19x05 - The MUFON Files

[bunniefuu]

It is the world's

most elite team of UFO hunters.

It's this huge network

of investigators

who are not just interested

in UFOs,

but want to do something

about it.

For five decades,

the Mutual UFO Network

has gathered detailed evidence

of unexplained aerial phenomena,

strange encounters,

and alleged alien abductions.

Out of all the cases

that you've looked at,

have you seen anything

like this?

Not like this,

and I've done over a thousand.

And now, they're collaborating

with the United States

government.

MUFON has been very well

received in Congress.

Whether they believe it's a UAP

from another world

or from one our adversaries,

they want to know

what's happening.

Could MUFON have

within its vast files

definitive proof

of alien visitation?

Here we have an outfit

that has decades worth

of investigation,

and some of their cases

are, in my opinion,

extraterrestrial encounters.

There is a doorway

in the universe.

Beyond it is

the promise of truth.

It demands

we question everything

we have ever been taught.

The evidence is all around us.

The future is

right before our eyes.

We are not alone.

We have never been alone.

Thousands descend

on the Mile High City

to attend the 53rd International

Symposium on UFOs.

We had a similar case out of

South Carolina last year.

At this annual conference,

researchers

from around the world

gather to share and examine

the latest developments

in the study of UFOs.

One resident claimed to have

compiled a list of 110 persons

who had witnessed flying objects

out of the small town

of only 2,000.

And it is hosted

by an organization

with the most highly trained

UFO investigators in the world,

MUFON.

MUFON is the acronym

for the Mutual UFO Network.

It's the largest UFO

investigation organization

in the world,

and its mission statement

is the scientific study

of UFOs for the benefit

of mankind.

MUFON is a all-volunteer

organization

that's grown to well over

4,000 members worldwide

of field investigators and

people that want to participate

in the quest for the truth.

At the core of MUFON

is an investigative body

that exists to go out

and investigate sightings

that are worthy of investigation

and compile our database.

But over the years, MUFON

has grown into so much more.

We offer kind of a community

for people that care about

the topic.

MUFON is the coming together

of people who are not just

interested in UFOs,

but want to do something

about it.

They want to investigate

the cases.

So, it's like this huge,

uh, network

of like-minded people

all around the United States

and indeed the world

brought together by their shared

passion for the subject

and their shared interest in it.

I became involved

after having been present

for the Phoenix Lights incident

here in Phoenix, Arizona

in 1997.

My interest was captured.

I first joined up with MUFON

after a trip to Roswell

with the family in 2019,

and it got me interested in it.

I had heard of MUFON before,

but I didn't think,

being a nurse,

if I would be useful.

But I called the headquarters

to see about

just attending meetings, and

I became an investigator,

and I've loved it ever since.

I was 12 years old

when I saw my first UFO.

Uh, was outside, and then

I lived in Dallas, Texas.

I saw this little white disk,

uh, kind of just zig-zagging.

So, imagine that seared

into you as a young kid.

As the years roll by,

I noticed that there was

an organization called MUFON,

Mutual UFO Network.

Then I found their website.

Wait a minute,

you can get behind the scenes.

You can become an investigator.

And so I said, "You know what?

This is what I'm going to do."

Having now existed

as an organization

for more than five decades,

MUFON's mission is to

objectively investigate

the hundreds of eyewitness

accounts of UFOs

and other aerial phenomena

that are reported every year

across the globe.

MUFON started in the '60s

as an association

of private citizens

who trained themselves to ask

questions, to go to scenes

where people had reported UFOs

to question people.

They developed a whole protocol.

They had a very

sophisticated methodology

that they used

to document these things,

and they kept records.

Started in Quincy, Illinois,

MUFON originally stood for

"The Midwest UFO Network"

but by 1973,

the organization had so many

members across the country,

its name was changed

to "The Mutual UFO Network."

The group remained

relatively obscure, however,

until 1980,

when it played a key role

in a sensational UFO case called

the Cash-Landrum Incident.

Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum

are driving through Texas

when they encounter this giant

diamond-shaped object

hovering and spewing out

blue flame from the bottom.

They stopped the car

to investigate.

The local environment

is actually being heated

by this object

to the point where

they try to touch their car

and it's hot to the touch.

And then what happens

is they notice

that there's an army

of helicopters,

Chinook helicopters,

seeming to escort this object.

This is Vickie

Landrum from Dayton, Texas.

Now, what makes this unique

is that,

when they get home,

after a couple of days,

they start to show symptoms

of being exposed

to ionized radiation.

The women all had

their hair fall out,

they develop cancer,

and they blamed

the U.S. government for this.

And this then became

a very well-known court case,

where they were suing the

U.S. government, essentially.

This was reported

in major newspapers

all over the United States.

They couldn't ignore this story.

MUFON investigators

got the witness statements,

gathered the evidence,

including things

like medical records,

which were central

to the legal case.

And, although, the witnesses

didn't win their case,

what's important was that

that gets it on the record.

Without MUFON,

it's unlikely that it

would have gone to court.

It helped MUFON

come to the forefront.

It gave us credibility

as a group.

And it was a really

establishing moment for MUFON.

You can click on this,

and you can click on your state

and see if your case

is coming up due soon.

40 UFO researchers

have arrived in this

small desert community

for the annual

MUFON Investigator Boot Camp.

This intense,

three-day conference

offers hands on training

in techniques used

to investigate cases

of reported

extraterrestrial visitations.

Stay with your group.

We have five sites.

You guys are gonna go

to the sites,

and you're going to find stuff,

tag it, bag it,

and you're gonna submit it.

MUFON strives to train up

their field investigators

to know photo

and video analysis.

We're expected to know how

to read astronomical charts.

We're expected to know how

to look at flight radar returns.

And that's just

the tip of the iceberg.

One of the strengths of MUFON,

is that it

brings together people

with different skill sets.

So, for example, some of them

will be, uh, retired cops.

Also, people who specialize

in imagery analysis.

There are other people

who know all about computers.

So, all the different things

that an organization

investigating UFOs might need,

someone's gonna have

that skill set.

MUFON has many members

from the m*llitary,

from the police force,

lawyers, PhDs, doctors.

Those are highly, highly

educated people.

So, it's serious work

that these investigators

are doing.

MUFON is not an organization

of wide-eyed believers.

These are not people who think

everything's an alien spaceship.

MUFON get thousands of cases,

and they investigate,

they analyze,

and they conclude.

And MUFON pride themselves

on trying to adhere

to the scientific method.

The UFO phenomenon

goes back, in my opinion,

thousands of years.

The day when it becomes

accepted knowledge globally

that we are not alone

and never have been

alone on Earth,

I think that MUFON will be part

of this paradigm shift.

For MUFON investigators,

determining the source

of an encounter

is key to identifying

what is truly unexplained.

And often,

the most compelling cases

are those in which eyewitness

accounts can be corroborated

by physical evidence.

Former British Ministry

of Defence UFO investigator

Nick Pope

and Dr. Travis Taylor,

who was the chief scientist

for the U.S. government's

UAP Task Force,

have arranged to meet with two

seasoned MUFON researchers,

who investigated

a possible UFO landing here

in the summer of 2022.

I'm really fascinated to see how

MUFON do their investigations.

What resources and capabilities

they can bring

to bear on these investigations.

I find it really intriguing

that at least they've taken on

that role because,

in the United States,

there is no government office

that's set up

to take UFO reports.

With the UAP Task Force,

we only looked at m*llitary,

uh, scenarios.

We never looked into civilian

events in detail because

we had no authority to go

and investigate inside

- the walls of the United States, right?

- Right.

I'm gonna be interested

to look at this case

through the lens of the way

we did things at

the U.K. Ministry of Defence.

We took a very

methodological approach

to these sorts of things.

Before proceeding to the site

of the alleged landing

- Travis Taylor.

- Travis and Nick meet up with Robert Spearing

and Jason Albertson,

the MUFON investigators

who conducted the original

enquiry in July 2022.

I'm MUFON's, uh, International

Director of Investigations.

Uh, I have

a forensic background.

And this is Jay Albertson.

He's a field investigator

from Pennsylvania.

I'm also retired m*llitary.

I'm a chemical biological

radiological specialist.

So, I guess one

of the biggest questions to me

is, uh, MUFON's become so huge.

How's it funded?

Or is it all volunteer?

Are you guys getting paid

to do this?

- No, everything's volunteer.

- No.

That's what I thought.

That's amazing.

MUFON is mostly funded

by its membership,

and we have about 500

field investigators right now

from all walks of life.

Geologists, biologists,

rocket scientists, you name it.

So, what's your process when

someone makes a report to MUFON?

What happens?

When a witness submits a report,

it goes to, uh,

one of five administrators,

and the state director

will then assign it

to a person in that area.

Jay lived in

the general area where

the incident occurred, and

we immediately realized that

this was a case of interest.

So, what happened?

A woman,

about 2:30 in the morning,

heard her dogs barking.

She saw a white light

coming down

in the field behind her house.

The crickets and the cicadas

had stopped making noise,

which is unusual in

the summertime in Pennsylvania.

The woman was scared

because the dogs

was going crazy,

running back and forth.

And the next morning,

her husband went out

and discovered what we call

a saucer circle

about two yards in diameter.

The pond is to your right,

the impression

is straight ahead.

There's three circles

that are b*rned in the center.

You have a 14-inch circle,

perfect in the center,

and you have

two 12-inch circles

on the left and right.

And they connect

with the outside impression

that comes down.

Circle here,

and here's the big circle.

Yeah, there's another one

right here it looks like.

- Yeah.

- Could that be landing gear?

Did the ring look

dug into the ground

or pushed into the ground?

The outer ring, that was pushed

down about a half an inch.

They hadn't mowed

before you got there,

or had they mowed over this?

No, they hadn't mowed at all.

Okay, got it.

All right.

You know, if I were going to

sit here and play the role

of a debunker, right?

I'd look at things trying to

figure this out and say,

"Oh, well,

"I've seen when I've bent

my lawn mower blade,

it cuts

perfect circles like that."

But you couldn't cut

a perfect circle around it

- where you did that.

- No.

I don't know how in the world,

even with a zero-turn

radius mower,

- you couldn't do that.

- No.

And then if it's

actually depressed,

that means that there's

something that was heavy

- sitting there.

- Yes.

Uh, so I find this

really interesting.

So, when you get

to the location,

is the first thing you do

to go to these circles

because that's what's

been brought to your attention?

And what do you find?

The first thing I did was,

I went to the circle.

I was taking photographs and

getting all my measurements

first, and then,

when I initially was down

on the ground taking samples,

I felt a burning sensation

on the insides of my arms

on certain parts

that I-I just

couldn't understand.

Pain, nausea, headaches,

and me being in the m*llitary,

I knew

exactly what that could've been.

And are you worried?

Are you scared? Are you?

At that point I was 'cause

then I knew exactly

- Could be radiation or

- I knew it was a flash burn.

It had to have been

a flash burn.

So, do you seek medical help

for that?

Yes. Yes. I went directly

to the hospital.

Yeah, they were initially just

burns, and then they circled.

They initially looked at it, and

they said, "Is this a bug bite?"

And I said, "No."

Right, because,

you know, you've

- Everyone's been bitten by bugs before, right?

- Exactly.

You know what that feels like.

And-and you are saying

that was not what happened.

- This is something else.

- Exactly. Yes.

After I talked to the doctor,

he determined that it was

unexplained skin eruption.

What other data

did you collect with this?

When we got the lab results back

from the MUFON lab in Missouri,

the technician there

told us that there were

some heavy elements

within the soil itself.

Yeah, if you look on the back

of the test here,

it states that

where it was coal mining,

toxic metals were present.

Mercury, lead, arsenic, uh,

cadmium, aluminum,

nickel, uranium.

This was all found

in the samples.

The technician there

told us that,

when heavy elements interact

with the residual

EMF field left over

by whatever left the EMF field,

it can become toxic for them.

And we believe that's

what started the blistering

on-on Jay's body.

The other thing

the lab found was that

some of the, uh, vegetation

within the circle had been

burnt from the inside out.

So, I believe, when you add

in that the plant matter

was b*rned from within,

you have more and more evidence

suggesting that there was

a strong residual EMF field.

So, out of all the cases

that you've looked at,

have you seen anything

like this?

Not like this.

I'd say this is one

of the top three cases

I've done, and I've done

over a thousand.

Well, I'll tell you

what I would like to do.

Uh, you guys still have

your investigation kit with you?

- Yes.

- I would like to go back up there,

and you guys go back through

all the measurements you made,

and we'll get to watch

and see how you did that.

But, at the same time,

we're taking another measurement

that happened a given amount

of time after the event.

And if there are changes,

that'll be very interesting data

that we'll need to know.

- Okay. Let's go.

- Let's do it. Let's go. - Great.

November 7, 2022.

Dr. Travis Taylor and Nick Pope

are in Wapwallopen, Pennsylvania

to see how MUFON investigates

UFO sightings firsthand.

- Greetings.

- They arrive at the home

of Robert and Melissa Skirchak.

The Skirchaks

are looking for answers

as to what occurred on their

property several months earlier.

So, where abouts

did this take place?

Right behind you

in the grass area.

Right behind you in

the grass area.

Well, lead the way. Show us.

- So, it was this close to the house?

- Yes.

Wow.

- Yeah, in this area right here.

- Over here.

I say we-we go back

and get the equipment

out of the vehicle and then

we'll let the MUFON guys

come do their thing again.

Nick and Travis are joined

by MUFON field investigators

Jason Albertson

and Robert Spearing.

Jason and Robert

will retest the area

for radioactivity

and collect more soil samples

on the Skirchak property.

The goal is to see

if any lingering effects

from the initial incident

remain.

Jay's gonna check

for residual radiation,

uh, an EMF field,

residual EMF field,

and we're gonna see

if there's anything sub-ground,

metallic underneath.

When we do that,

if it's safe to go back in,

we're gonna do

some soil samples.

- Sure. All right.

- So, let's-let's do it.

Okay.

Jason actually has

a pretty good background

for this type of,

uh, investigation.

He's from a m*llitary background

doing chemical weapons disposal.

So, he's familiar

with radiation,

electromagnetic fields,

and that type of

scientific measurement

Now, you remember where it was?

and understanding

those phenomena.

Just about here.

Now, normal radiation levels

in this area

of Pennsylvania, about

50 to 68 clicks per minute?

Yeah, that sounds about right.

It's pretty much 65 right now,

so I don't see any sort

of dangerous radiation.

Did you find anything

with the metal detector

on your initial search?

Initially, no. Nope.

So, uh, Jason,

you said you took samples

outside of the spot?

- Yes.

- So, you took, uh,

- soil samples from the pond, grass samples

- Yes.

- water samples.

- Yes.

Soil samples here and the, uh,

the soil samples near the pond

were not the same or they were

the same as they were here?

- They were different.

- Okay.

The interesting thing,

though, is

that right here,

just ten, 20 feet away

- It's different.

- you have different

minerals in the soil

than you do there,

and you would expect the runoff,

since that's downhill,

it all ought to be the same,

which is odd.

Jason and Robert are going

to take fresh samples

of the soil to test it again.

Jason, this is where

- you kind of got sick yourself, right?

- Yes.

As soon as I got

down to the ground,

that's when I felt

different spots in my arms

and the insides of my arms.

Yeah, we'll get some grass

in here, too, from this.

All right, and then

we'll get a control sample.

Yeah, I'm gonna hold on to this

till it's labeled.

Yeah. All right.

So, we'll take

the control sample.

Yeah. There we go.

So, this then gets labeled,

gets sent back to the lab,

and you maintain

the chain of custody.

You've got some initial data.

If it was just

simply something on

the surface,

it's been enough time now,

a lot of that

should've washed away.

So, it might be that you'll

find a different sample

than what you found before.

That's it. We're good.

I can't wait to see the results.

For Travis and Nick,

the Skirchak case

has shown them the methodical

nature of MUFON investigations.

I think MUFON

did a great job here.

I was very impressed

with both the investigators.

Everything I witnessed them

talk about and actually do,

uh, resonated with me in terms

of the sort of thing

that we did in the government.

The case here at

the Skirchak residence

is a really interesting one

because there's actually some,

uh, physical evidence left

behind that can be investigated.

And the MUFON guys

did a good job

taking soil samples,

electromagnetic measurements,

gamma ray measurements,

and things of that nature.

This is the type of process

that we're gonna have to

standardize more

if we're ever going to

get to the bottom

of this phenomena.

The Skirchak sighting is one

of MUFON's most intriguing

cases of 2022.

But deep in MUFON's files

are a host of other sightings,

many with video evidence

that cannot be explained.

Gosport, England.

January 9, 2017.

Just before 11:00 p.m.,

residents of this city

see something unusual

in the night sky.

Dramatic video is captured

of three lights converging,

separating

and then reconverging.

For MUFON investigators,

this footage

was particularly exciting.

What makes this video

especially compelling

is that you have the visual

evidence, multiple witnesses,

and it still stands out

as something we can't explain.

That's what we call

the "category three case."

It's the one with the most

potential to be unexplained.

On December 31, 2021,

an even stranger video

of an alleged UFO

was sent to MUFON by soldiers

at Tooele Army Depot in Utah.

The soldiers filmed

a strange light

hovering in the sky

for five consecutive nights.

If it were some kind

of a m*llitary plane,

we would be able to detect it.

We have our ways of finding out

that this is a m*llitary craft.

We can check all the information

in the area.

There was no craft at that time.

What makes this case

so interesting to us

is that, after this happened,

all m*llitary personnel

were released from the base.

After the fifth night,

m*llitary executives

suddenly showed up.

They interviewed people.

They told everyone

on the base who had seen

these UFOs that

they were dismissed.

They told them also

their clothes and things

had been contaminated

by this UFO.

Are the mysterious lights

in these videos

and accounts by witnesses

like the Skirchaks

evidence that extraterrestrials

are visiting our planet?

For now, the answer

remains a mystery.

But each MUFON investigation

is added to their

ever-growing database

in the hope that, one day,

they will provide vital clues.

Every time you investigate,

you're adding to the database

of knowledge,

and then you look for trends.

It's those sorts

of little details

that you just store away

until they come up again.

And then maybe

it tells you something

interesting and important.

While MUFON has

amassed a large inventory

of reports they cannot explain,

there are a few that stand out

as truly astonishing.

One of the most compelling

of all

involved multiple witnesses

who saw not only a craft,

but also alien visitors.

A man named Randy Young

has come forward to report

a UFO encounter that happened

almost 50 years earlier,

in 1975.

The story begins

when he was ten years old

at the Miracle Mountains

Boarding School

in Hartshorne, Oklahoma.

Miracle Mountain was kind of

out in the boonies of Oklahoma.

That day, my brother and I

were out in the sandbox,

and we saw this circular, uh,

shining light that was

probably 2,000 or so feet

up in the air.

It didn't have the movements

of an airplane.

It was just hovering.

And, as it got darker,

this craft got closer.

It had lights that went

through the midsection

all the way around,

and it had this classic,

saucer-type shape.

For decades,

Randy and his brother

kept their extraordinary

encounter to themselves

for fear of how

it would be received.

You didn't want people thinking

that you're crazy,

you didn't want

to ruin your reputation.

But, in the back of my mind,

that story was always there,

and with all that has been going

on with, um, the government,

the m*llitary, jets that are,

you know, tracking these things,

and there's been a lot more talk

about it recently.

I'm like, okay,

if they're talking

this big at this level,

they got to hear this story.

They need to know about

what had happened in Hartshorne

in 1975, and so,

I contacted MUFON.

The report reached the desk

of Mindy Tautfest,

the Oklahoma state

MUFON director.

Randy filed an official report

through mufon.com,

and I immediately knew,

after reading it,

that this case could be

a very, very important case

to all of UFO history.

I first reached out to Randy

and interviewed him.

The next person

I spoke to was Philip Buchanan.

Philip was one

of the older children

at the school at the time.

And so, he has one

of the more complete memories

of what transpired there

and the operations

of the school itself.

And then, I spoke

with the teacher via email.

And the teacher described that

some of the kids were hiding

under the beds because

they were very terrified,

and some of the kids

were looking out the window.

They reported

to see shapeshifting

entities out there.

They just said,

"It keeps changing."

What Mindy found out

after doing all that work

is that these kids were

recalling the exact same thing.

As these witnesses were telling

their stories years later,

one of the things

Mindy asked them to do

was to actually draw

the UFO that they'd seen.

And the consistency is amazing.

And not only are they

telling the same story,

but they're describing

the same craft.

It shows us that these

old historic cases

still have something to offer.

I think that, um, we need

an organization like MUFON.

I think we need to have

a database for all these

different incidents,

and I think that

we need to have, um,

as many eyes

and as many investigators

on this as possible.

We need to figure out

what's going on.

There's been a lot

of excitement around this story

because there were

a lot of things

that corroborated each other.

We find value

in all UFO reports,

and some of the older ones

serve to validate

some other sightings

that may be in our database.

And so, the older historic cases

really have a lot of value

whenever it comes to ufology.

This cold case is one

of the most fascinating cases

that MUFON's ever investigated

because students,

they had not spoken

to each other since 1975,

and they all replied

with the same answers,

which indicates

that something happened,

and everybody saw

the same thing.

In the ancient astronaut

opinion,

those stories of UFOs today

are the same stories

that our ancestors

in the remote past

also explored.

Their cell phone cameras

were the walls of caves

and reliefs and carvings

in which they commemorated those

incredibly significant events

that they were eyewitnesses to.

Is MUFON's growing database

further evidence

that extraterrestrial beings

have been visiting

our planet

for thousands of years,

as ancient astronaut

theorists suggest?

And if so, what do they want?

Perhaps clues can be found

in MUFON reports

that go beyond UFO sightings

and describe

terrifying encounters.

Each year,

the Mutual UFO Network

receives approximately

10,000 reports

of UFO phenomena.

While most involve sightings

of strange objects in the sky,

in some cases,

the witness claims

to have come face-to-face

with an alien entity.

A lot of people

that approach MUFON

have these stories of having

these personal encounters

with entities

that they can't explain.

But we found over the years

is that there

is serious validity

to this phenomenon.

I believe that worldwide

there are millions of people

who have had these encounters,

but it is very, very difficult

for a lot of people

to come forward.

Maybe they told their family,

maybe they told a good friend,

and they were laughed at.

They feel that they really need

to talk to someone,

but they can't.

In 2011, MUFON formed

the Experiencer Resource Team,

a program dedicated

to assisting those who claim

to have been traumatized

by extraterrestrial encounters.

We receive up to 150 reports

per month from the people

who believe that they have had

a missing time event,

they've had a close encounter

with a craft,

sometimes observed

nonhuman entities,

and we've worked

with members of the m*llitary,

we've worked

with medical doctors,

we've worked

with business owners,

credible people

who have a lot to lose.

Oftentimes, they're frightened.

So, they are seeking assistance

in overcoming the fear

and in gaining

a better understanding

of what is occurring.

One such encounter

reported to MUFON

was made by trauma nurse

Earl Gray Anderson in 2016,

just weeks after he had joined

MUFON as a field investigator.

Earl was at his home

in Los Angeles when his room was

suddenly illuminated

by a mysterious light.

Our room started

filling with light,

and it was a light

with no source.

It wasn't coming from an object

or a lamp or outside.

And the wall opened up.

I couldn't move.

I was paralyzed.

And that was when

I first started feeling afraid.

I saw these little

diminutive creatures.

You would call them

the Small Grays.

It was almost like watching

a surgical team work.

There were these tubes

that they attached

to the top of my chest,

and I felt like they were

draining blood or-or energy,

life force from me.

I was yelling in my mind,

and I was crying out

for them to stop.

But they were

not listening to me.

They pulled backwards,

out the same way they came in.

The wall, like, seemed to swirl,

almost like

a little galaxy in the room.

And it was back to normal,

except there was

still light in our room.

The light didn't fade for a good

five minutes with no source.

After the experience,

I didn't tell

friends and-and family.

I mean, you're gonna feel

skepticism if somebody says

that, you know, you've just

became a field investigator,

and I'm suddenly saying

that I was visited by ETs.

But it scared

the hell out of me.

It was very, very serious.

Earl eventually reached out

to MUFON's

Experiencer Resource Team,

and after sharing his encounter,

he decided to become a member

of the ERT himself.

It was very, very helpful

to have someone to listen.

And-and that's what

I find in my own dealings

with experiencers now.

The ERT is MUFON's

it's-it's like the

compassionate wing of MUFON.

Like social workers

for experiencers.

By working closely

with individuals

who claim to have been abducted,

MUFON has compiled

a wide range of data

on the experiencer phenomenon.

The data that we

collect is pretty interesting.

And we try to find patterns.

It's really kind of astounding,

whenever you break it down

and look at the

different commonalities

between these different

sightings or abductions.

Most experiencers have

conscious continuous recall

of being awake.

They become paralyzed.

They have a sense

of an electrical tingling

sensation through their bodies.

They might hear high-pitched

buzzing tones in their heads.

We used to think that abduction

occurred only once,

but after years of research,

we've realized that

individuals are taken

multiple times over a lifetime.

We are gaining

a better understanding

of what is occurring.

With the volume

of empirical data

that has been collected

over the years

related to mysterious sightings

and reported encounters,

is it possible

that the organization

could be on the verge

of a major breakthrough

in the UFO phenomenon?

For ancient astronaut theorists,

the answer is a resounding yes.

And they believe it will come

thanks to emerging

cooperative efforts

between MUFON

and the United States

government.

UFO enthusiasts

across the nation

tune in to watch as a

Congressional subcommittee holds

a hearing on UFOs

for the first time

in more than 50 years.

Unidentified aerial phenomena

are a potential

national security thr*at,

and they need

to be treated that way.

The last hearing, held in 1968,

was called to discuss

Project Blue Book,

the U.S. government's first

official UFO investigations.

By the late '60s,

Project Blue Book had been going

for many years, and

whatever the

U.S. government knew

about UFOs behind the scenes,

this public program

was just considered

by senior m*llitary officers

a waste of time and money.

So, they wanted

to get out of the game.

And they got

the answer they wanted.

A recommendation that the

Air Force disengaged from this.

So, we've had decades of playing

the whole thing down,

and now, it's as if

they're putting it out there

in front of us all.

We know that our service members

have encountered

unidentified aerial phenomena.

Some absolutely fascinating

information was disclosed.

The briefers presented evidence,

talked about how there

had been near misses

between UAP and m*llitary jets.

There was discussion

about how these-these objects

moved with

no visible propulsion.

It looks, uh, reflective

in this video,

somewhat reflective, uh,

and it quickly passes

by cockpit of the,

uh, of the aircraft.

So, this was

absolutely groundbreaking.

A major contributor

to the hearing

was Jessica Tocco,

a lobbyist who briefed

committee members

about civilian UFO encounters

on behalf of MUFON.

The Mutual UFO Network

was founded around the time

that Project Blue Book

was disbanded.

So, to work with the government

on this issue,

and that there were

elected officials

who were very interested,

that was groundbreaking

and historic.

Many hailed the hearing

as a historic breakthrough,

one that could potentially

usher in a new era of government

cooperation

with civilian UFO research.

When that day comes,

MUFON investigators believe

their large database

will prove vital

to future investigations.

MUFON stands ready to assist

the government

in any way that we can.

We are really at the forefront

of UFO investigation.

We have the world's

largest database

of UFO sightings

and investigations.

Here's the thing, though,

we'll never say,

"Oh, it was definitely

extraterrestrial."

We can't

scientifically prove that.

Now, we can say

that it's unexplained,

and that we don't know

what it was.

We're going after the truth.

MUFON has amassed

this treasure chest

of investigative reports

of cases

that are very similar

to stories of our ancestors

that say

that they have witnessed

strange events up in the sky.

There is a connection

between the two,

and, usually, the simplest

solution is the correct one.

In my opinion, the suggestion

of extraterrestrials

is the simplest solution

to explain this phenomenon,

this aerial thing that goes on

up in the sky

for thousands of years.

From ancient depictions

of disc-shaped objects

and strange figures,

to modern-day video footage

of UFOs

and accounts

of alien abductions,

does evidence exist that,

for thousands of years,

Earth has been visited

by extraterrestrials?

And as the public

becomes more open

to discussing

this incredible possibility,

and sharing

personal experiences,

will we arrive

at a definitive answer?

Perhaps as the evidence

continues to mount,

and more witnesses come forward,

we will finally arrive

at the undeniable truth

that we are not alone.