Original subtitles

- Tonight on the "Proof is Out There," we're going global.

In Russia, are these the footprints of a hungry yeti?

- We were told that before this footage was obtained,

a number of chicken carcasses were discarded in the area,

but yet afterwards, no feathers,

no carcasses at all were to be found.

- [Tony] In the Amazon jungle, is this a genuine UFO?

- [Tony] In Japan, has an apex predator

come back from the dead?

[speaking Japanese]

- [Tony] And in Sweden, we investigate a medieval book

written in one night with some help from the devil.

- The devil appeared to him and said,

"Oh, I'll finish it for you.

Just give me your soul."

[dramatic music]

- Around the globe are videos,

photos,

and sounds that defy explanation.

[air buzzing]

- [Expert 1] We don't know where they come from,

who made them, or how they operate.

- [Tony] What are they?

- [Expert 2] Some sort of bizarre mutation.

What's exciting is nobody really knows.

- Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.

- I'm Tony Harris,

and as a journalist for more than 30 years,

I've followed the facts where they take me.

Now I'm bringing that spirit of investigation

to the world's strangest sounds and images.

- [Eyewitness] It's coming towards us.

- 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, everyone,

and welcome to "The Proof is Out There."

We kick off with a group of Russian children

heading out into the snowbanks with a camera

to record some winter fun.

What could go wrong?

As you're about to see, they may have stumbled

onto one of the country's most fearsome legends.

Take a look.

It's January, 2013 in the Kemerovo region

in Southern Siberia.

Three young boys are videotaping themselves playing

when they come across a set of monstrous footprints.

It's all fun and games as they follow the tracks,

until they spot this.

A dark figure is hunched in the brush.

As the kids get closer,

the creature seems to watch them for a moment

before darting away.

The boys, terrified, run off as fast as they can.

The mysterious footage immediately sparked

worldwide debate and speculation over its authenticity,

with some experts calling it

the most compelling sighting of a Russian Yeti to date.

Igor Burtsev,

director of the International Hominology Center of Moscow,

believes this video actually shows two creatures.

- [Tony] Reported from the Himalayas to Siberia,

the Yeti is believed to be a creature

adapted to cold, harsh climates.

Some say it resembles a bear more than an ape.

And the indigenous Mansi people of Russia

believe it was a ferocious monster

known to rip out the tongues of its victims.

Still, the Yeti is thought to share

most of the same behavioral traits

from supposed Sasquatch-like creatures around the globe.

- At this location,

several branches were broken off pretty high up

and the bark had been perhaps chewed off.

Breaking trees and particularly twisting it

are known Sasquatch behaviors.

I have personally found great examples in my research areas

of just this sort of damage.

- [Tony] Another strange detail

was the mysterious disappearance of several dead chickens.

- We were told that before this footage was obtained,

a number of chicken carcasses were discarded in the area,

but yet afterwards, no feathers,

no carcasses at all were to be found.

Could this be why a Yeti was in the area

in the first place?

- Now, so far, the Yeti sightings

we've investigated on this show

have turned out to be a hoax or a misidentification.

But back in 2019, the Indian Army publicly tweeted

that its mountaineering team

had discovered footprints of a mysterious beast

near a Himalayan base camp.

The post was widely ridiculed.

But did these kids actually find the Yeti

haunting the snowy fields of Russia?

Let's see what our experts think.

First, is it just a bear?

Bears do walk on their hind legs for short distances.

- This is the right color for a brown bear in this area.

However, the body structure doesn't look like a bear.

It seems to have longer limbs

and shoulders that are higher up,

so I don't think that this is a bear.

- [Tony] However, our experts are suspicious

of the creature's footprints,

particularly Igor's suggestion that their size

is caused by a second smaller creature

walking behind its parent.

- If a parent were making this track

and a younger one was following in its footsteps,

you would expect to see some missteps in the snow.

They're perfectly spaced out from one another.

Looking at our own species,

a child's movements are much more clumsy.

It's not gonna be uniform like this.

- [Tony] And the solid brown coat

makes it even harder to believe.

- I don't think it looks like a wild animal.

Although this bean is one uniform color,

if you look at the other kids, they're in snowsuits.

It is totally possible that this is just another snowsuit

that are the same colors.

- As they're running away,

there's one of these boys in particular

that looks remarkably similar

to the configuration of this figure.

I mean, his snowsuit and cap,

he's uniforming color from head to foot,

he could stand in for this figure.

- [Tony] And perhaps most telling of all

is a noticeable jump within the footage.

Did you miss it?

Look again, right there.

- If this were a video

of what the boys were seeing in the wild,

there would be a continuous plane.

So I don't understand why all of a sudden it would cut.

To me, this signifies that this is a hoax video.

- Our verdict?

We agree with our experts.

This one is a hoax.

There are just too many red flags.

We were hoping to break the curse of the hoaxed Yeti videos,

but we have Yeti to find a real one.

Now let's flip the script from Russia to Brazil.

Many people believe that indigenous tribes

from around the globe experienced and interacted

with alien phenomena in centuries past.

And some tribes in the Amazon

may still be having similar encounters to this very day.

It's July, 2024 in the Brazilian state of Acre.

UFO researcher Rony Vernet has headed deep into the Amazon

after hearing reports of strange phenomena

among one of the jungle's indigenous tribes.

- [Tony] Rony sets up his cameras

and captures something strange.

This video, recorded off of Vernet's computer monitor,

shows several fireball-like orbs

which move across the night sky slowly

but then start to zigzag at lightning speed

in different directions.

Take a closer look as these strange fireballs

strobe around the sky.

- [Tony] Vernet has kept the specific location

of this video secret.

And by far, it's not the only UFO sighting in the area.

- This is just one in a long history of UAP events

that had been reported around the Brazilian rainforest.

In fact, Brazil had its own Roswell event,

which occurred back in 1977, known as the Colares Incident.

The locals, for a period of time,

were tormented by what they allege as UAP

coming down and even sucking the blood

from some of the civilian population.

In fact, Brazilian military and law enforcement

were called in at the national level to investigate.

- [Tony] The Brazilian Air Force

named their investigation Operation Saucer,

which included over 500 photographs and

15 hours of film. - The doctors who responded to this incident

all substantiated that there were people,

both civilian and military,

who sustained what appeared to be burns or lesions,

possibly the type of damage a high energy laser would do

to human tissue.

- [Tony] And the South American encounters

weren't just limited to Brazil.

- When I spoke to authorities in Peru, in Argentina,

in Chile, in Uruguay, I was absolutely floored

by the sheer number of reports that seemed so eerily similar

to that of Brazil and the Colares Incident.

Local indigenous people tormented by these UAP

was a routine occurrence.

- Could there be alien life forms

running rampant in South America?

According to Elizondo, indigenous

communities from Peru, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay

have all experienced UAP phenomenon

not unlike those reported from the Brazilian rainforest.

Let's see what our experts think is actually going on here.

[enigmatic music]

Many have commented these fireballs

appear to be meteors.

- The bright light we see with a meteor

is actually it burning up

as it comes into the Earth's atmosphere.

Depending on what the meteor is comprised of,

you can get a variety of colors

but usually not these kind of flaming oranges and reds.

- [Tony] Only very slow moving meteors

occasionally appear red or orange,

while faster ones, like this object,

are generating such intense heat

that they typically glow white, blue, or green.

So if it wasn't a meteor, could it have been an airplane?

- The consistency of the flashing pattern, to me,

really speaks to it being a commercial aircraft.

The warning lights that are on commercial aircraft,

they're evenly-spaced like we see there.

- [Tony] But an aircraft isn't capable

of something we see here that's truly anomalous,

the object's erratic motion.

- It's a very quick maneuver

that these things are doing on the screen.

That's instantaneous acceleration.

That's what it's doing.

And I can honestly say that I've not seen

anything like that before that's been recorded.

- [Tony] So could this in fact be some type of alien craft?

- It's on a monitor, and a person zooms in and zooms out.

Something that's very clearly an object

that somehow moves very instantaneously

in different directions, that could be a video artifact.

If it's legitimately an object,

this is very, very, very compelling,

- [Tony] An object that may gain further legitimacy

due to its behavior,

which mirrors previous activity reported in the area.

- This video here

is just another one of those like mysteries we see in Brazil

throughout its entire history.

You are having reports of these lights

that were moving around in the sky.

And you had medical evidence

that's supporting anecdotal evidence.

And many of these indigenous cultures in Brazil,

they're seeing craft or something that's in the sky

that they can't account for.

Ultimately, these objects were doing all those things

that UAPs typically do.

[enigmatic music]

- Our verdict?

Our experts can't come to any definitive conclusion,

so we're going to have to go with genuine UFO

if only because these objects are still unidentified.

One thing is for sure.

We'll keep in close contact with Rony

and share more of his fascinating work in the Amazon.

We'll keep in close contact with Rony]

- The Japanese wolf went extinct more than a century ago

after hunting and disease decimated the population,

or did it?

Our next story features an encounter in the woods

that has many wondering

if this vanished apex predator has returned.

October 14th, 1996, Chichibu Tama Kai National Park, Japan,

Mountaineer Hiroshi Yagi

is driving at night on a forest road

when something flits across his line of sight.

An unknown creature approaches his car,

stopping just a few feet away.

The animal shows no fear as Hiroshi moves towards it

and captures this.

With pointed ears, a long snout, and thick brown hair,

it appears to be wolf.

Hiroshi takes several pictures,

amazed that he may have stumbled upon an animal

that hasn't been seen in decades, the Japanese wolf.

- [Tony] Years after that first encounter in the forest,

Yagi checks one of his trail cameras

and sees footage of three deer

appearing to flee something unseen.

And on the camera audio,

we hear the unmistakable sound of a howl.

[animal howling]

- [Tony] There's a good reason

why Yagi's discovery is so stunning.

- The last known remains of a Japanese wolf

were purchased by a zoologist in the year 1905.

And he in turn shipped those off

to the Natural History Museum in London.

But these images were taken in Japan in the 1990s,

and it's kind of unexpected.

There's an interesting parallel here

between the Japanese wolf

and something known as the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine,

which is a carnivorous striped animal

that supposedly went extinct

on the island of Tasmania back in the 1930s.

However, since that time,

there have been dozens of alleged sightings

of these animals running around on the island of Tasmania.

- Or are Yagi's photos evidence

of the wonders of modern science?

In 2025, Colossal Labs announced

that by using gene editing technology,

they brought back to life dire wolves,

a species that has been extinct for more than 10,000 years.

Has someone else been tinkering with mother nature in Japan

to resurrect another wolf species?

A 2021 study revealed that the Japanese wolf

has genetic links to both pre-historic wolves

and modern dogs.

So did Hiroshi Yagi find a Japanese wolf in those woods

or just a plain old pooch?

Let's ask our experts.

First, we compare the howl from Yagi's video

to a recording of an actual wolf.

- Comparing the wolf howl, the wolf tone,

to what we have in the recording,

there are many similarities here.

[wolf howling]

[animal howling]

The wolf tone has a very long pitch to it,

very similar to what we had in the example recording.

It tends to be at a long duration at one frequency.

[wolf howling]

So nothing about the the duration

or the frequency range here would rule out

that it could be a wolf that we're hearing in the recording.

- [Tony] So the audio evidence is pointing to a wolf.

But what about Yagi's photos?

- The thing that stands out is this creature

seems to be a bit on the short and small side

for what I would expect for a normal wolf,

but Japanese wolfs actually were quite a bit smaller

compared to our standard wolves.

- [Tony] But based on the photos alone,

can we conclude anything?

- The snout and head seems a little bit elongated

and more oval-like.

Also, the tail looks a lot different

than what I would expect from a wolf.

And their heads seem to be shaped

just a little bit different than a normal wolf.

So I think, most likely, what's being reported here

is a type of dog.

I do think there is a high possibility

that some of the feral dogs in the area

might still carry some Japanese wolf genetics,

but it would still be classified as a feral dog.

- Our verdict?

Kind of a split decision.

Our experts say these images are of a feral dog,

but our audio analysis of that howl

leaves room for Hiroshi's wolf hypothesis.

So the next time you're taking a hike at Japan,

keep your ears to the ground.

- We have seen alleged UFOs

that fly around at hypersonic speeds

and even dive in and out of the water.

But what about A UFO that doesn't move at all?

Our next video features a strange object

that seems to be making the rounds without going anywhere.

Take a look.

April 27th, 2023, a couple is driving home

through the desert just outside Las Vegas, Nevada.

Around 9:00 PM, they noticed something strange

hovering in the night sky.

Fascinated, they pull over to a fence line

and watch in amazement.

Beyond a chain link fence,

a row of sparkling multicolored lights hovers in midair.

- [Tony] The formation is completely static,

attracting attention all over town,

before allegedly disappearing a minute or two later.

- Another Las Vegas resident saw the same thing

northwest of his neighborhood.

That eyewitness said that these lights

didn't match up with any helicopter he'd ever seen.

- [Tony] The incident even makes local news.

Reporters check with a nearby airport,

but no flights can explain the stationary lights in the sky.

Instead, some theorized they're connected

to secret military craft.

After all, the American West is dotted

with special use airspace, and Nevada is no exception.

In fact, one local military base seems a likely culprit.

- Nellis Air Force Base is one of the biggest

and also one of the most secretive.

In fact, it's one of the places that trains pilots

in some of the most cutting-edge airplanes

that the military has at its disposal.

Vertical take-off and landing is a technology

that the military is actively working on.

These aircraft can take-off vertically

without any kind of runway,

making them great for small areas or even aircraft carriers.

They can hover just like these lights in this video

and would remain completely stationary.

So could these lights be some new kind of vertical take-off

and landing technology?

- [Tony] Problem is Nellis also denies

having anything to do with these lights.

But there is another nearby base to consider, Area 51,

which some UFO investigators believe

may be the site of a UFO reverse engineering program.

- In 2023, Pentagon whistleblower David Grusch

did testify that the government

was trying to reverse engineer UFO technology.

So that would be consistent with this potential sighting.

[enigmatic music]

- In March, 2021, roughly two years prior to this sighting,

Vegas residents noticed

another nearly identical set of stationary lights

hovering over the city.

Authorities later identified those lights as flares.

Will our experts say the same for this sighting

or will these lights lead us elsewhere?

Since that 2021 case turned out to be flares,

are these new lights just flares too?

- Typically, flares are going to be only one color.

And the color that a flare is

depends on the chemical element that's involved.

So, for instance, if we're using sodium,

like it's used in some streetlights,

it's gonna be a yellowish-orange hue.

Or perhaps if we're using magnesium,

then we would have flares that are more whitish.

But you're not going to have color-changing flares.

That is very unusual.

- [Tony] So then could we be looking at lights

from emergency vehicles,

maybe on a distant hill we can't see since it's nighttime?

- The colors are not the right type

of first responder lights that you would be expecting.

These are the colors of the rainbow.

And typically first responders are blue, red, and white,

and maybe amber.

- [Tony] So even though there are some hills

in the surrounding area,

we know this isn't police cars on them.

But could they be attached to a vehicle in the sky,

like those vertical take-off and landing planes?

- I would say definitely not.

They wouldn't be using rainbow-colored

lights to fly around. They're set up to hover,

but you would hear those type of distinct engines.

None of this fits any of that.

- [Tony] If a craft is small enough, however,

noise could be negligible.

Could these simply be consumer grade drones?

- Drones have the ability to hover,

and drones will be producing lights,

but drones are not gonna be able to hover perfectly.

There's always gonna be a little bit of movement in the air,

and it's very hard to keep drones in place

in that kind of situation.

- [Tony] Perfectly still rainbow lights

may not match any aircraft,

but they are reminiscent of something we've seen before.

In a previous episode,

we investigated these stationary Vegas lights

and found they were simply reflections in the clouds

of lights from the Hilton,

the Encore,

and the Wynn hotels.

However, we checked, and these lights

are not in the immediate vicinity of any big casinos.

- Due to the configuration and color of the lights,

I would definitely say you're looking at an unknown.

- I have no idea what these rainbow-colored lights are.

And my final verdict is genuine UFO.

- Our verdict?

For this one, genuine UFO.

This is one video of lights in the sky

that certainly hit the jackpot.

- For many people of faith,

the Bible is recognized as the word of God,

a sacred scripture handed down from the heavens.

But in this next story, we're cracking open a spiritual text

that's rumored to be of unholy origin.

The National Library of Sweden in Stockholm

holds a collection of more than 18 million items

that date back over a thousand years.

What's the biggest draw?

Well, history buffs, religious scholars, believers,

and nonbelievers alike all find themselves drawn to this.

It is believed

to be the largest preserved medieval manuscript

in the world, the Codex Gigas,

famously called the Devil's Bible.

And it's easy to see why.

Weighing 165 pounds, this is an 800-year-old,

620-page book said to be made

from the skins of 160 donkeys or possibly calves.

Within the pages of this historic tome

is a terrifying depiction of the devil.

But how the book was made and by whom is a mystery.

- There's a really interesting legend

about how this book was created.

They say that there was a monk at the monastery

where this was created, in Bohemia.

He committed some kind of grave sin.

And he was sentenced to be walled up alive.

[thunder cracking]

He said, "Please, I will write a book

with all of the knowledge in the world overnight,

and then can I escape this punishment?"

And the Abbott said, "Sure."

He tried to write this book in one night.

It didn't work.

So the devil appeared to him and said,

"I'm happy to write this book for you in one night.

You just have to give me your soul."

And the Codex Gigas, or the Devil's Codex, was created.

- [Tony] This origin story

isn't the only unsettling tale surrounding the book.

There's another account of a museum caretaker

who suffered a mental breakdown

after being trapped with the book

inside the National Library overnight.

And if that's not spooky enough,

there's also another mystery of what's been torn

from the book's pages.

- There was a lot in this book

aside from the pictures of the devil and heaven,

the Old Testament, the New Testament,

calendars and ecclesiastical texts,

a dictionary of medical knowledge,

and even text for an exorcism.

However, there are some pages missing.

[enigmatic music]

- [Tony] Some people think the missing pages from the Codex

contain an incantation used to summon the devil.

Were they torn out to keep people from doing that?

We can't speculate, but we did ask our experts

to speak to the mystery of who made this book and how.

First, is this the work of one man on one sleepless night?

Well, that's half right.

- One of the studies that have been done in recent times

is a handwriting analysis.

And to our surprise, it turns out that the text part

was almost certainly written by a single person.

The handwriting is identical throughout the book.

- [Tony] But as far as the rest of the story, not so fast.

- Even if it was penned by a single person,

it's virtually impossible

that it was done in a single night.

The kind of ink that they used back in those days,

that took hours in and of itself to dry

before you could turn the page.

- [Tony] So even if you accept the man was possessed,

the ink wouldn't have cooperated.

The National Library of Sweden set out to find

how long it would've taken.

- They've done a little bit of math or calculation

on just how long it might take a monk

to accomplish this work.

You figure they work six days a week,

taking Sunday off of course,

working six hours a day, you might say,

but trim that down to three because of all the activities

that a monk will have to do in his day.

But then when you do that calculation,

it comes out to be 20 or 30 years of dedicated effort

in order to accomplish this.

- [Tony] As for the devil's portrait,

it's worth noting that the Dark Lord's image

comes immediately after another full page artistic depiction

of heavenly Jerusalem.

That has left some suggesting

that the person who drew the devil

actually made a two-page spread

that contrasts the symbol of salvation against one of evil.

- [Michael] I think perhaps this was the work of a monk

who was dedicated to loosening the mysteries

as relate to the devil,

and thought it would be a contribution

to society and the church to spend year after year,

decade after decade perhaps,

creating this incredible work.

[enigmatic music]

- Our verdict?

Manmade, or maybe we should say monk-made.

The devil may be in the details,

but according to our experts,

he's not behind this centuries-old text.

- Is there life on the moon?

Scientists of yesteryear

gave this question considerable thought.

In fact, an 1846 textbook says, quote,

"It is the general opinion of Astronomers

that the Moon is inhabited."

Nearly two centuries later,

could this next video be the proof?

July 21st, 2024, Austin, Texas.

It's about 11:30 PM,

and Eric Eman is in his backyard moon-gazing

when he spots something peculiar in the viewfinder

of his Seestar S50 telescope.

- It was a mix of excitement and disbelief.

I'd spent hundreds of hours outside watching the moon

and I've never seen anything like it.

- [Tony] A round object appears to travel

in a downward diagonal from right to left

across the face of the moon.

Its movement appears purposeful

and unwavering from its straight path.

Then a wider shot captures the object

as it completes its 45-second journey across the moon

and glides into the darkness of space.

- I was just looking at it mesmerized the whole time,

like, wow, I can't believe I'm capturing this.

- [Tony] The video is so astounding

the local news shares it for all of Austin to see.

And no one can explain it.

- I definitely think it was some type of saucer vehicle.

- [Tony] And Eric isn't the first moon gazer

to consider an alien presence on or around the moon.

In fact, it was a NASA scientist who reported in 1970

that the moon rang like a bell during an Apollo mission.

This sparked speculation

that the moon may be harboring an alien base.

- The Hollow Moon theory suggests that the moon

is not in fact a solid body but is hollow,

and that inside that cavern is a whole alien civilization

that has launched probes or missions out of the inner moon

and to explore the area around us,

potentially even the Earth.

- [Tony] The theory may sound out there,

but recent radar data

collected by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

has revealed a large cave

roughly 500 feet below the moon's surface,

which could serve as a shelter or even a base.

Bear in mind, our understanding of the moon

is constantly evolving as new data comes in.

For example, it was believed that the moon

was completely dry until 2009.

- India's Chandrayaan-1

found evidence of water molecules on the moon.

This doesn't mean that there are lakes and rivers,

but it could support further research

into whether or not the moon could have ever hosted life.

[enigmatic music]

- So where did the moon come from in the first place?

The most widely accepted theory

is the Giant Impact Hypothesis,

the idea that the moon was formed

by debris created in a collision

between Earth and a small planet.

Will our experts be able to draw their own conclusions

about Eric's object?

[enigmatic music]

At first glance, we can't tell

what our distance from this object is or its size.

First, we don't really know how far away this object is.

Is it possible it's not close to the moon at all

and is instead something small in our own sky, like a drone?

- Well, there's different kinds of drones,

but typically we'd be able to see the shape of the drone

pretty obviously in this view.

But we just see this black blob here.

That black blob tells us it's something further away

that's been magnified by the telephoto lens.

Drones are small.

Beyond about two miles away,

you would probably not even see this in the sky.

- [Tony] So the object is likely large

because of its visibility

and far away because of its lack of detail.

In fact, this object could be so far away

that its straight line trajectory could

be an orbital path. - Now if you see something move across the

moon, it's typically a satellite in orbit around the Earth.

It passes in front of the moon.

And the thing that's interesting about this

is that when you watch them cross the moon,

they're gonna look like a silhouette against the moon

because the moon is so much brighter.

And so it'll appear as this dark object crossing the moon.

- [Tony] However, not everyone sees that.

- The best indication that this is not a satellite

is that we can see the object

after it's passed the edge of the moon.

- [Tony] Take a look.

We punched up the brightness and magnified the image,

and notice how the object is still visible.

It doesn't disappear into the blackness of space.

That's because it's not in space.

- You wouldn't see any brightness around it.

What we're seeing here in terms of brightness

is actually the brightness of the atmosphere

illuminated by the moon.

- [Tony] This is because the gas particles

in Earth's atmosphere trap and scatter the moonlight.

But in the vacuum of space, there are virtually no particles

to scatter the light.

- So what we're seeing here is an object

that's inside Earth's atmosphere.

Satellites don't go inside the atmosphere,

so it can't be a satellite.

- [Tony] To figure out what it is,

our experts do some calculations of their own.

- We know that the objects is moving

about seven or eight times its own size per second.

If this was something like a balloon

that was only two feet in diameter,

it's only moving about 10 miles per hour,

just about wind speed basically.

So I'm gonna go with balloon.

- [Tony] But now it's D'Antonio's turn to disagree.

- The trouble is it's moving downward,

but regular balloons don't move in that kind of fashion.

They're gonna move in the wind horizontally.

So it would be moving this way, not that way.

- Our verdict?

Unidentified object.

We doubt this is a UFO from a lunar civilization.

But with convincing arguments from both our experts,

we're not sure what it actually is either.

But if there is life on the moon, we may learn soon enough.

NASA plans to send to astronauts there again

as early as 2027.

- On this show, we've investigated

reports of weird, unexplainable lights,

the Marfa Lights of Texas

and the Hessdalen lights of Norway, to name just two.

Well, this next story concerns a light

that has had people scratching their heads

for almost 150 years.

January, 2011, Joplin, Missouri,

Lisa Livingston-Martin is driving

on the aptly named Devil's Promenade Road

right of Route 66. Spotting something eerie in the distance,

she comes to a stop and pulls out her camera.

Over the red glow of her car's brake lights,

she captures this.

In the distance, an orange orb of light

hovers over the road.

It's bigger and brighter than a star

and too low to be the moon.

Lisa says it is a well-known site among locals.

They even have a moniker for it.

- It's gone by several different names.

And there's reason for that.

Originally, it was seen

around the hamlet of Hornet, Missouri,

and so that's where it got its name

as the Hornet Spook Light.

- [Tony] People have even taken videos,

like this one from 2022.

All of the attention has spawned plenty of theories.

- The Hornet Spook Light has actually quite a long history.

It's been reported as early as 1836

along the Trail of Tears.

One of the stories was that there was a Quapaw maiden

who was in love with a warrior.

He died in battle, so she drowned herself,

and that this spook light is her spirit or her soul

as an orb looking for this warrior.

- [Tony] But this mystery

didn't just inspire local folktales.

At one point, it even drew the attention

of the federal government.

- The Army Corps of Engineers went there in 1946

to try to figure out what it was

and declared this the mysterious light of unknown origin.

They couldn't figure out what it was.

- Fans of the Pixar film "Cars"

might already be familiar with the Spook Light.

The filmmakers made a spinoff short

called "Mater and the Ghostlight"

based in part on this legend.

But the images we've seen across the decades

aren't works of animation.

Let's see what our experts think we're looking at.

[enigmatic music]

- One of the ideas that people think about this glowing ball

at the end of the street

is that it has something to do with swamp gas

that has been ionized or ignited.

- [Tony] Swamp gas occurs naturally

when organic matter like mud and sediment decomposes,

releasing flammable methane.

If swamp gas is exposed to a spark,

it can burst into colorful flames.

- But if you look at the geology

in the region where that light is appearing,

you don't see any indication of swamps

like we see in Florida or in England and those areas

where you get a lot of swamp gases and stuff.

- [Tony] Could these lights

actually be connected to Native American folktales?

- What I always kind of find a little troubling

is whenever you have something that's a mystery,

you try to explain it away with an Indian myth.

The Quapaw elders dispute this story,

that it was a maiden who drowned herself,

because this area is not their homelands.

And so they say that this light is not her.

- [Tony] Is it possible

that this is all just the trick of the light

from cars in the distance?

- I don't subscribe to the hypothesis

that we're seeing an optical illusion from car headlights.

First of all, car headlights come in pairs.

So maybe the car headlights are too far away

and they've merged.

But then again, a lot of individuals over the years

have reported this light being very close to them

and yet without them hearing a sound like a car engine.

So I really don't think that these are car lights.

- [Tony] Ultimately, these lights

might remain a mystery, at least for now,

- It's some sort of natural phenomenon in the atmosphere

or related to the Earth

that we've not yet fully understood and explained.

- Our verdict?

Unexplained phenomenon.

Stray headlights might explain

some of the sightings of the Hornet Spook Light

but definitely not those

that predate the invention of the automobile.

There might not be an answer to this mystery yet,

but we'll keep our eyes on the road.

And that's our show for tonight.

Thank you for watching.

And keep those cameras rolling.

[dramatic music]