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January 8, 2008. Stephenville, Texas.

Three friends are enjoying a crisp, clear winter evening.

The fun will not last for long. Steve Allen is a local

pilot in Stephenville. His buddy, Mike, invites him

and another friend over and the three of them are

hanging around a bonfire just chatting and

enjoying the sunset.

As a pilot, it's natural for Steve

to constantly be scanning the skies.

He's the first person to notice something strange up there.

He immediately points it out to his friends,

Mike and Lance.

From the East they see what appears to be

a giant object with four lights.

The lights are intensely bright. Steve compares them

to a magnesium flare. That's how bright they are.

The lights appear to be moving at an extremely

high rate of speed. Although the object is moving

incredibly fast, it makes absolutely no sound.

Suddenly, the lights come to a dead stop over Stephenville.

And this is when some really weird things happen.

The lights change formation several times.

The two columns of light burst into flames.

And then, they disappear.

They don't fade in the distance. They don't streak out of sight.

They simply and completely disappear.

All three men are amazed and alarmed

by what they have just witnessed.

Lance is terrified by what he's just seen.

Without so much as a goodbye, he jumps in his truck

and takes off.

Steve and Mike rush into the house

to tell Mike's wife, Claudette, what they've witnessed.

Claudette's not sure what to make of the story,

so she decides to pick up the phone

and call Lance. When Lance answers the phone,

he's driving down the highway. And he can see the object

coming back towards them. He tells Claudette

to run outside.

And this time, the object is closer and lower

than the first time they saw it. It feels up close and personal.

And then, two F-16s fly by, apparently in hot pursuit.

They all watch in amazement as the object and the jets

travel out of sight. This is just the

beginning of what will become one of the most famous UFO

flaps in history.

Year after year, these types of sightings

consistently appear in the skies over Texas.

What makes the Lone Star State such a lightning rod

for these UFO encounters? Hangar 1 looks for answers...

right now. The Mutual UFO Network,

known as "MUFON," is an independent organization

not bound to any government. They investigate reports

of UFO sightings from around the world.

Over the past five decades,

they have collected more than 70,000 files.

Stored at a secured location known as "Hangar 1."

Now, MUFON is granting access to their vast archive.

These are the files of Hangar 1.

They say everything is bigger in Texas.

The hats, the belt buckles, the cattle.

Even the UFO sightings.

And the Stephenville incident that began with local pilot

Steve Allen is no exception.

The day after the sightings, Steve begins a quest

to try to figure out what he saw.

He first contacts the local Stephenville airport

to see if they have any information.

They reach out to Ft. Worth, but none of the airports

seem to have any answers.

Steve's next step is to reach out to the local newspaper

to see if they had anyone else

who might've reported the sightings.

A local reporter decides to investigate Steve's story.

And suddenly, witnesses start coming forward.

It turns out, a lot of people in the area

witnessed strange lights that night.

MUFON investigators learn of the sightings.

And launch a full-scale investigation.

The phone of the MUFON Texas State director

began ringing off the hook.

Everyone wanted answers. We set up a team of

investigators that began interviewing

witnesses.

Seventeen different witnesses come forward

to report sightings. What I love about

the Stephenville story

is multiple eyewitness accounts of the same object,

the same scenario,

the same descriptions, there's credibility all over it.

These are large, clear sightings

that are seen by, you know, police officers

and scientists and citizens of all walks of life.

I see these kind of events as displays.

They're displays. They're like peacocks spreading

their feathers.

Armed with a mountain of eyewitness testimony,

MUFON investigators search for hard evidence.

Because multiple witnesses had reported seeing

jets chasing after the UFO,

investigators reached out to the military

to try to get some answers. Stephenville is

in the vicinity of three different Air Force bases.

So residents are familiar with how military jets

look and sound. And yet, when the military was

initially contacted, they denied having

any jets in the area or knowledge of

unusual activity. Stonewalled

by the military, MUFON investigators turn

to local radar data. MUFON investigators were able

to collect radar data from the FAA from

multiple radar stations in the surrounding area.

And the information they uncovered was astounding.

Radar data proved there

were unidentified objects in the area during the time

of the sightings. But that's not all.

The data also reveals there was a potential target.

One UFO was headed directly towards

restricted airspace.

And this isn't just any restricted airspace.

This is the Crawford Ranch, the vacation home of President

George W. Bush.

What was this UFO doing over the area?

Was it specifically interested in President Bush?

Radar data from the night of January 8, 2008, also

shows an unusually high volume of military aircraft

in the area. Radar data reveals

not one, not two, but ten different military jets

in the area during the time of the sighting.

When first asked, the military denied having

any aircraft in the area, and any knowledge

of unusual circumstances. Now, with indisputable evidence,

the military recants their original statement,

and claims that they did, in fact, have military aircraft

in the area, but were simply running a training operation.

Were the military aircraft dispatched to protect

the President's ranch? Any pilot knows

that if you cross over into that restricted airspace,

you're either gonna be forced down or shot down.

But the object was moving so fast,

that it was through the restricted airspace

and gone in the blink of an eye.

Was this UFO dangerous? Are all of these military jets

launched for defense or was there another reason

why this UFO and these jets were in the air

around the same time?

I'm not at all surprised by this encounter.

I know for a fact that jets had been scrambled

to try and get them and they could never get

close enough to them. They had free reign

over what they did and where they showed up.

As many times as we've scrambled jets,

to try and stop them, we've never been able

to pin them down. The events

surrounding the Stephenville sightings

remain a mystery. But as we explore other

extraordinary Texas encounters, new pieces

of the puzzle emerge. Up next: UFOs shut down

vehicles, leaving motorists terrified

and helpless. They're showing us

that they're here. They want us to know

that they're here. The remarkable story

of the Levelland Landings, when Hangar 1 returns.

The Lone Star State is no stranger to UFOs.

But why is it such a hotbed of unexplained phenomena?

Perhaps, additional clues can be found

in another Texas case file. One where the UFOs

prove to be more than just lights in the sky.

Levelland, Texas. November 2, 1957.

Two immigrant farm workers,

Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz, call the Levelland police

department regarding a UFO sighting.

Officer A.J. Fowler is manning the night desk

at the police station. And this is the beginning

of what is about to be a very strange night.

Pedro and Joe are driving four miles West

of Levelland when they see a blue flash

of light near the road.

Suddenly, their engine dies, and the vehicle

rolls to a stop. At that moment, a strange object

approaches them.

When the object moves away from the vehicle,

the engine restarts. Saucedo immediately

calls the police.

Officer Fowler thinks he's dealing with a crank call.

So he ignores it. But an hour later,

he gets another call. Jim Wheeler is

four miles East of Levelland when he reports

a brilliantly-lit egg-shaped object sitting

in the road, blocking his path. And like Pedro,

he claims his vehicle dies. As he gets out of the car,

the object takes off and at the same time,

the object's lights disappear.

Once again, the car restarts

after the object is gone. First, Pedro and Joe.

Then Jim Wheeler, then the calls just start rolling in.

A married couple driving Northeast of Levelland.

A motorist 11 miles North of town.

A Texas Tech college student ten miles East of town.

Boom, boom, boom. The calls keep coming.

All of these motorists have similar stories.

"A strange object in the road." Their engines cut out.

When the object flies off, their engines start up again.

By this time, the Levelland police department

is actively investigating the situation.

Officer Fowler alerts on-duty officers

to the situation. The local sheriff and one of

his deputies begin monitoring Officer Fowler's reports

and tracking the object. Around 1:30 A.M.,

they have their own encounter.

A large glowing object passes across the highway

in front of them. The officers claim

the entire highway is lit up below

the sun-like object.

The Levelland police department received

a total of 15 calls that night. And reports would continue

to trickle in for the next several days.

The Levelland case is considered by UFOlogists

to be one of the most impressive in UFO history.

Mainly because it wasn't just a light in the sky

seen by one or two witnesses.

But something that landed, and the object, whatever it was,

interacted with the environment.

This sounds like an EMP to me.

An electromagnetic pulse weapon

that shuts down motors. It doesn't kill the people.

They're showing us that they're here.

They want us to know that they're here.

The local newspaper runs the story, which is

then picked up nationwide. Project Blue Book

then dispatches an Air Force sergeant

to investigate. The Air Force sergeant

heard that there had been thunderstorms in the surrounding

area earlier that morning. He decided to focus on this

and announced that a phenomenon called

"ball lightning" had occurred.

So ball lightning is a real phenomenon that exists.

Um, we just don't really understand what it is.

It's one of those interesting atmospheric effects

that generally occurs in thunderstorms

after lightning strikes. And it basically

is what it sounds like. It's a glowing ball of light

and electrical discharge and energy.

If you've ever seen a plasma ball in the store,

that's sort of, I think, a good image of what it is.

But not everyone is convinced

of the Air Force's official findings.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek was an astronomer

at Northwestern University, and one of the top

scientific consultants to Project Blue Book.

After doing his own investigation,

he claimed the sightings could not be attributed

to ball lightning. First of all, ball lightning

is not very large. But in each of the sightings,

the object was big enough to block the road.

Second, ball lightning is not known to have the ability

to shut off car engines. Despite what the Air Force

sergeant heard, there was no rain or lightning

in the vicinity of Levelland at the time of the sightings.

It appears the military's report

does not reflect all the facts. Despite these omissions,

the case is closed.

Up next: the nation takes notice

when one of the most famous Texas UFO sightings

is caught on film. When I was a kid,

one of the first images of UFOs that I ever saw

were the Lubbock Lights.

And I thought this was amazing. The incredible story

when we return.

Texas is home to some of the most intriguing

UFO cases in history. Do these mass UFO sightings

fall within a particular area creating a geographical

pattern? One particular case

may hold some important clues.

Lubbock, Texas. August 25, 1951.

Around 9:00 P.M., three professors

from Texas Tech University were hanging out in one

of the professor's backyards.

There was a chemical engineer, a petroleum engineer

and a geologist. So you have

three scientists here. The men have

actually gotten together to study meteors. So their eyes

are trained on the sky.

Suddenly, they see 20 to 30 bright lights roughly the size

of dinner plates, flying in a "U" formation.

The objects are moving fast across the sky.

The men immediately rule out the objects as meteors.

And as they're discussing what the lights might be,

another group of lights, similar to the first,

flies overhead. The professors reach

out to the Air Force for answers.

The professors check with Air Force personnel,

but there was no traffic in the air that night.

Not sure what to make of this, they shared their story

with a local newspaper. Once their story's

published in the newspaper, multiple witnesses

start coming forward with similar stories.

Very bright, very big lights, arranged in a boomerang

formation, flying across the sky,

and never making a sound.

Sightings continue from August to November

of 1951. The professors are intrigued.

And decide to investigate further.

They formed a watch group and set up a schedule

to watch the skies. Between the original sighting

in August, and sometime in November,

hundreds of these observers around Lubbock

saw as many as three flights in one night.

Then, on the night of August 30th,

new evidence of the Lubbock Lights

is captured. A Texas Tech student

by the name of Carl Hart, Jr. attempts to photograph

the lights.

He witnesses two different flights that night.

One at 5:30 P.M., and the other around 10:30 P.M.

He takes photos both times with his 35 mm camera.

In each of the photos

you can see anywhere from 18 to 20 lights

arranged in a boomerang formation.

The local newspaper publishes the photos.

And they begin circulating throughout the country.

When I was a kid, one of the first images

of UFOs that I ever saw were the Lubbock Lights.

And I thought this was amazing.

Eventually, the Air Force gets their hands on the photos.

They're actually given to Captain Edward Ruppelt.

Edward J. Ruppelt was a US Air Force captain.

He's most famous as being the head of Project Blue Book.

The Air Force had had several investigative bodies

that investigated UFOs going back to 1947.

The first one being Project Sign,

which went up until 1949. Which was then succeeded by

Project Grudge, and then 1952 that became

Project Blue Book.

Captain Ruppelt, now working under Project Grudge,

travels to Lubbock to investigate further.

He finds a local man who mentions seeing one night

the reflection of the newly installed city streetlights

bouncing off the white bellies of a few plover birds flying by.

This gives Ruppelt, and the Air Force,

a natural phenomenon to explain away the silence.

And they jump on it.

They issue a statement that the newly installed

vapor streetlights were bouncing off the undersides of the birds

as they flew overhead. Case closed.

In an effort to test this theory,

a photographer at the local paper

attempts to recreate Hart's photos

using plover birds flying over the city at night.

His photos are nowhere close

to Hart's photos. The reflection off the birds are

way too dim to see anything.

A federal wildlife game warden also rules out the plovers

as a cause of the sightings. He notes that the birds can only

fly around 50 miles per hour. Much slower than the movements

of the lights. Not to mention the fact

that you can hear the birds when they fly.

The residents of

Lubbock are also not satisfied by the Air Force's findings

and demand answers. When MUFON investigators

start digging, they expose shocking

revelations.

At MUFON's Midwest UFO Conference in 1971,

a presentation was given about the way the government

documents UFO cases.

It was discovered that in some instances,

Project Grudge created two different reports

for the same UFO file.

One secret report and one public report.

And they did this for the Lubbock Lights case.

The public report basically said that these lights

were nothing more than a flock of birds

and that we were seeing reflections off of their bodies

reflected off of streetlights below them.

But the secret report was saying other things.

Like we really need to figure out what this thing was.

The secret report reveals the findings

of both the photographer at the paper and the game warden.

And it concludes that the objects in Hart's

photographs are definitely not birds.

It's very troubling when you think about it.

The government is flat-out lying to the public

about its findings. Who knows

what else they're lying about? The dots connecting

these historic UFO sightings are starting

to reveal a pattern. As MUFON investigators

continue to dig deeper into Texas' most unusual

UFO cases. Coming up:

Victims of a close encounter with a UFO

sue the federal government for damages.

Details of the case when we return.

Hangar 1

has opened its files to some of Texas' most

extraordinary cases. This next incident may be one

of the most shocking yet.

Huffman, Texas. December 29, 1980.

Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum,

along with Vickie's seven-year-old grandson Colby

are on their way home from dinner.

At about 9:00 P.M., they're in the dense woods

of Huffman, Texas, on an isolated two-lane road.

They see a light above the trees

and initially think it's just an airplane

approaching the Houston Intercontinental Airport.

A few minutes later, the same light is now much

closer and very bright.

This giant, diamond-shaped object

is hovering at about treetop level,

right in front of them. It's illuminated

in this bright light and flames are flooding out

from the bottom of it. It's giving off

significant heat.

Both Cash and Landrum get out of the car to inspect the object.

Colby, however, is terrified. Landrum quickly has

to return to the car to comfort the frantic child.

But Cash remains outside, mesmerized by the bizarre sight.

The heat coming from the object is intense.

Cash had to use her coat to protect her hand

from being burned by the door handle.

Suddenly, new aircraft come into view.

A group of CH47 Chinook helicopters surround the object

in a tight formation. Cash and Landrum watch as

the object and the helicopters fly off into the distance.

It's not just an unidentified flying object,

there are some identified flying objects in this same event.

They're right there in the same proximity.

They seem to be escorting it somehow.

I see a blur...

... between what might be completely extraterrestrial,

or what might be, perhaps, human and extraterrestrial

happening there.

Unfortunately for the witnesses,

the incident doesn't end there.

All three of them suffer from nausea,

vomiting, diarrhea, generalized weakness,

and a burning sensation in their eyes.

Landrum continues to have intermittent outbreaks

throughout her life.

Cash, however, who spent the most amount of time

outside the car, her symptoms actually get worse.

Cash winds up being hospitalized

for several weeks. She can't walk.

She loses large patches of skin. She loses her hair.

These large, painful blisters form on her skin.

And her eyes swell shut. Landrum and Cash

reach out to several UFO organizations,

including MUFON, for help. MUFON submits the witnesses'

medical records to a radiologist,

who, after examining them, believes there's strong evidence

that the patients have suffered secondary damage

to ionizing radiation.

And there was possibly an infrared or ultraviolet

component as well.

Something like a UFO that's traveled here,

presumably, it has a very powerful, strong energy source.

It's probably using something similar to our nuclear reactors,

maybe of a different design.

And it could be leaking radiation in a way that

would expose people to it and then have

severe effects on them. Suddenly, you're experiencing

rapid cell damage, through hair falling out

or even something as extreme as cancer.

A few months later,

Vickie Landrum and her grandson have a chance encounter

with another possible witness. Landrum and her grandson

see a CH47 flying into Dayton.

They wind up being able to approach the helicopter

and talk with the pilot. And the pilot makes

an interesting comment. He claims that he was

in the area once before in order to check on a UFO that

was in trouble near Huffman. Landrum says she's really glad

to run into him, because she had been one of

the people burned by that UFO. When the pilot hears this,

he clams up. He kicks them out of the helicopter

and refuses to say another word to them.

Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum

decide it's time to take their case directly

to the US government.

The Chinook helicopter suggests at least one branch

of the military may somehow be connected to this UFO.

And yet, when the Department of the Army Inspector General

interviews Cash and Landrum, he says there's no evidence

that the helicopters belonged to the US Armed Forces.

Eventually, Cash and Landrum hire a lawyer

and file a complaint against the US government

for $20 million. There was a lot of effort

by investigators to find out where the helicopters came from.

But no bases anywhere near the Houston area

claimed to have helicopters in the air that night.

The only base that even acknowledged having

a large patrol of helicopters was Gray Army Airfield,

located at Fort Hood.

The lawsuit of Cash and Landrum

vs. the US government proves unsuccessful.

In 1986, the case was dismissed by a US District Court judge,

who claimed that there was not enough evidence

to prove that the helicopters were associated

with the US government. And military officials had

testified that US Armed Forces did not have a large

diamond-shaped aircraft in their possession.

The case was closed, but questions remain.

Could the helicopters have been part of a classified

military operation to retrieve UFOs?

Perhaps the answers to this mystery can be found

at Fort Hood, Texas. Coming up:

Inside the military's elite UFO helicopter unit.

And a look at the extraordinary history

of UFOs and Fort Hood when we return.

Hangar 1 has opened

the Lone Star State's most unusual case files.

Searching for clues for what may be attracting UFOs

to Texas. When helicopters are seen

escorting a UFO, questions regarding the military's

connection emerge. Does the answer lie within

America's largest armored post, Fort Hood, Texas?

The summer of 1975. A pilot stationed at Fort Hood

with an RS2 intelligence aviation unit,

is driving on a highway close to a base,

with a friend, around 10:00 at night.

Despite the weather, he can see in the sky

above Fort Hood a number of Army helicopters.

They appear to be heading back to the base,

but they're not alone. They're surrounding

another object

as though they're escorting it. But it's an aircraft unlike

anything he's ever seen.

Now this guy's a helicopter pilot himself,

so he's very familiar with what helicopters look like at night.

And he's certain that this large object, a disc-type thing,

with a reddish light, is not another helicopter.

The next day when he gets back to the base,

he asks his friend who works in the air traffic control tower

if he knows anything about what happened.

The friend claims nobody at the tower knows anything.

So he starts asking around among his other pilot buddies.

None of them seem to know anything either.

Now this seems really strange to him.

Usually, if anything happens on the base,

it makes its way through the grapevine pretty quickly.

But for some reason, in this case,

nobody seems to know anything. Finally, after asking

around for a bit, one of his pilot buddies tells

him he'd better stop asking questions if he cares at all

about his job.

Were the helicopters witnessed by Cash and Landrum

and the Fort Hood pilot part of a top secret

UFO project, operating out of

Fort Hood, Texas? Numerous witnesses have

reported seeing helicopters escorting UFOs in

and around Fort Hood. Why would this keep happening

over and over in this area?

At some point you have to ask,

"Is the military working in partnership

with extraterrestrials?" A news reporter that has

filmed a segment at Fort Hood learned that there was

a special helicopter unit involved with UFOs

called the "Blue Boys."

The Blue Boys supposedly operate out of the section of Fort Hood

called Gray Army Airfield. This helicopter unit

may be responsible for escorting and

transporting UFOs. They may even be storing them

on the base.

Gray Army Airfield was a top secret facility

that was built with numerous underground tunnels,

originally designed to store atomic weapons.

These tunnels could be a perfect location

for the military to store recovered UFOs.

We have testimony from an individual who worked

in an underground bunker at Fort Hood.

He actually stated that "the technology that is being applied

in this underground complex would remind someone

of a science fiction thriller. It is unbelievable

what they know and can do from this area."

The question is: is this technology our own

or is it extra-terrestrial?

I believe that the military had interaction with these beings,

as we have heard in the stories.

That might not be the whole picture.

There might be another layer to that onion.

Does the US military have a secret UFO research

facility at Fort Hood? And could it be tied

to a history of reoccurring UFO sightings

in Texas? Coming up:

More than 100 servicemen reported seeing strange,

illuminated flying objects in different shapes

and configurations buzzing around the area.

Deep in the heart of Texas

one of the most extraordinary UFO flaps on file

takes place directly over Fort Hood.

When we return.

Spring, 1949. The skies over Camp Hood,

now known as Fort Hood, are filled with

unusual objects.

Fort Hood may have been one of

the first times when UFOs have been seen around

and above military complexes.

In 1949,

over the course of four months, March through June,

the heavily guarded facility of Camp Hood

experiences a record number of UFO sightings.

More than 100 servicemen reported seeing strange,

illuminated flying objects in different shapes and

configurations buzzing around the area.

In 1949, Camp Hood was one of three

national stockpile sites where nuclear weapons were stored.

Security over this whole area was paramount.

The situation was so serious that a very high-level

conference was held at Camp Hood to discuss

this whole situation. They brought in the Fourth Army,

the Air Force Office of Special Investigation: AFOSI,

Office of Naval Intelligence, and the FBI

to study what was going on.

Despite the urgency of the situation,

government officials cannot agree on a course of action.

Eventually, the base commander decides to take matters

into his own hands.

After two weeks of nightly sightings,

the commander of Fort Hood devises a plan of action

by establishing special UFO patrols.

Each patrol is assigned to specific areas of the base,

and each team has four men: an instrument man, a timer,

a recorder and a radio operator. The idea was that when

a team would spot a UFO, they would track

the exact elevation, the azimuth, of the object.

The radio operator would call out the location of the object

and the direction it's going to other teams, which would

then know where to look.

Azimuth is the angle of an object

in relation to North. You combine that with

the object's elevation, and you can pinpoint its

exact location in the sky. This kind of data is critical

when trying to prove the existence of UFOs.

The plan seems

foolproof. And it has the support of every

man who's participating. For the first time in history,

everybody wants to get on the patrols.

But since the Air Force has prime responsibility

for UFO investigations, the plan has to be

coordinated through them. A copy of the order

is rushed to the Air Force, with everyone standing by for

the minute they say "Go." And they don't.

These patrols would've provided

an excellent opportunity to get some concrete data

on at least one type of UFO. It's something that should have

been done from the start. Speeds, altitudes and sizes

that are estimated just by looking at a UFO

are miserably inaccurate. But this plan could have

provided us with some real information.

Indisputable evidence. So why doesn't

the Air Force approve the plan?

Some people believe that this is because,

realistically, the Air Force did not want lower-level operations

confirming the reality of UFOs. IRRATOR: Despite ther

Force's unwillingness to approve official UFO patrols

at Fort Hood, Texas, sighting reports continue

to flood in.

Because so many sightings are taking place,

a standardized form is created. On one night alone,

50 sightings are reported. Finally, after four months,

the sightings stop. The Air Force collects all

of the reports on sightings, but ultimately sweeps them under

the rug, waiting for them to be forgotten.

Could this event in Texas have been one

of the United States' most defining UFO moments?

We had mass UFO sightings for an extended period of time

over Camp Hood and a base commander willing to authorize

a serious investigation. This could've been

the turning point for UFO investigations

in America. If the investigation

had been approved, we could have collected

indisputable evidence allowing for public awareness

that these entities exist.

Although this event did not lead

to national public awareness, it still may have played

a significant role in our UFO history.

And be a clue to why UFOs are drawn to Texas.

The sightings at Camp Hood are a major UFO event, and it may

be that this event triggered the government's desire

to have a secret UFO facility at this location.

It's possible that the UFOs were originally

attracted to Camp Hood because of the nuclear weapons

stored there. What's interesting is that

those same underground storage facilities that housed

nuclear weapons could now be housing a secret

military UFO operation.

Fort Hood is located directly in the middle

of the UFO corridor. Is Fort Hood the missing link

to Texas' unexplained UFO activity?

The state of Texas has Texas-sized UFO cases.

Perhaps as UFO groups like MUFON continue to investigate,

one day we'll understand

what is attracting these UFOs.

For now, the truth

behind the strange objects that light up the Texas skies

remains elusive.

But keep your eyes peeled when traveling through

the Lone Star State because you may become a witness

to the next big sightning.