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01x01 - Messengers

Episode transcripts for the TV show, "Encounters". Aired: September 27, 2023.*
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Mass UFO sightings from the last 50 years fuel a global mystery in this docuseries featuring eyewitness accounts, expert interviews and new evidence.

01x01 - Messengers

Post by bunniefuu »

[birds twittering]

[swing squeaking]

[chicken clucking]

[vehicle approaches]

[man 1] When we first moved here

in March of 2020

the very first time

that I saw something in the sky,

I really hesitated

to say anything to anybody.

But it happened repetitively,

maybe three, four times,

before I mentioned it

to somebody down in Dublin.

They said, "Well, you know

that this place is famous for that."

[intriguing ambient music playing]

Do you know who Ezekiel was?

Prophet?

- Ezekiel was a prophet. You're right.

- [boy] Mm-hmm.

And it was a long time ago, all right?

As a Homeland Security consultant,

I do a lot of threat analyst work,

uh, for the government.

I've seen the government flat-out lie.

Where I was standing in the location

they were lying about.

What I am seeing here is similar

to sightings that they had

by the guys in the Air Force.

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

[laughs]

[man 1] It's the movement

that catches your attention,

that fast movement.

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

[intriguing music continues]

- [girl] Ah, jeez. [laughs]

- [chuckles] I know, right? Spooky.

It's something otherworldly.

There's no other way to describe that.

"And the star they had seen

guided them to Bethlehem."

One of the reasons

why a lot of people don't believe

is because they haven't seen it,

and it messes with their concept

of who we are in relation to the universe.

and it guided them,

so it knew where it was going.

- Right?

- [boy] Mm-hmm.

That mean That means it was

UFO.

UFO.

Do I believe there's life

on other planets? Yes.

But I don't think

these are people from another planet.

I still think these are

what people called angels.

I think they're messengers.

I mean, I'm dying to know

what they've got to say.

[eerie music playing]

[man 1] From the beginning

of recorded time,

men have been seeing

unexplainable things in the sky.

[woman] Are we alone in the universe?

[man 2] Somewhere in the data

will be something worth real inquiry.

We have not been hiding anything.

There are such things

as interplanetary spaceships.

I thought it was an alien,

and he had big eyes.

[man 3] There's something

profoundly important going on here

that is authentic and real.

[music fading out]

[interviewer] How much of your work

is classified?

All of it.

Eh, all of Everything I did,

all day long, was classified.

All of it.

My name is Matthew Roberts.

I was a cryptologic technician

in the US Navy for 16 years.

I was present

on the USS Theodore Roosevelt

for the Gimbal event.

[pilot 1] Look at that thing, dude.

[Matthew] So, uh [sighs]

that was the first time

I saw the Gimbal footage.

- [pilot 2] Well, if there's

- [pilot 1] Look at this thing!

[pilot 2] It's rotating.

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

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

It's flying along,

and then it kind of tilts up

onto its side.

[suspenseful pulsating music playing]

I was watching this footage,

and I could see

no kind of aviation surfaces

that you would expect to see.

Wings, tail, you know, rudder.

There's none of that.

So I couldn't really make sense

of why this thing was

kind of up in the air like it was.

And

I just

I had this kind of

emotional response to it.

And I At the time,

I didn't understand that. Um

I knew that it wasn't ours, right?

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

So, I mean, that only leaves

one other option, I think.

- [interviewer] Which is what?

- And that's non-human tech.

Non-human intelligence technology.

[pulsating music continues]

[Matthew] Because my job was classified,

and I had access to classified, um

I was kind of aware

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

This, uh These things happen frequently.

[music fading out]

All the time.

They happen all the time.

- [radio static crackling]

- [distorted voices over radio]

[reporter] The skies over Stephenville

haven't looked the same since a UFO

[radio static crackling]

[distorted radio jingle plays]

[woman 1] Milk Duds!

[woman 2] A nice, cold glass

of Borden milk will cool you off.

You'll like the taste of milk

with everything you eat.

- [radio jingle] Milk is a natural ♪

- [static crackles]

[milk sloshing]

[cows mooing]

[man] Stephenville, Texas.

The milk capital of the world.

They put out quite a bit of milk

over there.

Something very strange about this area.

I look at the sky quite often.

Wonder what all's out there.

Wonder what we don't know about.

[crowd cheering]

[man] I grew up around here.

- [lighter flicking]

- [tobacco crackles]

Nothing to do in these small towns.

You wanna fight?

Sure, go ahead and have a fight.

That same night, we'd go camping

or go fishing on the river down there.

So, it was It's innocent fun.

We'd have a good time.

[engine rumbles]

You know, I've been fascinated

with engines of all types

since I can remember.

So much to where

I started a trucking company.

And it became quite large,

had quite a few people working for me.

[engine rumbling]

I've always owned quite a few motorcycles,

boats, airplanes.

Just to see how it all works.

It's just simply fascinating.

In 2008, I had a great life.

I had a successful business.

I guess I'd been married 16,

17 years at that time.

[exhales]

Very blessed is all I can say.

But what I saw in the sky that night

changed everything.

[suspenseful ambient music plays]

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

That was the first day

we had a decent day.

So we came out here

to the top of the hill to have a campfire.

[fire crackling]

It was myself, Mike Odom, and Lance Jones.

Then all of a sudden,

I see some real bright,

high-intensity lights,

off to the east, headed our way

at a high velocity of speed.

The lights were so bright,

it was unlike anything I'd ever seen.

It was almost blinding to look at 'em.

Then what amazed me

is there was no wind noise,

no engine noise.

There was silence.

When it came past us,

I developed the most peaceful,

easy feeling

I think I've ever had in my life.

It was almost like a religious experience.

Like I was at one with whatever it was.

Something I've never had

before or since then. It was unreal.

And then another brief second,

it just simply disappeared.

It didn't streak off or anything.

It just disappeared.

And then you could count,

one second, two seconds, three seconds,

and two F-16s came in hot pursuit.

Full afterburner hanging out.

And in my head, I'm wondering,

"Is it w*r of the Worlds,

or what was going on?"

I got in my car,

and I went back to my house,

and my wife says, "What happened?"

She could tell I was visibly shaken.

I told her what happened, and she says,

"Whatever you do,

don't tell anybody about it."

And she says,

"People will think we're crazy."

And I said, "Actually, I don't care

what people think about us."

"All I know is what I saw."

[telephone ringing tone]

That next day, I called the newspaper,

Stephenville Empire-Tribune. "ET."

[telephone ringing]

[woman] It had been a slow news day,

the day that the UFO story broke.

[telephone ringing]

[woman] Angelia Joiner was

in the newsroom,

and she had gotten a call

from Steve Allen.

And he was a local pilot,

and then he told her

that he saw something strange in the sky.

[Angelia] He said something like, "Okay,

I really need to tell you something,

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

And he began telling me a story

that, uh, I found pretty incredible.

Angelia had a brief conversation with him

and came to my office and said,

"You'll never believe this, but"

It was late in the afternoon,

and we really had our stories together.

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

"We'll talk about it tomorrow

when I get to the office."

I grew up in California. I got engaged.

And my husband was in the dairy business,

and his family had come out here.

So we got married and we moved.

It was a startling change for me.

As managing editor,

I was responsible for all of the content.

I had a lot to prove.

I was the youngest editor

that had ever been hired

to be the managing editor of the paper.

I was the second female.

And I was still seen as an outsider.

So, inside, I was dealing

with a lot of insecurity, I think.

The next morning, I picked up my paper

and saw "UFO" in huge font

across the top of the paper.

I just felt like the wind

was just completely knocked out of me.

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

"Steve Allen, Mike Odom, and Lance Jones

were out admiring

a beautiful Texas sunset Tuesday evening

when they saw something

none of them can explain."

I had a publisher at the time,

and she told Angelia,

"You're going with this tonight."

And she changed the whole front page.

She was the boss, the top dog,

so she did whatever she wanted.

But I was in charge of the newsroom,

and so I felt like people

were gonna question my credibility.

My news judgment.

"The ship wasn't really visible

and it was totally silent,

but the lights spanned

a mile-and-a-half long

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

That really sent me over the edge.

I mean, aside from the headline,

just "the ship."

Like, we were naturally assuming

that this was some kind

of a spaceship out there.

When I walked through those doors,

I was like a crazy woman. I was furious.

Walking into the publisher's office,

and I was screaming and crying. [chuckles]

I mean, like, "You have"

"What have you done?"

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

"You are you're absolutely wrong

about all of this."

"We've sold out every newspaper

in the county."

[man] When I started reading the story,

my brain just goes 100 miles an hour.

I thought to myself,

"Man, what I saw, other people saw it."

You know, "Do I tell anybody?

What do I do?"

[suspenseful pulsating music playing]

[Lee Roy] It was my wife's birthday,

and we wanted to rent a movie.

And I came outside to my squad car

to get my credit card.

As I'm walking back,

something caught my attention.

I saw what appeared

I-I call it a bubble or an orb.

It was a, uh, reddish-orange,

fiery-looking color.

Really big.

And I focused in on it.

And that's when I noticed

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

There was these bright lights,

flashing, like a pulsating thing.

Like that.

They had spread out.

There was 11 or 12 lights

that I was able to count.

All of a sudden,

these things just sh**t off

at a blazing speed.

Well, it was probably what seemed

to be maybe a minute or two, uh,

I hear jets coming.

[jet engines whoosh]

They were flying in the same direction,

the same path as these lights.

You know, I think those jets were

the same ones that Steve Allen saw.

[Steve] After the newspaper came out,

I get the call from Lee Roy Gaitan.

I didn't know him at the time,

but he told me his story,

which, time-wise,

matched exactly what ours did.

And I said, "Lee Roy, can you help us out

with this a little bit?"

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

[Lee Roy] I'm voted in

by my peers to protect them,

just like the sheriff is.

What are they gonna think,

that I'm one of the guys that said,

"I saw these lights"?

I thought it was gonna ruin me.

[Steve] And I said, "I understand,"

but I said, "Come on, Lee Roy."

"I need somebody

with a little credibility to add to it."

[Lee Roy] He said,

"I saw something special. You did too."

"And I think the world needs to know."

Somebody like Lee Roy Gaitan

has a lot to lose.

I have a lot of respect for him

because when I called,

he hesitated a little bit.

Then he said,

"No, I think it's important."

He said that,

"What we saw was really different."

I just saw some strange lights,

traveling at a high rate of speed,

doing some things

that I've never seen anything

before in my life.

[Sara] That was, I think,

the first big county official

that she was able to get

that went on the record with it.

Gave, really,

the stories a lot of credibility.

[man 1] When I first heard

about these reports,

the first thing that went through my mind,

"Okay, something significant happened."

Now, as to what happened,

at that point, I didn't know.

But it was definitely worth investigating.

My degree's in chemistry.

I was an engineering manager

in the semiconductor field.

And for the last 16 years,

I have spent my time

studying the UFO phenomenon.

And my goal has always been

to try to bring science to this subject.

MUFON stands for the Mutual UFO Network.

It's an organization

that investigates UFO sightings.

In 2008,

I was the director of research at MUFON.

And I remember

I was monitoring reports as they came in,

and I suddenly saw over 20 reports

in one geographic area,

Stephenville and Dublin.

And I knew then

that something unusual had happened.

[gripping music plays]

My view at that point in time was,

"We need to get there as soon as possible

and investigate this

while everyone's memory is fresh."

[man 2] We were contacted by MUFON,

and I'd never heard of MUFON.

But they wanted to set up

an investigation.

And so we said,

"Well, we've got the Rotary building,

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

I'm chairman of the board

of the First National Bank of Dublin.

My grandfather was mayor of Dublin

in the '30s.

And then my, um, dad was mayor.

My brother was mayor.

So, yeah, we've been in Erath County,

in this area, for a long time.

[reporter 1] Investigators

from the Mutual UFO Network

plan to look into

the Stephenville sightings this weekend.

[Pat] I was setting things up,

and the guy said, "35 is probably max."

"I don't know

if we've ever had that many show up."

We set up 35, 40 chairs there,

and then the door opens up.

And it's like It just filled up.

[reporter 2] Hundreds of people

crowded Dublin's Rotary Club

to share their stories.

What I saw was a very large blue light.

These were big, round objects.

You can't see through it.

You can't see in it.

It was going so fast,

and it didn't make any noise.

- [static crackles]

- [suspenseful music plays]

[indistinct chatter]

[Robert] The building was packed.

There were people even outside

on the sidewalk.

Some of the people who had come,

they just turned around and walked off.

They didn't even want to deal

with the number of people there.

[reporter 3] At least 500 people

filled the room.

Witnesses who saw the light.

[Pat] The MUFON folks

were kinda just taken aback

because they've never seen

anything like this.

[man 3] In an extremely

small number of cases

will we get a mass sighting like this.

We put all those chairs out,

and there were still people

standing around the room.

All right, if I could see a show of hands

who the witnesses are.

[Pat] It was like everybody there

had seen something.

We're approaching

a hundred people, probably,

that have seen something

in regard to this.

[Robert] The Houston papers are there,

the Dallas papers,

the papers from outside of Texas.

The best way I can describe it

was a media circus.

[Sara] The next day or two,

we were just inundated

with media from all over the country.

Dozens of people in a small Texas town

are talking about

some unexpected visitors.

- Do you guys believe in UFOs?

- Yes.

- I think it's possible.

- Yes.

I realized that the entire city

had totally transformed.

[horn blares]

[reporter 4] Skies over Stephenville

haven't looked the same

since a UFO reportedly

made tracks across it January 8th.

[reporter 5] Stephenville,

the North Texas town,

is swept up in UFO mania.

[Steve] They had Japanese film crews,

Brazilian film crews.

The Japanese film crews asked,

"Why does it keep coming to Stephenville?"

Then, jokingly, I said,

"Well, it's the milk capital

of the world."

They said, "Oh, they like milk!"

"Da-eerie."

[Steve] No wonder they're kind of gray

and sickly-looking. Vitamin D deficiency.

- [violins stab]

- [man] Got milk?

[woman] The high school science club

designed a T-shirt and made $4,000.

- I can't even believe it.

- [marching band plays]

[reporter 5] Aluminum foil hats

to ward off alien mind probes.

Nice look, guy.

- [woman laughs]

- [Sara] People are having a good time.

It's the most excitement

Stephenville's had in a long time,

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

[band drumming, stop]

[Sara] One evening, my husband

and I happened to go to dinner,

and it was packed.

And all of a sudden, the TVs came on,

and there was There they were.

[news bulletin music plays on TV]

[man 5] They were dancing around,

and they were flickering.

[Larry King] Tonight, strange sights

in the night skies over Texas

fuel otherworldly questions.

When that came on, there was just a hush.

Everybody just was riveted.

[Larry King] Angelia Joiner,

staff writer for the Empire-Tribune,

who has talked to several witnesses.

Very similar stories from people

that have called in and emailed me.

So I think there's been

a lot of consistency in the spottings.

[Sara] Angelia did not treat this story

like it was a fun-and-games story.

She She took it serious

from the very beginning.

After doing the first story,

I did get a little spooked.

I thought, "Oh my gosh,

this is bigger than

than what I even dreamed it could be."

[Pat] It was nice

that people were calling me,

going, "Hey, I saw the front page,

and it was saying 'Dublin, '"

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

But then, at the same time, people

There's some that just love to ridicule.

They love to kinda knock somebody

off their horse.

There were some, um, radio stations

out of Fort Worth came down and

and basically just to make fun.

- You know?

- They took my job.

They took my wife.

But they're not getting my pickup truck.

There was people that showed up

just to try to discredit these folks.

When one of those little green monsters

starts walking up here,

then I'll believe it.

And so, um, when these sightings

started taking place,

we saw it, but we didn't really say

a whole lot about it.

It was starting to get a little dark.

It was about this time of night.

My friend Kent was telling us this story

about something

that he saw a few days before.

I looked up, and I'm saying,

"Ah, that's just not normal for me."

He saw this, um this huge, um

He called it a Dorito.

Looked like a triangle,

or I-I said originally a Dorito.

He, um, stands up,

and he's stretching his back,

and all of a sudden,

he goes, "They're back."

And I said, "Who's back?"

And he just points.

I see this big, triangular vessel.

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

There is no sound whatsoever.

I couldn't process what I was seeing

because it was huge,

and you just look and you think

"What is that thing?"

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

Almost like it just vanished.

I was not scared,

but it was almost where I'm thinking

beginning to doubt myself.

"Did I even see anything?"

Then it was, like

The next day, it's like

"Don't tell anybody."

When you sit there and you say,

"Yeah, I just saw this this vessel,"

or, "I saw these lights,"

well, who do we tell about it?

And if we did,

what kind of flak are we gonna take?

[school bell rings]

[students chattering]

[in Spanish] What we don't understand,

we try to explain,

but our culture is also very open

to accepting things

we cannot see or understand.

We do not rely on facts constantly,

like here in the US.

The inexplicable does not necessarily mean

that it is not reality or fact.

[in English] In 2008,

what I saw were lights in the sky.

But the neat thing about it was

that when I saw those,

I remembered they were exactly the same

as the first time I saw 'em.

'Cause I saw them first as a teenager.

[eerie ambient music playing]

We're originally from Mexico.

And for Christmas break,

we were getting ready

to travel to Michoacán,

in Mexico, with our family.

My mother, the evening before,

was on the dairy farm.

And she says,

"I was out there feeding the calves,

and these lights were-were appearing

up in the sky, like bubbles."

"You know, could it be evil spirits

or-or-or something?"

Because we tend to be

a very superstitious culture.

And so when she saw those,

she was very much startled.

She was afraid.

That next day, we were on our way

to travel to Mexico,

we were in our vehicle,

already loaded up and-and headed out,

and these lights started coming up.

And then my mom said,

"Those are the ones I saw, um, yesterday."

And me and my sister and my other sibling

saw those at that time.

It wasn't something that we could explain.

All I know is that what I saw in 1989

was the same thing that,

again, I saw in 2008.

[mysterious music playing]

We were coming back from Fort Worth,

me and my husband,

about this time in the evening.

We could see the lights up in this area.

It was like they would bubble in one spot,

then bubble in another spot.

And it was too fast for any-any

any airplane or helicopter to do.

As we're looking up,

I'm hanging out the door with my camera

trying to take pictures of it,

but the camera, it just wasn't fast enough

to be to be able to take those pictures.

Then they were gone.

I do believe that when people

come to our area, it's for a reason.

If they're here,

why are they here? [chuckles]

Today we're-we're gonna be

talking about Don Quixote.

Who's familiar with Don Quixote?

I love working with students.

I've always told them,

"You have a mind of your own."

You need to see what information A

and information B has.

Not going against their parents

or going against, uh,

any-any type of doctrine,

but just to be informed.

[Steve] We was very driven

to find out what it was that we saw.

The more we dug into it,

I kept developing more questions

than answers.

I don't have enough nerve

to call the NAS, the naval air station.

Angelia, she did.

She'd called down there

and talked to Maj. Carl Lewis.

[Angelia] I called him to check out,

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

He said, "No, we did not have

any F-16s in the area."

[reporter] The Air Force says

none of its planes were in the area

at the time of the sightings.

[Steve] Angelia told me that.

And he'd come back

with all kinds of excuses

what we thought we might have seen.

One excuse was a reflection

off of a high-altitude jet airliner.

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

And I said, "Is it a reflection

off of my shiny white a*s?"

[tense ambient music playing]

[Angelia] I was really worried

about Steve Allen.

You could tell he was just haggard.

His wife told me

he was on the Internet constantly,

looking for pictures,

trying to find something

that looked like what he had seen.

[Steve] I told my wife that several of us

was gon' get in our airplanes

and go look for it.

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

But, you know,

it's like telling a-a kid to do something.

We're gon' do what we want to.

Our first thought was,

we hoped we would find

where it was based out of.

It appeared out of nowhere.

[indistinct chatter over radio]

[Steve] So we explored all possibilities.

We combed the whole area.

- [chatter continues]

- [radio trills]

[Steve] Then on about the third night

[radio chatter continues]

we was talking to each other

on the radio.

I said, "Do you guys ever feel like

you're looking for a needle

in a haystack?"

- [chatter continues]

- [radio trills]

[Robert] What I saw happen in Steve

is the same thing I've seen happen

in a lot of witnesses.

You've got this feeling of control.

And then, suddenly,

you see something close to you,

and it does something

that is so impossible

that it just shakes the underpinnings

of what they have

always thought the world was.

[reporter] Ricky Sorrells was deer hunting

in these woods

when he says the UFO stopped

and hovered just over his head.

And I did just like this,

and I could see it. And it

[Robert] Ricky Sorrells has

a very interesting story.

Ricky actually had a UFO sighting

almost two weeks, roughly,

before the Stephenville incident.

[suspenseful pulsating music playing]

[Robert] I met Ricky personally,

and he told me the story

of-of what happened.

He was out deer hunting.

All of a sudden, everything got dark,

like clouds had come overhead.

Well, he looked up,

and there was an object above him.

He couldn't tell its size or its shape

because it was so large

that it just covered everything above him.

[Steve] He raised his r*fle up

and looked at it through the scope,

so he could get a better view of it.

And, uh, he says, "I looked it over,

and there was no bolts, no rivets,

and it just seemed seamless all over."

And that's all he could see.

And he says,

"I started to go ahead and sh**t it,"

but he got to thinking, "That wasn't

the smartest thing I'd ever done."

[reporter] Sorrells didn't want to start

an interstellar w*r.

And when it took off, it took off so fast,

if I would have blinked,

I would have thought it vanished.

He said, "You know, the amazing thing

is that this huge object

that took off at such a high speed,

it should have just sucked me

right along with it."

And he said, "There was nothing.

No sound, no wind. Nothing."

Somehow that object

didn't interact with the atmosphere.

[music fading out]

[Lee Roy] There was one morning, uh,

Ricky came to my house,

and Ricky's in tears.

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

He said, "Lee Roy,

people are harassing me at my own house."

"Who's harassing you?"

He said, "I don't know."

He said, "They tell me

that they, uh, work for the government."

[tense music plays]

[Steve] Ricky was definitely

being intimidated.

He found a b*llet.

It was definitely military-grade.

He thinks they may have

left that on purpose

to persuade him

not to be speaking about it.

The next thing I know,

um, he is calling me.

He said, "Something's going on.

Somebody's bothering me."

[helicopter blades whirring]

"I'm having all these helicopters

flying over my place."

"They are running my cattle to death."

And he came to me

out of concern for my safety.

[Larry King] Angelia,

assuming that Ricky is not nuts,

uh, what do you make of this?

Well, I feel that perhaps

Ricky might have been singled out,

simply because he was the one

that had a daytime sighting.

He had more detail than anyone else,

and I wondered if that might be

why he was singled out.

And, suddenly

Ricky stops talking to everybody.

I think Ricky saw a lot more

than what the rest of us saw.

[Steve] Ricky has said he saw some sort

of something inside the aircraft,

and it resembled some sort of insect

or maybe even a praying mantis.

[Lee Roy] I-I-I think that Ricky was

possibly approached by someone

and offered a monetary agreement.

They wanted him quiet.

[Steve] A military colonel called me,

one afternoon at my house,

and talked to me

about an hour and 45 minutes.

Says, "We've had a lot of discussion

about you and what to do with you."

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

"If you just happened to come up missing,

it'd kinda look suspicious."

[pilot 1] They're going against the wind.

The wind's 120 knots west.

[pilot 2] Look at that, dude!

[Matthew] I found myself

watching the footage over and over again,

almost obsessively.

I had no awareness

of what the upper chain of command

was doing with this information.

In 2017, I transferred

to the Office of Naval Intelligence.

I was gonna be an analyst there.

[inhales shakily]

And, um shortly after I arrived, I, uh

I started to have

these follow-on experiences

with the phenomenon.

That was, like, the beginning of seeing

non-human entities in my room at night.

I would wake up several times a week,

and I would feel my body

kind of sliding across the bed.

And I knew that they were taking me.

I woke up 'cause I felt

a hand grab my arm right here.

So I went to try and raise my hands

to my face to wipe the sleep away,

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

And I could just see this outline

of a shadowy figure with

you know, a torso, two arms,

and a head, standing over me.

When I was in the Navy

and I saw this footage,

I knew that there was something out there.

Right? I knew there was

something non-human out there.

So I knew when they started

showing up in my room

that a-all of this was real.

I-I-I had the luxury of knowing

that I wasn't going crazy.

Right? I knew what it was.

- [radio static]

- [indistinct chatter over radio]

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

[laughter]

- Woo-hoo!

- [man] Roger.

[Matthew] There's all kinds

of sensor evidence, radar evidence.

I think that there's enough footage

that if they just released all of it

and said, "Hey, this is what we have,"

they don't even have to

give an explanation.

They can just say,

"We don't know. This is what we got."

Um, there would be no no doubt

as to whether or not

the phenomenon is real.

Everyone would know it.

The US military is now saying

it was fighter jets,

not UFOs, that folks were seeing

in the Stephenville area

earlier this month.

[reporter 1] The military now says

it was training in the area after all.

Ten F-16s over

the Brownwood military operating area.

[reporter 2] The military spokesman blames

an internal communications error

for giving out false information.

[Sara] There was no more new sightings.

We were clearly not gonna get an answer

from the government or

on what this could have been.

So unless we have something new

and significant to report about it,

we need to get on to other things.

It was a hard thing for Angelia.

She really had a hard time

letting go of it

and breaking away from it.

[Angelia] I just couldn't abandon

those witnesses.

They were thrust into the limelight

just like I was.

Plus, it was shaking them

to their very core

about what they had seen.

[Sara] I had given her an assignment,

and I had this feeling

that she wasn't doing it that day,

and she left.

And I got on her computer

and discovered some emails

that she had sent

saying that the newspaper

and the management here,

or me, um, specifically,

I'd gotten pressure to shut it down

from the government and the city,

and the city officials.

And I was pretty upset about that,

'cause none of that was true.

[Steve] Very strange story with Angelia.

She came into work one morning,

and her computer was gone.

And she says, "Hey, what happened

to my computer and my stuff?"

And they told her

she didn't work there anymore.

[Sara] Was it a termination? Yes.

But she didn't want to be there.

She wanted to continue this.

And that was a story

that I was happy to move on from.

If you look at the UFO phenomenon, for

It's gone on for 75 years

in the modern era.

And yet, today, we still don't know

much more than we knew 75 years ago.

That's troubling for many

in the field of science

because there's no crystal clear,

solid evidence.

And-And that's the mystery

of this phenomenon,

is like, "Where is the evidence?"

[slow suspenseful music playing]

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

I'd been out working

a moonlighting job in Stephenville.

There's an alarm call at this business.

I went ahead

and advised the sheriff's department

that I was close by

and would take the call.

And when I get out of the car,

I look and I see a pulsating orb

up in the sky.

Got my dashcam and positioned it,

trying to videotape this object.

I took the video home.

Uh, back then, it was VHS,

and put it in my player at home.

- [VHS tape clacks]

- [static]

It was not a clear video.

It was like something

was interfering the, uh, quality.

[tense ambient music playing]

I said, "Man, why is this tape messing up,

right now of all times?"

I had never had a problem

before that with any video.

After that, I used that camera

at least another year and a half,

before I went digital.

Never had a problem like that.

Whatever this thing was,

whoever was responsible for it

did not want clear footage of it.

I wanted to find corroboration

for the object seen by Lee Roy and Steve,

and all the other witnesses,

in Stephenville on January 8th, 2008.

I had the witness statements.

I knew the when and the where

and the direction they were looking.

At the MUFON event,

I met a guy from Colorado, Glen Schulze,

and Glen was a former army radar expert.

[static crackles]

Anything that flies in the sky is caught

with what's called primary radar data.

- [radar beeps]

- [static crackles]

So I wanted radar data to support

what the witnesses had told me.

The FAA won't volunteer those returns

because they say nothing happened.

So you have to send

a Freedom of Information Act request in

and force them to release the data.

[Robert] I sent FOIAs

to every police department,

to every military base.

And the one FOIA that panned out the best

was the FOIA to the FAA,

which provided me with radar data

from five different radar antennae

across the state of Texas.

Glen Schulze and I went four months

to go through the radar data.

Before I went looking for any unknowns,

first thing I did was track the F-16s.

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

- [jet engine whooshes]

[Lee Roy] They were flying

in the same direction as these lights.

[Robert] These are the two that flew down

to Comanche, Dublin, Stephenville.

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

I went to start looking for objects

that did not have transponders.

So I wanted to see everything

that was not supposed to be in the sky.

I get to where Steve is.

So I'm looking there,

and do I see any unknowns

that are popping up

that match what he described?

[radar pinging]

What I find is radar data

that confirms what Steve Allen

and Lee Roy Gaitan have told me.

[Steve] I came out here

to have a campfire,

and all of a sudden,

I see some high-intensity lights,

headed at a high velocity of speed.

[Robert] Steve is located here.

There are two radar points that showed

an object moving without a transponder.

[Steve] When we first saw the ship,

it was just a few minutes after 6:00.

[Robert] The two data points

match the time

and the geographical location.

Does its flame-job over Stephenville,

just simply disappears.

This is outside

of military operating area,

so it should have a transponder

if it is military aircraft,

but it doesn't.

In the case of Lee Roy,

I had about five data points on the radar,

indicating there is this object

south of his home.

[Lee Roy] I came outside.

Something caught my attention

off-off to the, uh, southwest sky.

All of a sudden, these things

just sh**t off at a blazing speed.

And they travel, what I say, northeast.

[Robert] When he says

it moves to the northeast,

I get a data point ten seconds later

that's to the northeast

and is moving at an extreme rate of speed.

It's not very often

that you get radar data

that just corroborates

exactly what a witness said

in terms of geographic location and time.

It showed it in black and white

that there was something flying out there.

And that the speeds

that these things were traveling

are, like, speeds

that we cannot do here on Earth.

[Robert] These stories check out

with the radar data.

So there's absolutely no doubt

that there's an object in the sky

and that the object that's in the sky

does not have a transponder code.

That tells you that you're

you're dealing with something real,

whatever it is.

- [radio static crackles]

- [indistinct chatter over radio]

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

- [man 1] Okay!

- [radio static]

[woman 2] With all the attention

of the UFO sightings,

Stephenville will no longer be alien

to the rest of the world.

- [radio static]

- [child] Milk Duds!

- [radio jingle] Milk is a natural ♪

- [static]

[woman 3] Hundreds of UFO sightings

are reported to authorities

[man 2] If you're interested in UFOs,

you might wanna come on out,

if you dare.

- [radio static]

- [cow moos]

[unsettling ambient music playing]

[Matthew] Is any of this stuff real?

I don't know. I mean

I think UFOs are just as real as,

you know, the-the lights in this room or

or the cameras that are in front of me.

I think that, uh

I think they are very real.

But I think, what is your idea of reality?

That's the question.

You see that the DOD and NASA, even,

they're all hiring physicists

to work on this UFO issue.

And that's not

where the truth of this lies.

This lies more

within the realm of the humanities,

within the realm of psychology,

uh, philosophy,

religious studies.

Um, that's where you're gonna find

the truth of this.

No physicist is gonna be able

to tell you what this is.

Because the physicist maybe can tell you

how physical matter might behave,

but the humanities will tell you why.

It's not a

It's not a Department of Defense issue.

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

And that's why

I could not justify being quiet.

- [children chattering]

- [trampoline squeaking]

[man] I've got eight children.

We homeschool our kids,

and we've really seen fruit from that.

All right, ready? Up!

[groans] Wuh-uh!

Okay, which one first?

Every day starts out

with some type of Bible lesson.

- Ezekiel was a prophet.

- [boy 1] Mm-hmm.

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

- In the Old Testament.

So check this out.

"I looked, and behold,

a whirlwind was coming out of the North."

"A great cloud

with raging fire engulfing itself,

and brightness was all around it."

"And radiating out of it,

the color of amber,

out of the midst of the fire."

What was it that Ezekiel was seeing?

Not the message part.

I get the message part.

I wanna know what he saw.

"Behold a wheel

suddenly came to the earth."

"And the rims were full of"

Translate this for me.

"eyes all the way around."

[girl 2] Eyes or lights.

Lights or

- [girl 2] Anything, really.

- Windows or Right?

To me, I think that talking about UFOs

with my kids, even the littlest ones,

is making Scripture

a lot more real for them

than just a bunch of stories.

This was Switzerland,

and some guy just got this on video.

It's a UFO.

What does that look like, right there?

- [boy 2] It's a wheel within a wheel.

- [Eddy] And that was two days ago.

The Christian populace

does not wanna believe

that any of this is real,

because if it does,

it changes all of their reality.

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

Or Or is it for them too?

[Lee Roy] That's

A million-dollar question is,

"Where does life and other planets

and religion fit together?"

If somebody were to ask me,

"Did God make other

creatures?", I'd say yes.

When Kent was telling us this story,

I was the typical jerk

giving him a hard time, saying,

"Here's a guy

that just saw a flying Dorito."

[Kent laughing]

And when we all looked up

and saw this thing,

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

that we look at both sides

of the story more.

[Lisa] Now when I hear people tell stories

of things they see,

I am not a doubting Thomas.

I'm thinking, you know,

"They saw something."

"I know they did

or why would they be saying this?"

Of course, psychology today

would tell you that,

hey, if you're experiencing these things,

you're seeing things

in your room at night,

that you're schizophrenic.

Or you have some kind

of other severe mental illness.

And, to me, that's not

[sighs] That's not correct.

That's not right.

When I made the decision

to talk about this, to leave the Navy,

I was four years away from retirement,

which would have meant,

you know, a pension,

health insurance for the rest of my life.

You know? And I

I left that all on the table.

And I walked away from it

because this isn't just about me, right?

It's not about me at all.

It's about all of us.

[inhales deeply]

[voice breaking] It's about everybody.

[Norma] Don Quixote is

one of my favorite novels.

And, in it, Don Quixote is a madman.

And everything that he sees,

he sees in a different light.

Don Quixote sees these windmills,

but in his mind, they're not, uh

They're not windmills. They're giants.

We know that we're not mad.

We know that there is

something credible to this

because too many people saw

these, uh, lights in the sky.

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

We're not a Don Quixote.

There's-There's more to this.

[Robert] You can argue,

"Well, it was some secret

US black project, right?"

But our technologies

don't just suddenly leap

across 100 years of-of technology.

Th-They're gradually created.

In this case, I think whatever people saw

was intelligently controlled.

And it was not manufactured

by the United States

or any other nation, for that matter.

So, about nine months later,

I was driving my daughter

to gymnastics in Dublin,

and I saw [scoffs]some lights.

I pulled over to the side of the road,

and I just stopped

and looked out my front window.

And they kinda were blinking

or kinda coming in and out of focus.

And then they kinda

came together, cohesively,

and and just sort of disappeared.

I just was so shaken and so shocked.

I thought, "My gosh."

"I'm seeing what everybody's been

talking about all this time."

[intriguing ambient music playing]

It felt like the universe was sort of

playing a trick on me, like [chuckles]

I balked at this story so hard

in the beginning and for so long.

And then, you know, months later,

it was sort of like, you know, here it is.

I can't believe

all of the wonderful people I've met.

And that's the good of UFO reporting.

I've loved every minute of it,

and I hope that I'm gonna be doing this

for a long time.

- Thank you.

- [audience applauding]

- [applause fades out]

- [somber music plays]

[Sara] If I could talk to Angelia again,

I would tell her how brave she was

for understanding

that there was a story there to be told.

And I certainly wish that, uh,

we had parted ways differently if

[voice breaks]

My-My biggest regret of all is that.

[somber music continues]

[crickets chirping]

[Steve] Our business suffered

because I was chasing

the unidentified object that we saw.

So it put an undue strain

on our relationship and her as well.

And after 17 years

of being together and married,

we ended up getting a divorce.

My relationship suffered.

My company suffered. I suffered.

I still consider it a blessing

that I did see it,

and it's forever in my mind.

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

I will find out what happened.

This is a great big open secret.

Nothing I am saying is anything new.

It's just a matter of,

are you gonna believe it or not?

[stirring mysterious music playing]

[music fading out]

- [radio static]

- [stations scrambling]

[man chatters indistinctly over radio]

[woman 1] A cold glass of Borden milk

will cool you off.

When you need a boost, try Borden milk.

[radio stations scrambling]

[indistinct radio jingle plays]

[child] Milk Duds!

- [singing continues]

- [child] Milk Du

- [radio stations scrambling]

- [radio chatter]

[static crackling]

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

[man] Okay!

[radio stations scrambling]

[woman 2] Milk's a natural

with the food we like best.

It's too good to leave at home.

- [radio stations scrambling]

- [indistinct chatter]

[man 2] Saturday, and Elsie the Borden Cow

is in her kitchen.

[Elsie] Beauregard,

that cookie would taste even better

with a glass of Borden milk.

- It tastes

- [static interference]

[man 3] Fresh is fresh

It's gotta be good, it's gotta be good ♪

[man 4] Try all our dairy products,

'cause

[static interference]

[woman 1] You'll like the taste of milk

with everything you eat.

- [radio static]

- [indistinct chatter]

[radio stations scramble]

- [child] Milk Duds!

- [radio jingle] Milk is a natural ♪

- [radio static]

- [indistinct chatter]

- [high-pitched tuning tones whizzing]

- [chatter continues]

[static crackling]