Original subtitles

(soft mysterious music)

- [Narrator] A troubling and persistent phenomenon

has been occurring throughout history

to people on Earth for centuries.

The belief that they are being taken by beings

from some other place,

perhaps outer space or another dimension.

These people have real memories

of being taken secretly against their will

by apparently non-human entities

and subjected to complex physical

and psychological procedures.

People claiming to have been abducted

are usually called abductees or experiencers.

There are famous modern cases,

such as the Betty and Barney Hill abduction,

the Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker abduction

and the Travis Walton abduction.

However, for every well-documented abduction case on record

there are hundreds of less-known cases

where people have experienced alien abductions.

Each have unique differences

but all have a common thread.

- The term abductee has been used a lot over the years

to explain how some unknown intelligence,

it might be extraterrestrial,

might even be from another dimension or another time,

that these entities have come to take people

against their will, do things,

they take them away, they do things to these people

that are very unpleasant

and the whole thing leaves the person

that went through this type of experience very victimized

but the term experiencer is a bit more loose.

It is just indicating that somebody's encountered

an intelligence but not necessarily

been traumatized by it in all cases,

not necessarily been taken in all cases,

just they've come into contact with it.

The term contactee actually was another term

that was used back in the '50s, a little bit in the '60s.

That kind of the thing is no longer in vogue.

But experiencer is, I think, the proper term for it

because not everybody's taken

and those who go are not always taken against their will.

(soft mysterious music)

- [Narrator] The study of the alien abduction phenomemon

often begins with a UFO sighting.

The sighting make occur in childhood

and the individual will have UFO encounters

throughout their lives.

Many abductees remember their encounters

but some require hypnosis regression

to draw out details of their experience.

(soft mysterious music)

Often they do not realize that an early childhood encounter

has led to a lifetime of alien experiences.

- My whole family were going to bed at 11 o'clock

and I looked out the window from my bedroom

and I saw this green, shimmering light in the sky

and below the clouds, a small point in the sky

maybe 500, tops 1,000 feet in the air.

So it was will within our atmosphere.

And the smoke was blowing out

with green shimmering lights behind it.

I called to my mother, "The sky is green."

And she comes in and she looks.

Sure enough the sky was green

and pretty soon my whole family,

my parents, my sister and myself

were out on the front lawn.

So it was summer, because we were still in our pajamas

and I wasn't cold.

My father didn't know what it was.

My mother said, "It's the second coming."

Very religious woman

and she thought it was the second coming

'cause none of us had any clue as to what it was.

But it was a huge craft, perfectly silent,

huge round lights of various colors,

none of which were FAA standard, and just sat there.

And then we looked up to the left

and here's a little funnel cloud of smoke coming down.

- The room was lit up completely but my eyes were closed.

I knew somehow not to open my eyes.

There was something telling me don't open your eyes

because you don't want the light, you won't be able to see.

Eventually I did open my eyes

because I could hear noise in the room,

there was like scuffling on the floor.

I open my eyes, there were three small, gray beings

with big black eyes, big heads

and very skinny spindly limbs.

They pulled me up out of the bed and then with one behind me

and one each side of me holding my elbows

walked me towards the window.

And I'm thinking, well the windows are closed guys

so you better open them before we go any further.

So there was this rationality-irrationality going on

at the same time.

- And it was later.

My sister just didn't pay any more attention after that.

And under hypnosis, it was revealed that

this little tornado of smoke that came down

had a craft, a smaller craft in it,

and small, gray beings came out of the craft,

took me and then took her,

she remembers them taking me and then taking her,

to be examined.

She doesn't know what happened with me

but she knows what happened with her.

And then returned us.

We don't know if our parents were taken or not

because when she was returned,

I was back on the lawn and so were my parents.

We were all just looking up, like we were frozen in time.

Okay?

- And as we approach the window, I closed my eyes

and as I did, I felt this stickiness.

It was like, it was a stickiness and a feeling

of something being pulled very slowly across my face.

It wasn't painful, just very very weird.

The next, I open my eyes because I felt cold,

I felt wind on my face and I was aware

that I was now floating outside of the window

three stories up, looking down at the car park

with a very bright light above my head.

I couldn't really see what was above my head.

I was just very aware of this very bright light.

One little gray on each elbow, I was aware of them.

And we floated up into the craft.

- And then I can only assume

this is the missing time phenomenon, okay?

So when we were all back in place,

we were switched back on, so to speak,

and the craft had departed.

All there was left was that smoke.

(soft mysterious music)

(gentle piano music)

- [Narrator] The late professor John Edward Mack,

a respected Harvard University psychiatrist,

was asked to investigate an experiencer's case

and became so perplexed by the phenomenon

that he devoted a substantial amount of time

to investigating additional cases.

His desire was to understand objectively what was going on.

Professor Mack eventually concluded

that the only phenomenon in psychiatry

that adequately explained the patient symptoms

in several of the most compelling cases

was post-traumatic stress disorder.

This would imply that the patient genuinely believed

that the remembered frightening incident

had really occurred.

- These people have been examined by myself,

they've been tested psychologically,

they are of above average intelligence,

they are of sound mind,

they've been shown as of superior mental functioning

by the testers, so there is not indication

of any kind of psychiatric condition

that can account for this that I've been able to find.

In fact, when one abductee

hears the story of another abductee,

they react with shock

because they don't want to believe it's true.

They would rather believe it's a dream

or a form of mental illness

than that this is something real

because it's so shuttering to their notion of reality

and that's happened over and over again

among the people I've been working with.

(soft piano music)

- [Narrator] Alien abductions can occur at any time

throughout an individual's life.

They are rarely a one time event.

(soft piano music)

Many abductees have endured encounters their entire lives,

including when they were very young.

These experiences have a profound effect on the individual

with some being traumatic

while others are completely benign.

- My very first memory in life is actually of an encounter.

I was two years old, I was in my crib late at night

and a face came in to the room and stared down at me

at the foot of the crib.

It was kind of skeletal,

that's how I was able to put it into some context

'cause at the tender age of two

you don't really have a background

in saying, oh that's an alien.

Well, maybe today's television.

Back in 1973, that was the closest I could equate it to.

But it wasn't a dream, it didn't go away.

I started to scream and it continued to stare down at me

and my parents in the other room,

I could hear my mother's voice saying,

"Go back to sleep, go back to sleep, it's okay."

And she never came to the room.

And after a few moments, the face just got up

and left the room.

I say face, there was a body attached to it

but it was so dark I really couldn't make it out

and I could tell it was on its way

over to my brother's room.

(soft piano music)

- [Narrator] The origins of these beings

are sometimes disputed by alien experiencers.

The most common and accepted theory

is that aliens are from outer space

and are traveling here from some distant planet.

They are here to observe humans

and abductions are situations

whereby the extraterrestrials

are conducting medical examinations

to better understand our species.

However, a recent and more complex theory

involves the aliens using an inter-dimensional corridor

to reach Earth

and many may not even be from out universe at all.

- We were watching as the sky seemed to be giving birth

to this huge craft.

The lights were there

and it just kind of came through a vortex

and that's why I believe extraterrestrials

come from other planets and/or other dimensions

through a vortex.

Instead of going from point A to point B, they fold time

and leave their spacetime and arrive at our instantaneously.

(mysterious music)

- [Narrator] Not only are the origins

of extraterrestrials a mystery,

their motivations are also a subject of much conjecture.

Clearly they are interested in our bodies

as most abductees describe procedures

that appear to be medical in nature

and focus on our genetic makeup.

Yet they also appear to be concerned

with our psychological makeup

and our attitudes towards the environment, society

and even our spiritual development.

Often, the extraterrestrials will intervene

and direct an experiencer's life in a direction they prefer,

rather than allowing nature to take its course.

- The teen years were definitely the height

of what had happened to me

but in my early 20s,

there were still a lot of things going on in my life.

At that age, in my early 20s,

they became very interested in things

like whom I was dating, that kind of a thing.

In fact, they had, it seems very intentionally,

scared away a woman that they thought wasn't right for me.

She and I were out in a fairly secluded part of some woods

and, doing some stargazing,

and suddenly we were both paralyzed

and they approached us, three little gray guys

and they started very harshly inspecting her.

Not touching her, just staring at her very fiercely

and they were like, no, she's no good.

Not this one, no no.

And then they left and the paralysis broke

and we hightailed back at the car

and she broke with me immediately after,

although I hadn't told her yet

because we'd only been dating a couple of months

about my experiences.

It seemed like she understood

that what had just happened to us

had everything to do with me

and she was right in that respect.

(gentle piano music)

- [Narrator] The majority of abductees

do not appear to be deluded, confabulated, whine,

self-dramatizing or suffering from a clear mental illness.

While psychopathology is indicated

in some isolated alien abduction cases,

assessment by both clinical examination

and standardized tests has shown that,

as a group, abduction experiencers

are no different from the general population.

Psychologists have argued that abductees' mental health

is no better or worse than the average individual.

The abduction phenomenon has been going on

for a very long time, perhaps even in antiquity.

Cave paintings made by our ancestors

are strikingly similar to modern-day descriptions of aliens.

History is replete with mystical tales that sound very much

like alien abductions or extraterrestrial encounters.

Such tales are often found in our holy texts.

For example, the Bible contains many stories

that could be interpreted as alien encounters.

- The biblical UFO hypothesis

tries to examine the connection

between anomalous aerial phenomenon

that was witnessed 2,000-4,000 years ago

by Ezekiel, a wheel within a wheel,

Moses' pilar of cloud, pilar of fire.

Chariots of fire,

the Romans used to cal them flying shields

because they looked like the shields

that they went off into battle with in the sky.

So my theory and, it wasn't my original theory actually.

Erich Von Daniken has said, in his Chariots of the Gods,

these things were in fact

forerunners of today's UFO phenomena.

And what they were seeing then were the same type

of other-dimensional beings that would come

and just like when Columbous arrived on American shores,

just like when Captain Cook arrived in Hawaii,

they all revered them as gods

because they came over the flat Earth,

over the horizon in these huge canoes

with the sheets to catch the wind,

strange-looking men with different kind of clothes,

different colored skin.

They must be gods.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] The Bible is not the only holy text

that contains references to aliens.

The Hindu Mahabharata describes weapons

reminiscent of guided rockets,

beam weapons and nuclear devices being used

in an ancient war between alien races.

Technologies that, from their description,

could only be advanced propulsion systems as well.

(gentle music)

During medieval times,

tales of the Succubus and other fairy creatures

are reminiscent of extraterrestrial visitations.

In fact, throughout history, references to aliens, gods

or other beings having come from the stars are quiet common.

Many researchers today are beginning

to piece together a theory that we ourselves

may be the product of alien intervention.

Humans could be a hybrid created by the extraterrestrials

and left here on Earth

to be monitored in some long-term experiment.

- But there are species that we look just like.

The reason we look just like them

is because I believe that that particular race

or a race like them came to Earth how many millennia ago,

and through genetic engineering used their DNA,

mixed their DNA with a simian creature Earth-bound being

and created our species.

So yes, they are our creators.

Then you go back to the book of Genesis,

Orthodox religion's gonna say

God said he made us in his image.

Well, no, it doesn't.

God said let us make them in our image.

Well, who's got talking to?

So the apes and the monkeys that we see today

were not part of this hybridization.

We are.

(suspenseful piano music) (thunder roaring)

- [Narrator] Alien abductions are often benign.

Some even report them to be enjoyable.

However, a large number of experiencers

tell tragic tales of being taken.

Harsh medical examinations,

invasive physical and psychological procedures,

as well as sinister techniques

used by the extraterrestrials.

- When I was seven I woke up

and saw a big black hole hanging above my head in the bed

and out of that a metallic cable came out through the portal

that was above my head and started kicking off electricity

and just whipping around above my head

and as it did that, I felt a high vibration

running, pulsing through me and it was very heavy.

It almost fell like I could just explode.

And as it revved up, I started to feel engulfed

by what was this black hole in front of me

and then suddenly I found myself onboard

what appeared to be a craft.

I didn't go through the front door, so to speak,

I came in however this contraption allowed me

to transmit over to the craft

and I was in a small room with two little gray guys.

They led me into what appeared to be an examination room

and there was another little gray in there

and then they left me alone in the room.

Now normally when I'm taken I'm paralyzed,

they keep me under close watch.

But I was like, this is strange.

They just kind of left me alone here in this room

and they don't seem to care that I'm here

so I'm gonna see what's in that door there.

So I walked off and I exited a door from the room,

walked down a hallway and I look back

and they were following me.

It seemed like they very quickly realized I left the room

but just wanted to see what I would do

and as I walked around the sort of curving hallway

I came to a dead end so I had to come back

and as I started back towards them

a door on my right opened up

and I could tell that's where they actually wanted me to go.

We went into this room, there was a big metal chair

in the center of the room and they had me sit in it.

And the little gray guys that were following me around,

they were about three foot tall, kind of a charred gray,

and they ushered me into a room

where there was a slightly taller being

that looked a lot like them but had lighter skin,

he was about five feet tall,

and had a very doctor type of feel to him.

And as I sat in the chair he looked at me and he said,

"Okay, be very good and you'll get to see the color blue."

Now as a kid you expect, be very good you get ice cream,

soccer, some kind of treat, something like that

but the color blue.

These guys don't really understand

children very well, do they?

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] Simply being taken against your will

is frightening enough but what if our own government

is aware of abductions and are powerless to prevent it

or even more frightening is the theory

that they are in league with the aliens

and have signed treaties to allow humans to be taken

and used as the aliens see fit.

If the government is aware of the abduction phenomenon

would it matter to an abductee?

- I believe that the government knows so much more

about this phenomenon than they're letting on

that even finding out the tip of the iceberg

of what they know is going to put people in shock

but as I'm actively involved

in the local MUFON chapter in Michigan

we get currently about 200 sightings a year

just in Michigan.

And that is enough to fill your plate several times over

with UFO cases so to me it's almost at a point

where I don't care what the government knows

and what they're hiding.

I've got in an embarrassment of riches here

with the number of UFO cases coming into our local chapter.

I don't need them to try to hide anything

because it's all just flowing freely now,

people are talking about what's happening to them openly.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] While alien abductions

did not achieve widespread attention until the 1960s,

there were many similar stories circulating decades earlier.

These early abduction-like accounts

have been dubbed paleo-abductions

by UFO researcher Jerome Clark.

In an 1897 edition of the Stockton California Daily Mail,

Colonel HG Shaw claimed he and a friend were harassed

by three tall slender humanoids

whose bodies were covered with a fine dainty hair.

Colonel Shaw reported that these beings

tried to kidnap the pair.

The 1955 publication of Harold T. Wilkins

Flying Saucers Uncensored,

declared that Karl Hunrath and Wilbur Wilkinson

who had claimed they were contacted by aliens

had disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Wilkins reported his speculation that the duo

was the victims of alleged abduction by flying saucers.

A wave of contactee cases emerged in the 1950s as well.

These individuals claimed to have been contacted by aliens.

However, the substance of contactee narratives

is often regarded as quite different

from alien abduction accounts.

(gentle music)

Widespread publicity was generated

by the Betty and Barney Hill abduction case of 1961.

The Hill incident was probably

the prototypical abduction case and was perhaps the first

in which the claimer described beings

that later became widely known as the grays

and in which the beans were said to explicitly identify

as extraterrestrial origin.

An entire subculture has developed around the subject

with various groups and a detailed mythos

explaining the reasons for abductions.

The very various aliens, the grays,

reptilians, Nordics and so on

are said to have specific roles, origins and motivations.

Abduction claimants do not always

attempt to explain the phenomenon

but some take independent research interest in it themselves

and explain the lack of greater awareness of alien abduction

as the result of either extraterrestrial

or governmental interest.

Often abductees share experiences

or recall meeting on board a spacecraft.

However most alien abductions occur to individuals

with no way to prove what has happened to them.

- There's a couple different ways where other people

are involved in these types of experiences.

Sometimes you find yourself aboard a craft

or in some situation where you run into other people.

I've never been one of those people to be in that situation

where I've been aboard anything and I've seen anybody else.

Although it's not uncommon.

In fact there's a lot of stories

that are from people I know quite well

who have been aboard a craft, have met somebody

and then later in life have actually met

that person in real life

and then they were like, oh yes, we've met somewhere before

and they figure out it was on board.

I have been involved in experiences along with other people,

like seeing UFOs with other people present.

There was the time where I was dating a girl

and they came up and paralyzed us both

and that experience was definitely a shared one

so it doesn't always happen when somebody's alone.

I mean go figure Betty and Barney Hill,

one of the most infamous cases of course

was about a couple being taken.

So sometimes there are other people involved.

Most of the time, they just isolate you

and take you, the individual.

- [Narrator] Dr. Ronald Sprinkle,

a University of Wyoming psychologist,

became interested in the abduction phenomenon in the 1960s.

For some years he was probably the only academic figure

devoting any time to studying

or researching abduction accounts.

Sprinkle became convinced of the phenomenon's reality

and was perhaps the first to suggest a link

between abductions and cattle mutilations.

Eventually Sprinkle came to believe

that he had been abducted by aliens in his youth.

After that, he was forced from his job in 1989.

Being an abductee often has repercussions

on an experiencer's career and social life.

Some have even turned the experiences

into ways of expressing themselves and educating others.

- It has not affected my career or social life.

I didn't talk much.

I was at a die maker

and I didn't talk much about UFO phenomenon.

In fact, after I retired in 2000,

I got a show, Comcast Cable TV,

called We Are Not Alone.

And some of the guys saw me and just could not believe that.

Look, David Twitchell's on TV talking about UFOs.

Well, some percentage of them were into that.

A bigger percentage were not.

But I did that show, that TV show for 10 years

before I gave it up and now I've been on WHFR Radio

for the past six years doing the same show,

one-hour interviews.

- I worked several places where

when they found out about what had happened to me

I could feel a distance suddenly.

I was never really openly ridiculed at work,

though I do think that at one of the places I worked at

they let me go when they found out about my experiences.

But as time went on, I found myself working at a college

a very open-minded environment,

and as I've sort of come out there about my experiences,

to some degree, they've been very supportive

and it's been a wonderful experience

being able to actually talk about that other side of my life

that it happened to me all these years

so I feel fairly blessed in that respect.

My family has had a number of unusual experiences as well

so they've always been supportive

and socially my friends from high school have,

I've told them all along what's happened to me

and they're still right behind me

and I've been, again I would say blessed

that I've been fortunate enough

to be able to share what's happened to me

without too much backlash.

(gentle piano music)

- [Narrator] The late Budd Hopkins,

a painter and sculptor by profession,

had been interested in UFOs for some years.

In the 1970s, he became interested in abduction reports

and began using hypnosis to extract more details

of dimly remembered events.

Hopkins soon became a figurehead

of the growing abductees subculture.

The mid and late 1980s, saw the involvement

of two esteemed academic figures,

Harvard psychiatrist John Mack

and historian David M. Jacobs.

This decade brought a major degree

of mainstream attention to the subject.

Works by Budd Hopkins, Whitley Strieber,

David M. Jacobs and John Edward Mack

presented alien abduction as a genuine phenomenon.

Jacobs and Hopkins argued that alien abduction

was far more common than earlier suspected.

They estimated that tens of thousands of North Americans

had been taken by unexplained beings.

Furthermore, Jacobs and Hopkins believed

that there was an elaborate scheme underway

that the aliens were attempting to create

human-alien hybrids.

- It seemed a lot of things that were psychological,

more mental than physical, in some cases.

In other cases they just seem like,

let's grab this body, do something to it and dump it back.

Very traumatic, an awful time trying to sleep at night.

It was usually with the light on, TV or radio.

We'd usually have the dog in the room.

I would put stuff in front of the door

so that nobody could get in, that kind of a thing,

and it continued into my early 20s.

(mysterious music)

- [Narrator] Though the motives for hybrids where unknown,

there were incidental reports of phantom pregnancy

related to UFO encounters, at least as early as the 1960s.

Budd Hopkins and especially David M. Jacobs

were instrumental in popularizing the idea

of widespread systematic interbreeding efforts

on the part of the alien intruders.

Jacob's presents this scenario

as not only plausible but self-evident.

Dr. David Jacobs, author of The Threats says,

"The entire abduction event is precisely orchestrated.

"All of the procedures are predetermined."

There is no standing around and deciding what to do next.

The beings are task-oriented

and there's no indication whatsoever

that they've been able to find of any aspect of their lives

outside of performing the abduction procedures.

Alien abductions follow a standard scenario.

First, the capture.

An abductee is rendered incapable of resisting

and taken from terrestrial surroundings

to an apparent alien spacecraft.

Then the examination.

Physiological and psychological procedures,

training and testing or sexual liaisons.

Next is the conference.

The objectors communicate with the abductee

or direct them to interact with specific individuals

for some purpose, usually instructed telepathically.

In some cases, abductees are then given a tour of the ship.

Abductees often rapidly forget

the majority of their experience

either as a result of fear, medical intervention or both.

The abductees are returned to Earth

occasionally in a different location

from where they were allegedly taken or with new injuries.

- But as I sat there I was just sort of staring

at his giant, giant, big black liquid eyes

and I felt a sharp pain on my right arm

and when I looked down I saw there was a cut across my arm.

And then I saw it heal right before my eyes,

right when I was looking at it.

I don't know what caused the cut,

I didn't actually see a scalpel or a laser

or any type of device cutting it.

I just saw, felt the pain and I saw the cut

and then I looked and I saw it heal up into a scar.

And I look back at the being

and suddenly his black eyes turned a bright backlit blue,

very bright blue, like had these lights

almost right in front of its head

and it was very bizarre

but at the same time it was beautiful.

His eyes were such a wonderful deep lustrous Cerulean blue

and it was very tranquilizing, it was very calming,

it was peaceful, it was wonderful

and I just lost myself in these eyes.

And then I woke up in bed the next day

and I had this scar there and I still have the scar.

In fact, later that same day, the story wasn't over yet.

I was playing in the backyard with a friend of mine,

six-year-old from a few doors down,

and this mist rolled into the backyard

and there was a little gray guy in it

and he just came to check up on me, make sure I was fine,

and it only took a second for him to figure out I was

and then the mist, then the little gray guy

just continued down through the backyard

of the next-door neighbors and kept going.

My friend didn't even seem aware

that there was anything in the mist.

We definitely saw the missed but only I saw the little guy

and then that was probably about the end of that one

but I still have the scar.

- [Narrator] Many experiencers describe

unusual feelings after an abduction.

They may have a profound sense of love,

a high similar to those induced by certain drugs,

or a mystical experience

accompanied by a feeling of oneness with God,

the universe or their abductors.

Whether this is the result of a metaphysical change,

Stockholm Syndrome or prior medical tampering,

remains a mystery.

The abductee must then cope with the psychological,

physical and social effects of the experience.

If alien abductions are happening

shouldn't we see an effect on society

or would something so subtle

be difficult to emerge in social behavior.

The UFO phenomenon has been with us for centuries.

Is it possible that our society is being directed

by the extraterrestrials?

Could genetic changes in us alter our behavior?

And our attitudes toward the phenomenon

changing dramatically since the modern era of UFOs began.

- Sadly I don't see much of a change in people

from years ago, from centuries ago.

I really don't see it.

I see a change in technologies.

I see a change in weaponry.

I see a change in intelligence

as to the knowledge of the world around us,

the Universe in which we live.

But I don't see a change in human attitude, sadly.

And all you have to do is read the paper to learn that.

- [Narrator] Some proposed psychological

alternative explanations of the abduction phenomenon

have included hallucinations, temporary schizophrenia,

epileptic seizures and parasomnia, near sleep mental state

such as night terrors and sleep paralysis.

Sleep paralysis in particular,

a theory often accepted by skeptics,

is accompanied by hallucinations

and a particular sensation of malevolence

or a neutral presence of something in the room.

Though usually people experiencing it

do not interpret that something as aliens.

- You can write it off to the abduction phenomenon,

write it off to sleep paralysis.

Sleep paralysis.

Yes, there's such a thing as sleep paralysis.

Everybody's awakened half awake, half asleep

and thought they saw something in the room.

This has happened.

At the same time, a goodly number,

I think the late Budd Hopkins said it was like 33%.

One third of these cases,

were abductions that happened at work

while a person was wide awake and conscious.

For example, my sister walked into her bedroom

perfectly conscious, and the lights are out

but this is one of her weird experiences,

there was a blue light in her room.

Her room was illuminated with his blue light

although the lights were off.

She walked in and she looked around.

She said, what is this blue light

as she stood in the doorway

and the next thing she knows there's no light in the room,

she's sitting on the end of the bed.

Now she just gets up, gets ready for bed and goes to bed.

Being it no more tension.

(soft music)

- [Narrator] Proving alien abductions is difficult

without obvious physical evidence.

When an experiencer is returned,

all he has to prove his encounter

are the fragments of memories left intact by the aliens

though throughout the history of UFO studies,

countless cases have occurred

that do indeed present physical evidence.

Many are not aware of this

or the facts of a case are simply ignored.

Details in each case often are the proof

an encounter happened

but even with specific details we're left with the account

and the sincerity of the witness,

- I think a lot of people if they don't see it

and it doesn't affect their life,

they have the luxury of ignoring the phenomenon.

I mean, if they buy into it

and it questions what they've been taught

in their religion for example,

why would they entertain that

if they're comfortable with their religious teaching.

If it doesn't affect their life in any other respect,

they can choose to ignore it,

unless it comes knocking at your door.

I think a lot of people say I don't have time

or space for this in my life

and until it becomes an issue

where it's going to affect my world

then I'm just going to ignore it.

- If the evidence that has presented itself

are both circumstantial and direct evidence

is not enough to sway people's opinion

then nothing's going to prove their existence

except maybe, and I say maybe,

them landing on the White House lawn

which almost happened a couple times,

earliest as '52, I believe, '54.

I think it was 1952 when they overflew the White House.

That's when Truman shoot them down.

Well, he's in Washington

and there's a crash out in Roswell, New Mexico.

That's alright, we'll deal with that.

But when they start overflying my house, shoot them down

if they don't answer your call.

- [Narrator] California podiatrist Dr. Roger Leir

claims to have removed alien implants from patients.

Alien implants is a term used in ufology

to describe a physical object placed in someone's body

after they have been abducted by aliens.

Claimed abilities of the implants range from telepresence,

mind control and bio telemetry,

the way we tag wild animals for study.

As with UFO subjects in general,

the idea of alien implants has seen very little attention

from mainstream scientists.

- We found in several cases that they put out

an electromagnetic field measurable on a Gauss meter

of about six milligauss.

And if anybody's into electronics and radio

you'll know that's a pretty strong magnetic field.

When they're taken out of the body, they don't do anything.

Also on an instrument called a trimeter

we get a mid-range reading on a combined scale

electrical scale and magnetic scale,

and that's also a pretty strong reading.

We have electrical engineers

and he has designed a special probe

that's connected with an oscilloscope

so we can read the wave and see what it looks like

and it says there's a good indication

that there's something going in

and there's something coming out

so obviously these objects are in communication

with somebody at some distance.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] One recommendation from skeptics

is to try to trick the aliens into presenting evidence,

such as bringing back something from the spacecraft

or set up a camera trap to record in abduction.

This has been tried and in each case

the cameras simply failed

and the experiencers are so closely watched

and controlled during an abduction,

taking something is impossible.

- I've never done anything like set up a camera

or any sort of recording device

to try to track my experiences

since they happen so infrequently.

It would be a very disciplined effort

to try to set up a camera

for something that maybe happens only

even at the peak of when I was having these experiences

every few months, which is still a lot.

In the past decade or so I really haven't had

the same types of experiences that I had prior to this

to try to do it now.

But yeah, it it happens so infrequently

that I was never really able to set anything up

that I thought would catch anything.

- I find that the best cases are cases were people

are coming forward after 20, 30, and 40 years.

They're finally coming forward with these cases

where they had lived at the time in Michigan

and saw this, had a very close encounter,

like myself, like my family with a UFO.

Not just the light in the sky,

but a close encounter where it's a couple hundred feet away

and you can see it's perfectly silent,

it has no visible sign of propulsion,

has no wings, has no rotors, makes no sound.

What is it?

And then it hovers, shoots off.

What do we have that would cancel out the inertia

to where the pilot would not be a grease spot on the wall

when it takes off.

So I've seen, I've heard of a lot of cases

with Michigan MUFON, some have good evidence.

But personally all I can say is my sighting.

Now I can't convince you, I can't convince your viewers

that my family actually saw this thing

but what would be my motivation?

I've written three books.

Is it to sell books?

Trust me you don't get rich selling books on UFOs.

But the purpose of the books is to get the word out there.

To let people know we're not alone.

- [Narrator] If the presence of extraterrestrials on Earth

is made known or the aliens themselves

reveal their interaction with people of Earth

what would be the reaction of the general populace?

Would you be able to handle the truth?

- I've written a book called

The Global Implications of UFO Reality

and in it I kind of theorize, speculate

as to how this world will take the news.

Well, France's come out with the Cometa Report

where their top scientists and military men

have investigated some of the cases in Europe and in France

and it was kind of like an honest Project Blue Book.

Our Project Blue Book I call Project Whitewash.

But the Cometa Report investigated

these good quality sightings and abduction cases

and they have concluded that it is something real.

- If it ever gets to a point

where it's officially acknowledged,

I think we're in for some rough times.

When I found out about the LA riots,

just a very very small percentage of people

that rioted in LA so many years ago

and what they were able to do to the city

I think a very very small people

will handle something like this very badly.

They won't be able to accept it, it'll turn violent

and even again just with a very small percentage of people

they can cause a lot of mayhem,

and I think that with the modern media being Internet-based

that all sorts of opinions on it

are gonna be clashing with each other for years.

I think it's just gonna be awful unfortunately.

I mean, it's not to say that it shouldn't happen

because it's a growth thing.

We need to get beyond this close-minded view that we have

that we're the only ones but,

yeah, those are going to be some tough times I think.

- [Narrator] A precise number

of alleged abductees is uncertain.

One of the earliest studies of abductions

found 1,700 claimants

while other surveys argued that 5% to 6%

of the general population might have been abducted.

If true that would be a huge number of people being taken.

- Best evidence I have found is my own sighting.

Seeing is believing.

Most researchers have lot better cases than I have,

the Betty and Barney Hill case,

the Peter Robbins doing the Rendlesham Forest case.

In Michigan, I am from Michigan of course,

and I'm with Michigan MUFON,

we get a lot of I-saw-a-light-in-the-sky cases.

These light-in-the-sky cases, there's a lot of them

because these people are convinced

that they're seeing something anomalous

when it's just a light in the sky.

- I think that the best evidence,

and I do get asked occasionally what's the best evidence

for the reality of extraterrestrial,

if that's where they're from, visitation

and I just think it's the wrong number of people

that have had these types of experiences.

There are those who are open about it

but that's a minority for certain.

A lot of people that I speak to will come up to me

and say I've never told anybody this before but,

and there are a lot of people

that deny having these types of experiences

when they know themselves that they've had them

and it continues, it continues.

It doesn't stop, it doesn't let up

and generations in the past and generations to come it seems

unless some major change happens

are gonna continue on the same course

of having these types of experiences regularly.

And whether people choose to acknowledge it or ignore it

it doesn't matter to the phenomenon.

The phenomenon will just continue.

You can't make it go away,

it's not a fad or anything like that.

- [Narrator] We may never know the full agenda

of the beings responsible for alien abductions.

Further research is needed.

However, with each new case we gain more knowledge

of the alien agenda and we become better prepared

for the day when we will have full disclosure.

(dramatic music)

(gentle music)

- [Kid] Reality films.