Original subtitles

- Tonight on, "The Proof Is Out There."

The story that shook the nation.

- [Tony] Swarms of drones flying over New Jersey,

who is behind it and what do they want?

- It was a bit unsettling,

we could see these things start to show up.

They were never there before.

What's going on here?

What are they doing?

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] Did a fisherman find proof

of a radioactive mutant?

- It reminds me of that kind of uranium glow

that we would expect with nuclear waste.

- [Tony] Did this astronaut spot a UFO

outside the International Space Station?

- [Samantha] Oh my God, I see the-

- [Tony] Could these holes

at the bottom of Lake Michigan be sinking ships?

- The reason they call it a burp of death

is that methane gas is very dangerous.

- [Tony] Divers in France search for the source

of this legendary spring.

But what will they find?

- The story goes inside this kind of cavernous area

resides this horrible, terrible monster

known as the basilisk.

- [Tony] And was this woman in bed with a ghost?

[eerie music]

- This idea of a parasitic spirit is very common.

They are desperate for some kind of human contact.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] Around the globe are videos.

[peoples screaming]

Photos.

[dramatic music]

And sounds that defy explanation.

[dramatic music]

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

who made them or how they operate.

- [Tony] What are they?

- [Journalist] Some sort of bizarre mutation.

- [Investigator] What's exciting is nobody really knows.

- Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.

[dramatic music]

- I'm Tony Harris.

And as a journalist for more than 30 years,

I've followed the facts where they take me.

[dramatic music]

Now, I'm bringing that spirit of investigation

to the world's strangest sounds and images.

- [Woman] It's coming towards us.

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

- It's a credible case, it's a credible video.

- [Tony] And pass a verdict on what it is.

- This video was clearly faked.

- The proof starts now.

[dramatic music]

Good evening and welcome to, "The Proof is Out There."

Our first story needs no introduction,

but I'm here, so here we go.

This mystery began as a spate of sightings in one US state

and grew into a worldwide phenomenon.

Officials have one opinion, residents have another.

And now it's time for The Proof team

to weigh in on the New Jersey drones.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] November, 2024, Randolph, New Jersey,

Mike Walsh sees some discussion online

about mysterious drones over his area.

So, he decides to go out and look for himself.

That's when he realizes the drones aren't rumors,

they're real, and he starts recording.

In the pitch black sky,

three white orbs blink at seemingly random intervals,

with no visible structure to connect them.

- The first time I saw one, in person,

it was a bit unsettling

'cause just why are there so many of these things?

They were never there before.

What are they doing?

- [Tony] In the following weeks,

Mike and many others see hundreds more

of these strange objects,

from pronged formations to orbs

surrounding him on all sides.

[dramatic music]

The New Jersey sightings quickly become the subject

of national news and speculation.

[dramatic music]

- I mean, everyone was talking about these drones.

What is that?

And it led to this feeling like

New Jersey was under attack.

- [Tony] Many people, including Mike,

even call the police to report their sightings.

Then the heavyweights show up.

- The FBI got heavily involved in its investigation

into these drone sightings,

mainly because this part of New Jersey

is home to a lot of sensitive installations

that need to be protected.

For one, the Trump National Golf Club

and the Picatinny Arsenal military base.

And this would insinuate to them that perhaps these drones

are there for some nefarious purpose.

The most common theory that started to pop up

was that the vast majority of these drones

were some sort of foreign reconnaissance project.

- [Tony] And it's not just New Jersey.

New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C,

and even US military bases in Europe

see a rash of mysterious drones.

[dramatic music]

To complicate matters researchers

John and Gerry Tedesco

say some of these objects outperform known drone tech.

- Most local agencies deployed drone buster technology.

Basically they transmitted interference patterns

and they're designed to interrupt transmissions

from a remote location to the drone itself

that didn't yield much in the way of results,

as far as stopping the the the flow of the the drones

or interfering how they fly.

- And that suggests that these are different

than our typical commercial drones.

[dramatic music]

- In December, 2024,

one New Jersey police Chief, Joseph Orlando,

publicly declared that the UFOs

appeared nefarious in nature.

Are they from adversaries like Russia or China,

clandestine craft closer to home

or something else altogether?

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] First and foremost,

did Mike spot a foreign reconnaissance drone,

like so many suspect?

- Those drones typically aren't gonna have lights

that say, "Hey, I'm over here, look at me."

You know they're gonna actually, if they have lights,

they're gonna turn 'em off.

On this side you see a red light

and on the left side you see a green light.

Now, FAA mandates aircraft lighting

to have navigational lighting like this.

- [Tony] And what kind of aircraft

would follow FAA mandates?

- Just looking at the lighting pattern

and the anti-collision light,

the red light that flashes on the bottom there,

that just is entirely consistent with a commercial aircraft.

- [Tony] The featureless black sky around it

likely creates the illusion of a slower, even hovering craft

since it doesn't offer any reference points for speed.

But what about all these other New Jersey drone sightings?

Some of them didn't appear on radar,

so they can't all be commercial planes, right?

- We have to keep in mind that radar works

to a certain altitude,

and starts working at a certain altitude.

Below that altitude, you might be off the radar.

So, many times when a plane gets too low,

you aren't under radar coverage anymore.

- The majority of these incidents can be attributed

to misidentifications of commercial aircraft.

The second batch, I think you have people

who are taking their hobby drones

and putting them up in the air now,

in hopes of capturing these mystery drones

and frankly created more confusion.

- [Tony] So, there were no foreign drones.

Well, we didn't say that.

Remember like the Tedesco brothers said,

some of these craft appeared to have

very sophisticated configurations.

- The public gets to hear one thing

and some people that have connections with Washington

will hear another thing.

Now the question is, are we hearing the full truth?

Absolutely not.

And the reason you hide the truth is that so the enemy

is not allowed to know what you know.

And the fact remains that these drones

have made an indelible mark on the people in New Jersey.

[dramatic music]

- Our verdict,

Mike's video is the commercial plane,

but other sightings like this one still remain unexplained,

according to the Tedescos.

In January, 2025, the White House claimed

that the craft were mostly FAA authorized planes and drones

being flown for research and various other reasons.

New Jersey residents weren't satisfied with that

and neither are we.

[dramatic music]

We are just getting started with UFOs tonight.

And this next one comes out of South America.

Pilot UFO encounters

provide some of our most credible cases.

And this encounter you're about to see is so compelling.

Some have called it the best UFO video ever.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] May 4th, 2023,

pilot Jorge Arteaga is flying a Cessna T-303 Crusader,

12,500 feet over Colombia en route to Medellin,

when he sees a strange object moving toward the plane.

He turns to his copilot who confirms he also saw the object.

Determined to investigate, Jorge turns the plane around

and begins recording.

[dramatic music]

A small speck appears in the distance,

slowly approaching the aircraft.

Then in the blink of an eye,

a silvery object zooms past the cockpit window.

Let's slow that down.

The object appears to be rotated at a 45 degree angle

with a metallic domed top that tapers out into a sharp rim.

When YouTuber, Andrew Crawford finds the video online,

he knows he has to get the word out.

- Soon as I saw, I thought, wow,

we have something that we need to take a closer look at.

So, I put the video out there

and it just took on a life of its own.

- [Tony] Andrew's followers flock to the video

with some comments calling it the best UFO video ever.

And soon the pilot's firsthand account

emerges in news reports.

- He said when he was getting closer to this object,

the object shot at him, straight towards him.

Which wow, that's pretty spectacular.

Also, this thing seemed to have the capabilities

of some sort intelligent flight

where it banked to avoid crashing into the plane,

even though it flew right at it.

- [Tony] And it's not the only strange craft

seen over Colombia.

- In 2020, a pilot flying an Airbus A-320,

over Medellin, Colombia,

saw a square object in the sky.

When you look at the video, it looks like it's solid metal,

but it's very small, it doesn't have an engine,

it doesn't have wings.

- [Tony] The object also evades radar detection

leaving the pilot puzzled.

- He said it was way too high up to be a balloon.

He couldn't explain what it was.

- [Tony] We analyzed that one ourselves

in an earlier episode

and we couldn't explain it either.

Making it a genuine UFO.

Then in March, 2025, another spherical UFO

flies over Colombia, and allegedly even lands.

X-rays of the sphere show multiple layers of metal

surrounding a central chip,

but its origins remain a mystery.

Is what our pilot saw

somehow related to that puzzling sphere?

- This isn't a clearly identified object,

so there's a mystery to it.

[dramatic music]

- And two other things that heighten this mystery.

One, this UFO didn't show up on radar.

And two, it seems this pilot

is trying to stay off our radar.

That's right.

Despite our attempts to talk to the man himself,

it's been radio silence.

So, is this actually the best UFO ever

or is there reason to be suspicious?

We'll let our experts decide.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] First off, could the video be a fake?

- To me, it's extremely fishy

that they knew that this object

was gonna come across the the sky

and pointing their camera when they did,

and then had this one incident happen

where now you've got this object coming across their window.

I don't think that it's there.

I think it's actually a computer generated image.

- [Tony] Then again, the pilot's foresight

in filming the object

is consistent with the account he gave in initial interviews

that he had already seen it

and went back for another glance.

We may not be ready to call this one a hoax, just yet.

[dramatic music]

- From this recording, the clarity of the object is strong.

There is nothing that suggests

that, that object was added into that scene.

- [Tony] If it's not a fake,

could it be space junk falling to earth?

- This is definitely not a falling rocket part

because it was actually holding steady

at that particular altitude.

- [Tony] Wait a minute, holding steady.

The pilot himself says this thing sped right past him.

But De Antonio doesn't see that here.

- I don't think he saw something coming at him

at very high speed.

I think he saw something he was passing at very high speed,

that was sitting rather still in the air

and thus it looked like it was moving toward him

at very high speed.

- [Tony] With that in mind, we can think

of only one likely culprit.

- I believe that what we're looking at here

was moving much slower than the aircraft.

Maybe it's traveling on air currents.

And we saw it zip by.

In some of the still frames, I was able to see

that the object had the uncanny resemblance

to a Mylar balloon.

- [Tony] However, Hoffman disagrees.

- With a balloon, the aircrafts moving along

would have probably caused it to deviate

or move around a little bit.

The wind's gonna buffer it

and make it move in different directions.

And you just don't see that here.

[airplane engine roaring]

- [Tony] Then could this really be a genuine UFO?

Opinions are divided.

- I think it's CGI.

- To me, every aspect of this says Mylar balloon.

- You've got a daytime sighting,

you've got a credible witness.

It's not something minuscule,

it's not even out of focus.

It is such a clear image

that it was dubbed one of the best UFO sightings

of that year.

- It's inconclusive

[dramatic music]

- Our verdict,

this is an unexplained object,

at least until our experts can reach more of a consensus.

- When you're thinking of frightening aquatic monsters,

giant beasts like Nessie in Scotland come to mind.

But size doesn't always matter.

Sometimes the scariest creatures

come in the smallest packages.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] It's June, 2015 in Penghu, Taiwan.

A fisherman is plying his trade at a local port.

But he is stunned when today's catch

looks like something pulled straight from a nightmare.

[dramatic music]

A strange, green creature slowly crawls along the ground,

its body undulates and an uncanny pink appendage

flicks in and out of its body.

- When this fisherman posted this video online,

it immediately got a million views.

Most people thought that it might be

some type of mutant worm

or perhaps something extraterrestrial

from outer space.

- [Tony] And that might not be

as crazy as it sounds.

Astrobiologists continue to present findings

that certain life forms named Extremophiles

can endure the extreme conditions of space travel.

Could worm-like visitors

be dropping onto the planet's surface?

Some say that's exactly what happened

just recently in neighboring China.

- Just a year before this video was shot

in the Chinese province of Lao Neng,

there was actually a video of weird worm-like animals

raining from the sky.

And that particular incident was so startling

that the local government actually warned people

to stay indoors.

- [Tony] A darker theory suggests

this creature isn't from the sky above,

but from the netherworld below.

- In Chinese Taoist philosophy,

there's something known as The Three Worms.

The belief that all people are essentially

infested by three demonic parasites

that are worm-like in nature,

and they reside in our three energy centers,

the head, the chest and the abdomen.

This belief states that when someone dies,

these worms will actually leave the body

and they will transform into malevolent ghosts

that will essentially haunt the planet.

Does this thing actually add some credibility

to this idea of these three worms

that reside inside human hosts?

- [Tony] And finally, some have suggested,

this green gross out is the result of nuclear pollution.

- From Godzilla to the Incredible Hulk

to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,

green creatures born from exposure to radiation

or toxic waste are a recurring theme in popular fiction.

Could this green entity share a similarly hazardous origin?

Let's check in with our experts.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] First,

could nuclear waste really be responsible

for this neon nightmare?

[dramatic music]

- There have obviously been theories,

this is some kind of a radioactive creature.

But this animal isn't glowing

and it actually seems really healthy.

If it were subjected to nuclear waste,

we would see large lesions and injuries

and probably scarring around its body.

Seems to be fairly healthy

and have a solid coat of skin on it.

- [Tony] Well then could this creature

be connected to those infamous worms that fell from the sky?

- These were referred to as alien sky worms on social media.

It turned out that these worms

were actually just the fuzzy seed components

of poplar trees.

- They just were very worm-like in appearance.

Even with the crazy reports

of the alien sky worms versus this,

just, it doesn't look the same at all.

This creature looks almost wet in appearance.

It's very slimy and gelatinous.

- We're clearly looking at a live animal here.

And that's what makes it even more interesting.

- [Tony] So we're starting to wonder

if that folkloric demon worm theory might be true.

But then our experts solve the riddle.

- This creature is actually something

known as a ribbon worm,

which can be found all throughout the water column.

The pink structure you're seeing come out of its mouth

is actually its tongue,

but it's not necessarily a tongue,

as we think of our own tongues,

it's actually a specialized structure they use

to subdue prey.

And some of them can actually be poisonous.

- [Tony] But if our experts

have solved the mystery of what this thing is,

they haven't figured out what it's doing here.

- It's very rare to see an animal like this on a dock

or on land because typically it would be

pretty well submerged on the bottom of the ocean.

It's possible it could have been tasting or feeding on bait,

for example, that was left in the water,

and just got caught.

But it typically wouldn't be found moving across land

because it would dry out very quickly.

Being on the surface of a boat or a dock

wouldn't be a really great place to be,

if you're a ribbon worm.

[dramatic music]

- Our verdict,

this isn't some atomic monster or space creature,

just your run of the mill ribbon worm.

Likely picked up by one of the fishing boats.

But like something outta science fiction,

the ribbon worm can not only grow lost body parts,

in some cases entire new worms can grow

out of the fragments of the original.

Let's just hope these guys

don't start falling out of the sky one day.

- At the bottom of Lake Michigan,

there are 210 shipwrecks.

And those are just the ones that have been found.

The locations of hundreds of others remain a mystery.

So, when a pair of underwater explorers

found something even more mysterious down there,

we had to check it out.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] In 2022,

local maritime historian, Brendon Baillod

and diver, Dusty Klifman

are combing the depths of Lake Michigan

for a freighter that disappeared 50 years ago.

[dramatic music]

In the middle of the night,

after nearly 30 hours on the water,

a strange shape appears their sonar screen.

[dramatic music]

But it's not a shipwreck.

[dramatic music]

500 feet below the frigid surface,

several massive craters are revealed on the flat lake bed.

These multi beam sonar images reveal their full scale.

Some of the craters measure

nearly a quarter mile in diameter.

When Dusty and Brendon send an ROV

down to the depths to investigate,

it records closeups of the craggy landscape

at the base of these depressions.

- They had sort of a round or oblong, in some cases, shape

and they were pretty deep.

Most of them were 25 to 30 feet deep,

but they were huge.

- We found multiple craters all in that area,

so we weren't really sure what we were seeing.

- About 40 or so craters were discovered

and a few theories started to circulate

that they were somehow connected

to a place known as the Lake Michigan Triangle.

- [Tony] Legend has it

that the Lake Michigan triangle is marked by three spots,

Manitowoc in Wisconsin and Ludington

and Benton Harbor in Michigan.

It's an area that, like the Bermuda Triangle,

has a reputation for unexplained disappearances.

- There have been roughly 1500 ships

that have wrecked or gone missing

over the last 300 years or so.

[dramatic music]

One of the earliest recorded disappearances of a ship

occurred in 1679.

A vessel known as Le Griffon,

was heading back home near Green Bay.

It simply vanished.

No one knows what happened to it.

- [Tony] But perhaps the triangle's

most infamous vanishing took place in the air

- On June 23rd in 1950,

a northwest Orient Airlines flight 25-01

was carrying 55 people,

and it was making its trip from New York to Minneapolis,

when all of a sudden, mid-flight,

the plane simply disappeared off radar.

And essentially to this day,

no recovery of the aircraft has ever been made.

- [Tony] Do the craters in the scans

have something to do with all this?

Well, it turns out there are similar craters

in that other mystery zone we mentioned.

- One possible explanation comes from the Bermuda Triangle

and what is comically referred to as a burp of death.

And these burps of death are essentially pockets of methane

that seep out of the ocean floor

beneath the Bermuda Triangle.

- [Tony] Methane pockets are created

when marine life dies and falls to the sea floor,

getting buried.

As the remains decompose, possibly over millions of years,

they build up methane.

This increasingly pressurized gas escapes

through fissures and releases into the water.

[dramatic music]

It is believed that sudden releases or burps

destabilize the water,

causing ships to sink.

It's even theorized that methane could reach the atmosphere

and cause turbulence that could bring down an aircraft.

[dramatic music]

- Could the force of this, sort of, expulsion of methane

explain these mysterious formations?

[dramatic music]

- In 1991, fishermen in Lake Michigan

caught something truly odd in their net,

a side winder missile with a live warhead.

There was no explanation for how it got there,

but there is a history of naval training on Lake Michigan

going back to World War II.

So, another theory,

could these craters have resulted from ordinance

set off under underwater

or are the burps of death to blame?

Let's find out.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] First,

is it possible that the underwater craters

were created by an explosion,

perhaps from a naval training exercise?

[dramatic music]

- If it was a product of weapons testing,

one would expect to find evidence of shrapnel,

evidence of a pinpoint of impact spreading out.

I don't think that our current images

show that kind of signature,

so it does not look like the kind of bomb testing crater.

- [Tony] What about the burps of death?

Scientists have measured methane seep craters

around the world,

in sizes ranging from three football fields

to nearly a mile and a half.

These formations in Lake Michigan appear to vary

between 500 to about a thousand feet across.

But the photos here don't provide any smoking gun

that reveals any evidence of a burp of death.

So, the methane theory has some competition.

- Just by looking at the images alone

cannot determine whether this is methane C.

You cannot also rule out the possibility

that this is a natural phenomenon

caused by sink holes formed into the limestone beds below.

This was a highly glaciated area in the past.

So, one of the other possible ideas

is something called kettles.

Kettles are buried ice blocks

that sat there for hundreds of thousands of years.

And once the glacier retreats,

these blocks are still left behind

and they're inside the soil, so eventually they melt.

And when they melt, the roof of them just collapse

and they form these little depressions.

- [Tony] So, lots of theories here.

Picking a winner will require a deeper dive of the lake.

- After you look at all the different possibilities

and the geology and everything in the area,

you find out this needs a lot more research

to figure out what's really going on

at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

[dramatic music]

- Our verdict,

unexplained formations.

We agree with Dr. Anderson that we can't know for sure

what's going on here

until there's a closer analysis of these craters.

For now, we'll have to stifle the burp theory

along with the rest.

- The European Space Agency or ESA,

is basically Europe's NASA.

And as is the case with NASA,

there are some who believe ESA knows

more about what's really out there

than it's willing to let on.

For proof, they point to a video of a space encounter

that even stunned one of the astronauts.

[dramatic music]

[indistinct astronaut radio chatter]

- [Tony] November, 2014,

Italy's first female astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti,

is onboard the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft.

[indistinct astronaut radio chatter]

As it approaches the

International Space Station to dock

something catches Cristoforetti by surprise.

[dramatic music]

The video feed from the Soyuz capsule captures the moment.

You can even hear Cristoforetti cry out.

- [Tony] But what is she reacting to?

After scouring the video,

many believe she may have gotten a closer look

at one strange object

that made its appearance just a few minutes earlier.

[dramatic music]

Did you see it?

Let's zoom in.

[dramatic music]

The object moves in a straight path,

down the center of the screen,

apparently just beyond the ISS.

When ESA releases the footage,

it ignites a frenzy of online speculation.

Did Cristoforetti cry out because she saw a UFO

or did she see something else up there?

Other astronauts have sworn that we are not alone.

- Ed Mitchell was the lunar module pilot of Apollo 14

and the sixth man to walk on the moon.

And he maintained, for years,

that the government had secrets about alien life

and was withholding it from the public.

- [Tony] But this object is a little small

to be a spaceship, isn't it?

[dramatic music]

Well, its size might actually make a lot of sense

if it's an alien probe.

[dramatic music]

- Harvard physicist, Avi Loeb, likens these small craft

to dandelion seeds coming off of a mother ship

that are going out to do reconnaissance

or to gather samples

before returning back to that larger ship.

Some believe that what we're seeing in this video

is one of these dandelion seeds.

[dramatic music]

- A fun fact,

Samantha Cristoforetti is the first person

to brew a cup of espresso in space.

But does she also make history as the first astronaut

to encounter space aliens on video?

Let's ask our experts

to sip on this.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] Back to that size issue.

Since the UFO is relatively small,

could it just be a mere camera artifact?

- Camera artifacts like lens flair

are typically not linear artifacts.

Like they don't move in a straight line,

they move at a kind of a curved speed

or they look themselves to be curved

because they're reflections of curved elements

within the camera itself.

And this just looks like a little dot

moving in a straight line.

So, it doesn't really look like any type of lens flair.

- [Tony] So, we believe

it's a real object in space.

The next question is, could it really be an alien probe?

Well, there's a problem with that theory.

[dramatic music]

- It fits more in the mundane side of things

because it's just traveling in a straight line

and just looking like it's just

passing by the space station.

- [Tony] That straight line means

this thing isn't necessarily under intelligent control.

Instead it may simply be following an orbital path,

like a satellite.

But hang on.

- The odds of actually seeing a satellite

outside the space station are extremely small

because satellites actually all exist at a different orbit

to the space station,

'cause otherwise they'd be bumping into it.

So, it doesn't really look to me

like it could possibly be a satellite of any sort.

- [Tony] Then what are we seeing here?

- I think what we're looking at here

is something that we quite often see in space videos,

which is a piece of ice.

Because it's very cold in space,

either the rocket propellants

that are used to maneuver the space station,

the Soyuz module,

or from venting air or waste from the space station.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] If this is something so commonplace,

why would it shock a trained astronaut?

- [Tony] Short answer,

it didn't.

- Given the astronaut gasp, minutes later,

I don't think that they're related.

- I don't think that was anything other than her

simply being swept up by the beauty of the moment

and she simply cried out in wonder.

[dramatic music]

- Our verdict,

ice and one awesome view.

We looked into it and Cristoforetti has said

she was reacting to the sight of a beautiful sunset,

reflected off the ISS.

In fact, she described the sight as almost alien.

Do with that what you will.

- Erie, Pennsylvania

is home to numerous ghost stories and folklore.

And while most of these encounters

are reported by word of mouth,

we may have video evidence to confirm

that there is something eerie going on in Erie.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] February, 2024, Erie, Pennsylvania.

A mother lies quietly in bed as her baby rests,

silently, in its nearby crib.

This nanny cam captures any movements with a green outline,

but everything remains relatively still

until suddenly.

[eerie music]

The blanket next to the mother seems to be pulled

by some invisible force.

It creeps down, scaring the woman enough

to grab her baby and flee the bedroom.

[eerie music]

- Take a look at the bed's pillow.

- [Tony] An imprint seems to form there

in the shape of a human head

as the blanket mysteriously moves.

Dad, Jorge Cruz, says, this ghostly activity

was just the tip of the iceberg

when it comes to what he and his family experienced.

- We started hearing like footsteps

and we started hearing scratches.

Next thing you know,

couches was being lifted off the ground.

Table were flipping upside down.

Refrigerator doors opening and closing.

My daughter being dragged from her crib.

- [Tony] After determining from the landlord

that this had never happened here before,

Cruz wondered if a ghost had somehow

become personally attached to his family.

[eerie music]

- Every culture across time seems to have some conception

of a parasitic ghost,

the revenant or a spirit that might attach itself

to an individual.

These are lonely spirits,

desperate for some kind of human contact.

- [Tony] Perhaps the most famous example

of a parasitic ghost is the well-documented case

of Doris Bither from the 1970s.

[eerie music]

- Doris was a single mom with four children.

She had a very rough life.

The household was filled with stress.

And she began reporting being physically assaulted

by unseen hands, violently touching her, shoving her.

It was very, very disturbing

and very frightening for her and her kids.

- [Tony] Two parapsychologists from UCLA

investigated Doris's claims,

which would become popularized

by the bestselling novel and film, "The Entity."

- They observed the ghostly phenomena

that she was describing.

They took photographs,

they took electromagnetic measurements.

And they were unable to reach an explanation.

People wonder, as with the case of Doris's ghost,

is this a video of some kind of supernatural entity

unwilling to let go?

[eerie music]

- Doris Bither eventually fled her house in Culver City,

but she claimed the haunting followed her.

Could this video be evidence of a similar spectral parasite?

Let's see what our experts think.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] Could this video be proof

of some parasitic spirit whose energy

has attached itself to this family?

Physics may hold the answer.

- Now, when you see the videotape,

there's a hook, of some sort,

that is yanking the cloth in that direction.

If this was really a ghost moving the cloth,

the cloth would've moved from all directions.

Like when you get up in the morning

and you move the bedsheets, everything moves.

- I'm wondering if this blanket wasn't pulled

by something very thin like fishing wire.

You'll notice that the blanket is bunched up,

in such a way, where it would make it easier

to conceal any trickery,

as opposed to a blanket just lying flat.

- And as far as that pillow is concerned,

- There are ways to achieve this effect

with practical effects.

Maybe some sort of balloon that's inflating the pillow

and then deflates and is remote controlled in some way.

- The motion of the pillow, the motion of the blanket,

the running of the woman,

all of them were carefully choreographed, I think.

- [Tony] Choreographed by someone

with some experience in misdirection perhaps.

You see it turns out Jorge makes his living as a magician.

- I think it's really interesting

that the individual involved with this video

is actually a stage magician.

When somebody has a magic career,

they know how to pull off tricks like this.

[dramatic music]

- Our verdict, we agree with our experts.

This is a hoax.

And a pretty good one at that.

Jorge, you get an A for effort,

but it's time to put this ghost story to bed.

- There's a world famous spring in Lourdes, France

that's said to have healing properties.

It's visited by millions of people every year,

but we're looking at a different French spring

in this next story.

One that may be even more of a riddle.

In fact, its mysteries might literally be bottomless.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] October, 2019, Tonnerre, France.

Professional cave diver, Pierre-Eric Deseigne,

plunges into a spring called the Fosse Dionne,

which translates to Divine Pit.

[dramatic music]

On his descent, he captures this video.

And the spring seems to get deeper and deeper and deeper,

but he never gets to the bottom.

And he's not the first to be frustrated.

[dramatic music]

Over the years, so many have tried

to find the source of the spring,

that the town had to shut it down and for good reason.

[dramatic music]

[Pierre-Eric speaking in foreign language]

Legend says the spring is bottomless.

And the tale stretches back to at least the seventh century

when a monk, Saint Jean de Reome

allegedly discovered something sinister there.

- The story goes that Reome is essentially sent, by God,

on this kind of holy quest to the area where Fosse Dionne is

and is tasked with sort of making it safe.

But when he gets there, he discovers

that inside this kind of cavernous area

resides this horrible, terrible monster from mythology

known as the basilisk.

So, Reome, sort of protected by the power of God

goes and faces the basilisk

and essentially kills it and defeats it.

- [Tony] While the legend of Fosse Dionne

is unique, it is not the only spring in Europe

rumored to be bottomless.

- The Czech Republic is home to the Hranice Abyss

which is thought to be the largest fresh water cave

in existence.

No one knows the depths of its waters.

[dramatic music]

In 2022, scientists attempted to probe

the bottom of the spring using a submersible.

It submerged to about 1500 feet,

at which point its transmission conked out.

As with the Hranice Abyss,

we are still awaiting discovery

of the bottom of Fosse Dionne.

- Although Fosse Dionne's source is a mystery,

we do know it is powerful.

The spring spews out an average

of 82 gallons of water per second.

Now we're not saying it's bottomless,

but the mystery here is how deep is it

and where is all this water coming from?

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] Underwater springs like Fosse Dionne

form when rivers flood,

pushing groundwater up through complex underground caves,

until water flows out at the surface.

These cave systems can get huge,

continually growing through erosion.

The largest in the United States

is more than a whopping 45 miles long.

- Only experts should go into these environments,

trying to figure out where they're going.

Because there's so much unknown,

one mistake and you could be a statistic.

[dramatic music]

- [Tony] To safely locate

the source of Fosse Dionne,

scientists injected a traceable dye

into the nearby Lana River, 27 miles from the spring.

Then they found traces of that dye flowing

from Fosse Dionne's waters.

- The main source may be higher,

it could be a river that's up in the mountain.

- [Tony] So, what did Pierre-Eric find down there?

[Pierre-Eric speaking in foreign language]

- Pierre-Eric didn't discover the source

of the mysterious spring nor any basilisks,

but he's not giving up.

[Pierre-Eric speaking in foreign language]

- So, how deep is the spring

and where's the water coming from?

Our verdict,

undetermined.

And while divers and dyes

haven't gotten to the bottom of it yet,

if any other bright ideas spring to mind,

we'll let you know.

And that's our show for tonight.

Thank you so much for watching.

And remember to keep those cameras rolling.