All language subtitles for Weird or What S01E03 1080p AMZN WEB-DL DD+2 0 x264-Absinth_track3_[eng]

(suspensful music)

- You know I've been around for awhile.

Met some interesting people.

Done some crazy things.

So you, just might think
that there's not much

that can take my by surprise.

You'd be wrong.

(door opens)

The world is full of stories.

Science, and things that
amaze and confound me.

Every single day, incredible mysteries

that keep me awake at
night, some I can answer.

Others, just defy logic.

- [Voiceover] Do monsters exist?

In West Virginia, a town is terrorized by

a seven foot winged demon.

Did it cause the death of 46 people?

- [Voiceover] It had two huge black wings.

And no head, no arms.

(waves crash)

- [Voiceover] In Newfoundland,
a macabre creature

washes up on a local beach.

Are our oceans concealing a megabeast?

- [Voiceover] It was
nothing that either of us

had ever seen or could imagine.

- [Voiceover] And in New Delhi,

thousands are attacked by
a metal-clawed monster.

(faint screaming)

Was it a man or a beast?

- Yeah.

It's a weird world.

And I love it.

(suspenseful music)

- You know, I just had a
lovely holiday in Scotland.

Had my castle, bagpipes, the whole deal.

Even went to Loch Ness, where Nessie,

famous Loch Ness monster
is supposed to live.

We got on this boat, went out on the loch,

searching for hours, and guess what I saw.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Total waste of time, and six bucks.

Are monsters nothing more than bait

to lure gullible tourists?

Do things like yeti, Bigfoot,
and chupacabra exist?

I got news for you.

They just might.

- [Voiceover] Point
Pleasant, West Virginia.

(suspenseful music)

Nearly 50 years ago,
this sleepy farming town

was brutally awoken by a
series of monstrous events

that are still a mystery today.

(crickets)

Loren Coleman is an author.

He documented the incidents,

which began on the night
of November 15, 1966,

when two young couples took a drive.

- Roger and Linda
Scarberry and the Mallettes

were driving around on the old TNT area.

It was called TNT because that's

where dynamite was stored
during World War II.

(crickets)

- [Voiceover] Secluded and dark,

TNT was also a well-known lovers' lane.

But instead of fun, the four teenagers

are about to encounter a living nightmare.

(crickets)

- All of a sudden, they see this creature

at six feet tall, and it's coming to them.

It's having glowing red eyes in its chest,

which are reflecting the headlights.

It had two huge black wings.

No head, no arms.

(rustling)

All of a sudden, it goes into
the air and starts flying.

(tires screeching)

They started racing
back to Point Pleasant,

and the creature was in back of the car.

Really, they felt that
it was almost touching

both sides of the highway.

Red glowing eyes, no arms,
just these huge wings.

(rustling)

- [Voiceover] Reaching
speeds of 100 miles an hour,

the chase continues, until
finally the creature disappears.

(ominous music)

Was there something unpleasant

in Point Pleasant?

- The next day, they come back out there

and they see it flying overhead.

So all of a sudden, you get more and more

kind of word of mouth in the town

that this creature's been around,

people are seeing it.

The newspapers hadn't even caught on

to the reports, yet.

So the next day, you have Marcella Bennett

saying she's going over to
one of her relative's houses,

which it's a bunch of
houses right along the road

that leads to the TNT.

She gets close to the house,

and all of a sudden on
the roof of the house,

sees the Mothman.

She's carrying her baby in her arms,

and falls on the baby

out of terror and fright.

Gets up, races off, and
they tell the police, too.

What occurs, however, is that it's then

that it gets into the newspaper,

and all of a sudden,

you had within a few weeks

200 people saying that
they'd seen the Mothman.

- [Voiceover] This remarkable
story sends shockwaves

through the town.

The media calls the creature

the Mothman.

(suspenseful music)

Local resident Faye LePort

was 14 years old at the time.

Three days after the first sighting,

she decided to visit
the scene for herself.

- That's the road over
there that we drove down,

me and my brother, to come
out here to try to find

the so-called Mothman we heard about.

My brother said, "Well I'm just gonna see

"if I can find and prove
that it's just somebody

"in a Halloween costume,

"or something on wires or something."

As we got to the area,
my brother kept looking

past me to the window.

And I said, "Well, what is
it? What are you looking at?"

And he said, "Well don't look right now,

"But there's something beside
the car there, by the window."

So he slammed the brakes on,

and just like it was nothing,

just leaped right up on the car.

Even though it was dark,
you could still the eyes.

The eyes held me.

The most red, I can't
even explain the red.

It was such a red,

I just can't describe it.

It's a color, it looks
like they're really lit up,

but it's not a glow, but
it's perfectly lit up

that you cannot miss it.

And that's all you see
when you look at it.

It had the features of a
bird combined with a human.

We were really scared, and
I was begging and crying

for my brother to go ahead
and let's get out of here.

That's when I finally
saw it open up its wings

and just flew off in the sky so pretty.

And it was gone.

- [Voiceover] For the next
year, the Mothman terrorizes

the people of Point Pleasant.

- [Voiceover] We were
coming up the road here,

and we looked around the
thing, around the curve there,

and we thought it was a car light.

So we stop the car,
and the thing came over

the top of the car.

- I just think it's a,
something supernatural

we can't explain, or something like that.

I know I can't explain
it, that's for sure.

- [Voiceover] They wonder
where it will all end.

(suspenseful music)

13 months after the first sighting,

they get their answer.

- [Coleman] The Silver Bridge

between West Virginia and Ohio,

starting at Point Pleasant,

collapsed on December 15, 1967.

67 people fell into the
water of the Ohio River.

46 died, and two bodies
never were even found.

- [Voiceover] There's
seemingly no apparently reason

for this horrific tragedy.

Then comes a terrifying report.

The night before the disaster,

the Mothman was seen hanging
from the Silver Bridge.

- And people were scared.

They were so scared they didn't
wanna talk about the bridge.

They didn't wanna talk about Mothman.

They didn't wanna talk about anything.

They just, this town became quiet.

And everybody, for a long
time, said that nobody talked.

And you still have people
that won't talk about

the bridge collapse, today.

- [Voiceover] The Mothman
was never seen again.

For 45 years, this incredible
story has baffled experts.

But some believe, recent
evidence could finally explain

the mystery of the Mothman.

(coin pings and flips in air)

- [Voiceover] Joe Nickell
is a paranormal investigator

with Skeptical Inquirer science magazine.

- [Voiceover] We human being
misperceive all the time.

People say, I know what I saw.

Actually, they know what
they think they saw.

- [Voiceover] Joe believes the Mothman

wasn't quite the monstrous
beast it was made out to be.

- I believe the barred owl is the creature

that most clearly fits the bill.

- [Voiceover] Was the
Mothman simply an owl?

Nickell thinks the answer
lies in Linda Scarberry's

first descriptions

back in 1966.

- Her original description of Mothman

is of a very large, winged creature.

She said it had no neck,

and virtually no real head.

Just eyes, very large eyes,

round and shining like
a bicycle reflector.

In the owl family, there
are different degrees

of what's called eye shine.

Among the most potent is
that of the barred owl

which has a deep crimson eye shine.

It's a large owl with big wing span.

It would look like just eyes
set at the top of a body

with wings up.

It flies in a silent moth-like flight.

It has pretty much exactly
the characteristics

of Mothman original sightings.

- [Voiceover] But does Nickell's
theory explain the height?

Eyewitnesses reported a creature

that was six or seven feet tall.

- We know that people misperceive,

and I'm quite confident that somebody

looking and not knowing
what it is at night quickly,

and maybe being frightened by it.

I dare say I would misjudge the distance,

and therefore misjudge the height.

Keep in mind that the barred owl

does not fly around with
a yardstick in its claw

for measurement purposes.

So, if you're looking at it,
and you don't know what it is,

because it's a funny-looking creature.

So I think that people
misperceive the distance,

and therefore misjudge the height.

They were excited and they
kind of focused in on it,

and that almost made it loom large

in their consciousness.

Barred owls were at the site.

This was at McClintic Wildlife Preserve,

overlaps the TNT area,

and there were barred owls in that area.

So I would say this, in summary,

if it looked like a barred owl,

and acted like a barred owl,

and had red reflector eyes,

maybe it was a barred owl.

- Incredible, isn't it?

Here we have an entire town
in fear of their lives,

from something they can't explain.

A creature seven feet tall,
that can fly 100 miles an hour,

and maybe even bring down a bridge,

and they blame it on this guy?

Don't get me wrong, he's scary.

If you're a field mouse.

Perhaps the real question here is,

why do so many people
think they saw a monster?

And even blame it for
the death of 46 people?

Weird, or what?

- [Voiceover] A psychologist believes,

there's one sure way to solve
the mystery of the Mothman:

Using fear.

- We're going to try to induce a mild case

of mass psychogenic illness.

(leaves crunching)

- [Voiceover] A mysterious winged creature

called the Mothman

terrorizes a town in West Virginia.

Is it proof that monsters exist?

Jim Houran is a psychologist.

He believes the Mothman can be explained

by a phenomenon called MPI.

- [Voiceover] Mass psychogenic illness,

or MPI, is a psychological term for

an outbreak of myserious illness

that has no medical
cause, but it's entirely

in someone's head.

And before you know it, you
have a contagion effect,

whereby those social
symptoms start spreading

in a large group of people.

Mass psychogenic illness tends to be

associated with negatives because

people oftentimes report and care about

and give a lot of credence
to dramatic things

in the environment.

And oftentimes, just from
our evolutionary standpoint,

those are dangerous
things, negative things.

So when it comes to illness,

that's something we want to avoid.

So if we see someone get sick,
that grabs our attention.

Just like when we see something
that might be paranormal,

that grabs our attention, too.

- [Voiceover] Was Mothman the
result of social contagion?

Houran believes he can
prove his theory by showing

what might have happened
in Point Pleasant.

- We're gonna try to induce a mild case

of mass psychogenic illness.

I've selected a group of volunteers,

I'm going to give them the suggestion

that they're gonna be visiting

a very haunted place in the woods.

We're gonna take them out there,

and let their imaginations take over.

What we should see, if
mass psychogenic illness

is a plausible explanation
for the Mothman sightings,

is that we'll see a few people
start having experiences,

other people will notice that,

and then we'll see an
outbreak of similar symptoms,

if that's what you want to call them,

just due to social pressure.

Was this fact, was this fiction?

- [Voiceover] Houran
begins by telling the group

he needs their help to solve a series

of disturbing paranormal incidents

reported in the area.

As night falls, the group
sets out into the woods.

- Everyone stop, please.

Everyone fan out.

- [Voiceover] They are told
to turn off their flashlights.

- [Voiceover] And stop.

- [Voiceover] From this point,
they can only be turned on

when someone thinks they
experience something paranormal.

- [Voiceover] Just get
your sense of bearings.

- [Voiceover] In just
minutes, flashlights come on.

And reports of paranormal
activity flood in.

Houran believes the
flashlights act as social cues

which influence the other
members of the group.

- You felt a cold breeze?
- Mm-hmm.

- Someone felt cold over there, too.

- Let me understand this.

Like, right here, you feel like there's

static electricity on your face?

- Mm-hmm.

- As soon as one or two cues took hold,

then you start seeing a flurry

of other flashlights going on.

It percolated throughout the entire group.

Exactly what we would expect with

psychogenic illness in a group.

Tonight's experiments
were very impressive,

because it kind of confirmed
what I think happened

with the Mothman.

That is, we'd had the right type of people

in the right type of environment.

An environment that was
spooky, full of context,

exactly the same kind of environment that

the Mothman experiences happened.

And a little bit of
suggestion caused a flurry,

an outbreak of experiences that otherwise

wouldn't have happened.

It's exactly what I thought
happened with Mothman.

(suspenseful music)

- [Voiceover] Was the
Mothman all in the minds

of its victims?

And does this explain what eye witnesses

like Faye LePort saw?

(car driving)

Ken Gerhard is a
professional monster hunter.

He believes the best way to
solve the Mothman mystery

is to hunt it down himself.

- For the past decades, I have gone out

and searched for hard physical evidence

that we share our world with creatures,

legendary beasts, things
that have not been

classified or verified by scientists.

Mothman is a monster in the
truest sense of the word.

I mean, here you have a
creature that doesn't match

the description of anything we know about

in the natural world.

Something that's seemingly
stepped right out

of a science fiction movie.

Mothman's main motivation seems to be

to chase and terrify people.

And possibly leave a path of destruction

and devastation in its wake.

There are many people who blame Mothman

for the collapse of the Silver Bridge.

And believe that's actually a death curse

associated with the Mothman.

So I would say yes, Mothman
is the ultimate monster.

- [Voiceover] Gerhard has come to

the McClintic Wildlife Reserve,

close to where the
Mothman was first sighted.

- It's very exciting to be here,

in the actual location where Mothman

was reported so many
times back in the 1960's.

If Mothman is a real physical animal,

it's gonna make an impact
on its environment.

And this could be tracks on the ground,

nests, markings, and the like.

(footsteps in leaves)

- [Voiceover] Using a camera trap,

Gerhard is hoping to
catch Mothman unaware.

- This is actually a
motion-activated camera

with an infrared beam,

and anything that passes within that beam

is actually gonna be captured
on this particular camera.

I can put the camera out overnight

and come back the following morning

to determine whether in
fact I've captured an image

of the subject.

- [Voiceover] To attract his prey,

Gerhard sets up a blasting device,

a machine that broadcasts the sound

of forest creatures in pain.

(screeching)

- [Gerhard] Many of the eyewitnesses say

that Mothman made kind of a squeaking,

mechanical mouse sound,

and fortunately I have a little sound

on here called "lip squeak."

And I think that's exactly what we need.

(recorded squeaking)

(leaves rustling)

Did you hear that?

Something moving around
there in the brush.

I don't know what it was,
but basically that last sound

definitely evoked some type
of response or reaction.

- [Voiceover] With his equipment set,

it is now a waiting game.

Will the Mothman reveal himself?

- I don't know about you,

but if I were a monster hunter,

indeed, if I were hunting the Mothman,

I think I'd be taking something
a little more substantial

than this.

(squeak)

I mean, at least

I think

you take something

like this.

(shotgun racks)

Wouldn't you?

But we have to ask the question.

If monsters really exist, why has no one,

monster hunter or not,
been able to catch one?

Then again, if monsters
were just ordinary critters,

they wouldn't really be
monsters, would they?

(squeak)

- [Voiceover] Returning the next day,

monster hunter Ken Gerhard checks to see

if he's found evidence of the Mothman.

(footsteps crunching in leaves)

- Huh.

Well, unfortunately, it doesn't look like

we got anything on film.

I may have been a little bit wrong

about the placement of this camera.

Lesson learned here is
that monster hunting

is a very arduous and
time-consuming process

and it may take quite a bit
of time before we actually

get an image of our quarry.

(suspenseful music)

- [Voiceover] The high-tech
approach has failed

to find anything, but
Gerhard thinks he knows

exactly what Mothman is.

- [Gerhard] I believe
Mothman to be the product

of negative energy.

Consider, for a moment, the main location

where Mothman was encountered.

Many of the Native
American tribes would avoid

this area completely because they believed

it to be haunted by
monsters and evil spirits.

And then you have the great
curse of Chief Cornstalk,

the Shawnee chief who, on his deathbed,

cursed the area because the
white men had betrayed him.

So in that respect, I believe
Mothman to be the cumulation

of all of this negative energy.

Perhaps brought to life
by some type of mechanism

far beyond the realm
of human comprehension.

Beyond that, there have been reports

of winged humanoid creatures

all over the world for centuries.

And in many ancient cultures,
for example in Japan,

where you have the
tengu, which a bird man.

The tengu is often
considered to be a bad omen,

or a harbinger of doom.

You have the banshee from Scottish lore,

and so in many of these
mythologies and folklores,

these winged creatures
are often considered

to be premonitions of
doom and destruction.

So I think that's a very
interesting tie-in between

Mothman and the timing
of the bridge collapse.

- [Voiceover] Was Mothman a bad omen

that somehow materialized
in Point Pleasant?

Or could it simply have been mass hysteria

created by an owl?

Weird, or what?

(suspenseful music)

- [Voiceover] A fisherman finds a giant,

unidentifiable creature on
a beach in Newfoundland.

- [Voiceover] It was
nothing that either of us

had ever seen or could imagine.

- [Voiceover] Are monsters
lurking in the deep?

- Ya! Hey! Ooh!

You know I used to love fishing.

Nothing better than the
thrill of landing a big one,

the ultimate challenge
between man and beast.

Well every now and then
you catch something

you're not expecting.

Strange things that make you wonder

what is living in the
depths of our oceans?

I don't know.

(water rushing)

(waves crashing)

- [Voiceover] In 2001,
Garry Stenson was working

as a fisheries officer
in Newfoundland, Canada,

when he received the strangest phone call

of his career.
(phone ringing)

(phone lifting from base)

- Got a call from a
fisherman who's telling me

about a creature on the
beach that had washed up.

He started to describe it to me,

and it sounded unlike
anything I had encountered.

(phone placed down on base)

- [Voiceover] Mystified, Garry decides

to meet the fisherman and
investigate the strange sighting.

(waves crashing)

- [Garry] It's a very isolated area,

and as we came up to it,
we saw this large creature

laying on the beach itself.

I've never seen anything
that looked like this.

The whole thing was
tapering to the tail end,

and once it got to the tail
end, it just broke off.

We had thought that it might be something

like a giant squid, which we do have here.

But there were no tentacles
that looked like that.

It didn't also look
like a whale or a shark,

which it could be.

There was nothing that looked like a head,

there was nothing that looked
like any sort of structures

that we could identify it.

- [Voiceover] In over 20
years, as a fisheries officer,

Garry thought he had seen it all.

Until now.

- I worked on a lot of whales,

and I worked on a lot of seals,

and even some sharks
that have come ashore.

But this creature was nothing like that.

And there was nothing that we
could tell where it came from.

From a distance it had
what looked like hair

standing up all over it.

It was about five and a half meters long,

about two meters wide,
and about a meter high

in the middle of it.

There were a number of
lobes, they looked almost

like short arms, with notches in between.

It smelled a lot like rotting tissue.

(creepy music)

It was pretty heavy.

We tried pushing on it.

It was solid.

It was nothing that we could move.

So what we did was, we took our knives

and we tried to cut up
and cut into the tissue.

- [Voiceover] As they
cut into the carcass,

they made a bizarre discovery.

- The exterior of it was very
hard, it was quite tough.

But there was no sign of any organs.

If it was a shark, there'd be cartilage,

but there was no cartilage.

So we looked for bone.

If it was a whale, there'd
be some bone in it.

But none of this, either.

We spent a lot of time trying to decide

what we thought it might be.

Of course, as a scientist,
you're very curious.

In fact, the sign of a
good scientist to me,

is somebody who's curious
about what they see.

And, of course, we were very curious

as to what this might be.

So we decided that the best thing to do

would be to take some tissue with it.

And we brought that back with us.

- [Voiceover] It seemed
Garry and the fisherman

had discovered a creature
unknown to science.

- [Garry] It was nothing that either of us

had ever seen or could imagine.

It's not impossible that
there's something out there

that we haven't seen before
that's lurking in the depths.

- [Voiceover] A giant creature
washes up in Newfoundland.

Was it an unknown species,

or a monster from the deep?

And if there was one,
could there be others?

Remarkably, the answer is yes.

- It's incredible.

In the last century, giant weird blobs of,

ooh, I don't know what,

have been washing up all over the planet.

Are they something awful
from the bowels of ships?

I hope not.

In fact, they're so hard to
identify, that the only name

scientists could come up with

is "globsters."

Part glob, part lobster.

Globster, clever.

(chuckle)

Well what the hell are they?

(suspenseful music)

- [Voiceover] Mathew Wedel
is a professor of anatomy.

He believes the explanation is simple.

- It sounds like
something very mysterious,

something completely unknown to science.

There are dozens of reports of globsters

from around the world
going back over a century.

They're usually formless, and
they don't contain any bones.

There's no evidence of a
head or a tail or any limbs.

They're just big shapeless globs of flesh.

But there's no evidence so far,

that they're anything
other than dead whales.

- [Voiceover] But if globsters are whales,

how could tons of bones and
internal organs be missing?

Wedel thinks the answer
lies in one of the strongest

elements in nature.

Collagen,

a protein found in whale skin.

- Collagen is similar to steel
in terms of tensile strength.

So it's one of the toughest
substances known to man.

If you feel the back of your heel,

feel your Achilles tendon,
that's a big rope of collagen

the size of your finger.

Now imagine something like that woven

in overlapping belts around
an animal 100 feet long,

and you get some idea of
the strength of whale skin.

It's just incredible.

- [Voiceover] Scientists
think protective collagen

allows whales to dive up to two miles

below the surface of the ocean.

- Many submarines would
crush before they got down

to that depth.

Collagen is their pressure
suit when they dive,

and their armor against things like sharks

that would try to take bites out of them.

- [Voiceover] Wedel also
believes collagen causes whales

to decompose in a unique way.

- [Wedel] Decomposition for whales

is an interesting process
because whales are different

from other animals in two ways, mainly.

The first is that they're so big,

just their sheer scale
influences how they decompose.

The other thing is the skin of whales

is unique in the animal kingdom.

It's incredibly thick,
it's incredibly strong.

You can hang up the
entire weight of a whale

by a hook through its skin.

When a whale dies, the
skin doesn't fall apart

the way that normal animal skin does.

- [Voiceover] After death,
scavengers rapidly devour

the insides of a dead whale.
(camera click)

But they leave the gristly collagen alone.

- [Wedel] Once animals have
eaten their way into the body

to get the good stuff,
it's easy for the bones

to slide right out and sink
to the bottom of the ocean.

The skin falls off like
a sock off of a foot.

And now you have a hundred
foot long tube of skin

floating through the ocean.
(camera click)

- [Voiceover] But many
globsters have tentacles.

Strange arms, and even hair.

Can Wedel's theory explain
these bizarre features?

- Imagine the gnarliest piece of gristle

you've ever encountered
that's 100 feet long

and a foot thick.

It lasts essentially forever.

It's only broken up really,
by getting pounded on rocks

and torn apart by waves.

That sack of skin can
float around in the ocean

for months or maybe even years.

It can rip, it can tear, it can shred

into all kind of interesting shapes.

And the collagen actually frays,

just like an old pair of pants

And those threads of
collagen that stick out

are usually pink or red,
and they look like hair.

- [Voiceover] Are globsters
simply giant globs of collagen

floating around in a suit of whale skin?

Or are they beasts from the deep?

- [Wedel] I love a good mystery
as much as the next person.

And I would love to think that there are

giant unknown animals in the ocean.

And there probably are
some new kinds of sharks

and maybe even new species of whales,

but there's no real sea monster.

As much as I would like
to believe that there is,

I have to go where the evidence leads.

And so far, all the evidence that we have

suggests that globsters are just

the rotting skin of dead whales.

- [Voiceover] Are globsters
simply masses of mammal meat?

Some believe they are proof of something

far more terrifying.

- [Voiceover] It would
absolutely be a monster.

(suspenseful tones)

- [Voiceover] Strange
creatures called globsters

are washing up on beaches
all over the world.

Are they simply dead whales?

(suspenseful music)

Dr. Hans Larsson is a paleontologist.

He thinks globsters
could be a living relic

from our ancient past.

The researchers who point
to globsters and say

they're nothing more than whales,

they're probably right for most cases.

But pretty much the entire ocean

below 100 meters depth
hasn't been explored.

- [Voiceover] Some areas
of the ocean are over

six miles deep.

Larsson believes that
a terrifying creature

could be lurking in the depths.

The megalodon.

- [Larsson] The megalodon is a huge fish.

It looks a lot like a great white shark,

but it's much bigger.

- [Voiceover] It is known

as the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the deep.

A monster that terrorized the
ocean for 25 million years.

And the right size for a globster.

- This is a tiger shark,
about 15 or so feet long.

And look at the size of the teeth,

and the size of the mouth.

It's pretty impressive, I mean
this would be scary enough

in the water, should
you be in front of it.

But, compare that to a megalodon,

and this is an average size tooth.

It would absolutely be a monster.

- [Voiceover] Most scientists
believe this marine monster

became extinct one and a
half million years ago.

But remarkably, Larsson isn't so sure.

- Some people have suggested
that the cooling of the ocean

may have driven megalodon to extinction.

I think we should be a little
bit skeptical about that,

because all the other animals in the ocean

survived quite well.

And if that whole ecosystem could survive

the global cooling of the
oceans and the ice ages,

why not megalodon?

- [Voiceover] Could science be wrong?

Another giant of the deep, the coelacanth,

was supposed to have died
out 65 million years ago

with the dinosaurs.

But then in 1938,

a fisherman hauled one up.

Are megolodons alive?

Could globsters be washed up remains

of a 25 million year old living fossil?

- [Larsson] We have glimpses of

some other fishes down there.

Other sharks and other non-shark fishes.

But we know practically
nothing about them.

I think that that world
is just unexplored.

If megalodon was one animal down there

that we didn't know about,

there could be a huge range
of other animals as well.

Non air-breathing animals.

Things like other squids, other fishes,

both sharks and non-shark
fishes, other invertebrates.

Who knows what other
kids of crab-like animals

or arthropods or jellyfish
animals are down there.

We just have no clue.

- [Voiceover] Do giant
killers lurk in our oceans?

Are they monsters of the deep?

Or just globs of super strength blubber?

Weird, or what?

(suspenseful music)

- [Voiceover] In India,
a rampaging man-beast

causes wide-spread panic
in the nation's capital.

Are scientists creating man-made monsters?

- You know, when it
comes to trying to prove

there's no such thing as monsters,

there's one big problem:

there's just no hard evidence.

They never seem to hang
around long enough.

But what if we're looking
in the wrong places?

What if, instead of creepy
shadows or deep dark corners

of our imagination,

the monsters we're looking for

are right under our noses?

What if, we're the ones creating them?

(sitar music)

- [Voiceover] Sanal
Edamaruku is a journalist.

He was in Delhi in the summer of 2001,

and witnessed one of
the most bizarre events

in its long history.

- [Voiceover] As thousands of
people try to escape the heat,

they have no idea a six
week reign of terror

is about to begin.

- [Voiceover] In the city,
home to thousands of monkeys,

at first the attack seemed unremarkable.

Until the victims describe
what they had seen.

- [Voiceover] What had
attacked the workers?

Within 24 hours,

the newspapers give the creature a name.

The Monkey Man.

The very next night, it strikes again.

By the end of the week, there are reports

of a dozen more attacks.

(screaming)

- [Voiceover] All the victims
describe the same thing.

A hairy creature with metallic
claws and strange lights.

- [Voiceover] Then comes a new twist.

As rumors grow, so does the panic.

Just two weeks after the first
sighting of the Monkey Man,

the entire city of New
Delhi is besieged by terror.

- [Voiceover] Then, tragedy strikes.

(screaming)

- [Voiceover] In the following
days, more people die

as crowds rush to escape.

As panic rose, New Delhi
becomes a ghost town.

- [Voiceover] Then, just as
the terror reaches its peak,

the incredible happens.

- [Voiceover] What happened in New Delhi?

Something held this giant city

in its fearful grip for weeks.

Was it a monster?

Could the Monkey Man be real?

Jay Lakhani is a teacher
of the Hindu religion.

He believes the Monkey
Man can be explained

by Indian culture.

- [Voiceover] There is nothing
here that could make me feel

that there's anything
more than superstition

rolled up with fear,

and rolled up with idea
of religious iconography.

It just cannot produce the story.

- [Voiceover] Lakhani
believes that powerful

religious beliefs could have
helped create the Monkey Man.

- [Lakhani] In the Hindu tradition,

the word avatar is very central.

"Avatar" means "one who descends."

The Hindu say the spirit has
a habit of descending to earth

in human form.

- [Voiceover] In the Hindu religion,

gods knowns as avatars

are believed to descend
to earth in times of need.

Many are depicted as
part human, part animal.

Was the Monkey Man a well-meaning avatar

that was mistaken for something evil?

- India is a poor country
struggling with lots of issues,

so it's understandable the
public would like to project

the idea that an avatar
is here to rescue them.

Any sober Hindu, when
he looks at the story

in a very sober manner,

will immediately come to the conclusion

that this was not an avatar.

It's not just my take on it.

But every sober Hindu, no
sober Hindu would really

consider this to be an avatar,

because there is nothing
that monkey has done

which any way reflects what
an avatar is all about.

Which is to benefit
humanity, not frighten it.

You see, a layperson is very gullible.

I suspect it is quite possible

that a few pranksters got together,

dressed up as couple of
monkeys, and set them loose

on the streets of New Delhi.

And for a layperson, who is gonna steep

in religious tradition,

it is understandable that
somebody sees a few pranksters,

he somehow projects his own
idea that this is an avatar

on the streets of New Delhi.

- [Voiceover] Were thousands
of New Delhi residents

victims of pranks blown out of proportion

by widely-held religious beliefs?

Did the Monkey Man exist at all?

- I don't think Monkey Man existed at all.

I think all these things combined

with a few real monkeys jumping about

and perhaps some pranksters
getting into the act

is the reason why we have got this story

developing in India as an
avatar coming down to earth.

- So is that the end of this mystery?

Maybe not.

Could Monkey Man be a product
of the human imagination,

in a different way, not a
religiously inspired delusion,

but a manifestation of
the dark side of science?

Recently, declassified documents

hinted some kind of

twisted, Soviet genetic experiment.

Was the Monkey Man a
secret weapon that escaped

the evil lab of a mad
scientist that spawned him?

Is that weird?

(gasp)

Or what?

- [Voiceover] In New
Delhi, thousands of people

claim to have been attacked by
a metal-clawed monster known

as the Monkey Man.

Was it simply mass hysteria?

Or religious superstition?

Scott Marlowe is a cryptozoologist

with a remarkable theory.

- I believe monsters exist.

They may not necessarily be

the Saturday or Friday night
movie version of the monsters

that terrify us on the silver screen.

But there are things out there
that go bump in the night

that are terrifying, to say the least.

(screaming)

When I first heard the
story of India's Monkey Man

I was pretty certain I
knew exactly what it was.

- [Voiceover] Marlowe's
theory is controversial

and alarming.

He thinks the Monkey Man
is a real life monster

created by us.

- [Marlowe] Monsters exist
and we certainly have

the ability now with genetic engineering

to create them.

Based on some of the descriptions,

there is a distinct
possibility that Monkey Man

could be some kind of human-ape hybrid.

- [Voiceover] Could someone
have created a creature,

half man, half ape?

And if so, why?

Incredibly, this concept isn't as weird

as it sounds.

It could even be based in fact.

(marching)

Declassified Russian military files

have allegedly revealed
that in the 1920's,

Joseph Stalin secretly tried to create

a super soldier.

- The super soldier is a
genetically engineered creature

that is designed with a
military purpose in mind.

Stalin commissioned a scientist

to attempt a hybridization

who went to Africa, collected ape DNA,

and then attempted to
impregnate human women

with the sperm of the
chimps that he collected

the material from.

They were trying to create a soldier

that had superhuman strength.

They wanted the strength of an ape,

which is known to be about
seven times that of a human,

with the intelligence of a human.

(military trucks running)

- [Voiceover] Incredibly, Marlowe believes

Stalin wasn't the only one
who was messing with nature.

- Not to be outdone by the Russians,

we attempted to do the same thing.

The attempt was not successful,

by all accounts.

But a lot of that had to do with

the lack of knowledge on the genetics.

Today, it could probably be done.

- [Voiceover] Are scientists
using modern technology

to create super soldiers
from humans and apes?

Could this explain the Monkey Man?

- [Marlowe] Some of the evidence

that the Monkey Man is a human-ape hybrid

could be that they're frequently reported

wearing some sort of helmet,

or flashing lights and that kind of thing,

which would probably be some
sort of communications device.

The most alarming feature
that's reported are metal claws.

That seems more of a military weapon.

If such experimentation were going on,

and these creatures
were intelligent enough

as presumably they would be

to escape from the facility
that was creating them,

they could certainly
account for the Monkey Man.

- [Voiceover] Was the
Monkey Man an escaped

super soldier?

And why, in an age of predator
drones and nuclear bombs,

would India need one?

- Creating a super soldier using

hybridization genetics

would probably be a good
solution for a country like India

where, yeah they belong
to the nuclear club,

but it's not a very popular solution

to solving one's problems as a country.

A super soldier might be
engineered for stealth purposes.

They could pursue this type of a thing,

especially since in India,
monkeys and apes running around

are not at all unusual.

They could infiltrate,
they could blend in,

they could perform a
number of different things,

in terms of intelligence
gathering or otherwise

performing some sort of military function

without going detected.

I do know, if Monkey Men had been created

with genetic engineering
for a military purpose,

I would be extremely concerned,

if not deathly afraid of the outcome.

- [Voiceover] Was a
hybrid man-ape let loose

on the streets of New Delhi?

Are we creating man-made monsters?

Weird, or what?

(suspenseful music)

- [Voiceover] So there we have it.

Monster stories from all over the world.

In West Virginia, a winged monster,

seven feet tall with red eyes

terrorized the town of Point Pleasant.

In Newfoundland, a mysterious
giant mass of flesh

emerges from the depths of the ocean.

And in India, a half man,
half beast, attacks thousands

and sends an entire city into panic.

(screaming)

Are these bizarre stories
evidence that monsters exist?

Can we dismiss thousands of eye witnesses

who claim these things are true?

You decide.

- Join me again next time
for more stories that will

undoubtedly be weird

or what.

(suspenseful music)