1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:11,000 Over eastern Alaska, a Japanese cargo plane has a terrifying mid-air encounter with unidentified craft. 2 00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:20,000 The incident sparks a federal investigation and secret involvement by the CIA. 3 00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:27,000 He says this event never happened and we were never here. 4 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:36,000 In Melbourne, Australia, an extraordinary event shatters the lives of a quiet suburban community. 5 00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:40,000 I would say that what I'd seen was an extraterrestrial craft. 6 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:47,000 The mass sighting ignites panic and accusations of a government cover-up. 7 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:53,000 And a string of inexplicable sightings in a remote Peruvian town are captured on camera. 8 00:00:53,000 --> 00:01:02,000 The rare video evidence shows mysterious lights that mesmerize locals. 9 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:09,000 The incident sparks off a groundbreaking government-backed investigation. 10 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:12,000 Does anyone know what these phenomena are? 11 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:17,000 And do the governments of the world know more than they ever reveal to us? 12 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:23,000 The answers may lie in the fascinating stories of UFO conspiracies. 13 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:33,000 November 17th, 1986. 14 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:37,000 35,000 feet over eastern Alaska. 15 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:46,000 Japan Airlines Flight 1628 is being flown by Captain Kenjū Terauchi and co-pilot Takenori Temufuji. 16 00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:55,000 The two men are approaching the final leg of a journey that will end here. 17 00:01:55,000 --> 00:02:03,000 In the late 1980s, Tokyo's Narita Airport is one of the main gateways for imports into Japan, 18 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:10,000 helping to feed the country's growing demand for luxury foreign goods. 19 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:20,000 Flight 1628 is among them, carrying a consignment of expensive French wines from Paris. 20 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:26,000 For Terauchi, a veteran pilot of almost 30 years, it's a routine trip. 21 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:35,000 So the two men are relaxed as they make their way towards their fuel stop in Anchorage. 22 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:45,000 Then, just after 5 p.m., the pilots become aware of two lights in the darkness ahead. 23 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:53,000 Fearing that they are on a collision course, Temufuji calls air-trapped control in nearby Anchorage. 24 00:02:53,000 --> 00:03:01,000 The following audio is recorded live as the dramatic events unfold. 25 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:17,000 The craft aren't being picked up by ground radar. According to air-trapped control, the JAL crew is up there alone. 26 00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:24,000 The controller tries to get more detail from the pilots about what they see. 27 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:35,000 Anchorage calls nearby Elmendorf Air Force Base to ask if they have any military craft in the area. 28 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:43,000 The answer comes back as negative. 29 00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:49,000 And things are about to get even stranger for the crew. 30 00:03:49,000 --> 00:04:00,000 After 12 minutes, the two craft suddenly move off to the left, drawing the captain's attention to something on his port side. 31 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:08,000 He sees a faint strip of white light illuminating an object at least 10 times the size of the 747. 32 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:12,000 It's unlike any conventional aircraft. 33 00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:18,000 But remarkably, moments later, the sighting is backed up by news from the ground. 34 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:27,000 Anchorage's attention to the aircraft is back to normal. 35 00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:35,000 As the situation in the air becomes increasingly tense, Anchorage advises the crew to take evasive action. 36 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:44,000 They start a full 360-degree turn and momentarily lose track of the lights. 37 00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:50,000 But then, part of the way through the maneuver, the captain is shocked by what he finds. 38 00:04:50,000 --> 00:05:00,000 In the words of Captain Terra Uchi, there it was, as if it was waiting for me. 39 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:08,000 Still being tailed and low on fuel, Terra Uchi requests a direct flight path to Anchorage to land. 40 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:14,000 A nearby passenger jet is rerouted by air traffic control to see if it can confirm the crew's visuals. 41 00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:22,000 But it sees nothing in the skies around the JAL flight. 42 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:32,000 25 minutes later, the plane touches down, ending the crew's terrifying ordeal. 43 00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:43,000 Whatever was up there made a prohibited incursion into the Japan Airlines airspace that night, breaking international aviation rules. 44 00:05:43,000 --> 00:05:54,000 And since the object remains unidentified, the pilots are taken off to be interviewed by an official from the Federal Aviation Administration. 45 00:05:54,000 --> 00:06:01,000 The captain sketches a striking picture of what he saw. 46 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:08,000 A vast walnut-shaped craft which dwarfs the Boeing 747. 47 00:06:08,000 --> 00:06:17,000 Despite the accounts of the pilots and the radar readings that seem to show a second object in the air, the case is dropped. 48 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:23,000 The FAA doesn't pursue it any further at this stage. 49 00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:27,000 Back in the pilot's home country, it's a different story. 50 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:33,000 Tales of encounters with unidentified craft go back hundreds of years in Japan. 51 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:43,000 This drawing depicts a folk story from as far back as 1803, in which a mysterious hollow craft was said to have washed ashore in eastern Japan. 52 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:49,000 Inside the craft were strange symbols and a woman who was unable to communicate with locals. 53 00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:55,000 Since then, many more unexplained sightings have been recorded in Japan. 54 00:06:55,000 --> 00:07:01,000 So when Japanese journalists hear of the JAL encounter, they run with the story. 55 00:07:01,000 --> 00:07:05,000 Before long, it's picked up by American newspapers too. 56 00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:15,000 And soon, Alaska's branch of the FAA is inundated with questions. 57 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:23,000 In the FAA's Washington, D.C. headquarters, John Callahan heads up the Accidents, Evaluations and Investigations Division. 58 00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:28,000 In January 1987, he receives an urgent call from Anchorage. 59 00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:31,000 They said they had a problem. They didn't know how to handle it. 60 00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:38,000 That there was media running all over the hall. So he wanted me to tell them what to do about it. 61 00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:44,000 Callahan requests that the evidence is sent to him immediately. 62 00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:51,000 The recordings allow him to see and hear exactly what happened that night at Anchorage's Air Traffic Control Center. 63 00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:58,000 The official tapes no longer exist, but this video that Callahan filmed of their playback does. 64 00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:08,000 The footage clearly identifies JAL Flight 1628 on the radar screen, and over five miles away, a distinct second object. 65 00:08:08,000 --> 00:08:13,000 Convinced the evidence shows a real target in close proximity to the Japanese airplane, 66 00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:16,000 Callahan alerts his boss. 67 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:22,000 The Admiral calls me and says, alright, I set up a meeting tomorrow morning in the round room. 68 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:29,000 You're going to have the CIA and the FBI, and he says there will be three scientists from Reagan's scientific study team. 69 00:08:29,000 --> 00:08:36,000 Together they watch the video, and when they're done, a CIA agent demands that he hands over the evidence. 70 00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:48,000 He says alright, this, he's pointing to the screen. This event never happened, and we were never here. 71 00:08:48,000 --> 00:08:57,000 But that doesn't kill the story. Over the coming months, reputations will be called into question and accusations of a whitewash ensue. 72 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:01,000 The Japanese Air Force 73 00:09:03,000 --> 00:09:09,000 1986, a Japanese airline sees strange craft in the sky over Alaska. 74 00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:16,000 Now the FAA steps in to investigate. They interview Captain Teruuchi a second time. 75 00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:23,000 He remains adamant that what he saw was an alien craft. 76 00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:29,000 One theory suggests he may have been confused by an airborne natural phenomenon. 77 00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:36,000 One plausible explanation that has been suggested for the Japanese airline sighting might involve ice crystals. 78 00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:43,000 Ice crystals are found in the upper parts of our atmosphere in the area say above 20,000 feet. 79 00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:50,000 This high up, it's too cold for water to exist in its liquid form, so clouds of ice crystals form instead. 80 00:09:50,000 --> 00:09:53,000 These clouds can cause strange optical effects. 81 00:09:53,000 --> 00:10:08,000 Depending on the orientation of these billions of tiny little hexagonal ice crystals, as light is passing through that, they can create a strange optical image that could be mistaken for something else. 82 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:15,000 And on that night, in the skies over Alaska, conditions are perfect for ice crystal formation. 83 00:10:16,000 --> 00:10:23,000 It was in November in which you would have cold enough temperatures so that the upper part of the atmosphere would definitely be ice crystals. 84 00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:31,000 Leslie Kane is an investigative reporter who has written extensively about pilot sightings of UFOs. 85 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:36,000 She disputes the view that the JAL pilots were confused by natural phenomena. 86 00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:49,000 Pilots know how to differentiate from all the things that could be mistaken for a UFO in the sky such as a weather balloon, a blimp, some kind of lightning or natural phenomenon. 87 00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:53,000 And when they see something very unusual, you can trust what they're saying. 88 00:10:55,000 --> 00:11:03,000 But even if ice crystals could explain the sighting, that still leaves unresolved the mystery of the second object picked up by ground-based radar. 89 00:11:04,000 --> 00:11:11,000 In the wake of the CIA's involvement, the FAA releases the results of its investigation in March 1987. 90 00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:22,000 The report concludes that the whole incident was caused by nothing more than a technical glitch, born from the two different operating systems used by air traffic controllers. 91 00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:31,000 The first, primary radar, works by bouncing pulses of radio waves off objects, creating an echo. 92 00:11:33,000 --> 00:11:43,000 Secondary radar relies on the use of a device known as a transponder, which when triggered by a radar signal, relays information back to the ground about a plane's identity and location. 93 00:11:45,000 --> 00:11:49,000 On the night in question, the controllers were using both types of radar. 94 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:55,000 JAL 1628 is identifiable from the data sent back by its transponder. 95 00:11:56,000 --> 00:12:01,000 The second target, with no data, would suggest that it's a craft with no transponder. 96 00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:06,000 And coupled with the pilot sightings, that's what the controllers believed that night. 97 00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:12,000 But the FAA report concludes instead that it's actually what's known as a split radar image. 98 00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:18,000 This is caused when a faulty transponder sends back a delayed response, which is mistaken for a second plane. 99 00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:26,000 Former FAA division manager John Callahan doesn't think the findings of his old organization stand up. 100 00:12:27,000 --> 00:12:34,000 It wasn't a ghost target because mainly the pilot cannot see ghosts. 101 00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:39,000 And when he looked out the window, he told you what he was looking at. 102 00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:45,000 There's a big round ball with white lights running around it, and there's the size of two or three aircraft carriers. 103 00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:50,000 Leslie Kane agrees that the investigation ignores crucial evidence. 104 00:12:51,000 --> 00:12:56,000 It was very disappointing. They basically dismissed the radar as being some kind of defect. 105 00:12:57,000 --> 00:12:59,000 So that was sort of the end of the FAA's work. 106 00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:07,000 It's claimed that not long after the incident, Captain Terah Uchi was transferred to a desk job and has never spoken about it since. 107 00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:13,000 The FAA has refused to reopen the case, despite repeated requests to do so by UFO investigators. 108 00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:18,000 And the CIA's involvement, described by John Callahan, has never been publicly revealed. 109 00:13:19,000 --> 00:13:29,000 Whether it was a question of pilot error, technical irregularities, or something else entirely, the story of JAL Flight 1628 continues to mystify to this day. 110 00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:41,000 Melbourne, Australia, 1966 111 00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:49,000 On April 6th, it's a bright autumn morning in the city's southern suburb of Westall. 112 00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:55,000 At Westall High School, many pupils are outside enjoying a break from their studies. 113 00:13:57,000 --> 00:14:00,000 Among them, 13-year-old Jackie Argent. 114 00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:04,000 All of a sudden, play is disrupted when a strange object emerges over the school. 115 00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:12,000 Over 50 years on, Jackie, now a retired government advisor, returns to the school to relive the events of that extraordinary day. 116 00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:19,000 The object was a disk, a, would appear to me to be a large, silvery disk in the sky. 117 00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:24,000 And we saw the disk come over, and everybody in the school, everybody that was out on the oval, actually was pointing out to the sky, looking at the disk. 118 00:14:40,000 --> 00:14:44,000 Writer and teacher Shane Ryan has been investigating this story since 2005. 119 00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:49,000 He's pieced together the events that follow from the testimony of over 50 eyewitnesses. 120 00:14:50,000 --> 00:14:57,000 It was morning recess, and so the word rushed around the school very quickly, like a bushfire, that something was happening. 121 00:14:59,000 --> 00:15:03,000 Before long, a crowd is gathered, utterly transfixed by what they're seeing. 122 00:15:04,000 --> 00:15:12,000 We watched the way it moved, which was amazing. It was capable of standing still and moving very, very fast. 123 00:15:14,000 --> 00:15:23,000 Many students still speak of the incident, but there's only a small handful of teachers from Westall High who are willing to go on record to discuss what happened that day. 124 00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:26,000 One of those is Claude Miller. 125 00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:33,000 It was recess, and I was a bit late going out to do my eye duty, and when I went outside, bingo. 126 00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:38,000 A colleague, science teacher Andrew Greenwood, comes tearing down the hall. 127 00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:45,000 I met Andrew coming in, and his first words were, did you see it? Did I see what? 128 00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:53,000 And he told me what he saw, or what he thought he saw, but he said it was up there, moving at incredible speeds. 129 00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:56,000 And now, it's not the only thing up there. 130 00:15:57,000 --> 00:16:02,000 Several light aircraft are engaging with it in what appears to be a frantic game of cat and mouse. 131 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:08,000 They were flying around it at some distance away, but it would just leave them for dead. 132 00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:11,000 It would just suddenly whoosh and take off. 133 00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:18,000 Then, after moving over to an area of pine trees known as the Grange, it descends, seemingly to land. 134 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:27,000 By now, it's not only at Westall High that the strange object is seen, but also in other parts of Westall. 135 00:16:28,000 --> 00:16:36,000 After a few minutes, astounded onlookers see the UFO rise again, before it turns onto its side and disappears as fast as it arrived. 136 00:16:39,000 --> 00:16:46,000 The whole school was in turmoil, but it was the turmoil of kids excited that they'd seen something and it broke the monotony. 137 00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:51,000 After the craft is left, the number of people claiming to have seen it rises quickly. 138 00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:55,000 Eventually, the number reaches into the hundreds. 139 00:16:56,000 --> 00:17:03,000 It is one of the largest mass witness daylight UFO sightings in the world. 140 00:17:04,000 --> 00:17:06,000 We're talking about around 400 people. 141 00:17:07,000 --> 00:17:12,000 For Shane Ryan, the large number of witnesses is clear evidence that something strange really was seen in the sky that day. 142 00:17:14,000 --> 00:17:20,000 But for psychologist Dr. Susan Clancy, it's more likely to be a symptom of a phenomenon known as the bandwagon effect. 143 00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:33,000 A great example of what some people call the bandwagon effect or group panic, etc. took place in New York City in 1938. 144 00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:43,000 H.G. Wells wrote a book called War of the Worlds, in which aliens crash landed in a cylinder and they were all reptilian and they were drooling and scary. 145 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:51,000 But it was adapted for a radio show in 1938 and played in the New York area and it incited widespread panic. 146 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:54,000 I can see the things body now, it's large, it's large as a bear. 147 00:17:55,000 --> 00:17:57,000 It's just like wet leather, but it's a face. 148 00:17:58,000 --> 00:18:01,000 Ladies and gentlemen, it's indescribable, I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. 149 00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:05,000 People thought it was real. They tuned in late, they didn't understand it was a radio adaptation. 150 00:18:06,000 --> 00:18:14,000 And then what happened is the police department became flooded with calls of people saying that they saw the cylinder outside or they saw strange creatures. 151 00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:19,000 People believe that it's real and then they start seeing what they think they expect to see. 152 00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:27,000 So, can the Westlhawg UFO incident be explained as a case of mass delusion? Not so, according to Shane Ryan. 153 00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:39,000 It's really hard to imagine that something like mass hysteria could have been responsible for an incident like this when not only did we have an object in the sky that looked real, looked metallic, 154 00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:46,000 but when people went down to the Grange where the object was seen to descend, there was physical evidence to be found. 155 00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:53,000 The evidence is discovered when curious locals go to take a look for themselves. 156 00:18:54,000 --> 00:18:58,000 One of the first on the scene is engineering student Kevin Hurley. 157 00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:08,000 My uncle rang me up about four o'clock to say, hey, guess what? The kids have seen a UFO at the school and I go, wow! 158 00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:15,000 And then he told me that the UFO landed. So I thought, jeez, I better get down there and have a look at this. 159 00:19:16,000 --> 00:19:20,000 After hearing the news, he head straight to the Grange to see what he can find. 160 00:19:21,000 --> 00:19:26,000 Almost 50 years later, he returns to the site that had such a profound effect on him as a young man. 161 00:19:27,000 --> 00:19:34,000 The area we walked through was knee-high grass. It wasn't the scrubby stuff like this. And it was quite thick. 162 00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:41,000 The grass was flattened around, flattened down like this. Right? 163 00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:52,000 And it was flattened down in a circular area as if something had gone down and twisted on the ground a little bit to flatten the grass around in this circular fashion. 164 00:19:53,000 --> 00:20:00,000 And as news of the sighting spreads beyond Westl, a new compelling piece of evidence emerges, adding a fresh layer of intrigue to the story. 165 00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:11,000 On April 12th, a newspaper publishes a photo taken in another Melbourne suburb just four days before the Westl sighting. 166 00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:17,000 The picture seems to show a strange object hovering low in the sky. 167 00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:24,000 Much like the Westl UFO, it appears to be a disk-like craft made from silvery metallic material. 168 00:20:26,000 --> 00:20:28,000 Could the two sightings be linked? 169 00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:37,000 Back in Westl, Kevin Hurley's curiosity grows. He returns to the Grange for another look. 170 00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:52,000 Upon arrival, he quickly realizes he's not the only one who's interested in the site. The area is now guarded by men in military uniform. 171 00:20:53,000 --> 00:21:00,000 This very aggressive chap appeared. He was either Army or Air Force, I'm not sure what, and said, 172 00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:04,000 Go away! Don't come here! He was extremely aggressive. 173 00:21:05,000 --> 00:21:10,000 Before he retreats, Kevin Hurley manages to catch a glimpse of what's happening beyond the guards. 174 00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:21,000 There were a number of men also in these Army or Air Force uniforms going around the paddock, 175 00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:25,000 analyzing the ground with what looked like some sort of a Geigerkirch device. 176 00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:32,000 Since the UFO sighting, Westl seems a world away from the ordinary suburb it once was. 177 00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:37,000 And the next chain of events is about to rock its residents to the core. 178 00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:44,380 The 179 00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:54,000 1966, a school in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, has become the focus of a mass UFO sighting. 180 00:21:57,000 --> 00:22:01,000 The reported landing site is said to be crawling with military personnel, 181 00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:08,000 but pupils and staff at Westl High remain in the dark about what's going on. 182 00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:15,000 One of those left frustrated by the lack of answers is Claude Miller. 183 00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:20,000 I think we were expecting in the school that someone would come in, there would be explanations. 184 00:22:20,000 --> 00:22:26,000 And as the days went by, there were no explanations. 185 00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:28,000 Absolutely none. 186 00:22:30,000 --> 00:22:35,000 Unknown men in dark suits are seen visiting parts of Westall in the days that follow. 187 00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:39,000 But they don't seem to be there to provide answers. 188 00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:46,000 One afternoon, Jackie Argens is pulled out of class and interrogated by two men. 189 00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:53,000 It's an unsettling experience that's lived with her to this day. 190 00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:57,000 They ran through the whole event. 191 00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:00,000 It was like, where were you? Who were you with? 192 00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:04,000 What did you see? Just fired questions at me constantly. 193 00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:08,000 It was a boom, boom, boom questioning and my responses had to be instant. 194 00:23:08,000 --> 00:23:13,000 And then at the end, he just said to me, and I suppose you saw little green men. 195 00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:20,000 And that's when I just lost it and said, stuff you ran out, outside, burst into tears and went home. 196 00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:28,000 Jackie Argens doesn't know the identity of the men, but she has a strong suspicion of who they were working for. 197 00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:34,000 I came to the conclusion that they were Australian Secret Service Investigation Organization. 198 00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:40,000 As people try to make sense of what's happened, various theories begin to emerge. 199 00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:45,000 Some suggest the unexplained craft was nothing more than a weather balloon. 200 00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:51,000 For weather expert Professor Randy Servenny, these devices are nothing unusual. 201 00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:57,000 So the National Weather Services around the world launch weather balloons twice a day, 202 00:23:57,000 --> 00:24:03,000 and these balloons are meant to measure the weather at different levels of our atmosphere. 203 00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:09,000 But to most people, the unfamiliar shape of these large helium balloons can be surprising. 204 00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:14,000 And so they've become one of the most common causes of mistaken UFO identification. 205 00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:18,000 In April 1966, the Bureau of Meteorology releases a statement. 206 00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:25,000 A weather balloon was released from nearby Leverton Air Force Base at 8.30 a.m. on the morning of the sighting. 207 00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:35,000 But for meteorologist Dr. Karen Casiba, who's seen her fair share of weather balloons being deployed, the theory just doesn't add up. 208 00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:41,000 Usually when people are launching weather balloons, really they're trying to get it to go up through the atmosphere and not go sideways through the atmosphere. 209 00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:47,000 It's possible things could go wrong or they had some sort of different objective, but mostly weather balloons go up. 210 00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:54,000 The weather balloon theory also fails to explain why light aircraft would have been buzzing the object. 211 00:24:55,000 --> 00:25:00,000 The aircraft are one of the most mysterious elements of the Westall UFO story. 212 00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:08,000 After the sighting, the Department of Civil Aviation states there have been no reports of strange aerial encounters in the area. 213 00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:16,000 If the planes weren't commercial, then that leaves an intriguing alternative. They were military. 214 00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:22,000 Peter Merlin is an aerospace historian who specializes in military aviation. 215 00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:26,000 He thinks the UFO may have been what's known as a target drogue. 216 00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:35,000 Target drogue is a lightweight aerial target that's towed behind an airplane. 217 00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:45,000 The drogue is dragged at a safe distance from the towing plane on a long cable and used for target practice by pursuing aircraft. 218 00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:57,000 It's possible that if there was a training operation, you might have several aircraft flying along near it and it would look like they were pursuing this unusual object. 219 00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:00,000 So it might look pretty strange in the sky to a witness. 220 00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:05,000 If so, then what of the reported landing behind the Grange? 221 00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:08,000 And why would the military wish to keep the public away? 222 00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:13,000 Many questions remain unanswered for the residents of Westall. 223 00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:17,000 And as the days go by, more unknown figures appear in the town. 224 00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:28,000 A week later, Andrew Greenwood, the only teacher at Westall High to report having seen the UFO, is paid a visit at his home by two men. 225 00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:36,000 He thought they were coming around to take down more details about what he had seen. 226 00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:41,000 But in fact they were coming around to say, Andrew, we don't want you talking about this anymore. 227 00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:48,000 There are no such things as flying saucers and we don't want you saying that you've seen something like this. 228 00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:53,000 No government agency has ever admitted to trying to silence Andrew Greenwood. 229 00:26:53,000 --> 00:27:00,000 But the idea that there may have been an active attempt to hide the truth received some support from a separate incident involving Kevin Hurley. 230 00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:07,000 A few days after he was forced away from the suspected landing site, he returns to the Grange for another look. 231 00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:12,000 When he gets there, the military men have left and the site has altered dramatically. 232 00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:18,000 Though I walked through to where the circles were, that whole area was burnt. 233 00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:27,000 Whatever evidence there was of whatever had happened, it had clearly been destroyed. 234 00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:42,000 If the rumors are true and the military was sent in to cover up evidence of what happened on April 6th, what were they trying to hide? 235 00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:46,000 One theory is that it was some kind of experimental aircraft. 236 00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:53,000 Military organizations across the world have long experimented with revolutionary designs. 237 00:27:54,000 --> 00:28:01,000 These forward-thinking craft often look nothing like conventional aircraft and would therefore go unrecognized by casual observers. 238 00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:12,000 I myself have observed numerous different types of military and experimental aircraft and even I've seen things that I didn't recognize in the sky immediately. 239 00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:16,000 It's a theory that West will witness Jackie Argent was once open to. 240 00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:24,000 If you'd have asked me up until about 25 years ago, I would have said that it was an experimental craft. 241 00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:27,000 But over time, her opinion has changed. 242 00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:34,000 If you asked me today what it was that I'd seen all those years ago, I would say to you that what I'd seen was an extraterrestrial craft. 243 00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:38,000 We still don't have anything today that can move the same way that that one did. 244 00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:45,000 Despite such certainty from those who were there, psychologist Dr. Susan Clancy is still unconvinced. 245 00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:52,000 There's some culturally available script that exists. 246 00:28:53,000 --> 00:29:00,000 We've been reading about it, we've been seeing it in newspapers, even small children know what flying saucers and aliens supposedly look like. 247 00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:05,000 We don't necessarily believe it, but we think it's possible and then we see something in the sky. 248 00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:13,000 In unidentified flying object, it doesn't mean it's extraterrestrial and the explanations we often fall to are these culturally available scripts. 249 00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:17,000 The truth of what was seen that day might never be known. 250 00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:24,000 The Australian government has never admitted to carrying out any kind of investigation in the wake of the West's siding. 251 00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:32,000 In terms of finding official government documentation about this incident, even after all these years of looking, 252 00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:35,000 we've still drawn a blank. 253 00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:41,000 As long as they remain silent, the West's mystery is likely to remain just that. 254 00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:54,000 Chilucanus Peru, 2001. 255 00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:59,000 This remote town nestles in the foothills of the Andes. 256 00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:04,000 Its inhabitants, like so many in this region of South America, are deeply religious, with strong links to the spiritual world. 257 00:30:05,000 --> 00:30:11,000 On October 13, 2001, Chilucanus is filled with the sights and sounds of a festival being held in honor of a local patron saint. 258 00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:17,000 At around 9 p.m., the procession is working its way through the town. 259 00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:21,000 Among the onlookers is local photographer Yvonne Eza. 260 00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:27,000 It is the last day of the festival in Chilucanus, the city of Peruvian history. 261 00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:32,000 The festival is held in honor of a local patron saint. 262 00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:35,000 The procession is working its way through the town. 263 00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:40,000 Among the almookers is local photographer Ivan Iza. 264 00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:51,000 All of a sudden, progress halts as strange lights appear in the sky beyond the edge of town. 265 00:30:55,000 --> 00:31:00,000 Ivan turns his camera away from the festivities and up towards the floating lights. 266 00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:04,000 The camera's settings make the lights appear white, 267 00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:09,000 but they are described by those who see them as intense orange-red spheres. 268 00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:15,000 They hover silently above nearby Cerro Pelan, a hill that overlooks the town. 269 00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:23,000 Some witnesses claim that the lights actually approached the town, causing panic among the almookers. 270 00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:28,000 Today, Ivan recalls the tense scenes of that night. 271 00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:35,000 At that moment, the lights came closer to us, and people who were beside us said, 272 00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:39,000 here they come, here they come, here they come, and some ran away. 273 00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:43,000 But Ivan doesn't run. 274 00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:48,000 For over 20 minutes, he remains at the scene recording this strange phenomenon. 275 00:31:54,000 --> 00:32:01,000 12 days later, Ivan responds again to reports of strange lights over Chulucanus. 276 00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:09,000 From the top of a nearby hill, he films a single, tear-drop-shaped light hovering over the town. 277 00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:15,000 He's joined by a friend who sees it as well. 278 00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:20,000 It's incredible, hard to believe. It's like the thing we saw over Chulucanus. 279 00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:29,000 For about 20 minutes, the two men film the light, which reminds them of those previously seen over the area. 280 00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:40,000 Ivan is convinced he's captured something remarkable on video, but he's unable to explain what that is. 281 00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:45,000 To help him, he turns to a newly formed government department. 282 00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:51,000 The Office of Investigation of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena. 283 00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:59,000 It's established in 2001 by the Peruvian Air Force to examine reports of UFOs encroaching into the country's airspace. 284 00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:07,000 Ivan's call is answered by head of operations, Commander Julio Chamorro. 285 00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:13,000 I was ready to leave the office, and the phone call came in. 286 00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:20,000 It was somebody who told us they had video of a UFO. 287 00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:27,000 Chamorro dispatches field investigator Dr. Anthony Choi to do some digging. 288 00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:39,000 When Choi arrives in Chulucanus, his first priority is to review the evidence. 289 00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:47,000 Once he locates the rare tapes, he finally gets to see what he's come all this way for. 290 00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:53,000 When I saw these videos for the first time, I thought, wow, what is this? 291 00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:58,000 But my initial surprise had to give way to a more objective point of view. 292 00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:06,000 Over the coming days, Choi interviews many witnesses and visits the sites where the UFOs were seen. 293 00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:14,000 As he does so, he hears strange stories that make him realize the case goes way deeper than he ever imagined. 294 00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:29,000 Dr. Anthony Choi is in Chulucanus, Peru. 295 00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:37,000 As he looks for answers about strange lights in the sky, the story unfolds in deeply unexpected ways. 296 00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:43,000 Once in Chulucanus, when I began the investigation, I found many surprises. 297 00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:48,000 Witnesses said this phenomenon was not new, but very old. 298 00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,000 In fact, they remember seeing lights when they were kids. 299 00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:56,000 When I dug deeper into the investigation, I understood this phenomenon was even older. 300 00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:04,000 Sightings of unexplained lights here date back decades, and it turns out their roots are even older than that. 301 00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:09,000 To understand, Choi needs to look into the town's distant past. 302 00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:18,000 The indigenous people of Chulucanus descend from ancient pre-Inca and Inca societies, 303 00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:23,000 who fervently believed that gods and spirits inhabited their everyday lives. 304 00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:30,000 Those beliefs have changed over time, but they have not disappeared. 305 00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:38,000 Local writer Carlos Espinosa Leon has spent years gathering the stories handed down by generations of Chulucanus. 306 00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:49,000 They believe in legends, for example, that they used to see fantastical characters and little spirits. 307 00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:58,000 Choi discovers that many of their beliefs are rooted in the very hills over which the UFOs were seen. 308 00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:05,000 Most intriguing of all is Cerro Pilan, the hill over which the first lights appeared in October. 309 00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:13,000 There are a number of stories about the Pilan hill, that it's a haunted hill, 310 00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:18,000 and there you can hear the goats bleating, the herders screaming who have been bewitched. 311 00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:24,000 It's a hill that's highly respected. Peasants used to avoid passing it so that they weren't haunted. 312 00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:29,000 The respect held for Cerro Pilan goes beyond a simple fear of what it hides. 313 00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:39,000 It's thought to be one of four guardian mountains, responsible for protecting the town and capable of fighting other nearby hills in order to do so. 314 00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:58,000 Some peasants say that it's like a war of lightning bolts. The hills throw bolts at each other, trying to capture the rain for their own land, for their people, for their own areas. 315 00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:08,000 One of the most perplexing aspects of the Chulucana story are the reports that the lights approached the town, frightening onlookers. 316 00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:16,000 Psychologist Dr. Susan Clancy thinks the local belief that the hills are actually alive could have influenced that sighting. 317 00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:24,000 In a very religious country, when they're prone to want to see religious phenomena, they're dying to see religious phenomena. 318 00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:30,000 So it's like a lens where they're looking for stuff to happen, and it does. 319 00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:42,000 But while religious fervor may explain what the people of Chulucanas think they saw, it doesn't explain what was actually filmed by Ivan Iza on those nights. 320 00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:48,000 One theory is that the lights were caused by man-made aircraft. 321 00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:57,000 Having analyzed the videos, aeronautics expert David Higgins believes that search helicopters may have been responsible. 322 00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:04,000 I've looked at the footage of this particular sighting, and indeed you can see lights in the sky. 323 00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:12,000 Depending on the role of the helicopter, they may have a very bright search light that might be used in the role of search and rescue, or police, or military. 324 00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:21,000 And these lights are extremely bright, and to the onlooker on the ground who's never seen one before, it would certainly be quite a shock factor if this light suddenly came on. 325 00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:29,000 With no other existing evidence, there's only one way to work out if this theory holds weight, to analyze the videos themselves. 326 00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:35,000 Image forensics expert Michael Hartzhorn runs a series of tests. 327 00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:44,000 This footage showed a cluster of lights apparently in the sky. The first thing I wanted to do was increase the contrast as much as possible. 328 00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:53,000 And once I'd done that, I began to see a dark shape consistent with maybe a range of mountains. 329 00:38:54,000 --> 00:39:00,000 And although it's very, very vague, I definitely get the impression that these lights are on the top of a mountain range. 330 00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:07,000 If Michael Hartzhorn is correct, then the lights aren't hovering in the air. They're coming from something on the mountain itself. 331 00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:13,000 He carries out the same contrast enhancement on the second Chulukanas video, with equally revealing results. 332 00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:21,000 After enhancement, you can clearly see that that single mountain has a larger mountain behind it, and a larger mountain behind that. 333 00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:32,000 And it's actually part of a very big mountain range. And so the light that was apparently floating above the first mountain was probably on the fourth mountain behind it. 334 00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:40,000 With doubt cast over the sightings, it might seem that the Chulukanas UFO story is a simple case of mistaken identity. 335 00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:43,000 But the mystery doesn't end there. 336 00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:52,000 On November 15, 2001, 21 days after the second sighting, Yvonne is called to the center of town. 337 00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:57,000 There, a crowd of people is transfixed by another glowing object in the night sky. 338 00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:02,000 Here we are in Chulukanas, witnessing another UFO. 339 00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:07,000 Could this be just another case of a ground-based light being confused for something else? 340 00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:11,000 Hartzhorn runs tests to find out. 341 00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:20,000 I enhanced the street lamp as much as I could to see if you could see a reflection of the light in the side of that lamp. 342 00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:27,000 Because if we could have seen a reflection in there, then it would have proved that it was very close to the viewer, and it would have been a very small item then, rather than a large item in the background. 343 00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:31,000 I wasn't able to find anything in the street lamp. 344 00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:37,000 Having assessed that the glowing object is some distance away from the onlookers, Hartzhorn ups the enhancement even further. 345 00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:42,000 Once I've made this enhanced feel, I can see that the light is still in the background. 346 00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:48,000 Having assessed that the glowing object is some distance away from the onlookers, Hartzhorn ups the enhancement even further. 347 00:40:49,000 --> 00:41:04,000 Once I've made this enhanced video, I can see a diamond shape or certainly a shape behind the light, and it moves with the light and is consistent with the light being on an object. 348 00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:15,000 Image forensics alone can't prove what was up there, but the video suggests that whatever Yvonne captured on film was some kind of airborne, light-emitting object. 349 00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:24,000 Anthony Choi is unable to explain what's causing the Chulukhanis lights, so the official report that he eventually files is inconclusive. 350 00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:32,000 And when he appears on television afterwards, his Air Force boss, Colonel Rafa Maloche, is forced to admit that they don't know what's behind the sightings. 351 00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:43,000 For the moment, we can't venture to say because any explanation that comes from an unfinished investigation might result in false conclusions. 352 00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:50,000 More than ten years on, the case remains un-evolved. 353 00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:57,000 And for the people of Chulukhanis, the story has become another installment in a rich history of strange happenings.