Original subtitles

Taking a flying disc out by C-17.

Among the quiet towns and bustling epicenters around the world,

reports pour in of unusual aerial phenomena.

It shoots high into the air.

It's moving in an erratic way.

This is not a terrestrial craft.

Flying discs, hovering orbs,

strange biological substances falling from the sky.

To determine what it might have been,

you'd have to eliminate all the other possibilities.

The sensational becomes credible once it's crowdsourced.

Thousands of people claim to see these orbs.

UFO hotspots light up on the map.

What's made these places the target of otherworldly attention?

This might be the location of the vortex.

As vessels reappear in the same locations,

can we use the earthly to guess at otherworldly motives?

Are these mysterious visitors friends or foe?

And should we fear their return?

All over the world, repeat sightings of UFOs baffle researchers.

UAP are in our airspace, but they are grossly underreported.

A pattern begins to emerge.

These sightings are not rare or isolated.

They are routine.

What is the meaning behind these hotspots?

I can't go beyond what I've already stated publicly.

The government is not prepared.

Are we being mapped?

February 9th, 2023, 9 p.m.

At the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, in Colorado,

radio operators have picked up an unusual object floating over northern Alaska.

They have no idea what it is, but it poses a serious threat to U.S. airspace.

Cruising at an altitude of 39,000 feet,

the object is within the typical altitude range for civilian aircraft.

Alaskan authorities hurriedly order an airspace closure,

and within hours, a small fleet of F-35 fighter jets is en route to investigate.

But their testimonies only complicate the mystery.

According to some pilots, the car-sized craft appears to be moving through the air

with no visible means of propulsion.

They have no idea how it's staying airborne.

Other pilots have trouble even approaching the object,

claiming that it interfered with their sensors.

The following morning, two F-22 fighter jets take off from Elmendorf-Richardson Air Base, Alaska.

They have been given permission by the President of the United States

to engage and destroy the mysterious flying object.

A short-range air-to-air missile sends the unknown craft

hurtling into the frozen waters of the Arctic, just off the Alaskan coast.

Recovery operations would go on for 39 days.

Though bad weather and limited daylight would mean most of the unidentified object

would be lost to the frozen waters forever.

News of the 2023 Alaska high-altitude object would make international headlines,

but this is far from the only encounter in Alaska with unknown aerial phenomena.

76 years earlier, in August 1947,

FBI HQ in Anchorage receives a remarkable witness statement.

It begins.

Two Army officers reported to the office of the Director of Intelligence

at Fort Richardson, Alaska,

claiming that they had witnessed an object passing through the air

at a tremendous speed,

which they could not judge as to miles per hour.

The two pilots are traveling across Alaska

when they see this large spherical object that is soaring through the sky,

leaving no exhaust trail.

There's a slight discrepancy in terms of the account of the size of this flying craft,

with one of the pilots believing that it was further away and larger,

something like 10 feet long.

The other believing that it was closer and a lot smaller, only about 2, 3 feet.

If you are airborne and you see another object,

unless you're familiar with that object,

you have no idea how far it is away,

because you don't know how big the object is if you're standing next to it.

Unless you're familiar with that shape and that size of airplane,

it's very difficult to sort,

and that's why the two pilots disagreed.

This extraordinary account jolts the Anchorage FBI into action.

The cable FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover's office,

reporting that this is the second sighting of an unidentified aircraft in the region

in as many months.

A month before the two military pilots had their sighting,

a civilian pilot going over Anchorage claimed to have seen another rather strange object.

This one shaped like a wing that was flying through the sky.

The interesting thing about this other sighting is that,

like the two army pilots reported,

this wing-shaped, V-shaped UFO also left no trail of exhaust of any kind.

After moving away from this strange craft,

he then radios the Civil Aeronautic Administration,

only to be told there is nothing else in the sky around him.

Throughout the 1950s,

strange sightings in Anchorage and the Alaskan tundra continue to confound military observers.

Pilots and ground radar operators are haunted by mysterious ghost readings,

as objects appear and disappear impossibly from one moment to the next.

Naval officers patrolling the Alaskan coast

offer numerous accounts of unidentified red and orange lights

flitting erratically across the sky.

When civilians, pilots, or people on the ground see UFOs,

one of the examples or reasons that have been given for it in the past is

these are just military aircraft.

When a military pilot or the military is coming out and saying things,

then that lends to a different level of credibility or belief

because you'd expect that military pilots on the base

would know what type of military vessels are being tested.

If a combat-ready fighter pilot sees something in the air,

he's probably in a little better position to give a theory on what it might have been.

The military pilot is trained to judge distance of a potential adversary,

closing rate, intercept angles,

all the things that go with their combat maneuvers.

Just their level of training is quite a bit higher.

And this is important because it adds credibility to any sighting,

but it also is indicative of the fact that the stigma of the UFO phenomenon

has not yet set in,

that people in the military are very much willing to report these things,

and there is no procedure yet to clamp down on this.

None of these early accounts will quite match the remarkable circumstances

surrounding Japanese Airlines Flight 1628

flying over Alaskan airspace in November 1986.

Washington, D.C.

A telephone rings in the Federal Aviation Administration offices.

Chief of Accidents and Investigations, John Callahan, answers the call.

The voice on the other end crackles,

We got a problem.

The problem in question is the startling testimony

of former fighter pilot-turned-commercial operator,

Kenju Terauchi.

Terauchi was piloting a Japanese commercial cargo plane

on a long-haul flight from Paris to Tokyo

with a stopover in Anchorage.

As the pilot enters Alaskan airspace,

he notices a very strange bright object alongside.

At first, he dismisses it as, well, just another plane as you would,

but after a few minutes, it's still there,

and it doesn't look like another plane,

and he starts to ask himself some very searching questions.

Terauchi radios the Anchorage Air Traffic Control Center

to confirm the presence of the strange aircraft.

Anchorage confirms they have picked up an object on radar

eight kilometers behind the flight,

though they can't confirm what it is.

Terauchi says the radar readings are wrong.

The objects are not behind him.

In fact, they've moved and are now directly in front of him.

They're so close that Terauchi can feel the warmth

from the unidentified lights shining into his cockpit.

The interesting thing about this UFO encounter,

to me, is that feeling of heat.

In most encounters, they tend to be one-dimensional,

vision and vision only.

Feeling the heat, that's something new and something rare.

It's at this point that air traffic control radio

to the Regional Operations Command Center

and ask them whether they can see anything strange

or untoward near this aircraft.

So the Regional Operations Command Center

does confirm that there may be something there,

but they have absolutely no idea what it could be.

And then, very strangely, the pilot gets a message back

from air traffic control that whatever it is

that has shown up in the radar that the pilot is seeing

has just disappeared altogether.

This thing which you're observing with your eyes

is just not there.

Radar has a sensitivity to it.

If you have multiple objects in close proximity,

it may interpret that as a single object.

Also, depending on the conditions,

you may just not have a great signal quality.

So your signal from a single object

may not be strong enough to really say

it's here versus here

because the atmosphere in between

or other noises interfering

with getting a really good fix on that aircraft.

Tereushi and his crew continue to watch in amazement

as the objects dart forward and back,

disappearing behind the plane.

As he glances back,

expecting to see the crafts tailing him,

Tereushi sees something far more ominous.

To his horror,

there is what appears to be a mothership right behind,

and it is the size, he says, of an aircraft carrier.

This is an enormous craft

that is now bearing down on him.

The pilot is instructed to take evasive maneuvers at this point.

They drop 4,000 feet, circle the plane,

trying to shake off this craft, whatever it is,

but are actually unable to do so.

It sticks with them.

Finally, after 640 kilometers and nearly 50 minutes,

Tereushi and his crew lose sight of the mysterious mothership.

Exhausted and nearly out of fuel,

Flight 1628 finally touches down in Anchorage.

The FAA conducts an investigation, rightly so,

into this matter, given how unusual it is,

and sends its report and its results to Washington,

where it has a briefing with members from the CIA and the FBI.

And interestingly, the FAA is reported to have been told

to keep this under wraps,

not to let this out to the public.

If it's true,

there's two ways of reading the situation.

One is, obviously,

the government decided to avert panic,

to keep this story, as it were, under control.

But, of course, to the UFO community,

this is red flags all over the place.

I mean, why is it

that the government is hushing up

an incident like this

when you've got an experienced pilot

who claims to have seen something so incredible?

The Japan Airlines incident remains an enduring mystery.

What were these mysterious aircrafts?

And what was it about the frozen Alaskan wilderness

that could have attracted them?

Alaska is renowned for its extraordinary,

otherworldly aerial phenomena.

The most famous of these

is a force powerful enough

to send dangerous currents

surging through major power grids,

disrupt global satellite navigation,

and even affect the human brain.

The Aurora Borealis

is one of the most incredible phenomena

I have ever seen.

I have stood underneath the northern lights

in the Northwest Passage,

and watched the lights dance above my head.

They move, they shimmer,

they change so quickly,

and the colors that you get from them,

it's almost like a dream.

It's just an incredible thing.

What you're actually seeing

when you see an Aurora Borealis

is you're actually seeing particles

that were emitted from the sun

in a solar flare

that have traveled to Earth,

been redirected by the Earth's magnetic field,

and are interacting with gases

in our upper atmosphere

to produce plasma

and give rise to these beautiful colors

and moving patterns.

We have two things that protect us.

The atmosphere,

which protects from harmful radiation

from the sun,

UV radiation, etc.

And then you also have the magnetosphere,

which protects us against the sun's

highly charged particles,

which can also be harmful to life on Earth.

If those charged particles

were able to penetrate through our atmosphere,

they would cause an immense amount

of ionizing radiation at ground level,

potentially, you know,

killing off life on Earth.

While beautiful to look at,

the Aurora Borealis

is a remarkably violent phenomenon,

with its origins far from our own planet.

But severe electromagnetic disturbances,

even in our own atmosphere,

can produce electrical currents

capable of traveling down

to the Earth's surface.

If you get a strong enough solar storm,

it can mess up everything.

In early September 1859,

amateur astronomer Richard Carrington

joins a growing number of astronomers

studying a newly observed phenomena

on the sun's surface

called sunspots.

Sunspots are basically

cooler regions

on the surface of the sun.

They appear dark

because they're cooler

with respect to the surrounding regions.

Sunspots can occur

in regions of intense magnetic activity,

and they're also correlated

with things like

solar eruptions,

solar storms,

coronal mass ejections,

that all involve

the release of highly charged particles,

which will eventually

go out into space

and find their way to us,

and potentially cause

the beautiful Aurora.

As Carrington sketches

the dappled sun

through his telescope,

he is suddenly blinded

by an explosion of white light.

He doesn't know it yet,

but he has just become

one of the first people

to witness a coronal mass ejection,

a massive expulsion of plasma

from the outermost part

of the sun's atmosphere.

Those areas can literally

blast out mass,

like literal bits and pieces

of the sun towards the Earth.

In just 17 hours,

this mass of volatile material

strikes the Earth's magnetic field.

This is the beginning

of what became known

as the Carrington event.

This event was on the order

of tens of thousands of times

of any aurora

that we've really experienced since.

the Borealis actually extended

into the tropics.

As south as Cuba

and the southern tip of Japan,

people saw these auroras

because of this solar flare.

If suddenly the Aurora Borealis,

which is for the most part

a northern phenomena,

is visible in southern regions,

especially in the 19th century,

it's going to be alarming.

It's going to seem like

something supernatural,

something divine.

One of the crazy things

about coronal mass ejections

and particles traveling to Earth

is that they do carry

a charge with them.

And when a charge

passes by anything metallic,

we actually generate electricity.

So you have telegraph poles

sparking, catching fire.

You have operators

experiencing shock.

The disruptions

from the Carrington event

lasted for days,

with telegraph poles

and offices struggling

to repair the widespread

electrical damage.

Long-distance communication

became virtually impossible.

But as destructive

as this remarkable storm was,

a similar event today

would cause

an unprecedented global crisis.

To put into perspective,

if an event like this

was to happen now,

it would cost $2.6 trillion

in the United States alone.

It could literally

wipe out disk drives

on the face of the planet

so nobody has any

magnetic media storage anymore.

It could destroy

entire electrical infrastructure.

It could knock

all the satellites

out of service around Earth.

That would have

massive impacts

on humans

for decades

and potentially

even centuries to come.

The Aurora Borealis

have the potential

to cause serious damage

to any electrical component,

but are considered safe

because of their altitude.

Occurring between

80 and 640 kilometers

above the Earth,

these dazzling displays

are far too high

for conventional aircraft

to reach.

And yet,

the Aurora over Alaska

remain an unlikely hotbed

of unidentified aerial activity.

Wasilla, Alaska.

Less than 50 kilometers

from Anchorage.

In 2013,

a man drives west

along E. Seldon Road.

His son gazes

through the passenger side window,

watching waves of light

dance across the night sky.

They haven't been

this bright in weeks.

The man pulls over.

Then,

he sees something strange.

Dozens of floating red crafts

emerge from the pink

and green glow.

They group together,

forming an enormous circle.

From the side of the road,

he and his son

can make out

the shapes of the aircraft.

They're triangular,

moving slowly eastward

as a pack.

If aircraft or lights

or something

is seen emerging

from the Aurora Borealis,

we know that

it's not a human artifact.

Human aircraft

do not fly at that height

and cannot fly at that height.

More cars are stopping now.

As drivers gather

by the side of the road,

they begin to ask

one another questions.

What is this bizarre

fleet of aircraft?

Where did they come from?

And could they have

anything to do

with the Aurora Borealis above?

One of the stranger things

about the Aurora Borealis

is that it has been connected

to the UFO phenomenon

in the past.

People have reported

sightings of UFOs

in and around the Aurora

coming out of it.

What kind of relationship

is there between

the Aurora

and the UFO phenomenon?

Some UFO enthusiasts

question whether or not

the Aurora

creates energy,

as it were,

for alien craft

or whether it guides them in.

It's like the lights

on a runway.

Auroras as well

aren't something

that just happen on Earth.

Auroras can be seen

throughout our solar system.

The gas giants,

Jupiter,

Saturn,

and Neptune,

all have strong

magnetic fields

and dense atmospheres

producing their own

Aurora formations.

Planets beyond

our solar system

may host

even more remarkable

phenomena

as a result

of the interplay

between their atmosphere

and that of the nearest star,

though these are

too dim for us to see.

The Aurora

appear 64 to 305

kilometers above

the Earth's surface,

where our atmosphere

meets outer space.

This zone

is called the ionosphere.

The ionosphere

is a layer

of Earth's atmosphere

that is composed

primarily of

charged particles

called ions,

and it exists

between 50 to 600 miles

above the Earth's surface.

It's particularly

interesting in the context

of long-distance

radio communication

because it allows

radio signals

that are sent off

from the surface

to kind of bounce back down

and travel around

to other points

on the surface.

This region

is notoriously

difficult to study.

The atmosphere

is too thin

for weather balloons

to reach it,

but too thick

for satellites

to orbit through it.

In 1993,

the United States military

sets its sights

on a new project,

one that will probe

further and deeper

into the mysteries

of the ionosphere

than ever before.

The barren stretches

surrounding Gakona, Alaska

become a hub

of strange activity.

Rows of antenna

rise out of the forest,

reaching up towards

the sky above.

This remote installation

is called HAARP,

Alaska's high-frequency

active auroral research program.

HAARP is like

an enormous car park

in the middle

of a beautiful landscape

with loads

of radio antenna

in rows along it.

This towering arrangement

makes up HAARP's

ionospheric research instrument.

This high-power,

high-frequency transmitter

emits strong radio signals

to temporarily agitate

parts of the ionosphere.

The resulting effects

allow researchers

a small yet unprecedented window

into ionospheric properties.

How charged particles

interact with our atmosphere,

how they interact

with the magnetosphere

of the planet,

how that protects us

from the solar winds.

If that wasn't there,

life would not happen on Earth.

I mean, go over to Mars,

it doesn't have much

of a magnetosphere,

and literally,

the atmosphere was blown away

by the solar winds.

Aside from its primary

research function,

HAARP has sparked controversy

across the world.

Anytime we have a piece

of technology

that is sending signals

outward beyond our Earth,

there is a potential

connection to be made

by those who are really

interested in UFOs

that perhaps there is

an alien race

picking up those signals.

There is an element

of fear among some people

who believe that

trying to reveal

our location

to extraterrestrial intelligence

is not the smartest

thing to do

because we do not know

anything about

the motivations

of this extraterrestrial

intelligence

if it exists.

It's almost like

leaving our home address

on the Internet.

On the other hand,

there are the optimists

who believe

that it's very important

that we reach out

and try to communicate

with this extraterrestrial

intelligence,

and they think

that the assumption

that these beings

will be malicious

or harmful to human beings

is an unfair assumption.

As theories continue

to circulate

about how life

on other planets

might appear,

some astronomers

are keen to prepare

for the most advanced possibilities.

Dr. Douglas Vakoch

is the president

of the Messaging

Extraterrestrial Intelligence Program

or METI

in California.

He has long defended

the practice

of sending messages

into outer space

in an effort

to explore

an unusual idea

known as

the zoo hypothesis.

According to

what's termed

the zoo hypothesis,

we are essentially

an animal

in a cage

as far as

passing UFOs

are concerned,

and they're not

really interested

unless the animal

in the cage

does something

interesting.

I mean,

if you were in a zoo

and you walk past

the elephant enclosure,

you might just think,

oh, another elephant.

But what if the elephant

suddenly said,

you know,

I really like reading

Aristotle?

Then you go,

okay,

I need to take

a closer look here.

Now, one theory runs

that the activity

from HAARP

is something

that might fascinate

passing UFOs,

that they see

this interaction

with the ionosphere

and they wonder

what's going on.

So they zoom in

to take a closer look,

and that is what

makes Alaska

a UFO hotspot.

The strange occurrences

around the HAARP

installation

may be in part

due to its location

right at the heart

of one of Alaska's

most treacherous regions.

Most people have heard

of the infamous

Bermuda Triangle,

but not as many people

know about

the Alaska Triangle.

The state of Alaska

is vast,

measuring more than

1.5 million square kilometers

in total area.

It is by far

the largest state

in the United States,

and yet,

of its 365 million acres

of land,

only 160,000 acres

are inhabited

by humans,

less than 1 20th

of 1% of the state.

In any given year,

between 500

and 2,000 people

vanish in Alaska,

twice the national average.

You're sitting right

near the Bering Strait,

which has some

of the worst storms

in the world

that easily get on land there.

All the various creatures

that would love

to eat you,

that part of the world

is just super dangerous.

Like,

you can't just walk

into the Alaska wilderness

and expect to do it

on your own.

You are not going

to survive.

In 2007 alone,

2,833 people

disappeared.

Many of these

missing persons

are never found,

lost forever

to the unforgiving

Alaskan landscape.

The rate of disappearance

in Alaska

is simply jaw-dropping.

One has to wonder,

is there something else

which is stalking people

in Alaska?

Alaska

and any parts

of the north

are absolutely primed

for vanishing people.

Simply because

if you go out

into the wilderness

and you pass away,

one,

that is a really big area

to try and find you in.

And number two,

there is a lot of scavengers

that would love

to find a body

and that body

gets scattered

everywhere very quickly.

In a state notorious

for the rate

of its mysterious

disappearances,

no place is more infamous

than the Alaska Triangle.

People report

a kind of feeling

of unease,

auditory hallucinations,

visual hallucinations.

It's something about

the spirit of the place

which unnerves people.

Anchorage,

Juneau,

and Utqiagvik

form the three points

of the Alaska Triangle,

an enormous area

stretching from

the state's

southernmost coast

to its northernmost point,

just 1,300 kilometers

from the North Pole.

This massive area

is defined by

some of the most

treacherous wilderness

in the world,

ranging from

craggy mountain peaks

to snow-filled crevices

deep enough

to swallow

unlucky travelers.

October 16th, 1972.

A small airplane

carrying House Majority Leader

Hale Boggs

and Representative

Nick Begich

seemingly vanishes

into thin air

over Alaska.

The two politicians

and their aide

board the light aircraft

in Anchorage.

It's a short flight

to Juneau,

nothing they should

be worrying about.

Off they go

and they disappear.

On that day,

the weather was good.

The plane had just had

a maintenance check.

Everything was great.

In short,

really,

nothing should have

gone wrong.

I'll bet you any money

if the weather was nice,

they were sightseeing.

Because if that's the case,

they would have been

close to the water,

close to the shore,

showing off the congressman

and the senator

or the beauties of Alaska,

whatever,

they could have hit

a flock of geese

and do awful damage

to an airplane.

The 39-day search

for the missing Cessna

covers an area

roughly the size

of South Carolina,

over 82,000 square kilometers.

Given the high profile

of those on board,

hundreds of aircraft

and dozens of ships

are mobilized

to try and find

any sign of wreckage

or bodies,

but to no avail.

Hard enough to find

an airplane that size

if it crashed on land

because the trees

are very, very tall.

And unless you find

the scar,

the crash path

that leads

to some shiny metal,

you could fly over

that site a dozen times

and never see a thing.

If it went into the water

and sank,

not a hope.

Thousands have vanished

without a trace

in the Alaska Triangle.

Many of these unsolved cases

involve skilled outdoorsmen

with years of experience

battling the harshest environments.

In 2006,

Richard Lyman Griffiths

takes to the hills

of St. Elias National Park

to test his latest invention,

a wilderness survival cocoon.

After more than a year

in the Alaskan wilderness,

Griffiths is finally

reported missing.

But after so many months,

any trace of him

or his specialized gear

are long gone.

In 2013,

Alan Foster,

an expert pilot

with nearly 10,000 hours experience,

takes off from Yakutat

in his single-engine aircraft.

But just eight minutes

into the flight,

the plane vanishes

from local radar,

never to be seen again.

There is no distress call,

no sign of any trouble.

Years later,

his disappearance

remains unsolved.

These few cases

represent a mere fraction

of the 16,000 people

lost to this enormous,

inhospitable region

over the past three decades.

The obvious things

like dying of hypothermia

in the mountains,

being buried by snow.

But it has made many speculate

on whether there's

other reasons

for these people

going missing.

One possible answer

to these enduring mysteries

comes from the work

of Scottish biologist

and writer

Ivan Terence Sanderson.

In 1968,

Sanderson first theorizes

a new phenomenon,

which he coins

the vile vortex.

This is the idea

that at equidistant places

around the world,

there's a certain number

of vortexes

that have some kind

of malevolent character

to them.

And these are places

where there's anomalous activity,

there could be UFO sightings,

the vortex could be

in a body of water,

so it could result

in shipwrecks,

planes disappearing

or crashing.

These vile vortexes,

ranging from Stonehenge

in England

to the Devil's Sea

in Japan,

and the notorious

Bermuda Triangle

are epicenters

of the unexplained.

In the Alaska Triangle,

mysterious magnetic

disturbances

and strange apparitions

have indicated

that it may well be

among these vile vortexes.

In Alaska,

we hear about people

having trouble

with their compass

because it's not

pointing directly north.

And that's because

the North Pole

isn't exactly

where the magnetic pole is.

and the closer

you get to the magnetic pole,

the further off

true north

is going to be.

And to add all to that,

the magnetic pole

actually moves.

If you're down

in sort of the temperate regions

closer to the tropics,

it's not really

going to matter that much.

But when you're up

very close to it,

you can have

a big deviation.

And that will make

things seem really weird.

On the personal level,

people sometimes

attribute this

to the physiological feelings

they have

of nausea,

of auditory sensations

that are strange,

the sound of buzzing bees

in their ears

and so on.

The other thing

that happens is

if it is actually

covered in snow and ice,

you get a lot of reflections

from all sorts of directions.

And that causes disorientation.

It can also cause

hallucinations.

The theory of vile vortexes

continues to intrigue scientists

and laypeople alike.

But research has yet

to confirm

whether they could exist

or not,

prompting some

to contemplate

even stranger possibilities.

Some also believe

that these vortexes

are portals

to other dimensions.

Let's just say

that an alien base

is being built

somewhere in the United States.

Where better to do it

than sparsely populated,

inhospitable Alaska?

The strangest theories

about the Alaska Triangle

center around

some of the state's

most dramatic landmarks,

its mountains.

Around Alaska's

main city of Anchorage,

there is this crescent

of huge snow-capped mountains,

the Alaska Range.

And this crescent

extends for about 600 miles

of these jagged

and truly monumental mountains.

The highest peak

in the eastern Alaska range

is the magnificent

Mount Haze.

It's renowned

for its brutal climate,

with temperatures

regularly dropping

30 degrees below zero

and long,

intensely snowy winters.

This ancient mountain's

unexpected link

to the extraterrestrial

came in 1970,

when authors

Sheila Ostrander

and Lynn Schroeder

published a book

entitled

Psychic Discoveries

Behind the Iron Curtain.

So this book

alleges

that Soviet scientists

were training people

to kind of

psychically project

themselves

over large distances.

So you're in Moscow,

you psychically

project yourself

into the Pentagon

and you see

all the juicy files

that the Kremlin

wanted to see.

That was the idea.

If the Americans

got word

that the Soviets

were working on

something that could

be as powerful

as remote viewing,

the onus was on them

to investigate this.

Following the book's

publication,

the United States

leapt into action.

In 1972,

work begins

at the Stanford

Research Institute,

or SRI,

in Menlo Park,

California.

Over the course

of decades of research,

several psychics

emerged as

especially gifted.

One of these star performers

is former Burbank

police officer

Pat Price.

In 1974,

Price is brought

into the research center

to test his remote

viewing capabilities.

During this test,

Price was secluded,

placed in a room

with no contact

with others,

and he was asked

to make psychic contact,

as it were,

with a location

where a field agent

was based,

where there were

two pools,

and he described

these with

pinpoint accuracy,

so it seemed,

except he let himself

down on one detail.

He mentioned

a water filtration system

that wasn't there.

But then,

interestingly,

years later,

the analysts

come across

a historical image

of the site,

and lo and behold,

they see the water tanks

that Price was describing.

This is far

from Price's

most dramatic vision.

His remote viewing

capabilities

apparently enabled him

to access

one of America's

most closely guarded

secret programs,

its extraterrestrial

monitoring unit.

One morning,

in 1973,

Price enters

the offices

of Hal Puthoff,

one of the program directors,

and drops a file

on his desk.

He simply says,

you might be interested

in these UFO bases.

In a secret program

that is already

amongst the most bizarre

that the American government

has ever engaged in,

this only really ramps up

the stakes.

This gets very,

very strange.

Price's accounts

describe several alleged

extraterrestrial bases

scattered across

every continent.

Third on the list

is a base buried

deep in the heart

of Mount Hayes.

This alien base

is something

straight out of

science fiction.

It's bristling

with security mechanisms

to prevent access

to it,

and it has antennas

reaching right

to the top

of the mountain.

This is a fortress.

Not only does Price

claim to see

this strange location

inside the mountain,

he claims he can see

its inhabitants as well.

Humanoid creatures

of some kind

that's operating

the computers.

While no proof

of an extraterrestrial base

has ever been discovered

on Mount Hayes,

the legacy

of the United States

Psychic Research Program

continues to fuel

speculation

that it may be

the reason behind

Alaska's remarkable

extraterrestrial activity.

In the 1990s,

a new startling story

emerged

that sparked interest

in a new location

in Alaska.

Denali is the extreme

in an extreme place.

It is one of the

highest mountains

in the world

depending on how

you measure.

It is a place

which is so formidable

that only half

the climbers

are able to be successful.

More than 100 people

have perished

in trying to ascend

Denali.

On May 27, 2020,

41-year-old Nathan Campbell

waves goodbye

to the small charter plane

that has just

dropped him off

on the shores

of Cary Lake

in Denali National Park.

It's an unforgiving place,

riddled with towering

sharp alder thickets

and murky ponds.

It would take him

at least a week

of brutal bushwhacking

to reach the nearest town,

Lake Minchumina,

population 13.

Campbell takes stock

of his supplies.

Basic camping gear,

a hefty food supply,

and a two-way

satellite communicator.

These will be the keys

to his survival.

He is on a discovery mission

determined to find

one of Alaska's

strangest phenomena,

the infamous

Black Pyramid.

He will never be seen again.

The pyramid holds

a really interesting place

in UFO lore,

but also conspiracy theory

more generally.

A lot of theorists

have claimed that

pyramid structures

and shapes provide

healing powers,

for instance,

or that they are

repositories or sources

of really otherworldly power.

The story of the Black Pyramid

begins in Lopner,

a vast dry sea basin

in Central Asia.

Here on the 22nd of May,

1992,

China sets off

its largest ever

underground nuclear test.

The explosion

is estimated

to have 70 times

the explosive power

of the atom bomb

dropped over Hiroshima

in 1945.

Shortly after

the nuclear test,

three scientists

go on television

to say that

while studying

the shock waves

from the nuclear blast,

they detected

a huge pyramid-like structure

underneath Mount Denali.

This is a structure

far bigger

than the Great Pyramid

at Giza.

It's just absolutely

mind-boggling.

One of the things

that we can do

to image

what's happening

within our Earth

is map

the motion of sound waves

within the planet itself.

And if you have

seismometers

located at various points

on the Earth's surface,

you can measure

the timing

when those sound waves

reach those sensors.

And you can actually

start building pictures

of what the structure

in the Earth

actually looks like.

As word of the

mysterious structure

slowly spreads,

retired counterintelligence

agent Doug Mutchler

takes notice.

After the reports

of this pyramid

underneath the mountain,

he remembered

seeing maps

of the area

where parts of the map

had been mysteriously

whited out.

So when he sees

the news report,

he begins to wonder

whether or not

the U.S. government

has been hiding something.

If you want,

the dots

start to connect.

Waiting eagerly

for further details

about the strange discovery,

Mutchler is disappointed

when none come.

A year later,

in 1993,

he arrives at

Fort Meade, Maryland.

to look at the base's

detailed collection

of military records.

He's directed to a cabinet

filled with redacted files,

but his research

is rudely interrupted.

Two men suddenly appear

and pull the files

away from him

and tell him

that he has no authority

to look at those files.

Mutchler finding himself

blocked

moves increasingly

into conspiracy theorist circles

and also conspiracy theorist views.

If we take seriously

the theory

that there is

a Black Pyramid

under the mountain,

it's a very short leap

given the nature of that,

given the nature

of the kind of cover-up

that would be required

for that

to jump to UFO activity.

Is it something

that could be

an alien base?

Is it something

that attracts aliens?

What is it?

Does it have

extraterrestrial significance?

While it may be tempting

to dismiss

the legend

of the Black Pyramid

and possible connection

to UFOs,

the United States'

military and intelligence

history of cover-ups

and disinformation

suggests it's worth

a closer look.

One of the reasons

why people will not

be dissuaded

by the lack of evidence

or the lack of records

is because governments

have a history

of erasing

inconvenient truths.

The Manhattan Project

was a huge project

that was entirely secret

and there are

much more nefarious

things they've done

such as the

MKUltra program.

The veil of secrecy

surrounding the

alleged Black Pyramid

continues to frustrate

paranormal and

extraterrestrial researchers

to this day.

But as the demand

for information

about unidentified

objects increases,

new protocols

may finally shed light

on these enduring

mysteries.

There seems to be

some kind of shift

happening,

a sea change perhaps

in the way that

UFOs are handled

or understood

or at least

the receptiveness to it

given that

as recently as 2023

the Pentagon actually

put out a call

to current

and former

employees

who may have

knowledge of

programs that were

associated with

UFOs in some way.

The fact that

congressional committees

are even prepared

to discuss

UFO sightings

suggests that

there's a greater

openness to the

whole question

of whether or not

UFOs exist

even within

the highest reaches

of government.

All these attempts

at making revelations

about UFO data

or taking UFO data

seriously

are basically

a way of

misleading the public

in a way in which

the attention

is turned around

from other

geopolitical issues

or it may be

a way to further

obfuscate

the issue of UFOs

so that people

really can't figure

out what's going on.

As a new era

of unidentified

phenomena research

and monitoring

dawns,

the decades

of surreal encounters

in the United

States' last frontier

prompt us to wonder

what if we aren't

just being visited

by extraterrestrials

for the first time

what if

they're already here?

you