Unsolved Phenomena of the 1960s ｜ The Proof Is Out There

In 2011, a mysterious YouTube user named Ivan0135 uploads what he claims is leaked classified footage from the KGB shot between 1942 and 1969. The first video posted on April 13th starts with a KGB logo and censored text above and below. You can hear the audio clicking of an old film projector. Remember that. Next, we see a house and a mysterious flying saucer-shaped object hovering behind it. Switching to an aerial view, a saucer-shaped UFO is seen first from a distance and then zoomed in. But the most shocking footage is yet to come. Next, we're shown what looks like an alien autopsy being performed. Just weeks after the first video, a second, even more stunning video is released. It purports to put us face to face with an actual live alien. Notice how it blinks its huge expressive eyes and it moves its enormous round head and slim arms. As the camera pans from the bottom to the top of an alien's body, it's obvious it fits the descriptions of the infamous grays. The alien culprit blamed in almost three quarters of abduction reports. Science writer and space flight historian Amy Title says the footage was first uploaded to a YouTube channel created the same day the first video was shared. This video led to a lot of discussion online with people wondering if this footage was indeed real and if so, what did that mean? One theory is that this is real video footage of the aliens who landed in the Soviet Union in the 1940s. Title notes that some believe the footage may have been faked as part of an elaborate Cold War Soviet psyop designed to instill fear and paranoia in the United States. Would putting captured aliens on display strike panic in the West? The idea was this footage was designed to scare the United States into believing that the Soviets had this alien technology. There's even a theory that the Roswell incident of 1947 was actually staged by Stalin just to create this fear and doubt within the United States. Or could it possibly be real? Title says given more recent events, maybe aliens visiting Russia isn't so far-fetched after all. There is a long history of alien encounters within the Soviet Union. The most notable event was in 1977 in Petrozavodsk. A number of eyewitnesses reported seeing an amethyst-colored jellyfish floating in the sky. The Petrozavodsk incident led to a meeting of the Soviet Ministry of Defense in Moscow, which in turn led to the creation of two new departments designed especially to look into UFO phenomena. They operated without interruption until 1990. The official Soviet UFO investigators never released any definitive proof of alien contact. Could this be it? Our experts are here to get to the pravda. That means the truth. We begin our analysis with our aviation and military expert, Tim McMillan. In the first portion of the video, the flying saucer-shaped object certainly has some characteristics that are consistent with a blimp. It appears kind of football-shaped. We have the darker bottom with the lighter top, which is sunlight reflecting on it. But in terms of exotic maneuvers, you don't Next, we ask Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology, Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, to examine the figures seen in the footage. I don't think that we're looking at real aliens. I think it's much more likely costumed children. This impression stems from the body proportions as well as the movements. A child has a fairly distinctive way of moving. The biomechanics of their body movements are dictated by their smaller mass and lack of maturity of body control. Same can be said for the movements, I think, seen here. Finally, we take the footage to our forensic video analyst, Michael Primo. He immediately notes that the timecode on the videos was embedded digitally after the fact. Devices like these projectors didn't have timecode. What's peculiar is the way that the timecode is pulsing at one point in the video and how at other points of the video there is no timecode displayed. It just doesn't make any sense. And here's the key discovery. Primo says that the film damage we see here is identical to a film damage effect available in some popular video editing software. And finally, remember the sound of that projector click? Primo says that's an important clue too. One of the things that I detected in the tonality of the projector clicking sound, the tone or the pitch of that sound changes, which is an indication that the speed of the video was changed when it was being played back. So that prompted me to measure a sample group of pictures and the sample produced a result of 47 frames per second, much higher than any kind of film photography should have been digitized at because the standard for film was only 24 frames per second back then. Our verdict? This is likely a hoax, but we can't prove who made it or why. Perhaps it's an individual prankster, or perhaps it's someone working for Mr. Putin to spread Russian disinformation. Either way, comrade, you didn't fool us this time. It's December 12, 1965. Robert Le Chirac is on a motorboat with his family near Hook Island in Queensland, Australia. While crossing the bay, Robert's wife notices a strange object from the bottom of a lagoon. The family starts snapping pictures. The photo shows what appears to be a massive sea creature that resembles a terrifyingly large tadpole. The serpentine creature is dark black in color and can be easily seen beneath the clear waters of the lagoon. It looks to be at least 30 feet long based on the proportional size of the motor in the background, and it seems to be coiled in the shape of an S. They decided to jump in the water and get a closer look at whatever this thing was. It wasn't moving, so they assumed that it was dead. Journalist Erin McCarthy tells us that serpents like this are a popular feature of the local Australian lore. There's a creature from the mythology of Australia's indigenous peoples called the rainbow serpent. When you see a rainbow in the sky in Australia, that's said to be the rainbow serpent traveling from one waterhole to another. Could the myth have been inspired by something rare but real? So one theory that has been floated is that perhaps we're looking at a prehistoric creature, specifically a mosasaur, which lived in oceans around the world from between 82 and 66 million years ago. Technically, mosasaurs weren't dinosaurs. They're more closely related to lizards and snakes. As such, they were able to unhinge their jaws to eat prey nearly the size of their bodies. It seems ridiculous to think an extinct sea species could still be swimming, but McCarthy doesn't think so. There was a particular type of fish, coelacanth, that was thought to be extinct that was then rediscovered in the 1930s. So it's not unheard of for science to believe that a creature has gone extinct and for it to pop back up. So we could be looking at maybe a new species or maybe a creature that we thought was extinct but actually isn't. So from the EXIF analysis, no signatures of photoshopping or any third-party editing software was detected of this particular image. Now whether or not the print photography was manipulated prior to production of this image, I can't say with certainty. But digitally, nothing has occurred to these images. We turn to marine biologist Che Conger, who's pretty sure this is not a mosasaur. Mosasaurs were very dynamic predators. They were probably very fast. They had four flippers that you would see here. And mosasaurs were typically known to be deeper sea animals. They probably wouldn't be in shallow water like this. So I don't think this is some kind of a living predatory animal that we think of as prehistoric. So could it possibly be a large eel? Eels are definitely dark in color. They can be very large. But their bodies are much more tubular in shape and they wouldn't have such distinct large head on them. In addition, to have an eel like this up in the surf where you couldn't define any facial features would be very unusual as well. An eel would have really distinct eyes and nostrils that we'd probably be able to see here. So I would probably deduce that this is not an eel. Also, you don't actually see any disturbance or other signs of movement. So if this were a dynamic object or animal, you would see probably bubbles or some water. If I had to guess as to what we're looking at, I think this looks like a really two-dimensional object like black plastic that has been placed on the bottom of wherever this was taken. It's a very clear image. And the fun thing about it is your brain can't quite make it out. It's hard to tell what you're looking at. And that's where a lot of the mystery comes from in the Hook Island sea monster image. We're going to call this an unexplained object. The evidence still begets the question, is this a real sea monster lurking off the coast of Australia? Or just another convincing fake? But this is hardly the only suspected creature off Australia's shores. The country even has its own Loch Ness monster called the Hawkesbury Monster, which is believed to be between 23 and 79 feet long. So if you're ever in the waters off the coast of the land down under, keep an eye out. The year is 1964. It's a beautiful spring day in Cumbria, England. Fireman Jim Templeton has the day off and takes his family to a local park near an inlet called the Solway Firth. Five-year-old Elizabeth gathers a bouquet of wildflowers while her father, an amateur photographer, snaps a few photos of the adorable tot on his new Kodak camera. But one shows something no one can explain. Someone dressed in what appears to be a space suit can be seen just behind the young girl's head. Take a closer look at that white outfit in what looks like a helmet with a face shield. Sure looks like this guy could be planting a flag on the moon. But Jim swears there was no one else behind his daughter when he took the photo, and certainly no astronauts from this planet or any other. The image spreads quickly to newspapers around the world, as does speculation on what this mysterious figure could be. Importantly, the photo is from the early years of the space age, with both the Soviets and the American programs making regular headlines. So the spaceman theory quickly gained traction. On the flip side, the escalating nuclear arms race fuels wild speculation that the figure was wearing a radiation hazmat suit. Coincidentally, there was a Royal Air Force base used to develop nuclear missiles near the Solway Firth. Some speculated this figure could have actually been a Soviet spy. Intrigue involving nuclear weapons sounds like a stretch, but remember, Cold War hysteria was still riding high just after the Cuban Missile Crisis. So what's really in this photograph? A visitor from space? A Soviet nuclear spy? Or is it just a decades-old hoax? Let's see what develops when we consult our experts. First, we determined if the appearance of the figure was the result of some camera development trickery. To do some trick photography in the 60s, some would do a double exposure where you're taking two images onto the same slide of negative. Now that's not possible to create a scene like this, however, because you would see some kind of ghosting artifacts of this young girl. Especially since her wind is blowing in her hair, it'd be impossible to duplicate that same moment twice for both exposures. So it seems as though there really was someone or something in the background. If this was a person with a helmet on, then this arm is actually kind of pointing the wrong way. It's not an arm that's kind of coming out and forwards. It really looks like this is viewed from behind. Now, if I was to obscure the head of the person, it looks way more natural as something being viewed from behind. And perhaps what everyone thinks is a helmet is, in fact, something else. That would mean that this dark area here isn't actually a faceplate. It's just the hair of the person. So this is a hat. This is the hair. So I think what we're seeing here is a figure, and they're facing away from the camera. Based on the figure's anatomy, clothing, and setting, West's best guess is that this is a woman in a hat. We do have another photograph of the scene. What we see here is the mother. Now, the mother is wearing a bluish-looking dress. We see the top here in this region. It's almost white in this photograph. The theory is that the blue dress and her hat looks white here due to overexposure. But if it was the girl's mother, why didn't the family notice at the time? When the pictures get developed, they look at them days or weeks later. They just simply don't remember that that person happened to be standing in that position. No one has a perfect recording of exactly where everybody was stood on a particular moment like three days ago or a week ago. Based on Mick West's analysis of the clothing, we're going to agree and say it's a woman in a hat. It's August 1964. The naval research vessel El Tanin is on a scientific mission near the Antarctic coast conducting a survey of the ocean floor. Then, 13,000 feet below along the bleak and barren bottom, scientists are stunned when their cameras capture this. A strange object stands upright and alone on the seabed. Take a closer look. It has symmetrical nodules, spokes, and protrusions ending in a spherical top. According to field researcher Ken Gerhart, scientists were baffled. This was about two feet long with a rod-like base and none of the researchers or scientists at that time had any idea what they were looking at. And this particular image has subsequently become known as the El Tanin antenna. An antenna at the bottom of the ocean? At the bottom of the world? How did it get here? Believe it or not, some wonder if this artifact could be a remnant from a secret mission of Hitler's Third Reich. There are claims that in 1938, the Nazis drove U-boats down to Antarctica and formed a secret Nazi base known as New Berchtesgaden. Were the Nazis trying to build a base for Hitler in Antarctica? Most historians are cold on the idea, but Hitler wasn't the only one interested. In 1946, the U.S. military initiated Operation High Jump with an armada of naval ships, including the USS Brownson, deployed to establish their own Antarctic research base. They didn't run into any Nazis, but some say they found something else. Rumors are that USS Brownson was approached by a UFO that actually came very, very close to the ship's masthead and created electromagnetic disruption. Is it possible that in some way this antenna-like structure may be connected to one of these stories that involve Operation High Jump, secret Nazi bases, alien attacks, and so forth? Antarctica might look like one huge ice sheet, but under that ice lie hundreds of lakes and a huge canyon system that is as deep as the Grand Canyon, but longer. So what is this strange underwater object? Let's see what signals our experts pick up. We begin with physicist Michio Kaku, who has some doubts about the Nazi antenna theory. It does really look like an antenna of some sort, but the size of an antenna is roughly equivalent to the wavelength of the energy being transmitted. An antenna is a device made of metallic material and used to transmit or absorb electromagnetic waves, most typically radio wave signals. But Kaku notes that with World War II technology, there's a catch. However, if these objects can communicate with headquarters, they would be quite large, I suspect, because you're going to be communicating over vast distances. Yet this object is only just about two feet across. But could it just be a piece that's broken off? Kaku says a clue in the picture speaks volumes. Usually when you see metal objects that have been at the bottom of the ocean for decades, they're totally encrusted with different life forms. Here you see these objects pretty much bare without the kinds of sea life that you would normally expect to see. And so this is unusual. It sticks out. Next we go to NASA geologist Bob Anderson. He rules out that this object is Because Anderson says it's what he sees at the bottom of the object that makes it clear this is natural. When I looked at the images and saw the attachment to the soils, to the ground, it does seem to represent roots, which gave me the idea that this is definitely an animal that's living down in these deep waters. An animal shaped like that sitting at the bottom of the ocean? Believe it or not, marine biologist Shay Conger says it's possible. It seems to be stuck in the which is really common for an underwater invertebrate. And I believe this is a type of carnivorous sponge, which is known as cladorhiza concrescens. And these carnivorous sponges evolved in deep sea marine environments where there isn't a lot of food. Carnivorous sponges actually developed a really amazing way to feed on larger prey like fish and crustaceans that might swim by. Conger says that those knobs and protrusions that look so much like an antenna array are actually a feeding mechanism that evolved over millions of years. It developed barbed appendages. They often have these really unique geometric designs and they can look like antennas or musical instruments like harps. And for that reason, they were mysterious for quite a long while. Our verdict? We're going with carnivorous sponge. This is another one of those stories where the natural explanation is even weirder than the wild theories. Folks, we're talking about a sponge that eats meat. And it's only been about 30 years since scientists even discovered this ability.