Original subtitles

A flight has got 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.

UAV 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.

Are we being mapped?

July 4th, 2022, 4.30 a.m.

In Bass River Township, New Jersey,

two friends return home from a late night drive.

As they look up at the starry night sky,

one of them suddenly notices something highly unusual.

Two of the lights are much brighter than the rest,

and they've started moving.

The beams move closer,

and the friends can see now that they are attached to a strange craft,

roughly the size of a car.

They watch in shock as the lights pass over them.

The object then accelerates sharply away,

before vanishing into thin air.

Alone again in the dark night,

the two friends are left wondering

what this surreal aircraft could possibly be.

And could it be linked to news reports

of a mysterious device found by police

a little over a year earlier?

April 9th, 2021.

Detectives from the New Jersey State Police Department

have received a report of an unknown object

located deep in the wilderness.

When the police come across this object,

they think of it as something which is very strange,

potentially threatening,

and the immediate response is to send a bomb squad

and a canine unit to make sure that this thing is safe.

Once the object is cleared by the bomb squad,

the detectives cautiously approach it.

The label reads UFO Detector Site No. 448.

The detectives are baffled,

but they know this isn't the first strange occurrence

to take place in the forests of New Jersey.

New Jersey is not what one associates with mysterious places,

but there's an entire stretch of land called the Pine Barrens,

which is a genuinely weird area.

The Pine Barrens are a vast stretch of woodland

of over a million acres

divided into more than a dozen state parks,

nature reserves, and preservation areas.

I think that photos of the Pine Barrens

don't really do it justice.

You really can't with a space that is so large.

You can't underestimate how spooky a place like that can be.

It's going to produce some pretty interesting stories.

There's a whole tradition in our folklore

about mysterious, threatening forests

that you might get lost in.

Well, the Pine Barrens takes that to a whole new level.

This is a forest that could suck you in

and you'd never be seen again.

Despite its name,

the Pine Barrens are actually teeming with life.

To us, it might seem like a barren, inhospitable place,

and yet these places can actually have

dynamic and complicated ecosystems

that we've overlooked until now.

The Upland Forest is a dense pine forest,

which is really the signature forest area.

The pine trees are intermingled with the oak trees,

which are the two hardiest tree species in America.

In the lowlands,

dark cedar and hardwood swamps carve through the land,

fed by an intricate natural irrigation system

of streams and rivulets

leading east to the Atlantic coast.

Some of the rarest plants in the world

grow in these enormous forests.

Delicate flowers like the Pine Barren gentian,

bog asphodel,

and swamp pink

have been all but eradicated

in the rest of the world,

yet bloom happily here,

beside carnivorous plants

like the pitcher plant,

sundew,

and bladderwort,

gorging themselves on tiny insects.

But despite sprawling acres of trees and plants,

the Pine Barrens are known

for being an especially hostile environment.

The Pine Barrens are appropriately named in a sense

because the soil is inhospitable

in terms of turning this into farmland, for example.

For centuries, the Lenape tribespeople inhabited the Pinelands,

cultivating berries and hunting game

as they moved through the woods.

But in the 17th century,

with the arrival of European settlers,

large swaths of land were cleared

to establish farms and homesteads.

For these newcomers,

life here would quickly prove near impossible.

The soil is very acidic.

It's very difficult for things to grow there.

So the practices that early settlers

would have used to survive elsewhere

simply would not have worked.

And it very much would have brought them

to their knees

in terms of being able to survive.

These people eventually gave up

and they left.

And what they left behind

were these deserted villages,

essentially ghost towns.

Those brave enough to venture into the woods today

can still find the haunting remnants

of this struggle for survival.

Some of these deserted settlements

have been restored

and you can go and visit them

and they look very nice.

Others, though,

are really quite imposing

and tragic ruins.

There are facades from old buildings.

There are some very small ghost towns,

long abandoned,

old ruins that have just crumbled away.

Although these villages

now lie completely abandoned,

they stand as a testament

to the stories and legends

dating back hundreds of years.

It's not at all surprising to me

that the Pine Barrens

is saturated with ghost stories.

Ruins in general

invites lots of stories.

We're used to, in our experiences,

you see a house,

somebody's living in it.

You see an abandoned house,

something bad must have happened there.

Why isn't anybody living in it?

And that leads to these ghost stories

and other things that go along.

The early colonial period

has given us a lot of ghost stories

and folklores around the Pine Barrens.

Many of these stories

are around laborers,

railway workers,

mine workers,

who end up in real horrific accidents.

The alleged ghosts

wandering the Pine Barrens

have on occasion

presented as fully formed people,

indistinguishable from the living

until they vanish without warning.

But more often,

they are more abstract

or spectral apparitions.

The ghost stories there

are in many ways

more akin to UFO stories

or sightings

of orbs of lights

that are spectrally floating about

through the trees

that you just sight

through the forest.

Media these days

has us imagining ghosts

that are very much

looking like humans.

Ghosts of the time

when these stories first started

didn't.

Somebody saw a light,

somebody saw an abandoned railway,

heard a story of a person

who had recently died there,

put them together.

That's got to be

the person's ghost.

Among these unfortunate souls

is a pilot

whose final flight

ended abruptly

deep in the New Jersey wilderness.

Pine Barren's local

John Carr and his family

are walking through

Wharton State Forest

picking fruit.

As he moves through the trees,

John notices something strange.

To his horror,

he realizes he is staring

at the lifeless corpse

of a man

lying in the underbrush.

Though he doesn't know it yet,

John Carr has just found

the body of one of Mexico's

most celebrated aviators.

Emilio Carranza

was a dashing

Mexican national hero,

a pilot who was compared

to Charles Lindbergh,

a star of the 1920s

for his daring achievements

in the air.

And in 1928,

Carranza is paying a visit

to the United States.

Carranza engages

in a month-long goodwill visit

to the eastern U.S.,

finishing in New York City,

where he waits

for the poor weather

to clear up.

Carranza's story

turns tragic

when he attempts

to make his way

back to Mexico.

And he takes off

in rather mysterious circumstances.

It's not clear why,

but he tries to leave

in the midst

of a very difficult storm.

Taking off

in an airplane that size

in a thunderstorm

or anywhere near a thunderstorm

is looking for trouble.

A light aircraft like that,

an encounter

with a nasty thunderstorm,

just tears wings off.

When he's flying

over the Pine Barrens,

he loses control

of the aircraft

and crashes

and is killed.

And is later found

his body clutching

a flashlight.

And this is because

this is allegedly

his only source

of illumination

in this very difficult storm.

A monument was built

to Carranza

in the Pine Barrens.

And it is said

that if you flash

a torchlight at it

or your car lights,

that a light

will flash back at you,

the ghost of Carranza.

Renowned Mexican aviator

Emilio Carranza's ghost

is said to be

one of the hundreds

haunting the Pine Barrens.

But these eerie lights

are not unique

to this remote woodland.

Similar sightings

have occurred

throughout the state

of New Jersey.

November 20th, 1976.

A team of scientists

assemble in the forests

of Morris County.

They are from Vestigia,

New Jersey's

scientific anomalies

investigations team.

For years,

local residents

have reported

seeing the ghost

of a railroad worker

injured on the tracks

decades earlier.

He is known

as the Hooker Man.

He seems to appear

as a kind of

large disc-like light

and he hovers

above old

abandoned railways

moving along

the tracks.

The investigation team

uses copper wire

to link amplifiers

and oscilloscopes

to the tracks

to monitor variations

in electrical frequency.

With their equipment laid,

they wait for

the Hooker Man

to appear.

At 10 p.m.,

their instruments

spring to life,

recording dramatic

shifts in electrical

activity around

the tracks.

At the same time,

a bright light

emerges in the darkness.

For over two minutes,

the researchers

are transfixed

as the would-be ghost

glides around them.

The Vesigia experiment

was crucial

because it proved

that there was

this light source

appearing spontaneously

in the forest.

It also led

some people

to speculate

that it was

a natural phenomenon

known as

the piezoelectric effect.

The piezoelectric effect

is a physical process

where you squeeze

a crystal

and you get

a corresponding

electrical effect.

If we place

a pressure

on that object,

it causes

a slight shift

in the location

of the atoms

within the material.

When we change

that pressure,

because all of those

atoms are moving

ever so slightly,

it creates

an electric field

and produces

electricity

and electrical energy.

In New Jersey,

this unusual

occurrence

can be traced

to a major

geophysical fault line

known as

the Ramapo Fault.

Faults occur

where we have

pressure from

tectonic actions,

basically points

where the earth

is being upthrust

or pulled apart

and there's

pressures being

generated

along the fault line

that cause it

to stick

but then eventually

slip.

And when it does slip,

that's when we get

in an earthquake.

Now when we come

to these areas

of geological faults,

we can see

that they are

responsible not only

for seismic events

which do occur frequently

in that area

but also can be

responsible

for other phenomena.

So if we have

minerals

at a fault

that can act

in a piezoelectric

manner

and we have

changes in pressure

as a result of

changes in forces

along the fault,

potentially we could

generate electricity.

If we have

conductive materials

in that field,

we potentially

could produce

a light source.

On further

investigation,

the Vestigia team

concludes that

the Hookerman

lights appear

reliably before

local earthquake

activity.

But while the

piezoelectric effect

may be behind

some of the

haunting ghost

lights in the

Pine Barrens,

other sightings

continue to defy

scientific explanation.

The piezoelectric effect

is going to produce

phenomena at more

or less ground level.

They're not going

to produce phenomena

in the sky

or at a great height.

They're not

the kinds of lights

that are stereotypically

associated with UFOs.

The piezoelectric effect

can't explain

the decades of reports

documenting sightings

of otherworldly aircraft

and strange beings

in the Pine Barrens.

January 18, 1978.

3 a.m.

An officer from the

Fort Dix army base

near Trenton

drives through

the Pine Barrens

to investigate reports

of a low-flying aircraft

that has been detected

moving through the

base's airspace

before vanishing

into the forest.

Now,

the officer scours

the endless pine trees

looking for anything

out of the ordinary.

An hour into his drive,

this officer sees

this glow

coming from above

and it seems to be

some kind of alien craft.

He looks down

onto the road

in front of him

and into the beam

of light

from his headlights

comes what's described

as a textbook grey alien.

Long, slender,

very long arms,

saw him,

chained to eyes,

standing directly

in front of him.

He shouts at it

to freeze

and it doesn't,

so he then apparently

shoots it dead.

Hours later,

at 8 a.m.,

a specialized

cleanup crew

dispatched from

the Wright-Patterson

Air Force Base

in Ohio

arrives at Fort Dix

to remove

the unknown creature.

Wright-Patterson

Air Force Base

is infamous

in UFO history

as being the headquarters

of Project Blue Book,

America's longest

running systematic

investigation

into UFOs.

Following World War II,

we see an increase

of UFO sightings

being recorded

in the U.S.

The term of UFO,

naturally,

it applies to objects

that are not alien.

Any unidentified

flying object

is just that.

The post-war era

was explosive

for aviation

of all kind.

Experimentation

that had started

during the war

was going on

with more modern aircraft

and there was

more and more traffic

every day

and the civilian population

was not used

to seeing it.

Now,

this is significant

because it's also

at the beginning

of the Cold War.

These UFO sightings

become an issue

of national security

because they could be

enemy aircrafts

surveying the United States.

In 1948,

in an effort to calm

the fears of the public

and demystify

these objects,

Air Force General

Nathan Twining

establishes the program

that would eventually

evolve into

Project Blue Book.

Respected astrophysicist,

J. Allen Hynek,

is hired as

its scientific consultant.

Over the next 20 years,

researchers examined

more than 12,600 sightings.

There's a degree

of skepticism

that characterizes

Blue Book.

This is really about

debunking UFO sightings

and when the project

concludes in 1969,

it basically says

there was no evidence

to support the UFO proposition.

Following years of sightings

and reports, however,

even the most skeptical

of experts realized

that these mysterious

aerial phenomena

are real

and in dire need

of further study.

Some of those involved

in Project Blue Book

said that they felt

pressured

to take a skeptical line

towards UFOs

and it's interesting

to note

that there are

something like

700 Blue Book cases

that had no

solid conclusion

in other words,

the cases

are still open.

Project Blue Book

ends in 1969,

nearly a decade

before the surreal

alien sighting

near the Fort Dix

Army Base, Trenton.

This strange incident

may have been

forgotten entirely

were it not

for U.S. Air Force

Major George Feiler,

an intelligence officer

at McGuire Air Force Base

adjacent to Fort Dix,

who recounted the incident

for a 2018 biography.

Feiler has a lifelong

interest in UFOs.

I mean, he claims

to have had his first

encounter age five.

He's told to write

a memo

about the case

that this alien

has been brought in,

shot dead,

et cetera,

but he never actually

sees the alien.

He's just waiting

for the cleanup crew

to arrive.

It's always important

for the credibility

of a UFO sighting

to have a first-hand

account of it,

and unfortunately,

that's not really

what we have here.

So he's heard about

this second,

maybe even third-hand.

It's certainly something

to consider

when you're considering

UFO accounts,

like where did this

information actually

come from

and at what level

of remove.

The exact events

of the allegedly

fatal alien encounter

in the Pine Barrens

of January 1978

remain a mystery,

leaving UFO researchers

and enthusiasts

desperately trying

to disentangle

facts from fiction.

One theory

that has been proposed

to explain

at least some

of this unusual activity

in the Pine Barrens

is that it may simply be,

for lack of a better word,

an alien search party.

If we do take

it face value

that an alien

was shot

in the Pine Barrens,

well,

what would other

aliens have done?

They'd have gone

looking for

their comrade alien.

Mysterious lights

and unidentified

flying craft

continue to disturb

local residents,

but these haunting

objects are far

from the only

unusual phenomena

in these forests.

summer, 1990.

A local teenager

eats his dinner

by a small campfire.

He often camps

in these woods

and is used

to the strange

sounds of the forest.

But tonight

is different.

He can hear

something big

moving through

the trees.

It has been

stalking him

for hours now,

but he still

hasn't caught

a glimpse of it.

The terrified

teenager's

heart pounds

as he waits,

listening for

any creak

or telltale rustle.

Just as he begins

to relax,

a heavy footfall

lands directly

behind his tent.

This creature

doesn't appear

to be purely animal,

nor is it human.

Could it be both?

The story

of the Jersey Devil

is one of my favorites.

It's got a great

history to it.

It's got a great lore.

It continues to this day

in many forms.

It's just wacky.

I love it.

We go back

to the year

1795.

There's a woman

called Mother Leeds

living in very

modest circumstances.

She's about to have

her 13th child,

not uncommon

in those days.

But she's fed up

of bearing children

and she just screams out,

let this one

be a devil.

A few months pass

and she gives birth

and everything

seems fine at first.

But within just

a few minutes,

very shortly after,

a change starts

to take place.

The baby starts

to turn into

something else.

It begins to

transform into

some kind of

dreadful creature

with the eyes

bulging and wings

and claws.

It then attacks

its own mother

and the midwife

and other people

in the cabin

and the Jersey Devil

has been born.

Each year,

dozens of visitors

venture into

the vast Pine Barrens

in search of

the infamous

Jersey Devil.

but even before

the tale

of the Jersey Devil,

the Pine Barrens

are said to have

been home

to another creature,

not a devil,

but a god.

We have accounts

from the indigenous peoples

with their own stories

associated with the area.

One of the indigenous

deities associated

with the Pine Barrens

is known as

the Missing.

The Missing

was a very important

Lenape god

and he was a god

who maintained

kind of the balance

between man

and nature.

Missing was a

protector god

and a powerful

medicine spirit

worshipped to prevent

catastrophic natural

disasters

like storms

and earthquakes.

During their

tribal ceremonies,

the Lenape

would invoke

Missing

to keep them

safe from

the earth's anger.

Some have theorized

that these

ceremonial practices

were some of the

first that the

settlers had seen

and interacted

with the indigenous

population.

They hear about

the story,

of course,

living there

amongst the Lenape,

maybe trading with

them,

trading stories,

materials,

and you see

cultural transformations

take place,

with the settlers.

The European

settlers took

this creature

that had

benevolent powers

for the Lenape

people,

but they

Christianized it

and they

Christianized it

in such a way

that they turned

it from benevolent

to malevolent.

They turned it

into a devil.

Over time,

accounts of the

Jersey devil

poured in from

colonists living

in and around

the Pinelands,

building a truly

terrifying reputation

for the elusive

creature.

While some of

these witnesses

were discounted

for being

inebriated,

mistaken,

or simply lying,

many more

were taken

extremely seriously.

the credibility

of somebody

who belonged

to the upper

class,

who was viewed

as coming

from a good

family,

who was probably

male,

probably white

as well,

their testimony

would have carried

more weight

in the community.

In the early

19th century,

near Woodbury,

naval commodore

Stephen Decatur

claimed to have

spotted an enormous

pterodactyl-like

creature flying

overhead.

He fired a

cannonball

directly at the

animal,

only for it to

ricochet harmlessly

off its hard,

scaly body.

In 1820,

Joseph Bonaparte,

brother of the

former French

emperor Napoleon

Bonaparte,

took up residence

in Bordentown.

One day,

during a hunt

in the nearby

forest,

Bonaparte came

face to face

with a creature

he described

as having

the head

of a horse,

the body

of a kangaroo,

and the wings

of a bat.

But despite

their presumed

credibility,

Decatur and

Bonaparte's

descriptions of

the beast

don't quite line

up.

With the origins

of a lot of

these stories,

especially of cryptids

or unknown creatures,

there's always

discrepancies,

especially at first.

And so this is

the case with

the Jersey Devil

as well.

The Jersey Devil

is often described

as a nightmarish

combination of

various animals,

from goats,

bats,

and reptiles,

to camels,

kangaroos,

and horses.

Nevertheless,

there are sufficient

commonalities

between their

descriptions to

suggest that

they could have

seen the same

creature in

the Pine Barrens

or something

very odd

that lives out

there.

UFOlogists

refer to

regions like

the Pine Barrens

as areas

of high

strangeness.

It's a great

term coined

by ufologist

Jayon Hynek

to denote

areas or

times or

places where

frankly strange

stuff is going

on,

things that just

seem to defy

explanation,

and it's often

used to refer

to UFOs and

cryptids in

particular.

This is

basically an

area of high

strangeness

because all

these weird,

seemingly

inexplicable

phenomena keep

recurring in

this area.

In recent

decades,

the mysterious

ancient creatures

of the Pine

Barrens have

been joined by

the more

modern phenomena

of UFOs.

Just what

are these

objects,

and could

they somehow

be connected

to the

Jersey Devil?

In areas

of high

strangeness,

there is

a kind

of occurrence

of UFOs

or UFO-type

phenomena

wherever

cryptids have

been said

to have been

located,

whether it's

Bigfoot or

the various

sea monsters,

Ogopogo,

whatever it is.

But it is only

very recently

that people

started thinking

that, oh,

cryptids and

UFOs is a

connection,

but before

that,

people were

investigating

cryptids as

a biological

phenomena.

One of the

most mysterious

aspects of

the UFO

phenomenon

and the

cryptozoological

phenomenon is

that there's

often no trace

of any of

these alleged

animals or

these craft,

and there's

lots of

theories proposed

to account for

that.

One of them

comes out of

the 1960s by

journalist,

paranormal

researcher,

John Keel.

In the late

1960s,

Keel devotes

an entire

year to

investigating

reports of

strange creatures

and encounters

with non-human

entities in

remote West

Virginia.

Despite

countless

witness accounts,

Keel is left

baffled by the

lack of physical

evidence left

by any of

these phenomena.

He proposes

a theory that

may explain

this frustrating

discrepancy.

He calls it

the

Ultra-Terrestrial

Hypothesis.

John Keel uses

the idea of

Ultra-Terrestrials,

meaning that

these UFOs are

not from

out of this

planet.

We don't really

know where

they've come

from.

They could be

within the

planet, or

maybe from

another dimension.

We don't know

about anything

beyond our

universe.

There is

potentially other

universes or

parallel dimensions

out there that

have similar or

potentially differing

properties to us.

Now, when we

talk about

parallel universes

or the like,

the thought is

that they would

exist in some

higher dimensional

space.

That's a really

hard thing for

our human brains

to try and

conceive, because

we exist in

4D space, 3D

plus time, because

time is also a

dimension.

Is it possible

they're there?

And if they do

exist, could you

travel between

them?

Your guess is

as good as mine.

this is well

beyond the

physics that we

understand at this

point in time.

We talk about

this idea of the

multiverse, in

which each

universe has a

different set of

laws, a different

set of constraints,

a different set of

rules.

You know, it's

possible, maybe,

that there is a

sufficiently advanced

civilization that

has developed, by

some measure, that

we don't currently

understand, some

process of

traveling through

higher dimensions to

go from their

universe to

ours.

If this is the

case, it might be a

simple matter of

something like a

Sasquatch or a

Mothman just

traversing that

boundary to another

dimension and thus

leaving nothing

behind.

Since the late

1970s, researchers

have continued to

expand on Kiel's

work.

In 2022, a new

theory emerges,

based on the

work of

parapsychologist

Harold Puthoff.

The theory

strengthens the

link between

UFO reports and

tales of strange

nightmarish cryptids.

This is an

alternative model

that says that if

aliens do exist, if

extraterrestrials do

exist, and they

have such advanced

technology, then

it's also a

possibility that

they have the

technology to

travel between

dimensions, but

even more

profoundly to

manipulate our

reality as we

know it.

Now, why they do

that, who knows,

but they could be

able to do it.

And something like

the Jersey Devil may

be something that

they're projecting

into our reality to

mess with our

minds.

One interesting

theory is negative

reinforcement, that

they might be trying to

help us by crafting

experiences for us that

basically keep us away

from certain places,

almost like

cautionary tales, or

even like the

original purpose of

fairy tales is to be

wary of the woods.

reinforcement learnings

based on the idea

that when something

happens, there is

either a reward or

a punishment or a

bad thing doesn't

happen if you do

this as negative

reinforcement.

You're learning over

time that your action

has a specific

outcome, and that

outcome then feeds

back in to determine

do you want to do

this action again or

not.

And the same thing

will happen if it's a

scary story.

You've got a small

kid, so you tell

them, you know, don't

go into the woods at

night, because the

real reason, they'll

get lost, and you

don't want them to get

hurt.

But, you know, you

tell them that there

might be beasts or

other things in there,

you scare them to

stay out of it.

So if this is

happening with

something like the

Jersey Devil story,

going around, trying

to keep people away,

it's getting into that

fear to say, this is a

bad place, don't be

there.

It could very well be a

way of keeping people

out, but that would

work only for so

long.

You know, there are

always curious people,

and the more you tell

people that a certain

place is prohibited, at

least a certain group of

human beings is going to

be attracted to that

place.

The possibility that an

unknown force may be

driving humans away from

the Pine Barrens begs the

question, what for?

It may be that a device

like the Jersey Devil was

created to stop early

colonists from damaging a

pristine environment like

the Pine Barrens, and in

our time, the Pine Barrens

is a protected reserve.

Is this what the aliens

wanted?

Now, another reason that an

alien might do this, this

kind of negative

reinforcement, is because

they don't want us going

into the woods and seeing

what they're up to.

The Jersey Devil continues

to spark terror around the

Pine Barrens, leaving

locals and visitors

reluctant to venture into

the forest.

But the Winged Devil isn't

the only threat to the human

mind in these woods.

One aspect of UFO lore that I

find quite interesting is the

physiological responses that

people have to sightings and

encounters of various kinds.

It runs the gamut here from

fear, sometimes frustration,

anger, to much more

benevolent feelings.

And there's a range of this

being experienced in the Pine

Barrens.

One of the most shocking

accounts of extraterrestrial

activity in the Pine Barrens

was reported anonymously in

summer of 2022.

The person wakes up in the

middle of the night, can't get

back to sleep, has some

insomnia, so they decide to do

laundry.

As they enter the living room,

they catch something out of the

corner of their eye.

It looks like a thin, angular

person with long arms and a

large head, flitting across

the room.

But when they turn on the

light, there's nothing there.

Relieved, they turn towards

the laundry room.

Then, their heart skips a

beat.

They're stopped short by what

appears to be a hand reaching

around the door.

And they are kind of floored with

very visceral feelings of fear,

of danger, and overcome with

images of very extreme graphic

violence.

They reel back in shock.

But when they look back at the

door, the hand is gone.

They enter the laundry room,

beset by an onslaught of new,

even more harrowing images.

And they see the door adjoining the

backyard is flown wide open.

The dog is barking viciously, and

they witness a small humanoid creature

running across the lawn and then

disappearing right over the fence to

the neighbor's yard.

As the images in their mind finally fade,

they're left shaken and deeply disturbed.

All that starts off with that first

waking up.

And the first question is, were they

awake?

The descriptions follow what you would

expect for what's called vivid

dreaming.

And in vivid dreaming, you can make

decisions and move places and do

things and get a sense of you are

experiencing it because the parts of

your brain that would make decisions

and choose things, they are awake

enough for you to have that conscious

memory of those as well.

And so during that period in the dream,

you feel like you're awake and you're

doing these things.

But if it wasn't a dream, what could

this strange creature want in the

Pine Barrens?

And was it the cause of those

terrifying visions?

The story is really striking.

It's one of the more dramatic graphic

ones that I've come across, but it's

actually not unique or unprecedented.

There have been other stories like this

coming out of the Pine Barrens.

In 2006, a family camping by Lake

Absigami reported loud banging sounds

in the woods and the circle of strange

lights flying in a low ring formation

over the water.

They described a sinking feeling in the

pits of their stomachs that lasted for

days.

In 2016, a driver on Route 72 is gripped

by an inexplicable terror when he sees

flashing lights in his rearview mirror.

The light follows him for what seems like

hours, but when he checks his watch, he

discovers the entire ordeal has lasted less

than a minute.

Feelings of fear, feelings of anxiety, lost time, time

dilation, all of these are associated with the contact

with extraterrestrials.

This could simply be the case of people having what are fairly

natural reactions to them unknown phenomena, or it could

hearken to other theories like the

ultra-terrestrial model where they could be, in essence,

implanting these kinds of feelings in us, maybe again as a part of keeping us away from

key sites, instilling in us fear of places where they, for whatever reason, think we shouldn't be.

While little is known about the neurological effects of UFO encounters,

new research by Dr. Gary Nolan, professor of pathology at Stanford University,

may bring us a step closer to an answer.

The investigation of UFOs is split into a number of different branches and you have a range of people

with quite far-out theories that are very difficult or impossible to test, and then you have the

other range with pretty die-hard scientists who know what they're talking about when it comes to

their particular field, and this is the case with Nolan.

Nolan attracted media attention in 2012 for his work analyzing a tiny mummified skeleton

found in Chile's Atacama Desert.

Because of the features of this mummified body, rumors start to swirl

that it could be an alien.

The truth is, it was most likely a stillborn baby that possibly had some very unfortunate genetic defects.

Now for Nolan, he becomes a recognized investigator of unusual phenomena.

A year later, a former CIA agent and an executive from a large aerospace company,

appear at Nolan's Stanford laboratory.

They hand him a stack of brain scans, the MRIs of pilots and intelligence agents

who claim to have been in close contact with UFOs.

Nolan was tasked with analyzing them and carrying out further testing.

The images of many of the individuals show changes to a region of the brain called the basal ganglia.

Well, the basal ganglia are a series of nuclei in our subcortical regions.

Our prefrontal cortex, which is where our decision making is, our executive functions,

our personality is, are heavily connected to the basal ganglia, as are our motor control areas.

The MRIs showed stronger connections between some parts of the basal ganglia in pilots that have

experienced UFO sightings. But are these connections a cause or an effect?

You can either say that it's causal and having a UFO experience caused the change,

or you could say that it is, you know, a predictor. And so having this means you're

more likely to interpret an event as being one of these UFO experiences instead.

While Nolan doesn't claim that his research proves that UFOs exist,

he doesn't shy away from the possibility of extraterrestrial life visiting Earth.

Nolan is a lifelong enthusiast about UFOs and claims to have had his first encounter aged five,

but his approach is rigorously scientific.

Being scientific means not just considering things which fit into our picture of the world,

but being open to changing our picture of the world.

Gary Nolan's work is part of a new wave of UFO research.

In 2022, the US government established the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office

to research unknown aerial objects.

A year earlier, a Freedom of Information Act request to NASA revealed that looking for

extraterrestrial life remains one of the organization's top priorities.

And in 2023, a series of military officials presented their own experiences with UFOs

at a highly publicized congressional hearing. With this shift in the scientific community,

many wonder what else researchers might discover, and what these findings could mean for those living

in hotbeds of unusual activity, like the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.

What people go through when they claim to have seen a UFO or an extraterrestrial is something that we're

still grappling with. And we could hope that in the future, neuroscience may give us some new insights as to what's going on inside the human brain,

when people claim to have had an encounter of the third kind.

One of the things that continues to fascinate me about the UFO phenomenon is simply how little we know.

More than 75 years since the early days of the UFO phenomenon, we don't know that much more than we did back then.

It's frustrating, but it's also exciting that there's probably much more that we can learn from this if we take it seriously.

Could a new scientific dawn one day explain the seemingly unexplainable?

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