It's been almost 100 years since King Tut's tomb was discovered, and ever since, archeologists and treasure hunters have been digging in the Egyptian desert. But as you'll see in this next video, one group found more than they were bargaining for. [wind blowing] A group of treasure hunters is battling heavy winds in the Egyptian desert, in search of lost pyramids. It's May 2013, and the team is working with amateur satellite archeologist Angela Micol, who's directed them to these coordinates. It was a very large, triangular mound, and I was like, wait a minute, this could be undiscovered.
NARRATOR: Suddenly, the wind picks up, and the team is stopped in its tracks by the sound of a whisper in the air. [inaudible] NARRATOR: Take another listen. [inaudible] When I heard that voice, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
It sounded like some kind of an incantation. [inaudible] NARRATOR: Did someone on Angela's team say it? ANGELA MICOL: They're like, oh, no, we didn't put the voice on there. We don't know what it's saying. They also said they didn't think that it was Arabic, and I'm like, what could it possibly be? Could it be maybe an ancient Egyptian dialect? NARRATOR: Could the whisper be an ancient curse? Journalist MJ Banias says that theory leads back to Howard Carter, the man who discovered King Tut's tomb, in 1922. MJ BANIAS: Locals warned Carter that he probably shouldn't be messing around in the tomb of a dead pharaoh, and sure enough, after Carter made his discovery, strange things started to happen. Members of Carter's team began to drop like flies.
The tale goes that six people, including Carter's secretary and financial benefactor, died in the following years because of the pharaoh's curse. Is that curse what Angela's team recorded? Our analysis starts with audio expert Ben Gottesman. First question, is this really a voice or just wind? So here's wind. Right? Which you can see is this extremely intense, low frequency chunk. NARRATOR: Now, here's the whisper. [inaudible] Next, Gottesman compares the sound of the whisper to a human voice.
Here's a human S sound. [inaudible] NARRATOR: Now, listen to the whispers. [inaudible] Just looking at the spectrogram, the hissiness of the S's matched what we humans produce. NARRATOR: OK. The whisper sounds human, but did it happen in the Egyptian desert, or was it added later? We turn to forensic analyst Michael Primeau. I noted no instances of fading, a difference in background noises, anything that would be suspicious of that recording just kind of pasted into that section, through the spectrogram analysis.
So there is no direct evidence to support that this was layered into the recording or added after the fact. NARRATOR: So it looks like we have a real voice saying something, but what? Next, we send the audio to our Egyptologist, Nick Brown. [inaudible] NARRATOR: Could we have proof of an ancient curse? So the tricky thing with ancient Egyptian is it's a language that's died out. So modern scholars don't know actually how to speak it. NARRATOR: But according to Brown, based on hieroglyphics, we do know that sounds such as jah, sin, and cah were part of the language. As he listens, Brown doesn't hear enough to think this is Ancient Egyptian or a closely related language.
I have to say that I can't explain what the noise is. NARRATOR: Still, he can't rule out its authenticity. NICHOLAS BROWN: I think there is some possibility that, in the future, we might be able to tell-- as some scholars are trying to study and crack the code of ancient Egyptian and the language and how it was spoken. So we've determined that this whisper is definitely some sort of human-made sound, and it wasn't faked, but whether or not it's an ancient curse is yet to be determined. So our verdict, the whisper is an unexplained phenomenon.
As for the team, they've continued to search the site and have found evidence of limestone and pottery shards. Could it be pyramids? We'll let you know if they find anything. Hobbs, New Mexico, parishioners are attending mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church. Toward the end of the service, people start to notice something strange happening with the Statue of the Virgin Mary.
The worshipers get out their cell phones and start recording. From the video, it appears the statue is crying actual tears. Take a closer look at the cheek.
Many of those who see the video believe this is a supernatural event, and this is not the first time something like this has happened. Religious scholar Diana Pasulka says this tradition goes back centuries. DIANA PASULKA: Mary is the mother of God, and she's sad.
And sometimes she cries tears of oil, and sometimes she cries tears of blood. These are relics, basically, thought to have divine power. But how do we know this isn't some hoax meant to deceive the faithful? It's time to ask the experts, is this proof or not? [music playing] We start with trained engineer and Catholic miracle researcher Michael O'Neill.
MICHAEL O'NEILL: Many people gathered to witness this on three different occasions of this statue of the Virgin Mary weeping real tears. NARRATOR: First question, did someone stage this? We looked for internal duct work. Has something been installed inside the statue or outside the statue that would place tears on the eyes in a mechanical way, and that was ruled out. We also have to consider somebody sneaking in at off hours and putting droplets in the eyes and then alerting everyone saying, see, we're looking at a weeping statue. But we know that from the reports that people were gathered around the statue and saw the statue begin to weep tears. So the tears began to form on their own with witnesses around.
NARRATOR: So O'Neill investigates if perhaps the tears were caused by a leaky pipe. There is no leaky pipe either below or above or inside or around the statue. It's completely a standalone statue. NARRATOR: Finally, could the tears be caused by condensation? O'Neill visits the foundry that made the bronze statue.
MICHAEL O'NEILL: This was the singular case of all the many statues that they had created that exhibited this phenomenon. And we look at these statues, they're made of a bronze alloy, and so as such, they cannot retain water. NARRATOR: Physicist Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi also
weighs the condensation theory. What's special about the eyes that make that the location where it occurs and nowhere else on the statue? It wasn't sweating. It was crying. So what is it about the statue and the location of the eyes that would make it cry but not do anything else? NARRATOR: And it's even more strange, when you consider what the tears were made of. You would expect the liquid to be water, but the liquid has been tested, and it turns out, it's not water. It's olive oil.
So that makes this even weirder. NARRATOR: So if it's not a hoax, a leak, or condensation, then what is it? MICHAEL O'NEILL: This seems to be an authentic case of a miraculous weeping statue. We may not know why it's happening, but we know that it is happening. The Catholic Church has yet to verify this incident as a miracle, but so far, there's no earthly explanation for the weeping Mary of New Mexico, and that olive oil is what does it for us. Our verdict, an unexplained phenomenon, and if you want to call it a miracle, you go right ahead.
You ever get that feeling that you've been here before, and I'm not talking about deja vu. I'm talking about reincarnation. Millions believe in it as a matter of faith, but could there be photographic proof it's real? On the silver screen, actor Alec Baldwin has played dozens of characters, but some people think his greatest role wasn't an acting job but instead as the 13th president of the United States, Millard Fillmore. Look closely, those eyes, the nose, the mouth, and there's more. The internet has been buzzing with photos of celebrities and their uncanny counterparts.
Not only Alec Baldwin, actors like Matthew McConaughey as this 1800s doctor, Orlando Bloom as a 19th century composer, and Johnny Depp as this early 20th century choir director. What if these aren't merely striking resemblances but the actual evidence of past lives? For Barbro Karlen, the idea of reincarnation isn't a theory BARBRO KARLEN: I was about 2 and 1/2 years old, and my mother was calling my name. And then I said, yes, but my name is not Barbro. My name is Anne Frank. NARRATOR: Born in 1954, Barbro was a young writer, like Anne Frank, and published her first book of poetry at age 12.
And Barbro insists she has vivid memories of her past life as the famed Dutch diarist. I woke up almost every night, screaming and crying and reliving what happened to me in my past life. It's like two worlds. I live in two worlds at the same time. NARRATOR: To her family, that seemed implausible, until they visited Anne Frank's home in Amsterdam.
BARBRO KARLEN: I said, I know exactly where we are, and I led the way. And sure enough, there it was. NARRATOR: Barbro told a tour guide there were pictures missing from the walls.
BARBRO KARLEN: And she said, Barbro, you are absolutely right. They are taking down those pictures to put them in frames, but they were there, and Anne Frank did put up those pictures. How could you know this? NARRATOR: Barbro was just one of many. Researchers at the University of Virginia corroborated 1500s cases of past life memories.
Could Baldwin, Depp, and McConaughey be other such cases? Now, these celebrity look alikes are certainly striking, but are they really images of the same person? Let's put these photos to the test. [music playing] Hoan Ton-That is the co-founder and CEO of Clearview AI, a widely used facial recognition technology. HOAN TON-THAT: Technology has really caught up, and so with the Clearview AI algorithm, if you've lost some weight, and your face is thinner, if you grow out a long beard, we can still recognize you. NARRATOR: We gave Hoan the photo of Alec Baldwin to see if it's a match with Millard Fillmore.
In our first test, anything below a 0.8 on the scale is a match. Incredibly, the first test for Alec Baldwin came back just within range for the match category, a 0.78. Could it be possible? Not only are their faces similar, but Alec Baldwin's passion for politics is well known. It was once even rumored that he wanted to run for Senate.
Clearview repeated the test, this time, using 1.0 as the threshold, and once again, the results were astonishing. HOAN TON-THAT: This score is 1.04, barely above the threshold for a match. So a very, very close to the line there, and that's kind of incredible.
NARRATOR: The number was so shocking that a professional facial examiner was brought in to compare the photos. Hoan explains that analysis. When you look here, the first one is the lower lobe exterior shapes are quite different, and the other inconsistency was between the lips, and you can see that the photo A has a rounded upper lip, and photo B, which is Alec Baldwin, has a thinner upper lip. NARRATOR: So the photos are close, but not a perfect match.
Neither was McConaughey, and we're still waiting to hear about Bloom and Depp, but the question remains. Is reincarnation real? Barbro Karlen's answer is yes, a hopeful yes. I have had these memories, and I have gone through this to be able to tell that there is always goodness and light at the end of the tunnels. So is there truth to any of this? Well, I can't say, but there is definitely something very compelling about Barbro Karlen's story. But when it comes to Alec Baldwin and Millard Fillmore, our verdict, not a match. It's a sunny summer day in Beirut, Lebanon.
A stash of fireworks accidentally ignites, and then this. [explosions] What you've just seen is an explosion at a warehouse containing 2,700 tons of highly combustible ammonium nitrate, caused by those fireworks. The massive explosion can be heard for hundreds miles and makes headlines around the world.
But it's what happened next that caught our attention. A photographer snaps a photo of the smoke. WOMAN: Oh my god.
Oh my god [bleep] NARRATOR: As we get closer, we see what many people describe as two eyes, a gaping mouth, and a tail. It looks like a leering, demonic face. We return to Alexis Brooks, who covers the unexplained, and asked her to research eyewitness accounts of the event. A number of individuals, representing a variety of age groups, but all living in the area, all saw the image and all felt inherently that this image represented an evil that they feel is around them.
NARRATOR: Natural phenomenon or not, this isn't the first time people have reported evil faces near catastrophic events. In 2020, a devil-like face was reported in the wildfires raging across Australia. There was this demonic face in the smoke above the Notre Dame Cathedral fire, but perhaps the most haunting was this face. I don't have to tell you the date or the place. [music playing] So the question becomes, how unusual are these demon cloud formations? Is there a scientific explanation, or are other forces at work? Our experts, renowned theoretical physicist Dr.
Michio Kaku and atmospheric scientist Dr. Deanna Hence, have been digging into this mystery. DEANNA HENCE: Any time you have a plume of extremely hot air moving up in the atmosphere, you can end up with these pockets, where there is no smoke, where there is smoke, and that can lead to all sorts of funny shapes. NARRATOR: According to Hence, the holes that look like eyes and a mouth can be explained by the motion of heated gases from the explosion. Dr. Kaku says that after seeing shapes
similar to eyes and a mouth, our brains do the rest. When I see these fantastic images that look like something spectacular in clouds, I realize that this is probably something called pareidolia. NARRATOR: Pareidolia is the tendency for your mind to see a face or other familiar shapes in a random or unrelated object.
MICHIO KAKU: We see it, because our brain is hardwired for seeking patterns. It seeks out patterns, even when there's no patterns. It was good for our evolution, because 9 times out of 10, there was nothing there. But 1 time out of 10, there really was a tiger hiding in the bushes, and it saved your life. NARRATOR: OK. So we've heard from our experts, and they say the face in Beirut was made by the gases in the explosion.
The verdict? This is a natural phenomenon, but there are certainly plenty of true believers out there who feel these images are proof of evil forces at work. November, 2015, just a typical day of rush hour traffic in the Chinese city of Xing Tie. Then, this. Take a closer look. Two vans jump in the air and appear to suddenly defy gravity.
KRISSY ELLIOT: The van topples over, as it hits the ground, and nobody knows what happened. It's totally freaky. Doesn't make any sense. NARRATOR: But it's not just the laws of gravity that seem to be bending. In July, 2020, a photo surfaced on the internet that shows the impossible. Now, this one really is weird.
One of the girls, her facial expression in the mirror is different from her actual facial expression. Something like this can't be real. Right? NARRATOR: What is going on here? Has reality suddenly gone off the rails? Physicist Dr. Michio Kaku explains that some believe it's proof our world is actually an elaborate computer simulation.
The fundamental premise of the simulation theory is that there's a mysterious super advanced civilization that runs computer programs to simulate reality itself. They can create a world that's totally fake. NARRATOR: How would an alien civilization be able to generate our reality with such detail? Maybe we only need to look to our own technological advances. In the '70s, we were playing Pong on a black and white TV. Now, we have virtual reality. If we are capable of this kind of technological advancement, then an alien race that's millions of years ahead of us could create simulations that we can't even touch yet.
NARRATOR: So when a car mysteriously jumps in midair, or a mirror shows a wrong reflection, simple. It's a glitch in the alien's computer code. Not everything you see is always working the way it should. The computer's frozen, and some people perceive this phenomenon as proof that this is a glitch in the matrix. Now, if you believe we're not alone, and you believe technology advances exponentially, it follows that an alien civilization may well have evolved to the point that they're running lots of big simulations, and we're living in one of them.
But are these images proof or not? We first sent the bizarre video of the car to science writer and forensic video analyst Mick West. MICK WEST: My first thought was perhaps there was some kind of water main break, and the water was rushing up underneath this car and pushing it up into the air? NARRATOR: West zooms in on the video. There's clearly no water seen underneath the cars, but he does find a clue in how the van jumps in the air.
It kind of jerks, and then it's suspended. The only plausible thing that could hold up something like that is a rope or a cable or a chain. NARRATOR: OK. If we're looking for a cable or chain, I don't see anything. But West says take a closer look at the right-hand side of the screen.
See that large vehicle between the two cars? MICK WEST: There's a street sweeper going at about the same time that they get raised up into the air. NARRATOR: West did some more digging. Turns out, this street sweeper is the key to the mystery. MICK WEST: What actually happened was there was a cable lying on the street, and this cable got tangled up in the street sweeper, and it pulled the cars up into the air. And because the video is very low quality, you can't see this. NARRATOR: So chalk one up for everyday reality, but what about the photo of the girl in the mirror? We ask our other forensic video analyst Michael Primeau to take a look.
MICHAEL PRIMAEU: So I began my investigation by examining what's referred to as the metadata information. This particular image, I noted several consistencies with what I would expect to see as an original. I noticed no inconsistencies in the digital information. NARRATOR: Primeau confirms the file is a camera original, but could the face in the reflection have been digitally manipulated after the photo was taken? I look for any kind of inconsistencies in directionality of light, any kind of inconsistencies in the actual compression blocks, which is a X-ray version of the picture, which looks for areas of the image that have been copied over, duplicated, cloned, et cetera. NARRATOR: Here's where it gets freaky. MICHAEL PRIMAEU: We would expect to see some sort of pasting of these two faces, but I do not detect any evidence of tampering of any kind.
This is likely what actually was being documented in real life. So it turns out, those cars and vans can be explained pretty simply. Our verdict there, a tangled cable, but the examination of that photo is rock solid.
There was no digital trickery, and who knows, it could be evidence that this reality is not really real. Our verdict on the photo, unexplained phenomenon.
2023-03-11