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On this edition of Sighting, in the early 50s, Hollywood had a love affair with flying saucers,

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but the nation's capital was experiencing the real thing.

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It seemed like the very second that the interceptors left our scope, our UFOs came back.

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It was kind of scary.

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Sighting's examines the very real and very frightening UFO attack on Washington.

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He is the leading exorcist in Japan, for he says there's an alarming increase in paranormal activity.

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Japan is no good now. They do not respect the spirits that still live there.

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They have wandering souls invaded a Chicago apartment building, and his book Communion was at the center of the alien contact controversy.

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In many respects, it's destroyed my life, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

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Now Whitley Streber is taking the controversy one step further.

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Welcome to Sightings. I'm Tim White.

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On July 26, 1952, U.S. government officials and high-ranking military personnel

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gathered in the radar room of Washington National Airport.

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They were tracking an inbound craft traveling at more than 7,000 miles per hour,

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zeroing in on the nation's capital.

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Now, for the first time on television, one of the men in that room has come forward to tell Sightings

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the craft they were tracking was out of this world.

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When this string of UFOs appeared over Mexico in 1992, UFO researchers took the threat very seriously.

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The UFOs bear an uncanny resemblance to these objects, filmed over Utah 40 years earlier.

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But this was 1952, and UFOs were more likely to inspire behoovings than serious research.

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Never before has the screen rink that is to be tracked.

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In 1952, a double feature cost 25 cents, and UFOs were science fiction.

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And so it wasn't surprising that very few people took the threat seriously

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when flying saucers showed up in the nation's capital.

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It was the end of the trail for an unprecedented wave of UFO sightings,

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in which more than 1,500 people had reported seeing the strange craft.

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In 1952, it was a major turning point in the history of UFOs for the main reason that this was the year that

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so many UFOs were seen by military interceptor pilots and tracked on radar.

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Richard Hall believes that the flap of 52 was among the most significant events in UFO history.

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When these sightings happened, we were in the midst of the Cold War, which involved a fear that the Soviet Union

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was going to send bombers over, and there would be an atomic war.

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This was the period when we had bomb shelters and air raid drills,

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and kids at school had to go hide under their desks, and so the immediate reaction was,

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well, this must be a Soviet Union enterprise, it must be a breakthrough in technology.

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The United States Air Force launched a top secret investigation as part of the year old project Blue Book.

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The Air Technology Center in Dayton, Ohio was put on a high priority project to check this out,

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and they very quickly learned that this was not anything the Soviet Union had produced,

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and this led a lot of people immediately to say, well, if it's not from the Soviet Union, it must be from outer space,

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because there was no other explanation for it.

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The Foreign Technology Division at Wright Field, now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,

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was swamped with calls from alarm-dye witnesses.

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Newspaper reporter Al Chopp was hired by the Air Force to manage the flow of information.

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The policy at that time was to answer to the best of our ability any queries on particular UFO sightings,

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and often we could explain what the people saw, often we could not.

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Chopp estimates that at least 25% of the UFOs investigated by the Air Force were verifiable,

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but unidentifiable, including this Montana sighting and the sighting in Utah.

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In each case, eyewitnesses described multiple bluish-white objects flying in formation at speeds beyond the reach of 1952 technology.

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The government was interested, but not alarmed by these sightings until two Midsummer's Night Saturdays,

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when they showed up in Washington, D.C.

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We have UFO sightings that take place at the Washington National Airport on two consecutive Saturday nights.

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Objects are seen on radar, they're seen visually, not only at Washington National Airport, but Andrew's Air Force Base.

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Everybody who was there saw something.

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Kevin Randall has one of the largest collections of data, documents and photographs about the Washington incident.

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What is interesting is that we have radars in separate locations, also seeing the objects.

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We have airline pilots seeing them as well. Air Force interceptors are scrambled, they see the objects as well.

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So we have a wide variety of people seeing these bright bluish-white lights.

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In 1952, National Airport was Washington's only airport, centrally located and within a few miles of three important intelligence centers,

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the Pentagon, the White House and the Capitol. Al Chopp was in the airport radar room the night the UFOs first appeared.

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We let the press in and they were observing the scope along with the radar operators.

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We had about four or five radar operators there.

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The Air Force ordered an immediate scramble at nearby Bowling Air Force Base, but the interceptor jets weren't there. They were in Delaware.

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The Air Defense Squadron that normally guards the Capitol was assigned to Newcastle, Delaware because they were repairing the runways at Bowling Air Force Base,

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which seemed unusual for UFOs to visit the Capitol when the jets aren't there.

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It took over an hour for two F-94s to reach the Capitol.

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Well, we could see the flight coming in. All of our unknowns disappeared completely from the scope. It was kind of scary, so we let them go back to base.

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It seemed like the very second that the interceptors left the range of our scope, our UFOs came back.

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The fighters were recalled and began searching the skies over Washington.

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One pilot did make visual contact with the UFOs, and this time the objects did not disappear.

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He flew into this cluster of lights, and then he said, I see them, they're all around me.

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And he described them as brilliant blue-white lights. And we just looked at each other, couldn't figure out what was going on up there.

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The objects hovered in the sky until dawn, then disappeared.

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There were banner headlines in newspapers across the country, recounting the spectacular flyover and speculating about its origin.

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On July 29, 1952, Major General John A. Samford, Air Force Chief of Intelligence, held this press conference to explain the government's position.

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I am here to discuss the so-called flying saucers. We have, as of date, come to only one firm conclusion.

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It was the most heavily attended news conference since World War II. That's how big it was.

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And they were under pressure to explain what is this thing that's flying all over the country that we can't identify and have no control over.

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The official conclusion the Air Force came to was that temperature inversions had caused these sightings.

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Temperature inversions are when a cool layer of air gets trapped over a warm layer and forms a sort of atmospheric lens.

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And the signals are refracted and you see things flying around where there really is nothing.

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According to Hall, temperature inversions give only very weak radar returns and are incapable of the kind of acrobatic performance,

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clearly observed on radar and national airport.

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When the Air Force came up with the rather lame explanation that there were temperature inversions, this, for some reason, satisfied people.

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It's hard to imagine why, but it did. It threw people off the track and newsmen, like everybody else, I guess,

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it was too mind-boggling for them to believe it was real.

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But the incident is indelibly set in the minds of those who experienced it first-hand.

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These were good, solid returns. The Air Force radar expert who was present that night stated that they were good, solid returns,

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and he thought they were picking up metallic objects.

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These solid returns from metal objects have never been identified, friend or foe, earthly or extraterrestrial.

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From Utah in 1952 to the so-called Attack on Washington to Mexico City in 1992, these objects remain a tantalizing mystery, begging to be solved.

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But so far, no government has been willing to claim the obsolete 40-year-old technology as its own, or to provide another explanation,

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or even to pledge the funds necessary to conduct a comprehensive investigation.

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Our leaders do not see UFOs as a potential threat, and in that way, little has changed since 1952.

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By assuming the Washington flap of 52 was created by unusual weather conditions,

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some ufologists believe the U.S. government missed a golden opportunity to make significant contact with extraterrestrial visitors.

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They wonder, will we be ready the next time other worldly forces choose to make their presence known?

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Next, Japan's leading exorcist.

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Later, the president strengthens Area 51's veil of secrecy, and our mysterious apparitions and visions on the rise.

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Science, logic and a deep commitment to traditional values have long been the cornerstones of Japanese culture,

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but Japan is in the midst of a social revolution. Many people there are beginning to embrace the supernatural.

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On a recent trip to Japan, I met with Mudo Oda, one of the most influential leaders in Japan's emerging New Age.

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In Japan, more than 125 million people live in an area smaller than the state of Montana,

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and with so many people and so few natural resources, something's got to give.

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And in Japan today, it is the ancient religious traditions that are gradually being squeezed out.

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In its place, I discovered a new kind of spiritualism emerging in Japan.

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Mudo Oda is one new religious leader who combines exorcism, traditional Zen Buddhism and spirit photography to get his New Age message across.

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I believe as we live, there is nothing that is truly ours and nothing will remain after we die.

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I believe that all human bodies are temporary physical forms, and that the true world is the world of the spirits.

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And according to Oda, the spirits are restless. Japan is their island too, Oda warns,

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and if the living do not make a place for the dead and respect the power of other worldly spirits, the spirits will rise up and demand respect.

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There have been a great many changes in Japan in the past years. Are you calling on people to find their spirituality again? Is that really your goal?

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Japan is no good now. They are tearing down graves and do not respect that the spirits still live there.

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I would like to protect the ancestors and keep the ideals of the temples alive. The world of the spirits must be defended to maintain this.

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In his practice, Oda combines traditional Zen Buddhist teachings with non-traditional rituals. Ceremonial beatings are performed on willing followers.

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This is necessary, Oda claims, to appease a person's angry ancestors so they can rest in peace.

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I would like the people to remember and appreciate the world of the spirits. I feel this has been forgotten.

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People look at those with special powers as being God or Godlike, but I don't feel that way. It is just that spirits have entered people's bodies.

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In addition to the spiritual cleansing he performs in his temple, Oda also performs exorcisms inside people's homes.

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To prepare himself, Oda believes that meditating under this waterfall allows him to absorb the powerful life force of the water.

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He says he needs this energy to confront the spirits.

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When I began doing this, I did not start out calling myself an exorcist.

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In Japan traditionally, when there are no living family members of a deceased person able to take care of the family grave, the grave was destroyed and disposed of.

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I wanted people to understand that the spirit is still there, even if the physical grave is removed. That is why I began doing this.

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Oda uses an ancient crystal sphere to determine the location and disposition of the spirits.

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The crystal is placed over a picture of the home or person to be exercised, and then the crystal is photographed.

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Inside, Oda claims to see residual images of the dead.

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I concentrate on the inside of the crystal and call, and then photograph the spirits.

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There are some that come out clearly and those that are not so clear.

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I have seen over 30,000 spirits. When you look at the photographs that I have taken, you will be surprised.

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We talked about one previous case in which six members of one family had died within one year of moving into their home.

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Relatives who inherited the house asked Oda to exercise the building.

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And what does this image in here tell us about what happened in that house?

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During the Sengoku period, this house was used by members of the Takeira Shingen clan.

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They would run away to this land and commit suicide. This was during the 1500s.

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Many years later, a home was built on this land. The spirits do not rest.

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I accompanied Oda to a second floor apartment here, outside of Tokyo.

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The family had requested that Oda perform an exorcism and graciously agreed to let sightings videotape the ritual.

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The Ishii family told Oda that strange apparitions were showing up in family snapshots and on the TV, even when it was turned off.

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The land under the house. There are many people who have died there, long time ago.

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There are many people that have died and still live as spirits today.

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Oda finds evidence of spirit residue in this photograph and in his crystal photography, where he sees dozens of pairs of glowing eyes.

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You say you've been frightened by the power of some of these spirits?

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When you are performing an exorcism of a house or of a person, do you draw the spirit out of them and into yourself?

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I do not put the spirits into my body. Through a chant, the spirit rises from the person's body.

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I send my powers to the spirit, but if the spirit is exceptionally strong, it will fight back.

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I am putting all of my energy into this. It seems dramatic, but that is probably from my energy.

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I do not think about yesterday or tomorrow. I am concentrating on what to do. All of my energy is here.

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As the exorcism begins, Oda uses incense, temple bells and gifts to demonstrate his respect for the spirits trapped, he believes, inside this house.

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Today there are spirits that have lived here hundreds of years ago. To those who have not risen to heaven, we hope that you will reach heaven.

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There are many that invade these bodies and cause problems, but you should not bother others. Forget the past and go on your way.

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Surprisingly, Oda sends the presence of a displaced spirit, not in the home, but inside the body of Mrs. Ishii. He performed an exorcism to pull the spirit out of her.

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We are sending you to heaven. No longer wander in this world and find truth in heaven.

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What did you feel while Oda-san was touching you?

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I could feel the spirit leaving my body. I was very surprised. I simply listened to what the priest was saying and cleared my mind of all other thoughts.

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I feel like I have been relieved. I feel lighter.

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Thousands of people have come to worship at Oda's temple and some mainstream religious leaders are worried that Oda is rapidly gaining cult status.

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Oda rejects the notion that he is a cult leader, insisting that it is not the messenger but the message that is important to his followers.

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I want to continue working with my temple. I would like the youth of today to understand that traditional religion relates to the world of today.

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That every day when you wake up, you should tell yourself that you will do your best. That is all I want people to do.

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Oda doesn't agree with his critics who charge that he is turning away from his Buddhist roots. Instead, he believes that belief in and respect for the ancient spirits of Japan is fundamental to preserving his country's traditional values.

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Next, no hope for the victims of Area 51's negligence. Does this recent crop circle spell doom for planet Earth? And housing for the next millennium?

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Here are some of the stories that sightings is following in the news.

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Gaia Friendly is a new term being used to describe programs and projects that seek to keep our needs and the Earth's needs in balance.

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In Tarsna, Mexico, environmentalists who are trying to maintain this pristine landscape are getting a lot of help from a new breed of Gaia Friendly homesteader.

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The condition of the planet and the environment is gradually getting worse and worse and worse.

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It's more than just like architecture or recycling or energy or water collection. It's a way of life that is really going to make people be more peaceful on this planet.

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Reynolds is designing homes that are environmentally friendly from the ground up. Built from recycled materials, his self-sustaining homes are called Earthships.

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When you really look at what these are, they are vessels, independent vessels that will take us into the future. So that's how we ended up with the name Earthship.

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They're of the Earth, of course. They're aligned with the phenomena of the Earth and through that they will sail us into the future.

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The homes are created out of tires, aluminum cans and rammed Earth. They are designed to recycle existing environmental waste and to provide pollution-free sources of water and energy.

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This is like three operations of throwing mud into the void between the tires. Then there's one can and another glob of mud and then two cans and then another glob of mud goes on that. Then you're ready for plaster.

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They admit the sun for heating and warming. They admit the sun to make electricity. Rather than have a roof like this that sheds rain, they have a roof like this that catches rain.

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So all phenomenon are what we are using as our public utility system.

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You know, no matter what happens with the rest of the world, an Earthship is going to see you through. That's why we say it's going to sail on the seas of tomorrow.

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From Rachel Nevada, we recently reported on a lawsuit filed by former workers at Area 51, the top secret military base near Groom Lake, Nevada.

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For years, there has been speculation that captured extraterrestrial craft are tested and reverse engineered here.

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Some workers claim that they were exposed to highly toxic chemicals the Air Force was burning in the early 1980s in violation of state and federal environmental laws.

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Tests performed on tissue samples from a deceased Area 51 worker found extraordinary levels of an unknown toxin.

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I sent the profile to some colleagues around the country and other countries and people said, what on Earth is this? And I was not in a position really to tell them.

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Nobody had any idea what this stuff might have been.

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Now the White House has stepped in to make sure the public does not find out.

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The plaintiff's request for information about waste disposal practices at Groom Lake has been denied.

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President Clinton recently signed this presidential determination, exempting the base from disclosing, quote, classified information concerning that operating location.

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End quote, the president's action ensures that whatever is going on at Area 51 will continue securely behind closed doors.

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From Winchester, England videographer Peter Sorensen has made an unusual discovery while analyzing footage he taped there during the summer of 1995.

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Sorensen has found that this crop circle is an accurate depiction of our inner solar system with one startling exception. Earth is missing.

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What this crop circle has in it is like a beaded necklace of separate circles that represents the asteroid belt.

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And we know this quite surely because inside of that thing is an area containing the orbits for four planets and a sun in the middle.

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And our own solar system, this is exactly the anatomy of it. The sun, then Mercury, then Venus, then the Earth, Mars, and the asteroid belt.

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There was Mars, there was Venus and Mercury, but no Earth. And like a little chill goes to me, I think, wait a minute, what does that mean?

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Sorensen believes the crop circle may bear a message about the asteroid Tautatus, which some astronomers believe is on a collision course with planet Earth.

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We've just discovered that there is a large asteroid and it's headed towards Earth, it'll be here in 1999 and it may very well hit the Earth.

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It's within a very small distance astronomically speaking. And I go, asteroid belt, crop circle, missing Earth, it all came together.

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And if it was to strike, it would be similar to what happened when the dinosaur became extinct. There won't be any life here to speak of afterwards.

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The missing Earth crop circle has added fuel to the doomsday fire, but Sorensen believes this pattern is a warning and that we must put technology to work in order to avert disaster.

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For a long time, many scientists have been recommending that we should have missile systems in place that are designed to go out and hit an asteroid, push it out of the way.

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It's a doomsday scenario in some people's eyes, but not in mine. In my opinion, it means we have a chance to do something about it.

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We'll have more stories from the news next time. Now, here's what's coming up on CITIES.

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Author Whitley Screber believes that interdimensional beings continue to visit this New York location.

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If we went back and talked to Indians, we'd find they were telling the same stories.

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But first, can anything be done to help the wandering souls haunting this apartment?

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An apartment building in Justice, Illinois is surrounded by cemeteries, but a lot of the people who live there don't seem to be bothered by the weird location.

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The building's proximity to so many gravesites didn't use to bother Valerie Kalecki either, until she started seeing someone lurking in the shadows.

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The first time I saw it, I didn't know what to do. I just froze in bed.

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From the graveyard across the street, you can see Valerie Kalecki's apartment building.

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Right away, there is a sense that something is wrong here. The building seems out of place, and may be part of the reason for the haunting events happening inside.

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Where my bed is positioned in my bedroom, the head of my bed will face the hallway in the kitchen.

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So I could be laying there reading or watching TV, and I will glance out the bedroom door and I will see.

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The only way I can describe it is a shadow. It's just the build of a tall, sculptured male. I really don't know how to explain it.

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The inexplicable shadow is only one of a number of paranormal forces that have plagued Valerie since 1984.

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In the past few years, Valerie has had serious medical problems, and it seems that as her illness progresses, the ghostly forces are intensified.

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Valerie's doorbell will ring, but no one is there. Doors slam shut as if pushed by an unseen force.

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The lights in her bedroom turn on and off for no apparent reason, and Valerie's cat is exhibiting uncharacteristic behavior.

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I've heard that cats are more sensitive to things, and now I believe it. He will be in a room and he'll start looking around like above him, as if he was looking at something, but there's nothing there that we can see, and we can't explain that.

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What really convinced me to get involved in this case was just the amount of evidence, the amount of sightings, and the credibility of the witnesses involved.

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Dale Kazmerik is the founder and president of the Ghost Research Society. Using electronic detectors, Dale and his associates hope to find deviations in the normal electromagnetic fields, which could indicate a paranormal presence.

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As we approached the back of the apartment, near the back bedroom, we began to get much more activity.

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There were abnormally high field readings in Valerie's bedroom and downstairs in the laundry room.

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Sightings brought in psychic and paranormal investigator Peter Anthony to follow up on Kazmerik's findings.

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Peter claims to have the ability to communicate with the dead, and in fact, he was drawn to the same hotspots that had been detected before his arrival. He immediately descended into the basement laundry room.

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This is where it's the strongest.

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One of the ladies that live in the building, she is a number one skeptic. She opened the door to go into the laundry room, and immediately she saw what she described was a layout of a man laying on the folding table in the laundry room.

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Among Peter's first psychic impressions were shadowy images of a man, just as Valerie and her neighbor had described.

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What happens with me is I get videos, and it's almost like a fast forward on the VCR to try to understand the storyline on a VCR that's being pushed on fast forward.

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You have moments to sort of quickly gather what's going on, and that's how I get my visions.

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During his psychic investigation, Peter was also drawn to some innocuous looking shrubbery directly opposite Valerie's bedroom window.

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And this is where I'm picking up child. It's almost as though there's something in the very back.

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I don't know what I'm getting. I just, I sense a small figure of some sort here.

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Peter sat on an old bench nearby. Psychic impressions were replaying in his mind.

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There's a lot of sadness right here. A lot of sadness. And it's interesting.

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It's as though I see an older man crying here.

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As day turned to night, Peter kept circling the same area.

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What I'm sensing, perhaps, this used to be an extension of the cemetery.

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I noticed there's a cemetery across the way. Maybe this is why this man is sitting at the bench crying.

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He felt the source of the haunting was very near. Once again, he was drawn to the shrubbery near Valerie's bedroom window.

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And this time, he made a startling discovery.

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This is it. This is where your spirits are coming from. This is the male spirit that keeps coming through.

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Peter continued to dig and discovered three gravestones hidden under leaves and dirt.

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Long neglected gravestones that Peter believes hold the key to the haunting activity surrounding the apartment building.

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As I walked towards the bush and got that there was something underneath the bush, got that it was a cemetery, it made sense.

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This man was crying over loss. His family apparently is buried here in the basement. Or loved ones.

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And so his spirit form comes here and has not been able to leave that moment in his life.

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But Peter's revelations only deepen the mystery. There is no record of a graveyard ever existing on this property.

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There may be other gravestones just outside these windows on the property or even closer than the ones that we know about.

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So I believe this all ties in together.

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His connection with Valerie is that her illness reminds him of his feelings towards his family.

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He almost is acting as though he's watching over her as a protector. It's nothing evil.

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We don't think evil. It's just almost like a fatherly or brotherly love.

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I don't believe that whatever is here is harmful in any way because if it was by now it would have shown itself.

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I'm very comfortable and I don't feel like I need to leave.

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Peter Antony believes that the mystery of the graves under the apartment building must be solved before the spirits there will be free to move on and out of Valerie's life.

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But so far the names on the headstones cannot be found in any cemetery records or on any county death certificate.

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Next, after ten years of interdimensional visitors, Whitley-Streiber is still searching for the truth.

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It's something that we don't understand and I want to understand it because it happens to me.

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In the early 1980s, thousands of people were having strange visions of alien creatures, their own abduction and bizarre medical experiments.

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They kept it a secret and feared that they were going crazy.

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But then a man named Whitley-Streiber wrote a book called Communion about his own abduction experience.

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It was a breakthrough for all those people who felt it was finally safe to come forward.

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In the middle of the night, I woke up and found myself, instead of being in my bed, in a little cramped room with what I perceived to be long faces with big black slanted bulging eyes staring at me.

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A lot of noise and activity around me. Something was fired into the side of my head, a little needle, and then it was just black.

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The next morning I woke up. At first I thought I was crazy. And then I had to face the fact that it was something real that I did not understand.

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And it became clear that whatever it was, that it did appear to be contact with aliens, did some research on them.

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I wrote a book about my experiences called Communion.

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Communion was the first book to crystallize the alien abduction phenomenon.

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It was an instant hit and stayed on the best seller list for nearly a year.

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The book's success transformed the lives of Whitley and Anne Streiber.

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When the book Communion first came out, Whitley and Anne were receiving thousands of letters a month.

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It was very difficult to actually handle all that mail and they felt that they had an obligation to respond to these letters.

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So the Communion letter was a response to try to generalize that communication so that we could help people who were writing to Whitley.

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There was no belief system that was being promoted. It really was like a networking effort.

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The Communion newsletter continues to this day, but the focus has changed over the years.

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Fear of the aliens and suspicion about their motives has been replaced with an active pursuit of contact.

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The breakthrough Streiber describes in his latest book.

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Ed Conroy is a reporter who has charted Streiber's life after Communion in his own book and has found that not everyone believes that Streiber is sincere.

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I got a lot of angry letters from various people who were trying to convince me that Whitley-Steiber was emotionally unstable, pathological liar.

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But I happened to notice that these letters were coming from people who appeared to be obsessed with vilifying Whitley-Steiber.

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I'm the bad guy all the way around. I am the guy that the skeptics say started the whole belief in alien abductions.

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And I don't follow the UFO community's holy writ. This is aliens from another planet, etc. and so forth at all.

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I mean, I don't generally know what it is. I just know it's something that we don't understand and I want to understand it because it happens to me.

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Many abduction experiences turned their backs on the Streiber's when they began to question the extraterrestrial origin of the phenomenon.

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But Whitley and Anne continue to pursue contact with visitors they believe are from another dimension.

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I suspect they've always been here. Many religions have talked about beings like this.

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Many legends, folklore. But I think right now our culture doesn't have a place for them.

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I think the visitors are here and some people see them and some people don't.

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In 1990, the Streiber's took up permanent residence in this cabin in upstate New York.

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It is the same place where Whitley had his very first abduction experience in 1985.

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It's an interesting place because a lot of people have had things happen back in here, unusual things.

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Hunters who have seen figures.

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I will bet you that if we went back 500 years and talked to Indians, we'd find they were telling the same stories.

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Whitley wanted to write another book, but he feared continuing criticism from skeptics.

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So before he began work on breakthrough, Whitley claims he gave the visitors an ultimatum.

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If I was going to write another book, they had to show me what they were doing.

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And they had to do this in multiple witness experiences where I would be able to verify everything they were doing step by step.

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Over the next five years, the Streiber's cabin became a laboratory for the abduction experience.

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People from all over the country came here to make contact with the visitors and to be interviewed about their experiences.

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Many who came here did make contact and for the first time since the project began,

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the Streiber's have allowed a television crew to visit the sites where Whitley and his guests experienced most of their contact.

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I felt something climb into the window. I thought it was a skunk or a raccoon that had climbed onto the bed.

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I very slowly rolled over and what I saw was a small being crouched at the foot of the bed.

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One foot on the window ledge, one foot on the bed, its leg was touching my leg.

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I could feel it as much as I'm feeling the chair under my body right now.

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It just very simply raised its hand and my instinct, my reaction was,

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you fool, reach out and touch it, you know, which is what I did.

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I just reached forward and allowed my fingertips to touch its fingertips.

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And what actually occurred at that moment was a sensation, not unpleasant,

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like what you'd feel if you touched a tuning fork, you know, a vibration.

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Down my hand, down my side, almost like a circuit was made to the point where its leg touched mine.

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I saw a large, glowing ball of light that came from behind the group

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and floated over the level of the trees, really not very high above us.

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I mean, it was very close to us. And I must say that that was an extraordinary thing to see.

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Right through Chronicles many of the visitations his guests have experienced here,

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but despite hundreds of accounts from independent experiences,

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Strieber still struggles to understand why, why this place, why him.

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Ten years have passed. I've had many, many of these encounter experiences.

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And it has been the hardest thing in my life. It has in many respects destroyed my life.

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But I wouldn't trade it for anything.

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I mean, it's better than climbing Mount Everest. It's been the most exciting, darn thing.

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Incredible experience. Incredible.

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Whitley Strieber believes that within the next few years there will be yet another breakthrough in the abduction phenomenon.

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He feels that the visitors, as he describes them, will reveal themselves in a more concrete, public way

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and tell us why they've come.

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My dear children, peace. Peace. Peace.

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Next, our visionary is about to reveal a mysterious message of hope for war-torn Bosnia.

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Recently, sightings reported from Venezuela, where claims of miraculous healing coincide with reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary.

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In this update, Carla Wall reports that sightings of religious apparitions are on the increase worldwide.

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It was at a shrine in remote Batania, Venezuela that I first met Maria Esperanza

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and heard firsthand accounts of religious visions, supernatural lights and miraculous healing.

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But extraordinary events inspired by visions of the Virgin Mary are not unique to Batania.

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According to Emory University Assistant Professor Charles Knuckles,

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Mary and apparitions are increasing at a dramatic rate.

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At a time of crisis, instances like this tend to crop up greater and greater frequency.

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No apparition side illustrates Knuckles' theory better than Medjugorje in the Serb Republic.

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Here, mysterious messages of peace are offering a ray of hope in this war-ravaged region.

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It began here in 1981, when 16-agers claimed that the Virgin Mary had appeared to them.

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The visions continue to this day.

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Ivan Dragikovic was one of those teens. He came to the United States during the recent peace talks in Ohio.

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Describe for me the apparition.

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When our Lady comes, she comes in a light and she never stands on the ground. She's on a cloud.

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Like Batania, tens of thousands of people have visited Medjugorje on a pilgrimage of faith.

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Wayne Weibel came as an impartial journalist. He left a believer.

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I was unprepared for what happened when I got here.

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I saw lights where there were no lights.

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I saw the sun do its spinning and pulse saving the sky.

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How do you explain the sun dancing all over the sky?

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Why do you think you were chosen to see these visions?

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I'm asking myself today, why me?

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I know that there is a great joy in my life today, but it's also a great responsibility.

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Ivan says that the Virgin Mary appears to him each night at precisely 6.40.

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He then relays her message to the faithful.

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Ivan recalled for me the first prophetic message he received 15 years ago.

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My dear children, peace, peace, peace.

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Almost ten years to the day after that profound vision, war erupted in Yugoslavia.

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Miraculously, the people and pilgrims of Medjugorje have remained unscathed.

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Some say it is the supernatural aura here that contributed to another miracle in the region.

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The safe return of Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady, who was shot down a short distance from Medjugorje.

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It wasn't for God's love for me and my love for God, I wouldn't have gotten through it.

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He's the one that delivered me here and I know that in my heart.

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Would you argue that Scott O'Grady's being rescued has something to do with Medjugorje?

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Oh, absolutely. By his own admission, during his time of hiding out,

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he said he felt the presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary there.

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He felt something of Medjugorje while he was there.

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He didn't go any further in his explanation and he's kept it very quiet, very private.

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Ivan believes that the presence of the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje can save lives and heal the sick,

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but that she will soon reveal her ultimate purpose here.

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You were supposed to receive ten secret messages. How many have you received so far?

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I have nine secrets.

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And what will happen after the tenth?

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Our lady will explain to us what will happen and what needs to be done.

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I cannot tell you anything ahead of time.

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None of the six Medjugorje visionaries knows when or how the tenth secret will be revealed,

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only that the timing is out of their hands.

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In Medjugorje, people are praying that the peace process will continue

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and that the war will soon end, and to carry the hope that when peace finally comes,

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the tenth secret will be revealed.

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Fire came off the bottom, so I started running behind my police car.

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The Southwest encounter then.

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There's no trickery involved here.

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It's a power and people come out of healings feeling better.

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Investigate the miracle medicine of the South American shamans

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and discover their true healing powers next time on Sightings.

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At the Sightings forum, download images, sounds and quick time clips.

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Also join us for Monday evening chat sessions live on AOL.

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Until next time, remember, no mystery is closed to an open mind.

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For Sightings, I'm Tim White.