1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000
On this edition of Sightings, what's the British military hiding?

2
00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:11,000
Two Army helicopters approached us and appeared to be harassing us.

3
00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:15,000
Startling videotape reveals the truth behind crop circle formations.

4
00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:19,000
Then, is the human race the result of an extraterrestrial experiment?

5
00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:23,000
We are the direct descendants of the intelligent people who landed here.

6
00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:26,000
Also, dangerous entities are terrorizing this hotel.

7
00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:29,000
It's even possible these people don't know that they're dead.

8
00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:32,000
Plus, a young girl's premonition turns to tragedy.

9
00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:37,000
She drew that picture. She knew she was going to die.

10
00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:38,000
And...

11
00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:40,000
It was exactly the kind of signal that we were looking for.

12
00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:43,000
A narrowband signal clearly of intelligent origin.

13
00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:46,000
Have we made contact with a civilization from another galaxy?

14
00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:47,000
Finally, an update.

15
00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:51,000
The sculptor whose psychic vision helps families find missing loved ones.

16
00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:22,000
Music

17
00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:25,000
Welcome to Sightings. I'm Tim White.

18
00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:32,000
The ancient hamlet of Avery in southwestern England is the site of two distinctly different supernatural events.

19
00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:37,000
In the Avery area, more than 300 crop circles have been discovered since 1990.

20
00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:44,000
And then there are the bizarre glowing orbs that locals have dubbed the Avery mystery lights.

21
00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:54,000
The two phenomena seemed unrelated until recently, when videotape was shot showing what appears to be a glowing ball of light actually creating a crop circle.

22
00:01:54,000 --> 00:02:03,000
This is a military helicopter circling the field in Avery, England, as captured on home video.

23
00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:11,000
The researchers who shot this tape believe it is evidence that the British government is involved in secret crop circle research.

24
00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:18,000
Watch carefully as the helicopter hovers near a mysterious ball of light in the middle of your screen.

25
00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:21,000
In the field below, a crop circle.

26
00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:24,000
Music

27
00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:29,000
The crop circle activity in this area this year has been quite considerable.

28
00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:35,000
We have something in the region of 100 major patterns in Great Britain currently.

29
00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:39,000
Over 90% of them are in this area once again.

30
00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:43,000
Some of the crop circles are made by my few exoterrestrials.

31
00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:49,000
When you study the material over the last 40 years from many countries,

32
00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:58,000
you have solid metallic looking objects landing, taking off, leaving a characteristic ground feature like an ordinary crop circle.

33
00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:06,000
It was like a clear sphere, oranging inside with like thousands of lights spinning and rotating and the whole thing was spinning.

34
00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:13,000
Most of the lights that are seen above the crop formations and some of them are actually seen in the fields.

35
00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:21,000
There must be some connection although at the present we haven't got that little thing that clicks the two together.

36
00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:28,000
Every night, sky watchers bring the hills around Avery waiting for a glimpse of the mysterious lights.

37
00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:36,000
The following amateur videotapes of unexplained lights in the night sky have all been taken within the last three years.

38
00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:40,000
It was only very short lived, but for the five seconds it was there. It was tremendous.

39
00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:47,000
It was like looking at something half the size of the moon just sat on the ridge top, brilliantly glowing orange.

40
00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:56,000
They looked like orange voles of light. You could see that they were mushroom shaped, revolving and emitting orange lights out from the bottom.

41
00:03:56,000 --> 00:03:58,000
So we were quite fascinated by it.

42
00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:07,000
I describe it as being spherical, oval shaped, silvery white, it's like orange tinge.

43
00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:14,000
It came over from the left to the right of the trees and it went back and it came back again.

44
00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:19,000
Then all of a sudden it looked like it tripled in size and changed colour to orange.

45
00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:28,000
But then after that we see the white ball came out from the side of it and that went off to the left and we never see that no more.

46
00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:36,000
The lights are there and they're not aircraft, planets or radio towers, but are they extraterrestrial craft?

47
00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:42,000
Most astronomers believe the Avery mystery lights are a natural phenomenon, but so far they don't know much more than that.

48
00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:55,000
At the heart of a lot of genuine sightings of UFOs are these balls of light, cavorting around in the night sky, perhaps coming down very close, perhaps changing shape.

49
00:04:55,000 --> 00:05:05,000
It's quite possible that those balls of light are a glowing plasma, which is the same type mechanism that we do think is involved in crop circle formation.

50
00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:15,000
Plasma being very simply electrically charged air particles and they start high in the Earth's atmosphere and come down and torwards the ground.

51
00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:23,000
So if you have plasma coming from high in the Earth's atmosphere, you should expect that it's likely to be swirling by the time it gets anywhere near the ground.

52
00:05:23,000 --> 00:05:27,000
And that's completely consistent with what we find in crop circles.

53
00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:39,000
It is just conceivable that some of the circles may result from balls of light that just touch down and touch this very responsive surface of a corn field.

54
00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:44,000
The ground here is chalk and limestone crisscrossed with underground springs.

55
00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:53,000
Some scientists hypothesize that the interaction between the water and the rock creates an electrical charge that either attracts or helps create the lights.

56
00:05:53,000 --> 00:05:59,000
But what is so strange is that these lights appear to be moving purposefully.

57
00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:11,000
And that's for me what sets it aside from the natural phenomenon to one which may well be controlled by an intelligence of some sort, or indeed in itself may well be intelligent.

58
00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:20,000
I turned and I saw this glint and I thought, what's that? And automatically almost I picked my video camera up.

59
00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:30,000
On July 26th, 1990, crop circle researcher Stephen Alexander captured this remarkable footage of one of the mysterious Earth lights in a field near Avery.

60
00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:34,000
The Earth light was maneuvering next to a newly formed crop circle.

61
00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:40,000
This object just actually curved round and dropped into the crop and disappeared for a while.

62
00:06:40,000 --> 00:06:44,000
And then it started maneuvering through the crop and it was glinting and flashing.

63
00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:47,000
It was a very intense sort of energy source, it seemed to me.

64
00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:52,000
Then you can see that object actually take off and in the distance was a tractor driver.

65
00:06:52,000 --> 00:06:58,000
And you can actually see the tractor driver stop as the actual object went over the top there.

66
00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:02,000
I couldn't explain it.

67
00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:07,000
In the back of my mind I knew it wasn't a bird or a balloon or just something blowing in the wind.

68
00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:10,000
I knew that it was something important there.

69
00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:19,000
This videotape of another Earth light above Avery was taken from a hang glider by Dutch UFO researcher Foka Kooja.

70
00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:24,000
But scientists and ufologists may not be the only ones interested in these lights.

71
00:07:24,000 --> 00:07:29,000
It appears that the British military is also studying the phenomenon.

72
00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:34,000
That is what you look at. Look at these bristles with equipment.

73
00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:39,000
Right, we get this here. We get a picture of him in front of us.

74
00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:41,000
Oh yeah.

75
00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:43,000
There you go.

76
00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:45,000
Hop out!

77
00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:52,000
What appeared to be happening was that we had moved, walked into a situation which was undesirable.

78
00:07:52,000 --> 00:07:59,000
Because what happened was that the two Army helicopters approached us and appeared to be harassing us.

79
00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:02,000
I mean he was so close, it was unbelievable.

80
00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:07,000
The helicopter broke away across this field to the far side of the field to my left.

81
00:08:07,000 --> 00:08:15,000
And what you can see on the film is a small white object pulsating identical to Stephen Alexander's.

82
00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:19,000
Very similar to the Dutch people's footage and others.

83
00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:24,000
And this helicopter went directly to the light which we could see on the footage.

84
00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:27,000
There's some flashing thing on the ground.

85
00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:30,000
He's hovering right on the right now.

86
00:08:30,000 --> 00:08:32,000
Oh yeah!

87
00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:42,000
It overshot it. The helicopter you can see backing up to get this back into full view as this white light is pulsating underneath it.

88
00:08:42,000 --> 00:08:47,000
And on film this light just disappears.

89
00:08:47,000 --> 00:08:51,000
But once again on film we have something we cannot explain.

90
00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:57,000
If the lights are simply a natural phenomenon, why would the British military be involved?

91
00:08:57,000 --> 00:09:05,000
If the lights are nothing more than concentrations of superheated energy, how could they create these intricate designs?

92
00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:09,000
These things are seen to move from one pattern to another.

93
00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:13,000
They appear to have total awareness of their surroundings.

94
00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:21,000
And on occasions we have many reports of an interactiveness between the people who are observing them.

95
00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:25,000
And so therefore for me that puts it into a slightly different slot.

96
00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:29,000
We're looking at what might be intelligence.

97
00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:32,000
He's hovering right on the right now.

98
00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:40,000
The British Ministry of Defense has stated that the helicopters in Colin Andrews' videotape were on a training exercise

99
00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:44,000
and that no one involved with the exercise saw anything unusual that day.

100
00:09:44,000 --> 00:09:50,000
According to the Defense Ministry the pulsing white object is simply a reflection from the helicopter's strobe light.

101
00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:56,000
Coming up, startling new theories suggest that there is a missing link in the story of human evolution.

102
00:09:56,000 --> 00:10:01,000
Don't call them aliens because we look like them, they look like us.

103
00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:14,000
When Charles Darwin published Origin of the Species in 1859, it ignited a worldwide controversy that continues to divide science and religion.

104
00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:20,000
But the controversy doesn't end there because within the scientific community itself there is bitter division.

105
00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:32,000
And now new evidence that a conspiracy of silence among mainstream anthropologists is covering up evidence of what some believe are our true extraterrestrial origins.

106
00:10:32,000 --> 00:10:39,000
The Bible answers the riddle of our origin in four simple words, and God created man.

107
00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:42,000
Darwin looked at monkeys and saw Michelangelo.

108
00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:49,000
But for modern anthropologists who try to put a name and a date to the dawn of humankind, the answer is constantly changing.

109
00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:56,000
Fossils discovered recently in Ethiopia put our earliest ancestors at around 4.4 million years,

110
00:10:56,000 --> 00:11:00,000
but some scientists believe that there is evidence that we are much older than that.

111
00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:08,000
On an archaeological dig in Weatlico, Mexico, Dr. Virginia's steam magentire discovered tools that predated the earliest known humans.

112
00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:11,000
Her find created a storm of controversy.

113
00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:16,000
I don't really want to be in the center of a controversy. I never asked to be in the center of a controversy, but I'm here.

114
00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:22,000
And, um, Doug Gonnett, I want to get the information out. I want to get at the truth. I guess that's what it is.

115
00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:30,000
Why does Dr. Steen MacIntyre feel the need to protect her artifacts from her more mainstream colleagues?

116
00:11:30,000 --> 00:11:35,000
Why are contradictory findings being met with contempt instead of excitement?

117
00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:41,000
Some researchers charge it's because these new findings would turn modern anthropology on its head.

118
00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:51,000
I believe that we came from outer space.

119
00:11:52,000 --> 00:12:02,000
All the evidence suggests that human beings, as we know them, did not originate on this planet,

120
00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:08,000
but have come to this earth from other dimensions.

121
00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:18,000
I believe that we came from outer space, that we are the direct descendants of the intelligent people who landed here a long time ago.

122
00:12:18,000 --> 00:12:22,000
Gene Phillips is the founder and president of the Ancient Astronaut Society.

123
00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:29,000
He claims that museums are hiding thousands of artifacts that do not conform to their narrow view of anthropology.

124
00:12:29,000 --> 00:12:38,000
This is an exact replica of an object that is in the Smithsonian Museum, and they call it a stylized insect.

125
00:12:38,000 --> 00:12:44,000
The Smithsonian had it on display, and they used to sell replicas in their shop.

126
00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:51,000
Phillips claims that after the Ancient Astronaut Society interpreted the object as a prehistoric space shuttle,

127
00:12:51,000 --> 00:12:55,000
the Smithsonian removed the original from public display.

128
00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:02,000
Phillips and his group have studied more than 150 ancient sites in 30 countries.

129
00:13:02,000 --> 00:13:06,000
These 5,000-year-old masks were unearthed in Eastern Europe.

130
00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:12,000
They bear a striking resemblance to modern-day depictions of supposed aliens, known as greys.

131
00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:17,000
There's a site in Bolivia, South America called El Fuerte.

132
00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:22,000
What it looks like is a catapult type launch site for space vehicles.

133
00:13:22,000 --> 00:13:28,000
The Ancient Astronaut Society is not the only group supporting the theory of interplanetary contact.

134
00:13:28,000 --> 00:13:33,000
Author Zachariah Sitchin concurs in his book The 12th Planet.

135
00:13:33,000 --> 00:13:41,000
There is one more planet in our own solar system, not light years away, that comes near Earth.

136
00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:49,000
Between Mars and Jupiter, every 3600 years, at which time people, intelligent people, beings like us,

137
00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:59,000
come and go between their planet and our planet, and brought us homo sapiens about sooner than we might have appeared otherwise.

138
00:13:59,000 --> 00:14:04,000
Don't call them aliens, because we look like them, they look like us.

139
00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:07,000
All we ask is that people have an open mind.

140
00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:11,000
Look at something with an open mind with today's space age eyes.

141
00:14:11,000 --> 00:14:17,000
Scientists on the fringe of modern anthropology believe that their theories are not taken seriously,

142
00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:22,000
because mainstream scientists are afraid to admit that they've been wrong.

143
00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:30,000
All the textbooks would have to be rewritten, all the exhibits in the museums would have to be changed.

144
00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:41,000
This would be very embarrassing, and people who have positions to defend like that don't like to be embarrassed.

145
00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:49,000
The idea of alien evolution does sound far-fetched, and its proponents are well aware of the fact that they're looked at as eccentric outsiders.

146
00:14:49,000 --> 00:14:57,000
They may not have all the answers, but it's often the so-called eccentrics who ask the most interesting questions.

147
00:14:57,000 --> 00:15:02,000
Next, they call him the recomposer of the decomposed, and he solved another case.

148
00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:07,000
The payoff emotionally is helping to put some of these cases to rest.

149
00:15:10,000 --> 00:15:19,000
Recently, Siding's profile forensic sculptor Frank Bender, his uncanny gift for sculpting a human face on the bare bones of an unidentified skull,

150
00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:22,000
has brought closure to many unsolved murder cases.

151
00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:30,000
And now, because of our original broadcast, another family can put a long-lost loved one to rest.

152
00:15:30,000 --> 00:15:39,000
In 1980, police made a grisly discovery in a row house on North Lithgow Street in Philadelphia.

153
00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:46,000
The body they found was badly decomposed and bore no resemblance to the young woman she once was.

154
00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:50,000
That's where forensic sculptor Frank Bender comes in.

155
00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:56,000
He has an uncanny gift for creating a face on a bare skull,

156
00:15:56,000 --> 00:16:01,000
for giving life, if only in clay, to the victims of unsolved crimes.

157
00:16:01,000 --> 00:16:07,000
His studio is the final resting place for men, women, and children who have no names.

158
00:16:07,000 --> 00:16:14,000
Bender's technique combines forensic science with an emotional, some call it psychic, attachment, and it works.

159
00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:19,000
On a previous sightings, we profiled Bender and his amazing success rate.

160
00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:26,000
After the first segment of sightings aired, I received numerous phone calls from people all around the country,

161
00:16:26,000 --> 00:16:37,000
basically saying that they were thanking sightings and also thanking me and the team involved for the work that we're doing.

162
00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:44,000
And now, the woman who Frank Bender resurrected from a skull found on North Lithgow Street has a name.

163
00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:48,000
The one brain and waiting are over for one Philadelphia family.

164
00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:53,000
After 15 years, they know what happened to Jackie.

165
00:16:53,000 --> 00:16:56,000
All these years I've never moved because I thought maybe she would come home.

166
00:16:56,000 --> 00:17:00,000
Never changed my phone number. Everything's been the same.

167
00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:05,000
Just in case she would reach out as they say in phone home.

168
00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:11,000
Because of our broadcast, Frank Bender met police officer Virginia Hill,

169
00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:15,000
who works in the missing persons unit of the Philadelphia Police Department.

170
00:17:15,000 --> 00:17:20,000
Officer Hill inherited the Jackie Goff case three years ago.

171
00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:26,000
The search for Jacqueline Goff started with me in 1991.

172
00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:30,000
The first time Officer Hill visited Frank Bender's studio,

173
00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:36,000
she was struck by the resemblance between Jackie Goff and one of the busts Bender had sculpted.

174
00:17:36,000 --> 00:17:43,000
I came over to his studio and we talked about it on a show that he was doing.

175
00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:48,000
And we put two and two together and we both believed the same that it was Jacqueline.

176
00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:51,000
Forensic evidence supported the matchup.

177
00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:54,000
Jackie's dental records indicated she had an extra tooth.

178
00:17:54,000 --> 00:17:57,000
So did the skull that Bender had worked from.

179
00:17:57,000 --> 00:18:02,000
A photo of the bust was given to the Goff family. They made positive ID.

180
00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:07,000
From here up, I would almost have to say positively that it was.

181
00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:15,000
Frank has never met Jackie, but when he made this, it seemed like he knew her when he made it.

182
00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:22,000
Because that looks like her through her eyes. Top part of her face.

183
00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:27,000
DNA results are still pending, but Frank Bender is confident he has made another match.

184
00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:32,000
The payoff emotionally is satisfaction. The satisfaction of helping.

185
00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:37,000
Helping to put some of these cases to rest.

186
00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:43,000
Officer Hill is continuing to work with Frank Bender on other missing persons cases. The future is promising.

187
00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:46,000
I work with families that are in great distress.

188
00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:52,000
A lot of families haven't heard from their children in 10, 15, even 20 years.

189
00:18:52,000 --> 00:19:01,000
And I get a lot of relief when the family has put it to rest when we can positively identify someone and then they can go on with their lives.

190
00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:11,000
Sadly, the bust that Frank Bender was sculpting during our original broadcast has still not been identified.

191
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:18,000
Here again is the face of an unnamed child found murdered in Philadelphia in 1994.

192
00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:28,000
If you have any information about the identity of this little boy, believed to be 5 years old at the time of his death, please contact the homicide division of the Philadelphia Police Department.

193
00:19:41,000 --> 00:19:45,000
And this computer document may prove that we are not alone.

194
00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:58,000
1849. The gold rush is on. More than 85,000 people flock to California in search of the mother load.

195
00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:02,000
A few become millionaires, but most barely scratch out a living.

196
00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:09,000
And many of the legendary 49ers die, laboring with hand tools inside unstable mines.

197
00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:19,000
It is the ghosts of those who died trying that many believe are still here today, haunting a small town in the Sierra foothills of California.

198
00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:28,000
You can hear explosions. You can hear fire crackling. You can hear people screaming.

199
00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:33,000
In California's gold country, the mines are idle now. The streams and creeks played out.

200
00:20:33,000 --> 00:20:39,000
But in Jamestown, the spirit of the 49ers is still alive inside this hotel.

201
00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:46,000
You can still find a hot meal and friendly conversation at the Willow Hotel.

202
00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:50,000
And some people believe you can still hear strange echoes from the past.

203
00:20:50,000 --> 00:20:55,000
I went into the bathroom. I went to turn the light on and something touched me on the back of my hand.

204
00:20:55,000 --> 00:21:00,000
I've seen spices fly off the shelves, laughter in the kitchen when no one's there.

205
00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:06,000
Ceiling fans coming on by themselves, lights in here, constantly going on and on.

206
00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:12,000
Why does the Willow Hotel seem to be the focus of so much haunting activity?

207
00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:18,000
Many people believe it's because of a great mine disaster that killed 23 miners here in 1862.

208
00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:24,000
Before the dust had settled, construction began on the Willow Hotel.

209
00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:29,000
It was built directly on top of the mine where so many had lost their lives.

210
00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:36,000
Jamestown tried to put the past behind it. The hotel thrived, hosting presidents and gunslingers.

211
00:21:36,000 --> 00:21:38,000
But the past did not go away.

212
00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:41,000
There's a lot of good here, but there's a lot of evil also.

213
00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:45,000
The Willow Saloon has been in constant operation since 1862.

214
00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:49,000
But for the past ten years, no one has slept here.

215
00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:53,000
A series of mysterious fires have engulfed the sleeping quarters three separate times

216
00:21:53,000 --> 00:21:57,000
and always on the same date in years ending in five.

217
00:21:57,000 --> 00:22:01,000
July 21st, 1955. July 21st, 1975.

218
00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:06,000
When the hotel burned on July 21st, 1985, no one wanted to rebuild.

219
00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:09,000
We smelled smoke all day.

220
00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:14,000
And then later that evening, we spotted flames in the wanes coating over in the dining room.

221
00:22:14,000 --> 00:22:18,000
When the fire department came, they chopped the wall up and went through it and everything.

222
00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:22,000
Inside the wall, there was no electrical. There was nothing there to make that fire start.

223
00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:25,000
It just started from nothing.

224
00:22:25,000 --> 00:22:32,000
Then after we got the fire put out, then Kevin, the owner, asked us to stick around just in case it reignited.

225
00:22:32,000 --> 00:22:39,000
And at that time, we started hearing two scratches from underneath the bar floor by the waitress' station.

226
00:22:39,000 --> 00:22:49,000
I took a fast exit out the door and then shortly after that, out of this wall that I'm leaning against came two massive exhales.

227
00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:53,000
Word spread about the strange fires at the willow.

228
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:57,000
A local news crew came in to conduct an overnight surveillance.

229
00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:01,000
We set the camera back on the tripod and we left it just sitting there. Nobody touched it.

230
00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:05,000
And the camera went black and white.

231
00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:10,000
And we had the electrical was blinking in and out.

232
00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:16,000
And the walls of the booth in the front there started rolling.

233
00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:20,000
As if like an earthquake, you know, was making the walls roll out.

234
00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:22,000
We did play it back.

235
00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:25,000
Yeah, we had lines going across it and then started rolling.

236
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:27,000
And then ever since then, I haven't been able to really view it.

237
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:33,000
It kept shutting the VCR off, ejecting the tape, and it was a brand new tape.

238
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:40,000
That same television crew took these photographs and claimed they saw transparent entities hiding in the shadows.

239
00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:45,000
I just looked across the room and I just saw somebody standing at the booth.

240
00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:48,000
And as soon as I got up, he just disappeared. He was gone.

241
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:53,000
That was the reason why I took a picture of the booth to see what would happen.

242
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:59,000
And then it appears that there are two faces in the booth, one on each side.

243
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:03,000
And one of the faces looks like he has like a miner's hat.

244
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:06,000
Are these entities somehow responsible for the fires?

245
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:13,000
Do they have a connection to the Great Jamestown Fire of 1896 that destroyed almost everything but the willow?

246
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:19,000
In the late 1800s, when the town was burning and they've dynamited some of the other buildings to save this one,

247
00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:28,000
they said while they were dynamiting, a man was killed and they said one of the kinfolk from the man that was killed is who keeps lighting this place on fire.

248
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:35,000
Or is the haunting here related to the turbulent times the willow experienced during Prohibition?

249
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:41,000
In 1925, Gus Rado, who was leasing the bar at the time, went upstairs to his wife's room and called to her.

250
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:50,000
And when she opened the door, he fired one shot into her head and turned around and shot another into his own head.

251
00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:54,000
Since 1972, the places belonged to the Mooney family.

252
00:24:54,000 --> 00:25:00,000
When Kevin Mooney took over four years ago, he was a confirmed skeptic until he had his own sighting.

253
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:02,000
I'm getting ready to walk through the back door.

254
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:08,000
When I look up at the window and there's eyes like red like this, two red eyes looking through the window.

255
00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:12,000
I just, my heart started going, I hope God, I get outside my heart's blue.

256
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:14,000
I look around, there's nothing there.

257
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:21,000
The Mooneys had earlier contacted parapsychologists Nick Nosarino and Chuck Pelton to conduct a thorough investigation.

258
00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:26,000
You got something here that's very hot. Very hot.

259
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:33,000
This is where the apparition should be. If there's going to be an apparition, it should be in this area.

260
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:39,000
When you walk through this building, you still feel heat, you feel fire, you smell smoke.

261
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:48,000
Pelton and Nosarino believe that there are three layers of hauntings here, caused by what they have termed residual thought forms.

262
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:56,000
Well, thought form is probably an event that took place that these people are reliving.

263
00:25:56,000 --> 00:26:08,000
And if you tie that into a quick death, had it been from a fire explosion, a mine cave, it's even possible these people don't know that they're dead.

264
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:13,000
No one can predict if the haunting forms of the past will appear again.

265
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:21,000
But you can bet everyone in Jamestown will be keeping an eye on the willow every July 21st, ending in five.

266
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:30,000
The pattern of fires occurring on the same date nearly every decade since 1955 has all the earmarks of a classic arson pattern.

267
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:33,000
That's what the Tollamy County Fire Department originally thought.

268
00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:39,000
But their extensive investigation has ruled out arson as a possible cause.

269
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:45,000
When sightings continues, a child's premonition turns tragedy into hope.

270
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:49,000
Katie was given a glimpse from the other side.

271
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:58,000
Most psychical researchers believe that we are born with extraordinary powers of ESP.

272
00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:06,000
But as we grow older, our psychic ability is weakened by a world that teaches us to rely on empirical thinking.

273
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:14,000
If this is true, it might help explain why young Katie Tronson had a premonition of death that tragically came true.

274
00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:20,000
This is the last picture Katie Tronson ever drew.

275
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:23,000
It was her vision of another life beyond this one.

276
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:30,000
It seemed to spring from an active imagination, but less than a week after Katie showed the drawing to her mother,

277
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:34,000
the little girl who seemed heaven sent was gone.

278
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:45,000
Katie was a beautiful little girl who was really happy and was always kissing people. Just really loving.

279
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:49,000
She would always have her arms around other children.

280
00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:54,000
She seemed to be the one that always brought children together.

281
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:58,000
Over the course of almost seven years, she had hundreds of drawings.

282
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:04,000
She expressed herself by drawing hearts all the time because she was filled with love.

283
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:15,000
Julie Tronson vividly recalls one day in October of 1991 when Katie came to her out of the blue with an unsettling question.

284
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:22,000
She came into the room where I was sitting, holding a tablet that she had been drawing on.

285
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:27,000
And in a real innocent way came up to me and asked me,

286
00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:32,000
Mommy, am I going to die?

287
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:36,000
And I said, no honey, of course not, you're not going to die.

288
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:41,000
And she said, never.

289
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:46,000
And I said, Katie, no, you're not going to die.

290
00:28:46,000 --> 00:28:53,000
Then she just danced off, happy that she wasn't going to die.

291
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:57,000
But two days later, Katie developed what appeared to be a severe flu.

292
00:28:57,000 --> 00:29:04,000
The next day her condition worsened and she was rushed to the hospital. Doctors suspected that Katie had a ruptured appendix.

293
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:17,000
In the hours after that time, and prior to her going to surgery, her prognosis had become extremely grave.

294
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:25,000
Julie never left her daughter's side. Just before three o'clock, while Katie was awaiting surgery, there was a change in her breathing.

295
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:29,000
She lapsed into unconsciousness and Julie could not wake her.

296
00:29:29,000 --> 00:29:36,000
I said, Katie, Katie just talked to Mama.

297
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:42,000
And she wasn't responding to me at all.

298
00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:50,000
And I looked at the clock and it was right at three o'clock.

299
00:29:50,000 --> 00:30:04,000
I looked at the clock, I looked at her and suddenly she just sat up in the hospital bed, raised her arms out towards the window, opened her eyes.

300
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:10,000
It was like she wanted me to pick her up, yet she wasn't in my direction.

301
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:19,000
There was this stillness in the room that is indescribable. It was just completely still.

302
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:24,000
It was like an infinite moment.

303
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:30,000
And in my spirit, I just knew that my little girl had been taken.

304
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:45,000
And I ran out into the hall and I just yelled, my little girl just died. I just saw her die.

305
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:54,000
A medical team rushed in to try to revive Katie. Julie waited in the hallway, just outside the room where her daughter was dying.

306
00:30:54,000 --> 00:31:00,000
And then I noticed a pregnant woman walking towards me.

307
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:06,000
And I could tell by the look in her eyes that she was going to say something to me.

308
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:13,000
And she came right up to me. She touched me on the shoulder.

309
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:22,000
And she said, the Lord has spoken to me, you're to be like a lioness. Your little girl is okay.

310
00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:27,000
And I just felt this shiver go through my body.

311
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:35,000
And I thought, if the Lord has spoken to her, then Katie is okay.

312
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:43,000
Whether she's going to live or whether she's gone to God, Katie's going to be okay.

313
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:48,000
The woman disappeared as if into thin air. And Julie never saw her again.

314
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:54,000
Katie was being kept alive with machines. After three days doctors pronounced her legally brain dead.

315
00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:58,000
The thronsons made the agonizing decision to remove life support.

316
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:09,000
The autopsy indicated that there was indeed appendicitis and that there had been extension of this infection locally to other organs that were nearby.

317
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:16,000
Officially, Katie died October 10th, but both Julie and her doctor believed Katie was gone much sooner.

318
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:32,000
When I told the doctor that at that time she had raised her arms out towards the window, he said, I believe that that was the time that Katie left her body.

319
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:41,000
And that although they artificially kept her alive, she had died at three o'clock.

320
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:46,000
It was six-year-old Katie who was the first to be laid to rest in the family plot.

321
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:52,000
It was an unspeakable tragedy from which the thronsons never thought they would recover.

322
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:57,000
But a few months later, there was a ray of hope stuffed inside a cardboard box.

323
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:03,000
Julie found the tablet that Katie had been drawing on just days before her death.

324
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:22,000
She had drawn a picture of these angels surrounding a light and the cloud and the moon had sad faces and all the angels had sad faces and some of them even had tears coming down their face.

325
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,000
The picture said everything.

326
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:32,000
When I saw it, I knew without a doubt that Katie had a premonition.

327
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:36,000
Julie drew strength from that cherished drawing.

328
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:45,000
Then five months after Katie's death, a picture appeared in Life magazine that seemed to confirm Julie's belief that her daughter's drawing was a premonition.

329
00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:50,000
This 19th century engraving was part of an article about life after death.

330
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:55,000
The depiction of a welcoming vortex of light was strikingly similar to Katie's own vision.

331
00:33:55,000 --> 00:34:02,000
Both pictures have a circular pattern that resembles the tunnel of light, commonly reported in near-death experiences.

332
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:06,000
Coincidence? Or did Katie receive a divine message?

333
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:12,000
She knew she was going to die. She drew that picture. She asked me, Mommy, am I going to die?

334
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:21,000
Whether or not she knew the meaning of it, I believe her spirit did.

335
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:27,000
Author Dr. Gerald Jampulski is a child psychiatrist who counsels bereaved families.

336
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:34,000
After Julie Tronson saw the Life magazine article, she wrote to Dr. Jampulski and asked him to look at Katie's drawing.

337
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:42,000
I pointed out that at three o'clock it looked like one of the angels was going toward the center and going toward the light.

338
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:51,000
I was like amazed for a minute and he continued it, but I'm thinking he doesn't know that Katie died at three o'clock.

339
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:53,000
There's no way he could know that.

340
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:57,000
Julie also tried to find the pregnant woman who had comforted her.

341
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:05,000
The hospital gave her the names and phone numbers of all the women in the maternity ward that day, but none of them remembered speaking to Julie.

342
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:13,000
She was obviously an angel. There was some kind of a message there of life and death and birth.

343
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:17,000
The cycle of death and birth continues.

344
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:27,000
There is a new life in the Tronson family. Little Cody was born on October 7th, 1992, one year to the day after Katie died.

345
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:29,000
It was an uncanny coincidence.

346
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:33,000
I was once told a definition of coincidence. I've always found it very helpful.

347
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:39,000
A coincidence is a miracle in which God wishes to remain anonymous. It makes a lot of sense to me.

348
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:48,000
When the Tronsons take Katie's brothers and sisters to her grave, the family remembers and talks about what they believe is God's plan.

349
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:52,000
It was a gift from beyond. Maybe a gift from God.

350
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:59,000
The impact that drawing has had on our life is just beyond words. We have this to share with people.

351
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:07,000
We have the hope to share with people that there is a beautiful side to all of this.

352
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:11,000
It helped us in the healing because it gave us both peace.

353
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:18,000
I felt honored that Katie was given a glimpse from the other side.

354
00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:30,000
There's just the fact that there's life after death. And even though we can't see it, it exists.

355
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:34,000
Just a few weeks ago, the Tronsons were in a serious car accident.

356
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:37,000
Unfortunately, everyone's all right. They're recovering at home.

357
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:40,000
But something strange happened during that crash.

358
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:48,000
Three-year-old Christopher told his mother and father that right after the moment of impact, he saw Katie.

359
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:49,000
Up next.

360
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:53,000
It was five to six times stronger than any signal in the past.

361
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:58,000
After receiving what could be an extraterrestrial message, this facility could be shut down.

362
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:07,000
The radio telescope at Ohio State University in Columbus is nicknamed the Big Ear.

363
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:14,000
Its job is to listen for anomalous sounds in the cosmos that might be evidence of intergalactic communication.

364
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:22,000
If someone out there is trying to get our attention, the Big Ear is probably the telescope that will bring the message to us.

365
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:27,000
Man has always wondered, are we alone in the universe?

366
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:35,000
Are there other intelligent beings somewhere that we might perhaps converse with at some point, or at least learn of the existence of?

367
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:40,000
The universe has no beginning, no middle, and no end.

368
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:47,000
In such a limitless ocean of planets, moons, and stars, are we really the only lifeforms searching outer space?

369
00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:50,000
Is another civilization trying to make contact?

370
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:54,000
Astronomers operating this telescope believe contact has been made.

371
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:57,000
It was exactly the kind of signal that we were looking for.

372
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:02,000
It's a narrowband signal that clearly have intelligent origin, clearly not interference, not any of those things.

373
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:10,000
In the late 1950s, Ohio State University began construction on what would become the world's largest radio telescope.

374
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:14,000
It was designed to pick up and record the noises of space.

375
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:24,000
And for over 15 years, it cataloged a symphony of static pops and hisses that were emanating naturally from satellites, stars, and explainable sources.

376
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:34,000
Then, in the mid-1970s, the radio telescope known as the Big Ear received NASA sponsorship and began listening for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

377
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:37,000
In 1977, they got their first hit.

378
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:43,000
I had the task to look at the computer printouts to see if there was anything interesting.

379
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:47,000
Anything four or above was definitely unusual.

380
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:50,000
Well, this was the equivalent of 30.

381
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:59,000
And so it was so strong, five to six times stronger than I had seen any signal in the past, that I was astonished,

382
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:04,000
and immediately wrote the word, wow, exclamation point in the margin of the computer printout.

383
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:07,000
The very strange thing is that we have these two beams in the sky.

384
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:09,000
We saw it in only one of those beams.

385
00:39:09,000 --> 00:39:20,000
So that means that it turned off or on one or the other as we were watching it, which is even further indication of intelligent noise.

386
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:25,000
The tantalizing thing is we went back and look hundreds of times later and it was never there again.

387
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:27,000
So we will never know exactly what that was.

388
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:30,000
It could have been from some other civilization.

389
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:34,000
The spontaneous signal became known as the Big Wow.

390
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:38,000
It immediately sparked serious debate among astronomers.

391
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:45,000
No one could explain the origin of the signal, but many scientists would not accept it as proof of intergalactic communication.

392
00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:51,000
Others insisted the Big Wow was Earth's first contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence.

393
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:54,000
The debate continues to this day.

394
00:39:54,000 --> 00:40:00,000
The fundamental problem in a scientific experiment is if you can't repeat it, you can't say it exists.

395
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:06,000
Dr. Louis Friedman does not believe that the Big Wow is definitive proof of interstellar communication.

396
00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:13,000
But he does believe it is an important piece of a larger puzzle that the Big Ear will someday solve.

397
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:20,000
Nonetheless, it has over the time made very useful observations in the whole search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

398
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:26,000
But despite the Big Ear's scientific contributions, the radio telescope's future is on shaky ground.

399
00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:35,000
Congress did cut out the funding last year and that has made the SETI program really disappear from all government activities.

400
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:41,000
Because the subject deals with extraterrestrial life, it's a subject that is obviously capable of ridicule.

401
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:47,000
And Congress didn't continue the funding because they were susceptible to those kinds of jokes.

402
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:54,000
Unfortunately, the land the Big Ear sits on is becoming more valuable than the radio telescope itself.

403
00:40:54,000 --> 00:41:03,000
Without federal funding, it's up to private organizations like the Planetary Society to stave off destruction of the project.

404
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:11,000
The idea that someone out there may be transmitting and we're not listening is not one that we in the Planetary Society are comfortable with.

405
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:19,000
Currently, everyone who works on the project works for free. The Big Ear is supported by volunteers who don't want to see the project die.

406
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:28,000
We have people from all walks of life. We have an attorney, we have physicists, astronomers, a chemist, school teachers, a jukebox repairman,

407
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:32,000
people who just do anything that you can imagine to volunteer here.

408
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:37,000
The Planetary Society encourages anyone with an interest in the heavens to join them.

409
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:42,000
Volunteers who aren't physicists or astronomers learn from those who are.

410
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:52,000
If it weren't for someone like me coming up and moving, repointing the telescope a couple of times a week, then no such survey would be done.

411
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:57,000
Their equipment is sadly outdated, but the Big Ear volunteers are undaunted.

412
00:41:57,000 --> 00:42:02,000
Who knows when one of them will be able to write, wow, on a computer printout.

413
00:42:02,000 --> 00:42:09,000
There's no telling what extraterrestrial civilization's power is, so even the weakest equipment might be able to pick something up.

414
00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:15,000
If eventually they will transmit, then I think you'll hear it. If not in my lifetime, then the next one.

415
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:20,000
It seems unlikely that only here in this very typical place that life would have formed.

416
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:26,000
In fact, if we go on searching for a long period of time and never find anything, that will be an even stranger situation,

417
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:30,000
but we will have to then understand why did life form only here and nowhere else.

418
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:37,000
We want the Earth to be listening. We have a lot to learn in this area. Who knows where we'll strike a little gold in those hills.

419
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:46,000
The land underneath the Big Ear is leased to Ohio State by a land development corporation.

420
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:51,000
The university's 10-year lease expires next year, and there are rumors that when it does,

421
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:57,000
one of the world's tallest radio telescopes will be dismantled to make way for a golf course.

422
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:19,000
At 1-900-933-7444.

423
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:24,000
Until next time, remember, no mystery is closed to an open mind.

424
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:27,000
For Sightings, I'm Tim White.

425
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:53,000
From West Craven, Wishmaster, Wednesday at 9 p.m. on Sci-Fi.