All language subtitles for On.The.Trail.of.UFOs.S01E02.The.Changing.Face.1080p.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

(Eerie resonating)

(Rapid beeping)

- Funny thing about ufos,
they're always changing

while perpetually
remaining the same.

The earliest documented
reports of strange

objects in the sky essentially
defined them similarly

to early descriptions
of flying saucers.

In the 1600s, reports
of strange lights

off the coast of the Americas

defined some of the earliest
known types of ufo sightings,

while in the 1700s settlers
in the new england areas

recalled descriptions of
hovering orbs in the skies

above the waterways
around Boston.

Today, it's not just flying
saucers or lights in the sky

that experiencers encounter.

Cigar shaped craft,
tic tacs from space,

and yes, the black triangles.

Triangular shaped craft
began gaining notoriety

during the 1980s when
a wave of sightings

swept across the Hudson valley.

But it wasn't until 1997
that the national media

began focusing on them.

- My name is lynne d. Kitei, md.

I am a medical doctor.

Had no interest or
knowledge in this topic at all

till what would become
the most historic,

most documented, and most
important mass anomalous

aerial sighting in modern
history if not all history

called the Phoenix lights.

My husband and I are
physicians and healthy skeptics.

One must be when
you're a physician.

We had a very close
sighting to our home.

We live mountainside
in paradise valley

pretty high on the mountain.

Have a panoramic
view of the city skyline

so we know what planes
look like, and helicopters,

and street lights and so forth.

These phenomena are
very different than anything

we'd ever seen before.

In fact, my husband called
me to one wall of our bedroom

is a window so we see
whatever pops up out there.

He noticed that there
were three Amber orbs

a little below over very
treacherous desert landscape.

We live in a gated community
nestled in the mountains

so there is no way that it
could have been military.

Here these three orbs
in a period formation,

one on top and two underneath,
were just hovering there.

Most people that have
these anomalous experiences

don't move, they're in awe.

I wanted to take
everything in mentally.

The size, the shape, the color.

These orbs were about
three to six feet each,

depending on how
close they were.

They were actually oval
shaped, like an egg on its side

or like what Navy
pilots are now describing

as tic tac shape.

It was a uniform
Amber color throughout

and they didn't glare at all.

Every other light
out there glared.

My husband calls me back,
he says, "get over here quick,

"one of them is disappearing."

And as we both watched in awe

the top orb, without budging
from the other two underneath,

started to implode, shrink,
almost like a dimmer switch.

Getting smaller, and
smaller, and smaller.

- Dr. Kitei's sighting
would be the first of three

that culminated with the
mass sighting on march 13th

of what would
become widely known

as the Phoenix lights incident.

Between 1995 and 1997
lynne would begin studying

the ufo subject and
paid closer attention

to the sky above
her desert home.

Lynne's next sighting
would occur in January 1997,

two months prior to
the Phoenix anomaly.

But what she witnessed that
night bears close similarity

to the craft that would
make its way overhead

in march later that same year.

- I was lying in bed
and I happened to notice

three huge Amber orbs,
but at a distance far away.

I thought, "wait a
minute, they're Amber,

"they're in a line formation
equidistant from each other,

"they're hovering for
moments, minutes."

Which is ironic,
because two months later

thousands of people who saw
the Phoenix lights phenomena

on march 13th, 1997 would
describe them as five lights

in a v formation
with two trailing.

But this was two months before.

I watched as each one imploded.

They seemed to
shrink, from right to left,

and they were gone.

(Bugs chirping) (Owl hooting)

(Static crackling)
(Unsettling music)

(Fast paced unsettling music)

(Static crackling)

- Now, triangles and tic
tacs are weird enough,

but the history of
unidentified objects in the us

goes back further than
most people realize.

In researching the ufo subject

I found a string of
reports of unidentified craft

which hovered over major
cities and small towns alike,

seemingly wanting to be seen.

Sound familiar?

No, this wasn't
the Phoenix lights

or any number of other modern
day mass sighting events,

it was the great airship waves,

and they occurred
well over a century ago.

To start to understand
the full scope

of what is being
seen overhead today

it's almost a necessity
to take a look back

at what people were
seeing in the past.

To look back through
American history

there's probably no better
place to start than new england,

and there's fewer schooled
in the history of strange objects

in the sky than Linda Zimmerman.

Linda is a researcher and
author located in upstate New York

who has written a
number of books on ufos,

particularly of sighting
and encounters

in the Hudson valley area.

Linda's knowledge
of the ufo subject

comes from a lifelong
interest in the phenomena

and a decade's worth of
experience interviewing witnesses.

- The oldest sight tests
I'm aware of are probably

in the 1700s colonial accounts

of strange objects in the sky.

Certainly by the
1800s there were a lot.

The biggest, earliest wave
that I've been able to find

was 1908-1909, the mysterious
airships as they called them.

They weren't called ufos yet.

But these were enormous
craft that could hover,

they could fly at extremely
high rate of speed,

and carried one to three
extremely bright spotlights.

There simply were no craft
that we mere mortals had

at that point that had
those flight characteristics.

Didn't exist.

- These cases
are just incredible.

I remember reading
about them years ago.

They dubbed them airships,

so and the 1890s there
was this whole outbreak

of sighting and encounters
that people were having

with airships, they didn't
know what else to call them.

They actually looked
like, for me it evokes

sort of a steampunk version
of a zeppelin or something

because you read these
cases and these people

are talking about
these massive shifts.

Sometimes with different
kinds of gears and fins

and things like that on them.

They see these crafts,
sometimes they land,

sometimes they
encounter the occupants.

- A lot of them were
described as balloons

or zephyrs, or
that sort of thing.

Although, (mumbles) Of this
type were not very popular,

especially not here
in the United States.

There was a little bit
of research into that,

but most of that was
going on in Europe.

- In the area where I live
in southern Hudson valley

there were sightings
many, many nights.

Farmers would be out
commenting on these enormous

bright lights like as if they
were searching for something.

Worcester, Massachusetts
in Christmas of 1909

tens of thousands
of people were just

spilling out of their
homes and businesses

to see the mysterious
airships that sometimes

would circle overhead
for hours and hours.

- You get these farmers and
people living in rural areas

who really just don't
know what to think.

All of a sudden
there's this flying craft.

You can imagine what that
was like in the late 1800s,

well before
airplanes and so forth.

Suddenly there are
these huge ships

that are coming
down from somewhere.

- One night there
was a sighting,

it went as far from
New York City to Boston

in a single night,
witnesses all along the way.

These were just
long sustained flights.

- These are some of the
earliest cases that we get,

this whole rash of airship
sightings and encounter

are sort of a subset of
the identifications of ufos.

- When you see these stunning
reports basically from here

to Canada and out to the
midwest over a two year period,

how else do you explain that?

- When were seeing
that sort of thing

here in the United States,

I think that really was
a genuine mystery.

- When we get into later
periods of course descriptions get

somewhat more consistent,
but only to a degree.

(Rapid beeping) (Eerie music)

- Dean merchant is something
of a ufological historian.

He's based in New
Hampshire, not far from the site

of one of the more famous
encounter stories near exeter.

It's apparent that
his love of the subject

has placed him in a unique
position as a gatekeeper

for information that
others might otherwise

let slip through the cracks.

- Kenneth adleman was a
really cool part of the ufo history.

He was a pilot himself.

He saw (mumbles)
Craft in the (mumbles).

He saw the craft
and he chased after it.

He got a very good look at it

and he knew this was something

that was not
basically of this world.

Came back and reported
them and he talked about them.

Tried to describe how
they acted and he said,

"if you could picture a
saucer skipping on the water."

And that kind of was coined.

But actually, a lot of them
seen are in disc shapes.

Even more of the wing,
like the b-2 stealth bomber

which interests me.

They had that kind of flying
wing shape that he saw.

At that time this became
of great interest to the press.

The movie genre was
going to be starting soon.

All of this stuff
is milling around.

Post world war ii, about
to hit the early '50s,

so there's a lot of
interest with the media.

(Rapid beeping)

- Stan Gordon has been
taking reports of ufos

in the state of Pennsylvania
since the 1960s.

In that time, he's become
known as the got to source

of information relating
to anomalous phenomena

on the western
edge of the state,

and he's authored multiple books

on a number of strange subjects.

He's also spent decades
researching a purported crash

of one of america's many
supposed crashed unknown objects

near the village of kecksburg,

which makes him a
very valuable resource

when it comes to
identifying trends,

if they exist, in
craft descriptions.

- Well, of course, going
back many, many years

and you still get
some of these reports.

You had your typical big disc,

and I can tell you
during the 1960s

there were many, many
incidents here in Pennsylvania

of very large structured
metallic objects.

Big discs, many
with portholes in it,

very low to the ground.

There's a common accepted
idea of the flying saucer

that literally looks like
maybe a pair of plates

or a saucer if you turned
it upside down that's flying.

A lot of people were
reporting those types of crafts.

And there were
landing reports, in fact,

there was one happened only
miles from where we're sitting

years ago, probably
one of my favorite stories.

Unfortunately, both
witnesses are now deceased.

They were two brothers.

It was February in 1968.

The older brother gets
married in February of '68

and he and his new wife,
they ran a small farmhouse

not far from here.

One afternoon,
look out the window,

about 50 feet off the ground

there's this huge metallic
dome shaped object

with portholes and like a
catwalk hovering right there.

He can't believe
what he's seeing.

He steps outside,
he calls his wife,

and as they're
looking at this thing

these small little
humanoid creatures

come out on the catwalk,
communicating with each other,

and they look directly at them.

It's starting to snow.

He goes back in the house,

he calls his brother in
greensburg who believed in this.

He and his wife come out.

When they get
there it's still there,

but it's about 100
feet off the ground.

Starting to snow pretty good.

As they watch this thing
suddenly it shoots off

across the sky into the heavens.

Looks like a red star crossing
the sky and disappears.

They called the local
airport and they said,

"you're one of many
people calling in

"to report the same thing."

- There would be
variations on them.

Sometimes they would
have windows along the sides.

Sometimes a window
on the top or a dome.

- 1930s we started
getting circular craft,

your classic flying saucers.

Certainly that was the
model of choice in the '40s

and '50s and early '60s.

- But then we
have all these other

variations of these ships.

The cigar shape is another
one that was really reported

quite often initially,

and that was this idea
that it was a larger craft,

going back to that
balloon type of shape

or zeppelin type of
shape, but it's more of a

metallic looking cigar shape.

- We have many reports
for years and years

of the big metallic
cigar shaped object,

including as we're
filming in the last week

some very detailed
sightings up in Cambria county

where something like
this was being seen

by independent observes 100
feet, 200 feet off the ground.

Very close range
reports coming in.

- Do you notice, and I
don't know if this is just me,

do you notice a weird
correlation between

ufo descriptions

and the era in which they're
taking place technologically?

- So there are
phases that go on.

The typical flying saucer,
the round disc shaped object

that we saw so much
in the '50s seemed to be

more something that was
happening during that era

and we haven't seen
so much since then.

So there are trends that
seem to happen here and there.

- Gee whiz.

(Explosion booming)

- In the midst of that
we also had craft that

resembled a little bit
closer to the bomber,

the stealth bomber.

- Then the triangles.

The triangles, vs, and
boomerangs of the 1980s.

The signature events
of the waves of the 1980s

were triangular shaped craft

that almost always
were described

as the size of a football field

would descend
down to treetop level.

I had people tell me
they could have hit it

with a baseball, a
rock, a tennis ball,

that's how close these were.

- Larger craft that were
reported, for instance,

in the Phoenix
lights, these massive,

hesitate to use the word
almost, but motherships

as some people dubbed them.

- Absolutely silent.

Most people said
eerily quiet, dead silent.

One witness said it
was like a city of lights.

Hundreds and hundreds
of multicolor lights.

- Triangles were something new.

That wasn't
something as abundant

as it has been more recently,

although these triangle
sightings have been going on

for quite some time,

but it just seems like more.

(Whooshing)

- Again, the ability
to hover in place

for extremely long
periods of time

and then shoot off
in the blink of an eye.

There was one man that
impressed me in particular,

Mike hartnit.

He actually became one of
the highest ranking members

of the New York
City fire department.

This was not a
skittish man at all

and he had one of
these massive triangles

move very, very
slowly over his house.

Being one of New York's bravest,

he got a very bright like
million candle power light

and he flashed it at this object

and in response all
of its lights dimmed

and then came back on
in direct response to him.

(Rapid beeping)

- Shawn Kevin Jason witnessed
a black triangle for himself

on a desert road
somewhere between

Las Vegas and Rachel, Nevada.

Shawn has spent the
time following his sighting

further exploring the subject

and fully admits he hopes
to have another encounter.

What Shawn witnessed
though is distinctly different

from the Phoenix
lights phenomena

or the typical triangular
shaped ufo craft descriptions,

and his theories as to
what was piloting the craft

make his sighting stand out.

- It was a slow night.

Business was slow.

Jumped on the highway
heading out of town

until I hit the apex exit.

Got off at apex
where you head on 93,

highway 93 heading
towards area 51.

Right when I'm getting
to the end of that turn

off in the distance
I see these lights.

By this time it was
right around 10 o'clock.

I see lights off
ahead and I think,

"okay, there's another
car heading my way."

Didn't think anything of it
at first and continued driving.

I was a little concerned
because this was a time

before cellphones,
that sort of thing,

so if someone's in trouble
am I gonna stop to help them?

So I'm driving a little
ways thinking about this

when it dawned on me that
the lights were not on the road,

they were hovering
over the road,

because I can see
the lights over the road

and then I can see
the illuminated road

underneath these lights.

So I had a pair of
binoculars with me

and I decided to try to
get a view of the craft

through my binoculars
as I'm driving.

I'm trying to drive while i'm
using them at the same time.

I can definitely see the
lights better with the binoculars

and tell something for
sure is over the road.

I had tossed the
binoculars in my backseat

and decided to just floor it.

Push the car as fast
as I could to get there

before this craft leaves.

It didn't take long at
all before I found myself

pulling up underneath the
craft and parking my car.

There's lights in a
delta formation like this

and it's juts a
pitch black craft.

Perfect equilateral
black triangle.

It was hovering rightly
around 20 feet over the road.

Completely silent,
making no noise at all.

The craft was actually
darker than the sky behind it.

I'm sitting there and just
dumbfounded, in awe.

At one point I decided
to pinch my arm

just as am I really awake?

Is this really happening?

And I had done so so hard

that I wanted to draw
blood from my arm.

I'm thinking if I can
grab my binoculars

I might be able to make
out any logo or identification.

I had thrown them
in the back seat,

so I turn around,
see them right away,

they were lying on the floor
behind the passenger seat,

grabbed them, turned back
around and the craft is gone.

I'm thinking at this
point it's totally gone,

I'm not gonna see it again.

So I start scanning the horizon,

I catch it again to my
seven o'clock position.

It actually got a good ways
down the valley from me

in just that short period time.

Like I said, it was flying to
the seven o'clock position

and then it made a right
heading basically north

towards the mountains.

It was just a
bizarre thing to see

as this thing slowly crept
up the side in the mountain

and you see it hit the top

and then it just drops
down the other side of it.

(Electronic music)

- So today we know that
a number of early sightings

of triangular shapes
craft might be written off

as stealth bombers
undergoing testing,

particularly in the
western part of the country.

It doesn't account, however,

for the large number of
sightings in recent years

and certainly can't account
for the sightings of craft

that seem to be city sized.

Still, more recently the
face of the phenomena

continues to change.

This is evidenced in the
abbreviation used by many

within the research community,

changing from ufo for
unidentified flying object

to uap for unidentified
aerial phenomena.

Tic tacs and craft
referred to as gimbles

are being seen in the skies,
and further along we come

the more obvious it is
that we're leaving behind

the days of only reports of
the classic flying saucers.

But, like the old adage goes,

the more things change
the more they stay the same.

- So you've got all
these different reports

from so many different people.

Just like the sighting last
week up in Cambria county,

I got the first report that
evening from a witness

who saw this thing very
low, very foggy area,

big solid cigar shaped object.

But he said the entire object
was glowing and luminous.

Not separate windows, it
was completely luminous.

He said it would suddenly
fade out and disappear,

reappear again, fade out, and
then disappear and it's gone.

This guy very
familiar with aircraft.

- When I was talking about
these military encounters

typically what they're
encountering is an orb of light,

some kind of bright round
or elliptical shapes object.

That's been going on for years.

- The most typical craft
that have been reported

to me personally have
been mostly triangular

or mostly lights,
just lights in the sky,

whether it's orbs or just
unnatural formations of lights.

That seems to be
where we are right now

in terms of the amount
of reports coming in.

A lot of people
think that ufo reports

have dwindled a lot in
the past decade or so.

I don't know what that
is, what that represents,

but there seems to be a decrease

in the amount of
ufos being reported.

The ones being reported
are mostly lights in the sky

I would say.

- In the 1800s it was
balloons and wooden ships

and that sort of thing.

In the '40s and '50s, especially
once we started building

our jets, they were
typically shiny silver craft

when the f-117 came around
and the b-2 stealth bomber

now we're getting into
black triangular designs.

But as curious that the
dimensions, the shape, the color

of these craft often mirror

where our aviation
is at the time.

- What's become more
apparent in recent years

is the bleeding
together of various

"craft shapes and sizes."

Small craft are
seen gaining mass

while large craft
dwindle to small lights

that flitter away
in the night sky

like ashes from a dying fire.

All of this points
to just one reason

why many consider the
Phoenix lights event of 1997

one of the most fascinating
cases in recent memory.

On march 13, 1997 between
the hours of 7:30 and 10:30 pm

thousands of people
across the city of Phoenix

and the surrounding area
witnessed a series of lights

in a v formation floating
across the night sky.

The event encompassed
a number of descriptives

regarding uaps that helps
illustrate just how varied

these strange things
people are seeing can be.

- In 1997 there was an incident

called the Phoenix
lights incident.

It's become probably one
of the most famous cases

in recent ufo history.

It involved a large
number of people

obviously in the Phoenix
area who reported seeing

a massive craft moving
through the sky completely silent.

- Many people called.

Most people called between
8:00 and 10:00 that night

because most people
were outside looking up

at the hale-bopp
comet at that time.

But the mass sighting of
anomalous aerial phenomena

were not only
appearing in Arizona,

but starting at 3:00
pm in the afternoon

daylight sighting in Arizona.

Five o'clock hour they were seen

by native Americans
in new Mexico.

Seven o'clock
hour in California.

11 o'clock hour they
were actually reported

by two separate
airline commercial pilots

who reported one
of these massive

over mile wide craft
covering Las Vegas.

- In his time
working with aerojet,

Ron regier was tasked with
multiple classified projects,

chief of which was the
defense support program,

a satellite used to keep a
close watch on the airspace

above the United States as
well as the rest of the world.

In his time involved
in the program

he witnessed a number
of unusual phenomena

detected on the infrared system,

including the Phoenix lights.

- The Phoenix lights,
which everybody's heard of,

we tracked those from
just south of area 51

down to tuscan.

- When you say tracked them,

can you elaborate
on that a little bit?

- Yeah, our satellite is in the

geosynchronous earth
orbit, so it's always looking,

and we put three of
them around the earth.

That gives us full
binary vision coverage

of the entire
earth surface 24/7.

Phoenix lights, we
first picked those up

just south of area 51, which
is northeast of Las Vegas.

Don't know where
it originated from

or if that's just when it
became within our spectrum.

It came all the way
down past Phoenix

and then went down
and went out of sight

just north of tuscan.

- Do you know how big that was

or how big it might have been?

- Well, it could be
eight separate objects

or it could have
been one big object,

I don't know.

- Air traffic controllers

at sky harbor
international airport

saw the same exact thing.

Took their high power
binoculars to look

and what they described was
six equidistant points of light

that seemed to be attached
to something over a mile wide,

but they couldn't quite see

what these lights
were attached to.

You would hear that again
by thousands of people

and they were alarmed,
because there is a 30 mile radius

around the center of the airport

called class b
restricted airspace.

Anyone that comes
into that airspace,

especially 1,000 feet
altitudes that these were,

must call into the
tower but no one did.

- Often these sightings
the craft or whatever it is

seems to be wanting to see it.

It's not like people
see triangle craft often,

but when they do
seem them they're often

extraordinary circumstances.

For instance, you've
got the Phoenix lights

that happened in '97
and that was a big deal.

Governor fife symington
says he saw those lights.

What he says is taken seriously.

He goes as far as
to say he believes

that they are from
something else.

That what he saw was a craft

from out of this
world essentially.

- The last report I received,
credible report personally,

was from a boeing crewman
who was coming in to work

with his crew at 5:30
am the next morning

at sky harbor
international airport

and saw one of
these mile wide craft

hovering over their tarmac.

It was for many, many
hours, over a dozen hours,

and there were many
activities happening

in many areas at the same
time during the mass sighting.

- A lot of people
don't realize actually

that the Phoenix lights
were also seen in Nevada

in the Vegas area
and other regions.

This was a very
concentrated wave of sightings

that a large number
of witnesses saw.

The fascinating thing
about that is, again,

we still have no answers.

- Now we have really
evolved since the '90s

to actually looking at the data

now that more and more
credible people are coming forward,

including our own
former Arizona governor

who admits that he saw
one of these mile wide crafts

and that it was otherworldly.

Now that Navy pilots
are coming forward

and sharing that
what they're seeing,

the technology is so far
passes any technology

that we have here on
earth that we know about.

The whole thing is really
evolving to a good place,

a much better place
of people being ready.

Being ready to
learn about the topic

and being ready to
accept that this is real.

- At the turn of the 20th
century it was airships,

which became flying saucers,

which became
cigar shaped objects,

and then triangles,
and on, and on.

This is where it was first
seen, or they were first seen,

the Phoenix lights.

The phenomena first
appeared in the sky

above the Prescott valley,

then moved over
the town of Dewey,

before finally making
its way over the city

in the direction of
sky harbor airport.

It's a sobering thing to
come to a place like this

and look up into the same sky

where something so important
happened over 20 years ago.

For a lot of witnesses
the event passes

and is then forgotten.

A string of lights
passing in the night

no doubt was easily forgotten

for most people when
they're completely unaware

that what they're seeing
is something extraordinary.

But for others like lynne,
it was the beginning.

A door opened,
she stepped through,

and now there won't
be any going back.

It makes you feel very
small to stare up into the sky

and wonder if
they're still here,

and if they are and you're one
of those who catch a glimpse,

just what it is you'll see.

(Somber piano music)

Coming up on the next
episode of on the trail of ufos.

- Over the last several
weeks people in this area

are reporting high
altitude objects in the sky

they're not familiar with.

- You'll find that
there are areas,

particularly in the united
states and around the world,

that seem to have a high
concentration of sightings.

Places like point
pleasant, West Virginia

or Chestnut Ridge, sedona.

- The Hudson valley ufo
wave started with the police

and it kind of ended
with the police.

They actually invested
all these cases.

(Camera shutter clicking)

(Unsettling electronic music)