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I'm Shannon Legro. I host a podcast called Into the Frey. And for most of my life, I've

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been capturing history in a bottle. No, not the history that we all grew up learning about

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in school or reading about in the newspaper. But the weird stuff. The bizarre. The strange.

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I collect eyewitness stories of people who've encountered the unreal. And today begins my

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own search for one of the biggest questions I've ever asked. Are we alone?

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Here's the deal. Unless you've been blissfully living under a rock for the last decade, you're

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probably aware that the world has gone crazy. Politics, societal unrest, poverty, global

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relationships, it's all in flux. Social media has made it easier than ever to express or

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disdain for each other. While television news is a nonstop war on any sense of well-being,

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we may have otherwise managed to convince ourselves of. Wars are being raged across

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the Middle East while inner cities remain an ignored battleground on our home soil.

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In the last year, the U.S. Navy admitted they were aware of aerial phenomena that remains

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unidentifiable. Former members of secret government sanctioned organizations who studied the UFO

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subject have come forward positioning the phenomenon as one of the go-to topics of discussion

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for news anchors, radio hosts, and late night talk shows alike. Pop culture is full of aliens,

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while television execs have embraced the newfound popularity by blanketing networks and shows

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about men and women hunting flying saucers. Where UFO debates used to rage in cavernous

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forums hiding in the dark and recesses of the Internet, today the verbal battles erupt

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on Facebook and Twitter. Somewhere in the middle of all this newfound attention, something

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has been lost. I no longer see the excitement over the unknown that once inspired so many

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people to look up to the skies. When the U.S. government is actively telling you that UFOs

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are real, what's the sense in being curious about anything?

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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I don't consider myself a ufologist or a researcher or even an investigator. I collect stories.

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When I was just a kid, I had something happen to me that I found hard to explain or rationalize.

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I had no one to really talk to about it. I started wondering if maybe there were other people out there

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like me. Other people who had witnessed something be on the norm who had no one they could share their

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experience with. That's what set me on the path I'm on today. I've been fascinated by strange

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objects in the sky for ages now, since I was little and yet I've never encountered one for myself.

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Over the next year, I'll be traveling the country along with the documentary team from small town

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monsters in search of stories and maybe a few answers to some of my questions. While there are a

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number of spooky, creepy stories about encounters with little green men littering ufology, it's not

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what drives me. I'm driven by curiosity and by a desire to learn more about the people who see these

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things. People like Dan Weiss.

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So I guess walk us through the story sort of from the beginning.

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Okay, it's a warm summer night. My sister Stacy, she's a few years older than I am. She says let's go for a

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walk. So we take a walk and we go around the block here. Here's the house. We just go around the block

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and we go over here one street over and we start heading down this hill. We can see Belgrade Gardens

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out here to the, you know, to my right and there's this big tree line behind there. And suddenly we saw it

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and it's just like they describe in books and videos, you know, it's like a saucer. And it seems so crazy, but

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this thing's huge and it's coming from the south. It's kind of higher up on the tree level, the tree line. It's

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coming from the south. It's kind of moving to the north and it's coming down slowly as it goes. Talking on the

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phone with my sister, Lindy, last night, you know, like I said, she was so ecstatic about it, like more into the

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story than I was. I said it was covering lights, right? I go, you know what it actually looked like was that

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ride at the fair, it's called the rotor. You get in, it spins super fast and you stick to the walls. I said that

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ride looked like a spaceship because that's how they designed it to look like, you know, and it's covered in

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lights and she goes, that's exactly what it looked like. Put that on a winch and threw it in the sky for a few

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minutes. I don't know.

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What was their lights on, you know, around the whole thing on the top of the dome and as well as underneath?

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No, I think it was, I don't think there was lights, at least from my point of view, I don't think there was lights on top

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or bottom. I think it was just, you know, you got just enough. I think it was in my field of vision for six to eight

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seconds. So it was relatively slow moving and it had kind of a humming noise, like a light humming noise.

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You know, it was covered in lights. It seems so silly to be covered in lights, you know, just everything is exactly how people

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describe it, seeing a UFO. But I think what gets me the most is whenever I've looked up videos or images of UFOs, I really

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don't ever see anything like I saw. Usually it's like, you know, the video will be like a series of lights way far

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out. Like you can't see any detail or anything and they're here and they're gone. But this thing was clear and present and it was

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just, oh, you know, and it just slowly moved below the tree line and it was gone.

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Dan has been keeping this story to himself for almost 30 years. In that span of time, the cultural landscape has changed in so

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many ways. Pop culture has elevated UFOs into a position where they're never far from our minds. And yet the reality of what an

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actual encounter is like has been ignored. In the last two years, the subject has been thrust into greater prominence thanks to major

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news stories, an expanding lineup of television shows covering the topic and the number of celebrities and political figures who have

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involved themselves in the debate. These days, few people are looking to the skies, though, to satisfy their curiosity and instead have turned

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personalities and figures for answers. A far cry from the earliest days of UFO research. But what brought us to where we are today?

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Yeah, no problem. Well, thanks for asking.

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Alejandro Rojas is a journalist who covers pop culture, science fiction and outer space based topics with a focus on UFOs and the search for

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extraterrestrial life. His focus at OpenMinds.tv is to cover the full breadth of the subject and to objectively report on the latest news.

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How do you see what's the biggest sort of difference between where the UFO world or where the UFO subject sits today compared to where it was, say, like 20, 30,

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40 years ago? 20, 30, 40 years ago? Well, 20 or 20 years ago or so when I first got into this, it was kind of a low point for UFOs.

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It wasn't taken as seriously or covered as much, not like today where we're in a very, very unique situation where the government's talking about

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UFOs, the president has been talking about UFOs in a serious manner. The credibility level of the subject is at a high point, higher than it's been in a long time.

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David Weatherly is located in my hometown of Las Vegas. He's a paranormal historian who has written a number of books on a massive array of strange subjects.

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He's extremely knowledgeable about the UFO topic and its history.

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Modern ufology and when I say modern, I mean probably the last 10 years, it's taken some very curious twist and turns. When we look at the modern state of things now, the paranormal in general has become part of pop culture.

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This is because of the raster, ghost hunting shows, UFO shows that are on television. So all of a sudden we reached a point where all of these topics become much more acceptable and a bit less taboo.

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What has happened in the midst of this evolution in recent years is that not only has the study of UFOs, the topic of UFOs become something that's culturally acceptable, but a lot of other people have come out into the open in the midst of that.

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We have an amazing array of scientists, of military officers, law enforcement, a whole range of people who are coming forward and either saying yes, I've had an encounter or you know there's something much more to this topic than me see eye and it bears further study.

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Ronald Regear isn't just a UFO investigator. He's a bona fide rocket scientist who has worked for Douglas aircraft which became McDonald Douglas prior to becoming Boeing. He was part of the team that launched the Saturn Apollo moon rocket and later his position as an engineer made him aware of radar pings for unusual aerial phenomena such as the Iran UFO in 1974 and the Phoenix lights.

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Ronald was also employed at a secure area in Nevada which is tied to the infamous Area 51 known as S4. Later he would become the state director for one of the largest organizations looking into UFOs, the Mutual UFO Network or Mufon.

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How do you feel about the sort of change in ufology from maybe where it was like 30, 40 years ago to where it is today? How do you see the subject changing maybe in the public view?

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There's more acceptance of the phenomena now. We're getting back to where it's a serious subject and that may be because of Regear's mentioning it seven times in speeches and Bill Clinton mentioned it a couple of times.

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Do you think that makes it easier for witnesses to come forward or because of the ridicule factor maybe being lessened?

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Yeah, as long as it's not a ridicule, I've had a lot of witnesses who did not want to talk about it. They wanted to talk to somebody that it would be kept strictly confidential and that's why it was so important for us to maintain confidentiality.

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If there's one characteristic that marked the last 80 years of the subject, it was probably the way experiencers have been greeted with ridicule, consternation or been simply ignored.

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In the earliest days of ufology, many witnesses were met with a genuine interest and even excitement by family, friends and even members of the press.

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That changed very quickly, however, when a scientific committee was formed at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency who, more than anything, wanted the subject of flying saucers to simply go away.

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This kicked off what would become a pattern for the government's handling of the topic for decades to follow and indirectly or directly may have helped form the basis for the treatment of witnesses.

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While the Robertson panel and subsequent projects such as Blue Book did their utmost to debunk reports of unidentified objects, they also helped to further the false impression that witnesses are few and far between and more often than not are just misidentifying mundane craft or naturally occurring atmospheric conditions.

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Despite their best efforts, though, people have learned that strange aerial phenomena are being seen around the world by ordinary people on a daily basis.

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Dan Weas doesn't seem afraid of ridicule, but it's taken him decades to understand that what happened to him is part of something much bigger.

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Is it important to you that it's documented in some way or is it more like whatever, you know, like I'm going to have it with me forever because it's much too early?

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I think it's important is so much is that it'd be nice to know if there's anyone else who saw something similar or if they do in the future.

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You can point back to this and say, okay, we've seen it before.

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I mean, that tree right there, that big one that's taken up most of the view, we could have been right here.

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Yeah.

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Maybe that tree, you know, 25 years removed is just a lot.

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It's the same with the big pine.

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So it's straight ahead.

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Yeah.

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Can we pull into that parking lot over there?

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Right in the corner area, there's like a path when you go in.

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How did you all feel about seeing it?

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I mean, were you scared?

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Well, I ran in the house.

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Like I said, we had come around the.

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Come over there.

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We came back around the road.

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Right in the, our older sister, second sister, we came back around the road.

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We came back around the road.

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We came back around the road.

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We ran into our older sister, second sister that saw this.

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And she said, yeah, I'd seen it.

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And we talked to the neighbor of ours older yet, and he had been jogging.

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And he said, certainly he had seen it too.

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I ran in the house and I remember my dad was on the couch right in the main room there.

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And I woke him up out of his sleep.

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I said, you will never believe what we saw.

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You know, of course you're telling your 40 year old dad that you just saw on a UFO.

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Saw a UFO.

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He said, why did you wake me up?

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Is that pretty much really what he said?

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Pretty much, yeah.

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Ryan Sprague is an investigator and author who lives in New York City.

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Ryan and I started out together as hosts on my show into the fray.

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Eventually he struck out on his own and now hosts his own podcast called Somewhere in the Skies,

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which was also the title of his first book on the subject.

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Ryan was also featured on a recent CW television series about the paranormal,

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but has since returned to independently investigating and researching UFOs.

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For decades, UFO researchers have been trying to make what we do validated, make it legitimate.

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And we always went to the government for that, which is good and bad.

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I always found it fascinating that UFO people never believe the government,

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but the minute they come forward and say, hey, UFOs are real, we acknowledge they're real,

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we're so quick to just accept that.

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But the fact that the New York Times broke this story and we found out that there was a secret program,

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we all thought it ended with Project Blue Book.

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It was this guy, Lou Elizondo, who was investigating UFOs or researching them at the Pentagon.

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He's a career intelligence officer.

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He got hooked up with people in the government who have been working in the paranormal arena for decades.

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They were working together to essentially investigate UFOs for the government.

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Even us in the UFO community had no idea that this program existed

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and that they actually brought evidence to the table to show us these pretty captivating videos.

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I thought the Tic Tac UFO is specific.

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In 2004, outside of off the coast of San Diego, there was an encounter by the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group.

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They were catching on radar these objects.

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At one point they zero in some jets on the objects.

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One of the jets approaches the object.

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They saw some water churning above that water.

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It was an object he said was about 40 feet long.

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It was white, smooth, lozenge, short of shape.

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He even calls it a Tic Tac.

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It looked like a giant flying Tic Tac.

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He maneuvered toward this thing and this thing began to match his maneuvers.

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It was starting to get behind him, which is a position you don't want if you're a fighter pilot.

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So he moved to get in front of this object and the object took off at incredible speeds.

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The fact is that government has been actively involved in the UFO game going all the way back to the 1940s.

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In 1952, Project Blue Book was the name given to the Air Force operated study into the UFO phenomenon,

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which was advised by J. Allen Heineck, an American astronomer and professor.

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Blue Book continued into the late 1960s before it was shuttered,

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but it's theorized that the Air Force, along with other branches of the military and the United States government, continued investigating the subject.

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In 2017, Luis Elizondo confirmed the suspicions by breaking his silence on the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or ATIP.

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Elizondo left the secretive government-sanctioned group, went public about its existence,

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and then joined an enterprise called To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences,

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which counted many former and some current government officials and scientific minds.

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But the fact that To The Stars counted so many political figures amongst its ranks acted as a red flag for many enthusiasts and historians alike.

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But there might be more to this story than simply a secret government-sanctioned look into whether or not little green men are visiting Earth.

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The man named John Greg Bishop is just one of the people who has reason to question the existing stories about ATIP.

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TTSA was formed in, I believe, October of 2017.

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They had a press conference, Tom DeLong, a former guitarist, a songwriter from Blink 182.

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He apparently got in touch with a bunch of people, former and maybe present government people, military intelligence,

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and for some reason they saw something in him and decided that maybe they could form some kind of organization that would be a private UFO study,

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information gathering, basically a media empire to support itself so they could do this UFO research. That was their story.

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Right now, Elizondo, who worked for the Pentagon investigating UFOs, he left and joined this group to The Stars, ran by rock star Tom DeLong.

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So now we have a situation where in, gosh, in recent weeks even, there have been all these revelations from government officials.

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We've heard about ATIP, we've heard about the fact that the Navy is looking at UFOs.

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They gather together people from different parts of the government, I think all retired, all in intelligence and military intelligence and some military.

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The important part of their mission that they stated, I mean, it's totally public, is they're trying to find out what is going on with the UFO subject to see if any part of the technology or the apparent technology can be exploited for profit defense, both.

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And as far as anybody knows, that's what they're doing. I think they're doing far more than that and they're not going to talk about it, but that's what everybody does.

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You do anything, you don't tell everybody anything at all that you're doing because then you can't do whatever you're going to do.

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You know, their look at some of these significant cases involving military accounts and so forth is really changing, I think, how the public in general looks at UFOs.

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And it's interesting to me because, you know, for years there's been a disclosure movement, but come on, if the government came out tomorrow and said, we're going to disclose everything about UFOs and a press conference, it's going to take one hour.

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Would you really believe that they were doing that?

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It's going to be pretty fascinating to see where things go from here because I think there's been so much attention put on the topic of UFOs now that we've finally reached a zenith point where we can't really go back.

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You know, we can't suddenly close the curtain and say, no, never mind, nothing was going on. They did that with Blue Book, but it works back then. It won't work now.

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So we have a celebrity rock star heading up what could very well become the impetus for disclosure. It's strange for sure, but far from the weirdest thing to ever happen to the field of UFO study.

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In my short time involved in all of this, I've come to see a dramatic shift in the way people react to one another online.

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Whether it's the number of former government officials involved or the murkiness of what their true agenda might be, to the Stars Academy is creating a debate.

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But why debate the true merits and motives of a group of scientists, politicians, and celebrities at all? Isn't this simply shifting the focus away from where it should be to begin with?

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The further one wades into the current state of the UFO field, the more it seems to me that there is a disconnect between the people who have actually encountered a UFO and the personalities, agendas, and gossip that has built up around the subject.

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The peer review used to be people talking to each other in journals. Now it's fighting on social media. That's basically... it's basically ufology now, at least most of it.

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Just people yelling at each other on social media and arguing about stuff that's probably not that important.

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The ridicule factor has played a very large role in keeping people quiet. A large reason why they don't at least publicly engage in this sort of topic is because they're afraid of the ridicule factor and this hurting their credibility.

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And so often scientists will remain anonymous. And the issue with that is, even though individual scientists may be interested, scientists are not the ones with the big bank role.

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They're not the people with all the instrumentation. These are organizations and institutions. And those are the people who have to want to be able to get involved in order to put all these resources towards figuring something out.

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It's exciting. I think for a lot of us it's a new shift in how the public overall looks at UFOs.

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What is that shift?

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I think the public's perception of the UFO phenomenon is now acknowledgement that UFOs exist. That had been a question for so long. Just getting the government to say that, they would never do that.

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And then, boo, out of nowhere it happens. They said UFOs exist. Now the question is, I think, what are they? Who's in control of them? And most importantly, I think, what do they want?

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You get an understanding of what the phenomenon is doing and what it's about by dealing with people that it's affected. That gives you an insight into what's going on.

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Just being, just trying to heal them and help them and listen and be sympathetic, that's a huge part of the ufology thing that nobody's really talked about.

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It's not argued about on forums or anything, but the element of what happens to people, how does it affect them and how do they, if they need to recover from it.

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I want to talk to them about what happened later. I want to talk to them about how it made them feel. I want to talk to them about how it changed their lives.

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And I want to talk to them about how they feel about it now and if they've been able to go on with life.

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Because I think, one, that helps the person, which is the most important thing. And two, like I said, it gives you an insight into the phenomenon that you wouldn't have had before.

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And that oblique insight is a lot more important than, you know, to me than what color was it, how fast did it go, what direction did it go. Who cares about that stuff?

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That could be interesting, but we have tons of data. Nobody's really done anything with it, at least it gives us any answers.

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So maybe the answers lie in the interaction between people and the phenomenon itself.

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Do you, even at your own house though, do you still sometimes look up and, I mean, did it ignite any kind of an interest in this more so than maybe you would have had?

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Yeah, I'm always interested in, I don't know if I should say space travel or something, but I'm always interested in space.

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And I do look up in the sky and I, she's calling out. I do look up in the sky and say, wow, how cool it would be if I could see something like that again.

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Yeah.

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Hey, thanks for calling me back.

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Sure.

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So...

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I'm just gonna tell you how cool it was that you had seen it too being older that it kind of reassured me when I was thinking I'd saw it, you know?

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Yeah, maybe that makes sense.

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Would you have a second to kind of tell me what you saw?

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Because they're actually recording too and I thought it'd be cool. It makes the story so much more credible when you have someone else telling it, you know?

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I had just gone for a walk around the block and I was by myself. I was headed up the road and I saw something that looks very much like a typical UFO with lights and it was just a quick something out of the corner of my eye.

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And I thought, that's crazy that, you know, I couldn't explain what else it was though. And I kind of shrugged it off and then you and Stacy were walking towards me maybe three or four minutes later and she was all worked up and said that you guys had just seen the UFO.

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And I said, well, I saw something also but I, you know, I don't know what it was but I laughed and thought that's kind of what I thought it was too.

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And I was trying to talk all of us out of thinking that's what it was. We had a complete stranger jogging by over hurt us and said, no, she's right and you're right. I saw it also.

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I immediately started, you know, in my own head, you know, my first reaction was what the heck was that look like a UFO. And then I thought to myself, you're an idiot. Those things aren't real.

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Right.

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And I kind of laughed myself. But then when Stacy was all worked up, I started thinking, we really did see something. But it is hard to remember details. You know, it's been 25 years ago.

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It's something that I've never forgotten. And occasionally, I have brought it up and shared with my friends that, you know, there was this one time where a few of us saw something.

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Right. So why do you ever? I mean, do when you look at this guy, are you because like every now and then I look, especially when I go past this area, I kind of think real quick like, Oh, it'd be cool if I just saw something.

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Or do you ever wonder if there is something back there? Like maybe there's like some underground thing where they keep these things? Or do you do you think it was government? Or do you what do you think?

228
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No, I mean, late at night, if there's a plane, you catch a flashing light, it does sometimes it triggers that memory. Because planes at night have different color lights and that sort of thing.

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Well, thanks for letting me talk to you about it. I appreciate you because like I said, without someone else's testimony, I'm kind of out here pointing at this guy and I'm like, yep, saw it.

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We have someone else, especially someone who was older, especially considering I was only nine years old. It helps bring a lot of credibility to the story and everything.

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No, we all saw something. So I really couldn't be certain what it was, but we all saw something that day.

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I think so too. All right, thanks, Lennie.

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Okay, no problem.

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Okay, bye-bye.

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I guess if there's one thing I've learned so far, it's to start putting the focus back on the people. Not just the people who are investigating or researching, but the people who have had experiences with something they don't understand.

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Lost in all the hype over Navy tic-tacs and media empires are the witness experiences and the motivations behind the people who look into these subjects.

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This time, I'm not just attempting to prove to myself that UFOs exist, and for once, I'm not simply collecting stories. I'm gathering data from as many sources as possible in as many ways as I can.

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When it's all over, I hope I can look back at a year-long trek across the U.S. and have some answers to the questions that so many people have become too distracted to ask.

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Coming up on the next episode of On the Trail of UFOs.

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The oldest sightings I'm aware of are probably in the 1700s.

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There's lights in a delta formation like this, and it's just a pitch-black craft, perfect equilateral triangle.

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The last report I received was from a Boeing crewman, and saw one of these mile-wide craft hovering over their tarmac.

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The next one is from a Boeing crewman, and it's just a pitch-black craft.

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The next one is from a Boeing crewman, and it's just a pitch-black craft.

245
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The next one is from a Boeing crewman, and it's just a pitch-black craft.

246
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The next one is from a Boeing crewman, and it's just a pitch-black craft.

247
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The next one is from a Boeing crewman, and it's just a pitch-black craft.

248
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The next one is from a Boeing crewman, and it's just a pitch-black craft.

249
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The next one is from a Boeing crewman, and it's just a pitch-black craft.

250
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The next one is from a Boeing crewman, and it's just a pitch-black craft.

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