Original subtitles

- Tonight on "The Proof Is Out There."

Did this video capture something off-world in the Amazon?

- You start to see a face.

It looks like its eyes and mouth are opening, are changing.

- [Tony] And is there a connection

to a famous missing explorer?

- It's rumored that he actually believed this

to be an outpost for some sort of extraterrestrial beings.

- [Tony] Some people thought

that this slab of meat was undead.

- It was speculated that the cow that this meat came from

was a victim of one of these folkloric demons.

- [Tony] Are these strange patterns discovered

on a lake bed a message?

- A lot of people online believe

you have these artificial patterns being dug

for the purpose of communication

with some otherworldly entity.

- [Tony] And does the murderous tale told on this rock

solve one of the greatest mysteries in American history?

- This stone, many believed, could provide a clue

for what happened to the lost colony of Roanoke.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tony] Around the globe are videos,

[witness screaming]

photos,

[entity screeching]

and sounds that defy explanation.

[air squeaking] [suspenseful music continues]

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

who made them or how they operate.

- [Tony] What are they?

- [Expert] Some sort of bizarre mutation.

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

- Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.

[fire whooshing] [victim thumping]

- 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.

- [Witness] It's coming towards us.

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

[vehicle thumping] - 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.

[suspenseful music]

Good evening and welcome to "The Proof Is Out There."

We know the Amazon rainforest

is home to some of the planet's most exotic creatures,

but could it also be sheltering life forms

not of this earth?

April 23rd, 2024, a group of conservationists flies a drone

over an undisclosed location in the Amazon.

Later when the team reviews the footage,

something odd appears, a spooky, alien-like creature

seems to be hiding among the green canopy of the forest.

Did you catch it?

The footage is blurry, but when we enhance it,

we see what appears to be a gray-colored being

nestled between the trees.

It looks to have a large bulbous head, a long thin body,

and with these oversized almond-shaped eyes,

it immediately invites comparison

to the classic gray aliens described by alleged abductees.

The footage adds to a long pattern

of strange Amazonian sightings.

Brazilian researcher Rony Vernet recently documented UFOs

near the villages of Amazonian indigenous tribes,

videos our experts still can't explain.

- It makes sense that a hyper- intelligent alien species

might use the Amazon to their advantage.

If you were an alien species

that didn't wanna panic the local human beings

living on the planet,

I think that is a reasonable spot to hide out.

- [Tony] Another theory is that this creature

is returning to a place

where aliens had prior contact with humans.

- In the early 1920s,

there was a British explorer named Percy Fawcett

and he actually uncovered an ancient Portuguese manuscript

that described an absolutely wondrous Amazonian city.

The city supposedly had crazy advanced architecture

and also very advanced knowledge

of astronomy and mathematics.

- [Tony] In his cryptic journals,

Fawcett hinted that the City of Z

was built by a long-lost advanced civilization

of spiritually-evolved entities.

Some believe he was referring to beings not of this earth.

- It's rumored that he actually believed this

to be an outpost for some sort of extraterrestrial beings

that had visited Earth millions of years ago.

- Some people have speculated

that perhaps that's why there are so many UFO sightings

and such alien interests in the Amazon.

[air whooshing]

- After years of searching for the Lost City of Z,

Percy Fawcett and his son vanished deep in the Amazon.

While many believe they were killed

by hostile tribes or succumbed to disease,

others speculate Fawcett

may have made first contact with beings not of this world.

Could this creature be connected?

Let's see what our experts think.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

Are we just not seeing the forest for the trees?

Some foliage can look like animals,

like this supposed dog man creature

that turned out to be a bush.

- As I rewatched it,

I did see something move and I do think

that it is actually something living in the forest.

- [Tony] This is what we're seeing. Here, you can

detect the creature's head turning to the left,

but could this really be an incognito extraterrestrial?

Before we run too far with that notion,

we need to rule out some other potential explanations.

- Although I do see resemblance physically to an alien,

I think there are much plausible

and logical answers as to what this is.

- There is a tremendous diversity of primates,

from capuchins to howler monkeys,

[monkey howling]

but they have very distinctive facial features

that would differentiate the monkeys

from what I'm seeing here.

This could be a young bird perched high up in the canopy

in perhaps a nest.

- The Amazon has many bird species.

One of them is the harpy eagle,

which is a really large bird of prey.

It looks like its eyes and mouth are opening or changing,

but I think shadow effects from light,

because remember, we're in the canopy here,

there's sun going through leaves.

So I think that's what we're seeing

that's creating that appearance

rather than an actual alien with a mouth and eyes.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

- Our verdict?

This is no alien, but a harpy eagle,

one of the largest and most powerful eagles in the world.

While it may not be extraterrestrial,

the harpy eagle is a legend unto itself.

Named after the harpies of Greek mythology,

these birds can build nests about five feet wide

and have talons as long as a grizzly bear's claws.

[air whooshing]

Now let's head home to North America

and one of the most important

and secretive sites in the United States.

The White Sands Missile Range

provides the United States armed forces

with the world's top research,

testing and training facilities,

and some believe this next video proves that research,

testing and training, has involved UFOs.

[suspenseful music]

In the mid-1990s in New Mexico,

a camera man is positioned in the desert

outside the White Sands Missile Range

when he aims his camera up at the sky and catches this.

A bright white object plummets diagonally toward the ground,

but when it strikes the earth, it doesn't explode.

Instead, it bounces, shooting back up into the air.

It almost looks like it's taking off into the sky

until finally, it descends once more,

this time exploding in a shower of debris.

Take another look at that bounce and crash.

This strange footage emerged at a 1997 UFO conference

and has been raising questions ever since.

- Some people have now speculated

that what we're seeing here is a UFO that has crashed

on the White Sands Missile Range,

one of the most mysterious, highly sensitive and secretive

US military installations in the United States

and quite possibly the world.

- [Tony] For this reason, people have speculated

that whoever took this video

worked for a secret government program.

- My colleague, who was a senior intelligence official,

testified to the American people and to Congress under oath.

- I was informed in the

course of my official duties

of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval

and reverse engineering program.

- [Tony] David Grusch says it all started

when the US government came into possession of a craft

that crashed in 1930s Italy.

- There's a memorandum by Mussolini himself

threatening people with their life

if they were to talk publicly about this crash.

It wasn't until after World War II

that the United States allegedly gained control

of this crash material.

- [Tony] Since then, Grusch says the US government

has allegedly been attempting

to reverse engineer that material.

- He actually testified that there is a secret arms race

that we have with other nations to try to crack the code,

if you will, on this technology before anybody else does.

- [Tony] So is this bouncing UFO a failed test flight?

Keep in mind, UFOs have been reported to bounce or skip.

Pilot Kenneth Arnold,

one of the earliest eyewitnesses of the UFO phenomenon,

said the UFO's he saw moved like a saucer would

if you skipped it across the water.

But there's another theory,

that it's not a reverse- engineered craft we've built,

but an actual alien craft crash landing.

Turns out there have been other sightings in this area.

- Believe it or not,

there is documentation from the US government

where UFOs were seen so common

in and around the White Sands Missile Range area

that there was a huge investigation conducted.

So listen to this.

"December 1948 through May 1950.

Phenomena have continuously occurred

in the New Mexico skies during the past 18 months

and are continuing to occur,

and these phenomena are occurring in the vicinity

of sensitive military and government installations."

[air whooshing]

- Based on what Elizondo said, we found another 1950 memo,

this one from the FBI.

It says three so-called flying saucers

had been recovered in New Mexico

and it indicates that our own high-powered radar

may have been what caused them to crash.

It seems something was going on then,

but what about this video?

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

To keep this investigation grounded,

we first asked if the video could be a hoax.

- It did come from some sort of tape,

but it has been recompressed, it has been processed.

When it gets to the last segment of the video,

there is a stabilization that was applied.

The danger with that is you are creating pixels

throughout that area that may not originally

have been in that evidence.

We would need that original tape or that native file

to be able to definitively confirm or deny authenticity.

So in this case, it's inconclusive.

- [Tony] So there's room for doubt,

but a 2024 report from a Pentagon whistleblower

may support the theory

that this could be a reverse-engineered craft.

It alleges that a government program

called Immaculate Constellation

collects and conceals UFO data in an effort so secret

the whistleblower fears execution for exposing it.

But just because the government might be hiding UFO videos,

it doesn't mean this is one of them.

- It doesn't quite match what we would consider

to be a traditional UFO

because it has what looks like some type

of propellant coming out of the tail,

and that is pushing it forward.

- [Tony] That matters because it's indicative

of a combustion engine, which produces exhaust.

By contrast, UFOs are thought

to have more advanced methods of propulsion.

- I would say 99.9% of the UFOs that we know of

don't leave any type of heat trail

or heat signature behind it or around it.

So it's probably a conventional construct that was built

to test out something at the White Sands Missile Range.

- [Tony] So what might that something be?

[missile whooshing]

- I think the luminous object that we see here

is not an object at all.

That's an artifact of the propulsion system of a missile

that as it's entering a terminal phase,

it skips off the ground and doesn't explode,

and then eventually comes back down and explodes.

- [Tony] A missile test at a missile range makes sense,

but is it consistent with the video?

Look closely, the object appears to pull up

as it careens toward the ground

as if attempting to avoid an impact.

- I would not hope to hear anything

about what was tested at White Sands anytime soon

because if they're testing something unusual

beyond a missile, we're not gonna hear about it.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

- Our verdict?

Unexplained object.

While we considered McMillan's missile theory,

this video is just lacking too much information

to draw an informed conclusion.

The video's inscrutability stands as a testament

to the military's ability to keep some things secret.

- Who doesn't love a good steak?

In 2022, Americans ate more than 13 million tons of beef,

followed closely by the Chinese,

who consumed close to 12 million.

But the next time you're in China,

you may want your beef cooked well done,

especially after seeing our next story.

December 2017, Fushun City, China,

a shopper returns home from her trip to the local butcher,

but when she throws her prized slab of meat

on the cutting board, something unappetizing happens.

The beef begins to twitch.

First, a piece of the midsection moves slightly,

but before long, the whole filet begins pulsating.

The slab of mysterious meat even appears to be breathing.

Many online speculated that the strange acting meat

could have been artificially grown inside a lab.

- There's a new technology called cellular agriculture

where you basically grow meat.

They take real muscle tissue from an animal

and then they grow more muscle tissue in a petri dish.

- [Tony] While others thought something, admittedly far out,

could be at play.

- Chinese folklore has a demon called a jiangshi.

It's kind of a cross between a vampire and a zombie.

Some people have speculated that the cow

that this meat came from

was a victim of one of these folkloric demons.

- [Tony] Just like Western vampires,

jiangshi are said to feed on the life force of the living.

According to some legends,

they are corpses whose physical bodies were reanimated

and puppeteered by a necromancer,

someone who can raise the dead.

- They can go after your pets, they can go after livestock,

and it just like wreaks havoc upon the environment.

You don't want one of these things in your neighborhood.

[air whooshing]

- Many people who watched this video were reminded

of a mad cow disease outbreak from the '90s,

where holes developed in the brains of infected animals,

causing them to act nervous, uncoordinated, even violent.

But in those cases, it was primarily the animal's brain

and spinal cord that were affected,

while the muscle tissue remained untouched.

So why is this meat twitching?

Let's check in with the experts.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

First, we checked to see if this meat

could be infested with worms, like many online suggested.

- There is a worm called trichinella, which is a parasite

that you can get from eating undercooked or raw meat.

Now, what people should know

and understand about trichinella

is that they're actually microscopic parasites.

So to think that something that small

would have the strength to move the muscle

of a piece of meat that big would be impossible.

- [Tony] And as far as the reanimating legends

of China's jiangshi are concerned,

even if those stories were true, in this case,

that's not what's happening.

- The Chinese folklore showed sentience and communication,

where the brain is still connected to the muscle

and commanding it on what to do.

That's not what we're seeing here.

This is a piece of meat

that's just spontaneously contracting.

- [Tony] So could this be a strange side effect

of meat manufactured in a lab?

- Now, lab grown meat doesn't look like this.

Lab grown meat is mushy, it's slushy, it's minced.

It looks like ground beef.

It doesn't look like these beautiful long muscle fibers.

- [Tony] Then what exactly is going on here?

- This is really spooky,

but the fact that it's still twitching actually indicates

that the quality of meat is really good

and that indeed it is really fresh.

The animal must have been recently butchered,

and it's likely that she put salt on it.

- Salt is actually sodium chloride

and these muscle cells have sodium channels on them

and if you douse 'em with salt,

it's gonna open up all those channels

and fire off the contractions.

- But this won't happen for much longer.

This only happens for a short period of time

after the animal is butchered.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

- Our verdict?

Salted muscle spasms.

Our experts agree, while it's very freaky,

this is nothing more than meat

from a recently butchered animal,

so recently its muscle cells are still able

to react to sodium chloride,

but if it's still twitching after a couple of days,

we may have a whole new story on our hands.

- As we've seen,

plenty of strange stories come out of China,

alleged dragon sightings, alien egg implants,

and that mystery meat we investigated earlier.

But if you think we dug deep on those stories,

wait till you see what some calling a sunken civilization.

November 11th, 2022, Yueyang, China.

Extreme heat and low rainfall

have caused a catastrophic drought in Dongting Lake.

But when a local resident flies a drone over the lake bed,

he wasn't expecting to find this.

At the bottom of the dried out lake, a pattern is revealed.

Seen from above, it looks like an enormous maze

has been carved into the lake bed's mudflats.

Local residents say that each of these huge,

strangely-shaped segments

is roughly the size of a soccer field.

- The footage went viral

on the Chinese social media app Douyin,

where videos of the patterns exploded

and received millions upon millions of views.

We had a lot of speculation as to what caused these.

- [Tony] Some wondered whether these exposed patterns

are anything like the mysterious Nasca lines of Peru.

- The Nasca lines were built thousands of years ago,

and when viewed from the sky,

you had images of various animals

and people and geometric patterns,

and some speculated that these were essentially a sort

of landing pad for alien spaceships.

- [Tony] Another theory is that these remnants

are connected to a lost continent called Mu,

popularized by British writer James Churchward.

- The idea is very similar

to the lost content of Atlantis.

Churchward did some traveling to India

where he began visiting various temples and monasteries

and he befriends this high priest in this temple,

who shows him these strange tablets that allegedly show

and describe this long-lost continent.

Churchward became convinced Mu existed somewhere

in the Pacific Ocean.

[air whooshing]

- This wouldn't be the first time

that an ancient Chinese ruin was found underwater.

In 2001, scuba divers stumbled upon an entire city

from the seventh century

submerged within the depths of a lake.

The ancient underwater city of Shicheng

was declared a protected historical relic.

Have we found another monument here?

Let's ask the experts.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

First, is this an ancient astronaut landing site similar

to what some believed is the purpose of the Nasca lines?

- This shows me no evidence

that this was any kind of a runway whatsoever,

and there's no evidence of any machinery

or anything left behind.

For example, I mean, the Mars rovers leave tracks behind.

They're actually shedding pieces of wire

or pieces of insulation,

but you see nothing like that in this region.

- [Tony] Could there be some connection

to the lost civilization of Mu?

The evidence doesn't seem to suggest so.

- The problem with that is that Mu, like Atlantis,

was supposed to be a fantastic,

very advanced civilization,

and what we see here on the ground,

if it's a settlement at all,

is a very humble and modest one, mostly loose gravel,

and that is no way to set a foundation,

not the kind of thing we would expect out of Mu.

- [Tony] Is it possible that what we're seeing

was caused by some natural underwater force,

like this artistic puffer fish

that we featured in a previous episode,

which sculpted sand on the sea floor

into beguiling patterns?

- I cannot think of a process

that would've created these elbow joints

and the little spots

and in a perfect rectangle or square like this.

This is almost certainly the hands of man.

- [Tony] If that's true,

who's responsible for building these structures,

and why'd they do it?

- The official conclusion of the Chinese government

is that these represent illegal fishing operations

involving short fences that trap the fish

during seasonal inundation.

- [Tony] A fish trap works by using water currents

to guide fish into a confined area where they become stuck.

Then the fish can easily be harvested at low tide.

But could there be something, well,

fishy about this explanation?

- I don't think the Chinese government

has a great track record

of properly publicly identifying unexplained things.

The government's conclusion

that something this geometrically complex

is simply to capture fish seems lacking in my opinion.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

- Our verdict?

Unexplained construction.

While we agree with Anderson and Barnhart

that this isn't Mu or an alien landing site,

there's no concrete evidence telling us exactly what it is,

who made it, or why.

- In 1587, about 120 English colonists founded a settlement

on Roanoke Island off the coast

of what is now North Carolina.

Three years later when a ship came to check on them,

they had all disappeared.

Can a stone found in the 1930s

finally solve this enduring mystery?

September 1937, Edenton, North Carolina.

Tourist Louis Hammond is taking a walk in the woods

along the Chowan River when he suddenly comes across this.

It's a stone with faded etchings.

On one side there's an inscription written by a woman

with the initials EWD,

saying her husband and child had passed away.

On the back, she writes that all but seven

of the Roanoke colonists were killed by Native Americans.

Hammond brought the stone to experts at Emory University.

- Right off the bat, Emory made a faculty

investigative team to examine this.

And so, you had

English professors and history professors

and scientists on the team.

They spent five days with this guy quizzing him,

and at the end, the historian at Emory,

he believed this is a real message from Eleanor Dare.

- The stone was signed EWD,

which was assumed to be Eleanor Dare,

John White's daughter.

John White was the leader of the Roanoke colony.

- [Tony] Until Dare's stone came along,

the only clue to what happened to colonists

was an eerie message found later at the settlement.

It said "Croatoan," which was the name of a local tribe.

- One theory is that the colonists actually moved inland

and were absorbed into local Native American tribes.

Others believed that they moved inland

and were actually killed by Native American tribes.

- [Tony] Believe it or not, another theory comes to us

from a clue scrolled invisible ink.

- In 2012, researchers were working with the British Museum

and they discovered this map

that was apparently created by John White.

The map had an invisible symbol on it that was created

with some kind of liquid,

and it's believed that this symbol indicated

where the Roanoke colony planned to make its capital.

- [Tony] Experts say that this symbol is of a fort.

- It was about 50 miles inland

from where the colonists originally settled.

So possibly they believe

that's where the members of the Roanoke colony were headed

when they left the island where they had been living.

- [Tony] Could John White's map tell us what happened

to the colonists?

For now, the stone remains the one piece

of archaeological evidence that spells out

what might have happened to these lost souls.

[air whooshing]

After the discovery of the Dare Stone,

a $500 reward was offered for anyone

who found anything similar.

A number of people came forward

with their own stones, like this one,

but their discoveries were all deemed forgeries.

So is the original Dare Stone real

and can it help us figure out just what happened

to these lost colonists once and for all?

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

Is it possible that the Dare Stone,

like the forgeries that cropped up in its wake,

is also just a hoax?

- People that have looked at the letters themselves

are doubtful that they came from the time period

of the colony,

because it's not the kind of script

that the average person would write in

during the late 1500s.

- People have suggested

that maybe a chemical was used on the stone

to make it look like it's weathered.

Well, that's not readily available in the 1930s.

Plus, you can't really fake having edges

of etching worn down.

When you carve into a rock, you wanna leave behind something

that you can easily read.

But over time, those really sharp edges

are going to show examples of weathering.

It's gonna start not being so sharp on the edges.

- [Tony] So the stone may or may not be real,

but what about its message?

Was the colony wiped out in an attack or assimilated?

- I would think if I was a great chief

that had decimated this colony of Europeans,

that those artifacts would be highly prized,

and I'd be showing them off,

except those artifacts don't ever show up again.

- [Tony] Or do they?

In June 2025,

archaeologists announced they discovered iron flakes

in 16th and 17th century soil layers on Hatteras Island,

near where the settlers disappeared.

They say these flakes are evidence of blacksmithing,

which wasn't known to Native Americans of that era

and believe it proves

that the missing colonists were assimilated.

But the discovery of a fort drawn in invisible link

on John White's map suggests yet another possible fate.

- The map was recently reexamined in the British Museum

and they found a fort-like structure about 50 miles inland.

Recent excavations have also found artifacts

at this location that are distinctly European.

And so, they haven't yet found anything

that they can directly tie back to Roanoke,

but it's an interesting possibility

that really they just moved and you couldn't find them.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

- Our verdict?

Unexplained.

Like our experts, we're not only stumped

as to what happened to the colonists,

but the question of the Dare Stone's authenticity

still appears to be uncertain,

and there are no supporting artifacts

to confirm its murderous narrative.

In short, we're between a stone

and a hard place on this one.

- Antarctica is a place of extremes,

an ice sheet covers 98% of the continent,

and it remains, arguably,

one of the most unexplored places on the planet.

So when we saw the weird iceberg in this next video,

we had to ask, what does it mean?

October 16th, 2018,

the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

Operation Icebridge,

NASA's longest-running aerial survey of polar ice,

is flying over this 47,000- square-mile ice sheet.

As the plane surveys the frozen coastline,

something strange appears on the horizon,

and the team captures this.

A massive perfectly- cut rectangular iceberg

stands out in the surrounding sea ice.

Let's take a closer look.

It's 90-degree angles appear so precise

and the walls of the iceberg so smooth,

it looks like nature operating with such precision

that this rectangle must have a meaning.

- Some believe that this is an example

of something known as sacred geometry,

which is the idea that geometric shapes in nature

are sending some kind of message

or have some kind of symbolic meaning.

- [Tony] Perhaps one of the most famous examples

of sacred geometry is what's known as the golden rectangle.

Its sides are in a mathematical proportion

called the golden ratio.

This ratio, roughly one to 1.618,

is said to create a sense of visual balance.

- Is someone trying to tell us something

through these shapes?

Some even believe that they are the building blocks

of the universe.

- [Tony] And it's not just an earthly phenomenon.

Beguiling rectangular shapes

have even been found in the cosmos.

- There's the Red Rectangle nebula HD 44179,

which is a star 2,300 light years away

in the constellation Monoceros.

This star is dying,

and it is shedding material out into space,

and that material creates a rectangular shape

around the star.

- [Tony] Or, if it's not nature,

some are asking if the iceberg in Antarctica

might be part of an unknown structure.

- In 2018, a journalist named Linda Howe

interviewed someone who was a first lieutenant commander

with Naval Special Operations,

and he claimed that in August 2003,

he and his team were sent out

to the southeast coast of Antarctica

to investigate a structure sticking up 18 feet out

of the ice.

When they went inside,

they supposedly saw an illuminated space with walls

that had a bunch of intricate symbols on them,

but they didn't look like

any hieroglyphics we would be familiar with.

[air whooshing]

- In the 1982 John Carpenter classic, "The Thing,"

a team of scientists in Antarctica

discover an alien spacecraft

and encounter a fearsome extraterrestrial being

that wreaks havoc on their research station.

Whether or not what we're seeing on the Larsen C Ice Shelf

is something to be feared,

it certainly merits more investigation.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

Is this remarkable rectangle just random

or proof of sacred geometry?

- I tend to think that throughout the universe,

you are gonna find different kinds of geometries,

but they're not sacred.

- [Tony] So what does science say

about our Red Rectangular nebula?

Well, for one thing, despite its name,

it's not a rectangle, it's an X.

- My personal point of view

is that we're looking at a double star system,

two neutron stars rotating around each other.

Each star has a north pole and a south pole,

and when they circulate around each other,

it creates the illusion of an X.

- [Tony] The star at the center could actually be two stars

that orbit each other.

Left to themselves, the forces of nature

can randomly create some remarkable shapes

the human mind interprets as intentional,

especially with ice.

Look at this iceberg

that bears a striking resemblance to Batman,

or this ice grim reaper created

by a winter storm in Ontario.

And as for our rectangle?

- In this case, we're looking at a tabular iceberg.

It takes hundreds of years for this iceberg to become flat

through wind and storms that have moved through the area.

For that reason, when a rift happens,

the rift will often create those rectangular cuts

that we see.

The rift probably happened two, three, maybe four years ago.

The reason we have such sharp 90-degree angles

is because it hasn't been weathered enough.

- [Tony] In other words, this tabular iceberg is too young.

Over time, wind and weather will reshape it

into something less than perfect.

- [Juan] The wind, the waves,

the sea spray has not taken a toll on those sharp edges.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

- Our verdict?

Natural, young iceberg.

As for the geometry,

it's certainly impressive, but sacred?

That's up to you.

- Deep in the Himalayan mountains,

more than 16,000 feet above sea level

is a secluded body of water

that some call Skeleton Lake.

Why Skeleton Lake?

Well, that's the mystery.

1942, Chamoli, Uttarakhand, India.

A forest ranger is patrolling along Roopkund Lake

in the Himalayan Mountains

when he discovers something disturbing.

Photos from his moment of discovery aren't available,

but here's something better.

This is recent footage

of skeletal remains scattered throughout the site.

There are anywhere from 300 to 800 human skeletons here,

and no one's quite sure why.

Was it some ancient massacre, a bizarre disaster?

- When I saw the skeletal remains,

it was a mystery to be solved.

We wanted to know more about them,

like why these skeletons

are lying out there

in such a huge number.

We do not exactly know how many individuals are there.

- [Tony] The area around the lake has been excavated

and studied by researchers for years,

but no one has unlocked its secrets.

- One theory is that the skeletons at the lake

actually belong to dead soldiers,

and we've seen something similar

in a different area of India.

In 2014, literally hundreds of skeletons

were discovered at the bottom of a well in Punjab.

Experts found that those skeletons actually belonged

to Indian soldiers who had been executed by British forces

following a mutiny in 1857.

- [Tony] Mass graves have been discovered around the world

as murderous regimes have tried

to cover up their war crimes.

- An act of war isn't the only theory.

Some actually believe that the skeletons belong to people

who are victims of a natural disaster,

specifically a hailstorm.

The deadliest hailstorm on record

occurred in northern India

in April 1888.

Some 246 people died,

and the hailstones were said to be as big as oranges.

Could something similar have happened

to the people who ended up at Skeleton Lake?

[air whooshing]

- There's a growing concern about theft at Roopkund Lake.

Tourists have been swiping

skeletal souvenirs from the site.

Experts say that if the bones aren't protected,

they may gradually vanish in the years to come.

But how did these bones get there in the first place?

Let's ask our experts.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

A 2019 forensic examination of the remains

revealed even more mysteries.

- They did a study that included radiocarbon dating and DNA,

and what they found was there were males,

females, and some died just a few hundred years ago,

and some died more than a thousand.

Also, the vast majority come from South Asia.

However, there is some DNA

from people that originated in Crete,

which is thousands of miles away.

- [Tony] But what force could have taken so many lives

from such wide ranging locations and time periods?

- Most myths are born out of a fragment of truth.

In this case, it may be that this area

has a lot of hailstorms, and in 2004,

an expedition went to this location

and they found deep fissures on their heads

and their skulls and on their upper bodies

likely caused from a tremendous hailstorm,

and that's probably what killed them.

- India is notorious for having very large hail,

hail that spans from two to four inches in diameter.

Imagine baseballs falling from the sky.

That can create a lot of damage to someone's property

or even lead to the loss of life.

- You can see the terrain is, is that it's very rugged.

You got ice on all four sides here,

which means when it gets a little bit warmer,

some of that ice melts

and then you'll get a lot of avalanches or landslide debris.

All those people down below or up at near the top,

they'd all be just carried

or buried instantly down that area

at the bottom of the lake.

- [Tony] So the evidence points to this lake being a place

that's killed people across different eras

and from wildly different places,

almost as though it carries a curse.

- When you have people

from different places and different centuries,

there's a possibility

that there were different causes of death.

So there's more research that needs to be done.

- [Tony] As to why these bones have been arranged in piles,

that's one part of this mystery we can solve.

- It's clear to me that people in the past

have taken those bones together

and just stacked them out of maybe reverence for 'em.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful music]

- Our verdict?

Deadly hail.

And by the way, some have wondered

if the discovery of Greek DNA here

comes from descendants

of Alexander the Great's invasion of India,

but the evidence doesn't support that.

So for now, the research continues.

But what do you think?

Send us an email and let us know.

That's our show for tonight.

Thank you so much for watching

and as always, keep those cameras rolling.

[suspenseful music]