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The Proof Is Out There - Season 6 - Episode 04: The Battle Of Los Angeles, Chinese Dragon Discovery, And Celebrity Ufo Engsub
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00:00Tonight on The Proof is Out There.
00:03It's a classic UFO mystery of World War II.
00:06What did the army shoot at in the Battle of Los Angeles?
00:09This photo alone can't possibly capture the sheer panic
00:14that was felt by everybody involved.
00:18Could the myths and legends be true?
00:21Are these the bones of an ancient dragon?
00:24The body of this animal looks almost reptilian in nature.
00:28Did a famous pop singer have his own close encounter with a UFO?
00:33This thing kind of floats and hovers in the sky
00:35and then very quickly just kind of shoots away.
00:39And is this nun's body actually proof of a miracle?
00:44Incorruptibility is when a person's corpse simply doesn't decompose.
00:54Around the globe are videos.
00:59Photos
01:00and sounds that defy explanation.
01:08We don't know where they come from, who made them, or how they operate.
01:12What are they?
01:13Some sort of bizarre mutation.
01:15What's exciting is nobody really knows.
01:17Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.
01:22I'm Tony Harris, and as a journalist for more than 30 years,
01:25I've followed the facts where they take me.
01:28Now I'm bringing that spirit of investigation
01:30to the world's strangest sounds and images.
01:33It's coming towards us.
01:34We'll analyze each one with top experts.
01:37It's a credible case.
01:39It's a credible video.
01:40And pass a verdict on what it is.
01:43This video was clearly faked.
01:55Good evening and welcome to The Proof is Out There.
01:58In 1942, just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
02:03California was the site of a deadly incident now known as the Battle of Los Angeles.
02:09Some thought the Japanese had struck again.
02:11Some thought it was a UFO invasion.
02:14And luckily for us, someone snapped a photo.
02:19February 25th, 1942, Los Angeles, California.
02:24It's only a couple of months since the Pearl Harbor attack
02:27brought the United States into World War II,
02:30and fears of a Japanese invasion are running high.
02:34Around 2 a.m., military radar detects an unidentified object approaching the city.
02:40A blackout is ordered while air raid sirens blare,
02:43and the anti-aircraft artillery starts firing.
02:46As the chaos unfolds, one Los Angeles Times reporter captures this.
02:54Searchlights converge on what looks like a white craft.
02:57It appears to have a pointed top, tapered sides, and a domed bottom.
03:02The anti-aircraft fire peppers the surrounding sky.
03:06Whatever this thing is, they can't shoot it down.
03:09The photo makes headline news,
03:11and the incident becomes known as the Battle of Los Angeles.
03:14All over town, eyewitnesses insist something was in the sky that night.
03:20Some people, of course, particularly in more modern times, have thought,
03:24well, wait a minute.
03:25Isn't this a classic UFO sighting?
03:29At the time, people thought, my goodness, we're under attack.
03:32The Japanese are here again.
03:33In fact, just before the Battle of Los Angeles,
03:37a Japanese submarine had surfaced off the coast near Santa Barbara
03:42and had actually bombarded an oil field there,
03:46aiming for some of the storage facilities.
03:49So you can imagine the feeling was no one's safe.
03:52And then it hit, and people started saying,
03:56there's something in the sky, and they're firing up.
03:59It's just, like, smoke, the sound, the lights.
04:04I mean, they're in the middle of a war zone here.
04:06And so this goes on for some hours.
04:10But it's a tragic story, because five people lose their lives in this.
04:15Two heart attacks and three fatalities in road traffic accidents.
04:22It's believed that, you know, the lights being out and so forth
04:26caused all sorts of chaos on the streets.
04:30More than 1,400 rounds of anti-aircraft artillery had been pumped into the sky.
04:36But once all the smoke cleared, there was no wreckage from Japanese planes
04:40or any indication of Japanese aircraft.
04:43Now we know Japan didn't fight the war with aircraft alone.
04:47In fact, they would later launch a new weapon against the American mainland.
04:52Balloon bombs.
04:53Japan did launch balloons designed to drop bombs
04:57over to the continental United States,
04:59most notably reaching Oregon,
05:01which makes people wonder, was what happened this night
05:04actually an early balloon or an early attempt by the Japanese
05:07to launch something toward the American mainland?
05:12In January 2018, Hawaiians received this emergency alert warning.
05:17Ballistic missile threat inbound.
05:20Seek immediate shelter.
05:21This is not a drill.
05:22Panic spread.
05:24But it all turned out to be a false alarm.
05:27Similarly, some believe a false alarm triggered the Battle of Los Angeles.
05:31But then how do you explain that photo?
05:34Let's ask the experts.
05:40Considering the U.S. was at war,
05:42was this a Japanese air raid?
05:44I don't think that's what we're actually looking at here,
05:47because when we zoom in on this image,
05:49it doesn't look like a plane.
05:51It just looks like a whitish blob.
05:53And if it was a plane,
05:55you'd be able to see that it was a plane from these searchlights.
05:58But what about an early balloon bomb?
06:01Again, a balloon would be something
06:03that would be very well illuminated by searchlights.
06:05You will see the clear, circular outline,
06:08and we just simply don't see that.
06:10And of course, if it was a balloon,
06:11it probably would have been shot down,
06:12because balloons don't move very fast,
06:14and they're very vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire.
06:17The Japanese later denied involvement in the incident.
06:20Even the U.S. military dismissed the so-called battle as a false alarm.
06:25Could that be all this is?
06:26We have to remember the radar was very much in its early days back then,
06:31and it was very slow scanning and very prone to error.
06:34So what might have shown up on the radar back then
06:36may just have been something like reflections of waves on the water or even birds.
06:42Of course, faulty radar doesn't explain the photo,
06:45though something else might.
06:47I think what we're actually looking at here
06:49is just simply a region of smoke from the anti-aircraft fire
06:53that's been illuminated by multiple searchlights at the same time,
06:57and that single bright area that all the searchlights concentrated on
07:02creates a shape that looks a little bit like a flying saucer,
07:06and so a legend was born.
07:09But that still leaves numerous eyewitness accounts of strange objects in the sky,
07:14objects that could not be struck down by anti-aircraft artillery.
07:19World War II fighter pilots in Europe
07:21would notice something similar two years later.
07:25They reported being confronted by mysterious glowing orbs
07:28that they called Foo Fighters.
07:31My best guess here is that either nothing was there and it's a false alarm,
07:37or that maybe it was a high-tech craft of some kind
07:39that never could be hit by our shells.
07:42And to this day, we can't discount the possibility
07:45that it might also have been an advanced craft that was eluding the guns.
07:54Our verdict?
07:56This is a split decision.
07:57We think the object in the photo is probably smoke from the anti-aircraft fire,
08:02but based on the eyewitness accounts,
08:04we believe something unexplained was also in the skies that night.
08:10Whether it's Smaug hoarding treasure in The Hobbit or the Targaryens
08:15riding them to victory in the Game of Thrones,
08:18dragons are among the most iconic creatures in legend and literature.
08:23But that's all just fiction, right?
08:27October 10th, 2017, Zhangji, Yakou City, China.
08:33Villagers of this rural community gather around, smartphones in hand,
08:37after several residents claim to have made a bizarre discovery.
08:41We see what appears to be a 65-foot-long skeleton.
08:45It has a serpentine body, a head with antlers, and a set of prominent claws.
08:51The villagers are in awe, with some even straddling its head while posing for photos.
08:56This video went viral, and ultimately it got over 10 million views.
09:01But apparently many of the local villagers swore up and down
09:04that these were actually the remains of a real-life dragon.
09:08Many say this skeleton matches the anatomy of dragons from Chinese mythology.
09:13They were often depicted with horns or antlers.
09:18In primeval China, emperors were said to have descended from the bloodline of dragons,
09:25and these were known as the long.
09:27It's a very powerful symbol in Chinese culture.
09:31One can wonder, where does this mythology stem from?
09:34Are we actually looking at the remains of a real-life dragon?
09:39Some argue that instead of looking to China's cultural history,
09:43we should look to its fossil record.
09:45In 2024, an international team discovered the fossilized remains of a new type of dinosaur,
09:54Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, nicknamed the Chinese dragon.
09:58This particular species lived about 240 million years ago.
10:03But what was really remarkable was that it had a very long neck like we're seeing here in the video.
10:07So, are these the remains of some type of prehistoric creature?
10:15Legends claim that Alexander the Great came across a dragon during his campaign in India,
10:21a hissing cave-dwelling beast over 100 feet long and with eyes as large as a Macedonian shield.
10:29The terrifying creature reportedly struck fear into his army and was worshipped as a god by the locals.
10:35Is it possible that these creatures once did exist?
10:40Let's ask the experts.
10:46This is really like no skeleton that I have ever seen before.
10:52Dragons are often depicted as having wings.
10:55For animals that have wings, like birds and bats, they're essentially like modified hands.
11:01And we're not seeing any indication of that here.
11:05In fact, we're seeing forearms and we're not seeing anything on its back.
11:11However, the dragons of Chinese myth were thought to be wingless.
11:15They'd fly by undulating through the sky.
11:18Impossible?
11:19Well, check out these airborne leaps made by paradise tree snakes,
11:23recently documented by researchers at Virginia Tech.
11:26But our experts still say no way.
11:30These bones seem really thick and there's a lot of them.
11:35Even if this were a real dragon, it doesn't make sense for it to have such a dense number of
11:42rib bones.
11:43Its skeleton seems way too heavy.
11:46It doesn't seem physiologically possible for this animal to be able to fly.
11:52Okay, so maybe not a dragon as we know them, but could it be an undocumented, cold-blooded creature of
12:00some sort?
12:01The body of this animal looks almost reptilian in nature.
12:06You see a very elongated body like a snake and seems to have some sort of antlers.
12:10There's one snake out there which does have two seeming antlers on them.
12:15The snake is known as the venomous horned viper, Sarastes, named after a horned serpent of Greek legend.
12:23But those antlers, they're more cartilage-based and they're fleshy tissue that would decay and dissolve with the rest of
12:30the body.
12:31If it's not a new species of reptile, is it possible this mysterious beast is actually very old?
12:39A dinosaur like that recently discovered Chinese dragon.
12:43Skeletons of dinosaurs are not actually bone anymore because the minerals from the surrounding rock have replaced the bone.
12:52If this is a real animal, this is one that would have had to have died very recently.
12:57If this was truly a recent kill, I would expect to see some sort of insect or decomposer in the
13:05area.
13:05My hypothesis is this is some sort of hoax.
13:09They either used fake bones or they took bones from other existing animals and put them all together to create
13:16the shape and illusion of a dragon.
13:23Our verdict?
13:25We agree with our experts that this is most definitely a hoax.
13:30There are just too many things that don't add up.
13:32And recent online posts from China indicate that this may indeed be a movie prop.
13:38So dragons shall remain the stuff of myths and legends for now.
13:45Every parent knows the anxiety of tending to a sick child, but it's even worse when the doctors can't even
13:52figure out what's going on.
13:53Well, in this next story, hundreds of children experience the same strange affliction all at once, setting the stage for
14:01one massive medical mystery.
14:04July 13th, 1980, Kirkby in Ashfield, England.
14:09Photographer Neil Lancashire is covering a children's band competition at the Hall & Wells Showground, where more than 300 kids
14:17are gathered with their instruments.
14:19But in the midst of this idyllic scene, disaster strikes, and Neil's camera captures this.
14:27All over the showground, children begin to collapse.
14:31Complete chaos takes over as people lie unconscious in the grass, and parents carry their children in their arms.
14:37As you can see in Neil's photos, young children appear to be doubled over in pain, as if sick to
14:44their stomachs, or possibly gasping for air.
14:48You don't understand what's really happening.
14:50You're in the moment and thinking, well, this is not right.
14:54Some of the children had come down without the parents, and there was only a big sister to look after
14:59them.
15:00They called in ambulances then, they took the children to the hospital, and the ambulances couldn't cope with the amount
15:08of children that fainted.
15:10All these kids just were falling over, really horrible, and it was really frightening.
15:15Thankfully, no one died.
15:17But what caused this in the first place?
15:20The health department theory?
15:22Mass hysteria.
15:23Mass hysteria has affected a lot of young people.
15:27There was a case in 1962 called the Tanganyika laughing incident, which occurred in Tanzania and East Africa.
15:35And in this case, up to 1,000 girls over a period of weeks couldn't stop laughing.
15:44They were also getting rashes and sores and sore throats and fainting and nausea, so people were very concerned about
15:52what it could have been.
15:54In 2014, 34 years after the Hollandwell incident, British politician Dennis Skinner claimed the incident was not properly investigated because
16:04the victims were working-class kids.
16:06He said if the children had fallen ill at a royal garden party, authorities would have handled it more meticulously.
16:13Let's see if our experts can discover anything those authorities might have missed.
16:22Could we really be looking at a case of mass hysteria?
16:26Mass hysteria, or mass psychogenic illness, is a very real phenomenon in which symptoms with no known cause spread throughout
16:34a community.
16:35Some believe that mass hysteria actually reflects the social fears and anxiety of a given time period.
16:40There have been many mass hysteria events throughout history.
16:43A famous one occurred in 1518 in Strasbourg, France, when a woman began dancing and didn't stop for a couple
16:50of weeks.
16:51More and more people began to join her until eventually there were 400 people dancing.
16:56Some of them died from overexerting themselves, and no one could figure out what had caused the event.
17:03Most recently, there was a mysterious condition called Havana Syndrome, which occurred in Cuba.
17:08U.S. diplomats there were suffering from dizziness and migraines, and they thought they might have been attacked by some
17:14kind of weapon.
17:16Officials came to the conclusion that this was some kind of mass hysteria, where people became sick because they thought
17:21they were exposed to some kind of threat.
17:24According to two U.S. intelligence agencies, it's possible that a novel weapon wielded by some kind of foreign adversary
17:30could be causing some cases of Havana Syndrome.
17:33Others, however, disagree.
17:36The reasons why I don't think this is a case of mass hysteria is that we see infants that are
17:41falling sick.
17:42Infants who are less than a year old are not going to be taken over by psychological manifestations of symptoms.
17:50In addition, there were individuals who felt sick when they got home.
17:54The symptoms continued even after people had left the scene when they were not around other people who were sick.
18:03If mass hysteria can't explain what's happening, maybe chemistry can.
18:08According to reports, there was a powerful chemical smell coming from the recently cleaned bathrooms.
18:15People smelled a combination of ammonia and chlorine.
18:18Because they were smelling that combination, that gave people the idea that that was the major cause of this accident.
18:25The beauty of chemistry is that you could take two everyday normal household items, mix them together, and come out
18:33with something totally different.
18:34And that very well could be what happened here.
18:37When they were trying to clean the bathrooms and they mixed the bleach with the ammonia, they produced chlorine gas,
18:43which can be pretty terrifying.
18:45It was even used in World War I as a weapon.
18:50Now that sounds like a compelling theory, but that doesn't make this a closed case.
18:55After all, you can see in these photos, the kids were outside, in the open air.
19:01Those two gases would have dissipated long before they had gotten out onto the field where those kids were playing
19:06their marching bands.
19:08There's just really no evidence to really determine what actually went on.
19:12Everybody has their own leading hypotheses, but there's really no strong evidence to point to any one particular thing.
19:26We're going with Dr. Anderson on this one.
19:29The Hollandwell incident remains one of the greatest medical mysteries of the 20th century.
19:37Skeptics often argue that UFO witnesses are lying about their experiences for fame and fortune,
19:43while believers argue that there's too much ridicule involved for that to be the case.
19:49But what does it mean when somebody who's already famous shares his UFO sighting?
19:54It means we need to investigate.
19:57It's spring 2024 in New York City.
20:00Grammy-nominated musician Jay Balvin is hanging out on the soccer field with some friends.
20:06Before long, they notice something strange in the sky and manage to record this.
20:12The camera zooms in on an object hanging in the blue sky.
20:16It appears triangle-shaped with rounded corners and a light or opening on its underside.
20:26The object pivots slowly from side to side as if scanning the area.
20:31Then, as Jay turns the camera away from his awestruck friend, the UFO zips away.
20:38Jay posts the video on Instagram, and you can guess what happens next.
20:43Jay Balvin is enormously popular. He has more than 50 million followers on his social accounts.
20:49So when he posted this video, it spread like wildfire.
20:54Jay's sighting brings to mind a type of UFO that's famous in its own right.
20:59UFOlogists will point to kind of consistent shapes that UFOs have, and triangular is one of them,
21:05with sightings from around the world.
21:08From 1983 to 1984, even into 1985, residents of the Hudson River Valley area reported giant,
21:15triangular, or boomerang-shaped craft.
21:19This is important because this is not just grandma seeing some lights in the backyard.
21:23These are trained observers, highly trained individuals like law enforcement, even military
21:28personnel, all reporting being eyewitnesses to some of these, the most incredible UFO
21:34experiences and events in recent history.
21:39It's worth noting that while triangle UFOs typically have sharp edges, this one is a little different.
21:46Take a look at this. See how it has these rounded corners? And look here in the middle.
21:52Now, if you ask me, that looks like an opening going straight through the craft.
21:57That's different. But what will our experts make of this celebrated sighting?
22:07We always consider the most obvious explanation first. Could this be some sort of novelty balloon?
22:13Balloons can be any shape that you want them to be, but the balloon is going to be impacted by
22:18wind
22:19and wind changes. It would not be hovering in one spot. It would be up and down, and you don't
22:25see
22:25anything like that in this video. We know that paparazzi have started using drones to get shots
22:30of celebrities. Could they be targeting J Balvin? I would think that this drone would be a lot closer
22:36to the individual so that they could get good facial recognition and see who's part of his entourage.
22:43Also, I have tried zooming into this video and I don't see any indication that this in particular
22:49object is a drone. There's none of the lights. There's no sound. The typical things that you would see
22:54with a drone are not in this video. So if it's not any flying craft we know of,
23:00is it a famed triangle UFO? Not exactly. I don't think that it's a UFO. It's not the description that
23:07we typically get for triangular-shaped UFOs at all. It looks like it's relatively about the same distance
23:13from the camera as the water tower is, which is not that far. So it appears to be relatively small.
23:22Triangular UFOs are known for being massive, often described as the size of multiple football fields.
23:28So if this one is small, it doesn't fit. And that's not the only suspicious clue.
23:34In this video clip, there's a water tower, there's a tree, and then there's an object. When I zoom my
23:40camera in, I'm seeing the fact that the position of the actual object shifts and moves with the camera
23:48movement. See how in this stabilized version of the video, the object doesn't actually hold steady
23:55relative to its surroundings? Instead, it moves with a video frame. That's a telltale sign it was
24:02digitally inserted into the scene. None of the things matched up in terms of positions of where
24:09the object was. The moving away from that to take a picture of somebody, all that has the indications
24:15of it being a hoax. Our verdict? Hoax. If you're still not convinced, take a look at this photo from
24:27Jay Balvin's Coachella performance just four days after he posted the video to social media.
24:32Look familiar? That's the same UFO. Clever promo, Jay. But I think we can agree your talent is for music,
24:40not video fakery. Have you ever seen The Blob? It's a 1958 horror movie where a community is
24:50terrorized by an alien creature made of goo. This fictional blob consumes people, growing bigger and
24:56hungrier with each victim. Well, after seeing this next video, you might think something similar
25:02happened in Nebraska. June 20th, 2024. Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska. Chad Casey is
25:10out and about in the countryside when suddenly something on the ground starts moving towards him.
25:16It's like nothing he's seen before. So he takes out his phone and captures this.
25:25A brownish blobby mass studded with white spheres crawls along the ground. Chad films it moving across the
25:33countryside as it spreads out in what seemed to be layers eating everything in its path. After it's posted,
25:40the video spawns a curious theory online. People drew comparisons between the video and the movie The
25:46Blob, which was apparently inspired by a real-life incident. On September 26, 1950, two Philadelphia
25:53police officers saw an object falling from the sky. They called for backup and then pursued the object to
26:00where it had fallen. During a search of the area, they discovered an ooze that seemed to move. According to
26:06some
26:06reports, it even shimmied up a telephone pole. When one of the officers touched the ooze, it left behind
26:13a clear sticky residue. After about an hour and a half, the whole mass simply evaporated. Because they
26:19had called for backup, there were actually four witnesses to whatever had gone down in that field.
26:26Think that's the only time a weird jelly fell from the sky and puzzled the world? Think again.
26:31In 1969, following a meteor shower, scientists in Australia were actually able to gather 200 pounds
26:38of a jelly-like substance off the ground, which they then analyzed and discovered that it included
26:43amino acids, which are the building blocks of life. So is this some sort of natural substance from space?
26:50Or could it be possible it was created in a lab? After all, we've seen synthetic blobs like this
26:57magnetic putty, which appears to have a life of its own. Scientists have also created a really creepy
27:04looking gooey substance. It's actually infused with metal. And so when you put it near magnets,
27:10it moves in a way that is really unsettling. In 2024, in Southern California,
27:18beachgoers spotted clusters of strange oval-shaped blobs along the shore. These were identified as
27:25valella valella, a small ocean predator related to jellyfish. But what about our terrestrial blob?
27:32It's nowhere near any ocean. Can our experts identify it?
27:41Could this blob be a man-made creation? It's got dirt in it. It's got ice in it. You can
27:47see that it's
27:47picking up material that's on the outside. This appears to be like a mud type of feature. It's more moving
27:53like a solid. And so more like a mud flow. So it's more natural than it is a man-made
27:58type of feature.
28:00If it didn't come from a lab, where did it come from?
28:03I believe this has the appearance of hail. We're looking at some water. So this tells me
28:08we're looking at the beginnings of a flash flood. Flash floods might conjure up images of rushing water,
28:15but they can also create what's known as a debris flow. This is when flooding runs downhill,
28:21picking up loose soil, rocks, and foliage along the way. The result? A sludge-like torrent.
28:28More than likely, we just saw a storm move across with flash flooding that is likely occurring in the
28:35background. We also probably just experienced a hailstorm that dropped quite a bit of hail across the region.
28:44Good theory. But how about some data? Well, we confirmed that a hail-forming storm
28:50front had passed through the region. Although this blob may seem quite scary,
28:55the most monstrous thing we saw was a severe hailstorm that impacted the Scotts Bluff area.
29:05Our verdict? Hail and ground debris flow. So this was no living goo monster, but there's a chance
29:13we'll soon see a different kind of blob come to life. Scientists in Japan have recently engineered a
29:19pink blob out of collagen gel to mimic living skin tissue for humanoid robots.
29:27On a previous episode, we investigated the case of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster,
29:33whose body was remarkably, some say miraculously, preserved after her death.
29:38Well, we have some developments to that story. Is it more evidence of divine intervention?
29:44You can make the last judgment. April 2023, Gower, Missouri.
29:51Four years after the death of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, the other sisters of her order decide
29:58to transfer her remains to the monastery chapel. But when they open her casket, they're stunned to find
30:05this. It's Sister Wilhelmina's body, but where one might have expected decayed and formless remains
30:13after four years. Instead, her body is largely intact. Sister Martina Lee, who witnessed the exhumation,
30:21reveals that it's not just Sister Wilhelmina's body that seemed unscathed by the passage of time.
30:27Everything that she was wearing at the time of her burial, her veil and forehead piece,
30:33her entire habit was preserved intact. It's kind of like, you know, this is God's little sign that
30:38this person was so faithful to him that she didn't necessarily need to undergo the curse of corruption.
30:46Incorruptibility is when a person's corpse simply doesn't decompose. It's said to happen
30:52with people of the cloth. At the time, the story caught fire with media around the world. People were
30:59so excited that 25,000 people flocked to rural Missouri in the first month after her body was
31:06exhumed to pay their respects and see for themselves. When we first told this story, our verdict was that
31:12this was a potential miracle. Now, a new development. Fast forward to 2024 when a new medical exam of the
31:21remains has come up with some startling revelations. In the time since Sister Wilhelmina was exhumed,
31:26she has been examined by medical experts who, according to the church, couldn't find any
31:31reason for why her body would be so well preserved. Now, a fellow Benedictine nun said that this is a
31:36miracle and she is actually gathering testimony from eyewitnesses to bolster the case, and that is
31:42just one of the steps towards canonization. In 2024, experts studying relics in Spain exhumed the body of
31:54Saint Teresa of Avila, who died in 1582. They declared that her remains had not decomposed at all.
32:02A year later, the church presented the new evidence. Saint's corpse was put on display and some claimed
32:08that its well-preserved condition was proof of her incorruption. But can we say the same for Sister Wilhelmina?
32:20When we first covered this story, no medical exam of the body had taken place. But now, we've got
32:27forensic data. So what did that new exam reveal? The examining doctor was a doctor of pathology and was
32:34assisted by two other medical doctors and also by the local coroner. And they said that her body is truly
32:41atypical for what they might expect for the passage of approximately four years. To top it off, the
32:47team literally dug deep for more answers, conducting a soil analysis around the grave.
32:53They even addressed people's ideas about the soil. There are chemicals that will help preserve skin and
33:01help preserve tissue. But they came to the conclusion that there was nothing in the soil that would have
33:07preserved her body in such pristine condition. Additionally, the medical examiners interviewed
33:13eyewitnesses at the burial and did not learn of any other factors that could explain the body's
33:20remarkable condition. What's really remarkable about Sister Wilhelmina is that when they pulled out
33:26her coffin, there was a large crack down the middle, they found a large amount of moss suggesting really
33:33damp and wet environment. And you're going to see more bacteria, scavengers, all of these organisms that
33:41decompose the body. So the fact that her body was preserved despite the environment is unexplainable. I
33:47honestly don't have a medical explanation for what's going on here.
33:52So can we call this a real case of incorruptibility?
33:57Perhaps this is truly a case of incorruption in the great tradition of the Catholic Church. But
34:03throughout Christian history, we have 10,000 saints who have been canonized by the Catholic Church.
34:08A very small fraction of those have been declared incorruptible.
34:18Our verdict, unexplained phenomenon. As of 2025, the Catholic Church has not yet
34:24weighed in with a formal declaration on Sister Wilhelmina's perceived incorruption.
34:30But now that there's an American pope, maybe that could change.
34:35For centuries, medieval medicine has been dismissed as unsound. The time period
34:42itself is snidely referred to as the Dark Ages, suggesting that it was unenlightened by science
34:48or reason. So how could a 1,100-year-old medical book from this period hold the secret to curing
34:56modern illnesses?
34:592016, London, England. Scientists around the world are intrigued when the British Library
35:06announces it is releasing online the complete pages of Bald's leech book, a medical text that is believed
35:13to have been written in the mid-10th century. When the day comes, eager researchers log on to find this.
35:21It's a blend of Old English and Latin, and the remedies within it are totally wild, completely unorthodox.
35:29Among these cures is one for swollen eyes, in which it's recommended that the person whose eyes are swollen gets
35:35a live crab,
35:36cuts off the crab's eyes, and then holds those eyes to their neck. There's even a baldness cure,
35:42in which it's advised to take burned bees, willow leaves, and oil, make a salve, and spread it all over
35:49your scalp.
35:51Bald's leech book is actually one of the oldest surviving collections of medical knowledge in
35:57existence. Bald was the owner of the book. Leech refers to physicians. In this book, there's bald's
36:04eye salve to cure an eye infection. There was a very specific recipe. It had onion, garlic, English white
36:13wine, and the bile salts from a cow's stomach. How did this leech book come by its odd remedies?
36:20Some speculated it was witchcraft. Magic really was a part of life in the middle ages, really before
36:27the witch persecutions started in Europe. There were people who you believed worked magic, and you might
36:34go to them for cures probably before you would go to any kind of physician who is out of your
36:41reach.
36:42But for some people who were coming up with cures during the middle ages, there was a real danger,
36:48particularly for women who were accused of witchcraft. The church and the patriarchy were
36:53not okay with this. They persecuted those women and sometimes even executed them for coming up with
36:59remedies and the kinds of things you'll find in Bald's leech book. It's not the first time we've seen
37:07books like this ahead of their time. In the 70s, Chinese scientists found a malaria treatment in
37:13a text from the fourth century. Do the cures in Bald's leech book work too? And how did they get
37:19there?
37:24How did the medieval healers behind Bald's leech book come up with their remedies? Did they actually work?
37:30Bald's leech book isn't the only medicinal book from this period. We have other examples of books
37:36with remedies in it, and they actually came up with remedies that worked. The treatments devised by
37:41practitioners in the middle ages required gathering ingredients and experimenting with them until they
37:48found something that worked. Willow bark was used to calm inflammation, and today a compound from willow bark
37:54is used in aspirin. Another example are the psychotropic plant compounds that were used in
38:00witches quote-unquote flying ointment, but today we use them as muscle relaxants and to cure motion sickness.
38:07A lot of this stuff has been around for a very long period of time. This book has a remedy
38:13for
38:14arthritis that contains nettles, and we know that nettles are a traditional Native American way of
38:20relieving arthritis and is also found in modern arthritic medicines today. So we know a lot of those herbs
38:27and a lot of those methods really are effective. Researchers at the University of Warwick actually
38:34tested out Bald's eye salve on a staph infection. To their astonishment, the staph infection was completely
38:43gone, and they repeated the experiment time after time, and every time they found the same results.
38:49The eye salve was completely eradicating the staph infection. Scientists were even more surprised when
38:55they tested the salve on MRCEP, a highly resistant bacterial strain. This is a superbug that is
39:03responsible for killing about 2,000 people a year and a major problem in the world of medicine today.
39:09And to their surprise, the eye salve killed 90 percent of the infection. How could an archaic recipe that
39:17includes white wine and bile salts from a cow's stomach accomplish this? Researchers found that
39:24allicin, a component of garlic, while it had the strongest bactericidal properties, did not work
39:31nearly as well alone as it did mixed with the other ingredients. Within the book's remedies, researchers have
39:39also discovered herbal ingredients that can effectively treat coughs, colds, and toothaches.
39:46But not all the recipes are created equal. There's another recipe where if you mix beetroot
39:52and honey, mash it together, smear it on someone's face, have them lay on their back in the sun,
39:59and let it drip down their face, that will cure their headache. I don't believe that works.
40:09Our verdict? There are some real, proven medical treatments in Bald's leech book.
40:14We haven't come across witchcraft or magic potions here, just evidence that the dark ages weren't so
40:20dark after all. Still, I think I'll pass on Bald's cure for warts, which says to apply dog urine and
40:28mouse blood to the affected area. No thanks. And that's our show for tonight. Thank you so much for
40:34watching. And remember to keep those cameras rolling.
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