Original subtitles

Okay. We're recording. Today's date

is January 2, 2005. Anytime you wanna start.

My name is - and I was living

in California at the time.

1985, Los Angeles, a pair of teenage friends

sneak out after curfew. A 16-year old kid

to protect his identity, we're referring to him as Chet,

had just gotten his driver's license, he takes his best

friend out to explore a place that's considered off-limits.

Their destination, a decommissioned

missile site. In 1950s, the US Military

installed a ring around Los Angeles

on 16 Nike missile sites.

These are anti-aircraft

missiles mainly put in there to defend the growing

aerospace industry in Southern California.

By the early 1980s, however, many of these

had been shut down. I suspect there are few things

more appealing to a group of teenage boys

in the prospect of checking out an abandoned missile site.

Chet and his friend hopped the fence to take

a look around. There's not much to look at anymore

but they're having fun, sneaking around and exploring.

The kids are having a great time being kids

when suddenly Chet looks up and notices something.

There are blue lights just above them in the sky.

These blue lights appeared and I'm thinking,

"Oh, man, this is a police helicopter,

we're gonna get busted for trespassing."

If this was a helicopter, the rotors would be

deafening by now.

Instead, the boys don't hear anything.

It's totally silent.

The blue lights descend from above

and the boys quickly realize they are not dealing

with the police. I don't know

what to call it. It wasn't like anything

I'd ever seen on Earth.

A giant UFO.

Now, this UFO is so bright that the boys can barely

see the craft itself. The entire missile base

is getting lit up like it's the middle

of the day. Chet and his friend

are frozen. The witnesses

are paralyzed by more than just fear.

This light was shining down on us

and I suddenly realized, I couldn't move.

It was like this UFO was somehow holding

me in place. I couldn't run and hide,

I couldn't yell out. I felt trapped.

What were you thinking at that moment?

I was thinking, "Am I gonna die?"

Chet's experience is not unique.

Hundreds of everyday citizens report having their lives

turned upside down by a UFO. Could these never-before-told

stories hold the key to the UFO mystery?

MUFON investigates extreme close

encounters 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 secure location known as Hangar 1.

Now, MUFON is granting assess to their vast are kind.

These are the files of Hangar 1.

Los Angeles 1985, a pair of teenagers

are trespassing at a decommissioned

missile base when a UFO descends

from above, projecting a light that appears

to paralyze the friends.

What were you thinking at that moment?

I was thinking. "Am I gonna die?"

And then it started to feel like

something was invading my brain.

Invading?

Yeah, somehow I knew that this UFO

was like scanning me, you know. I could feel it in there,

reading my mind.

Chet's friend later reported experiencing the same thing.

Was the UFO scanning

these kids? And if so, why?

Was the UFO specifically interested

in these particular boys or could it have been attracted

activity on the missile site?

After about a minute

of what the witnesses called telepathic scanning

from the UFO, the intense light surrounding

the craft dimmed. The boys finally feel

like they can move again.

The UFO quickly flies up into the sky

just as silently as it appeared.

Do you recall how you felt?

I don't know. I was just glad it was over.

These teenagers have just been through something

amazing. But now that it's over, what do they do next?

To tell their story is to admit that they were trespassing

on government property. Not to mention, they're afraid

of being ridiculed. So they keep it to themselves.

There are very confusing aspects of these experiences

and the physiological impact of just seeing

these incredible things.

The spiritual awakening that occurs when you realize

that we are not alone in the universe.

It is life changing.

These lesser known stories

can be very important because they often validate

some of the more famous sightings.

But when they decide to come forward,

a pattern starts to emerge.

Okay. We're all set. You can start

when you're ready.

WoOkay. Thank you. Summer 1970,

Loreen Cosentino spots her young son

pedaling home on his bike. Even from the door,

I could tell right away that something was wrong.

The kid races up the driveway,

jumps off his bike and makes a beeline

for the front door.

The boy is talking a mile a minute.

Loreen can't even make out what he's saying.

The kid is clearly rattled.

She thinks maybe there's been an accident or something.

But the boy is upset about far more

than scrapes or bruises. The son tells his

mother he just saw a UFO, a flying saucer

covering directly over the neighborhood.

And what was your reaction? I was just happy

he wasn't hurt. I wasn't really taking

the UFO part seriously. She tries to console

her son, telling him it's probably just a plane

or a trick of the light or something

but this only starts to upset him again.

He was begging me, just come with me and see.

So like when a child is afraid of a monster

under his bed, Loreen wants to show her son,

there's nothing to be afraid of but then she looks up.

It appeared right over the roof.

What appeared? It was -

I guess the best way to describe it is

a flying saucer.

Just as she's assuring her frightened child

that there's no such thing as flying saucers,

bam, there's one plain as day.

Now, she doesn't know what to say.

This UFO is shiny and metallic.

There don't appear to be any windows

or doors or hatches or even any seams at all.

It's just a perfect disk, quietly levitating

over their neighborhood.

Now, the mother and her son are just standing there,

staring at this UFO. They don't know what to do.

They're awestruck, but they're both

seeing it together. It's very real.

They keep watching this thing for almost five minutes,

it's not moving, they're not moving.

It's like the whole world had stopped.

But then the mother take a step closer

and everything changes. The flying saucer

suddenly launches itself upward and disappears into the sky.

The witness described it as not building to acceleration,

it was just instantaneous. Whoosh. It was gone.

The first thing the mother wants to know is,

"Are we the only ones that witnessed this?"

This is a mind-blowing but very brief encounter.

No one else was there to see this UFO which means

that Loreen's story is not going to make

any headlines.

This is the 1970s, there's no internet.

So, how do you confirm this kind of sighting?

The mother calls the local news to ask if anyone else

has reported seeing a UFO in the area.

And as it turns out, the answer is yes.

Several people reported similar sightings that day.

That night, she tunes into the news

but there's no mention of flying saucer reports.

So, this amazing story just remains this family's

own secret for decades.

Then in 1990, the mother learns about MUFON,

and finally has somewhere to officially report

her encounter.

Well, some witnesses may wait years

to reveal their stories. Once in a while,

a MUFON investigator will be in the right place

at the right time and stumble across

an amazing case that might never

have been reported.

Next, a chance discovery uncovers

a lost history of terrifying UFO events

going back over 50 years. This has got to be alarming.

Here's this flying saucer and it circling you

like an animal, getting ready to pounce.

And later, a late night encounter

on a lonely highway gives one man

an up close look inside a UFO.

When we return.

MUFON archives contain thousands of UFO accounts

previously unknown to anyone without access to this vault.

Some witnesses wait decades to report UFO encounters

and even when they don't come forward,

sometimes an investigator

will be lucky enough to stumble onto their amazing case.

In 1991, MUFON investigator,

Davina Ryszka receives a file

containing two photos.

They depict a saucer-shaped UFO flying over a wooded area.

These pictures were sent to MUFON from an Air Force

contact who received them years earlier from a former neighbor.

The neighbor got them from a friend who may

or may not have been

the original photographer.

These are not

high quality images. These are black and white

Xeroxes of old pictures.

But there's something

intriguing about these photos.

This UFO isn't some blur way up in the sky,

it's right there in front of the camera

hovering just off the ground. Davina needs to know

if these photos are legit but nobody can find

the original photographer. After four months

of investigative work, Davina Ryszka is finally

able to track down the original witness.

It turns out the photographer, a 64-year old widow named Jane

was living in Ellsworth. And over a cup of coffee,

Jane reveals

that this UFO photos go back almost 30 years.

Fall, 1962 Elk Creek, South Dakota,

Jane accompanies her husband and son on a rabbit

hunting trip. Jane had just bought

a Polaroid camera and she's eager to try it out.

So she figures this outing will be a great chance to take

some nice nature photos.

The family is enjoying a peaceful afternoon together.

And then all of a sudden, the tranquility is shattered

by his piercing mechanical shriek coming from the sky.

The high pitched noise drops to a steady rumble

that begins to grow louder.

WoSo tell me what happened next.

Whatever was making all these noise,

it sounded like it was closing in on us.

The rumble is everywhere. She can't tell

where it's coming from. Then Jane turns,

and there it is.

A metallic flying saucer

hangs in the air, hovering behind Jane

and her husband. She instinctively

raises her camera and start snapping photos.

As soon as Jane

starts taking pictures, the UFO begins to move.

But it doesn't fly away. Instead it keeps hovering

just out of reach and begins to slowly move

counterclockwise around the group.

Jane continues to take photographs

as the UFO circles around her. WoCan you describe it?

It was really loud like a - like an old furnace

clanking and banging around. And it was leaving a trail

of dark smoke ball through the woods.

This has got to be alarming. Here's this bizarre,

noisy, smoking flying saucer. And it's circling you

like an animal getting ready to pounce.

But Jane's first thought is to make sure she gets

this thing on film. This could be a world

changing event.

Jane keeps snapping away

until the UFO suddenly

flies off in a straight line and vanishes over the horizon.

She looks to her family and they all just shared

this absolutely mind-blowing experience, right?

Well, they had a different reaction to the encounter.

Jane's husband says it's probably just

an experimental military aircraft.

Jane can't believe he's being so casual about this.

To be fair to Jane's husband, Elk Creek isn't

too far from Ellsworth Air Force base. So it's not

unreasonable to assume this UFO might be man-made.

But it's still way more advanced than anything they've ever seen.

WoWhat did you think? I felt like we had

just witnessed something from another world.

But my husband didn't seem to care.

He just wanted to go back to hunting rabbits.

Oftentimes, some witnesses just flat out don't want

to acknowledge it.

After that trip, anytime Jane brings

up the encounter or gets out the photos,

her husband laughs at her. She becomes afraid to speak

of her UFO experience and refuses to talk about UFO's

for the next three decades. And that's a shame because

when she finally opens up to the MUFON investigator,

it turns out, there's a lot more to the story.

In 1991, Jane reveals a secret

she has never shared with anyone.

At this point,

Jane is elderly and not in the best health.

She's ready to put it all out there.

She confides in the MUFON investigator that following

that encounter she woke several times

in a paralyzed state and observed shadowy figures

standing above her.

On another occasion, small glowing orbs

entered her house flying from room to room.

This woman lived with these very unsettling

experiences for years. And felt like she had

to suffer in silence for fear of ridicule.

And important questions went unanswered.

Was she chosen based

on that first encounter

or was she being tracked because she saw something

she shouldn't have.

Jane is not alone in her reluctance

to come forward with an extraordinary story.

Next... "Hangar 1" reveals

another file from deep within their vault

of extreme close encounters. We have what seems to be

a human directly interacting with a UFO.

A flying saucer descends upon a small farm

but is it friend or foe?

MUFON investigators have studied thousands

of UFO witness testimonies. Stories that when otherwise

remained unknown to the public. Including extreme

close encounters with ordinary citizens

whose lives are forever changed by a UFO experience.

Right. So it's important to MUFON

that we get very close encounters reported to us.

'Cause many time,

there's interaction between the beings on the craft

and the individual

witnessing the event. Something happened,

maybe the reality is transformed, space

and time are manipulated, things of this nature

which are so far beyond what we're normally used to.

That it has a startling effect most cases on the witnesses.

Okay. We are rolling. Thank you for doing this.

No problem. No problem.

Summer, 1975, William Riley

runs a small farm in Grinnell, Iowa.

I was sleeping on the front porch.

Why the front porch? It was a really

hot night. We didn't have air conditioning and the porch

was cooler than the house.

Riley is awakened in the early morning hours

as an unusual odor drifts across the front porch.

Riley wakes up wondering, "What's this weird

smell?" There are a lot

of odors on the farm but this is something entirely new.

It's an almost overpowering burning chemical smell.

He gets up to go investigate and that's when

the sounds begin. This deep like

buzzing was moving through the whole farm.

I can feel the ground and everything starting to rumble.

At this point I had no idea what could be happening,

but I was worried about what was happening to my farm.

Riley follows the sound to his barn

and is shocked to discover the source.

And right there in front of it hovering 80 feet of the ground

is a giant ball of orange light.

WoIt's takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust

and he sees that this isn't just a ball of light.

The light is coming from a large rectangular

craft hovering overhead.

I had no clue if this one is hanging over me.

But after a few seconds, I took a step closer

and this UFO instantly moved back.

Moved back? Yes, sir.

It backed up the exact same distance I moved forward.

So then I stepped backwards and the thing moved back

to its original position.

This is very interesting because we have what seems

to be a human directly interacting with a UFO.

There are a lot of encounters on file

where a witness becomes burned, sick or otherwise injured

after getting too close to a UFO.

So maybe, this dance is actually the UFO

trying to protect the witness.

Riley continues his tentative interaction

with the UFO until the craft makes an unexpected move.

The UFO stops dancing and suddenly launches dozens

of burning bright projectiles in every direction.

I didn't know what was happening.

Was I being attacked here? Was this UFO about to fry me

here and my farm?

He's bracing for the worst,

but then he notices these projectiles are just

hanging there in the air. It's actually quite

a beautiful light show.

The glowing spheres slowly drift towards the ground

but completely dissipate before touching the farm soil.

Then just as suddenly as this light show started, it stops.

The UFO went totally dark.

There was this loud flick like someone just flipped

a giant switch. And then it shot straight up

into the sky and disappear. I never saw it again.

William Riley doesn't know where

to turn with his story until years later

when he learns about MUFON. Here we have one man who

experiences something amazing all alone in the middle

of the night. This case doesn't become front page news,

but it's a very fascinating encounter nonetheless.

And with this encounter in the MUFON files,

someday, this seemingly random event will provide

an important piece to a larger puzzle.

Next. A Long Island teenager's backyard

UFO encounter is finally verified

three decades later. After keeping this bottled up

for his whole life to the point where maybe

he was even doubting his memories,

Simon gets this confirmation, "This did happen.

I'm not crazy." When we return.

Thousands of extreme close encounters are archived

within Hangar 1, events that have been reported

to MUFON by witnesses who are initially

hesitant to come forward. Sometimes, a UFO witness

will keep their encounter a secret until many years

later, they begin to question the details of what happened

but on occasion, one of these witnesses

will be fortunate enough to get confirmation

of their sighting even after

several decades of uncertainty.

August, 1977. High school student Simon Quinn

enjoys a summer evening outside his family's

Long Island home. Simon is in the backyard

with his brother, sister, cousin

and his brother's girlfriend.

Simon is distracted by something unusual in the sky.

A trio of lights appear in the distance.

There are three separate lights but they seem to be flying

in formation holding a triangle pattern in the sky.

The kids stopped their game and started

watching these lights. What are they?

They're flying too low to be airplanes,

they're also moving in a very strange pattern,

but the three lights maintained the same distance

from each other the whole time. Suddenly,

two of the lights vanished in the darkness.

When two of the lights disappear, the third light

continues to move directly towards Simon

and his family.

Simon's brother wants a better look

at this thing so he runs inside the house

to retrieve his glasses. Did anything

change about it? Yeah, in the minute

and a half or so that my brother was gone,

the light came a lot closer. They're watching this thing

approach, mesmerized and before they know it,

the UFO is passing right over. At this point,

I was like, "Oh, my God. This is a flying saucer."

Simon describes the craft as disc-shaped

with no windows. The UFO comes to a stop

hovering over his neighbor's yard.

The group is terrified about what might happen next.

Then suddenly, the UFO projects an intense cone of light

down on the neighbor's yard. It is so bright that it makes

the green grass appear white. I remember thinking,

"Is this thing here to take us away?"

This is petrifying. For all the kids know,

they're about to get abducted, but suddenly, the blinding

light cuts out. Then what happened after?

The UFO started to make this soft whirring sound.

Then it shot off

to the horizon. It was gone in seconds.

Just as the UFO vanishes, Simon's brother finally

comes back outside with his glasses

but he missed everything. The kids snapped

out of their terror and started screaming.

"What just happened?"

They all clamber into the house

to tell their parents about the unbelievable thing

that just happened outside but nobody believes them.

The adults laugh off the story. After that night,

we didn't talk about it at all.

To see an event like this

and then only the very next day to have to completely

shut up about it because you're getting laughed at.

It is disappointing to say the least when even very,

very intelligent people

around you are not willing to admit that there could be

something beyond what you've been told all your life is true.

Decades later, Simon is speaking

with his sister and he finally

brings up the UFO. It turns out

that she's been keeping the story to herself too.

She recounts the entire event back to Simon just the way

he remembers it. After keeping this bottled up

for his whole life to the point where maybe

he was even doubting his memories,

Simon gets this confirmation, "This did happen.

I'm not crazy." Simon reaches out

to another witness, his brother's ex-girlfriend.

Simon's brother hasn't spoken to her in decades

and she's now married, has a family, but they managed

to track her down and ask about that night in 1977.

And it's like she's remembering a ghost.

She was very unsettled by the event but she only

remembers parts of the story, the approaching lights

and then the very bright white light.

For some reason, the rest of her recollection is hazy.

It's as if there are holes in her memory.

Did she block them or as many witnesses report,

do this close encounters have a way of erasing themselves?

We have an interesting phenomenon, multiple witnesses

with varying degrees of recollection about the event.

Is this simply due to selective memory?

While some UFO sightings may be buried

or erased from witnesses' minds, other encounters

are so incredible that those who experience them

often question whether or not the event was real.

Next, a Missouri UFO encounter that predates the Roswell crash

and could provide a glimpse into our future.

What if this UFO pilot is actually a time traveler?

When we return.

Two years before the Roswell crash put UFOs

on the front page,

a couple of kids experienced something just as incredible

if not more so, the difference that their story

only exists in a MUFON case file,

but when you start to pull all of these cases together,

you discover a pattern of incredible encounters

that occur much more often than we realize.

1945, Saint James, Missouri,

teenage brothers Andy and Patrick Calhoun

are enjoying a Sunday morning on the family farm.

These two kids are sitting around the kitchen table

and they're reading the Sunday comics

and suddenly the older brother

notices something outside the window.

The older brother bolts out of the house.

The kid brother follows him and finds him standing

in front of their garage looking up at the roof.

Hovering over the farm's garage

is a small flying saucer. The object sort of swayed

in the air like it was very light in weight.

As if witnessing a flying saucer isn't enough,

the brothers can see into the dome on the UFO

and there's a pilot inside. And he's not

what you might expect.

There's a man inside it. Seemingly oblivious to them,

but this UFO pilot doesn't seem too alien at all.

It's a human-looking male. Blond hair, buzz cut,

and he's wearing a nondescript jumpsuit with no patches

or insignias. What are they

seeing here? A science fiction serial

is coming to life on the family farm.

The saucer is starting to make a lot of noise

and the pilot is pre-occupied with the control panel area

as though he might be making some type of repairs.

The two brothers are just staring up at the UFO

in total astonishment. This is 1945 and they are

witnessing some kind of antigravity motion system.

There are no propellers, no jet engines, nothing.

But this saucer somehow is equipped with a technology

to hover above their garage. Soon, the pilot

notices he has an audience.

What did this pilot do? As soon as he saw me,

he reacted as if he wasn't supposed to be seen.

The pilot looks down and sees these two farm kids

gawking at him. He's startled,

drops whatever he was working on, grab the controls,

and the UFO blasts off.

It's gone in an instant. Patrick and Andy never see

the UFO or anything else like it ever again.

They're still not exactly sure what they saw on the farm

that morning or what it means. I'm inclined to think

it was American made. The pilot certainly

looked American.

The pilot looked human, but there was no technology

like this at the time. You might make the argument

that this was a reverse engineered alien craft,

but if Roswell was the dawn of UFO reverse engineering,

then how do you explain this craft zipping around

two years before Roswell?

How would they have got the technology before that time

and how long would it take to produce their own

version of it? That's the real question.

I can't see that happening in 45 or a few years after.

That's the real problem

is trying to track that down.

We have a UFO featuring highly advanced technology

that clearly doesn't belong in this time or place.

Could it be that the UFO pilot was actually a time traveler?

One hypothesis that these beings

are us from our future and they're coming back now.

It's difficult to pin that down, but when you

talk about ufology, almost all bets off.

I don't know if in 1945 these boys were thinking

time travel or aliens. At the end of the day,

they didn't know what to say. So, they didn't say anything.

They keep the experience to themselves until adulthood

when one grows up to be an aerospace engineer

and the other brother is the mayor of a large

Missouri city.

Time and again, we have these unbelievable reports.

And what seems to be a pattern in many of them is that there

is a reluctance to come forward with the story.

Are these witnesses afraid or maybe they find their own

stories difficult to believe?

From this reported UFO encounter with the seemingly

human pilot, MUFON investigates another case of a one man's

surprising look inside a UFO, and its extraterrestrial crew.

He looks into this opening

and there are figures looking right back at him.

When we return.

When you start to search through these lesser known

MUFON files, you'll discover these mind-blowing UFO

sightings by some highly credible witnesses.

We recently had a man come forward to us with a story

that offers an amazing, incredible account

of what might be going on inside a UFO.

Okay, we're rolling. I need to tell my story

because maybe somebody else will step forward

and tell what they saw. Fort Worth, Texas.

A security guard is driving home from his job

at a local trucking company. It was in July of 2007

when I noticed an orange-gold

glow coming from the north. It looked like a beautiful

full moon horizon. But then he realizes,

"Wait a second, I'm heading north. That can't

be the moon up ahead." Ken's trying

to figure out what's happening when suddenly

this moon starts zipping around the sky.

It's a bright orange-yellow ball, crisscrossing the road

and it's getting closer. I got a full glance

of exactly what it was.

A massive flying saucer comes into focus

above the road. I thought to myself,

"This cannot be what I think it is."

Really, that time, I thought, "Okay, it's a hoax.

This can't be real." Since there was no real traffic,

I slowed down and just observed this thing.

The UFO circles around until it's traveling alongside

the highway, right next to Ken's vehicle.

The truck and the UFO are basically cruising down

the highway together and he can get a really good look

at the strange craft. He describes it as shaped like

two salad bowls joined by a ring of lights.

Ken is trying to take in all the details of this UFO.

But the UFO is apparently trying to do the same thing to him

because it suddenly projects a beam of blue light.

This is isn't like a flashlight or laser though.

It's a very strange light. It was almost like

a light saber where the light came out

slowly and could stop at a certain distance.

I don't know how they would do that.

The blue beam extends across the highway

and directly into his vehicle. This beam isn't simply shining

through Ken's window, it's actually stretching out

into a wide flat shaft of light and penetrating

the entire body of his vehicle. And it's not like it's burning

a hole in the metal or anything, the beam just keeps projecting

uninterrupted as though nothing is in its way.

I had no idea what to think about that.

There was no heat. There was no sound.

There was no vibration. There was no tingling.

There was nothing. It did not damage or stop

the motor on my vehicle. It didn't change anything.

It didn't even make a static on the radio.

It was just there. It did what it did

and then it was gone.

He reports that this light seems to pass through both

him and his car as though he is being scanned.

He later speculated that perhaps the UFO was assessing

his threat level.

With the scan completed, the blue beam

is retracted back into the UFO.

What happens next is truly amazing.

As Ken keeps pace with the flying saucer,

he notices movement on the side of the craft.

I look over to the side, I could see

that a window or a portal -

it was a great big square opening in the craft.

Ken is trying to understand this bizarre craft and suddenly

he's granted an almost perfect view right into the heart

of this mystery. And he's astounded

by what he sees.

In the craft, there were five beings, two very tall ones,

and three small ones, we know them as the Grays.

The other ones were twice as tall.

They had very thin heads, almond shaped eyes.

The one thing that I did notice, it eased my mind,

all of them were holding hands. The only thing

that came to my mind was they care about one another.

So they can't be dangerous. It was the most wondrous

moment in my life.

Imagine it, you're driving home after work and suddenly find

yourself in a staring contest with a group

of extraterrestrials. How do you even begin

to tell people about this? And who is going

to believe you?

In cases like these, witness credibility

is especially important. He's agreed

to a background check. He's a veteran of 16 years

of distinguished military service, no criminal record,

and he doesn't want any attention over this encounter.

A lot of these witnesses like Ken, the brothers

who saw the UFO pilot in 1945, the teenagers at the missile

silo, Jane who photographed a UFO in the woods,

they have nothing to gain by coming forward,

except the hope that their combined experience might one

day help solve the UFO mystery. These people

coming forward, they are seeking some kind

of verification and some kind of acknowledgment that what

they have said is true. We want to be accepted as real

people and not just people imagining things in our minds.

Thousands of similar, undisclosed UFO sightings exist

within the files of Hangar 1. Incredible reports

from everyday citizens

who struggle to know if what they experienced is real.

Ask your friends and family if they have had any of their

own extreme close encounters. You may be surprised

by what you learn.