All language subtitles for Beyond.UFOs.and.The.Unknown.S01E02.eng

[dramatic music]

Some people who are associated
with the CIA came to my office

one day, unannounced,
and started talking about UFOs.

[man] That's not our L and S,
though, is it?

There's another thing.

They said,
"We have this medical data."

"We need your help."

Looking at the brain scans,

we found the same
internal scarring.

What's special
about these people?

Well, they're pilots.

We're seeing them
in the morning, afternoon.

We're seeing them
in the evening.

In their maneuvers.

They don't correlate
with the technology

that I'm aware of
as a fighting pilot.

[Mellon] All these different
government agencies had

pertinent information
on this topic

that they weren't sharing.

There was virtually
no discussion

in mainstream news outlets.

Yet, meanwhile, local papers,
there were

thousands and thousands
of reports all over the world.

[dramatic music]

After that night,
I became scared.

I had a mark
on the side of my head.

I had been rectally injured.

I was obviously the victim
of an assault of some sort.

But when? Who?

[theme music playing]

♪ ♪

[mellow music]

There is a much bigger picture,

a much broader way
of looking at UFOs.

♪ ♪

It's not as simple
as some physical craft

coming from somewhere else.

♪ ♪

There's something elusive
or trickster-like

about the phenomena themselves.

It might be fair to say we're
in a Jacques Vallée moment here.

[pensive music]

[interviewer] Keep coming.

-About?
-[interviewer] Your history.

Yes. Okay.

[camera clicks]

For me, Jacques Vallée
is the barometer.

He's a major UFO researcher,
really legendary in many ways.

♪ ♪

I'm not sure
it's common knowledge,

but the Monsieur Lacombe
character,

played by François Truffaut,

is actually based
on Jacques Vallée.

[Vallée speaking French]

[Kripal] He started out
as very much

a kind of nuts and bolts
kind of guy.

You know, the UFO was
a machine in the sky,

and it was about tracking things
with NASA and...

you know,
maps and astronomy, et cetera.

He's moved very much to a view
that it's also about folklore,

it's about religion,
it's about consciousness.

Jacques Vallée is certainly
one of the most influential,

one of the most, I think,
intellectually nuanced

and innovative thinkers
who've been a part

of the UFO world
now for a good long time.

The public's awareness
of the problem has deepened

in the last five years,
certainly.

People are taking it
more seriously,

because now it's not
just one person

seeing something,
it's one person

seeing something supported
by technology that we trust.

[man] Hey, dude. They're all
going against the wind.

The wind's 120 knots
to the west.

So that takes the whole subject
to another level.

I was just in Washington
a few days ago

because I've been asked
to brief some staff people

on the background
of the problem.

[reporter] Just last week,
the U.S. government revealed

they are tracking
more than 650 potential cases

of so-called
unidentified aerial phenomena,

more commonly known as UFOs.

Director of the Pentagon's

All-Domain Anomaly Resolution
Office, Sean Kirkpatrick.

Of those over 650,
we've prioritized

about half of them to be
of anomalous, interesting value.

I was informed in the course
of my official duties

of a multi-decade
UAP crash retrieval

and reverse engineering program
to which I was denied access

to those additional read-ons
when I requested it.

I'd rather not talk
about who asked to meet with me.

And there are
a number of us, you know,

are providing background data
and historical data

so that hopefully some
of the mistakes made before

are not repeated.

[announcer] Jacques Vallée,
International Authority

on the UFO experience.

First thing
I'd like to dispel is

the frequent misconception
that UFOs

are limited to this country.

Well, UFOs are not
an American phenomenon.

They are a worldwide phenomenon.

[Eghigian] The Ufology
community, it has to be said,

is a diverse community.

There's lots
of different voices,

lots of different
perspectives involved,

lots of UFO sleuths
in the early days.

These detectives,
these investigators.

But Jacques Vallée
was not the first,

probably the first great one

and the one who really
makes a huge difference

is this guy, Donald Keyhoe.

♪ ♪

A retired military man,
a guy who then makes a career

as a pulp fiction writer.

So he's got connections
to both of those worlds.

And he is assigned
by one of these pulp magazines

to actually conduct
a kind of investigative

journalistic reportage
about this topic.

♪ ♪

The UFO movement
as we know it today

really begins just a few years
before this, in 1947.

There's a private pilot
by the name of Kenneth Arnold,

who's flying
over Washington state,

who sees these nine objects
flying in a pattern

at enormous speeds in formation.

And he reports this
to the media,

and from that moment on,

you start to see a wave
of sightings across America.

[dramatic music]

Keyhoe talks to some
of his sources

in the military
and in intelligence,

and he publishes, in 1950,

an article and a book
later on called

The Flying Saucers Are Real
about this phenomenon.

Is there any tangible evidence
that these flying saucers exist?

Well, I'm positive
they exist.

The weight of the evidence
makes it impossible

to arrive
at any other conclusion.

This book is really,
really important

for a number of reasons.

First of all,
the arguments it makes

that the government
is pretty much convinced

that these things are
extraterrestrial in origin.

Secondly,
they're keeping it a secret

because they're scared it's
going to provoke a mass panic.

And third, that the belief
is that the aliens are now here

for the first time
because they've seen

that we have
exploded atomic bombs.

They know we have
the secret to atomic energy,

and that concerns them.

The other thing that's
really key about Donald Keyhoe

is that chapters
of the book get serialized

in newspapers and magazines
throughout the world.

So, by the end of 1950,
Donald Keyhoe and his arguments

are known virtually
across the globe.

[dramatic music]

I've always wanted
to be an astronomer.

You know, when I grew up,
I had a telescope.

What teenagers do when
they discover science and so on.

And what changed my look
at things is that I saw a UFO

with a friend of mine.

We were the two best students
in physics and math,

and he saw it
independently of me.

♪ ♪

[speaking French]

This was very clear blue sky
in summer in France,

outside Paris.

Very clearly, a disk.

My mother saw it first,
called me.

I saw it with her.
There was no question.

♪ ♪

The next day, this friend
told me he had seen

the same thing with binoculars.

I got him to draw it for me, and
it was exactly what I had seen.

At the time, there were
new aircraft coming up,

you know, the first jets
and so on.

Said that could be
a new device that's going

to be publicized later.

♪ ♪

Except that it didn't.

My first job
was at Paris Observatory

tracking the early satellites.

So we were working
with the U.S. Navy.

You know, we're computing orbits
of satellites.

So this was a new,
completely new science

coming up, and it was exciting.

[playful music]

We... I mean, the whole team,
saw some things

we could not explain,
but we did not report it.

And the lesson there,
I asked, why didn't...?

I mean, we had computed
the orbit, we had the data

with data
from other observatories.

"Why don't we send it
to the U.S. Navy?"

And my boss said, "The Americans
would laugh at us."

And the last thing you want
as a scientist in France

or anywhere else in the world

is to be laughed at
by the American academy.

Because the Americans
may have an explanation

for this
that they haven't given us.

Major Keyhoe. Why?
Why will the Air Force,

why will the United States
government withhold information

from United States citizens?
For what reason?

Because they're treating
them like children,

the way they did
with the H-bomb at first,

and the way
they were doing with...

They've been doing
with other things.

Now, I'm not attacking
the United States Air Force.

I'm attacking
a small group in there

that has been persistently
keeping this from the...

from the public, just
as they've kept other things.

[dramatic music]

The conspiracy theory,
at least within the UFO world,

is really something
that emerges almost

from the very beginning.

Lots of people over the decades
are asking, "What are they?"

"Where are they from?
What are their intentions?"

But there's
this second order question,

which is,
"What does the government know?"

"When are
they going to come clean?"

And, in fact, Donald Keyhoe
really makes that his focus.

He becomes the head of really,
America's biggest

UFO organization called NICAP.

♪ ♪

NICAP's mission
is primarily going to be

what I think we today
would call disclosure.

Get the government, lobby
the government to come clean.

We want congressional hearings.

[reporter] NICAPs director,
Major Donald E. Keyhoe,

insisted that the Air Force
knew more than it was telling.

We are being observed
by a highly advanced,

superior civilization.

Instead of being
a subject for ridicule

and a big joke,
actually is a serious matter

which could affect
the lives of all of us.

[reporter] And for the umpteenth
time in as many years,

the Air Force called before
a congressional committee,

said it was hiding nothing.

There's nothing
in the records

that could indicate
that we have been visited

by any advanced civilization.

[Bender]
Going back from the 1950s,

people love
the government secrecy movies.

But it's often called
science fiction for a reason.

[dramatic music]

We live in a country
where conspiracy theories

now are all the rage, right?

We have political leaders
that traffic conspiracy theories

in a way that we didn't
a generation ago.

[Bender] I find it hard
to believe,

having spent so many years
with these agencies

and the people who work there,

mostly good people, mostly
dedicated public servants,

that they have orchestrated
this vast galactic conspiracy

for decades and decades.

But people love a good story.

And the more fantastical it is,
the better.

[man] The committee wishes
to emphasize that there is

no evidence
of any wider conspiracy.

No evidence whatsoever.

[dramatic music]

[Bender] No matter
what the answers are,

it's potentially
one of the biggest news stories,

if not the biggest news story
in the history of mankind.

So, obviously, it would
be huge if we know, you know,

without a doubt
that we're not alone.

If the Chinese or the Russians
have developed

some futuristic technology
and we don't know about it,

it is the biggest
intelligence failure in history.

♪ ♪

And they had them in 2004,

flying circles around
the USS Nimitz off California.

That's two decades ago.
So what do they have now?

If it's our secret technology

and Congress
doesn't know about it,

that's a scandal.

So, you know, wherever you might
come down on the explanations

for the unidentified
aerial phenomena,

as they call them, UAP,

whatever it is,
it's a huge story.

And if you're
in the news business,

why would you not
want to cover that?

On the basis
of what I had seen was

at Paris Observatory,

there was no question
then for me

that those phenomena were real.

As a French citizen,
I had access

to the early French files,
which were kept by the military.

I had access to big computers,
so I started building databases,

building my own files,
more or less privately,

with interested colleagues

who were not afraid
of the stigma attached to it,

which was real.

You know, somebody told me,
"You're not going to have"

"a career as an astronomer
in France"

"if you continue doing this."

[upbeat music]

But I didn't care
because I had the data.

♪ ♪

I would talk to somebody
who reported something

to the police, the farmer
or the rancher or whatever.

But I would ask around,
"Are there other people"

"who've had
something like that around?"

♪ ♪

"Well, there's a farm,
you know,"

"a few miles down the road
where the same thing happened,"

"but they never reported it."

I would go to the farm
and I would talk to the farmer.

Most of the time,
they would be shocked,

and I would laugh
and I would say,

"Well, you know,
I talked to your neighbors,"

"and I'm really interested
in what you saw."

One of them described
something that happened

not to him, but to his father.

This was 1932. Okay?

It wasn't 1947 or 1957.

[Gallaudet] I have a great deal
of respect for Jacques,

and what I admire about him is

he is ultra objective.

He listens to the eyewitnesses,

and he just accepts
what they report

and documents it
and the diversity

of these encounters.

He has been working
on the topic, I think,

longer than I've been alive.

So you have to...

You have to respect that,
at least.

[upbeat music]

I was recruited to join
the University of Texas

Astronomy Department to work
on galaxies and planets

and computing,
and then I was told,

"If you want to continue
looking into," you know,

"the UFO issue," you know,
"use the equipment"

"on your own time,"

"as long as you do the work
for the department."

I rebuilt the files
with the help of my wife,

and we ended up
with something like

10,000 cases on the computer.

♪ ♪

[Eghigian] By the 1960s,
here in the United States,

scientists, academics,
people like that

are now looking
into this matter.

Probably the big advocate

is the consultant
J. Allen Hynek.

♪ ♪

Hynek was an astronomer,
and from the very earliest days

of the flying saucer
phenomenon in the '40s,

he was brought in as
a consultant to the Air Force

to help them in analyzing

these reports
that were coming in.

Dr. Hynek had always
been in communication

with the people
in Austin, in Texas.

So he heard of my database
and said,

"If you want to come
to Northwestern in Chicago,"

"I'll give you access
to the U.S. files."

♪ ♪

So I told Hynek,
"I'll bring the European files"

"and you let me look
at the American files"

"and we'll merge it together
and we'll try to do"

"some high-level statistics."

So we started
working together on that.

It's very clear that,
at least privately,

Hynek becomes ever more
convinced that there's something

that just can't be
explained away

in these sort
of conventional ways.

I started almost
as a complete skeptic,

because I thought
the whole thing was

a question of postwar nerves,

but it was the persistence
of the phenomenon--

it refused to dry up
and blow away--

that finally led me
to the belief

that we had
a real phenomenon to deal with.

[Vallée] The computer work
first was designed

to clean the data,
finding the patterns

that are natural,
physical patterns,

to narrow the database
to the cases

that were the most intriguing,

and then to look at their
distribution in space and time.

[upbeat music]

What emerged were situations
where there was a lot of reports

in a particular part
of the world that peaked

in about a month or two
and then declined.

So you had essentially
three months of a wave

of cases that were not
explained by sociology.

So we could begin to look
at the patterns of these waves.

1950, 1952, 1954, 1956.

It breaks down in 1957.

What is 1957? Sputnik.

♪ ♪

[announcer]
Today, a new moon is in the sky.

A 23-inch metal sphere placed
in orbit by a Russian rocket.

[announcer] The Soviet satellite
triumph was demonstrated

for all to see.

All around the world
we listened.

So you can say,
"Well, there were more people"

"looking up in 1957" because
they were looking for Sputnik.

[Bender] I think there's
plenty of evidence.

During the Cold War,
the government fanned

the flames of UFO hysteria
on purpose,

because if we were building
secret planes

and testing them out
in the Nevada desert,

we didn't want the Russians
looking at them.

So if you start spreading
UFO hysteria,

people are looking here,
people are looking there,

including the Russians
and the Soviets too,

to throw them off.

The stuff we're sort of hiding,
We don't want them to look at.

[Kean] Project Blue Book
was an Air Force project.

They were the leading agency
in the '50s and '60s

involved with everything
that was going on

with the UFOs and with the
investigations that went on.

If they have
retrieved material and craft

and bodies or anything
like that,

if they retrieved these things
during the Cold War,

they certainly are not going
to want to reveal that

to the Russians or anyone else
in the outside world.

[Vallée] They were reporting
to Congress every year

that they could explain

everything except
maybe 2% of the...

Which meant it's not worth
spending money on it,

which was a big mistake

because the 2% could be
the 2% that really mattered.

But that's scientists speaking.

You know, certainly
from the military point of view,

2% wasn't worth
deploying officers and airplanes

and everything else.

So Project Blue Book
funded a small project

suggested by Dr. Hynek for me
to redo the Air Force files.

So I was invited,
with Dr. Hynek,

to the Foreign
Technology Division,

and that's a visit
I'm not going to forget.

♪ ♪

They had a little building
with no windows,

about 200 PhDs,
who were doing intelligence

on primarily Russian equipment.

And you go into the lobby and
you notice an airplane hanging

from the ceiling and when
you look carefully you realize

it's a MiG with the hammer
and sickle on the tail.

Okay, so that gave you
an idea of what was going on

in the building.

They were not interested
in UFOs.

[dramatic music]

[interviewer]
Hal interview, take one. Mark.

I'm Hal Puthoff,
PhD in quantum electronics

from Stanford University.

And I've been part of programs
for corporate America

for various government
organizations,

intelligence community,
DoD and so on.

♪ ♪

In general,
in the academic community,

things like UFO research
or stigmatized tinfoil hat

kind of stuff.

But behind the scenes,
the Department of Defense

and the intelligence community,
they don't have that luxury.

If there's something that's real
that could potentially affect

national security,
then they're all over it.

Starting back in the '50s,

the government felt they had
to begin to gather data on this.

One of the issues
that's difficult to deal with

is the fact that sightings
are so ubiquitous.

I mean, hundreds of sightings
every year.

The problem for the military,

it was
a public relations problem.

They didn't have a budget
to investigate all the cases.

This was a real albatross around
the neck of the Air Force.

They hated dealing
with this subject.

So they really
wanted to get out of it.

And so they asked
that the University of Colorado,

under Edward Condon,
would take a look at this.

A scientific study that gets
conducted starting in 1966,

and really gets done by 1968,
gets a lot of public attention.

[Vallée] Dr. Hynek and I were
the first two scientists called

as witnesses to testify
before the committee.

[Eghigian] That investigative
task force gets riddled

by questions
about whether or not

he and others are acting
in good faith in studying it.

When they conclude
that this phenomenon

not only has no legs,
but that it's certainly

not worthy of any kind
of scientific funding.

Truth of the matter is, they
really wanted to get out of it.

And so, in 1969, it was decided
that the Condon report,

even though there's a lot
of good data,

even in their own report,

that they couldn't account for,
they said,

"Okay, but we're not
learning any science here,"

"so let's just abandon this."

There was an explosion
inside the committee

when they discovered a memo
one of the administrators

had written, saying, "We need to
get rid of this whole problem."

We have not been
hiding anything.

The investigations
have been made public.

The very memo
by General Bolander

that canceled
Project Blue Book

had down in the fine print,
"Aha."

But if there's anything
that looks like

it might affect
national security,

we will continue
to gather data on that.

So the truth of the matter
is that the program didn't die.

It just went black.

The Air Force has been,
yeah, very noticeably silent

on this issue,
and the Navy has taken the lead

in terms of speaking about it,
acknowledging the videos,

contributing to reports.

Of course,
the Air Force was responsible

for a lot of the things
that happened

in the past
that people are unhappy about.

[man] The committee concluded

that in the 19 years
since the first UFO was sighted,

there has been no evidence
that unidentified flying objects

are a threat
to our national security.

As we convene here,
UAP are in our airspace,

but they are
grossly underreported.

These sightings are not rare
or isolated. They are routine.

Parts of our government
are aware more

about UAP than they let on.

But excessive
classification practices

keep crucial information hidden.

[Gallaudet] I served in the Navy
for 32 years.

It's weird,
but there are cultures

within each military branch,
and the Navy culture

is very much one,
because we work on ships,

away from any kind of support

or any kind
of observation sometimes

that we just learn
how to do things on our own,

and we take initiative,

and we're not afraid
to speak out

because we sort
of own the issue.

But the Air Force
always has some oversight,

and that oversight creates

a much more
hierarchical organization.

And you see that
in UAP reporting.

These pilots, these Navy pilots,
are not afraid to come out.

But the Air Force,

their reporting
is next to nothing.

[Mellon] Navy and Air Force jets
are both training

and doing exercises
in the same area.

The Navy pilots are seeing
and reporting these UAP.

None of the Air Force pilots
are reporting these things.

And it's not because
they weren't seeing them.

They had to have been
seeing them.

They have even better
sensors than the F-18s.

[Gallaudet] UAP are not going
to be discriminating

between any given
military branch

or any given country, obviously.

The Air Force
has to be seeing these.

Of course, the Air Force
has a lot more to lose

than the Navy, because they own
this multi-billion dollar

air defense system, so they'd be
acknowledging that they're

failing to meet their mission.

[Vallée] The problem for people
like me, who've been studying it

for a long time,
what the military sees

with their devices is only
maybe 10% of the cases.

I worked on a classified
database, as you know,

that had 260,000 cases
from all over the world.

Those are not being
considered right now.

I cannot really talk
about what we actually did,

but there is no reason why
that should remain classified.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

No. Didn't know who he was.

I'd been starting
to read in the area

and, you know,
mostly watching YouTube

and going down
some pretty weird rabbit holes.

Jacques reached out to me
about two or three weeks later,

and so we went for lunch,
and he said,

"Well, what do you think
about what the aliens might be?"

And so I gave him my answer.

He completely destroyed me.

I was infuriated.

And then I realized
I like this guy,

because he just deconstructed
my argument.

That it's future humans.
It was just speculation.

Future humans have come back
to mess with us or watch us.

You know,
he didn't prove me wrong.

He proved to me
that my certainty

of the conclusion was misplaced,

and we just became friends

and I saw him
from that point on,

almost literally
every other week.

[Vallée] Obviously his work
in biology and medicine

is exceptional,

but I admire his willingness
to jump into this

and to look
at the accumulated data.

So we started working together.

[Nolan]
When it comes to UAP or UFOs,

there's a story and then
there's material evidence.

[Vallée] I'm very grateful
for people like Dr. Nolan

to bring leadership and to bring
real science into it,

because it's going to be needed.

Scientists are beginning
to realize that,

"Well, there appears to be more
to this than we thought."

We have such excellent
sensor systems

that have been developed.

So now you've got the pilots
in the air taking pictures

with their forward-looking
infrared radar system.

You've got overhead planes

that are getting information
on the flight path of it.

You've got other ships at sea
catching these things, you know,

dropping from 80,000 feet
down to the water

in hardly any time at all.

That's on the detection
of the events.

♪ ♪

Mr. Fravor,
the Tic Tac incident

that you were engaged
occurred in 2004.

What kind of reporting took
place after that incident?

None. We had a standard debrief
where the backseaters went down

to our carrier intel center
and briefed what had happened.

And that was it.
No one else talked to us.

And I was in the top 20
in the battle group.

No one came.

The captain was aware.
The admiral was aware.

Nothing was done.

[Vallée] I think the people

who are going
to testify before Congress

are all from the defense
intelligence agencies.

And, yes, we trust them
because they have access

to very, very good information.

But what they look at
is very narrow.

♪ ♪

What about what people
in France have seen

in the fields since the 1940s?

What about in other countries?

What about what
Whitley Strieber saw?

Of course, I guess the Strieber
story is pretty well-known.

What happened to you initially?

[dramatic music]

[camera clicks]

I first met Whitley
over a dozen years ago.

We were both
at a retreat center.

Whitley was standing on a patio
overlooking the ocean.

And I stepped out onto the patio
to introduce myself.

And I said his name. He almost
jumped out of his skin.

And I thought to myself,

"This is a man
suffering from PTSD."

[Kean] He's been writing
about this topic for decades.

There's nobody else
like Whitley Strieber.

[man] Whitley Strieber is
a novelist, a memoirist.

[Kean] His best-selling book,
Communion,

just changed the world,
changed ev--

I mean, in terms of experiences,

people who had encounters
with phenomenon

on many, many different levels.

[Eghigian] Strieber brings
a couple of different things

to the table.

One is
he's an experienced writer.

He's a horror writer.

He's a very famous one,
and very good at that.

So here we have somebody
who has an experience,

who can actually talk
about it himself,

write about it himself.

Most experiencers don't do that.

They have other people
write their narratives for them.

[dramatic music]

I'm Whitley Strieber.

I grew up in south Texas.
Old-fashioned Texas family.

♪ ♪

From early times,

I was very interested
in writing.

I wrote my first short story
when I was six,

and it wasn't much
of a short story,

but my mother loved it.

And when I left high school,
I was going to become a writer.

That was the only thing
I wanted to do.

♪ ♪

And then I met Anne
in April of 1969,

and everything began to change.

♪ ♪

She was in New York trying
to become a fashion designer.

So here were
these two crazy dreamers,

a fashion designer
and a writer, right?

We had been doing very well
with the writing,

and we had a little money
in... I guess it was '84.

And we realized we could have
a place outside of the city.

We found this little cabin way
out in the middle of nowhere.

Since I was a full-time writer,
we could actually live there

all summer when our little boy
wasn't in school.

So we bought it.
That's how it started.

And we certainly didn't expect

anything peculiar
to happen there.

[suspenseful music]

The Christmas was
exceptionally lovely.

Our little boy was
at the perfect Christmas age.

There was absolutely nothing
that night

that would have suggested
anything strange

to happen the next morning.

♪ ♪

This was witnessed
by two friends,

Annie Gottlieb
and Jacques Sandalescu.

They were in the cabin.

Downstairs. And our son was
in the next bedroom downstairs.

And we were
in the master bedroom upstairs.

And in the middle of the night,
I was awakened by light.

A lot of light
woke me up right away.

And it was cold,
and the wood stove had been on.

And I thought, "Oh, my God.
The stove set the roof on fire."

So I jumped out of bed,
and at the same time,

there was a huge bang
that came from outside,

and the light went away.

Then our little boy
was awakened by the bang

and started screaming.

And so I ran down,
and the door

to Jacques and Annie's bedroom
was open.

And Annie was standing
in the doorway, as I recall.

And I said, "It's all right.
It was nothing."

And I went and comforted my son
and then went back to bed.

But later,
when Annie and Jacques

were questioned
without any preamble,

they remembered a lot
that was unusual.

Jacques had seen
a light so bright,

he thought it was daylight,
and he thought he'd overslept.

Annie had heard feet
scurrying from above,

from the ceiling,
as if someone was running...

Little feet were running
out of the bedroom.

We weren't aware of any of that
the night it happened.

But after that night,
I became scared.

[dramatic music]

I bought a shotgun.
I bought a pistol.

I could not imagine sleeping
another second at the cabin.

And Anne thought
I was going crazy.

♪ ♪

After the experience
in December,

I was really strung out.

I hurt. I had been assaulted,
and that was obvious to me.

I mean, I had a mark
on the side of my head.

I had been rectally injured.

I was obviously the victim
of an assault of some sort.

But when? Who?

Yes.

I went to the doctor
because my first thought

was either it's a brain tumor
or psychosis of some kind.

Because the memories
were very vivid.

I went through an MRI scan
to determine whether or not

the brain was in normal shape,
and it was.

The test which showed that I was

an exceptionally stable brain,
highly unlikely to hallucinate.

♪ ♪

What I wanted to do
was to find out

that there was some explanation
for this that was normal.

A rational,
rational explanation.

I think on the second doctor
visit, he examined me rectally

because I mentioned
that I was in pain.

And he did find
I had been raped.

And, uh...I was in...

It was a terrible period
of turmoil in our lives

because I was subliminally
thinking I was going mad.

Yeah.

No. I thought,
"I can't tell Anne this."

And I started trying
to get rid of Anne

and get her to divorce me
because I figured I'm psychotic

and I don't know
what is going on.

[mellow music]

Finally, I got it
together enough,

and I told her one night.

She was...

Tears were coming at the edges
of her eyes because she was

thinking I was going to say,
"Honey, we need to end this."

"It's not working."

And instead I say,
"I think I was taken aboard

a flying saucer by little men."

And she blurts out,
"Oh, my God!"

"Thank God. I thought
you were going crazy."

♪ ♪

We burst out laughing
and sort of laughing and crying

at the same time. We just
flew into each other's arms.

And that's when the whole
rest of our life started.

♪ ♪

After I had the two sessions
with the head

of the New York State
Department of Psychiatry

and one of the...
Literally

the leading psychiatrists
in the United States...

We had to face the fact that...

Apparently something

had happened that involved
these strange beings,

that they were real in some way.

As to what they were,
I've never been ready

to say they're aliens
from another planet.

A lot of other people
have said that for me,

but that's not what I say.

I call them "visitors" because
we don't know what they are.

We have no idea.

♪ ♪

My wife,
I have to give her credit,

she was always encouraging me
to write. She was the one...

who made sure that Communion,
the book, was a book,

essentially, of questions,
not of answers.

And millions of people
responded to it.

They knew it.

They recognized it from
something in their own lives.

[Nolan]
When I was a boy, you know,

I think I was
around seven or eight,

I woke up
with little people in my room,

you know, and I told my parents,
I said,

"There's these little men
who come into my room at night,"

"And I'm awake
and I can't move."

And, "Oh, you're dreaming.
It's okay."

And I, "No, and one of them
looks in the window."

You know, and then
that happened for about two...

My... I'm getting goosebumps
remembering it.

And then it stopped.

I don't have
any bad memories of it.

I just remember it.

I didn't know
what a UFO was then.

There was no Internet.

Aliens weren't
a discussion topic.

There were three channels
on our TV, black and white.

But it wasn't literally
until I was a grad student

at Stanford and I was
at a used bookstore

in the science fiction section,
of course.

And I pull out a book,

and there on the cover
was the face of what I had seen.

♪ ♪

And it was
Whitley Striber's Communion.

I remember dropping the book
on the ground and had

like a nervous breakdown,
because it was like that was...

That was... And it all came
flooding back.

[Strieber] I wanted it
to be a film,

and somehow
it ended up kind of cockeyed.

[mellow music]

I think it would
have been possible

for the film to reflect
the open-endedness

and questioning of the book,

but it does freeze things
in a kind of level of reality.

Christopher Walken
danced in the film.

He's a wonderful, great actor

and also a great song
and dance man.

And he dances great,
but people keep asking me,

"Well, did you really dance?"

And I said,
"Of course I didn't dance."

This experience...
compels us

to keep the question open
at every level.

And in so far as the film
tended to close the question

a little bit, that wasn't good.

How would you react,
do you think, if you woke up

in the middle
of the night and found

at the end of your bed
a small figure

with two holes for eyes,
a hole for mouth,

and wearing
a very strange metallic garment?

You know, I learned something
about people,

a lot about people,
when I published Communion.

Well, you'd probably scream,
wake up

and realize that you've
been having a nightmare.

Not my next guest,
he didn't scream.

He went along with the whole
thing, and he ended up

in a spaceship being probed and
prodded in all sorts of places.

[laughter]

Seriously,
when he woke up in his own bed

the following morning,
he had a pain in his bottom,

among other things,
and a lot on his mind.

What did he do?

He wrote a book about the whole
thing called Communion.

Publishing something
with quote, unquote, "claims."

And there weren't claims.
They were questions,

but they were taken as claims,
is going to make you vulnerable.

Will you welcome,
please, Whitley Strieber?

[applause]

With an introduction like that,

I wasn't sure
that I dared to come out.

-[laughter]
-But here I am, anyway.

A lot of people
have a bully hidden in them,

and they want so badly
to let that bully out.

I dreamt that I was lying
in my bed in the dark,

when all of a sudden
this bright blue light

filled the room.

Then I was lying on a table,

and these scary aliens
wanted to operate on me.

Then South Park came out,

and their first episode
was a lampoon of me.

Dude, visitor. Totally.

Did they give you an anal probe?

Ah, what's an anal probe?

That's when
they put this big metal

of hoopaju up your butt.

Whoa, aliens stuck stuff
up your ass?

- No.
- I became the rectal probe man

and found myself
being laughed at

for having been raped.

Sorry to hear about your ass.

Why are you walking
so funny, Cartman?

-Shut up.
-You know,

I'd go on a TV show
and they'd ask me about,

"Well, what do
you think about the planets?"

"What about Uranus?"

Are you an alien?

-To you, I am, yes.
-Are you going to probe us?

Why does everyone always
assume that? What am I doing?

Am I harvesting farts?

How much can I learn
from an ass?

Well, I--

Moronic, low-grade,
creepy ugliness.

What happened? Did little green
men come down and--?

No, not at all.

How do you know you're not nuts?

I am talking to you
about a real thing.

I'm pretty sure.

The public reaction
for a long time

was much more open-minded
and friendly.

In fact, the book came out
in October '87,

and the letters started
like a week later.

[mellow music]

I was going
around touring for the book,

and Ann called and said,
"Whitley, we've got a problem."

"We've got a lot of mail."

♪ ♪

[Horowitz]The book became
an enormous bestseller.

It captured the experience
of countless numbers of people,

many of whom, well into
the thousands, wrote letters

to Whitley and his wife Anne,
describing related experiences.

[Strieber] The post office
was bringing huge boxes

of mail up to the house.

I said, "Annie,
what are we going to do?"

"We can't even... We got
to get rid of these letters."

She says, "Whitley, we're not
getting rid of these letters."

"We're gonna read them."

[Horowitz] This population
of people who felt unseen

and lacking in any kind
of a voice or recognition

read Communion,
felt less alone and said,

"This captures something
like my experience."

♪ ♪

And people might think,
well, these letters

are fan letters, but they really
are not fan letters.

They are... "Let me tell you
what happened to me" letters.

At length.

They're coming to him
to tell them their story.

♪ ♪

My name is Jeff Kripal.

I'm a professor of religion,
and I'm associate

dean of the School
of Humanities

at Rice University.

♪ ♪

Another collection here.

It's the Anne and Whitley
Strieber collection.

Whitley's been a colleague
and a co-writer

of mine for over a decade.

And when Jacques Vallée
offered to donate his papers

and correspondence files,
I immediately approached Whitley

and said, "Hey,
Jacques just did this."

"What do you think?"
Basically, "What do you have?"

This is the first Anne and
Whitley Strieber collection box.

I don't know, there might be
nine of these or so.

And I mean
I'm this far in box one.

Whitley published
Communion in 1987.

And he made the mistake
of putting his address

in the book because he thought,

you know, a dozen people
might want to write him.

And they received,
they think about a quarter

of a million letters.

And it was Anne actually
who took it upon herself

to read through these

and winnow them down
to the 5,000 that now exist.

♪ ♪

You're talking
about 5,000 human lives

that are reaching out
to an author to often reveal

their stories
they've never told anyone.

A lot of the letters
look like...

They look like this.

I mean, they're literally
handwritten with, you know,

blue ink on paper that's been
torn out of a notebook.

I mean, they're super personal.

The letter writers
consistently say,

"Please, please call me,
please, please write back."

They recognized in Whitley's
honesty and his transparency,

their own anomalous experience

which often
they hadn't told anyone.

♪ ♪

[Santos]
It's dizzying to fathom

that there are more
than 10,000 of these letters.

When you dive in there,
you can be delirious.

The details,
the specificity, the variety

of experiences of entities
witnessed and observed.

So it's going
to take a deeper study

of those letters to really see
what they might be seen to...

embody or testify to
collectively.

♪ ♪

[Strieber] What the letters say
about us and our world

is really simple.

We don't know what we are.

We are much more, much more
than we let ourselves believe.

We live going down
a little road of life,

but we live in a magical
and extremely strange world

that we are part of
and choose not to recognize.

Because if we recognized it,
it would be impossible

to live out a normal life.

You would be--God knows
what would happen to you.

My own feeling about
paranormal phenomena in general

is that they tend to occur
in a person's life

when there's some kind
of transition or trauma

or danger or illness or death.

What the flip is,
is when an intellectual

or a scientist experiences

something in their life that's
unexplainable, but it's real.

The flip is when
a scientist realizes that,

"Oops, actually,
mind is fundamental"

"and matter
is what's epiphenomenal."

"Matter is actually
some kind of expression"

"of mind or consciousness."

"But my science or my chemistry
or my physics actually"

"doesn't change at all."

It's just this complete flip
of orientation.

In other words,
mind or consciousness is real.

Whatever it is,
it's part of being human

and part of our world
that, for whatever reason,

we are very reticent
to face head-on.

[closing theme song playing]

♪ ♪