Original subtitles

- Tonight on "the proof is out there"

what is the strange creature found frozen in a tree?

- All kinds of extinct creatures

are popping up that we don't know about yet.

- [Tony] What's behind

the serpentine surprise in the sunroom?

- I looked really close and I said, "you've got two heads."

- [Tony] And a freakish fire.

How do you explain a Blaze that only burns some things?

Around the globe are videos-

- [woman] What the heck is this?

- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.

- [Man] Is it some kind of unidentified object?

- [Man] A plane that was literally frozen in the air.

- [Tony] What are they?

- [Man] Some sort of bizarre mutation.

- 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.

[Creature growling]

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."

Imagine hearing a deafening noise outside your house.

And when you go to investigate the cause

you find something even more frightening.

One Russia man claims he experienced exactly that.

But what exactly did he find?

Take a look.

[Mid-tempo music]

It's 2011 in a small village in Russia.

A local farmer reports that his home

is shaken by a large explosion nearby.

While looking for the source,

the farmer stumbles upon this.

Some remains that look nothing

like the usual local wildlife.

Take a good look.

The creature has a strange head

and an even stranger torso and limbs.

And the state it's in is even the more puzzling.

It appears petrified.

The way this finding is displayed in the video

is also quite intriguing.

- What's very interesting to me

is that they're drying some corn at the same time.

And I wouldn't think you'd want

to put something alien next to a food resource.

- [Tony] According to the source who gave us this video,

the cause of the explosion was never found.

[Slow dramatic music]

But residents of the town were more frightened

by what this creature could portend for their village.

Journalist Erin McCarthy

says local legends could explain why.

- In slavic folklore, there's baba yaga,

a witch who lives in the woods in a shack

that has chicken legs and chicken feet.

She also steals and eats children.

- [Tony] Baba yaga has become the equivalent

to the boogeyman for kids in this region.

Some locals may have believed

this creature was her handiwork,

but McCarthy says there could be another

slightly less creepy explanation.

- Permafrost is melting in Russia

. and with that melting, all kinds of extinct creatures

are popping up, like mammoths and rhinos.

So potentially this creature is something that's extinct

that we just don't know about yet.

- Now there are some conditions on earth

that could instantly mummify a living creature,

like the super alkaline waters of lake natron in Tanzania.

But there's no evidence something like that

currently exists in Russia.

So before we determine if this video

shows an undiscovered dinosaur,

or even a child-eating witch, our experts will dig deeper.

[Slow music]

First, video forensic analyst Mick west

examines whether this specimen could be some kind of hoax.

- I think the only way you could have done that

is to have modeled it from life.

And that means that you actually had

the real thing to start off with.

So I think the simplest explanation here

is that what we're seeing is what we're getting.

This is in fact a dead animal

that has been partially or fully mummified.

- [Tony] If this is indeed some kind of animal,

what kind of animal?

[Slow music]

- Just in terms of the morphology,

something about its face looks quite bird-like to me,

it looks like it could have part of the beak

that had formed off or not been preserved

in this mummification process.

But it's got a really big eye socket.

Birds tend to have quite small eyes.

So for me, that would kind of rule out a bird.

- [Tony] That exes out it being one of baba yaga's chickens.

Biologist Floyd Hayes is thinking mammal.

- Okay, right here it looks like

there may be some teeth in the jaws.

To me the skull looks much more like a mammal.

It does look like there may be a wing.

It could potentially be a fruit bat.

There are some large species

of fruit bats called flying foxes.

- [Tony] Furman sees some merit in the bat theory.

- They also do have that similar large nose

that we can see in this fossil.

In terms of their skeleton,

they do have a long neck as well.

And going right to the end of what looks like

it could have been wings they have

what looks like it was a claw or a hand of some sort.

- [Tony] So it kind of looks like a large fruit bat.

But here's the problem.

- They don't live up in Russia though.

They're more characteristic of the tropical islands

in the western pacific ocean and Indian ocean

and in southeastern Asia.

- [Tony] Floyd says until this family

comes forward with the specimen,

we can't be certain what it is.

- The process of mummification

can take a long period of time.

It's possible that this is an extinct species of animal

that formerly lived in Russia

that is no longer there today.

- So I know we're going out on a limb here,

but for now we're going to say

this is an unidentified extinct animal.

Of course they would take proper scientific examination

to know for sure, but with the arctic warming

two times faster than the global average,

we may see more strange creatures

thawing out from the permafrost soon.

And we'll do our best to identify them.

- In Greek mythology, the hydra

was a giant sea monster with multiple heads.

But where did this gruesome idea come from?

Did the Greeks get their idea

for a multi-headed monster from nature itself?

Maybe they saw something that looked a lot

like what you're about to see in this next video.

[Slow dramatic music]

September 2020.

Jeannie Wilson of taylorsville, north Carolina

is cleaning up after game night with family and friends.

She heads into her sunroom

where she comes across a modern day monster.

[Dramatic music]

She records this video of a foot-long snake,

slithering around the bottom

of a five-gallon container, with two heads.

Based on the video, the snake's heads

appear to be working independently of each other.

Jeannie was nearly shocked out of her skin.

- I spotted him in the corner of the sunroom.

I thought somebody had stepped on his head and mashed it.

And I looked really close and I said,

"you've got two heads."

And it's like, wow.

For a two-headed snake to make it that long

out in the wild is amazing.

- Field researcher cliff barackman

believes that animals like this two-headed serpent

may have been the original inspiration

for many of the world's most fearsome mythical monsters.

- Probably the only thing scarier than a snake

might be a two-headed snake.

If we look back into ancient times,

you can find stories of multi-headed animals,

like the multi-headed dog Cerberus

that guarded the gates of hell.

Or the hydra, the-mini headed snake monster.

And I think that behind these sorts of stories

is always a grain of truth.

- [Tony] Field researcher Ken gerhard

lays out a more sinister idea.

Warning, these images could be disturbing.

[Slow dramatic music]

- I'm thinking of a Russian scientist

who was able to successfully attach

the head of a dog to another dog.

- That would be Dr. Vladimir demikhov,

a pioneering Russian surgeon

who transplanted one dog's head

onto the neck of another dog back in 1968.

The conjoined animals survived for 38 days.

- [Ken] So we can't rule out the possibility

that this two-headed snake

could be the result of a similar type of experimentation.

- Sadly about 3/4 of all conjoined twins

die before, during, or soon after birth.

So how did the snake get this way, and how did it survive?

Is this fantastic beast unnaturally lucky?

Or is it a bit too fantastic?

First we brought the video to roxy furman

who assessed the authenticity.

- I've seen conjoined twins before

of various different other species.

But my initial instinct was, is this head real or not?

And up until kind of halfway through

this second head is not kind of using its tongue

to smell the environment.

But then there was a point

where the second head, its tongue comes out.

And at this point you can see it's kind of wanting to move

in a different direction,

which then made me think this is real.

- [Tony] Furman says these two-headed creatures

are examples of a natural,

but mysterious mutation called polycephaly.

- [Roxy] There's a lot that we still don't understand

about conjoined twins.

If there are two heads,

both which have their own consciousness,

then who kind of overrides the control of the body,

or whether they communicate

with one another as two individuals would.

- [Tony] Furman refutes the idea

that this multi-headed snake

could be the product of human experimentation,

similar to that of Soviet scientists in the 1950s.

- There's no indication of recent surgery.

There's no stitches or suture marks.

- [Tony] So it's a real natural-born snake.

But what explains its mutation and its survival?

- It seems to be doing pretty well.

This is unique because we don't often see animals

with two heads that seem to be healthy,

because they don't tend to survive in the wild.

- [Tony] And while conger is positive this snake

isn't some bizarre experiment,

she says the genetic mutation we see here

may still have been caused by humans,

just not intentionally.

- Amphibians and reptiles like snakes

are actually just really prone to mutation.

And a lot of this has to do with environmental pollution.

It's been shown that there's a number of pollutants

that can actually cause malformations in wildlife.

And we're seeing this increasingly today.

- [Tony] So, our verdict.

This snake was an example of polycephaly,

quite possibly caused by pollution.

What became of it is this story's happy ending.

Jeannie gave the snake to a friend, and here's his update.

He says he named the serpent double trouble

and says he's alive and well.

- When double trouble was found,

he was already a few months old.

So he had a good start.

He's approaching a year old and he's never refused a meal.

He's just been thriving.

And that's the sign that he's going to make it

and possibly live to adulthood.

I always wanted a two-headed snake,

so it was kind of like a dream come true.

And I've loved working with him ever since.

- Fire is a powerful, mystical force

that can seemingly take on a life of its own.

It's been known to behave in ways

that seem to defy explanation,

but we've never seen anything quite like this next video.

It's may 2020 in calahorra, Spain.

A local man named Juan Carlos Gil Lopez

is walking through a nearby park

on a bright spring day.

Suddenly he sees something so utterly mind bending

he immediately has to film it

to make sure he's not hallucinating.

A line of fire is moving steadily across the ground.

As it burns it leaves behind green undamaged grass.

Look closely.

The fire reaches benches and eventually trees.

But none of that seems to burn.

Juan was understandably stunned.

[Speaking Spanish]

Humans are naturally fascinated by fire.

It's an evolutionary survival mechanism

developed to make us aware

of these dangers from out of the womb.

So there's a reason we're mesmerized

by images like this Texas tree burning from inside

and this downright devilish fire tornado

seen in the UK in 2018.

Is what Juan captured a similar freak of nature,

or was it planned?

The us government regularly starts fires on purpose.

These so-called controlled burns

are meant to protect communities,

restore habitats, and even control pests.

Maybe that's what's going on here.

In the us, 6.4 million acres

were subject to controlled burns in 2017 alone.

Is the Spanish government doing something similar here?

Maybe it's just another video hoax.

In case of emergency, break glass and call in the experts.

[Slow dramatic music]

First, video forensics expert Michael primeau

runs a test to make sure

this isn't actually digital manipulation.

- When we were assessing the digital integrity

of the file itself, there was a signature

that came up using our forensic tool called medex

that has the ability to make changes to a file.

- [Tony] While that sounds like a red flag,

primeau digs deeper.

- Although this tool can make changes to a file,

we didn't detect any evidence that this fire

was created unnaturally in the video,

and no evidence to support that this was cgi.

- [Tony] We turned to atmospheric scientist

Dr. Deanna hence

to find out if conditions in this region of Spain

would sustain a fire like this.

- Well, I looked at the climate conditions

around the time that this video was filmed.

In this particular region it was actually quite wet.

There was plenty of moisture in the environment,

rainfall that could account for why

everything was so green and lush.

And because the fire is moving very quickly,

that doesn't really leave a lot of time

for the objects around it to dry out and then catch on fire.

- [Tony] That explains why the grass, and trees,

and benches don't ignite, but how would such

a strangely-shaped fire form in the first place?

Our all-star physicist michio kaku

shed some light on the matter.

- We don't have that much

direct experience with large fires.

And if you did, you would realize flames

go in the direction where you have lots of oxygen,

lots of tinder, and loss of surface area.

- [Tony] Kaku explains that the white discoloration

in the grass in the front of the flames

is actually the fluffy seeds

of the poplar trees around the park.

That's what is actually catching fire

and why the narrow flame is moving so fast.

- Notice here that the poplars are burning

because that's where you have maximum surface area.

The first things to burn will be those places

where we have maximum surface area.

- [Tony] In fact, the same principle

that causes these poplar seeds to burn so quickly

also applies in your own home.

- That's why a newspaper burns very fast

while a log in a fireplace will take a lot of time

for it to heat up because the newspaper

for a given weight has a maximum amount of surface area.

- So, our verdict.

Well, this mesmerizing fire appears to act

mysteriously and contrary to nature.

Its bizarre behavior is actually an idiosyncrasy

of environment and physics.

Officials at this park believe the fire

was started unintentionally

from a cigarette or other stray spark.

- Since voyager 1 launched in 1977,

humans have been probing space

looking for signs of intelligent life.

There's been no confirmation yet that an alien species

is doing the same, looking for us.

But what if they've been sending probes our way

this whole time and we've just been misreading the messages?

It's a clear evening in gainesville, Florida,

and motorist Chad zettrower is driving along newberry road

when his dash cam captures something

that makes him pump the brakes.

It's not on the road, it's in the sky.

A blue orb shoots overhead.

- [Chad] What the [Beep] was that?

- [Tony] Let's slow that down.

Whatever fell from the sky appears to flash or explode,

but no pieces or impact crater are discovered.

When the video goes viral it has many thinking ufo.

One scientific explanation is that what Chad filmed

was simply a meteor.

But there's a whole new theory gaining traction

that some rocks from space are ufos.

- I can't really say it's not of alien origin

because I really never get a good enough look at it.

- [Tony] In October of 2017, observers spotted an object

racing around the sun that didn't have a tail like a comet

and was on such a strange trajectory

they realized it had to be from another solar system.

They named it ;oumuamua, or scout in Hawaiian.

A Harvard astronomer recently suggested

that it could be some form of alien technology.

And physicist Dr. Hakeem oluseya wonders,

could there be others like it?

- ;oumuamua brings up the idea

of alien probes coming into our solar system.

If we look at rocky surfaces in our solar system,

they're covered in craters.

And up till now we've assumed that those craters

were due to solar system bodies.

But now, perhaps, maybe some of the craters you see

when you look up at the moon

were created from an object outside our solar system.

We don't know.

- ;oumuamua was odd not only because

of its interstellar origin, but because

of its unusually long slender shape and size.

Was what Chad captured on dash cam

something equally anomalous?

For that, we turn to Mars mission planner Jonathon hill.

[Slow music]

Hill begins by considering whether the light

could be caused by a spacecraft or satellite.

But he says this thing is moving far too quickly for that.

- When satellites pass by in the night sky,

they usually take very arcing paths,

and they usually move very slowly.

So that's not consistent with a satellite by any means.

- [Tony] Could it be the re-entry

of space junk into our atmosphere?

Hill says the best clue is the color of the object.

Each metal or compound

produces a unique color when it burns.

- When anything on earth explodes,

you almost always get a yellow flame.

But this object has a very distinct,

bright, light blue color to it,

which tells us that whatever is burning

is a very different compound

than what we usually see in our everyday lives.

- [Tony] Instead, says hill, that blue is a strong indicator

that the object is likely made of magnesium,

and definitely not manmade.

So could it be an alien probe after all?

- I think we had to keep our minds open to the possibility

that one day we may encounter artifacts

from an extraterrestrial civilization.

That cannot be ruled out.

- So where do we land with this one?

Hill's analysis points to a meteor made of magnesium.

[Slow dramatic music]

But no one ever found an impact crater

or any part of Chad's meteor.

So sure, it could have been an alien probe.

That part of the story remains unresolved.

And that's our show for tonight.

Thank you so much for watching.

And it's always, say it with me, team.

- [All] Keep those cameras rolling.

- Oh, I'm so proud.

That's beautiful.

Let's do it again.

[All laughing]