's excited or stressed.

Jayasinghe uses images he hopes will recreate

those feelings.

Although not conclusive,

some of Jayasinghe's experiments

produced surprising results.

- With Debbie, we noticed that there was voltage

that was being measured from her body

that was different to what could be

measured from ours.

So, slider phenomenon does exist.

- [William] But this phenomenon isn't something

Debbie can turn on and off at will.

- It's very hard to bring myself to a place where I'm going

to be electric, I suppose.

I'd be a much richer person if I could do circus tricks

and I can't.

It just happens.

- [William] Are Debbie, and thousands like her

really able to store electricity and release it in a flash?

Could a rare virus have turned them into human generators?

Or could it all be just

a series of shocking coincidences?

Whatever the answer, it's most definitely

weird ... or what.

So, there we have it.

Three bizarre medical mysteries.

An Arkansas woman baffles medical professionals

by surviving a horrific skydiving accident.

In upstate New York, a man vaporized in a fire

leaves investigators asking,

"Can humans spontaneously combust?"

And a group of people report being able to interfere

with electricity.

Do they have an inexplicable super power?

You decide.

Join me again next time

for more stories that will

undoubtedly be weird or what.