Man Finds What Look Like Plane Seats on Beach and the Internet Has Thoughts on Where They're From (Exclusive)

Matthew Jacob was out checking the waves for good surfing conditions after a storm in Margate, N.J. on Dec. 19, when something caught his eye by the water

A man found a row of what appear to be airplane seats washed up on the Jersey Shore — and his viral Tiktok video has followers theorizing about what they could be from.

Matthew Jacob was out checking the waves for good surfing conditions after a storm in Margate, N.J. on Dec. 19, when something caught his eye by the water, he tells PEOPLE. "I wasn’t sure what it was. I thought it was a tree branch at first. As I got closer, I realize that I was looking at seats. The closer I got they appeared to be plane seats," says the actor, who will soon appear in the Al Pacino film Killing Castro.

He shared a clip of his discovery on TikTok and Instagram, and the footage quickly went viral, garnering more than 12 million views, 1 million likes and over 42,000 comments since it was posted on Wednesday.

He showed a closeup of the rusted seats which still had their springs, though the fabric was gone. Some of the seats had a metal handrail between them, looking similar to those in an airplane, which is what led him to suspect that they may have come from an ill-fated flight.

"My mind went to the Malaysia airlines flight," he says of his first thought upon seeing the wreckage. But his TikTok commenters had another idea.

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Several people in his comments speculated that the seats could have come from the wreckage of TWA Flight 800, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean about eight miles south of East Moriches, N.Y. on Long Island on July 17, 1996. 

Witnesses at the time told the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that they saw an explosion before burning debris descended into the ocean. All 230 people on board were killed.

After a lengthy investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the cause of the crash was “an explosion of the center wing fuel tank, resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel/air vapors in the tank." However, conspiracies persist about what caused the disaster.

One top comment on Jacob's TikTok said, “4 across means that it has to be from a wide body plane. TWA 800 had a 3-4-3 economy config, just saying.”

Related: Pilot Dies in Fiery Plane Crash in Parking Lot of Texas Shopping Mall

Asked if he gives any weight to the theory Jacob tells PEOPLE, "After reading many comments on TikTok I am unsure what to believe anymore."

"It seems like everyone has a different theory," he says. "I spoke to a police officer when he picked up the seats. He was shocked. You can hear him in my TikTok video completely surprised." Jacob posted a few follow-up videos, including one showing law enforcement removing the seats from the beach in the back of a pickup truck.

Aviation expert and author of the New York Times best-seller The Crash Detectives, Christine Negroni weighed in on the likelihood that the seats could be from TWA flight 800.

"I have a little difficulty connecting these to TWA for a few reasons," she tells PEOPLE. "First, there are no armrests between each seat; the seats have armrests every two seats. However, the four abreast would have been correct for the center section of the 747-100 that was TWA 800."

She also notes that flight 800 exploded in 1996 and the wreckage Jacob found "does not look as if it had been submerged in salt water for 28 years."

A mock-up of flight 800 as it was reassembled during the crash investigation does show that "not all of the seats seem to have been recovered," she allows. "Some obviously were destroyed when the center wing tank exploded."

The spring supports visible in the seats, however, seem to be the death knell for the plane theory for Negroni. After consulting with airline mechanics, she tells PEOPLE that the presence of metal springs all but rules out the seats being from a commercial jetliner, according to the experts.

Still something large enough to contain seats of that size did end up in the Atlantic and the question as to what remains. Tiktok sleuths are already on the case, sharing theories on the platform.

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Hunting for additional debris on a New Jersey beach day may not be the best method, says Negroni.

It's not particularly common for airplane debris to wash up on beaches, she notes, but it did happen quite a bit in the case of Malaysian flight 370. "In that case, beachcombers in several locations found pieces of the airplane," she says.

The New Jersey police told Jacob they have detectives looking at what the seats could be from and he plans to keep those following the mystery updated on his social media accounts.

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