Original subtitles

(eerie music)

- [Narrator] There are places in the world

where the boundary between the known

and the unknown is very thin.

Places whose natural and wild beauty

hide secrets too incredible to be believed,

until those secrets begin to reveal themselves.

When that happens, people react in wonder,

curiosity, and sometimes in horror.

Humanity often commemorates these places

by creating monuments, such as Stonehenge.

Scholars suggest that it was a place

from which to observe the heavens,

a place of burial, a place of either

human sacrifice or healing.

The Nazca lines etched into the earth of southern Peru

carry the qualities of sacred symbolism.

The desert southwest has kept its own disturbing secrets

from the alleged crashes of craft from other worlds,

to the all too real testing of atomic weaponry.

Then there's the Bermuda Triangle,

a region of the Atlantic Ocean in which hundreds of ships

and approximately 75 planes have simply gone missing,

along with passengers and crew.

Both scientific and supernatural causes

have been proposed for these catastrophes,

but theories do little to ease the pain

of those who lost loved ones in the Triangle.

There are places in the world whose mysteries

call us to come and see for ourselves,

whatever the human toll might be.

Places like the Chestnut Ridge.

The Chestnut Ridge located in southwestern Pennsylvania

lies on the western edge of the Appalachian mountain range.

The ridge rises in southern Indiana County

and rolls to the southwest by way of towns

like Blairsville, Derry, Latrobe, Connellsville,

Mount Pleasant, and Uniontown

all the way into West Virginia where it

gradually comes to rest near Morgantown.

Villages along the ridge were founded

as far back as 1770.

The rich limestone clay soil rewarded the efforts

of early farmers, and soon the communities

could support iron furnaces, whiskey distilleries,

and general stores.

One family by the last name of Keck

settled in the area to bottle and sell

spring water and soft drinks.

They had no way of knowing that their town, Kecksburg,

would one day become world famous,

but not for ginger ale.

- Then I was 16 years old when the incident happened

near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania,

and I got involved with that that evening

as it was breaking on the news

and I've been out in the field ever since that time

investigating UFOs and cryptozoatic phenomenon

here in Pennsylvania.

Kecksburg, Pennsylvania is a small rural community

in Mount Pleasant township

in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania,

approximately 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

- [Narrator] Like many of the small towns

in Westmoreland County, Kecksburg

sits within the shadow of the Chestnut Ridge.

The ridge is dotted end to end with these tiny villages,

many of them founded well over a century ago.

Each of them bears their own

strange history of sightings and encounters

with things not of this world.

Many wonder what it is about this

particular stretch of land that beckons such mysteries.

For decades, researchers of the strange and unknown

have journeyed back

to the Chestnut Ridge in search of answers.

Their quest isn't solely confined to present day.

For over a century, mysterious circumstances

have shrouded the ridge in a fog of unease.

- I've been involved in the paranormal

since I've been about 10 years old,

and then I got into the field in 1997 investigating cases.

But my main base of operation in Pennsylvania

is the southwestern part of the state,

namely this particular area where we're at here.

Westmoreland, Fayette County,

Armstrong, Indiana, Washington.

Probably about 80% of my investigations and cases

that I've worked on have been

here in the Chestnut Ridge area.

- There's been a long history of

various phenomena along the Chestnut Ridge,

especially along the Westmoreland County side

and Derry township.

We have many reports from those small communities

such as Derry and New Derry

and Hillside, Superior, and Brenizer

and all throughout that area and many sightings

around the Keystone State Park.

- Without a doubt there's an atmosphere to this area.

You can drive these back roads and you just

get a weird feeling in some of these places you go into.

Some are very dark, and secluded.

They just give off a really ominous vibe.

- Something very strange has been going on

along the Chestnut Ridge for many, many years

and in fact the earliest firsthand account

I have of a Bigfoot encounter where I actually

interviewed the witness goes back to 1931

near Indian Head in Fayette County.

And of course Fayette County is one of those areas

that has year after year phenomena being reported.

- The newspaper article that I found that date back

to the 1800s, late 1800s, that talk about people

experiencing wild men of the forest,

or even gorillas or monkeys in this area.

It's not just Bigfoot related,

there's all kinds of weird phenomena from UFOs,

strange lights in the sky, cryptic creatures,

haunted locations, just a really

concentrated area right here.

There's a lot of weird activity that goes on.

- There's been a lot of history of

all kinds of strange phenomena

that's happened all around this area

and through Mount Pleasant Township

and throughout the community around here.

- The UFO sightings in this area have been rampant,

as I said earlier it's a very high volume of reports.

Even all the way up to Kecksburg in the 1960s.

- [Narrator] There probably was a time

when the residents of Kecksburg felt far removed

from the tension of the Cold War,

and obsession over UFOs.

All the televisions, movie theaters, and drive-ins

were full of nuclear wars or countered by

fantastical aliens in flying saucers,

this tiny burg remained blissfully detached

from the near hysteria that was gripping

other areas of the country.

In late 1965, that sense of security would be shattered.

- I'll remember it all my life you know?

It's something I'll never forget.

(beeping)

That night we was actually out playing football

and we didn't actually know about it

until we walked back in the house

and Mom and Dad said that there was a thing on the radio

that something crashed in Acme.

My mom looked out the window and she seen all the vehicles

and stuff on the road.

She says this is right behind the house, that ain't in Acme.

- I remember that evening just like it was yesterday.

It was Thursday evening December 9, 1965.

I was listening to a radio station in Pittsburgh.

There was a breaking news story

coming on the radio about this brilliant fireball,

this fiery object was seen from the tip of Ontario, Canada

over Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

- [Narrator] That night, a radiant fireball

was seen streaking through the skies over Detroit

and Windsor, Ontario moving in a southeasterly direction,

allegedly dropping hot metal debris

over Michigan and northern Ohio

before hitting the ground near Kecksburg.

All sorts of explanations were proposed.

Some thought they were witnessing an airplane accident.

Others thought a missile test had gone awry,

or that a satellite was reentering the atmosphere.

The most common assumption was that a meteor

was the brilliant light in question.

None of those however seemed to square

with what was happening near the Chestnut Ridge.

Local witnesses reported feeling the impact

of the object's crash landing,

seeing a wisp of blue smoke rising from the woods,

and some even claimed to discover

what it was that had fallen to Earth.

An object shaped like an acorn,

approximately the size of a small car

with hieroglyphic like writing around its base.

The ravine in which it fell quickly became

the center of curiosity and controversy.

- And it got more exciting during evening

as reports were coming in that the military

was now arriving in the Kecksburg area

to search for an unidentified flying object.

- We started watching out the windows and stuff

and I seen people coming in and out and going

down in the hollow in the field, down to where it was at.

And then we started seeing people come in,

seeing cars lining our driveway.

People going up and down through the fields

and people coming to the house, using the,

they used our house as a command post.

- People actually believe that they saw

a small military presence within maybe the first hour

after the object fell, but it was during the next few hours

during the evening that the military

began to arrive on the scene.

And many people throughout this area

reported seeing what looked like a military convoy,

military trucks coming in from

different roads into the Kecksburg area.

So what we learned was the fact that

as reports of this object coming down

in the Kecksburg area began to circulate on Pittsburgh area

radio and TV, hundreds of people descended on the small,

rural community to try and get a look

at the object down in the woods.

- [Narrator] An alarming scene was

beginning to unfold around the crash site.

Residents of Kecksburg claimed that armed soldiers

were present, and were preventing people

from approaching the wooded ravine.

In one instance a witness reported

that a member of the military instructed

two neighborhood boys to deliberately misinform

curiosity seekers, and the youngsters gladly complied

by giving people false directions to the impact site.

Things took a decidedly more serious turn though

the closer one came to the downed object.

A well known jazz musician from the Pittsburgh area

claimed that US soldiers aimed their rifles

at him and his friends, ordering them off a country lane

as an army flatbed truck hauling a tarp covered

acorn shaped object made its way out of a field.

Others who were teenagers at the time

reported that the military response

left them fearing for their lives.

- Some of the local residents who saw this object come down

that afternoon, they went down into the wooded ravine

to see what had fallen from the sky

and they came across this large, metallic,

acorn shaped object semi-buried in the ground.

There was actually two important locations.

One was on top of the hill, what is now called Meteor Road

which is where hundreds of people

were jamming the road that night.

That's where most reporters were, that's where some military

other authorities were.

Far on the opposite side of the woods was an old dirt road,

a farm lane which a number of people found themselves on.

That was closest to the crash site, the impact site,

and that's where a lot of the military presence

and other authorities were on that lane over there.

- There was people in black suits came in,

and those people there, they was actually,

seemed like they was in charge of everybody.

We seen some people coming down in white suit

carrying a big box.

One had a NASA patch on his arm,

and they took this box down into where that was at.

I seen him go down in with the box.

Never seen it come back out, but I seen the truck go down in

and I seen it come back out you know with something on it.

- There was a lot of talk around this community

that people had seen a large military flatbed

tractor trailer truck carrying a large tarped object

out of the area late that night,

but that never was in the news.

- Next day, me and my brother went down in the woods.

We seen where they had covered up a whole

different kind of dirt you know and seen

how the trees was broke off and walked over

to the other side of the hill when it was all burnt off.

There was some guy over there with a Geiger counter.

At the time we thought he was a treasure hunter.

We was kids, we didn't know any better.

He asked us what we was doing down there.

Told him well we live here,

you know we're down here all the time.

He says well, you know there's

a chance of radiation down in here.

Well what the heck is radiation?

You know we didn't know, so we sort of

ignored him and went on our way.

- So early the next morning I went to the local news stand

to see if there was any other stories

about what we'd seen last night in the local papers

and there it was in all the local papers.

The Pittsburgh Press, the Post-Gazette.

The Greensburg Tribune Review had two editions

and the early morning edition had Army ropes off area,

unidentified flying object falls near Kecksburg.

The later edition of the paper had several different stories

including one that caught my attention

which said searchers fail to find object

and it went on to say that yes, there was a search

in the early morning hours but they found absolutely nothing

and that the official explanation was that

it was people's imagination.

They had seen a bright meteor in the sky

but nothing had fallen to the ground,

and that's officially where the case remains today.

- I can picture it you know in my head,

the people coming in, people

keeping quiet about things and people I know

that was there and seen it and denied it.

I'll never forget that, you know?

It's something,

something that sticks with you.

- Kecksburg to me seems like it was almost the catalyst

for people becoming comfortable enough

to share their experiences and the newspaper media

following these encounters and are reporting on them.

- [Narrator] The Kecksburg experience turned the eyes

of those who lived in the area

to the skies over the Chestnut Ridge,

and what they saw over and over again

was more mysterious than they ever expected.

What they saw was unidentified.

In the spring of 1966, a woman in Latrobe

was awakened from sleep by her dog

which had become highly agitated.

Upon taking the dog outside, she saw a silver object

hovering no more than 80 feet above her roof of her house.

The object looked and spun like a top

and was bathed in a reddish glow.

After several minutes, the top-like anomaly

shot up into the sky and was gone.

The witness faced ridicule from her family and friends

when she spoke about what she had seen.

Later that same year, two women were approaching

Adamsburg on Route 30 when they noticed

a strange aerial craft almost touching

a series of high tension powerlines.

As they drove closer, the object went under the powerlines

and began to dive towards their car.

Fortunately, there was no collision and as it flew off,

the women observed its dark colored oblong shape

with a type of tail in the back

and deep grooves on its surface.

The driver of the car, who to that point

had been a UFO skeptic suffered

repeated nightmares about the incident.

In the months and years to follow,

reports like these would become more and more common

along the Chestnut Ridge.

Eyewitnesses were left to speculate about what they had seen

and wonder what normal life was going to be like

now that they knew something was out there.

- I know what I saw.

It stayed with me all this years.

I haven't told a lot of people about it.

At this point in my life, it happened

and I'm just here to tell you about it.

I grew up in Derry on Ridge Avenue.

This happened back in, it was either the late fall of '67

or early winter of '68.

It was still dark, but daylight was coming.

I was sitting at the table in the kitchen

when my mother was in the living room

and I heard her call Tom, come here.

When I walked into the living room

we were looking out a picture window in the living room

above Chestnut Ridge.

Out of the picture window, we saw a circular UFO

is what I'm gonna call it.

Multiple lights spinning around the bottom.

Red, green, white, orange.

It was just strange.

It was something that I had never seen or experienced before

and while we're standing there,

it was in the one spot and then all the sudden

it shot across, and you never saw it shooting across,

but it was in another position in the sky

above the Chestnut Ridge.

This went on I thought for a lifetime,

but it probably wasn't that long.

I'm going to say one minute to two minutes

and we just stood there in amazement

and neither one of us said anything to each other.

We just stood there and watched it.

All of a sudden it just shot straight up into the sky

and it wasn't like a sparkler, but there was a trail

of red and silver lights that came off the bottom of it

and it just disappeared.

I've looked into the sky in the last 50 years

looking for something similar to this.

I've never witnessed anything like that

since then, although I keep looking.

- [Narrator] Strange sightings around the Chestnut Ridge

have never been limited to the skies.

There's a long history of earthbound bizarre activity,

especially on the Westmoreland, Fayette,

and Indiana County side of the ridge.

With witnesses reporting subterranean sounds,

strange lights, black panthers,

and unusually large birds and then there's Bigfoot.

Accounts of hair covered man apes

can be found in Pennsylvania newspapers

dating back to the 1800s, and these creatures

have never really gone away, reemerging from time to time

in the southwest highlands of the state.

In the late 1960s a young man named Stan Gordon

began to actively research the Bigfoot phenomenon.

Like many, he was excited by the search

for an unknown primate living in the Pennsylvania forest.

- So it was my determination to set up

a volunteer group of research people

to go out to investigate these reports,

so that's what I did and I decided in 1969

to set up my own hotline for the public.

So I'm getting calls on haunted houses

and ghosts and flying saucers

and Bigfoot and strange creatures and weird noises.

Anything unusual, the calls were coming in.

By 1973 we expanded to cover

the whole state of Pennsylvania.

To our surprise, we were beginning to get referrals

from the state police and from the news media

and other agencies, so when they were getting reports

they would refer to the number of my group

to investigate the report.

And it was very lucky that we were already established

because 1973 comes around and here's this

major UFO Bigfoot wave which nobody

could have ever predicted and we were

extremely busy during that time period.

- [Narrator] It was fortunate that Stan Gordon

had assembled the Westmoreland County UFO study group

prior to the events of 1973.

The volunteer unit would come to include

medical professionals, law enforcement officers,

pilots, educators, engineers,

former military specialists and scientists

and they were united by a desire to gather information

as quickly and thoroughly as possible

about the odd happenings on the Chestnut Ridge.

Researchers like Barry Clark could be dispatched

to the scene of a strange occurrence

within minutes of it happening,

thanks to Gordon's state of the art two-way radio system.

The group's fieldwork was conducted as often

as their full time jobs permitted,

and many risked their professional reputation

by being associated with this pursuit,

but with their aptitude for technology

and their vast range of vocational expertise,

the members of the study group shared a basic optimism

that they would eventually uncover the truth

about the outlandish sightings

that seemed to multiply by the day.

- Yeah I'm Barry Clark, I was a, went out to investigate

different sightings and events that

you know for people who saw Bigfoot and UFOs,

that type of thing back in the early seventies.

Somewhere along the line I'll bet you

if you talk to in the Derry area especially,

Derry's a area, you'll talk to somebody

who's either friends with, related to, or know

somebody that had some kind of an experience.

- Of course 1973, Bigfoot was the big story.

There were multiple reports of Bigfoot sightings

all along areas of the ridge,

especially along the Westmoreland County side

and Derry township.

- What's interesting about those reports

from the 1970s, '73, '74, some of those reports

literally took place a couple miles from where I lived.

- An older lady lived kind of, not secluded but by herself

and I, the state police were there the night before.

I got to go there the next day and talk to her

but she had a little yapping dog

and it was carrying on and carrying on.

She looked out and she saw this thing,

and the more the dog barked the more agitated it.

It literally kicked the end of her trailer up on the corner

and dropped it, and there was no skirting around it.

When I looked the next day you could see

that it was not back in the same position it was.

- [Narrator] In the early seventies, the nation was still

enthralled by stories of the Abominable Snowman,

but was now even more enamored

of his homegrown cousin, Bigfoot,

whose presence in the Pacific Northwest

seemed to be corroborated by a shaky full color film

obtained by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin.

But to the shock of all involved,

a similar figure massive, hairy, sometimes leaving

large three toed footprints in its wake

was appearing on farms along wood lines

and crossing roads throughout

Westmoreland and Fayette Counties.

Most distressing was the creature's fearlessness

in approaching civilization,

and the damage it sometimes caused.

- But as these events of 1973 are coming to our attention,

we began to see some unusual patterns.

For example, we would have a UFO sighting in a certain area.

Within minutes to hours to days later,

we would have a Bigfoot sighing or vice versa

and then the reports got even stranger.

That's when we began to have reports

with UFOs and Bigfoots seen together

at the same time and place.

As reports were unfolding during that time,

some of the stranger reports began to come to our attention.

One case September 27, 1973.

This was out in an area where two women

were waiting for a friend to pick them up.

Suddenly they see this huge seven to eight foot tall

huge man-like creature with white hair

running across the road towards the woods.

Strangely enough, in one of its hands

it had a glowing ball of light.

It runs off into the woods and a short time later,

this object comes across the sky,

projects a beam of light down into the woods

where the creature ran into,

so these reports were getting very odd.

And then we had the case that occurred up in Fayette County.

It was the case that convinced me and my team

that there was a lot more to Bigfoot

than any of us had any idea about.

- There were several young men at a farm in Fayette County

not far from here that in October of 1973

saw a very large light in the sky

come down in a farmer's field.

- What we found out was at about nine o'clock that night

about 15 people in that rural community

observed this object in the sky.

It was only about 100 feet off the ground,

but was as big as a barn,

it was bright red, and like a big ball

and was only about 100 feet up

and was slowly moving down towards the ground.

- After he was done shooting at them,

they ran back to their truck, went back to the farmhouse,

told the family what happened,

took them to the neighbors and called the state police.

- And then the state police officer was called in

and he was called in after the fact,

after the craft disappeared.

He even mentioned how large the area was illuminated.

There was a very large area illuminated

by this craft or whatever it was that you could

literally sit down and read a newspaper

in it how bright it was.

Unfortunately there were some ramifications

that happened to one of the witnesses

where he was walking through the field

and there were investigators with him

and all of a sudden for no reason he dropped to his knees

and apparently having visions,

visions of end times, visions of the end of the world,

destruction, chaos, and that sort of thing

and it psychologically messed the guy up.

- [Narrator] Some of the most bizarre cases on record

erupted from the Chestnut Ridge in 1973 and '74.

One family was chased from the woods

by an aggressive ape-like creature with prominent fangs.

A motorist reported hitting a bipedal monster

which vanished at the moment of impact.

Another person claimed to shoot a Bigfoot

that had been stealing apples

from a bushel basket on his porch.

In many cases the unknown figures

announced their presence with an unsettling wail

that witnesses compared to a crying baby

as well as a distinctive smell like ammonia or sulfur.

These things happened with such frequency,

especially during the summer months,

that Gordon's investigative team sometimes responded

to multiple calls on the same night

with local newspapers providing

coverage of each disturbance.

One location where repeated oddities were reported

was the Superior mobile home court.

In August of 1973 the police were called

to investigate a close range Bigfoot sighting

and they even located and preserved

some unusual tracks for Gordon's team to analyze.

For reasons still unknown, this incident

attracted some unwanted attention from a peculiar source.

- The incident in the trailer court

happened on a Friday night.

We'd come home from Westmoreland County fair

and the whole neighborhood is abuzz.

(buzzing, crackling)

I was trying to figure out what was going on.

They said the woman lived across from me

heard a noise at the back of her trailer

and she opened the door and Bigfoot was standing there.

- The people who lived in that trailer

heard like scratching on the end of the trailer.

They heard like a baby crying sound from close by.

They opened up the back door and only a few feet away

here's this large, very broad shouldered

hairy Bigfoot creature standing there.

One of the witnesses saw it running

between the trailers out of the area.

- Everybody scattered and people were tripping

and falling over each other

and they were all, whole neighborhood's shook up.

- Four days later after the incident happened,

I get an emergency call from an operator.

Well it happened to be the woman who lived in that trailer

who four days before had seen the Bigfoot.

When she called she was very upset.

She said I think maybe I did something wrong,

and I said what's that?

She said well, this odd appearing man came to our trailer.

He was asking all kind of questions

about what we saw that night.

- [Jack] I come home from work,

and there's this car sitting there

and had Ohio government plates on it.

- He had some kind of an ID on him about Ohio

and UFO but she didn't pay attention to it.

He had an Ohio license plate on the vehicle.

And he wanted to know all about what had happened here.

- And there's a footprint in the sand

and he's about to take pictures of the footprint

and the boy who lived there, older boy,

he went and got his camera.

- As time went on that evening,

he was going over and looking at the footprints

and I guess there were several local people

looking at the tracks there.

There was a young boy, he had one of those

Polaroid Instamatic cameras.

- And he started doing his thing, taking a picture

and the government guy said no pictures.

Started taking pictures anyway and he ripped the camera

out of his hands and I don't know if he ripped the film out,

I don't remember that part.

Took the camera.

- He had just developed the picture,

and he said I just made a picture

and this mystery man, whoever he was,

grabs that picture from that little boy's hand,

wrinkles up and put it in his pocket

and said you just made a picture for us

and then he went over to the tracks

and with his foot, he destroyed the footprints

and the people were very, very upset over that,

started yelling at him and said we're calling the police

and he ran to his car and said,

he sped out of their so fast he almost turned the car over.

That's the last time anybody saw that fellow

and we never found out who he was.

- [Narrator] The instance at the Superior mobile home court

was extremely strange, yet ambiguous enough

to resist explanation.

It would become far more clear

that the United States government had knowledge

of the incidents being reported around the Chestnut Ridge

and knew who to talk to about them.

On September 20, 1973, Stan Gordon

received a phone call from a man

who identified himself as a US government official.

The caller indicated a strong interest

in the Bigfoot sightings taking place

in Westmoreland County, and then to Gordon's surprise,

asked that any convincing evidence be sent

to a facility in Washington DC.

The spokesman even provided a mailing address

and phone number for what he called

the Bureau of Sports Fisheries, Bird, and Mammals Lab.

Less than two weeks later, Gordon would be contacted by

and would meet with two men

from the office of congressman John H. Dent.

The visitors wanted to learn more

about Gordon's research group and their findings

and were courteous enough that Gordon

kept in contact with them

while the wave of sightings continued.

Later on, Gordon would be stunned to discover

that the government may have taken

a decidedly more active approach

in their information gathering.

- So while we're interviewing this witness,

back years later probably in the 1980s,

and we bring up the fact we might have to

hypnotize them again he said

why do you want to hypnotize me again?

And he goes on to say that here these two men

came to his home to interview him

and he thought they were part of our group

and we said well, tell us about what happened.

He said well these two guys come to my home.

One's in a dark suit, one is in an Air Force uniform.

The one in the Air Force uniform has a briefcase with him.

They wanted the witness to tell the story

of seeing the UFO and the Bigfoot

and then apparently he was hypnotized

and they told him thank you very much,

that they believed what he was telling them.

That they would be in touch with him.

He never heard from these fellas again.

- [Narrator] While Bigfoot seemed to be lumbering

through the woods of southwest Pennsylvania,

if eyewitness testimony is to be believed,

the skies above the Chestnut Ridge

were filled with all manner of lights, craft,

and inexplicable shapes flying under their own power.

In August of 1973 alone, witnesses reported seeing

an hourglass shaped object, a sphere dropping fiery debris,

a circular craft with illuminated windows,

a bright orange ball, red, green, and white lights

that looked like Christmas tree bulbs

and a boomerang shaped object all floating through the air.

- Another really significant UFO case

was September 3, 1987.

And this was on a major highway, Route 30 near Greensburg

and that evening numerous witnesses in the area

including law enforcement,

they see this huge cylindrical object.

Metallic, about 300 feet long, only about 300 feet up

with multiple lights on it.

I don't recall anybody reporting any sound.

It's moving across, coming across Route 30

across from the old Greengate Mall

where there was a power substation

so this object was moving horizontally across the sky

and then it turns vertical in the sky

and when it does, all the power in the area

goes out for a short time.

Behind that mall was an annex where they had movie theaters

and it was all blacked out,

and when the engineers went to examine it to investigate

they found all three of the master fuses have been blown.

Something that's apparently unheard of

and they were very interested in

what caused those fuses to go that day.

- [Narrator] In September of 1973,

the aerial activity seemed to intensify

over specific locations in Derry Township.

At one of these locations called the Bell Farm,

a family and their friends claimed multiple eerie encounters

with both UFOs and hairy humanoids.

Investigator Barry Clark, a colleague of Stan Gordon,

spent a number of nights staking out the Bell Farm

and soon found himself at the center of events

that by his own admission he found haunting.

- Three times we got a call from different people

saying that if you looked up in the sky

at 10 o'clock in the eastern part of the sky,

you would see a real, bright, large star

just all the sudden turn on.

So the one night I left interviewing one family

and I went back out to the farm

sometime after 10 we were sitting there

and maybe 10 minutes after 10,

all the sudden there was this bright star

and we're watching it, and all the sudden

that thing, it would turn blood red

and then go back to silver.

Turn blood red, go back to silver.

Then there were five flashes like an arc from a welder

and they were about a second apart

and then there were just multiple small, silver objects

went to it that looked like bees going to a beehive

waiting their turn to go in.

Well when they got there they either

reflected the red, or they turned red

and we stood there and watched in awe.

The guy's wife, she screamed, jumped in her car,

she wouldn't come back out and I said

there's something, it's doing something

and then we realized it was actually

coming down and it was getting bigger

and at that point we all left.

- [Narrator] After the incident at the Bell Farm,

Barry Clark decided that he was

finished with the paranormal.

Shaken by what he saw, he never investigated another case.

But evidently, the paranormal was not finished with him.

After stepping away from the research group,

Clark experienced an episode of missing time

while making what should have been a short drive

between communities on the ridge.

This sensation that only a short time has passed

when in fact many hours had elapsed

is most commonly linked to alien abduction scenarios.

Clark did not suggest that he was abducted,

but neither does he have any answers

for what happened to him.

Only the disturbing reality of time

for which he cannot account,

of which he has no memory.

And along with that comes the suspicion

that when one peers deeply into the darkness,

there's actually something looking back.

- I've had some things go on through my life after that

and what bothers me is I have a grandson

who was born in 1986

and from the time he was like eight, nine, 10 years old

he kept telling us about people that were coming

into his bedroom through a hole in his ceiling.

Now he has had lapses of time.

You know can't explain, which I've had.

I've had incidents where I've lost an hour,

an hour and a half, he does it.

So I don't know if what I was doing

back then triggered something,

and then it carried on to my grandson.

I don't know how that works,

all I know is it was about 1975 when these things started.

I talked to one other person that was involved back then

that said that they were afraid.

That they didn't want to, they were telling about

seeing things in the mirror when they looked at themselves

and incidents like that, but it's

quite scary when it happens to yourself.

You know it's nice to read about it by somebody else

but when it's really your life.

- I became friends with a guy named Sam Sherry.

He lived right in the heart of the Chestnut Ridge

up in Ligonier, Pennsylvania in a town called Wilpen.

It was 1986 and he was fishing

at a place called Sleepy Hollow.

It's a popular spot for fishing

and it's a little breezeway or a crossover

between Route 30 east and Route 30 west

and one night Stan was out there fishing

and he heard some noise to his left

and looked over to see a figure standing

on an embankment a little further down the creek than he was

and this was the Little Hannah Creek that he was fishing on,

so as he's fishing and doing his thing

he notices this figure's moving closer and closer to him

and it got to the point where it was so close to him

that he could make out very good detail of this thing

and as he described it, it's not your typical

Bigfoot creature that he saw.

It was an upright walking creature that had

very sparse hair on its body, almost like it had mange.

It appeared to have a mohawk on the top of its head,

and this creature was very tall, had long arms

hanging down well past its knees.

Sam saw this thing walking closer and closer to him,

ambling closer and it kind of unnerved him

so he got in his vehicle to leave

and just before he was able to leave this creature

stopped the vehicle from leaving,

put its hands on the driver side door,

stuck its head in the window

and he was literally face to face with this thing.

He said this thing actually opened its mouth,

he could see there were no teeth in its mouth

or it was missing a lot of teeth.

It was pushing down on the car,

preventing him from driving away.

He hit the horn on his car to scare this thing,

this thing stepped back like oh my gosh kind of expression.

Sam took off and left, and he said in his taillights

as he was driving away he could see this thing

waving at him as he drove off.

- [Narrator] Although the Chestnut Ridge has yet to see

another outbreak of reports

quite like the flap of '73 and '74,

unusual sightings have not stopped

and if anything, they've become more bizarre in variety.

Otherwise sober-minded individuals profess to have seen

enormous dark colored birds in flight

and on the ground, which are sometimes

referred to as Thunderbirds as well as black panthers,

upright walking canid creatures known as dog men,

winged humanoids, and even a 22 foot long

flying lizard resembling a dragon.

In many cases, observers struggle

to describe what they have seen

because there are no categories

that correspond to what they have perceived.

All they can do is react to the invasive presence

of what appears to be a monster.

- But there's all kinds of strange creatures

that have been seen.

The most recent was the dog man sighting

that took place literally miles down the road

from where we're at here in 2015.

Four women were going to a place called Roaring Run Park,

and they pulled into a pulloff at the trailhead

to get out of the vehicle to start hiking the trail

and as they got out of the vehicle,

they started into the trailhead

and they noticed a figure walking towards them.

The one woman claimed that this thing wasn't a person.

It was actually a very tall, muscular,

salt and pepper hair covered creature

that had a large snout like a wolf or a dog,

had pointy ears and had a tail on it.

It was standing upright on two legs

and it just approached them out of the forest.

Three of the four women got back in the car.

She stood there watching it,

and it stood there watching her

and the stareoff went on for several minutes

before this thing turned

and walked back off through the forest.

- There have been many reports over the years

of not only Bigfoot sightings,

but reports of Thunderbirds as huge, generally dark brown

or black birds with massive wingspans like a small aircraft.

- Thunderbird basically is a large bird

with anywhere from eight to 20 feet in length of wingspan.

Some witnesses describe the Thunderbird as having

black feathers all over its body

while others describe the Thunderbird

as having like a reptilian like membrane skin on its body

almost like a pterodactyl like thing flying through the sky.

- I only ever heard one that came from a guy

that said that he was up on the Derry Ridge

and this large Thunderbird,

well he didn't name it a Thunderbird,

this very large bird flew right over the top of him.

- Yeah I grew up in Lower Burrell.

I joined the army and then 2005 I retired,

moved out here to Derry.

I just got done cutting my back field.

My family was down at Keystone State Park there.

I went down to get them to bring them up

to show them what the field looked like.

I came back up to the field, I'm looking out there

at the end of the field and it looked like

there was a tree stump, so we drove out there

to the tree stump and I go

that isn't a tree stump, it's a deer.

Looked like a big deer about this tall,

maybe five, 5 1/2 feet tall sitting up on its butt

and it was like this.

And I'm getting closer I'm thinking

that doesn't look like a deer anymore

and it picked up its head and it was staring at me

like this, like it was mad.

Huh, so I stopped 50 yards maybe from it,

I'm looking at it, that's a bird!

It got up and it took one swipe

and it started coming towards me

and I'm like oh Judas Priest.

Came over the top of our bus

and my yard is shaped like a rollercoaster

and it, when it hit that it came up like that into the air.

It was big chested, just claws like this.

If it wanted to and it swooped down,

I'm not saying it's going to pick you up,

but it'll peck you into pieces and take those pieces away.

- Strange events like this go on all across Pennsylvania

and there's certain areas where sometimes

you get more activity than others,

but the one area of course that year after year

we seem to get more than normal activity

is areas along the Chestnut Ridge.

There's been all kind of other anomalies up on the ridge

such as underground sounds and mystery booms

and strange lights that people see

and small, little lights coming near their homes.

- And they appear as they said very close to the ground

or very very high up in the trees.

There's no rhyme nor reason nor explanation

for the pattern they move or why they move or a direction.

They just, they move, and it seems almost as if

they're intelligent enough to move

so they don't want you to see it.

Like you see it over here and you'll be focused over here

and then it'll appear over here,

then when you look over here,

it's gone and it's back over here again.

- To this point that is the biggest event

that has happened in my life

that I have no understanding of.

In August of 2015, myself and a friend of mine, Eric,

we were on the West Virginia side near Preston County

in a very remote location about two miles off of

anywhere would have been near any civilized area.

- There's a couple times where I've experienced this,

and I don't know what it is.

I really don't have an explanation

and I don't think anybody does at this point.

We were out doing a Bigfoot investigation

in this very active area.

- This night was pitch ink dark.

I couldn't even see Eric, I couldn't even see my hand.

I mean there was no moon that night.

You couldn't see through the canopy of trees,

no star residual light from the stars,

so we were in total ink darkness.

- [Eric] And I noticed off in the woods to my left,

probably about 100 yards away this light

and it first looked like someone just carrying a lantern.

If you would swing a lantern as you were walking

through the forest you could see it

moving back and forth, rocking.

- What appeared to be a light permeating

underneath the canopy of trees was moving around very slowly

but erratically at the same time, almost balloon-like,

but it didn't, it would stop and then it would move again.

- And as more people focused on it,

more people started to see this light

moving through the trees and we were trying to figure out

where it was emanating from, where it was coming from,

if maybe there was somebody over there

in the woods with us that night.

- As it got a little bit closer,

you could see, if you've seen

the lava lamps of the seventies,

it had this pulsating light change going on

inside of this spherical object.

I know for a fact it was within 60 feet of us

when the next thing happened.

Well I didn't see Eric and he couldn't see me.

Well he has a 500 lumen flashlight.

He lit it up with a flashlight.

This window opened up in this black darkness.

It was a translucent, silvery,

almost like it was light projecting out of it.

This thing went in, this window shut,

and then we're standing there in total darkness again.

- I have no idea where it came from.

I started talking to other people about it,

seeing if they'd seen it.

Other people that researched up in that area,

and little by little I began to hear people talking

about seeing this floating light in that area.

- [Narrator] Is there a simple cause

for the glowing orbs being detected

in the forests of Pennsylvania?

Perhaps an atmospheric condition

or weather related anomaly is to blame.

Or is there something more than natural

generating light in those dark places?

What is it about the ridge that seems

to produce a parade of the monstrous?

Do these creatures crawl forth

from the belly of the ridge itself?

And what about the strange lights that appear in its skies?

Are they terrestrial in origin,

somehow generated by the great earthen mound?

Do we even know the right questions to ask

about this window into the unknown?

In this region, mysteries tend to layer

one on top of the other.

- People, they sort of make the connection

between Bigfoot or UFO or UFO along with Bigfoot.

I am no expert by any means.

I think there are power sources in the area

and I think there might be a link to

power sources having something to do with this.

- I know if you look on the internet,

after that I started looking on the internet what I'd seen,

there's a lot of stuff that goes up on the Chestnut Ridge.

Is it strange?

Probably it's everywhere, they just don't pay attention.

But density of forest, I'm not sure.

- I don't know why this area

seems to attract the phenomenon, I really don't,

but it seems to be concentrated in the state in this area.

- It seems like mountain areas around here

and West Virginia areas have a lot of

strange things happening on it.

- Over the years you know we saw certain patterns emerging,

and we thought gee we're getting close to some answers

then another case would show up that would completely

dismiss your thoughts and theories,

and you're always hopeful that you're going to finally

come to a conclusion, but the more I receive reports

even in the last few years,

some of the crypto reports we're getting

are so strange and so unusual,

they're not even close to the normal Bigfoot

or Thunderbirds or panthers and other anomalies

we get reports on, so there's a lot more out there

going on that any of us have any answers for

and I think we're dealing with something

that's very strange and unusual and right now

beyond our scientific understanding.

- [Narrator] Some who have encountered the inexplicable

along the Chestnut Ridge have been able

to go on with their lives.

The occurrence becomes an intriguing footnote

in their personal history, nothing more

but for others, the experience

has a profound and lasting effect,

shifting their worldview, changing their thoughts

about what is possible, what is real.

Like Sam Sherry they become obsessed with having

just one more encounter to justify

what they've been through.

To prove it to the skeptics and maybe to themselves

that they're not losing grip on reality.

Or like Barry Clark, they would rather not

know what happened to them.

They prefer not to remember, but to forget.

- And maybe if I went and had digression

maybe I would understand more,

but like I said now

I don't know if I want to know any details.

You know I know what's happened happened,

and I've had some physical stuff left behind

but do I really want to know if I did do that?

Would it be worse than not knowing?

It's kind of a catch-22.

- [Narrator] Today, the village of Kecksburg

has embraced its enigmatic past,

hosting a UFO festival each summer

that has attracted thousands of visitors.

Families bring children to play

in the shadow of the UFO replica

once used in the filming of a TV program about the crash.

Locals are somewhat used to camera crews in town,

as media interest in the incident never wanes for long.

The people of this community have done their best

to turn the events of 1965 into a positive.

- Once again I started this

back when I was 10 years old in 1956 so this year

is going to be 58 years of research.

Why do this?

Well I guess it's just the fact that

I'm continuing to be curious,

I'm still learning more and more

about the phenomena out there,

I've learned that this is a very strange world

and there's a lot of ongoing things out there

that we have yet to understand

and I guess I'm always hopeful that that next phone call

I might get on my hotline, or the next email I get

might be the case that once and for all

gives us the evidence that will prove

that at least one of these phenomena really do exist.

- [Narrator] But countless questions remain.

What fell near Kecksburg, and what does

the United States government know about it?

What was unleashed on this region in 1973,

and did it ever really stop?

How do we talk about phenomena that are

continuously shifting, always just out of reach?

How do we describe the apparition

already disappearing in the mist?

It seems that the rolling slopes of the hills,

the silent presence of the Chestnut Ridge itself,

is the only thing permanent.

That, and the persistence of human curiosity.

(eerie music)