tonight on "nightline" -- birthday brawls. parents caught on tape, beating the party hats off each other at chuck e. cheeses nationwide. it happens more easily than you might think. we'll tell you about the perfect storm that can turn a kid's special day into a nightmare scenario. and "frozen planet." never-before-seen images from the sequel to "planet earth." this one-of-a-kind film captured at the edge of the world. plus, e-mails from the graves. they grieved at his funeral. now they say they have mail from him. the friends and families say the

messages are loaded with details only he could know. what's going on here? >> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with terry moran, cynthia mcfadden and bill weir in new york city, this is "nightline," march 15th, 2012. good evening. i'm cynthia mcfadden. we begin tonight with a sad state of parenting. kids' birthday parties where once about pinning the tail on the donkey and cake. but tonight, we take a look at a disturbing phenomenon. children's parties where parents start fights and settle scores. why do the kids seem to be the mature ones in these pictures? here's abc's nick watt. >> reporter: how sweet. a "toy story" cake. a shy smile. all of his friends and family gathered around. then, bam. it all kicks off. can you hear "happy birthday" in

the ground? this happens and not infrequently. bare-fisted brawling at kids' birthday parties at family restaurants. type chuck e. cheese into youtube, and you can watch as wide-eyed, multiple fights unfold. cell phone footage of birthday parties gone ferril. >> so, there's nothing wrong with chuck e. cheese itself. what's making these people go nuts? barbie clifton, a mother of five, was attacked at an ohio chuck e. cheese during her daughter's birthday party. >> all i really remember is hitting the floor. and my hair being ripped and ripped. and kicked in the head. the lady was infuriated over my children being on the picture machine so long. >> reporter: susquehanna,

pennsylvania, they were all-too frequent visitors to chuck e. cheese. >> we had an 18-month period when we were there 17 times. >> reporter: chuck e. cheese wouldn't give us an interview. but they sent us an statement. in 2011, 99.99% of 65 million guests occurred without incidents. despite our efforts, altercations occur with a very small percentage who visit. typically the incidents are not with the kids. but regrettably, with the parents. >> what you really see here is chaos. >> reporter: we asked two psychologists to watch these fights. do you find this behavior surprising? >> not really. birthday parties are really emotional situations. >> reporter: heightened emotions, happy or sad, can quickly turn to anger. and people bring unseen stresses to the party. imagine you're on a limited income. and you spent all you have to make your kid's day special.

>> if you have very few resources and this is your one opportunity to publicly state or show how good a parent you are, then, it's very stressful. >> reporter: and that stress, says stevenson, can quickly turn to violence. >> the fact that your family's judging you on how well you do this. the fact that your children are looking up at you for a good time. the fact that they've been talking about it. >> reporter: enter this crowd, and noisy, some alcohol to loosen tongues and quicken tempers and you're asking for trouble. try wedding and fight on youtube. a reminder that families don't always get along. >> when you have family members coming far birthday party and perhaps it was a divorce situation or a separation, where there was already uneasy feelings between family members. >> which are long-standing, and for some people, still ongoing, you really, sometimes, have a

powder keg. >> reporter: chuck e. cheese management realizes this is a problem. and they're trying to stop the fighting. in recent years, we have invested millions of dollars to this end. we utilize security guards in many of our locations. and have active security camera systems in all of our locations. but they could stop serving alcohol at kids' parties. they could reduce the crowding. >> you could prepare staff to see these tensions before they arise between children. and step in. >> reporter: here's another susquehanna melee. whoever posted this claims one of the combatants was actually pregnant. >> the more people you have in a room, the more people to use the games and activities. you can have conflicts about access to play. >> reporter: remember the movie "mad max"? they fought over limited oil. in "waterworld," they fought

over scarce dry land. in chuck e. cheese, they fight for access to the games. a birthday party can tip us over the edge. >> i'm surprised by what tips us over the edge. >> reporter: hockey games. soccer games. political debates. even black friday sales. >> there's a crowd mentality and sort of a diffusion of responsibility. >> reporter: london last year, a peaceful demonstration against a police shooting ended in city-wide mayhem that lasted days. the rules humans live by every day were forgotten in an instant. and the way us humans are wired, you know what? this environment, a kid's birthday party, the noise, the crowds, the stress, chuck e. cheese as all the making of a powder keg. and all it takes is one spark to make it explode. i'm nick watt for "nightline," in los angeles. >> sad story, indeed. coming up, the film makers

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>> announcer: "nightline" continues from new york city, with cynthia mcfadden. the images were like nothing we had ever seen before. for millions of us, "planet earth," revealed the breathtaking beauty of the natural world. well, now, the filmmakers are back with "frozen planet," going to even greater extremes. and getting even more incredible pictures. my co-anchor, bill weir, takes a

behind-the-scenes look. >> reporter: you've seen polar bears. but have you ever seen one try to punch through the ice? in search of a seal lunch. and when a rambunctious cub scarce away the seal because of making too much noise? have you seen a frustrated momma bear put it in a timeout? you've seen icicles. but have you seen them underwater. zapping starfish on the ocean fluor like a slow-motion lightning stake. you've seen snow. but have you seen the birth of a snowflake. no special effects here. no computer graphics. that's the actual creation of a tiny sculpture unlike any ever. guarantee you've never seen this because until now it's never been captured. a seal, alone on an antarctic ice floe.

wide-eyed and adorable to us. tasty protein to killer whales on the prowl. legend has it these so-called wolfs of the sea, hunt in packs, with a variety of techniques. here's the proof. together, they create a perfectly synchronized wave. again and again. wearing the seal down. washing it to its doom. like the stunning "planet earth" series before. we never see the two-legged animals that bring us the discovery channel's "frozen planet." >> oh. >> reporter: nature is always the star. but without a small army of intrepid bbc directors and photographers, spending years in conditions you cannot imagine -- we might not fully appreciate the magnificence of this planet. and we'd never see shots like this. >> when you're kneeling there, with your hands wet, and this

orca rises up, like a torpedo, spraying you with whale breath. and it starts checking you out, looking you up and down. it's just a view you're not prepared for. your heart's just pounding. >> reporter: what does orca breath smell like? >> you know what? it's like puppy breath. you would expect it to be like tuna, something rank like a monster. but they have a sweat breath like puppies. >> reporter: chadden hunter and vanessa burlwits, are a team that make for great stories in the arctic. >> there's a polar bear, 15 feet away from me, just watching me. i have never moved so fast in my life. >> you better hear the polar bear side of the story. >> reporter: i'll bet. you'll never believe what i saw. they prove that if you are willing to brave the most

hostile conditions, and just wait, there is always something new to understand about our planet. like cold water jellyfish that grow to the size of a human child. or sea spiders with massive leg spans. there's the dazzling way penguins torpedo through the water. and body surf into the air. the comical way male abellies build their rock nest to attract mates. problem is, there's more penguins than rocks. which lead some to a life of crime. and then, there's those stunning moments that show when life and death is often accidental. even out here. canadian wood bison, running for their lives. a young one may have the strength to escape. until a panicked bull runs him over to the delight of the hungry pack. >> i've never seen anything like

that in the wild. that's unbelievable. >> when we watched it in the helicopter, we didn't know whether to play it as tragedy. whether to play it as comedy. we didn't know what we'd seen. >> reporter: what do you want the audience to take away from this? other than wow, there's some killer whale behavior i've never seen before. are you trying to say anything about that in this film? >> we're not climate change scientists. and we're not politicians. we can record the pace of change at the moment. the pace of change is faster than it looks historically. way faster. >> i think it's really, really important that we don't make a cinematic version of a coffee table book. you would not know an ice sheet that literally collapsed a few years ago. and this shattered into hundreds of icebergs. this is the kind of change that's going to raise global sea levels. and people have to kind of acknowledge that this is

happening right now. and the reality is that animals will adapt. they always have. the real question is, can we? >> reporter: it is a humbling thought. and here's another. thanks to man's technology, thanks to miracle warm fabrics and incredible cameras, we are just now starting to understand the most extreme ends of our earth. just in time to see them change. >> what a report. bill weir. "frozen planet" premieres this sunday on the discovery channel. appointment tv. coming up, their friend is dead. so, why are they still getting e-mails from him? it's the messaging mystery that has even skeptics looking to the grave beyond. [ male announcer ] what if that hemorrhoid pain

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when jack froese died suddenly at age 32, he left behind grieving loved ones and plenty of friends. so, how is it that five months after his p,death, e-mails fro jack froese began arriving in their mailboxes? a cruel frank? a technical quirk? or something more? here's abc's david wright. >> reporter: this winter, in dunmore, pennsylvania, a mystery. >> one night in november, i was sitting on my couch. going through my e-mails on my phone. and it popped up, sender, jack

froese. and i turned ghost white. >> reporter: he turned white because jack, his best friend, was dead. >> jack had passed away. it turned out to be a heart arrhythmia. it was weird. >> reporter: weirder still because jack died in june. tim hart got the e-mail in november. >> right here, it says, jack froese. i'm watching. and it says, i'm watching. did you hear me? i'm at your house. clean your attic. and the clean your attic, the second-to-last time we were here, we went up to my attic. we were up here, looking at what we'd have to do if we ever wanted to finish it. the floors were just dusty. and he was like, better clean this attic before i get up here. just he and i up there. >> i had an e-mail from jack. >> reporter: jimmy mcgraw was jack's cousin. >> the e-mail, november 21st, at 10:30 at night. it says, hey, jim. how are you doing? i knew you would break your

ankle. i tried to warn you. try to be careful. and it was signed jack froese. and i had broken my ankle about the week before, walking out the door on my way to work. and really didn't see anyone besides couple friends. couple people in my family. that was it. >> reporter: the messages were so short. so specific. so personal, they didn't know what to think. could it be ghost 2.0. digital communication from beyond the grave? >> i love you, molly. >> reporter: sort of an updated version of "frequency"? >> hello? >> reporter: where dennis quaid communicates with his dead son over short-wave radio. all of us yearn for those we have loved and lost. no matter how mundane the message or the medium. for jack's friends and family, it was not just a mystery. it was a miracle. >> i look at it as, he's gone but he's still trying to connect with me. and still trying to tell me

things. to move along and feel better. >> reporter: tim tried replaying to the e-mail. but got no answer. >> we spoke to his mother. and she told us, you know, think what you want about it. or just accept it as a gift. and which i did. and if somebody's messing around, i don't care because i take it whatever way i want. >> the e-mails that people had received, i thought they were fantastic. they were great. i saw, you know, they made people happy. upset some people. but to me, that's keeping people talking about him. you know? >> reporter: they say death ends a life, not a relationship. maybe that's true online, too. the e-mails stopped right away. but for jack's friends, they were, like jack himself, something to treasure. i'm david wright for "nightline," in los angeles. >> thanks for watching abc news.