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On this edition of Sightings, this Midwestern family helped a spirit cross over to the other side.

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It's time for you to go into the light. It's time for you to believe this is our sleep.

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It just might be the worst mistake they ever made.

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In the name of God, you're going to leave these people and this house.

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Beginning with World War II, soldiers all over the world have witnessed mysterious flying balls of light.

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I spied something out there. It was kind of bright.

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I didn't know if it was an aircraft or what it was.

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Is there an explanation for these so-called fool fighters?

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The only reason I went out to check the pool was because I heard the voice of my father saying,

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Go check the pool.

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More and more people are being helped by relatives after they've passed away.

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Father had died 33 years earlier.

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And will the millennium bring greater enlightenment?

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The family featured in this first report say that they had grown quite attached to the ghost in their historic Illinois house.

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They called her Harriet and they believed she was a protective force operating from the other side.

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They grew so attached, in fact, they asked a paranormal investigator to perform a cleansing to help Harriet move on.

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Well now, Kathy and Gus Johnson say that that may have been a big mistake.

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The house was a wreck when they bought it, but Kathy and Gus Johnson loved this Civil War era mansion in rural Illinois

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and set about restoring the historic home to its original Georgian splendor.

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In June of 1990, work began and as the Johnson's pains taking the peeled back the layers of paint and time,

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something strange emerged, the feeling that the family was not alone.

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We would be scraping wallpaper or whatever we were doing and we would set our tool down

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and then we'd come back and we wouldn't be able to find it.

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And it was a joke at first because we never even imagined about ghosts.

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But then a lot more started happening.

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The spirit started walking the hallways, making noises, slamming doors.

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The Johnson's gradually began to believe that something was wrong.

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The Johnson's gradually began to believe that something or someone was trying to make contact.

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I was laying on the couch, I was ill and I was asleep with my dog laying with me.

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And I immediately wakened and the bright light came through the room and into the kitchen and my dog jumped up

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and he chased and then I chased after him. It was a bright white light and very warm and good feeling.

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Kathy's daughter Jody was the first to see the presence in human form.

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I would be coming downstairs in the middle of the night and I saw a silhouette sitting in the den.

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And I'd see the long, straggly hair.

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I could tell she was an old woman. I couldn't tell any distinct features.

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It was just shock to see someone sitting in your den in the middle of the night.

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Gus Johnson was the last family member to accept the paranormal forces at work in his home.

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Although he was reluctant to appear on sightings, Gus did agree to let us show you home video

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taken shortly after his first ghostly encounter.

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Then there was the night that I woke up, set up and she had already entered the room.

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I was facing toward her, she was walking across the end of the bed at a diagonal heading to the master bathroom.

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She walked to the bathroom, was gone.

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I immediately woke my wife up and told her, this is the strangest thing I've ever seen.

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Immediately I thought, this is real ghosts, this is no dream.

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Gus's sighting was enough to turn him from skeptic to believer.

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It was also enough to encourage Kathy to research the rich history of the house

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and interview former residents who still lived in the area.

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There was a family that lived in the house, they had four boys.

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And the youngest boy had to sleep with a pup tent over his bed

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because he said that the old lady kept bothering him at night.

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Kathy dug even deeper into the home's history

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and learned that it was originally built in 1862 by Robert and Harriet Dickerson.

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Kathy intuitively felt that Harriet, who was born in 1828 and died in 1913 at age 85,

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was still haunting the house she had helped build nearly a century and a half before.

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The Johnsons began calling the ghost Harriet

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and found her antics non-threatening, even endearing.

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Although at times Harriet could be a little annoying.

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She liked to bother me at night.

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She would walk up and down the hall, which there was a squeaky board in front of my room.

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So you'd hear her walk up and down, up and down.

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And Kathy says Harriet was also in the habit of putting her two cents in when it came to family business.

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My husband Gus has a developmentally disabled son and he lives with us and his name is Mark.

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And Mark is 13 and he's six foot tall.

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And Mark got into trouble on the school bus and so he had to be punished.

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So we punished him and then sent him to bed.

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That night Harriet just drove us insane.

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She was very upset that we punished Mark.

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The rest of that night after we went to bed, she bumped the bed, she walked the halls.

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She did everything she could do to let us know that she was very upset that we had punished her.

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She is standing looking at me, arms down.

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I would say screaming but there is no noise at me.

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She just kept mouthing and finally she stopped and like that was gone.

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We came to find out through investigating that Harriet had 11 children.

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And we believe that Harriet was a motherly type person and that she was always watching out for the children.

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The ghostly activity became so omnipresent that the Johnson's contacted Rob Conover,

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a paranormal investigator who has documented numerous local haunting cases.

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In addition to his research work, Conover also claims to be able to communicate with ghosts.

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The reason we called Rob was because Harriet had been here quite a while and we all loved Harriet.

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And I loved her enough that I felt like Harriet deserved to go to the light.

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When people have to understand about spirits, the spirits are just a person without a body.

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And that's the way I speak to them as a person.

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And I explain to them what's on the other side of the light and why they should go through the light

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and why they'll be happier there.

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And that's when they go through the light.

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But before communication could begin, Rob and his partner had to assess the level of haunting activity in the house.

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The pair canvassed each room, noting a variety of environmental factors.

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Electromagnetic field readings were particularly high in the master bedroom

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and Conover felt that this was a prime location to set up a surveillance camera

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in case Harriet decided to make her presence known.

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The camera was backed into a far corner and left on to run by itself.

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Later, when the video was played back, the team found strange noises and movement on the tape.

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Probably the best thing that happened was on the one tape, you hear three breaths.

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Sounds like an exhale of air into the camera microphone.

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Then a little while later the camera zooms in onto a bed post and then zooms back three times by itself.

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In order to zoom the camera, you have to push the buttons. You can't do it otherwise.

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I had set the camera up in the corner of the room. You would have either heard someone come in the room

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because when you walked into the room, the dresser drawers, latches would rattle.

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Two, when I did set it up, there was no possible way to get to the camera without being seen or heard.

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I believe it was a paranormal experience with the camera

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and I believe that it was Harriet's ghost that did it.

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Convinced that there was a ghost, Conover proceeded to the next step,

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an attempt to communicate with Harriet and lead her to the light.

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We were in the living room of the residence.

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Harriet?

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Kathy had come downstairs to join us. I called Harriet to see if she would come into the room

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and she did come into the room and manifested herself.

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And that's when I began talking to her about the light which was behind her.

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Kathy began talking to her also and explaining why she should go through the light,

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her children waiting for her, her family.

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I just felt so strongly about Harriet being able to be with her 11 children.

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And so I told her, Harriet, go to the light and be with your children.

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And she did.

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When Harriet went through the light, it's like an immediate change in atmosphere from cold to warm and peaceful.

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After that incident happened and Harriet went to the light, we've never seen or heard from her since.

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We're happy for her, but we do miss her.

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That wistfulness soon turned to terror because the Johnson's tell sightings as soon as Harriet went to heaven.

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All hell broke loose inside their house.

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When sightings continues more of our investigation and the psychic impressions of investigator Jory Ann Defray.

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Next, the Johnson family's uninvited guest goes from bad to worse.

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I awakened to someone saying, die you bitch.

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After a cleansing ritual designed to rid their house of a ghost, the Johnson family of La Roy, Illinois had a problem.

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While the ghost, known as Harriet, a sweet and well-meaning spirit by all accounts, did seem to have moved on.

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She forgot to close the paranormal door behind her.

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And as soon as Harriet was gone, a new spirit began to make its presence known, and it was anything but sweet.

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I was talking to a friend on the phone, and all of a sudden, the dryer started agitating really bad.

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I unplugged the dryer, and it wasn't on.

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I opened the door, and the drum was not rotating.

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I mean, it was agitating like a washing machine would, but this was the dryer.

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I was getting frightened.

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I felt like there was another spirit in the house, and it was not Harriet.

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There was an evilness to it.

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It was the first sign that something was wrong.

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Cathy called Rob Conover, the paranormal investigator who claimed to have helped the benevolent ghost, known as Harriet, move into the light.

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As soon as Conover arrived this time, he sensed an evil presence.

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I knew instantly that Harriet had been here to protect this house from another spirit, which was not a good spirit.

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Everyone in the family is being affected.

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The Johnson's 13-year-old son, Mark, has been particularly traumatized by the new entity.

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Mark's not sleeping well. He will not sleep in the room. He is scared.

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Every night, he asks to sleep with my father, which makes me mad that he's bothering my brother.

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I was sound asleep, and I awakened to someone saying right in my ear,

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Die, die, die, you bitch.

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I believe that it was the same entity that moved the dryer, and he was trying to frighten me.

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That was about the point that we started figuring out that it was a male,

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because I heard the male's voice. He was frightening me, and I'd never been frightened before.

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Again, Conover surveyed the home, documenting environmental factors.

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But this time, he also enlisted the help of two local psychics who independently determined the identity of the evil spirit.

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They came up with the name John Grady.

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Through the psychics, they learned that he had been a border in the house,

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and through the research found out, Harriet did have borders in the house.

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He was an alcoholic, a woman-beater, and had been killed while trying to strangle the woman.

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And this time, the family permitted sightings to document Conover's unique form of exorcism.

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I went down into the basement where John seemed to be emanating from, and I challenged him to scare me or to show me something,

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and I called him a coward and told him the only people he could scare were women and children.

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But when we came back upstairs, my assistant proceeded to make a derogatory statement about June 3.

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There was a loud bang on the floor underneath my feet, and we all heard it, and I felt it.

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And it was in a part of the house where there was no basement, just crawl space,

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so it wasn't, you know, somebody down in the basement trying to play a trick.

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The spirit of the man that we grew to know as John Grady was always in the house, but Harriet had control and kept him in place.

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And once Harriet was gone, then he came out and took control.

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Conover could not dispel the evil force known as John Grady.

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Word of the haunting spread throughout the Johnson small town, and newspaper reporter Jeanette Kendall was asked to investigate.

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I had heard a lot about the house before I arrived there, so I was kind of a little tense and nervous and not knowing what to expect.

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As soon as Jeanette began her interview with Kathy, the bizarre activity started up.

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All the electricity went off in the kitchen, and she had to go down in the basement to change the fuse

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and left me sitting alone in the dark in the kitchen, so that was a little eerie for me.

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She came back up after changing the fuse, and everything was fine.

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Okay, where were we?

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About five minutes later, everything went off again.

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While Kathy, her daughter, and Jeanette Kendall waited in the darkness, Rob Conover arrived and immediately went upstairs,

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prepared to do battle with John Grady once again.

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He said that the spirit was trying to get away from him, running from room to room, and he had to spill the wall that the spirit was going through,

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and it felt cold to the touch, colder than normal.

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And then we all went downstairs, and that's when we heard a loud thumping noise upstairs.

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Jody, put your hand on the rail and block the staircase.

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John Grady went down the stairs in front of me.

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I felt Jonathan coming down the stairs, and I said, Kathy, watch me, because I was starting to feel sick.

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And all of a sudden, Jody starts turning beet red.

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Tears are coming out of her eyes, and she grabs her chest like this, and she can't breathe.

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I was bending over, having chest pains, and it really hurt.

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I felt him just run right into me, and I could just feel the electricity running through my body.

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Her reaction was so bizarre compared to anything that we've seen that she felt like, and we all felt like,

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that Jonathan went right through her.

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The family is terrified and adamant that another cleansing must be done.

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They want Conover to force the evil entity from the house,

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but there are fears that John Grady will not go without a fight.

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John Grady is kind of a thorn in a paranormal investigator's side,

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because he doesn't respond to the normal things that we do.

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Clearly, paranormal reinforcements are needed.

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Sightings has asked that psychic investigator Jory and Defray come to the house

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and attempt to communicate with the spirit, and then assist Conover in what he hopes will be the final cleansing.

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It's very special to me to put an end to this.

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Conover and Defray's assault on the spirit presence of John Grady will continue on the next edition of Sightings.

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Next, Lunar Exploration for the Masses.

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A good luck cat gets married.

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Later, mysterious fireballs confound pilots.

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Here are some of the stories Sightings is following in the news.

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The American family has moved one step closer to becoming the Jetsons,

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with the unveiling of a new program designed to make public space exploration a reality.

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Soon, you might be able to fly to the moon.

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But unfortunately, no one's offering a frequent flyer miles yet.

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The moon is the source of inspiration for a Washington, D.C. based company

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that believes that mass lunar travel will one day be a reality.

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Lunar Corp is a consortium of scientists, engineers and business people

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who see the privatization of space as the final frontier.

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We had to find some way to get into space that didn't depend on huge amounts of tax dollars.

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David Gump is the president of Lunar Corp and in association with Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute,

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his company is working on two lunar rovers to be launched at the turn of the century.

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This mission is the first time that a private company has taken the lead in space exploration

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and it's the first time that the public gets to participate in space exploration.

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Lunar Corp sees this as the first step towards public space travel.

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Until then, the lunar rovers will be equipped with cameras

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so people can watch not only the rover's progress, but also control them from remote stations on Earth.

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Then, Lunar Corp hopes to add motion platforms at the remote stations

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so people can be virtually on the moon.

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This mission goes beyond the traditional motivations of science and exploration

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to incorporate the experience of being there and entertainment.

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Red Whitaker, director of the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon University,

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is part of the team responsible for creating the vehicles and hardware that will be sent to the moon.

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NASA has had a huge role in the creation of the technology and bringing it this far.

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But making hands-on space travel accessible to the public is Lunar Corp's ultimate mission.

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I think the core experience of being able to transport your senses to another planet

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and do exploration firsthand is what's most appealing to me.

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It's the first time that the millions of the rest of us can actually take part firsthand in space exploration.

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We're going to move from the era of watching astronauts on television to becoming explorers ourselves.

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Lunar Corp also plans on making their ventures accessible on the World Wide Web.

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The company already has a website that outlines their goals and project status.

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And while the lunar rovers are still in the testing stage,

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Lunar Corp hopes to have them up and running in time for the next millennium.

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In Bangkok, Thailand, Luck and Omens are a national obsession.

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When this Thai businessman made a financial killing recently,

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it wasn't hard work, he said, but his cat's unusual eye condition that cost his success.

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When you look at Thai culture in particular within the context of Asian cultures in general,

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the cat is seen as being lucky, the cat is seen as indicating prosperity,

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the potential to make money, the potential to do good in business or in marriage

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or whatever endeavor somebody starts.

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Fett has what the Thai call a diamond eye, actually a rare form of feline glaucoma.

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A diamond eye is considered lucky, so to increase his prosperity,

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Fett's owner found another cat with the same condition

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and spent $28,000 to unite the lucky cats in matrimony.

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There's probably a foundation in Thai culture to say that yes, cats are lucky and cats are good for business.

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So it's not surprising that somebody would have a big party in wedding for two cats

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that they think helped their business.

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Diamond eye is a curable condition and Fett's owner has promised to treat the condition

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now that the wedding has taken place.

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We'll have more stories in the news next time.

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Now here's what's coming up as sightings continues.

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What could be the source of these intelligent balls of light that pilots have reported seeing for 50 years?

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There's a possibility that Foo Fighters still are guided and controlled,

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created by an advanced intelligence, not of this planet.

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Professional pilots, both commercial and military, do see UFOs,

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but the culture of silence within their ranks means the public almost never hears about it.

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There was a time though, not long ago, when pilots who saw UFOs did talk to anyone who would listen.

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They were the fighter pilots and gunners of World War II,

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and they saw a lot of very strange things up there.

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World War II was the first great air war.

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Weapons of mass destruction were airborne,

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and technology was moving forward at an unprecedented rate.

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Axis and Allied powers were constantly on alert for the latest secret weapon.

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Germany had the V-1 rocket,

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England had advanced radar,

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an unblinking eye in the sky,

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and America was hard at work developing the air force.

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America was hard at work developing the ultimate weapon, the atomic bomb.

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And, says research scientist Richard Haynes,

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the belief that the other side could have developed just about anything

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may have concealed the largest mass UFO sighting in history.

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There were sailors on ships,

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there were GIs on the ground in artillery battalions,

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there were German soldiers on the other side of the line,

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people from all sides of the war were involved,

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and reported the same thing.

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Pilots described them as seemingly guided balls of light.

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Bob Leroy, a member of the 11th Airborne in New Guinea,

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remembers his first sighting of the mysterious craft.

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Suddenly I saw this ball about this size,

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that thing there about three feet in diameter,

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following this Japanese Betty bomber,

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and it started changing colors.

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I thought I had seen a new secret weapon.

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I had to agree with the rest of the guys,

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because that's what they all thought it was.

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They didn't know any better,

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and nobody had ever heard of a UFO in 44.

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They were spotted around the world,

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and became known as Foo Fighters, from the French word for fire.

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According to Haynes, who has investigated hundreds of newspaper and eyewitness accounts,

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the descriptions of the Foo Fighters are disturbingly alike.

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Pilots would report glowing, luminous balls of light

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that would come up from the ground, often orange or red,

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anywhere from one foot to six feet in diameter,

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would accelerate up to their altitude,

292
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and then level off very quickly,

293
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and then stay beside the airplane.

294
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They would fly either singly, or in pairs, or in trio, or four objects,

295
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oftentimes in rigid formation, which is important,

296
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and all of these flight dynamics point in one way or another

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to a fairly high, intelligent level of guidance.

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Robert May was the tail gunner on a B-24 for the last two years of World War II.

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He vividly recalls a dangerous top-secret mission to drop guns and ammunition behind German lines,

300
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but it wasn't the nature of the mission that has stayed with Robert for more than a half century.

301
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It's what he saw up there.

302
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I spied something out there. It was kind of bright.

303
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I didn't know if it was an aircraft or what it was.

304
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I'd say it was probably traveling at a fairly decent speed,

305
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maybe 200 miles an hour, 300 miles an hour,

306
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and it was coming toward us, but it was coming in a bright light.

307
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That's what made it so odd that we could not identify it.

308
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We all knew exactly whatever, whatever enemy aircraft was there.

309
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We knew who it was.

310
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It was very easy, because that's one of the things we learned real quick like.

311
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The Allies thought it was the Nazis, the Nazis that it was the Allies.

312
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Then the fireball showed up in Japan.

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And here from the November 1944 issue of the New York Times is a very interesting case of a B-29 flying over Japan,

314
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and the flight crew saw several Foo Fighters.

315
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Intelligent services for both Allied and Axis forces were hard at work

316
00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:00,000
trying to figure out where the Foo Fighters were coming from.

317
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Says Mark Birdsell of UFO Magazine.

318
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British intelligence was interested as well.

319
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They released reports.

320
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They tried very, very hard to put a category on it to classify it as a night fighter or an enemy bomber or something.

321
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Other than that, but it proved useless. They couldn't do it.

322
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To this day, no one has figured out what they were or who made them.

323
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I don't think there's any way that in 1943 or 44 or 45, terrestrial technology was advanced enough to produce the kind of flight dynamics,

324
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the containment of energy, the luminous output for as long as we're talking about here.

325
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And Foo Fighters did not go away when World War II entered.

326
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Military pilots reported seeing them during the Korean War,

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and were it not for the code of silence of modern-day pilots, there might be continuing reports today.

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Take the case of this former Soviet fighter pilot who claims to have had an encounter with a Foo Fighter.

329
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I gained altitude of 3,900 meters, and I saw a ball in front of me about 20 degrees to the right.

330
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In 1991, Maxime Chirvakov was at the top of his class, fast on his way to becoming Russia's top gun.

331
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Then, on a training flight, Chirvakov said that he was chased by an aggressive UFO that sent his plane into a nosedive.

332
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My altitude began to drop rapidly. I had to pull the plane out of the nosedive.

333
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At the altitude of 1,000 meters, I finally cleared the residential area, and I ejected.

334
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Four seconds later, the plane exploded.

335
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Chirvakov's admission that he had seen a fireball under intelligent control cost him his career.

336
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For pilots around the world, this only strengthened their resolve to keep the code of silence.

337
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As a result, we are no closer to solving the Foo Fighter mystery than we were 50 years ago.

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There's a possibility that Foo Fighters could have been, or still are, guided and controlled, created, produced by an advanced intelligence, not of this planet.

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But that is a difficult thing to prove, clearly.

340
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I'd like to simply let the evidence speak for itself, and to continue to do research on the subject, and then simply let the chips fall where they may.

341
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It's important to remember that in the heyday of the Foo Fighter, the term flying saucer hadn't been invented yet.

342
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So pilots didn't have a standard by which to measure their encounters.

343
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In fact, the government panel that studied Foo Fighters in 1953 said, quote,

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if the term flying saucer had been popular in 1943, these objects would have been so labeled, unquote.

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Next, messages of hope and help from beyond the grave.

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It was almost like they glowed, and he had his armor on her, and he just said, I've got her now, baby, and she's okay.

347
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If you believe in angels, you're not alone.

348
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According to Gallup Poll, more than half of all Americans do believe in angels.

349
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A lot of people believe that these angels are deceased relatives of mother, father, or sister.

350
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And there are many incredible stories of people who have been saved by the whispers from a loved one from beyond the grave.

351
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I heard a voice saying to me, go outside and check the swing pool.

352
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Our youngest son, who was only 21 months old, Jonathan, was floating in the deep end of the pool, face up, but under the water, eyes wide open.

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And I quickly ran to the side of the pool and screeched out Judy's name, and I jumped in the pool and pushed her to the side.

354
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Fortunately, I pulled this huskily crying child out of the pool who didn't require any resuscitation.

355
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And Bill and I just wrapped him in our arms, and then later Bill was able to tell me the story as we calmed down.

356
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He said, I don't know if you're going to believe this, but the only reason I went out to check the pool was because I heard the voice of my father say, go check the pool.

357
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And his father had died 33 years earlier.

358
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Both Judy and Bill Guggenheim now say that it wasn't just a coincidence or a fluke memory that called Bill to the pool.

359
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It was a communication from the grave.

360
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Bill was eight years old when his father died, and yet he came back to save his youngest grandson, who is now 18 years old.

361
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Bill and Judy have learned that what Bill experienced has a name, after death communication, or ADC.

362
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ADC is when someone is contacted directly and spontaneously by a loved one who has died.

363
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That is the one who has made their transition, chooses when and where and how to contact a person who is still physically alive.

364
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After their son's miraculous rescue, the Guggenheims interviewed more than 2,000 people who had been touched by ADC and put their stories in this book.

365
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So based upon our after death communication research, we can servefully estimate that at least 50 million Americans have had one or more ADC experiences.

366
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Pam Strickland and Susan Marshall are among those who have been touched by after death communication.

367
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I don't want to say it frightened me, but this was something that was way beyond any of us.

368
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Of all the friends I had, she's the only one I ever stayed in contact with, of all these years. She's my best friend in the world. I feel like she's my sister.

369
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And that friendship moved to an even deeper level after they shared an ADC experience.

370
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My mother had been terminally ill with cancer, and Susan and I had decided that after my mother had passed away, after I took care of some details that I was going to come and stay with her and her family up here.

371
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I loved her mother. I knew her mother very well, and Ruth meant a lot to me. We were very close. There was a great deal of love there. She was very protective, extremely protective of me, and very, very nurturing toward me as well.

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It was one afternoon in 1992 when Pam found out how strong her mother's love could be from beyond the grave.

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I was leaving the house to go get some groceries. Susan had just gone in to take her two and a half year old son, Eric, to the back part of the house to give him a bath.

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And she had laid Sammy, her six-month-old daughter, down for a nap. And just as I started to open the front door, I heard my mother's voice say, you need to check the baby. She doesn't sound right.

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And my immediate reaction was, you're hearing things. And I ignored it. I started to walk out the door again, got a few steps out the front door, and this time I heard, in a very stern, clear voice, Pamela, you need to check the baby. She doesn't sound right.

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I turned around, peeked into the door, into Sammy's room, and I looked into the crib, and her whole head and face were completely covered. I picked Sammy up. Her face was almost like a gray color. She, at that point, let out a big, deep gasp for air. And that's when I realized something special had happened.

377
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Both Pam and Susan are convinced Samantha is here today because of ADC.

378
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It was her voice that she heard, and I believe that Ruth said that to her daughter, for my daughter. That's why she's here today.

379
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I would have to say that most of the people that I see report an ADC experience in one form or another.

380
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:56,000
Dr. Kathleen Moore is a certified bereavement counselor in Orlando, Florida.

381
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The study of ADCs is exciting because we all face the experience of bereavement at one point or another in our lives.

382
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And since so many people report this as an experience, it gives us another way to look at it and perhaps another way to help that person through the experience.

383
00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:20,000
Mainstream science explains away after death communication as grief-induced hallucination.

384
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But researchers ask, what about the cases where the ADC occurs before the death of a loved one is known?

385
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There is no explanation that I can find of how somebody could have an experience first and then learn of the death afterwards and still call that a grief-induced hallucination because they're not bereaved when they have the experience.

386
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That was the case for Joanne Freeman, who was awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call about her daughter, Kim.

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When I answered the phone, it was the dispatch office at the police department, and they were telling me to answer the door.

388
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And so I was coming out of my bedroom when all of a sudden I saw this vision of Kimmy and her grandfather, who is deceased.

389
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They were like in a fog and Kim was standing there right next to him just smiling as pretty as anything.

390
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It was almost like they glowed. They were perfect and they both just looked very peaceful, happy.

391
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And he had his arm rondered and he just said, I've got her now baby and she's okay.

392
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It seemed like when I blinked and I kind of shook my head because I was just amazed that I would see this, when I opened my eyes back it was gone.

393
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So that's when I came on down into the living room and answered the door and the police were there and they were informing me that Kim had been in an accident and she was killed.

394
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Although nothing can ever erase the pain of Kimmy's loss, the ADC experience helped Joanne come to terms with her grief.

395
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:13,000
I think seeing Kimmy like I did, I think it has helped me and maybe that was God's way of telling me, you know, here she is, you know, you will get to see her one more time.

396
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:24,000
And he let her tell me, you know, Mom, I'm okay. I don't know why it happened but I know it happened to me and, you know, so I will treasure it.

397
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You know, as long as I live I will always treasure that. She will always be a part of my heart. She will always be a part of me.

398
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:36,000
You can't do this work without becoming emotional when you loved it.

399
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:45,000
If any counselor gets too moving, too sensitive and too real, too questioned that they might be anything but actual contacts, but it's these loved ones.

400
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Many researchers believe these spiritual encounters are simply a spontaneous memory of what a loved one would have said had they been there.

401
00:36:56,000 --> 00:37:04,000
But those who have had an ADC encounter insist that they've been contacted by a force that science will probably never understand.

402
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:09,000
Next, as the third millennium approaches, we'll find spiritual enlightenment.

403
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:15,000
People are looking for greater opportunity to link themselves to something bigger than themselves.

404
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:26,000
The year 2000 may be just a number, but all those zeros seem to be inspiring people to make predictions.

405
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:31,000
Think about the future and contemplate the meaning of life and mortality.

406
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Combine the coming millennium with 70 million baby boomers, all of whom have reached middle age,

407
00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:43,000
and you've discovered why the search for enlightenment is big news and big business.

408
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:51,000
I think spirituality is really one of the hot topics today.

409
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:58,000
And I think as we approach a new millennium, people are now drawn toward the hope that there's more to life

410
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:07,000
and that there's a possibility of putting life together in a way that is more creative and more satisfying to the human spirit than ever before.

411
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:12,000
Religion sociologist Wade Clark calls it the quest culture,

412
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a generation of seekers with an endless thirst for knowledge about the mysteries of existence.

413
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His research inspired Ruth to write a book about these lost baby boomers.

414
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I think there's a quest for meaning, there's a quest for sense of understanding about life,

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and more than just that, there's a quest for greater connectedness.

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People are lonely, people are looking for greater opportunity to link themselves to something bigger than themselves.

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There's a tremendous hunger in America for spirituality.

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Since 1977, Elizabeth Lesser has been feeding this spiritual hunger at the Omega Institute.

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The retreat provides eclectic workshops for people in search of meaning.

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Our culture was dominated by rationalism, science, there was a whole movement to take anything religious out of schools,

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and there of course has been the whole materialism that's dominated the later part of the 20th century.

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So there's a great hunger in people for something of meaning in their lives.

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Places like Omega didn't create it, we grew up in response to a need.

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People are trying to grow, they're trying to find new insight, ancient wisdom.

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Nice, good again.

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First of all, people have more choices than ever.

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Some people have returned to traditional evangelical faiths.

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Many of course have looked to so-called New Age religions.

429
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Choice now means that one can pick and choose.

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I call it the new American spirituality.

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You can be a spiritual person without belonging to any kind of church.

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You can do Buddhist meditation and go on a Christian retreat and celebrate the high holy days

433
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and build your own path, a patchwork of the great wisdom traditions.

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The search for meaning outside of the mainstream led Bill Elliott down a surprisingly traditional path.

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Haunted by the death of his parents as a small boy, Bill had been plagued by depression and anger

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until he decided to seek out the world's great thinkers and ask them to explain the meaning of life.

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I thought that's what I'll do, I'll get to 20 wisest people and put them in one book

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and ask them maybe 20 questions about life, the questions most of us want to know about things.

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Bill wasn't a professional writer, just a man in search of answers.

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00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:46,000
So he borrowed a typewriter and sat down with a stack of paper and a sincere resolve

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to find humankind's place in the cosmos.

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I typed up this letter and then I typed in the name at the top and it looked really bad.

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So I sent out all these letters and my friends, a lot of them said,

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Bill, you know, it's not going to work.

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And I, you know, I thought, well, maybe not.

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And they said, no, you know, Bill, you're nobody.

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Amazingly, though Bill had no credentials, his heartfelt persistence paid off.

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Some of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century agreed to meet him

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and share their insights about the meaning of life and death.

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When I interviewed Norman Vincent Peale, he said that he believes that there's a reason why we're each born

451
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and that we each have a purpose.

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And I believe a person can, at all, come close to finding what their purpose of life is.

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I think it will change all of their life.

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00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:43,000
People are searching in many places to try to come to terms with their ordinary lives

455
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and that spirituality in the final analysis is something very, very human.

456
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It's everyday life made meaningful.

457
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And that's what all of us want, to make some sense out of our everyday lives

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00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:03,000
so that when you get up in the morning and look in the mirror,

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there's some motivation for the rest of the day.

460
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:12,000
It was Bill's overwhelming sadness about the untimely death of his parents

461
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:15,000
that led him to seek out Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama.

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At one time I thought to be enlightened and to be really wise meant that I would never be sad again.

463
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That I'd be beyond being sad or beyond suffering.

464
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:28,000
So when I asked him, I asked him, is there anything that makes you sad in your life?

465
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:31,000
And he said, I'm a man who's lost my country.

466
00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:34,000
He talked about all the suffering that's happened to about all the people being killed.

467
00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:36,000
And he was very sad.

468
00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:39,000
For some reason that helped free me because I realized that,

469
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:43,000
boy, here there's this person considered very wise by a lot of people and he's still sad.

470
00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:46,000
Oh well, I guess it's okay to be sad.

471
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:51,000
The words of wisdom that Bill has gathered from around the world are in

472
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:57,000
Tying Rocks to Clowns, a book that Bill hopes will provide solace in the coming millennium.

473
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The deepest wish I had for my book was that it would help people in their life

474
00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:05,000
because I know what it's like to be lost.

475
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:11,000
So many people have come to realize that they need something deeper within themselves.

476
00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:14,000
Let's call it soul, let's call it spirit.

477
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:19,000
Something within themselves that gives them a sense of direction

478
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:21,000
and some purpose and meaning for their life.

479
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:25,000
And while some have turned to an unorthodox approach,

480
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:29,000
the fundamental search is the same within all of us.

481
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:35,000
If we understand the human quest to be one of search for meaning

482
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:38,000
and for finding the sacred in everyday life,

483
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:41,000
I don't think that one ever goes away.

484
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:46,000
And I don't think the 21st century, I'll call it the third millennium,

485
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:49,000
will fundamentally change the nature of that quest.

486
00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:54,000
It may take new forms, but that quest I think is here to stay.

487
00:43:56,000 --> 00:44:00,000
So significant is this new kind of do-it-yourself enlightenment

488
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:02,000
that sociologists have given it a name.

489
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:06,000
Now, more than 30 million Americans, half of all the baby boomers,

490
00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:13,000
are in a new category of religious worship called believers but not belongers.

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If you've had a paranormal experience, please write to us at Sightings.

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00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:24,000
Sightings can also be contacted at America Online at keyword Sightings.

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Download images, sounds, and quick time clips from Sightings episodes.

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00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:32,000
On the internet, access information about Sightings and the paranormal

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00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:35,000
at sci-fi.com slash sightings.

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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.

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Next on Sci-Fi, Dark Shadows.

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And what these personal experiments stopped.

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00:44:59,000 --> 00:45:03,000
Christopher Walken, the sci-fi premiere of Brainstorm.

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00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:06,000
Sunday at 7, on Sci-Fi.