Original subtitles

NARRATOR: It is the world's most elite team of UFO hunters.

NICK POPE: It's this huge network of investigators

who are not just interested in UFOs,

but want to do something about it.

NARRATOR: For five decades, the Mutual UFO Network

has gathered detailed evidence

of unexplained aerial phenomena,

strange encounters, and alleged alien abductions.

TRAVIS TAYLOR: Out of all the cases that you've looked at,

have you seen anything like this?

Not like this, and I've done over a thousand.

NARRATOR: And now, they're collaborating

with the United States government.

JESSICA TOCCO: MUFON has been very well received in Congress.

Whether they believe it's a UAP from another world

or from one our adversaries,

they want to know what's happening.

NARRATOR: Could MUFON have within its vast files

definitive proof of alien visitation?

GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: Here we have an outfit that has decades worth

of investigation, and some of their cases

are, in my opinion, extraterrestrial encounters.

NARRATOR: There is a doorway

in the universe.

Beyond it is the promise of truth.

It demands we question everything

we have ever been taught.

The evidence is all around us.

The future is right before our eyes.

We are not alone.

We have never been alone.

NARRATOR: Thousands descend on the Mile High City

to attend the 53rd International Symposium on UFOs.

We had a similar case out of South Carolina last year.

NARRATOR: At this annual conference,

researchers from around the world

gather to share and examine

the latest developments in the study of UFOs.

One resident claimed to have compiled a list of 110 persons

who had witnessed flying objects

out of the small town of only 2,000.

NARRATOR: And it is hosted by an organization

with the most highly trained UFO investigators in the world,

MUFON.

MUFON is the acronym for the Mutual UFO Network.

It's the largest UFO investigation organization

in the world,

and its mission statement is the scientific study

of UFOs for the benefit of mankind.

RON JAMES: MUFON is a all-volunteer organization

that's grown to well over 4,000 members worldwide

of field investigators and

people that want to participate in the quest for the truth.

At the core of MUFON is an investigative body

that exists to go out and investigate sightings

that are worthy of investigation and compile our database.

But over the years, MUFON has grown into so much more.

We offer kind of a community

for people that care about the topic.

POPE: MUFON is the coming together

of people who are not just interested in UFOs,

but want to do something about it.

They want to investigate the cases.

So, it's like this huge, uh, network

of like-minded people all around the United States

and indeed the world

brought together by their shared passion for the subject

and their shared interest in it.

HURD: I became involved after having been present

for the Phoenix Lights incident

here in Phoenix, Arizona in 1997.

My interest was captured.

I first joined up with MUFON after a trip to Roswell

with the family in 2019,

and it got me interested in it.

I had heard of MUFON before, but I didn't think,

being a nurse, if I would be useful.

But I called the headquarters to see about

just attending meetings, and

I became an investigator, and I've loved it ever since.

RODERICK MARTIN: I was 12 years old when I saw my first UFO.

Uh, was outside, and then I lived in Dallas, Texas.

I saw this little white disk,

uh, kind of just zig-zagging.

So, imagine that seared into you as a young kid.

As the years roll by,

I noticed that there was an organization called MUFON,

Mutual UFO Network.

Then I found their website.

Wait a minute, you can get behind the scenes.

You can become an investigator.

And so I said, "You know what?

This is what I'm going to do."

NARRATOR: Having now existed as an organization

for more than five decades,

MUFON's mission is to objectively investigate

the hundreds of eyewitness accounts of UFOs

and other aerial phenomena

that are reported every year across the globe.

RALPH BLUMENTHAL: MUFON started in the '60s

as an association of private citizens

who trained themselves to ask questions, to go to scenes

where people had reported UFOs

to question people.

They developed a whole protocol.

They had a very sophisticated methodology

that they used to document these things,

and they kept records.

NARRATOR: Started in Quincy, Illinois,

MUFON originally stood for "The Midwest UFO Network"...

...but by 1973,

the organization had so many members across the country,

its name was changed to "The Mutual UFO Network."

The group remained relatively obscure, however,

until 1980,

when it played a key role

in a sensational UFO case called

the Cash-Landrum Incident.

JAMES: Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum

are driving through Texas when they encounter this giant

diamond-shaped object...

...hovering and spewing out blue flame from the bottom.

They stopped the car to investigate.

The local environment

is actually being heated by this object

to the point where they try to touch their car

and it's hot to the touch.

And then what happens is they notice

that there's an army of helicopters,

Chinook helicopters,

seeming to escort this object.

VICKIE LANDRUM: This is Vickie Landrum from Dayton, Texas.

Now, what makes this unique is that,

when they get home, after a couple of days,

they start to show symptoms of being exposed

to ionized radiation.

DAVID CHILDRESS: The women all had their hair fall out,

they develop cancer, and they blamed

the U.S. government for this.

And this then became a very well-known court case,

where they were suing the U.S. government, essentially.

This was reported in major newspapers

all over the United States.

They couldn't ignore this story.

POPE: MUFON investigators

got the witness statements, gathered the evidence,

including things like medical records,

which were central to the legal case.

And, although, the witnesses didn't win their case,

what's important was that that gets it on the record.

Without MUFON,

it's unlikely that it would have gone to court.

JAMES: It helped MUFON come to the forefront.

It gave us credibility as a group.

And it was a really establishing moment for MUFON.

You can click on this, and you can click on your state

and see if your case is coming up due soon.

NARRATOR: 40 UFO researchers

have arrived in this small desert community

for the annual MUFON Investigator Boot Camp.

This intense, three-day conference

offers hands on training

in techniques used to investigate cases

of reported extraterrestrial visitations.

Stay with your group.

We have five sites.

You guys are gonna go to the sites,

and you're going to find stuff,

tag it, bag it, and you're gonna submit it.

MUFON strives to train up their field investigators

to know photo and video analysis.

We're expected to know how to read astronomical charts.

We're expected to know how to look at flight radar returns.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

POPE: One of the strengths of MUFON,

is that it brings together people

with different skill sets.

So, for example, some of them will be, uh, retired cops.

Also, people who specialize in imagery analysis.

There are other people who know all about computers.

So, all the different things

that an organization investigating UFOs might need,

someone's gonna have that skill set.

TSOUKALOS: MUFON has many members from the military,

from the police force,

lawyers, PhDs, doctors.

Those are highly, highly educated people.

So, it's serious work

that these investigators are doing.

POPE: MUFON is not an organization

of wide-eyed believers.

These are not people who think everything's an alien spaceship.

MUFON get thousands of cases,

and they investigate, they analyze,

and they conclude.

And MUFON pride themselves on trying to adhere

to the scientific method.

TSOUKALOS: The UFO phenomenon

goes back, in my opinion, thousands of years.

The day when it becomes accepted knowledge globally

that we are not alone

and never have been alone on Earth,

I think that MUFON will be part of this paradigm shift.

NARRATOR: For MUFON investigators,

determining the source of an encounter

is key to identifying what is truly unexplained.

And often, the most compelling cases

are those in which eyewitness accounts can be corroborated

by physical evidence.

NARRATOR: Former British Ministry of Defence UFO investigator

Nick Pope and Dr. Travis Taylor,

who was the chief scientist

for the U.S. government's UAP Task Force,

have arranged to meet with two seasoned MUFON researchers,

who investigated a possible UFO landing here

in the summer of 2022.

I'm really fascinated to see how MUFON do their investigations.

What resources and capabilities they can bring

to bear on these investigations.

I find it really intriguing that at least they've taken on

that role because, in the United States,

there is no government office

that's set up to take UFO reports.

With the UAP Task Force,

we only looked at military, uh, scenarios.

We never looked into civilian events in detail because

we had no authority to go and investigate inside

-the walls of the United States, right? -Right.

I'm gonna be interested to look at this case

through the lens of the way

we did things at the U.K. Ministry of Defence.

We took a very methodological approach

to these sorts of things.

NARRATOR: Before proceeding to the site of the alleged landing...

-Travis Taylor. -NARRATOR: Travis and Nick meet up with Robert Spearing

and Jason Albertson, the MUFON investigators

who conducted the original enquiry in July 2022.

I'm MUFON's, uh, International Director of Investigations.

Uh, I have a forensic background.

And this is Jay Albertson.

He's a field investigator from Pennsylvania.

I'm also retired military.

I'm a chemical biological radiological specialist.

So, I guess one of the biggest questions to me

is, uh, MUFON's become so huge.

How's it funded? Or is it all volunteer?

Are you guys getting paid to do this?

-No, everything's volunteer. -ALBERTSON: No.

That's what I thought. That's amazing.

MUFON is mostly funded by its membership,

and we have about 500 field investigators right now

from all walks of life.

Geologists, biologists, rocket scientists, you name it.

So, what's your process when someone makes a report to MUFON?

What happens?

When a witness submits a report,

it goes to, uh, one of five administrators,

and the state director will then assign it

to a person in that area.

Jay lived in the general area where

the incident occurred, and

we immediately realized that this was a case of interest.

So, what happened?

A woman, about 2:30 in the morning,

-(barking) -heard her dogs barking.

She saw a white light coming down

in the field behind her house.

The crickets and the cicadas had stopped making noise,

which is unusual in the summertime in Pennsylvania.

ALBERTSON: The woman was scared because the dogs

was going crazy, running back and forth.

And the next morning, her husband went out

and discovered what we call a saucer circle

about two yards in diameter.

ALBERTSON: The pond is to your right,

the impression is straight ahead.

There's three circles that are burned in the center.

You have a 14-inch circle,

perfect in the center, and you have

two 12-inch circles on the left and right.

And they connect with the outside impression

that comes down.

TAYLOR: Circle here, and here's the big circle.

ALBERTSON: Yeah, there's another one right here it looks like.

-TAYLOR: Yeah. -SPEARING: Could that be landing gear?

Did the ring look dug into the ground

or pushed into the ground?

The outer ring, that was pushed down about a half an inch.

They hadn't mowed

before you got there, or had they mowed over this?

No, they hadn't mowed at all.

ALBERTSON: Okay, got it.

All right.

You know, if I were going to sit here and play the role

of a debunker, right? I'd look at things trying to

figure this out and say, "Oh, well,

"I've seen when I've bent my lawn mower blade,

it cuts perfect circles like that."

But you couldn't cut a perfect circle around it

-where you did that. -No.

I don't know how in the world,

even with a zero-turn radius mower,

-you couldn't do that. -ALBERTSON: No.

TAYLOR: And then if it's actually depressed,

that means that there's something that was heavy

-sitting there. -Yes.

Uh, so I find this really interesting.

So, when you get to the location,

is the first thing you do to go to these circles

because that's what's been brought to your attention?

And what do you find?

ALBERTSON: The first thing I did was, I went to the circle.

I was taking photographs and getting all my measurements

first, and then,

when I initially was down on the ground taking samples,

I felt a burning sensation

on the insides of my arms on certain parts

that I-I just couldn't understand.

Pain, nausea, headaches,

and me being in the military, I knew

exactly what that could've been.

And are you worried? Are you scared? Are you...?

At that point I was 'cause then I knew exactly...

-TAYLOR: Could be radiation or... -I knew it was a flash burn.

It had to have been a flash burn.

So, do you seek medical help for that?

Yes. Yes. I went directly to the hospital.

Yeah, they were initially just burns, and then they circled.

They initially looked at it, and they said, "Is this a bug bite?"

And I said, "No."

Right, because, you know, you've--

-Everyone's been bitten by bugs before, right? -Exactly.

You know what that feels like.

And-and you are saying that was not what happened.

-This is something else. -Exactly. Yes.

ALBERTSON: After I talked to the doctor,

he determined that it was unexplained skin eruption.

What other data did you collect with this?

When we got the lab results back from the MUFON lab in Missouri,

the technician there told us that there were

some heavy elements within the soil itself.

ALBERTSON: Yeah, if you look on the back of the test here,

it states that where it was coal mining,

toxic metals were present.

Mercury, lead, arsenic, uh,

cadmium, aluminum, nickel, uranium.

This was all found in the samples.

The technician there told us that,

when heavy elements interact

with the residual EMF field left over

by whatever left the EMF field, it can become toxic for them.

And we believe that's what started the blistering

on-on Jay's body.

The other thing the lab found was that

some of the, uh, vegetation

within the circle had been burnt from the inside out.

So, I believe, when you add in that the plant matter

was burned from within, you have more and more evidence

suggesting that there was a strong residual EMF field.

TAYLOR: So, out of all the cases that you've looked at,

have you seen anything like this?

Not like this.

I'd say this is one of the top three cases

I've done, and I've done over a thousand.

Well, I'll tell you what I would like to do.

Uh, you guys still have your investigation kit with you?

-Yes. -I would like to go back up there,

and you guys go back through all the measurements you made,

and we'll get to watch and see how you did that.

But, at the same time, we're taking another measurement

that happened a given amount of time after the event.

And if there are changes,

that'll be very interesting data that we'll need to know.

-Okay. Let's go. -Let's do it. Let's go. -Great.

NARRATOR: November 7, 2022.

Dr. Travis Taylor and Nick Pope are in Wapwallopen, Pennsylvania

to see how MUFON investigates UFO sightings firsthand.

-TAYLOR: Greetings. -NARRATOR: They arrive at the home

of Robert and Melissa Skirchak.

The Skirchaks are looking for answers

as to what occurred on their property several months earlier.

So, where abouts did this take place?

ROBERT: Right behind you in the grass area.

MELISSA: Right behind you in the grass area.

Well, lead the way. Show us.

-So, it was this close to the house? -ROBERT: Yes.

Wow.

-Yeah, in this area right here. -MELISSA: Over here.

I say we-we go back and get the equipment

out of the vehicle and then we'll let the MUFON guys

come do their thing again.

NARRATOR: Nick and Travis are joined

by MUFON field investigators

Jason Albertson and Robert Spearing.

Jason and Robert will retest the area

for radioactivity and collect more soil samples

on the Skirchak property.

The goal is to see if any lingering effects

from the initial incident remain.

Jay's gonna check for residual radiation,

uh, an EMF field, residual EMF field,

and we're gonna see if there's anything sub-ground,

metallic underneath.

When we do that, if it's safe to go back in,

we're gonna do some soil samples.

-Sure. All right. -So, let's-let's do it.

Okay.

TAYLOR: Jason actually has a pretty good background

for this type of, uh, investigation.

He's from a military background doing chemical weapons disposal.

So, he's familiar with radiation,

electromagnetic fields,

and that type of scientific measurement...

Now, you remember where it was?

TAYLOR: ...and understanding those phenomena.

SPEARING: Just about here.

Now, normal radiation levels in this area

of Pennsylvania, about 50 to 68 clicks per minute?

Yeah, that sounds about right.

It's pretty much 65 right now,

so I don't see any sort of dangerous radiation.

Did you find anything with the metal detector

on your initial search?

Initially, no. Nope.

TAYLOR: So, uh, Jason,

you said you took samples outside of the spot?

-Yes. -So, you took, uh,

-soil samples from the pond, grass samples... -Yes.

-...water samples. -Yes.

Soil samples here and the, uh, the soil samples near the pond

were not the same or they were the same as they were here?

-They were different. -TAYLOR: Okay.

The interesting thing, though, is

that right here, just ten, 20 feet away...

-It's different. -...you have different

minerals in the soil than you do there,

and you would expect the runoff, since that's downhill,

it all ought to be the same,

which is odd.

NARRATOR: Jason and Robert are going to take fresh samples

of the soil to test it again.

POPE: Jason, this is where

-you kind of got sick yourself, right? -ALBERTSON: Yes.

As soon as I got down to the ground,

that's when I felt different spots in my arms

and the insides of my arms.

Yeah, we'll get some grass in here, too, from this.

All right, and then we'll get a control sample.

(overlapping chatter)

SPEARING: Yeah, I'm gonna hold on to this till it's labeled.

Yeah. All right.

So, we'll take the control sample.

Yeah. There we go.

So, this then gets labeled,

gets sent back to the lab,

and you maintain the chain of custody.

TAYLOR: You've got some initial data.

If it was just simply something on

the surface, it's been enough time now,

a lot of that should've washed away.

So, it might be that you'll find a different sample

than what you found before.

ALBERTSON: That's it. We're good.

TAYLOR: I can't wait to see the results.

NARRATOR: For Travis and Nick, the Skirchak case

has shown them the methodical nature of MUFON investigations.

POPE: I think MUFON did a great job here.

I was very impressed with both the investigators.

Everything I witnessed them talk about and actually do,

uh, resonated with me in terms of the sort of thing

that we did in the government.

TAYLOR: The case here at the Skirchak residence

is a really interesting one because there's actually some,

uh, physical evidence left behind that can be investigated.

And the MUFON guys did a good job

taking soil samples, electromagnetic measurements,

gamma ray measurements, and things of that nature.

This is the type of process that we're gonna have to

standardize more if we're ever going to

get to the bottom of this phenomena.

NARRATOR: The Skirchak sighting is one

of MUFON's most intriguing cases of 2022.

But deep in MUFON's files are a host of other sightings,

many with video evidence...

NARRATOR: ...that cannot be explained.

Gosport, England.

January 9, 2017.

Just before 11:00 p.m.,

residents of this city see something unusual

in the night sky.

NARRATOR: Dramatic video is captured

of three lights converging, separating...

NARRATOR: ...and then reconverging.

For MUFON investigators,

this footage was particularly exciting.

JAMES: What makes this video especially compelling

is that you have the visual evidence, multiple witnesses,

and it still stands out as something we can't explain.

That's what we call the "category three case."

It's the one with the most potential to be unexplained.

NARRATOR: On December 31, 2021,

an even stranger video of an alleged UFO

was sent to MUFON by soldiers at Tooele Army Depot in Utah.

The soldiers filmed a strange light

hovering in the sky for five consecutive nights.

SKYE LaFEVER: If it were some kind of a military plane,

we would be able to detect it.

We have our ways of finding out that this is a military craft.

We can check all the information in the area.

There was no craft at that time.

What makes this case so interesting to us

is that, after this happened,

all military personnel were released from the base.

CHILDRESS: After the fifth night,

military executives suddenly showed up.

They interviewed people.

They told everyone on the base who had seen

these UFOs that they were dismissed.

They told them also their clothes and things

had been contaminated by this UFO.

NARRATOR: Are the mysterious lights in these videos

and accounts by witnesses like the Skirchaks

evidence that extraterrestrials are visiting our planet?

For now, the answer remains a mystery.

But each MUFON investigation

is added to their ever-growing database

in the hope that, one day, they will provide vital clues.

POPE: Every time you investigate,

you're adding to the database of knowledge,

and then you look for trends.

It's those sorts of little details

that you just store away until they come up again.

And then maybe it tells you something

interesting and important.

NARRATOR: While MUFON has amassed a large inventory

of reports they cannot explain,

there are a few that stand out as truly astonishing.

One of the most compelling of all

involved multiple witnesses

who saw not only a craft,

but also alien visitors.

NARRATOR: A man named Randy Young has come forward to report

a UFO encounter that happened almost 50 years earlier,

in 1975.

The story begins when he was ten years old

at the Miracle Mountains Boarding School

in Hartshorne, Oklahoma.

YOUNG: Miracle Mountain was kind of out in the boonies of Oklahoma.

That day, my brother and I were out in the sandbox,

and we saw this circular, uh, shining light that was

probably 2,000 or so feet up in the air.

It didn't have the movements of an airplane.

It was just hovering.

And, as it got darker, this craft got closer.

It had lights that went through the midsection

all the way around,

and it had this classic, saucer-type shape.

NARRATOR: For decades, Randy and his brother

kept their extraordinary encounter to themselves

for fear of how it would be received.

You didn't want people thinking that you're crazy,

you didn't want to ruin your reputation.

But, in the back of my mind, that story was always there,

and with all that has been going on with, um, the government,

the military, jets that are,

you know, tracking these things,

and there's been a lot more talk about it recently.

I'm like, okay, if they're talking

this big at this level, they got to hear this story.

They need to know about what had happened in Hartshorne

in 1975, and so, I contacted MUFON.

NARRATOR: The report reached the desk of Mindy Tautfest,

the Oklahoma state MUFON director.

TAUTFEST: Randy filed an official report through mufon.com,

and I immediately knew, after reading it,

that this case could be a very, very important case

to all of UFO history.

I first reached out to Randy and interviewed him.

The next person I spoke to was Philip Buchanan.

Philip was one of the older children

at the school at the time.

And so, he has one of the more complete memories

of what transpired there

and the operations of the school itself.

And then, I spoke with the teacher via email.

And the teacher described that some of the kids were hiding

under the beds because they were very terrified,

and some of the kids were looking out the window.

They reported to see shapeshifting

entities out there.

They just said, "It keeps changing."

JAMES: What Mindy found out after doing all that work

is that these kids were recalling the exact same thing.

As these witnesses were telling their stories years later,

one of the things Mindy asked them to do

was to actually draw the UFO that they'd seen.

And the consistency is amazing.

And not only are they telling the same story,

but they're describing the same craft.

It shows us that these old historic cases

still have something to offer.

YOUNG: I think that, um, we need an organization like MUFON.

I think we need to have a database for all these

different incidents, and I think that

we need to have, um, as many eyes

and as many investigators on this as possible.

We need to figure out what's going on.

TAUTFEST: There's been a lot of excitement around this story

because there were a lot of things

that corroborated each other.

We find value in all UFO reports,

and some of the older ones

serve to validate some other sightings

that may be in our database.

And so, the older historic cases really have a lot of value

whenever it comes to ufology.

TSOUKALOS: This cold case is one of the most fascinating cases

that MUFON's ever investigated

because students,

they had not spoken to each other since 1975,

and they all replied with the same answers,

which indicates that something happened,

and everybody saw the same thing.

In the ancient astronaut opinion,

those stories of UFOs today

are the same stories that our ancestors

in the remote past also explored.

Their cell phone cameras

were the walls of caves

and reliefs and carvings

in which they commemorated those

incredibly significant events

that they were eyewitnesses to.

NARRATOR: Is MUFON's growing database further evidence

that extraterrestrial beings have been visiting

our planet for thousands of years,

as ancient astronaut theorists suggest?

And if so, what do they want?

Perhaps clues can be found in MUFON reports

that go beyond UFO sightings

and describe terrifying encounters.

NARRATOR: Each year, the Mutual UFO Network

receives approximately 10,000 reports

of UFO phenomena.

While most involve sightings of strange objects in the sky,

in some cases, the witness claims

to have come face-to-face with an alien entity.

A lot of people that approach MUFON

have these stories of having these personal encounters

with entities that they can't explain.

But we found over the years is that there

is serious validity to this phenomenon.

KATHLEEN MARDEN: I believe that worldwide there are millions of people

who have had these encounters,

but it is very, very difficult for a lot of people

to come forward.

Maybe they told their family, maybe they told a good friend,

and they were laughed at.

They feel that they really need

to talk to someone, but they can't.

NARRATOR: In 2011, MUFON formed the Experiencer Resource Team,

a program dedicated to assisting those who claim

to have been traumatized by extraterrestrial encounters.

MARDEN: We receive up to 150 reports per month from the people

who believe that they have had a missing time event,

they've had a close encounter with a craft,

sometimes observed nonhuman entities,

and we've worked with members of the military,

we've worked with medical doctors,

we've worked with business owners,

credible people who have a lot to lose.

Oftentimes, they're frightened.

So, they are seeking assistance

in overcoming the fear

and in gaining a better understanding

of what is occurring.

NARRATOR: One such encounter reported to MUFON

was made by trauma nurse Earl Gray Anderson in 2016,

just weeks after he had joined MUFON as a field investigator.

Earl was at his home in Los Angeles when his room was

suddenly illuminated by a mysterious light.

Our room started filling with light,

and it was a light with no source.

It wasn't coming from an object or a lamp or outside.

And the wall opened up.

I couldn't move. I was paralyzed.

And that was when I first started feeling afraid.

I saw these little diminutive creatures.

You would call them the Small Grays.

It was almost like watching a surgical team work.

There were these tubes that they attached

to the top of my chest, and I felt like they were

draining blood or-or energy, life force from me.

I was yelling in my mind,

and I was crying out for them to stop.

But they were not listening to me.

They pulled backwards, out the same way they came in.

The wall, like, seemed to swirl,

almost like a little galaxy in the room.

And it was back to normal,

except there was still light in our room.

The light didn't fade for a good five minutes with no source.

After the experience,

I didn't tell friends and-and family.

I mean, you're gonna feel skepticism if somebody says

that, you know, you've just became a field investigator,

and I'm suddenly saying that I was visited by ETs.

But it scared the hell out of me.

It was very, very serious.

NARRATOR: Earl eventually reached out

to MUFON's Experiencer Resource Team,

and after sharing his encounter,

he decided to become a member of the ERT himself.

ANDERSON: It was very, very helpful to have someone to listen.

And-and that's what I find in my own dealings

with experiencers now.

The ERT is MUFON's...

it's-it's like the compassionate wing of MUFON.

Like social workers for experiencers.

NARRATOR: By working closely with individuals

who claim to have been abducted,

MUFON has compiled a wide range of data

on the experiencer phenomenon.

TAUTFEST: The data that we collect is pretty interesting.

And we try to find patterns.

It's really kind of astounding, whenever you break it down

and look at the different commonalities

between these different sightings or abductions.

MARDEN: Most experiencers have conscious continuous recall

of being awake.

They become paralyzed.

They have a sense of an electrical tingling

sensation through their bodies.

They might hear high-pitched buzzing tones in their heads.

We used to think that abduction occurred only once,

but after years of research, we've realized that

individuals are taken multiple times over a lifetime.

We are gaining a better understanding

of what is occurring.

NARRATOR: With the volume of empirical data

that has been collected over the years

related to mysterious sightings and reported encounters,

is it possible that the organization

could be on the verge of a major breakthrough

in the UFO phenomenon?

For ancient astronaut theorists,

the answer is a resounding yes.

And they believe it will come thanks to emerging

cooperative efforts between MUFON

and the United States government.

NARRATOR: UFO enthusiasts across the nation

tune in to watch as a Congressional subcommittee holds

a hearing on UFOs for the first time

in more than 50 years.

Unidentified aerial phenomena are a potential

national security threat,

and they need to be treated that way.

NARRATOR: The last hearing, held in 1968,

was called to discuss Project Blue Book,

the U.S. government's first official UFO investigations.

POPE: By the late '60s,

Project Blue Book had been going for many years, and

whatever the U.S. government knew

about UFOs behind the scenes, this public program

was just considered by senior military officers

a waste of time and money.

So, they wanted to get out of the game.

And they got the answer they wanted.

A recommendation that the Air Force disengaged from this.

So, we've had decades of playing the whole thing down,

and now, it's as if they're putting it out there

in front of us all.

We know that our service members have encountered

unidentified aerial phenomena.

POPE: Some absolutely fascinating information was disclosed.

The briefers presented evidence,

talked about how there had been near misses

between UAP and military jets.

There was discussion about how these-these objects

moved with no visible propulsion.

It looks, uh, reflective in this video,

somewhat reflective, uh, and it quickly passes

by cockpit of the, uh, of the aircraft.

So, this was absolutely groundbreaking.

NARRATOR: A major contributor to the hearing

was Jessica Tocco,

a lobbyist who briefed committee members

about civilian UFO encounters on behalf of MUFON.

The Mutual UFO Network was founded around the time

that Project Blue Book was disbanded.

So, to work with the government on this issue,

and that there were elected officials

who were very interested,

that was groundbreaking and historic.

NARRATOR: Many hailed the hearing as a historic breakthrough,

one that could potentially usher in a new era of government

cooperation with civilian UFO research.

When that day comes, MUFON investigators believe

their large database

will prove vital to future investigations.

TAUTFEST: MUFON stands ready to assist

the government in any way that we can.

We are really at the forefront

of UFO investigation.

JAMES: We have the world's largest database

of UFO sightings and investigations.

Here's the thing, though, we'll never say,

"Oh, it was definitely extraterrestrial."

We can't scientifically prove that.

Now, we can say that it's unexplained,

and that we don't know what it was.

We're going after the truth.

TSOUKALOS: MUFON has amassed this treasure chest

of investigative reports of cases

that are very similar

to stories of our ancestors that say

that they have witnessed strange events up in the sky.

There is a connection between the two,

and, usually, the simplest solution is the correct one.

In my opinion, the suggestion of extraterrestrials

is the simplest solution

to explain this phenomenon, this aerial thing that goes on

up in the sky for thousands of years.

NARRATOR: From ancient depictions of disc-shaped objects

and strange figures,

to modern-day video footage of UFOs

and accounts of alien abductions,

does evidence exist that, for thousands of years,

Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials?

And as the public becomes more open

to discussing this incredible possibility,

and sharing personal experiences,

will we arrive at a definitive answer?

Perhaps as the evidence continues to mount,

and more witnesses come forward,

we will finally arrive at the undeniable truth

that we are not alone.

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