1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:20,000 This is a journey into a world of mystery and deceit. 2 00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:27,000 A fantastical place full of UFOs, strange encounters and stories of alien abduction. 3 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:37,000 My name is Nick Cook. I work for Jane's Information Group, which has reported on defence issues since 1898. 4 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:44,000 I investigate secret military programmes worth billions of dollars, but hidden from public view. 5 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:54,000 I dig out evidence of classified technologies developed by the defence industry and concealed behind a network of false trails. 6 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:59,000 It's my job to find out what really has been flying through our airspace. 7 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:06,000 So from time to time I examine sighting evidence of unidentified flying objects. 8 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:18,000 Do these sightings offer evidence of top secret military and defence technology, or do they hold clues to something more mysterious? 9 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:30,000 This world is normally off limits for a journalist, but I wanted to discover for myself what is real and what is not. 10 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:57,000 On the 24th of April 1964, America experienced its first credible close encounter of the Third kind. 11 00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:04,000 Officer Lonnie Zamora was driving along a quiet stretch of road, skirting the edge of the White Sands missile range in New Mexico. 12 00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:06,000 What the hell was that? 13 00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:10,000 Suddenly he caught a glimpse of something strange in the sky. 14 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:16,000 Whoa! 15 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:27,000 He left the road and set off for the desert following the craft. 16 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:39,000 He caught sight of a shiny object, now landed about 200 yards away. 17 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:47,000 As he looked over he saw two figures in white coveralls, close to what looks like a flying saucer. 18 00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:01,000 Suddenly without warning, the craft took off and headed straight for him. 19 00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:27,000 And as quickly as it had arrived, it disappeared off into the distance at high speed. 20 00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:36,000 This statement by Lonnie Zamora is one of the most intriguing UFO reports on record. 21 00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:39,000 It made headline news at the time. 22 00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:47,000 Everyone acknowledged that Zamora was a first class witness, a police officer, a man not prone to exaggeration. 23 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:54,000 The Zamora case remains one of a handful of unexplained sightings in Project Blue Book. 24 00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:05,000 When investigators arrived at the scene, they found an impression in the soil surrounded by burnt brushwood. 25 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:14,000 Zamora was so distraught that he insisted on seeing a priest before handing in his report. 26 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:20,000 The US Air Force was under pressure to explain what had actually landed. 27 00:04:20,000 --> 00:04:25,000 But there is one man who claims he knows what Lonnie Zamora saw. 28 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:34,000 Duke Gildenburg ran Cold War spy programs out of White Sands missile range and had access to top secret flight logs at the time. 29 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:49,000 That very same day we had a mission scheduled for the surveyor unmanned spacecraft that was going to be attached to a small helicopter 30 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:58,000 and flown all around the range by contractors, sampling, lava and that kind of thing which they might see on the moon. 31 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:08,000 On board was the pilot and then there was an engineer and they were both in white coveralls. 32 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:13,000 So to us that identified it almost perfectly. 33 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:14,000 There's too much of a coincidence. 34 00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:25,000 Two guys in white coveralls that were doing the mission anyway and then the sampler which left a print in the dirt that was identical to what later left on the moon. 35 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:30,000 I'm not at all convinced by Gildenburg's explanation. 36 00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:38,000 Zamora was a trained police officer and I'm sure would have known the difference between a helicopter and a flying saucer. 37 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:49,000 To try and make sense of what Zamora saw we need to go back to the U2 spy plane and to an event that shook the world on May the 1st 1960. 38 00:05:55,000 --> 00:06:02,000 When U2 pilot Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union, Cold War tensions intensified. 39 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:14,000 The wreckage of his spy plane was put on public display in Moscow. 40 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:24,000 This was a huge propaganda coup for Kristjof and it signalled the end of the U2's covert life. 41 00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:36,000 It was understood very early in the U2 program that it wouldn't be able to fly safely over the most denied areas of the Soviet Union forever. 42 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:48,000 Best it was given a few years. In fact it flew operationally for just about four years which was longer than anybody expected before one of the aircraft was shot down. 43 00:06:50,000 --> 00:07:05,000 The CIA launched an effort to produce a more workable aircraft with similar or better performance and one that would be so fast and so high flying that even the best missile technology that anybody could be looking at. 44 00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:09,000 Looking at in those days would have a very hard time hitting it. 45 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:21,000 Richard Bissell was head of the CIA's overflight program between 1956 and 1960 set up to monitor the USSR at the height of the Cold War. 46 00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:29,000 He was the man who was given the job of replacing the U2 and he had a radical idea about how to do it. 47 00:07:30,000 --> 00:07:37,000 We see here that he's urging his technical department to design a new aircraft for reconnaissance missions over Russia. 48 00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:47,000 According to Bissell who had a very good grasp of the technological challenges the optimal shape for that vehicle would be saucer shaped. 49 00:07:52,000 --> 00:07:55,000 The Avrocar which appears for all the world to be a flying disk. 50 00:07:56,000 --> 00:08:09,000 It wasn't just Bissell who had flying saucers on his mind. Just across the border Avro a Canadian based company had recruited talented British aerospace designer John Frost to work on a flying saucer. 51 00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:18,000 Frost was a visionary and under his leadership the company began experimenting with disk shaped craft. 52 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:30,000 Called the Avrocar it was a handful to fly and could barely get off the ground but it caught the eye of the United States Air Force. 53 00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:38,000 They bought all rights to the project and then it simply disappeared. 54 00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:46,000 Nothing more was heard or seen of Avro's saucer designs for over 40 years. 55 00:08:48,000 --> 00:08:51,000 But flying disks did not die with the Avrocar. 56 00:08:53,000 --> 00:09:00,000 Buried in the depths of the US Air Force archives I've discovered some blueprints which reveal something quite fantastic. 57 00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:02,000 A supersonic saucer. 58 00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:07,000 Called the Silverbug it was truly revolutionary. 59 00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:14,000 The plans show in detail a multi jet engine craft that boasted amazing maneuverability and speed. 60 00:09:17,000 --> 00:09:28,000 It's an intriguing thought that this concept may tie in with the work of the German scientists who brought saucer technology to the US at the close of the Second World War. 61 00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:39,000 I believe Silverbug could explain what Lonnie Zamora witnessed in the New Mexico Desert in April 1964. 62 00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:45,000 His description of a silver disk shaped object appears to fit the Silverbug profile. 63 00:09:46,000 --> 00:09:52,000 It's clear that a host of covert technologies were being developed by the Air Force during the 1960s. 64 00:09:53,000 --> 00:10:00,000 Some of the strange UFO sightings might be explained by activities at a secret base here in Nevada. 65 00:10:01,000 --> 00:10:06,000 So secret that according to the Pentagon it still doesn't officially exist. 66 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:12,000 From a defence journalist standpoint it doesn't get any stranger than this. 67 00:10:13,000 --> 00:10:15,000 Just behind me there is Nellis Air Force Base. 68 00:10:16,000 --> 00:10:19,000 Nellis is at the southernmost tip of the Nellis Air Force range. 69 00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:24,000 A closed off area totally barred to the public that's about the size of Switzerland. 70 00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:32,000 A messeling within the Nellis Air Force range is Area 51, the world's most secret air force base. 71 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:41,000 When Richard Bissell of the CIA urged his designers to think out of the box this is where their imaginations ran wild. 72 00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:52,000 It's the testing ground for the US Air Force's most secret technology. 73 00:10:58,000 --> 00:11:04,000 When the U2's covert life ended this is what Bissell's designers came up with. 74 00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:13,000 The Blackbird is the apex of aerospace technology. 75 00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:25,000 When the forerunner of this aircraft first flew the CIA's A-12 in 1962 from Groom Lake otherwise known as Area 51 in Nevada. 76 00:11:26,000 --> 00:11:30,000 Its mission and the aircraft itself was super black. 77 00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:38,000 That is to say it was a super classified aircraft. 78 00:11:38,000 --> 00:11:46,000 It's very easy to imagine how anyone catching a glimpse of this aircraft in 1962 might have mistaken it for a UFO. 79 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:49,000 Everything about this airplane is strange. 80 00:11:50,000 --> 00:12:04,000 It's black, its shape is extraordinary and its speed of course in excess of Mach 3 that's three times the speed of sound would have made it one of the most extraordinary sites that anyone could have seen at that time. 81 00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:13,000 Many Blackbird missions were flown at the height of the Cold War. 82 00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:22,000 The plane flew at over 100,000 feet at the very edge of space. 83 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:30,000 It was so fast that when it over flew the Soviet Union it could simply outrun any missile attack. 84 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:45,000 But it wasn't so much American spy planes that were worrying the Russians. 85 00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:49,000 There was something else in the skies that was causing them alarm. 86 00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:57,000 An incident over the small town of Petrozovodsk would trigger the largest study of UFOs on the face of the earth. 87 00:12:58,000 --> 00:13:01,000 Russia's ex-viles had begun. 88 00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:14,000 The Russian military was also involved in the Soviet invasion. 89 00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:26,000 On September 20, 1977, high over the Russian town of Petrozovodsk, a group of soldiers were on routine maneuvers. 90 00:13:28,000 --> 00:13:33,000 Suddenly a bright star appeared radiating pulsating beams of light. 91 00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:38,000 The object lingered over the town like a huge jellyfish. 92 00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:43,000 After a few minutes it wrapped into a bright half disk and shot off. 93 00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:54,000 News of the event reached the Kremlin. 94 00:13:55,000 --> 00:14:01,000 And Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB, gave an extraordinary order. 95 00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:07,000 That the entire Soviet army should watch the skies for unidentified flying objects. 96 00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:14,000 I'm in Russia on my way to meet the two men, Colonel Boris Sokolov and Dr. Yuliy Platov, 97 00:14:15,000 --> 00:14:19,000 who were ordered by Andropov to coordinate the whole operation. 98 00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:25,000 Colonel Sokolov, next. 99 00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:30,000 I'm in Russia on my way to meet the two men, Colonel Boris Sokolov and Dr. Yuliy Platov, 100 00:14:31,000 --> 00:14:35,000 who were ordered by Andropov to coordinate the whole operation. 101 00:14:38,000 --> 00:14:39,000 Yuri. 102 00:14:53,000 --> 00:14:57,000 At that time the army had a total of 7.5 million serving personnel, 103 00:14:58,000 --> 00:15:03,000 stationed across the whole of the Soviet Union, which comprised the sixth of the world land mass. 104 00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:07,000 Their army controlled the monitoring of these abnormal events. 105 00:15:10,000 --> 00:15:12,000 In the beginning these reports were numerous. 106 00:15:13,000 --> 00:15:18,000 Literally every week there was someone who had seen a dish landing with somebody coming out of it. 107 00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:25,000 Even when a sighting was not considered sensitive, it was still stamped top secret. 108 00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:37,000 The observations continued every night for 13 years. 109 00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:44,000 No other nation has conducted such a long and thorough research program into unidentified flying objects. 110 00:15:48,000 --> 00:15:52,000 But as Sokolov tells me, the evidence was inconclusive. 111 00:15:53,000 --> 00:16:04,000 I would like to say that it is absolutely certain that in those 13 years there was not a single report of anybody's contact with aliens. 112 00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:14,000 Most of these sightings, which were taken by observers and thought to be something abnormal, 113 00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:21,000 were in fact, as our researchers show, connected to technical experiments by our own military. 114 00:16:23,000 --> 00:16:30,000 And as Dr. Platov explains, even the Petrozovodsk incident, which led to Andropov's UFO surveillance operation, 115 00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:36,000 was nothing more than a secret missile launch. 116 00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:47,000 That the strange lights and jellyfish shaped object was in reality the burning rocket engine and its exhaust plume. 117 00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:56,000 But not every sighting could be so easily dismissed. 118 00:17:01,000 --> 00:17:09,000 Even though we could explain some of these sightings, there were many unexplained events which caused scientists to scratch their heads 119 00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:13,000 and which still remain unanswered today. 120 00:17:14,000 --> 00:17:23,000 For some, these inexplicable sightings fueled concerns that the United States military was developing a radical piece of aerospace technology, 121 00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:31,000 something that behaved and looked like a UFO that could fly undetected into Russian airspace. 122 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:50,000 And the Russian fears were well founded. This is stealth, a quantum leap in aerospace technology. 123 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:55,000 The Americans had built an invisible plane. 124 00:17:56,000 --> 00:17:59,000 The Russian fear was well-founded. 125 00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:03,000 The Russian fear was well-founded. 126 00:18:04,000 --> 00:18:08,000 This is stealth, a quantum leap in aerospace technology. 127 00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:12,000 The Americans had built an invisible plane. 128 00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:21,000 If you took one or two looks at that airplane and you saw how strange the shape was, 129 00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:29,000 it wouldn't take you very long to figure out that they were aiming at a very, very low level of radar cross-section. 130 00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:40,000 What was done with the first real stealth program was to produce something that had the radar signature over a small shotgun pellet, 131 00:18:41,000 --> 00:18:44,000 or perhaps maybe a small bird. 132 00:18:50,000 --> 00:18:58,000 My view is that it was advantageous for the Americans to keep up this kind of hype regarding UFOs. 133 00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:08,000 We guessed it was policy to conduct a campaign of misinformation, as far as the general public was concerned. 134 00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:17,000 Stealth was an enormous breakthrough and nobody out in the wider world really believed it was possible. 135 00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:20,000 Nobody could even imagine that it was possible for them. 136 00:19:20,000 --> 00:19:34,000 The Americans had won the technological race. Stealth was a decisive instrument in the Cold War. 137 00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:45,000 Secrecy was vital and the US were able to hide the existence of stealth from Soviet surveillance for more than ten years between 1977 and 1988. 138 00:19:51,000 --> 00:20:01,000 But stealth couldn't begin to explain the series of alleged alien encounters which were about to shock the American Southwest. 139 00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:07,000 The UFO story had come to ground in a very sinister fashion. 140 00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:14,000 This is New Mexico, an area that has witnessed UFO sightings since the 1940s. 141 00:20:15,000 --> 00:20:24,000 But in the early 70s a series of horrific events took these sightings to another level when aliens appeared to be attacking cattle. 142 00:20:24,000 --> 00:20:31,000 Ranchers began to find livestock with terrible injuries lying dead on their grazing plains. 143 00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:41,000 The weapon had been partially removed. The eyes were bulging out. I was horrified at the thought of what could do this in broad daylight. 144 00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:54,000 I really did believe something strange was going on. We had one up north where we believed the animal was paralyzed and was alive when it was being mutilated. 145 00:20:55,000 --> 00:21:01,000 I'm on my way to meet Edmund Gomez, a cattle rancher from Dulce, California. 146 00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:08,000 A town close to Los Alamos where the atomic bomb was developed. 147 00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:19,000 We met up and headed out to a desolate corner of his ranch. 148 00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:25,000 We were able to find the animal. 149 00:21:25,000 --> 00:21:30,000 Where are we going? Where are you taking me to? 150 00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:38,000 I'm taking you to our animal graveyard. Normally we would bury carcasses that would die from disease or from natural causes. 151 00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:46,000 But during the cattle mutilation that we had, we never buried any of the animals so in case we ever needed any more. 152 00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:51,000 The mutilation themselves took place over quite a time period, didn't it? 153 00:21:52,000 --> 00:21:57,000 Yes, on our ranchers from 1976 through 1982 approximately. 154 00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:05,000 When you found a mutilated cow, typically what kind of wounds would you find on the animal? 155 00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:13,000 The rectum had been coured out. The lower lip had been removed and the reproductive tract had also been removed. 156 00:22:14,000 --> 00:22:21,000 The organs that were removed were removed precisely without spilling of any blood and it was very, very neatly done. 157 00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:27,000 The rectum had been removed and the organ had been removed. 158 00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:34,000 Many of the ranchers believed the cattle mutilations were the result of UFOs, that aliens were dissecting the animals for experimentation. 159 00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:44,000 Usually when you find an animal that dies of disease or natural causes, the scavengers will attack the animal and attack the flesh. 160 00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:50,000 The animals that were dissected were not the animals that were dissected. 161 00:22:50,000 --> 00:22:57,000 But for Gomez, there were other clues. 162 00:22:58,000 --> 00:23:06,000 We saw this light kind of flying over our pastures and all of a sudden it kind of just came to a standstill. 163 00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:11,000 It looked like it was saucer shaped. 164 00:23:11,000 --> 00:23:18,000 But it had two dicks and had two sets of lights on it flashing one on top and one down towards the bottom. 165 00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:24,000 When you look at them, you think, well, gosh, that looks like the typical flying saucer. 166 00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:32,000 When all of a sudden the lights inside the cockpit of this vehicle went on, and when the lights went on, I could see the property of the car. 167 00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:39,000 And as Gomez tells me, he has his own theories about the fate of the targeted animals. 168 00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:47,000 They would put ropes or chains around the legs of the animal and lift them up and haul them off somewhere. 169 00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:53,000 Do their thing, come back, and then they would just go and get the animals. 170 00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:57,000 And why dump the cow, leave the carcass here? 171 00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:03,000 We felt that whoever was doing this did it and brought it back to the carcass. 172 00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:10,000 We felt that the carcass was going to be a little bit more dangerous than it was. 173 00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:16,000 We felt that the carcass was going to be a little bit more dangerous than it was. 174 00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:26,000 We felt that whoever was doing this did it and brought it back and said, we're doing this and there's nothing you can do about it. 175 00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:31,000 There were a lot of consistencies with the way that they were harvesting these animals. 176 00:24:34,000 --> 00:24:38,000 For Edmund Gomez, there are many unanswered questions. 177 00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:47,000 He wants the cattle mutilations, which put him and his family out of the ranching business, reinvestigated. 178 00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:04,000 Well, I think Gomez's hunch that this was some sort of covert testing activity was bang on the money. 179 00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:19,000 The way the cows were mutilated from the organs that were removed from the cows, it seems very clear that this was some kind of covert testing, covert monitoring program of some kind of contamination in that region. 180 00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:32,000 It also seems very clear that someone is trying to put in some kind of linkage between this mutilation activity and UFOs, trying to dress helicopters up, for instance, 181 00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:43,000 to make them look like UFOs in an area where people are very superstitious, very fearful of things they don't understand. 182 00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:57,000 So it's clear to me that some kind of disinformation campaign is going on, but the reality is whatever was going on up there has nothing to do with extraterrestrials or UFOs. 183 00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:13,000 In the alien encounters I have examined so far, military and defence technologies seem to be at the heart of what's going on. 184 00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:29,000 But parallel to these stories are other reports, reports of more direct encounters between aliens and humans, which seem to be of a wholly different order. 185 00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:37,000 These are the chilling first-hand accounts of alien abduction. 186 00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:53,000 The most challenging aspect of the UFO phenomenon is alien abduction. 187 00:26:54,000 --> 00:27:00,000 Throughout the 80s and 90s stories of abduction swept across the US. 188 00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:08,000 Over 2 million Americans claimed to have been taken by aliens. 189 00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:13,000 These stories followed a pattern. 190 00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:22,000 Typically abductties claimed they had been taken in their sleep to an alien craft, where they were subjected to invasive surgery. 191 00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:33,000 Samples were taken, probes were implanted. Some victims reported they had been abducted not just once, but many times. 192 00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:49,000 I've come to meet Travis Walton. He was the first alien abductty of this epidemic, and his story, which was widely reported, had a powerful effect on the public imagination. 193 00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:56,000 I caught up with him near the Apache Sickreeves Forest in Arizona, where the whole incident unfolded. 194 00:27:57,000 --> 00:28:04,000 Well, there was a group of seven of us, man. We were working up in the mountains in the woods. 195 00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:06,000 We had a tree cutting contract. 196 00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:08,000 We had a tree cutting contract. 197 00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:10,000 We had a tree cutting contract. 198 00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:17,000 Well, there was a group of seven of us, man. We were working up in the mountains in the woods. 199 00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:20,000 We had a tree cutting contract up there. 200 00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:24,000 We just finished a long, hard day's work, and we were headed home. 201 00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:29,000 We'd worked late that night, so it was starting to get dark. 202 00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:36,000 As we were driving down this rough track there, we saw light coming through the trees. 203 00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:39,000 What the hell is that? 204 00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:48,000 Travis, man! What the hell are you doing? Come back! Travis! 205 00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:57,000 Back then, you know, I was kind of a wild sort of a guy. You know, I was showing off, you know. It was stupid. 206 00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:09,000 Closer I got, you know, and it wasn't going anywhere, and I was, you know, thinking about how foolish it was for me to be doing this, 207 00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:16,000 but I was kind of showing off for the crew a little bit, and they were getting pretty excited and yelling at me to get back in the truck. 208 00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:28,000 When I got up to it, and I was standing there looking up at it, the sound suddenly got louder and it started to move, 209 00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:32,000 and it was making this sort of a rocking motion. 210 00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:37,000 Right at that instant, something hit me. 211 00:29:46,000 --> 00:30:01,000 The next thing I knew, I was regaining consciousness, but I was in a lot of pain. 212 00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:12,000 I saw these forms over me, and when I finally got into the focus, I could see this creature looking at me, and I just flipped out. 213 00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:20,000 I looked around, there were three of them. The one that was closest to me, I tried to hit him, I could hardly move, 214 00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:27,000 and my arm felt real heavy and I was weak. Somehow got the strength to get off the table. 215 00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:38,000 Several nights later, Travis Walton reappeared, dazed and confused. 216 00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:46,000 I didn't know how much time had gone by. Something in the conversation made that apparent to me. 217 00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:52,000 He said, hey, feel your face, and I felt, and I had this week's growth of beard, and I was just totally shocked by that. 218 00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:54,000 I said, you've been gone five days. 219 00:30:57,000 --> 00:31:03,000 I had enough trouble just dealing with the reality of this incredible thing that had happened to me. 220 00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:14,000 It was just so hard to explain what I'd been through, and there was nobody to relate to, and 29 years ago, there was nobody to turn to, and I was just on my own. 221 00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:30,000 Travis's story seems incredible, but it's only one of many such tales. Does the weight of evidence add up to a believable pattern of abduction? 222 00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:37,000 The story is about a man who was a Christian. 223 00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:47,000 Anthropologist Charles Siegler has studied many abductee testimonies. 224 00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:58,000 These people were not mentally impaired. Many of them were, in fact, highly trained. They believed these things. 225 00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:13,000 We gave them the same kind of satisfaction that religion gives other people. The notion that we're not alone, that there is some entity that's looking after us, that there's a better place waiting for us when we die. 226 00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:23,000 The chief skeptic of all, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who investigated UFOs for the U.S. military, also became a believer. 227 00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:37,000 There were just too many cases that baffled him during his military work. It was Hynek's interviews and expertise that formed the basis of the 1977 film Close Encounters, directed by Steven Spielberg. 228 00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:52,000 I think that we're all interested in having the re-enchantment of the universe. We want to feel that there are transcendent things out there that we're not aware of and that bode good for the human race somehow. 229 00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:57,000 I think this is just a natural human feeling. 230 00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:13,000 But what really fascinates me as a defense journalist is that you are as likely to find believers in UFOs among the higher reaches of the aerospace industry as you are in Hollywood. 231 00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:27,000 This is a report into future technology commissioned in 1968 by MacDonald Douglas, which I received for a contact with connections to the company. 232 00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:38,000 It takes the existence of UFOs seriously. It recommends using UFOs and copying their design in order to make the next quantum leap into aerospace technology. 233 00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:53,000 Some UFOs may be extraterrestrial vehicles. They certainly have not been proven otherwise. 234 00:33:54,000 --> 00:34:04,000 The existence of extraterrestrial vehicles indicates vehicles can be built, which would have capabilities quite useful to MacDonald Douglas Corporation. 235 00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:11,000 The report even suggested interviewing contactees to gather data. 236 00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:23,000 And if they were thinking that over 25 years ago, what advances might be on the horizon today? 237 00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:39,000 What I've learnt during this journey is that UFOs have had a powerful impact on our real world activities for more than 60 years. 238 00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:43,000 And they continue to inspire us today. 239 00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:52,000 I'm here in Seattle to meet someone who's built a device in the basement of his garage, indeed is flying it there. 240 00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:58,000 That he and others claim is able to do so by defying our current understanding of physics. 241 00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:09,000 As unlikely as it sounds, I'm wondering whether what I'm about to witness may just be our first small step towards the stars. 242 00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:24,000 This strange device is made of balsa wood and glue and covered in a layer of aluminium foil. 243 00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:42,000 It's connected to the mains electricity and is tethered to a device that steps up the power to over 50,000 volts. 244 00:35:45,000 --> 00:35:52,000 As the lifter's inventor Tim Ventura winds up the mains, the airframe buzzes with electrical activity. 245 00:35:54,000 --> 00:36:07,000 Tim, tell me why is this lifter demonstrating this levitation effect? 246 00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:13,000 There's an interaction that occurs between the coronal wire which runs around the top and the foil underneath. 247 00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:20,000 There's a 3-4cm air gap in between there and literally a high voltage electric field occurring. 248 00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:24,000 There's been some controversy, is this an ion wind effect? 249 00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:30,000 Is it the high voltage literally taking air molecules with it and creating an upward thrust or is it something more? 250 00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:40,000 Nobody knows for sure how the lifter flies, but one popular theory is that high voltage current flows between the wires, 251 00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:46,000 suspended on the top of the craft, through the air, down to the aluminium foil wrapped around the frame. 252 00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:58,000 The current literally drags air molecules down with it, creating a downforce called an ion wind which provides the thrust needed to lift the airframe skywards. 253 00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:08,000 This technology, not just the lifter but this whole scope of technologies, is almost like looking at the internal combustion engine back in the 1800s. 254 00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:11,000 We're trying to take it and say, look, these are real technologies. 255 00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:17,000 They have the same flaws that any other technology does, but hopefully they can do things that other technologies can't. 256 00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:23,000 So do you think what we're watching here could be the modest beginnings of a whole new industry? 257 00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:31,000 I think the lifter is literally sort of like the tricycle and it may not end up becoming the technology that builds the starships of tomorrow, 258 00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:38,000 but it at least shows us that given the right circumstances, given the right power, it will work. 259 00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:47,000 So what is the truth about UFOs? 260 00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:53,000 To me, the story of successive attempts to develop radically new forms of flight, 261 00:37:53,000 --> 00:38:01,000 conducted under the strictest secrecy, is inextricably bound up with our relationship with UFOs over the last 60 years. 262 00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:09,000 Whether it was Allied pilots buzzed by strange balls of fire in 1942 or the Roswell incident five years later, 263 00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:20,000 there is a strong case to be made that secret military technology offers a convincing explanation for many UFO stories. 264 00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:33,000 For me, what is so striking about Roswell is that it was the first good example of an officially sanctioned UFO disinformation exercise. 265 00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:41,000 It showed the CIA that UFOs could provide perfect cover for their Cold War activities. 266 00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:50,000 It didn't take much for the CIA to spin the extraterrestrial story into the hearts and minds of the American public. 267 00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:59,000 And once it was there, all manner of experimental technology could, if it was spotted, be put down to the UFO phenomenon. 268 00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:03,000 But there are some cases I just can't explain. 269 00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:16,000 The sightings of UFOs over Capitol Hill in 1952 remain baffling, 270 00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:23,000 and navigator Tom Hanley's aerial encounter is testimony to the possibility we are not alone. 271 00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:31,000 What is certain is that real-world UFOs, the man-made ones, continue to develop. 272 00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:40,000 In 2003, a series of sonic beams were heard exploding across California and Nevada. 273 00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:48,000 Something was in the sky that could be heard and felt, but not seen. 274 00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:55,000 Some informed observers, and I'm one of them, believe it was an aircraft traveling at several thousand miles per hour. 275 00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:59,000 A secret project known as Aurora. 276 00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:03,000 There is no trace of Aurora's physical existence. 277 00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:07,000 No evidence of government spending on its development or deployment. 278 00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:12,000 But there are tantalizing images that point to its existence. 279 00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:15,000 Pictures, for example, like this one. 280 00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:23,000 It shows a doughnut-shaped exhaust pattern, a sign perhaps that Aurora makes use of something called a pulsed air. 281 00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:31,000 And it delivers a hell of a punch, easily enough power to drive an aircraft to six times the speed of sound. 282 00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:35,000 But perhaps the most intriguing of these images. 283 00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:41,000 This is a weather satellite image that shows a very interesting contrail originating out of Area 51 in Nevada 284 00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:46,000 and moving all the way across the United States, out over the Atlantic, 285 00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:50,000 on a cross-border plane, and on a cross-border plane. 286 00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:54,000 It's moving in excess of 8,000 miles an hour. 287 00:40:54,000 --> 00:41:02,000 If it is the contrail of a high-altitude hypersonic aircraft, in my book it's the best evidence yet that Aurora is real. 288 00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:11,000 And Aurora's flights will probably give birth to a new aircraft. 289 00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:16,000 And Aurora's flights will probably give birth to a new wave of UFO sightings. 290 00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:24,000 Because whether aliens exist or not, many of us want to believe in them. 291 00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:34,000 Perhaps the only way we will ever find out for sure is if we make the leap into deep space ourselves. 292 00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:38,000 That day may come, sooner than we expect. 293 00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:42,140 The original em acept And Pak James 294 00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:10,180 and lost to legends. 295 00:42:10,180 --> 00:42:14,040 Now teams of investigators use cutting edge technology 296 00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:16,920 and reveal the hidden secrets to the most famous 297 00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:19,300 of all lost worlds. 298 00:42:19,300 --> 00:42:22,960 Atlantis, next only on the History Channel.