02x04 - The Experiencers Pt 1

[bunniefuu]

[♪ mysterious music playing]

-My name is
Debbie Jordan Kauble.

The night of June 30th, 1983,

I was in my 20s;
a single mom with

two little boys,
living with my parents.

That night I
was in the kitchen,

and I noticed the pedestrian
door to the garage was open.

I went out and looked
around in the backyard.

And I went into the garage.

And I felt weird.

And I remember thinking

“Oh my god I
gotta get out of here.”

And I ran towards the
open pedestrian door,

and the minute
I hit that door,

something hit me.

And it was a bright white
light that burnt my eyes.

I couldn’t move,

and I felt like
my skin was on fire.

I started to shake
and I started to...

the shaking
turned into a vibrating.

That’s when I saw what I
thought were children walking

around my mom's backyard.

But they were gray with
no hair and big black eyes.

And then I heard a voice
say it was unfortunate that

I felt pain.

This stuff is real.

This stuff is
happening whether you want

to believe it or not.

-He was dressed in
black and he had big eyes.

-There was this giant light
and it covered the whole lake.

I can remember being
levitated out of the car.

-I was right about here,

and all of the sudden
my hands just jerked back.

And I was on the UFO,
just like that.

-I think people who
had the experiences and

seen things like I’ve seen,

I think they’re an integral
part of this entire phenomenon.

[♪ theme music playing]

-We get reports every night.

-I don't know what
the hell it is.

-Rotating right around it.

[♪ theme music playing]

-A lot of people claim to
have anomalous experiences or

encounters with
anomalous phenomena,

experiences of
encountering beings and

being taken aboard ships,

and a whole range
of very strange,

let’s call them
abduction experiences.

And this has always been
kind of in the background

in terms of what's
considered to be respectable

in studying UAP.

The experiencer element of
it is not something that's

part of the
mainstream dialogue.

It's not part of what the
military talks about or what

the government talks about
or the scientific community.

They're focused on the
physicality of these objects.

-The people that say
they’ve been abducted by

aliens and taken up on a
spaceship or something, uh,

should bring a piece back.

-The question has been,

for a lot of people who do
care about that element of it,

is how to integrate that
into the dialogue without

scaring people away
who might be skeptical.

-This is suburban Indianapolis.

Not exactly the kind
of place you’d expect an

alien spacecraft to land.

But researchers
believe that one did land,

not far from here.

And what resulted is one of
the most well-documented and

incredible UFO cases ever.

-I had absolutely no idea
how long I was in the yard and

I don’t know how I got there.

I remember thinking,
“Oh my God, I'm dead.”

And those kids kind
of just glided in front of me

towards this thing to my left.

I called it a craft for the
last 40 years because I don’t

know what else to call it.

It was egg-shaped and it
probably wasn’t 10 feet tall.

The next thing I
remember is I heard my name.

[voice] Debbie, Debbie...

-And it was my mom.

She's like, is everything okay?

And I said,
“Everything's cool.”

I went in the
house and went to bed.

And the next morning,
when I woke up,

my eyes were swelled shut
and I was in incredible pain.

None of this made sense.

-I call the UFO phenomenon
"The Impossible."

And what I mean by that is,
it's actually not impossible,

but it's impossible
according to our own rules and

our own assumptions.

And so I'm interested in
things that are happening and

don't fit in.

My name is Jeff Kripal.

I'm a historian of
religions at Rice University.

I'm an academic,
I'm a nerdy professor.

And I’m interested in UFOs
because I don’t understand them.

And I don’t think
anybody else does either.

The experience of a UFO puts
into question marks everything

I believe about the world.

And that’s what the
archives are about.

The Archives of the Impossible
is a professional archive run

by Rice University that
collects human experiences that

are considered to
be impossible but, but

happen all the time.

We have well over a
million documents of

files and papers,
all on anomalous phenomena.

If you talk to experiencers,

their story's
gonna get really weird,

really fast.

-The doctor was an alien?

-Right, yeah...

-You feel you were
impregnated by them?

-Yes.
-And who visited?

-They just randomly picked me,

and I woke up while
they were doing it,

I’m going, "What
the [bleep] is going on,"

my room was white,

I mean it was like I
couldn’t see anything.

-I remember a light
hitting me in the forehead,

aliens in my room,

being lifted up
into a spaceship...

-You understand how
crazy it sounds to us?

-Often, something
is done to the person,

sometimes in a violent way,

but sometimes the
person experiences this in

very positive and
transformative ways.

These are actual
encounters with something

in the environment,

but clearly the human
imagination is kicking in

to translate what is
there from whatever cultural or

folklore or mythological
or religious material it has.

So, for example,

when a 16th-century
English woman reports an

abduction by fairies,
that's her cultural framework.

When a 21st-century
American reports an abduction,

they’re likely
gonna talk about aliens.

That person will see
what his or her culture tells

them to see.

The big question is,

why do human beings
have these experiences?

-In the 60s, we
first started to hear about

incidences of people
saying that they had

encountered alien beings.

And people being taken
against their will by these

beings that they
described with big eyes.

-The first really famous
abduction story was the story

of a New Hampshire couple.

Betty and Barney Hill were
coming back from a vacation

driving through
the White Mountains.

[Barny Hill]
And surprisingly, what I thought

was a star or a satellite,
began coming in my direction,

at a very rapid rate of speed.

-Through Betty's
dreams and through hypnosis,

this whole narrative emerged
about encountering a set of

essentially humanoid-like
aliens that are in this ship.

[Betty Hill] They don’t
look like what I expected

them to look.

They look like people but
they’re sort of grotesque.

And this frightened me.

I became very frightened.

[Barny Hill] And I
thought this can't be real.

I thought, "Oh God,
it's there!"

"What is this thing?"

-Barney and Betty Hill
really do seem genuinely

traumatized by whatever
the thing is that has

happened to them.

And they become the first
of hundreds of people who come

forward with stories of and
reports of alien abductions.

But the most obvious
criticism of the experiencers

is just the lack of evidence.

It could be a dream, it
could be a hallucination.

-UFO Enthusiasts think the
Hill case is a classic example

of a close encounter.

Why?

-There’s no
corroborating evidence.

For all I know, we may
be visited by a different

extraterrestrial civilization
every second Tuesday.

But there’s no support
for this appealing idea.

-After my experience,
the next day the yard had

this eight-foot diameter
circle where the UFO landed.

And there was this
long streak that shot off

one edge of it,
about two feet wide,

like a jet blast
burn or something.

The soil in this
area was rock hard.

-Definitely, it had some
type of radioactivity to it.

So, there was some
kind of activity we

couldn’t identify
that had taken place here.

-And then in the winter
when the snow starts to come,

the snow is
melting off of this place.

It’s not melting off the
other grass in the yard.

What does that?

For months after that night,

I couldn’t really remember
much about what happened.

There was about an hour
and a half of “missing time”

in this incident.

And I did wonder if
I was crazy sometimes!

I tried to make sense
of it in my own brain so

that it would fit in my world,

but the panic attacks
got really bad.

And I think I pretty
much had a nervous breakdown.

Eventually, I started
remembering more things.

It was like somebody slapped
me in the face and woke me up.

I had picked this book
up in the library and it

was called "Missing Time,"

and it was written by a
guy named Budd Hopkins.

-People who have
reported these experiences,

have their memories
clouded of what happened.

And they can't explain,
certainly not initially,

what it was that
accounted for the lapse of time.

So Budd Hopkins
put a name on this,

“Missing Time.”

And what he did
was very unusual.

He put his actual
address in the back of the book.

It drew people to him,
sending him letters.

[Deb Kauble] I wrote this 14
page letter to Budd Hopkins.

I told him about
how crazy I felt,

and I was just hoping
that he could help me

make sense of it.

[phone ringing]

Budd called the house.

As soon as I heard
his voice, I felt better.

[Deb Kauble] Hello?

[Budd Hopkins] Uh Debbie?

[Deb Kauble] Yeah.

[Budd Hopkins] This
is Budd Hopkins calling.

[Deb Kauble] Oh hi.

[Budd Hopkins] Very
interesting letter you wrote.

And I you know gonna
just have a few questions

to follow up on.

[Deb Kauble] Well I
appreciate you taking the...

I was frankly
very surprised that...

I didn't think I'd
ever hear from anybody.

I don't even know why I done it.

-Budd Hopkins is a very
important figure in the whole

history of UFOs and
alien abduction phenomenon.

He was a very fine artist
and sculptor who had works

in the Museum of Modern Art
and other important museums.

But he also got very
interested in the issue of

people who report these
encounters with alien presences.

-I got involved in this
whole strange subject by the

fact of having a
UFO sighting myself,

in the daytime, with
a couple of friends in 1964.

Well, when people write to
me about the possibility of

an abduction experience,

many letters begin with

"I may be wasting your time.
I hope not.

There may be
nothing to this, but."

What you have to do is
contact that person because

it's a very
interesting possibility.

-We communicated,
Budd and I.

And at some point, he's like,
I would like for you to come out

here to New York.

I sold my washer and
dryer that I had in storage

to get enough
money for a bus ticket.

I was desperately trying to
find reasonable explanations

for all this stuff.

I could find a lot of
people who could tell

me what it wasn't,

but I couldn't find
anybody who could tell me

what it was.

[Deb Kauble] I remember
getting off the bus in New York,

and Budd Hopkins stood,
cup of coffee in hand.

First place he took me to
was the psychiatrist's office.

I had the EEG on
my brain to make sure

I didn't have epilepsy.

I had the CAT scan
and then there was

the psychological testing.

At the end of the day,
the psychiatrist told Budd,

“Now I can't guarantee
you that she saw a UFO

or anything else,

but I can guarantee you
that she believed she did.”

And that was the beginning
of a two or three-year-long

investigation you know
that he conducted.

[Deb Kauble] I’m
walking down the street and

I’m really confused.

[Budd Hopkins] What
do you see as you walk

down the street, Debbie?

-Hypnosis was mentioned
during our conversations prior

to me coming.

And if I wanted to,

I could be hypnotized and
see if I could remember more.

All my sessions
with him are recorded.

[Deb Kauble] He had
those weird eyes.

[Budd Hopkins]
Can you describe the eyes?

[Deb Kauble]
They were really...

they were big.

And they were black.

And they were, like, fluid.

They like, shimmered.

-When you're sitting
with an experiencer,

it's a different feeling
that there has been something

that traumatic
that has happened,

but it doesn't feel
like it can be explained

away through a fantasy,
through a dream,

from an early childhood trauma.

It feels like they've had
an encounter with something

very, very unusual.

My name is
Simon Bresler and

I do psychotherapy
with experiencers.

I've had a lifelong interest
in non-ordinary experiences or

anomalous
experiences of consciousness.

I did a lot of traveling when
I was younger and

met people in
Argentina, Mexico,

different states in
United States that had

had anomalous experiences.

And I was compelled
by what they shared.

They had shared interesting
experiences that I didn't know

where to put,

and yet their earnestness
was intriguing to me.

The brain is still one of
the most mysterious organs

of the body.

We still don't understand
how and why subjective

experience is created.

Taking into account what
experiencers are saying and,

and feeling, I think, is
essential to understand the

breadth of this phenomenon

-Occasionally Budd had
these support group meetings

in his apartment in New York,

and I was fortunate
enough to be able to attend

a couple of them.

-Something otherworldly
had happened to me,

I mean, it was,
I was 5 years old and

I was lying in bed...

-It was truly amazing,

to me, to be with
a group where you could

be yourself and speak
freely about the things you

remembered without
being ridiculed.

Budd saw the people
like me that were wrecked by

it and couldn't function.

Our stories were different,

but the emotions
were very much the same,

you know, the
fear and the anxiety.

[Budd Hopkins] It’s okay.
Lie down. You’re okay, John.

Lie down. Close your eyes.
Close your eyes.

I’ve had police officers,
military personnel,

I was dealing with an army
officer of very high-security

clearance recently,
who was an abductee.

Doctors, nurses, scientists,

they are very frightened
by what's happened to them.

[Jeffrey Kripal] Something
I see in a lot of abductions

is trauma.

I mean that in the
sense that people are

physically traumatized,

or they’re
sexually traumatized,

or they’re
emotionally traumatized.

-They have stuck
needles up my nose,

they have stuck
needles in my eyes.

-You said they did things
to you that hurt, such as...

-Taking semen.
At their own will.

Not at my will.

-Some individuals put
forth that this could be

a traumatic memory from
an operating room procedure.

But with abduction experiences,

often they don’t
occur after an operation.

-What just happened?

-Something
came in the room.

I can’t move.

There’s something in
my nose and I can’t move.

[Leslie Kean] Budd Hopkins being
an artist made it very easy for

people to say he doesn’t
know what he is doing,

he’s just an artist.

There were concerns about
the fact that he was using

hypnosis with people,

but Budd had studied
for almost 7 years with

a licensed psychologist
and trained hypnotherapist.

-The problem of hypnosis
is that you can inadvertently

foster material that
surfaces that then are taken

to be memories when
in fact they're not.

Especially if there
are leading questions.

The way the questions are
posed when someone's under

hypnotic trance can
sort of shape the sorts

of material that
will surface during the

hypnotic session.

[Deb Kauble] I don't feel that
there was ever a time while

I was under
hypnosis that I was led in

questioning or anything unduly
was planted in my subconscious.

I had started remembering
things but it just sharpened

details of something
that was already there.

-There's a handful of
studies that have shown with

a trained clinician,

that hypnosis can
be very effective to

recovering memories.

-Three almost awake,
two, one fully awake.

[Simon Bresler] In this
relaxed state of being they

have access to parts
of their mind that they

don't typically have access to.

-After working with
Deb for a number of years,

Budd Hopkins wrote
the book Intruders

about Deb Kauble’s case,

because he thought
it was one of the most

outstanding cases ever.

It's very rare that you'll
have a craft that lands and

leaves this huge
mark on someone's lawn.

And it wasn't just
what happened to Deb.

There was also a
neighbor who witnessed

a large flash of light
around the time of the event.

And her mother had seen
this large orb of light around

the same time as well.

-Budd approached the
entire family and said,

“I think your case is
important and I would like to

write a book about it
so that I can share

it with the world.”

-Budd Hopkins,

an accomplished
artist and sculptor,

has turned into a
UFO investigator.

He has written two
books on the subject,

the latest called Intruders.

-Good morning, everybody.

Welcome to AM Chicago.
We have a lively group.

-Look at that eighties hair.

-When was the very first
time you saw a quote UFO?

-People have expressed
their skepticism of

my case in particular,
and it kind of broke my heart.

I did work hard to try to
find rational explanations for

things that happened.

And at the end of the day,

if people don't
want to believe me,

I don't care.

That's okay,
you don’t have to.

I share my story because
I know there are millions,

literally millions
of people out there

who have seen weird
things that they can’t explain,

and they’ve doubted themselves,
doubted their sanity.

And I have come to learn,
in my old age and my wisdom,

that life is not
what you think it is.

[Ralph Blumenthal] Every book
that Budd wrote after Intruders,

drew more people to him,
more letters.

People sought him out,

and they would have
these stories to tell him.

-He says, “Let me say
when I say there was a UFO

over the house I’m not
talking about something that

could be mistaken
for something else.

I’m talking about
something the size of at least

two large cars put together
maybe 100 feet up.”

[Ralph Blumenthal] Eventually,
Budd Hopkins shares this

information with a

renowned Harvard
psychiatrist named John Mack.

-I first got into this
field really without knowing

I was getting into it.

I had a psychologist
colleague who asked me,

did I want to meet Budd Hopkins.

And I said, “Who’s he?”

My reaction was that
he must be quite mad if

he believes such stories.

-Budd said to Mack,

“Listen, you’re
the psychiatrist.

I mean, you can
evaluate this better than me.

I talk to these people,
but you can see if they're

crazy or not.”

[Budd Hopkins] I gave him a
box of 20 letters, and I said,

”Here, John. You
take this box and you

read these letters and
let me know what you think

about what these
people are saying.”

[Ralph Blumenthal]
Mack, still very skeptical,

took the letters with him,

and after he
looked at them, said,

“This is absolutely
phenomenally strange.”

-Then John was, as they say,
down the rabbit hole.

-Tonight, a look at aliens.
-Are they really visiting Earth?

Or are they just the
product of some earthlings'

overexcited imaginations?

[Jeffrey Kripal] The topic
of alien abductions has gone

through stages or
decades of popularity.

In the 90s, the man who
really probably did more

than anyone was John Mack.

[Oprah Winfrey] Dr. John Mack.

[host] In the crossfire,
Dr. John Mack.

[reporter] Dr. John Mack is
professor of psychiatry

at the Harvard Medical School.

[Jeffrey Kripal] John Mack
was probably the most

famous researcher of
abduction experiences in...

certainly in the US.

-That’s what I’ve been
trying to do is get people

at least look at it.

Think about it.

-I’m Karin Austin.

I’m the Executive Director
of the John E. Mack Institute.

John Mack was sort of
amongst the elite in terms of

his credentials as a clinician,

as a psychiatrist,
and as a writer.

[Ralph Blumenthal]
When Mack got involved,

anyone who propounded
these stories were viewed

very skeptically,
if not as totally mentally ill.

But he gathered his
own group and started

his own investigation.

[Karin Austin] Once his
research began in earnest,

people started
coming to him directly.

And he interviewed
one individual,

after another,
after another.

There was testing
that was done.

-He was very wary
of using hypnosis.

He preferred
relaxation techniques.

[reporter] In this tape
made two years ago by

Canada’s CBC Television,

Peter hears one of his
own regression sessions

for the first time.

[Peter] They’re taking me.

[interviewer] Where are you?

[Peter] Laying on a table.

[interviewer] How old are you?

[Simon Bresler] John Mack
was interviewing these doctors,

lawyers, social workers,
blue-collar workers,

everybody from
all walks of life.

-I mean you put me
through psychological testing

to rule out delusions,

to rule out sexual abuse
or child abuse or any

psychosis or neurosis
that the normal psychiatric

community would say were
the reasons for these memories.

-Yes, actually you
came out healthier than

the average of
the population,

I want you to know.

[Karin Austin] People who
were perfect strangers to

each other at the time,

telling the same stories
over and over and over

and over again.

-They describe
experiences in great detail,

that are so similar
one to another, which,

and the only thing I
know that acts like that

is real experience.

[Karin Austin] He knew what
psychopathology looked like

and that this was not that.

-None of them have shown any
consistent personality pattern,

none has shown
consistent psychopathology.

-They didn’t suffer from
delusions, hallucinations,

schizophrenia,
proneness to fantasy.

John Mack started
to deeply question,

what if some percentage of
people are having encounters

with non-human intelligence
that aren't fully benign and

challenge our sense of
reality incredibly deeply?

-It sounds as if
what you’re saying is you’re

inclined to take these
reports at face value?

-“Face value,”
I wouldn’t say.

I take them seriously.

It’s often said
that I'm a believer,

and sort of have gone
and lost my objectivity.

I really object to that.

I didn’t believe
anything when I started,

I don’t really
believe anything now.

I‘ve come to where
I’ve come to, clinically.

In other words,

I worked with people over
hundreds and hundreds of hours

to consider
alternative explanations.

And none have come forward.

-We’re back now
talking about UFOs and

alien abductions and we
welcome Dr. John Mack,

a psychiatrist at
Harvard Medical School.

And Budd Hopkins who's
worked to help over 400 people

remember their
abduction experiences.

[Leslie Kean] Budd Hopkins was
very happy when John Mack came

on the scene because
being a Harvard psychiatrist,

he could lend a lot
of credibility to the

study of this.

And they were willing
to go out on daytime shows

to impress people
with the mystery of

what was going on here.

-Because it is the most
important event in all

of human history if it’s true

and I have no doubt
whatsoever that it is true.

[host] All right,
Dr. John Mack and...

-And then, other people
started to come forward who

had had similar
experiences.

-In December of 1985,

I woke up in the middle of
the night in this little room

with these people in it
that had these big black eyes.

It took me six to eight weeks
before I came to understand

that it might have been a
real and very bizarre experience

of some sort.

My brother had given
me a book and in the

back of the book,

there was a description
of an event like mine that

had been researched by
a man named Budd Hopkins.

So I went to see him.

I was very strung out at
the time, I was suicidal.

I was really struggling.

And Budd saved my
life by letting me

know that I was not alone,

that other people
had had this experience.

-The New York Times
list of bestselling books

is often cited as a
barometer of America's

current preoccupations.

And topping the list this week,

this is nonfiction,
is a book about one man's

encounter with
beings from outer space.

[Leslie Kean] Intruders
by Budd Hopkins and

Communion by
Whitley Streiber came out

within a few months
of each other,

but it wasn't
planned that way.

They were brand new blasting
out into the media world,

and they set a new tone
in the culture with regard

to the abduction
aspect of the UFO phenomenon.

[Jeffrey Kripal] 1987.

Communion created an avalanche
of hundreds of thousands of

letters to Whitley from
people who recognized the being

on the cover.

-My interest was in the
eyes and in the mouth and

the look on that face.

The eyes were brain
-bendingly intense.

It was like there was somebody
there looking at you totally.

-People who saw that cover,
found themselves shocked.

Transported into seeing a
figure that they thought might

have only come
up in their dreams.

[Leslie Kean] The Communion
cover has such power and detail.

Alien imagery was
already in the culture,

thanks to sci-fi
movies like Close Encounters,

but I don’t think there was
anything as compelling as the

Communion cover in terms of
its impact on experiencers.

[Jeffrey Kripal]
Whitley’s wife, Anne,

took it upon herself to
read all these letters,

all from individuals who
have had such an experience,

and she kept somewhere
between 5,000 and 8,000 of them.

And those now sit in our
Archives of the Impossible.

-My name is Amanda Nedham
and I came to Rice

being very interested in the
intersection between drawing

and belief systems.

I’d read that 200,000
people wrote to Whitley and

Anne Strieber and I
think a lot of the letters

have drawings because
it was people’s way of,

like making it more real.

This is a miniature
UFO that a woman saw.

It came into her
bedroom one night and pressed

itself down on her body.

So this is another one of these


this person one night.

A lot of people talk about
whether it’s psychological,

it’s physical, it’s
somewhere in between,

and it’s mediated by our
imagination and our mind.

But in the end, it’s, it
comes down to this being part

of our human story.

[Jeffrey Kripal] A lot of
these experiences are shared.

"A few years ago
I saw a UFO.

Several hundred
people also witnessed it."

That, that’s one of the
falsehoods that people make.

They think UFO landings
are somehow always private.

That's just not true.

Sometimes they
involve dozens of people.

[Ralph Blumenthal] So many
people have experienced these

UFO encounters
that it raises the question,

"Well, what is going on?"

[Ralph Blumenthal] John Mack
kept hearing about cases

breaking all over,

of people with alien
experiences that he was

eager to investigate.

[Simon Bresler] In 1994
in Ruwa Zimbabwe,

maybe sixty-plus
schoolchildren claimed to

have experienced
one of the largest mass

UFO sightings on record.

These children claimed
that in the middle of the day,

a UFO landed, and began
to communicate with them.

-They had long, longish
hair and big black eyes.

[witness] I saw something
silver on the ground,

amongst the trees.

-And a person in black.

-He was dressed in
black and he had big eyes.

[Simon Bresler] There was
sort of a media buzz about this,

and John Mack flew out to
investigate what was going on

and to speak
with these children.

-It seemed that he
was looking at all of us.

-What was it, what did
it feel like when he was

looking at you?

-I felt scared.

[Ralph Blumenthal] Some
of the children remembered

receiving telepathic
messages from these beings.

No adults saw this,
only children.

-I think the two most often
cited skeptical alternative

explanations for the
Ruwa event are number one:

that the kids
somehow made it up.

Number two is that they just
somehow embellished something

that was out there.

However, there's never
been any explanation provided

for what they saw.

[chanting in Shona]

-The whole quality of the
way they talk about it is

the way a person talks
about an experience that

happened to them.

-I think they want people
to know that we’re actually

making harm on the world.

[Jeffrey Kripal] I think
John Mack did have conclusions,

and that is that the secular,
materialistic, scientific

worldview that we assume
to be true is not fully true.

-I think John Mack's work
is invaluable on this subject.

He recognized that whatever
is happening in intense

UAP experience seems
to work differently.

Time and space are distorted.

It's not clear your body is
even operating the same way.

I'm Peter Skafish.

I'm a cultural anthropologist.

With people claiming to
have had abduction experiences,

from an academic perspective,
it's a really tricky thing

because a lot of it is not
distinguishable from what an

anthropologist or another
kind of scholar would call a

religious experience.

[Jeffrey Kripal] When
people ask me whether abductions

are real,
what they really mean is,

“Can you get this in a
scientific laboratory and

can you replicate
it and measure it,”

and I’m like, “No! You can’t.”

Of course, they’re real.

But they speak to a reality
that is not what we assume.

The UFO is a wedge issue into
a whole bunch of other questions

that I think are actually much
deeper and much more important,

like what is the soul?

What is the mind,
what is consciousness?

What these abductions
tell people, or teach people,

or force on people,

is the realization
that there’s a deeper reality

that has something to do
with our place in the cosmos,

and the idea that we are
not separate from nature;

we are not
separate from the universe;

we are not separate from God;

we are not separate
from one another.

-The mythic dimension of
the phenomena is also

very interesting because
we have a whole series of

cultures across the
world that make references

to non-human intelligence.

You have the
aboriginal Australians

who talk about the Wandjina,

and you have here
in the United States,

both the Cherokee
and the Lakota Sioux,

that talk about star people.

-This is why I keep saying
something’s actually happening.

But it’s getting fed through
whatever the mythological or

cultural lens of
the people of the time.

Fatima is a
perfect example of that.

In 1917, there are
three shepherd children,

in Fatima, Portugal.

And they encounter apparitions
of the Blessed Virgin.

These visionary experiences
promised that there would be

a great miracle on
October of 1917.


had, had lined up

in this valley,
waiting for this miracle.

What happened is
the sun began to spin,

and it created this sort of
chromatic effect on the ground.

And all these people,

they thought it was
the end of the world.

They report heat, they
report colors, and light.

There's a lot of
aspects of this phenomena

that looked
very UFO-like,

but it was framed in
a way that Portuguese Catholics

could accept in 1917.

This notion of a glowing
woman becomes the Virgin Mary

if you're in a
Roman Catholic world,

but it doesn’t become the
Virgin Mary if you’re not.

-We want to think that
science is one thing and

spirit is another.

And what this
phenomenon invites us to

look at is that the
split isn't always so neat.

-History starts with stories,

starts with ideas that
occurred in the past.

The stories takes us
into a certain direction,

and it’s a search for the truth.

September 1st, 1969.

Over 40 or 50 phone calls
came into the radio station.

The calls came in
one after another.

The phone just
didn't stop ringing.

Bright lights, strange
occurrences in the sky,

strange personal experiences.

And people who were abducted.

As long as I live,

I will never forget
that evening in 1969.

[♪ mysterious music playing]

-I'm Robert Krol.

I'm the executive
director here at the

Great Barrington
Historical Society.

The first UFO or strange
sightings were occurring during

the Massachusetts Bay
colony days.

That dates back to
our first governor,

Governor Winthrop.

People were going to him citing
strange occurrences with lights.

Strange movements of people
from one part of a town to

another without
knowing what happened.

It’s just another entry
into a long line of historical

documentation that said
something strange occurred here.

[Leslie Kean] The
Great Barrington case

is particularly
interesting because there were

so many witnesses to the
actual UFO that night.

And secondly, the people
who were abducted describe very

similar things, even though
they didn't know each other.

-We started collecting people’s
reflections of what happened

that particular day.

These documents are affidavits
of what people experienced.

It started from one
individual who had a

sighting in Sheffield,
our neighboring community.

But then it grew from there.

Once the word got out that
somebody reported an incident,

people started
talking about,

“I experienced
something, also.”

At least a dozen people
reported some kind of incident

that occurred that day.

And you start thinking,

hmm something
did really happen.

-I'm Tom Warner.

I was ten years old
when I was abducted.

It was September 1st, 1969.

It was a couple of
days before school starts.

Last swim of the summer.

We were swimming all day.

Later we went next door
and we watched a little TV,

and then we put on music
and all of a sudden I just

got a funny feeling.

I walked towards this window,
which was facing the east,

and I heard this
telepathic voice saying,

“You have to go home.”

It was a voice I
had not heard before.

So I ran out of the
house and over this way.

All of a sudden,

all the sounds of
crickets and Katydids... gone.

All a sudden I
became aware of it.

I was right about
here and all of a sudden,

my hands just jerked back.

And my brother's
screaming for me to run.

I say, "I can't.

The beam, it's
holding me in place."

-It was Labor Day weekend
in 1969.

My sister and I had spent
the day at the Mahaiwe Theater.

I was 12, she was 14.

We were cleaning the theater.

It was my first job,
her first job.

My dad and mom
picked my sister and I up.

And we drove to Lake Mansfield.

All of a sudden,
there was this light, huge,

huge light coming
over, and my dad was like,

“Holy [bleep]!”

And it was this giant light,
and it covered the whole lake.

But what was so
amazing about it,

was that there were
all these other colors

in the middle of it,

and I can’t even describe it
because they were so bizarre,

these colors.

-These were colors
I'd never seen before.

And the lights were spinning
one way and then another part

of the UFO was
going to the other,

and then a third was
going in an opposite direction.

[Melanie Kirchdorfer] And I
remember I put my head down.

And I can remember being
levitated out of the car.

You can't move when
you're being levitated.

You just can't move.

You can just move your eyes.

That’s when I ended
up on whatever it was.

-I describe it like if you're
swimming underwater and you

slowly come up out of water.

And all of a sudden you go...

[gasps]

like that when my
hands jerk back and

all of a sudden I'm like,
I'm on a UFO.

[♪ suspenseful music playing]