Unexplained: Caught On Camera - The Cornish Owlman Of Mawnan Smith

March 20, 2021 1:00 AM ‐ Television • Paranormal

This article is more than three years old.

Series Two, Episode Five - Saturday March 20, 2021

This week 'Unexplained: Caught On Camera' returns with more ghostly goings on and bizarre incidents all captured on CCTV, on mobile phone by members of the public, or on camera by paranormal investigation teams.

Working out whether these remarkable clips are truly unexplainable or not is the show's regular panel of experts consisting of Jayne Harris, Ciarán O'Keeffe, Barri Ghai and Deborah Davies. The mix of skeptics and believers will give their opinion throughout the show on the weird clips they're presented with.

In the show's fifth episode we hear about a ghost hunters who goes in search of a mythical beast in a Cornish cemetery, plus possible evidence of the legendary Loch Ness monster, a shop where the products fly off the shelves, and the haunted church that proved to be too much for one American investigator.

The Cornish Owlman Of Mawnan Smith

The first clip we are shown features a ghost hunting duo consisting of Mark Davies and Chris Power from the team Ghost Adventures of Cornwall, which despite how the name sounds isn't a spin-off of Zak Bagans' television series.

Instead the team document their investigations on YouTube and one of their outings gained them a fair bit of attention in the local press early last year.

In the clip the paranormal investigators are on the hunt for the legendary 'owlman', which according to local folklore going back to the 1920s, is a human-sized half-man-half-owl creature that scares off holidaymakers.

The pair are searching for the mythical beast in a remote churchyard at St Mawnan and St Stephen's Church near the Cornish village of Mawnan Smith. There has previously been reported sightings at this location.

Early in their investigation, while filming on night vision cameras, the investigators capture an unusual orb, which they couldn't explain.

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What Are Orbs?A common cause of orbs are tiny particles in the air which are invisible to the human eye in the darkness, but when illuminated by a night vision camera's infrared light source they appear to glow. Because they are passing close to the camera's lens they will appear much bigger and out of focus, like a glowing sphere. These particles can be anything from dust, water vapour, rain, snow, or even insects.

Later in their investigation the duo capture something a little harder to explain. As the camera pans around, it's clear to see a strange-looking figure stood in the distance. Chris described the figure as having goat-like legs and horns on its head.

Despite the figure being captured on camera, the pair say there was no one there in the churchyard with them. However, this sighting wasn't the last they saw of the figure and nothing could have prepared them for what happened next. Chris was left shaken after a black shadow swooped in and physically attacked him.

Ozzies Metaphysical, Brandon

Next we head to Ozzies Metaphysical. The small family-run gift shop in Suffolk sells spiritual items but also seems to have a few resident spirits.

The spooky case was first reported in May 2019 when Eve and Gary Osbourne started capturing unexplained movement in the store on their CCTV camera.

The first incident we see involves a string of bells seen hanging from the ceiling. The bells suddenly start to rotate in the footage before crashing to the floor right next to Gary. Later we see countless strange occurrences of products mysteriously falling from shelves, all of which were of course caught on camera.

Expert Barri said, "what's apparent is that there's definitely some form of poltergeist activity taking place in their shop." Jayne said that because this movement was so violent, if she'd been stood next to it at the time she'd feel "quite intimidated by that."

However Ciarán said, "there is always the potential for a location to be haunted, in terms of the footage I've seen, I remain skeptical about that."

The Loch Ness Monster

Photo: pixabay.com

Next we meet a Scottish school teacher called Mary who captured video of what she describes as strange flashing lights in the loch. As she watched the phenomenon, she realised there was something there that was moving. Could it have been the elusive monster?

We also hear from Ronald, who captains the Spirit of Loch Ness, a cruise ship that's fitted with sonar technology to try to track down Nessy. On one voyage the on-board display showed what the skipper described as "a big contact" right down at the bottom of the loch.

He said, "I was just blown away, it's totally unusual to see such a big contact so deep down." He added that it's the biggest and clearest sonar image to date.

Having examined the clip, Barri said, "this modern technology is providing real evidence that something big is lurking in the depths of Loch Ness." Deborah added, "I think it is a creature," although she admits that exactly what it is is still unexplained.

Could The Loch Ness Monster Be The Ghost Of A Dinosaur?It's often said that you never see the ghost of a dinosaur, but what if that's exactly what the Loch Ness monster is? It would explain why it's so elusive and hard to capture on camera.

This idea is not a new one. In fact the CIA questioned the possibility in recently declassified documents detailing experiments carried out by an American team of "psychic spies" at some point between 1972 and 1984. One of the men involved, Ed Dames, apparently used his "ample spare time at the unit" to perfect the skill of remote viewing in order to exercise his own "spiritual and extraterrestrial interests."

He claimed he focussed his gift on several 'targets' around the world and saw apparitions of the Virgin Mary, and the demise of Atlantis, which he said is "at the bottom of Lake Titicaca." He also said he saw a great many flying saucers, but also Nessy, which Dames claimed was a dinosaur's ghost.

Hunting The Dead At A Wickedly Haunted Tennessee Church

Our final stop is in Tennessee where Jody Dean from the YouTube channel, Hunting The Dead takes us to a "demon church". More than 225k subscribers his Jody's channel regularly to watch his ghost hunting videos.

With over 1,000 investigations under his belt, you may be wondering which of Jody's investigations made it into 'Unexplained: Caught On Camera'. It was a seemingly ordinary old abandoned church that gave the paranormal investigator a little more than he'd bargained for.

During the video, Jody is harassed by unexplained sounds, which he thinks are the result of a resident poltergeist, but he holds his nerve to investigate the location.

At one point he started reading from a bible and felt he was angering the spirits and the mood changed. Then suddenly and without warning the page he was reading from flipped violently.

Barri thinks this could have been the result of a poltergeist displaying its power, although Ciarán questions whether a breeze could have been the cause. Deborah thinks that it's likely the church is haunted, she said, "there can be people there who have been looking after that church for years and years and years who still like to come and visit it as a spirit. I think that that's happened here."

The page turning on its own was just the start of the activity. Jody said, "whatever that was inside that church, it did not want me there, it didn't like me being there, and I had to get out of there."

'Unexplained: Caught On Camera' continues next week on Really as part of the channel's #Freakend event, bringing viewers three nights of paranormal entertainment every Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

You can watch in the United Kingdom and Ireland as part of the Discovery family of channels. You can watch Really on Freeview (17), Sky (142), Virgin Media (129) and Freesat (160), plus YouView, BT TV and TalkTalk TV. Or watch previous episodes on demand on Discovery+.

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