Original subtitles

- Tonight on "The Proof Is Out There."

Did Nazi Germany secretly build flying saucers?

- There were meant to be several different

iterations of this vehicle

driven by some kind of anti-gravity drive.

- [Tony] Is this man able to communicate

with denizens of the deep?

- Many came to believe that Omar

had to be exercising telepathic ability.

- [Tony] Did these Bigfoot hunters

document an entire family of Sasquatches?

- Although bears can walk bipedally,

they don't do it for extended periods.

- [Tony] And could this strange light

that suddenly appeared over Texas be a genuine UFO?

- This does remind me of very well-known tractor beam cases.

[witness screams]

[light switch clicks]

- [Tony] Around the globe are videos.

- [Eyewitness] Oh, there he goes.

- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.

[airwaves screeching] [intense dramatic music]

[cell phone rattles]

- We don't know where they come from,

who made them, or how they operate.

- [Tony] What are they?

- 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.

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

[car smashing] - 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.

[lively dramatic music]

Good evening, everyone,

and welcome to "The Proof Is Out There."

From experimental aircraft to so-called wonder weapons,

Nazi Germany pushed science to its limits

in a desperate bid for power.

But could some of those breakthroughs

have come from somewhere else entirely?

Possibly even off-world?

- [Tony] Nazi Germany, 1939.

Hitler's forces are hard at work

developing cutting-edge technology

to aid in his plot for world domination.

That's when a film camera allegedly captures this.

[tense uneasy music]

A dark saucer-shaped craft rises from shadowy buildings

into a pale sky.

- It moves very slowly and slightly jerkily

to the right of the frame.

We hear about these jerky movements

typically associated with the lore

around anti-gravity propulsion devices.

- [Tony] Look at that again.

The object is smooth, symmetrical,

and has no visible means of propulsion.

Roughly 85 years after the footage is allegedly filmed,

Minnesota-based podcaster Tim Dust says he uncovers it

through a Freedom of Information Act request

with the National Archives.

- A family comes from German heritage,

and they had spoken often

about how the German regime

was always trying to develop a wonder weapon

during World War II.

- [Tony] Those wonder weapons aren't known to have included

flying saucers, though they were advanced.

- We know this from documented projects

like the V-1 and V-2 rocket programs,

and even armored vehicles that looked nothing like

what other armies were fielding at the time.

- [Tony] But Tim says the flying saucer in this video

was being developed.

- [Tim] I looked into it,

and the wonder weapon wasn't conventional in nature.

It wasn't Einstein's physics.

It was a different form of physics

that they titled the Haunebu program.

- [Nick] The Haunebu, it's German for honeybee.

There were meant to be

several different iterations of this vehicle,

supposedly driven by some kind of anti-gravity drive.

- [Tony] While there is no hard evidence

the Haunebu program existed,

post-war rumors derived in Germany

alleged the Nazis acquired the tech

from a 1936 flying saucer crash in the Black Forest.

Then it's said the Nazis reverse-engineered the saucer

and planned to mass-produce their own.

Not at Peenemunde, the research center

that developed the V-2 before being bombed in 1943,

but here at this unfinished facility in Poland.

- It's filled with manufacturing chambers.

It undoubtedly built secret stuff like missiles and rockets,

and it is associated

with German weapons of mass destruction.

- Check out this recently declassified FBI memo.

It says that in 1967, a man named Paul Peyerl told the FBI

he had test-piloted flying saucers for the Nazis.

He provided these copies of photos,

but they don't prove much.

So could our video finally prove the existence

of these rumored wonder weapons?

[tense mysterious music]

- [Tony] It's no secret that the Nazis invented

the first ballistic missile, the V-2,

but did they achieve flying saucer tech also?

Well, if they did, the scientist who left Germany

didn't seem to take advantage of that knowledge.

- After the war, we brought back the German scientists

that were developing all these advanced weapons.

They came back, and they built

the space program that we have, NASA.

What is it?

A combustion engine that takes us up into space.

They didn't do something

from an anti-gravity standpoint either

because they didn't have that kind of a capability.

- [Tony] On the other hand, several whistleblowing sources

would argue that the United States has toyed

with reverse-engineered flying saucers.

Just in secret.

- I was informed in the course of my official duties

of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval

and reverse-engineering program.

- [Tony] Still, there's something else about this video

that makes us doubt it's a flying saucer of either exotic

or earthly origin.

- The fact that it's flying amongst actual buildings

with no reports ever coming from someone who said,

"I saw it fly."

That's probably one of the more telling

aspects of this whole case.

- [Rich] There's absolutely no proof that that's in Germany.

There's no proof that that was taken in 1939.

There's no evidence that tells you anything at all

where that was.

- [Tony] The real story, it seems,

traces back to the Berlin of 2008, not 1939,

and a unique art exhibition.

- [Marc] Hubert Czerepok made found footage videos of

Nazi UFOs.

In fact, he had an entire exhibition.

It was meant to be more of an alternate history documentary.

Unfortunately, it led to many people saying they are real,

and then they came up with hoaxes of their own

to add onto it.

Had they really had a UFO,

we might all be speaking German right now

because we wouldn't have had anything close to that.

And they might have won the war.

- Our verdict: this is a fake UFO video.

D'Antonio says someone could have simply filmed a UFO model

and superimposed it into the video of a city skyline.

We're not sure if this is a Hubert Czerepok original

or a copycat hoax.

But either way, we can say that

if aliens were visiting Earth in the 1930s,

they were intelligent enough to avoid the Nazis.

[eerie drum pounds]

We move now from the skies over Europe

to the beaches Down Under.

The swimmers in Sydney, Australia, know

they have to be on the lookout for sharks.

But nobody was prepared when something unknown, frightening,

and smelly invaded the shore.

- [Tony] It's October 16th, 2024, in Sydney, Australia.

Professor Jonathan Beves

is working at the University of New South Wales

when he hears news reports that something bizarre

is happening at the nearby beaches.

[suspenseful music]

Hundreds of black circular objects have washed up on shore.

They are sticky to the touch and tar-colored.

They range in size from golf balls to baseballs.

Before long, news outlets around the globe

were covering this uncanny phenomenon.

- Many have come to believe that these aquatic oddities

contain some sort of strange life form

previously unseen by modern humans.

Perhaps these strange balls actually come from off-world.

- [Tony] And with good reason,

it seems that strange stuff from outer space

often turns up in Australia.

- On September 28th, 1969,

a meteorite exploded in the atmosphere

over Murchison, Victoria.

- [Tony] Like our black beach balls,

the Murchison meteorite had a strange odor.

And analysis revealed the presence of amino acids

never before found on Earth.

- There are those that believe this discovery

supports the theory of panspermia.

The idea that organic material, even life itself,

could travel vast distances of space and land here on Earth.

Could these strange balls be further evidence of that theory

and have come from somewhere else in the cosmos?

[light thoughtful music]

- When you look at these objects,

you don't see any evidence of microbial life

or any detailed mechanical devices

or anything that leads you to believe

that this is extraterrestrial

or has any tie-in to panspermia.

They all appear to be formed here directly on Earth.

- [Tony] Could this be some undocumented deep-sea organism?

Maybe eggs of some kind?

- Animal eggs don't exist as solid,

identical objects in the ocean.

They vary in size, texture, and color,

and almost none of them would have a solid center

like we see here.

And we would probably see a large number of scavengers

feeding on them.

There is a seagull in the footage here,

but it doesn't want anything to do with these.

- [Tony] So what are these strange spheres?

According to our experts, the answer is actually simple

and really quite gross.

- That's a fatberg, an object made of fat

or disposable material,

and it has a berg shape because it floats.

These are human waste products.

- [Shea] Fatbergs are made of human hair, excrement,

grease, oils, fatty acids,

and hundreds of other vile compounds

that are released from a ship or even a wastewater system,

and they don't bond with water.

So you have a large amount of this material

that eventually breaks up and forms spheres

and float across the ocean until they land on a beach.

- Our verdict: we agree with our experts

that these balls are just the gross remnants of waste

that enter the ocean through human sewage systems.

In this case, heavy rainfall discharged a massive fatberg,

stuck in an offshore stormwater system,

sending these pieces of it straight to the beach.

- This next story features a character

who seems to have sprung from the panels of a comic book,

specifically Aquaman.

- [Tony] We're in the Maldives.

Exact date?

Unknown.

A man lounges on a beach chair,

swarmed by a school of sharks,

but they're calm, unaggressive,

almost as if they recognize him as one of their own.

By November 2024, the footage has found its way

to Salt Lake City, Utah, researcher

and content creator Scott Whitehead.

He says he was amazed.

- It's quite incredible.

You know, part of me wishes that I had this ability.

- [Tony] Scott says that the man is named Omar Odavi,

and this is not the only time he's displayed

an extraordinary connection with sea creatures.

Here's another clip.

Also said to be Omar, where a great white shark

looks like it's stalking him until it just swims away.

This is supposedly Omar too,

gesturing to a whale that appears to follow his direction.

Scott was so fascinated, he says he reached out.

- I asked Omar, I said, "Hey, can I post about this?

I think this is a huge gift.

The world's gotta know."

And he was quite hesitant,

but he finally gave me permission.

Have you guys heard about Omar Odavi?

This is him on this chair.

- [Tony] With Scott's help, Omar's videos go viral,

and some wild speculation ensues.

- Many came to believe that,

very similar to the comic book superhero Aquaman,

Omar had to be exercising some sort of telepathic ability,

either knowingly or unknowingly,

to draw these creatures forward.

This idea emerged that maybe he was able to

exercise this telepathy

because of the brain's mirror neurons.

- [Tony] What are mirror neurons?

Well, if you've ever felt your heart racing

when you see a character in a movie running from danger,

or felt disgust when you see someone else getting nauseous,

mirror neurons might be responsible.

- [Aaron] Think of these mirror neurons as empathy on steroids,

where we are able to facilitate certain actions

by observing them in others,

maybe even across different species.

- [Tony] The idea is that Omar's empathetic brain power

is unusually strong.

He understands these creatures,

and they pick up on that like a feedback loop.

We wanted to speak with Omar himself,

but there was a problem.

- [Scott] Certain people wanted to study Omar

and see what was going on.

And so we did bring him to the US,

and they ran a bunch of tests

to try to get to the bottom of how physiologically

this gift was working.

And it just went south from there.

But we were finally able to get him away and back

to, like, a secret location where he's currently living.

- [Tony] So is Omar actually a real-life Aquaman?

Let's ask our experts.

[tense thoughtful music]

First, does Omar have high-powered mirror neurons?

- There's a lot of evidence that animals,

humans will use mirror neurons.

This is not telepathy.

This is your brain watching something

and then wants to mimic that behavior.

It's not getting a signal

or a message from the other brain to do it.

Animals are not able to read our minds

any better than we're able to read their minds.

- [Tony] Then what explains the behavior

of the sharks in this video?

- [Shea] In the area of the Maldives where this footage was

taken, the Thinadhoo Shark Beach tourist area,

marine life is abundant,

and it's not uncommon for nearby resorts

to chum the water to attract this marine life for tourists.

- [Tony] Our team dug up several similar videos

of tourists doing exactly the same thing we see Omar doing

in the original beachside footage.

But what about those other clips of Omar

posted by Scott Whitehead?

- [Shea] I believe this footage has been taken

from different instances and areas

of humans interacting with marine life.

I don't think this is one person at all.

- [Tony] Take a closer look at these two videos

claiming to show Omar.

The skin tones of these two people are clearly different.

- This entity known as Omar Odavi

is actually an aggregation of different footage

is actually an aggregation of different footage

of different people.

I believe what we're seeing here is a coordinated hoax.

- Our verdict: this is no superhero, folks.

We're looking at a tourist video

being passed off as a supernatural discovery.

So in a sense, Omar Odavi is like Aquaman,

a completely fictional character.

[eerie drum pounds]

Now let's turn our attention from a deep-ocean hoax

to a mystery lurking high above sea level.

While most mountain chains in North America

run north to south,

the 300 million-year-old Ouachita Mountains in Oklahoma

stretch east to west, making them a geological oddity.

And according to some,

they're home to an even bigger oddity.

- [Tony] It's September 2022

in Oklahoma's Ouachita National Forest.

Bigfoot researchers Jose and Tania Marquez,

native Spanish speakers,

are conducting a night investigation with their friend.

[Jose speaking Spanish]

- [Tony] As they're scanning the trees

with their flashlights, they hear a long, sustained cry

from somewhere in the woods.

[animal cries]

[Jose speaking Spanish]

- [Tony] Let's hear that again.

It's in the distance, so we'll crank up the volume.

[animal cries]

[Jose speaking Spanish]

- We stop, and we was paying attention

because we were hearing, like, a howling.

- [Tony] They keep walking and then...

[Jose shushing]

[Jose speaking Spanish]

- [Tony] Two figures with glowing eyes

emerge from behind a tree, then walk off.

- It was a brown and a black one.

And they looks like kind of gorilla

or a bear walking in two feet.

They was big.

Like a seven-foot tall and around 600, 700 pounds.

- We think there were three

because they were carrying something like a baby.

We had a lot of fear, but we wanted to know what was that.

- [Tony] Slowing the footage down,

we can see two or three figures.

Are the glowing eyes a clue?

- Sasquatch reports very often say

that Sasquatch's eyes reflect or emit light.

That would suggest

the presence of what's called a tapetum lucidum

on the back of the eyeball, which is a reflective layer,

very common in nocturnal mammals.

- The Bigfoot Research Organization

has done expeditions in the Ouachitas,

and during one overnight trip in 2001,

the researchers heard vocalizations, heavy footsteps,

and branches breaking near their camp.

Could this be related to the creatures Jose

and Tania allegedly caught on camera?

[light thoughtful music]

- [Tony] This mountain range is one of the few places

where black bears can be found in the state.

So is that what these Bigfoot hunters really saw?

- It is walking really well on two legs,

and although bears can walk bipedally at times,

they don't do it for extended periods of time.

And bears are not social animals, so it's also unlikely

to see two bears together side by side in general.

- [Tony] But if it's Bigfoot,

how do we explain that odd eyeshine?

- You see the eyes there,

and it's not the typical color eyeshine

that you see in nocturnal animals.

Humans do not have eyeshine.

Great apes do not have eyeshine.

And if we're talking about a very rare, very elusive animal,

then why would it get that close?

- [Tony] And when you really look close,

the answer becomes clear.

- When you blow it up,

you can see the one alleged Bigfoot that's nearest to us

is clearly wearing some kind of hood or a mask

because you can see it clearly with the neckline.

The one behind it has a very similar profile

to a very popular Bigfoot costume out there.

And the glasses they have,

they can be bought online for about $10 apiece.

- Our verdict: likely hoax.

And as far as the glowing eyes are concerned, best guess:

LED lights.

But we'll keep watching the Ouachitas just in case.

- Let's talk about remarkable rodents.

Rats may have small brains, but they're extremely smart.

In one experiment, they outperformed people

at recognizing patterns.

And you're about to see just how creative

these creatures can be.

- [Tony] It's May 2025 in California's Cleveland

National Forest.

Dan Potter and his family walk into a strange scene

in the half-finished basement of their vacation cabin.

[pulsing techno music]

- We saw the line of baseball caps

in a circle all the way around the pool table.

We were just very curious: "What on earth is this?

What's going on?"

Decided to pack it all up and then came back the next week.

And sure enough, she set it all up again.

- [Tony] She is Callie.

That's the name they gave

to what they believe is a female rat

who forages in the room at night.

In the time-lapse footage, we can see her jumping in

and out of a box of dance hats

and seemingly arranging them in a circular pattern.

- There really doesn't seem to be any

kind of marking of her territory.

We were really very curious

as to what her intent was and is, and we still are.

I mean, this was a year ago, and she's still doing it.

- [Tony] Is the rat trying to tell them something?

And if so, what?

Historically, some cultures believed rats

could predict the future.

- [Aaron] In folklore, it was said that they could serve as

omens, if you saw a rat going into your home,

that could be interpreted as a good sign.

But if you saw a rat scurrying away,

that could be a harbinger of some misfortune

about to take place.

- [Tony] One of the most famous accounts

of rats sensing danger and communicating it to humans

comes from the 19th century on the Mississippi River.

- In 1889, three workers aboard the Paris C. Brown riverboat

noticed rats leaving and chose not to return.

Soon after, the vessel struck a snag

and sank within minutes, killing 11 passengers.

- [Tony] Rats have also helped save lives

by detecting landmines in war-torn countries.

They're small enough that they don't trigger the mines,

and they're trained to sniff out

a chemical compound in the explosive,

and then scratch at the ground

to alert their human handlers.

Is this rat trying to warn Dan

and his family using hats like these?

Or is there another explanation?

In a previous episode, we showed you this footage

of a puffer fish making what some have called sand art.

Is Callie being creative?

Is she communicating?

Or is she doing something else?

[tense uneasy music]

- [Tony] First, can rats actually communicate with humans

and signal a pending threat?

And is this what Callie's doing here?

- Rats are highly alert and perceptive animals,

and they can learn to associate human voices, gestures,

and routines with rewards, which trains them to kind of

use their body language to indicate things to us.

There's even researchers that have trained them

to essentially drive cars.

And they also can pick up on danger in the area,

but it doesn't necessarily mean

that the danger applies to us.

You have to kind of incentivize them with a reward.

So at the end of the day,

there's always motivation to their actions.

- [Tony] But what reward is Callie getting from doing this?

- I thought maybe she's interested

in something in the box.

Maybe there's food.

You would think she would learn over time

that it's not in there.

It's really strange that she keeps going back to the box

over and over again.

- [Tony] What about the idea that Callie is making rat art

similar to those pufferfish sand sculptures?

- [Rosie] When pufferfish create these elaborate mazes

of sand underwater,

still typically serves a purpose or a function.

So in the case of a pufferfish, it's for mating.

I would still expect the hats to serve some sort of purpose,

like safety, structure, something of that nature.

- [Tony] Maybe that purpose is nesting.

Could Callie be creating a nest in

or outside of the hat box?

- Perhaps the hats are not providing enough of a space

for her to create a cavity in the box to raise her young.

Another explanation is she's using the hats as the nest,

but they're kind of loosely scattered, not concentrated.

- [Tony] This nesting theory is also complicated

by the fact that Callie has apparently had babies here,

but she isn't raising them anywhere near those hats.

- [Dan] We've noticed what might possibly be

- [Dan] We've noticed what might possibly be

some offspring of hers

that's sort of starting to move some things around.

We kind of love the idea that perhaps we'll have

a family of rats who like to come out and decorate for us.

- Our verdict: unexplained.

Callie may be creating a nest,

though, you know, the hats don't offer much protection

all spread out like that.

Rats are known to hoard household objects,

but Callie's practice of arranging them so precisely

for whatever reason is a mystery.

- Now we're gonna get a little sci-fi on you.

If you're a fan of the genre,

you've probably heard of tractor beams.

Beams of energy that can trap and pull in objects.

For now, tech like this is fantasy,

or at least far off in the future.

Or is it?

- [Tony] June 2025, Dallas, Texas.

A residential neighborhood is buzzing with excitement

after one resident spots something strange

illuminating the night sky.

- Here's this ring of lights that is glowing up in the sky

with a large beam extending downwards.

[eyewitness screams]

- What really stands out in this case

is the overwhelming confidence of the eyewitnesses,

all of whom insist that this light

was not a fixed structure,

nor some familiar object in their neighborhood.

- [Tony] The object certainly looks much different

than the streetlight we see here in the foreground,

which might be what prompts this remark.

- [Tony] The video goes viral online,

making headlines as one prevailing theory emerges.

- [Mindy] This light does remind me

of very well-known tractor beam cases.

- [Tony] As fantastic as it seems,

there have been accounts of UFOs

allegedly using tractor beams,

like one famous case from 1989 in New York City.

- [Mindy] Linda Napolitano was asleep in her bed

when she was suddenly awoken

and found that she was paralyzed

and surrounded by these small beings.

The next thing she knew,

she was being lifted up in this beam of light

towards an object that was hovering nearby.

- [Tony] One UFO researcher claimed

23 eyewitnesses on the ground

corroborated Linda's story,

though none of them ever came forward publicly.

Still, this is not an isolated incident.

- The accounts are controversial,

but for decades, the stories have shared the same details.

People frozen in place,

lifted straight up, and vanishing without a trace.

- It was pulp sci-fi writer E. E. "Doc" Smith

who first imagined an attractor beam

in his 1930s space operas.

The idea would later become known as the tractor beam.

Now, let's see if there's anything about this story

that's pulling our experts in.

[light thoughtful music]

- Could it be a tractor beam?

That's an interesting idea.

We see them in science fiction

where the light interferes with the surface

of a type of material, creates a pulling force.

- [Tony] But unlike the tractor beam cases of sci-fi legend,

this beam doesn't seem to be pulling anything towards it.

- The object doesn't move.

We see them moving the camera around quite a bit,

but the object stays solidly fixed in that position.

So if it is some kind of craft,

it's not really doing very much.

- [Tony] Another theory is a known atmospheric effect

called a light pillar.

- This is an optical illusion where hexagonal ice crystals

are suspended in the air with very little motion

and are reflecting surface light back into the observer.

However, for light pillars to occur,

you need extremely cold temperatures

below 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

The temperature in this case was in the 70s,

definitely not cold enough

to have suspended ice crystals in the sky.

- [Tony] We should also consider

if this might be military tech.

There's now something called the LOCUST laser

used to destroy drones.

Could that be what we're seeing here?

- [Mick] A LOCUST laser doesn't actually create,

you know, a very bright beam of light.

It's an infrared laser, so it's designed to create

an invisible beam of heat radiation

that will disable an aircraft.

So you wouldn't be seeing it even if it was there.

- [Tony] Let's play the clip once more.

Listen closely to one eyewitness

who seems to have it all figured out.

- [Tony] As we heard before, other eyewitnesses insisted

this was no streetlight, but were they wrong?

- The Dallas-Fort Worth area

is one of the fastest-growing areas in the country.

When it comes to building highways,

to be able to light those individual bridges,

you need an extremely high source of light.

- I wasn't actually able to find the actual address.

So what I did was I tried to find streets that looked like

what we're seeing.

So people are looking along the street,

they see their own streetlight,

and then behind the buildings they see one of these

very tall freeway lights

that have this cluster of six lights at the top.

That cluster of six lights is an exact match

for the cluster of lights that we see around the UFO.

And this slightly tapered metal pole

is an exact match for the tractor beam.

- Our verdict: a freeway light pole.

We think it may be a recently installed addition,

which would explain why these eyewitnesses

didn't recognize it.

- It's said that evil lurks in the hearts of men,

but could there be something satanic in your attic?

You need to see what one family found in theirs.

- [Tony] It's 2022.

A homeowner in an undisclosed location

is clearing out their attic

when they come upon a mysterious wooden box,

and what they find inside is chilling.

This photo shows a strange pale red creature

nestled inside with leathery skin

and two thin, dangling legs.

Taking a closer look, we can see its bat-shaped head,

pointed ears, flared nostrils, and razor-tipped wings.

The homeowner posts the photo,

and some wonder if it could be the preserved remains

of a devilish being like an imp.

According to legend, imps are small demons

or fiends with horn, a tail, and often wings.

They are the spawn of Satan

and serve either him or sometimes a witch.

And stories of small infernal servants don't end there.

- Folklore and testimony from the 16th and 17th century

described things called witches' familiars,

which were basically strange little creatures

that would do the bidding of witches.

It could be a dog, a cat, a ferret, or a frog.

And it was believed that these so-called familiars

were actually gifts from the devil.

And by gifting a witch a familiar,

she could actually make it her right hand.

- [Tony] This creature has some similarities to a bat,

which was supposedly used as a familiar

since it could travel at night as a messenger.

- In 1645, Elizabeth Clark was the first woman prosecuted

by Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins of Essex, England.

And while she was being questioned,

Clark actually described how she would dispatch

these little familiars to do various tasks for her

throughout the village.

- [Tony] Could this strange creature

have been sent by the devil himself?

Whatever powers it might have,

it can't scare off our experts.

[pulsing electronic music]

- A witch's familiar is only as useful as it is ordinary.

For them to be successful

in aiding and acting as a messenger for a witch,

they kind of needed to blend in.

This creature definitely does not blend in

and would definitely cause people to stop and stare.

I don't think at any point

this would've been a witch's familiar.

- [Tony] It's probably not an imp either,

since those were described as humanoids.

So then what?

It's in the shape of a bat, kind of sorta,

but the proportions are way off.

So what other animal could it be?

Was this thing ever alive?

- It appears to be biological.

The texture is like a lot of marine animals,

but there appear to be some appendages here

that have been modified.

So we see these upper limbs

that look like they could have been

some kind of a fin, maybe.

In addition, there appears to be

what looks like a tail here,

and that's swooped up and around this object.

And there also appear to be

bottom limbs modified from something else.

- [Tony] That's enough for our marine biologist

to make an educated guess.

- This is made from a skate or a ray,

which is known as an elasmobranch.

They don't actually have bone.

They have a cartilaginous connective tissue.

You can actually see some texture here on the neck,

and that is very indicative of the gill slits

of a ray that have been modified.

They then twist the snout in a way that makes it appear

as a human-like face with eyes and a mouth.

And in fact, that's actually the nostrils and the mouth.

The tail of this ray has actually been split

and then pinched together to look like two legs.

- [Tony] Strange?

Yes.

But who would do this?

And why is even stranger?

- [Rosie] I'm pretty sure this is a Jenny Haniver,

which is actually the modified body of a dried ray or skate

that's then turned into kind of a toy-like structure.

These guys first popped up in the 1500s in Antwerp, Belgium,

where sailors would actually take them and sell them

as curiosities, posing them as like real-life sea monsters.

- Our verdict: this is a Jenny Haniver.

A modified dried skate or ray carcass.

Yes, they were once popular,

but thankfully the trend of mutilating

these poor deceased sea creatures

has passed its shell-by date.

[lively dramatic music]

- [Tony] We have new developments in a story

we first brought to you in a previous season.

It was March 1974 on Florida's Fort George Island

when the Betz family discovered this strange metallic sphere

in the woods near their home.

An eight-inch, 22-pound orb,

and people said it had otherworldly properties.

- The ball could withstand extreme heat.

It was clearly designed to take on a lot of pressure,

about 120,000 pounds per square inch.

- [Tony] Testing revealed that the object was emitting

some sort of radio signal.

- If it had some impurities in that metal,

then you actually might be able to act like an antenna.

- [Tony] So could this have fallen from some satellite

or spacecraft?

- And you would expect to see some marks on it

that it had come from through the atmosphere.

And there's no marks on it.

There's no burn marks.

- [Tony] An up-close look may have given us further insight.

However...

- Unfortunately, because the ball has disappeared,

there's actually no way it can look inside.

- It's not available for study,

which is a big red flag from the scientific point of view.

Its non-existence alone makes me suspicious of its origin.

- The Betz Sphere left us with more questions than answers,

leading us to a verdict of unexplained.

But now a new mysterious sphere has revealed itself.

[eerie drum pounds]

- [Tony] This footage, reportedly filmed in Buga,

Colombia in 2025,

appears to show another strange metallic sphere

cruising through the sky and hovering stationary in midair.

These videos quickly went viral,

and this familiar-looking object

became known as the Buga Sphere.

- Well, you can see that it's very similar in shape and size

to the Betz Sphere.

So that's why the comparison between the Betz Sphere

and the Buga Sphere has come around.

- [Tony] But unlike the Betz Sphere,

which is still currently missing,

the Buga Sphere remains intact.

- One of the filmers of the video

actually saw the ball fall and went and recovered it.

And shortly thereafter, Mexican telejournalist Jaime Maussan

was able to obtain the sphere and brought it back to Mexico.

- [Tony] Maussan allowed the sphere to be examined

by select researchers.

- I was fortunate enough to hold the ball,

and the sphere itself is quite cold.

Some of the studies have said it's about 15 degrees colder

than the environment around it.

- [Tony] And the strangeness doesn't end there.

- Initially, it was found to be

a little more than four pounds,

and it got heavier over time.

When I held it, it was 22 pounds,

and it felt every bit of it.

- [Tony] Keep in mind,

none of these claims had been independently verified.

We don't even know for sure if the object filmed in the air

is the same one allegedly found on the ground.

- There's all kinds of ways

in which you can fabricate these types of things.

If we could do a detailed examination of the Buga Sphere,

then we could turn around and maybe have an idea

what the Betz Sphere really was designed for.

But I need to do more examination

on something like this

to be able to identify what it really is.

[pounding dramatic music]

- In the past, journalist Jaime Maussan

has presented supposed alien artifacts

that have been widely debunked as fakes.

The Buga Sphere could be another example of such a hoax,

but it has not yet been properly studied

by the scientific community.

Until that happens, the mysteries

of both the Buga Sphere

and the Betz Sphere remain unexplained.

And that's our show for tonight.

Thank you so much for watching.

And keep those cameras rolling.

[lively dramatic music]