All language subtitles for Encounters.2023.S01E01.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH-HI

[birds twittering]

[swing squeaking]

[chicken clucking]

[vehicle approaches]

[man 1] When we first moved here
in March of 2020...

the very first time
that I saw something in the sky,

I really hesitated
to say anything to anybody.

But it happened repetitively,
maybe three, four times,

before I mentioned it
to somebody down in Dublin.

They said, "Well, you know
that this place is famous for that."

[intriguing ambient music playing]

Do you know who Ezekiel was?

Prophet?

- Ezekiel was a prophet. You're right.
- [boy] Mm-hmm.

And it was a long time ago, all right?

As a Homeland Security consultant,

I do a lot of threat analyst work,
uh, for the government.

I've seen the government flat-out lie.

Where I was standing in the location
they were lying about.

What I am seeing here is similar

to sightings that they had
by the guys in the Air Force.

[man 2, over radio] Whoa! Got it!

[laughs]

[man 1] It's the movement
that catches your attention,

that fast movement.

That's exactly how we're seeing it here.

[intriguing music continues]

- [girl] Ah, jeez. [laughs]
- [chuckles] I know, right? Spooky.

It's something otherworldly.
There's no other way to describe that.

"And the star they had seen
guided them to Bethlehem."

One of the reasons
why a lot of people don't believe

is because they haven't seen it,

and it messes with their concept
of who we are in relation to the universe.

...and it guided them,
so it knew where it was going.

- Right?
- [boy] Mm-hmm.

That mean... That means it was...

UFO.

UFO.

Do I believe there's life
on other planets? Yes.

But I don't think
these are people from another planet.

I still think these are
what people called angels.

I think they're messengers.

I mean, I'm dying to know
what they've got to say.

[eerie music playing]

[man 1] From the beginning
of recorded time,

men have been seeing
unexplainable things in the sky.

[woman] Are we alone in the universe?

[man 2] Somewhere in the data
will be something worth real inquiry.

We have not been hiding anything.

There are such things
as interplanetary spaceships.

I thought it was an alien,
and he had big eyes.

[man 3] There's something
profoundly important going on here

that is authentic and real.

[music fading out]

[interviewer] How much of your work
is classified?

All of it.

Eh, all of... Everything I did,
all day long, was classified.

All of it.

My name is Matthew Roberts.

I was a cryptologic technician
in the US Navy for 16 years.

I was present
on the USS Theodore Roosevelt

for the Gimbal event.

[pilot 1] Look at that thing, dude.

[Matthew] So, uh... [sighs]

...that was the first time
I saw the Gimbal footage.

- [pilot 2] Well, if there's...
- [pilot 1] Look at this thing!

[pilot 2] It's rotating.

I don't... I can't even describe the shape.

I mean, it looks a little bit disc-like.

It's flying along,

and then it kind of tilts up
onto its side.

[suspenseful pulsating music playing]

I was watching this footage,

and I could see
no kind of aviation surfaces

that you would expect to see.

Wings, tail, you know, rudder.

There's none of that.

So I couldn't really make sense

of why this thing was
kind of up in the air like it was.

And...

I just...

I had this kind of
emotional response to it.

And I... At the time,
I didn't understand that. Um...

I knew that it wasn't ours, right?

I knew that it wasn't anybody else's. Uh...

So, I mean, that only leaves...
one other option, I think.

- [interviewer] Which is what?
- And that's non-human tech.

Non-human intelligence technology.

[pulsating music continues]

[Matthew] Because my job was classified,
and I had access to classified, um...

I was kind of aware...

this was not a one-off event for the Navy.

This, uh... These things happen frequently.

[music fading out]

All the time.

They happen all the time.

- [radio static crackling]
- [distorted voices over radio]

[reporter] The skies over Stephenville
haven't looked the same since a UFO...

[radio static crackling]

[distorted radio jingle plays]

[woman 1] Milk Duds!

[woman 2] A nice, cold glass
of Borden milk will cool you off.

You'll like the taste of milk
with everything you eat.

- [radio jingle] ♪ Milk is a natural ♪
- [static crackles]

[milk sloshing]

[cows mooing]

[man] Stephenville, Texas.
The milk capital of the world.

They put out quite a bit of milk
over there.

Something very strange about this area.

I look at the sky quite often.

Wonder what all's out there.
Wonder what we don't know about.

[crowd cheering]

[man] I grew up around here.

- [lighter flicking]
- [tobacco crackles]

Nothing to do in these small towns.

You wanna fight?
Sure, go ahead and have a fight.

That same night, we'd go camping
or go fishing on the river down there.

So, it was... It's innocent fun.
We'd have a good time.

[engine rumbles]

You know, I've been fascinated
with engines of all types

since I can remember.

So much to where
I started a trucking company.

And it became quite large,
had quite a few people working for me.

[engine rumbling]

I've always owned quite a few motorcycles,
boats, airplanes.

Just to see how it all works.
It's just simply fascinating.

In 2008, I had a great life.

I had a successful business.

I guess I'd been married 16,
17 years at that time.

[exhales]

Very blessed is all I can say.

But what I saw in the sky that night
changed everything.

[suspenseful ambient music plays]

It'd been a long, cold winter. Bad winter.

That was the first day
we had a decent day.

So we came out here
to the top of the hill to have a campfire.

[fire crackling]

It was myself, Mike Odom, and Lance Jones.

Then all of a sudden,

I see some real bright,
high-intensity lights,

off to the east, headed our way
at a high velocity of speed.

The lights were so bright,
it was unlike anything I'd ever seen.

It was almost blinding to look at 'em.

Then what amazed me

is there was no wind noise,
no engine noise.

There was silence.

When it came past us,
I developed the most peaceful,

easy feeling
I think I've ever had in my life.

It was almost like a religious experience.

Like I was at one with whatever it was.

Something I've never had
before or since then. It was unreal.

And then another brief second,
it just simply disappeared.

It didn't streak off or anything.
It just disappeared.

And then you could count,
one second, two seconds, three seconds,

and two F-16s came in hot pursuit.

Full afterburner hanging out.

And in my head, I'm wondering,

"Is it War of the Worlds,
or what was going on?"

I got in my car,
and I went back to my house,

and my wife says, "What happened?"

She could tell I was visibly shaken.

I told her what happened, and she says,

"Whatever you do,
don't tell anybody about it."

And she says,
"People will think we're crazy."

And I said, "Actually, I don't care
what people think about us."

"All I know is what I saw."

[telephone ringing tone]

That next day, I called the newspaper,
Stephenville Empire-Tribune. "ET."

[telephone ringing]

[woman] It had been a slow news day,
the day that the UFO story broke.

[telephone ringing]

[woman] Angelia Joiner was
in the newsroom,

and she had gotten a call
from Steve Allen.

And he was a local pilot,

and then he told her
that he saw something strange in the sky.

[Angelia] He said something like, "Okay,
I really need to tell you something,

but I don't want you to think I'm crazy."

And he began telling me a story
that, uh, I found pretty incredible.

Angelia had a brief conversation with him
and came to my office and said,

"You'll never believe this, but..."

It was late in the afternoon,
and we really had our stories together.

So I was like, "Yeah, sure, check it out."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow
when I get to the office."

I grew up in California. I got engaged.

And my husband was in the dairy business,
and his family had come out here.

So we got married and we moved.

It was a startling change for me.

As managing editor,
I was responsible for all of the content.

I had a lot to prove.

I was the youngest editor

that had ever been hired
to be the managing editor of the paper.

I was the second female.

And I was still seen as an outsider.

So, inside, I was dealing
with a lot of insecurity, I think.

The next morning, I picked up my paper

and saw "UFO" in huge font
across the top of the paper.

I just felt like the wind
was just completely knocked out of me.

I thought, "This is the end of my career."

"Steve Allen, Mike Odom, and Lance Jones

were out admiring
a beautiful Texas sunset Tuesday evening

when they saw something
none of them can explain."

I had a publisher at the time,

and she told Angelia,
"You're going with this tonight."

And she changed the whole front page.

She was the boss, the top dog,
so she did whatever she wanted.

But I was in charge of the newsroom,

and so I felt like people
were gonna question my credibility.

My news judgment.

"The ship wasn't really visible
and it was totally silent,

but the lights spanned
a mile-and-a-half long

and a mile-and-a-half wide."

That really sent me over the edge.

I mean, aside from the headline,
just "the ship."

Like, we were naturally assuming

that this was some kind
of a spaceship out there.

When I walked through those doors,
I was like a crazy woman. I was furious.

Walking into the publisher's office,
and I was screaming and crying. [chuckles]

I mean, like, "You have..."
"What have you done?"

She was like, "Well, you're wrong."

"You are... you're absolutely wrong
about all of this."

"We've sold out every newspaper
in the county."

[man] When I started reading the story,
my brain just goes 100 miles an hour.

I thought to myself,
"Man, what I saw, other people saw it."

You know, "Do I tell anybody?
What do I do?"

[suspenseful pulsating music playing]

[Lee Roy] It was my wife's birthday,
and we wanted to rent a movie.

And I came outside to my squad car

to get my credit card.

As I'm walking back,

something caught my attention.

I saw what appeared...

I-I call it a bubble or an orb.

It was a, uh, reddish-orange,
fiery-looking color.

Really big.

And I focused in on it.

And that's when I noticed...

my little boy, and he said, "Look, Dad."

There was these bright lights,

flashing, like a pulsating thing.

Like that.

They had spread out.

There was 11 or 12 lights
that I was able to count.

All of a sudden,

these things just shoot off
at a blazing speed.

Well, it was probably what seemed
to be maybe a minute or two, uh,

I hear jets coming.

[jet engines whoosh]

They were flying in the same direction,
the same path as these lights.

You know, I think those jets were
the same ones that Steve Allen saw.

[Steve] After the newspaper came out,
I get the call from Lee Roy Gaitan.

I didn't know him at the time,

but he told me his story,

which, time-wise,
matched exactly what ours did.

And I said, "Lee Roy, can you help us out
with this a little bit?"

And he said, "No, I can't. I'm sorry."

[Lee Roy] I'm voted in
by my peers to protect them,

just like the sheriff is.

What are they gonna think,
that I'm one of the guys that said,

"I saw these lights"?

I thought it was gonna ruin me.

[Steve] And I said, "I understand,"
but I said, "Come on, Lee Roy."

"I need somebody
with a little credibility to add to it."

[Lee Roy] He said,
"I saw something special. You did too."

"And I think the world needs to know."

Somebody like Lee Roy Gaitan
has a lot to lose.

I have a lot of respect for him

because when I called,
he hesitated a little bit.

Then he said,
"No, I think it's important."

He said that,
"What we saw was really different."

I just saw some strange lights,
traveling at a high rate of speed,

doing some things

that I've never seen anything
before in my life.

[Sara] That was, I think,
the first big county official

that she was able to get
that went on the record with it.

Gave, really,
the stories a lot of credibility.

[man 1] When I first heard
about these reports,

the first thing that went through my mind,
"Okay, something significant happened."

Now, as to what happened,
at that point, I didn't know.

But it was definitely worth investigating.

My degree's in chemistry.

I was an engineering manager
in the semiconductor field.

And for the last 16 years,

I have spent my time
studying the UFO phenomenon.

And my goal has always been
to try to bring science to this subject.

MUFON stands for the Mutual UFO Network.

It's an organization

that investigates UFO sightings.

In 2008,

I was the director of research at MUFON.

And I remember
I was monitoring reports as they came in,

and I suddenly saw over 20 reports

in one geographic area,
Stephenville and Dublin.

And I knew then
that something unusual had happened.

[gripping music plays]

My view at that point in time was,
"We need to get there as soon as possible

and investigate this
while everyone's memory is fresh."

[man 2] We were contacted by MUFON,
and I'd never heard of MUFON.

But they wanted to set up
an investigation.

And so we said,
"Well, we've got the Rotary building,

and-and you're welcome to come in here."

I'm chairman of the board
of the First National Bank of Dublin.

My grandfather was mayor of Dublin
in the '30s.

And then my, um, dad was mayor.

My brother was mayor.

So, yeah, we've been in Erath County,
in this area, for a long time.

[reporter 1] Investigators
from the Mutual UFO Network

plan to look into
the Stephenville sightings this weekend.

[Pat] I was setting things up,
and the guy said, "35 is probably max."

"I don't know
if we've ever had that many show up."

We set up 35, 40 chairs there,

and then the door opens up.

And it's like... It just filled up.

[reporter 2] Hundreds of people
crowded Dublin's Rotary Club

to share their stories.

What I saw was a very large blue light.

These were big, round objects.

You can't see through it.
You can't see in it.

It was going so fast,
and it didn't make any noise.

- [static crackles]
- [suspenseful music plays]

[indistinct chatter]

[Robert] The building was packed.

There were people even outside
on the sidewalk.

Some of the people who had come,
they just turned around and walked off.

They didn't even want to deal
with the number of people there.

[reporter 3] At least 500 people
filled the room.

Witnesses who saw the light.

[Pat] The MUFON folks
were kinda just taken aback

because they've never seen
anything like this.

[man 3] In an extremely
small number of cases

will we get a mass sighting like this.

We put all those chairs out,

and there were still people
standing around the room.

All right, if I could see a show of hands
who the witnesses are.

[Pat] It was like everybody there
had seen something.

We're approaching
a hundred people, probably,

that have seen something
in regard to this.

[Robert] The Houston papers are there,
the Dallas papers,

the papers from outside of Texas.

The best way I can describe it
was a media circus.

[Sara] The next day or two,
we were just inundated

with media from all over the country.

Dozens of people in a small Texas town

are talking about
some unexpected visitors.

- Do you guys believe in UFOs?
- Yes.

- I think it's possible.
- Yes.

I realized that the entire city
had totally transformed.

[horn blares]

[reporter 4] Skies over Stephenville
haven't looked the same

since a UFO reportedly
made tracks across it January 8th.

[reporter 5] Stephenville,
the North Texas town,

is swept up in UFO mania.

[Steve] They had Japanese film crews,
Brazilian film crews.

The Japanese film crews asked,
"Why does it keep coming to Stephenville?"

Then, jokingly, I said,

"Well, it's the milk capital
of the world."

They said, "Oh, they like milk!"

"Da-eerie."

[Steve] No wonder they're kind of gray
and sickly-looking. Vitamin D deficiency.

- [violins stab]
- [man] Got milk?

[woman] The high school science club
designed a T-shirt and made $4,000.

- I can't even believe it.
- [marching band plays]

[reporter 5] Aluminum foil hats
to ward off alien mind probes.

Nice look, guy.

- [woman laughs]
- [Sara] People are having a good time.

It's the most excitement
Stephenville's had in a long time,

so it probably won't end here. [laughs]

[band drumming, stop]

[Sara] One evening, my husband
and I happened to go to dinner,

and it was packed.

And all of a sudden, the TVs came on,
and there was... There they were.

[news bulletin music plays on TV]

[man 5] They were dancing around,
and they were flickering.

[Larry King] Tonight, strange sights
in the night skies over Texas

fuel otherworldly questions.

When that came on, there was just a hush.
Everybody just was riveted.

[Larry King] Angelia Joiner,
staff writer for the Empire-Tribune,

who has talked to several witnesses.

Very similar stories from people
that have called in and emailed me.

So I think there's been
a lot of consistency in the spottings.

[Sara] Angelia did not treat this story
like it was a fun-and-games story.

She... She took it serious
from the very beginning.

After doing the first story,
I did get a little spooked.

I thought, "Oh my gosh,
this is bigger than...

than what I even dreamed it could be."

[Pat] It was nice
that people were calling me,

going, "Hey, I saw the front page,

and it was saying 'Dublin, '"
and it's kinda like, "Wow, that's great!"

But then, at the same time, people...
There's some that just love to ridicule.

They love to kinda knock somebody
off their horse.

There were some, um, radio stations
out of Fort Worth came down and...

and basically just to make fun.

- You know?
- They took my job.

They took my wife.
But they're not getting my pickup truck.

There was people that showed up
just to try to discredit these folks.

When one of those little green monsters
starts walking up here,

then I'll believe it.

And so, um, when these sightings
started taking place,

we saw it, but we didn't really say
a whole lot about it.

It was starting to get a little dark.
It was about this time of night.

My friend Kent was telling us this story

about something
that he saw a few days before.

I looked up, and I'm saying,
"Ah, that's just not normal for me."

He saw this, um... this huge, um...

He called it a Dorito.

Looked like a triangle,
or I-I said originally a Dorito.

He, um, stands up,
and he's stretching his back,

and all of a sudden,
he goes, "They're back."

And I said, "Who's back?"

And he just points.

I see this big, triangular vessel.

But what's amazing is there's no sound.

There is no sound whatsoever.

I couldn't process what I was seeing
because it was huge,

and you just look and you think...

"What is that thing?"

And then, all of a sudden, it's gone.

Almost like it just vanished.

I was not scared,

but it was almost where I'm thinking...

beginning to doubt myself.

"Did I even see anything?"

Then it was, like...
The next day, it's like...

"Don't tell anybody."

When you sit there and you say,
"Yeah, I just saw this... this vessel,"

or, "I saw these lights,"
well, who do we tell about it?

And if we did,
what kind of flak are we gonna take?

[school bell rings]

[students chattering]

[in Spanish] What we don't understand,
we try to explain,

but our culture is also very open

to accepting things
we cannot see or understand.

We do not rely on facts constantly,
like here in the US.

The inexplicable does not necessarily mean
that it is not reality or fact.

[in English] In 2008,
what I saw were lights in the sky.

But the neat thing about it was
that when I saw those,

I remembered they were exactly the same
as the first time I saw 'em.

'Cause I saw them first as a teenager.

[eerie ambient music playing]

We're originally from Mexico.

And for Christmas break,
we were getting ready

to travel to Michoacán,
in Mexico, with our family.

My mother, the evening before,
was on the dairy farm.

And she says,
"I was out there feeding the calves,

and these lights were-were appearing
up in the sky, like bubbles."

"You know, could it be evil spirits
or-or-or something?"

Because we tend to be
a very superstitious culture.

And so when she saw those,
she was very much startled.

She was afraid.

That next day, we were on our way
to travel to Mexico,

we were in our vehicle,
already loaded up and-and headed out,

and these lights started coming up.

And then my mom said,
"Those are the ones I saw, um, yesterday."

And me and my sister and my other sibling
saw those at that time.

It wasn't something that we could explain.

All I know is that what I saw in 1989

was the same thing that,
again, I saw in 2008.

[mysterious music playing]

We were coming back from Fort Worth,
me and my husband,

about this time in the evening.

We could see the lights up in this area.

It was like they would bubble in one spot,
then bubble in another spot.

And it was too fast for any-any...
any airplane or helicopter to do.

As we're looking up,
I'm hanging out the door with my camera

trying to take pictures of it,

but the camera, it just wasn't fast enough
to be... to be able to take those pictures.

Then they were gone.

I do believe that when people
come to our area, it's for a reason.

If they're here,
why are they here? [chuckles]

Today we're-we're gonna be
talking about Don Quixote.

Who's familiar with Don Quixote?

I love working with students.

I've always told them,
"You have a mind of your own."

You need to see what information A
and information B has.

Not going against their parents
or going against, uh,

any-any type of doctrine,

but just to be informed.

[Steve] We was very driven
to find out what it was that we saw.

The more we dug into it,

I kept developing more questions
than answers.

I don't have enough nerve
to call the NAS, the naval air station.

Angelia, she did.

She'd called down there
and talked to Maj. Carl Lewis.

[Angelia] I called him to check out,

"Were there F-16s in the area?"

He said, "No, we did not have
any F-16s in the area."

[reporter] The Air Force says
none of its planes were in the area

at the time of the sightings.

[Steve] Angelia told me that.

And he'd come back
with all kinds of excuses

what we thought we might have seen.

One excuse was a reflection
off of a high-altitude jet airliner.

She says, "What do you think about that?"

And I said, "Is it a reflection
off of my shiny white ass?"

[tense ambient music playing]

[Angelia] I was really worried
about Steve Allen.

You could tell he was just haggard.

His wife told me
he was on the Internet constantly,

looking for pictures,

trying to find something
that looked like what he had seen.

[Steve] I told my wife that several of us
was gon' get in our airplanes

and go look for it.

And she, of course, didn't like that idea.

But, you know,
it's like telling a-a kid to do something.

We're gon' do what we want to.

Our first thought was,

we hoped we would find
where it was based out of.

It appeared out of nowhere.

[indistinct chatter over radio]

[Steve] So we explored all possibilities.
We combed the whole area.

- [chatter continues]
- [radio trills]

[Steve] Then on about the third night...

[radio chatter continues]

...we was talking to each other
on the radio.

I said, "Do you guys ever feel like

you're looking for a needle
in a haystack?"

- [chatter continues]
- [radio trills]

[Robert] What I saw happen in Steve
is the same thing I've seen happen

in a lot of witnesses.

You've got this feeling of control.

And then, suddenly,
you see something close to you,

and it does something
that is so... impossible

that it just shakes the underpinnings

of what they have
always thought the world was.

[reporter] Ricky Sorrells was deer hunting
in these woods

when he says the UFO stopped
and hovered just over his head.

And I did just like this,
and I could see it. And it...

[Robert] Ricky Sorrells has
a very interesting story.

Ricky actually had a UFO sighting

almost two weeks, roughly,
before the Stephenville incident.

[suspenseful pulsating music playing]

[Robert] I met Ricky personally,

and he told me the story
of-of what happened.

He was out deer hunting.

All of a sudden, everything got dark,

like clouds had come overhead.

Well, he looked up,
and there was an object above him.

He couldn't tell its size or its shape

because it was so large
that it just covered everything above him.

[Steve] He raised his rifle up
and looked at it through the scope,

so he could get a better view of it.

And, uh, he says, "I looked it over,
and there was no bolts, no rivets,

and it just seemed seamless all over."

And that's all he could see.

And he says,
"I started to go ahead and shoot it,"

but he got to thinking, "That wasn't
the smartest thing I'd ever done."

[reporter] Sorrells didn't want to start
an interstellar war.

And when it took off, it took off so fast,
if I would have blinked,

I would have thought it vanished.

He said, "You know, the amazing thing

is that this huge object
that took off at such a high speed,

it should have just sucked me
right along with it."

And he said, "There was nothing.
No sound, no wind. Nothing."

Somehow that object
didn't interact with the atmosphere.

[music fading out]

[Lee Roy] There was one morning, uh,
Ricky came to my house,

and Ricky's in tears.

I asked him, "Man, what's going on?"

He said, "Lee Roy,
people are harassing me at my own house."

"Who's harassing you?"
He said, "I don't know."

He said, "They tell me
that they, uh, work for the government."

[tense music plays]

[Steve] Ricky was definitely
being intimidated.

He found a bullet.
It was definitely military-grade.

He thinks they may have
left that on purpose

to persuade him
not to be speaking about it.

The next thing I know,
um, he is calling me.

He said, "Something's going on.
Somebody's bothering me."

[helicopter blades whirring]

"I'm having all these helicopters
flying over my place."

"They are running my cattle to death."

And he came to me
out of concern for my safety.

[Larry King] Angelia,
assuming that Ricky is not nuts,

uh, what do you make of this?

Well, I feel that perhaps
Ricky might have been singled out,

simply because he was the one
that had a daytime sighting.

He had more detail than anyone else,

and I wondered if that might be
why he was singled out.

And, suddenly...

Ricky stops talking to everybody.

I think Ricky saw a lot more
than what the rest of us saw.

[Steve] Ricky has said he saw some sort
of something inside the aircraft,

and it resembled some sort of insect
or maybe even a praying mantis.

[Lee Roy] I-I-I think that Ricky was
possibly approached by someone

and offered a monetary agreement.

They wanted him quiet.

[Steve] A military colonel called me,
one afternoon at my house,

and talked to me
about an hour and 45 minutes.

Says, "We've had a lot of discussion
about you and what to do with you."

"You're kind of a high-profile guy."

"If you just happened to come up missing,
it'd kinda look suspicious."

[pilot 1] They're going against the wind.
The wind's 120 knots west.

[pilot 2] Look at that, dude!

[Matthew] I found myself
watching the footage over and over again,

almost obsessively.

I had no awareness

of what the upper chain of command
was doing with this information.

In 2017, I transferred
to the Office of Naval Intelligence.

I was gonna be an analyst there.
[inhales shakily]

And, um... shortly after I arrived, I, uh...

I started to have
these follow-on experiences

with the phenomenon.

That was, like, the beginning of seeing
non-human entities in my room at night.

I would wake up several times a week,

and I would feel my body
kind of sliding across the bed.

And I knew that they were taking me.

I woke up 'cause I felt...

a hand grab my arm right here.

So I went to try and raise my hands
to my face to wipe the sleep away,

and, uh, I realized I couldn't move.

And I could just see this outline
of a shadowy figure with...

you know, a torso, two arms,
and a head, standing over me.

When I was in the Navy
and I saw this footage,

I knew that there was something out there.

Right? I knew there was
something non-human out there.

So I knew when they started
showing up in my room

that... a-all of this was real.

I-I-I had the luxury of knowing
that I wasn't going crazy.

Right? I knew what it was.

- [radio static]
- [indistinct chatter over radio]

[pilot 1, over radio] Whoa! Got it!

[laughter]

- Woo-hoo!
- [man] Roger.

[Matthew] There's all kinds
of sensor evidence, radar evidence.

I think that there's enough footage

that if they just released all of it
and said, "Hey, this is what we have,"

they don't even have to
give an explanation.

They can just say,
"We don't know. This is what we got."

Um, there would be no... no doubt

as to whether or not
the phenomenon is real.

Everyone would know it.

The US military is now saying

it was fighter jets,
not UFOs, that folks were seeing

in the Stephenville area
earlier this month.

[reporter 1] The military now says
it was training in the area after all.

Ten F-16s over
the Brownwood military operating area.

[reporter 2] The military spokesman blames
an internal communications error

for giving out false information.

[Sara] There was no more new sightings.

We were clearly not gonna get an answer
from the government or...

on what this could have been.

So unless we have something new
and significant to report about it,

we need to get on to other things.

It was a hard thing for Angelia.

She really had a hard time
letting go of it

and breaking away from it.

[Angelia] I just couldn't abandon
those witnesses.

They were thrust into the limelight
just like I was.

Plus, it was shaking them
to their very core

about what they had seen.

[Sara] I had given her an assignment,
and I had this feeling

that she wasn't doing it that day,
and she left.

And I got on her computer
and discovered some emails

that she had sent
saying that the newspaper

and the management here,
or me, um, specifically,

I'd gotten pressure to shut it down
from the government and the city,

and the city officials.

And I was pretty upset about that,
'cause none of that was true.

[Steve] Very strange story with Angelia.

She came into work one morning,
and her computer was gone.

And she says, "Hey, what happened
to my computer and my stuff?"

And they told her
she didn't work there anymore.

[Sara] Was it a termination? Yes.
But she didn't want to be there.

She wanted to continue this.

And that was a story
that I was happy to move on from.

If you look at the UFO phenomenon, for...

It's gone on for 75 years
in the modern era.

And yet, today, we still don't know
much more than we knew 75 years ago.

That's troubling for many
in the field of science

because there's no crystal clear,
solid evidence.

And-And that's the mystery
of this phenomenon,

is like, "Where is the evidence?"

[slow suspenseful music playing]

[Lee Roy] Three o'clock in the morning,

I'd been out working
a moonlighting job in Stephenville.

There's an alarm call at this business.

I went ahead
and advised the sheriff's department

that I was close by
and would take the call.

And when I get out of the car,

I look and I see a pulsating orb
up in the sky.

Got my dashcam and positioned it,

trying to videotape this object.

I took the video home.

Uh, back then, it was VHS,
and put it in my player at home.

- [VHS tape clacks]
- [static]

It was not a clear video.

It was like something
was interfering the, uh, quality.

[tense ambient music playing]

I said, "Man, why is this tape messing up,
right now of all times?"

I had never had a problem
before that with any video.

After that, I used that camera
at least another year and a half,

before I went digital.

Never had a problem like that.

Whatever this thing was,

whoever was responsible for it
did not want clear footage of it.

I wanted to find corroboration
for the object seen by Lee Roy and Steve,

and all the other witnesses,
in Stephenville on January 8th, 2008.

I had the witness statements.

I knew the when and the where

and the direction they were looking.

At the MUFON event,
I met a guy from Colorado, Glen Schulze,

and Glen was a former army radar expert.

[static crackles]

Anything that flies in the sky is caught
with what's called primary radar data.

- [radar beeps]
- [static crackles]

So I wanted radar data to support
what the witnesses had told me.

The FAA won't volunteer those returns
because they say nothing happened.

So you have to send
a Freedom of Information Act request in

and force them to release the data.

[Robert] I sent FOIAs
to every police department,

to every military base.

And the one FOIA that panned out the best
was the FOIA to the FAA,

which provided me with radar data

from five different radar antennae
across the state of Texas.

Glen Schulze and I went four months
to go through the radar data.

Before I went looking for any unknowns,
first thing I did was track the F-16s.

- [Steve] Two F-16s came in hot pursuit.
- [jet engine whooshes]

[Lee Roy] They were flying
in the same direction as these lights.

[Robert] These are the two that flew down
to Comanche, Dublin, Stephenville.

So once I identified where the F-16s were,

I went to start looking for objects
that did not have transponders.

So I wanted to see everything
that was not supposed to be in the sky.

I get to where Steve is.

So I'm looking there,
and do I see any unknowns

that are popping up
that match what he described?

[radar pinging]

What I find is radar data

that confirms what Steve Allen
and Lee Roy Gaitan have told me.

[Steve] I came out here
to have a campfire,

and all of a sudden,
I see some high-intensity lights,

headed at a high velocity of speed.

[Robert] Steve is located here.

There are two radar points that showed
an object moving without a transponder.

[Steve] When we first saw the ship,
it was just a few minutes after 6:00.

[Robert] The two data points
match the time

and the geographical location.

Does its flame-job over Stephenville,
just simply disappears.

This is outside
of military operating area,

so it should have a transponder

if it is military aircraft,
but it doesn't.

In the case of Lee Roy,

I had about five data points on the radar,

indicating there is this object
south of his home.

[Lee Roy] I came outside.

Something caught my attention
off-off to the, uh, southwest sky.

All of a sudden, these things
just shoot off at a blazing speed.

And they travel, what I say, northeast.

[Robert] When he says
it moves to the northeast,

I get a data point ten seconds later

that's to the northeast
and is moving at an extreme rate of speed.

It's not very often
that you get radar data

that just corroborates
exactly what a witness said

in terms of geographic location and time.

It showed it in black and white
that there was something flying out there.

And that the speeds
that these things were traveling

are, like, speeds
that we cannot do here on Earth.

[Robert] These stories check out
with the radar data.

So there's absolutely no doubt
that there's an object in the sky

and that the object that's in the sky
does not have a transponder code.

That tells you that you're...
you're dealing with something real,

whatever it is.

- [radio static crackles]
- [indistinct chatter over radio]

[woman 1] When you need a boost, try milk.

- [man 1] Okay!
- [radio static]

[woman 2] With all the attention
of the UFO sightings,

Stephenville will no longer be alien
to the rest of the world.

- [radio static]
- [child] Milk Duds!

- [radio jingle] ♪ Milk is a natural ♪
- [static]

[woman 3] Hundreds of UFO sightings
are reported to authorities...

[man 2] If you're interested in UFOs,
you might wanna come on out,

if you dare.

- [radio static]
- [cow moos]

[unsettling ambient music playing]

[Matthew] Is any of this stuff real?
I don't know. I mean...

I think UFOs are just as real as,

you know, the-the lights in this room or...

or the cameras that are in front of me.

I think that, uh...

I think they are very real.
But I think, what is your idea of reality?

That's the question.

You see that the DOD and NASA, even,

they're all hiring physicists

to work on this UFO issue.

And that's not
where the truth of this lies.

This lies more
within the realm of the humanities,

within the realm of psychology,
uh, philosophy,

religious studies.

Um, that's where you're gonna find
the truth of this.

No physicist... is gonna be able
to tell you what this is.

Because the physicist maybe can tell you
how physical matter might behave,

but the humanities will tell you why.

It's not a...
It's not a Department of Defense issue.

It's a... It's a human issue is what it is.

And that's why
I could not justify being quiet.

- [children chattering]
- [trampoline squeaking]

[man] I've got eight children.

We homeschool our kids,
and we've really seen fruit from that.

All right, ready? Up!

[groans] Wuh-uh!

Okay, which one first?

Every day starts out
with some type of Bible lesson.

- Ezekiel was a prophet.
- [boy 1] Mm-hmm.

- [girl 1] He was in the Old Testament.
- In the Old Testament.

So check this out.

"I looked, and behold,
a whirlwind was coming out of the North."

"A great cloud
with raging fire engulfing itself,

and brightness was all around it."

"And radiating out of it,
the color of amber,

out of the midst of the fire."

What was it that Ezekiel was seeing?

Not the message part.
I get the message part.

I wanna know what he saw.

"Behold a wheel...

suddenly came to the earth."

"And the rims were full of..."

Translate this for me.

"...eyes all the way around."

[girl 2] Eyes or lights.

Lights or...

- [girl 2] Anything, really.
- Windows or... Right?

To me, I think that talking about UFOs
with my kids, even the littlest ones,

is making Scripture
a lot more real for them

than just a bunch of stories.

This was Switzerland,
and some guy just got this on video.

It's a UFO.
What does that look like, right there?

- [boy 2] It's a wheel within a wheel.
- [Eddy] And that was two days ago.

The Christian populace

does not wanna believe
that any of this is real,

because if it does,
it changes all of their reality.

You know, then, is the Bible just for us?

Or... Or is it for them too?

[Lee Roy] That's...
A million-dollar question is,

"Where does life and other planets
and religion fit together?"

If somebody were to ask me,

"Did God make other...

creatures?", I'd say yes.

When Kent was telling us this story,

I was the typical jerk
giving him a hard time, saying,

"Here's a guy
that just saw a flying Dorito."

[Kent laughing]

And when we all looked up
and saw this thing,

all of a sudden, it-it changed us in a way

that we look at both sides
of the story more.

[Lisa] Now when I hear people tell stories
of things they see,

I am not a doubting Thomas.

I'm thinking, you know,
"They saw something."

"I know they did
or why would they be saying this?"

Of course, psychology today
would tell you that,

hey, if you're experiencing these things,

you're seeing things
in your room at night,

that you're schizophrenic.

Or you have some kind
of other severe mental illness.

And, to me, that's not...
[sighs] That's not correct.

That's not right.

When I made the decision
to talk about this, to leave the Navy,

I was four years away from retirement,

which would have meant,
you know, a pension,

health insurance for the rest of my life.

You know? And I...
I left that all on the table.

And I walked away from it

because this isn't just about me, right?

It's not about me at all.
It's about all of us.

[inhales deeply]

[voice breaking] It's about everybody.

[Norma] Don Quixote is
one of my favorite novels.

And, in it, Don Quixote is a madman.

And everything that he sees,
he sees in a different light.

Don Quixote sees these windmills,

but in his mind, they're not, uh...

They're not windmills. They're giants.

We know that we're not mad.

We know that there is
something credible to this

because too many people saw
these, uh, lights in the sky.

And so, um... We're-We're not...

We're not a Don Quixote.
There's-There's more to this.

[Robert] You can argue,
"Well, it was some secret

US black project, right?"

But our technologies
don't just suddenly leap

across 100 years of-of technology.

Th-They're gradually created.

In this case, I think whatever people saw
was intelligently controlled.

And it was not manufactured
by the United States

or any other nation, for that matter.

So, about nine months later,

I was driving my daughter
to gymnastics in Dublin,

and I saw... [scoffs]...some lights.

I pulled over to the side of the road,

and I just stopped
and looked out my front window.

And they kinda were blinking
or kinda coming in and out of focus.

And then they kinda
came together, cohesively,

and... and just sort of disappeared.

I just was so shaken and so shocked.
I thought, "My gosh."

"I'm seeing what everybody's been
talking about all this time."

[intriguing ambient music playing]

It felt like the universe was sort of
playing a trick on me, like... [chuckles]

I balked at this story so hard
in the beginning and for so long.

And then, you know, months later,
it was sort of like, you know, here it is.

I can't believe
all of the wonderful people I've met.

And that's the good of UFO reporting.

I've loved every minute of it,

and I hope that I'm gonna be doing this
for a long time.

- Thank you.
- [audience applauding]

- [applause fades out]
- [somber music plays]

[Sara] If I could talk to Angelia again,
I would tell her how brave she was

for understanding
that there was a story there to be told.

And I certainly wish that, uh,
we had parted ways differently if...

[voice breaks]
My-My biggest regret of all is that.

[somber music continues]

[crickets chirping]

[Steve] Our business suffered

because I was chasing
the unidentified object that we saw.

So it put an undue strain
on our relationship and her as well.

And after 17 years
of being together and married,

we ended up getting a divorce.

My relationship suffered.
My company suffered. I suffered.

I still consider it a blessing
that I did see it,

and it's forever in my mind.

I'm still on my quest, still to this day.

I will find out what happened.

This is a great big open secret.

Nothing I am saying is anything new.

It's just a matter of,
are you gonna believe it or not?

[stirring mysterious music playing]

[music fading out]

- [radio static]
- [stations scrambling]

[man chatters indistinctly over radio]

[woman 1] A cold glass of Borden milk
will cool you off.

When you need a boost, try Borden milk.

[radio stations scrambling]

[indistinct radio jingle plays]

[child] Milk Duds!

- [singing continues]
- [child] Milk Du...

- [radio stations scrambling]
- [radio chatter]

[static crackling]

[woman 1] When you need a boost, try milk!

[man] Okay!

[radio stations scrambling]

[woman 2] Milk's a natural
with the food we like best.

It's too good to leave at home.

- [radio stations scrambling]
- [indistinct chatter]

[man 2] Saturday, and Elsie the Borden Cow
is in her kitchen.

[Elsie] Beauregard,
that cookie would taste even better

with a glass of Borden milk.

- It tastes...
- [static interference]

[man 3] ♪ Fresh is fresh
It's gotta be good, it's gotta be good ♪

[man 4] Try all our dairy products,
'cause...

[static interference]

[woman 1] You'll like the taste of milk
with everything you eat.

- [radio static]
- [indistinct chatter]

[radio stations scramble]

- [child] Milk Duds!
- [radio jingle] ♪ Milk is a natural ♪

- [radio static]
- [indistinct chatter]

- [high-pitched tuning tones whizzing]
- [chatter continues]

[static crackling]