[Narrator] Mysterious orbs of light reported
all over the world.
Unidentifiable flying objects
witnessed by hundreds of people.
And evidence of extraordinary aircraft
moving at impossible speeds.
♪ ♪
Since the 1940s,
reports of flying, disk-shaped objects
helped define the modern UFO era.
But the 21st century has changed
much of what we now know
and witness when it comes to
unidentified anomalous phenomena.
Today, reports of strange, glowing orbs
are featured on the evening news,
cell phone footage of mysterious craft
can be found on social media,
and even the U.S. Congress is holding hearings
in search of the truth about UFO sightings.
[Narrator] On December 16, 2017,
The New York Times ran an explosive story
entitled "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money':
The Pentagon's Mysterious UFO Program."
It was the first time the American public learned
of a top secret U.S. government project,
the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program,
otherwise known as AATIP.
The revelations concerning the existence
of the Pentagon's AATIP program are extraordinary.
It is the single biggest ever news
in the whole history of the UFO phenomenon.
It's not quite a "spaceship in a hangar" smoking gun,
but it's the closest we've ever been.
[Narrator] The article reported that the program had been run
by a former Pentagon official named Luis Elizondo,
a senior career intelligence officer
with top security clearance
and with experience in everything
from microbiology and parasitology
to the study of global terrorism.
It was Elizondo's job to investigate
reports of unidentified flying objects
and to measure what threat they could pose to national security.
AATIP received its cases
from-from various different channels.
In some cases, reporting would come up through Navy channels.
In other cases, it would come up through Air Force channels.
In other cases, it would come through
the intelligence community.
And all roads led to-to our office,
uh, regarding the phenomena.
[Narrator] Elizondo played a key role
in the government's top secret AATIP program
prior to his leaving the government in 2017.
Among the reasons given for his departure
was the bitterness he felt that the research he was conducting
and the conclusions that he and his colleagues were reaching
were not being taken seriously by other agencies
within the government.
Even Congress, to which AATIP owed its funding,
was hard-pressed to give Elizondo so much as a hearing
so that his findings could be made part of the public record.
Interestingly, just two months after Elizondo's exit
from the government, The New York Times broke
the major story, exposing the AATIP program
and many of the facts surrounding
the government's secret research into UFO activity.
When I read in The New York Times this front-page story
that the-the government was running this semisecret program
to investigate, well, aerial phenomena,
which is kind of a code word for UFOs...
...yeah, you know, I thought, "My God, all these years,
"you know, people who-who think that we're being visited
"were claiming that the government was in fact
possessing some secret knowledge about this."
And, sure enough, they did have this secret investigation.
[Narrator] For Luis Elizondo,
the New York Times article served as a vindication
for the years that his research went unrecognized
and his warnings unheeded.
For if the UFO activity being recorded was real,
so, too, was the possibility that it was being caused
by technologies that were not only unknown
but of extraterrestrial origin.
[George Noory] Elizondo, he resigned
because he felt the government considered this a joke.
I think that the fact that these folks are out there
trying to get the answers that we're all seeking--
absolutely fantastic.
And they're getting to top government officials.
And some-someday,
we're gonna get the answers from people like that.
Not from government, but from people like that.
[Narrator] Luckily for Luis Elizondo,
one of the people who took him and his research seriously
was musician and UFO researcher Tom DeLonge.
[John Podesta] Tom DeLonge, who is most famous
for, uh, his,
uh, being the lead in Blink-182.
I've known Tom for a while, and he spearheaded
an initiative that's brought together a number
of scientists and others to both continue to study
the phenomena on the outside,
in the private sector, and to raise funds to do that.
[Pope] His enthusiasm,
his passion has driven things forward.
A lot of people were saying,
"What does a rock star know about all this?"
Let's not forget that sometimes even people in government
and military and the intelligence community
get a little more starstruck than they should by celebrities.
Tom DeLonge was able to use this to leverage,
I guess, access where others had tried and failed.
[Narrator] In October 2017,
Tom DeLonge announced the creation
of his To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science,
an organization devoted to the study of UFOs
and the possible existence of extraterrestrial activity
here on Earth.
When Elizondo left the Pentagon,
he was determined to bring AATIP's years of investigation
out of the shadows
by releasing several of the videos he had collected.
One of them featured this incredible encounter
taken by a fighter jet in Florida in 2015
now known as the Gimbal video.
On December 18, 2017,
DeLonge and Elizondo revealed a second shocking video,
which was released through The Washington Post.
This UFO had been tracked by the USS Princeton
for several days over the Pacific Ocean,
approximately 100 miles southwest of San Diego.
On the screen, it also says the speed of the F-18
is 250 knots--
roughly about, uh, 280 miles per hour.
This F-18 can't seem to get any closer
to this vehicle, whatever it is.
Now, the F-18's one of the, uh,
highest technology fighter crafts on the planet.
And it can't catch this thing?
When it darts offscreen to the left,
it would be going extremely fast.
The g-forces would-would turn a person inside it
into, like, tapioca pudding.
I mean, it would-it would kill them.
[Narrator] In March 2018,
a third Pentagon video entitled "Go Fast" was released
and featured yet another unexplained aerial encounter.
(chuckles)
[Narrator] But perhaps the most shocking information
to come from Tom DeLonge and his To The Stars Academy
was Luis Elizondo's claim that Bigelow Aerospace
had modified its buildings for the storage
of strange metal alloys of unknown origin
also known as metamaterials.
Now, hold, stop the presses right there.
What are these metal alloys?
[Pope] Luis Elizondo has referred
to these as metamaterials.
The implication is that they're-they're not special,
magical elements or anything,
but they've been studied.
According to Elizondo,
tests have been run.
The answer has come back.
Whatever these things were, they came from space.
[Podesta] There was also indications
that there were certain polymers
that were, uh,
discovered at crash sites
that were unexplained and were reviewed.
[Dolan] You know, for years and years,
UFO researchers had talked about crash retrievals of UFOs
or that elements of these objects
had been recovered and were being studied.
And skeptics would laugh at these claims.
You know,
how ridiculous
such conspiracy paranoid fantasies were.
Uh, well, guess what,
now we have it confirmed.
[Narrator] Is it possible that the U.S. military
has recovered crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft
and that wreckage from these aircraft
is currently being stored and studied
by a top secret team at Bigelow Aerospace?
[Taylor] One of the really interesting things about AATIP
is how much information hasn't been released.
We hear things that are coming.
There's this report that was written
that we're supposed to get to see at some point.
Haven't seen it yet.
And then are there more videos?
We've seen, I think, three videos come out
that they've released.
There has to be more.
They were doing this for, like, five years
or maybe even a lot longer than that.
I bet you there's a lot more.
When you hear the word "UFO,"
it may bring to mind images of classic flying saucers.
But many eyewitness descriptions of aerial phenomena
include a variety of shapes and sizes,
including cylinders, triangles,
and even orbs of light.
Yet one of the most compelling sightings of a recent UAP
was so strange,
it was named the Spaghetti Monster.
[Narrator] Iraq. 2018.
Marine officer Michael Cincoski
is deployed to Al-Taqaddum Air Base just west of Baghdad.
Upon arriving, he's shown a sensational video
that was recoded at the base the previous year.
When I first saw this video,
I was... I was a little shocked.
What made it unique was the overall shape.
It was this jellyfish.
We called it the Spaghetti Monster.
It was flying at a consistent speed,
going from east to west over our base and over the lake.
[Narrator] The unusual object was recorded by a large blimp
otherwise known as an aerostat
that was hovering above the base.
[Cincoski] This object was lower than our aerostat camera,
which is, I would have to guess,
less than 60 feet.
And the two people that you see on the video
that were walking on base had no idea that this thing was there.
It passed, seemingly, right over them,
and they had no idea.
[Narrator] The soldiers who were present at the time
the so-called Jellyfish UFO was recorded
told Cincoski that the object was only visible
on the infrared camera.
[Cincoski] The security element was sent out
to try to gain positive identification
on this thing flying over the base.
They used line of sight, uh, just with the naked eye.
And they tried to use night vision goggles.
And nobody was able to see anything.
[Narrator] The strange object was recorded
passing over the base for more than 30 minutes.
While some have theorized
that the object was merely a smudge on the lens
or even a soldier using some kind of jet pack,
both possibilities have been ruled out.
So, what could explain this oddly shaped craft
that could not be seen with the naked eye?
[Cincoski] I'm trained to identify
different types of drones,
different types of aircraft, whether they're manned
or unmanned.
And this is nothing like I've ever seen before.
There are a lot of different theories
from all the different Marines that-that saw this footage.
But there's really no explanation
for this sort of thing.
There's a possibility that this might be
something out of our world.
[Narrator] Could it be that the jellyfish-shaped UAP
captured on video flying over a U.S. military base
was of alien origin?
The footage remained unknown to the public
for six years after it was recorded
and only came to light in 2024
thanks to the efforts of filmmaker
and ufologist Jeremy Corbell.
[Cincoski] The videos were located on a secret terminal,
a secret system.
And the way the footage has been released,
I think somebody recorded, illegally, the screen.
And I don't know how long they've had this footage
or why they released it now, years later.
But I imagine they didn't want to get caught.
[Pope] The video was handed to investigative journalist
and filmmaker Jeremy Corbell.
And it was released to the public.
The Department of Defense have confirmed this is authentic.
This is not some blurry light in the sky.
This is up close and personal,
and you can see the detail.
[Taylor] The video from Iraq is the most intriguing one
that I've seen in a while.
The reason why is because
whatever this object is stays at a steady rate of velocity.
And it stays at the same altitude
above the surface the entire time.
So it's being controlled,
and it has some sort of propulsion device
that we don't see on board.
[Narrator] Is it possible that the so-called Jellyfish UFO
is footage of a visitor from another world?
While the military remains tight-lipped
about what was filmed in Iraq,
a number of compelling videos have appeared on the website
of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO.
Established in 2022,
AARO is a government program to study UAPs.
[Taylor] We have objects captured on an infrared sensor.
And we also have objects detected on radar.
And on the situational awareness system.
So, multiple instruments saying there's something there
suggests that there really is something there.
[Pope] Congress has now mandated the military
to actually devise surveillance equipment
specifically geared
to target and capture UFO images.
[Pope] So, we are gonna see a lot more of these.
Some in infrared...
[Pope] ...but others, perhaps, across the spectrum.
And that's interesting because whether something shows up,
just in infrared or other parts of the spectrum,
can tell you something about the object,
perhaps its energy source, perhaps its propulsion system.
[Narrator] But while the military
has been more transparent
in confirming the authenticity of UAP videos,
many believe the public has only seen a small fraction
of the footage they possess.
This has left ufologists to ask:
what other evidence might the U.S. military
be withholding from the public?
[Pope] High-level government insiders
have been saying, "We have both metamaterials
from craft, and actually intact craft,
but also entities."
And yeah, absolutely,
a small group of people in the government
are keeping this from the people.
[Taji Huang] When you look into some of these guys
that have long, illustrious military careers
that are opening up
and talking about things that we wouldn't have heard about
20 years ago, 30 years ago,
this all is going to add to more curiosity
and make us really say, "If this is what
we're hearing about, what about all the things
that we haven't heard about that are out there?"
They're still talking about UAP as
Chinese or Russian, things like this.
They're not willing to mention this as actual contact.
But what we do know is that, off the record,
many government employees, high-level people
who have really studied this, they absolutely believe this.
In November of 2024,
hundreds of UFO sightings were reported
across the eastern United States.
But these weren't metallic craft.
Instead, witnesses described seeing
glowing orbs of light that moved erratically in the sky.
To many researchers, these sightings sound exactly
like a strange phenomenon reported over 80 years ago,
during World War II.
[Narrator] November 1944.
In the closing stages of World War II,
Allied forces are pushing deeper into Nazi-occupied France.
On November 27th, American aviators
with the 415th Night Fighter Squadron
are conducting a nighttime raid along the Rhine river
when they report seeing
several strange red lights in the sky.
The glowing orbs seem to pursue them
through a series of high-speed maneuvers
before they suddenly vanish.
In the days that follow,
more pilots experience similar encounters.
These craft, these objects, whatever they-they were,
they were often just described as balls of light,
and they would come in very close to Allied aircraft.
[Pope] These strange balls of light
often displayed speeds and maneuverability
that was way ahead
of-of the cutting edge of aviation technology.
[Narrator] As the sightings increased,
Allied pilots began to call the mysterious orbs
"foo fighters."
[Bill Birnes] The reason they were called "foo fighters"
was because they were glowing on the inside.
The word for fire in French is feu,
and the French called them feu,
and that's how they got the name foo fighters from the Americans.
[Dolan] These foo fighters often
just stayed very briefly,
and then maneuvered with incredible speed
either straight up or far away.
[Narrator] Most concerning to pilots
was that sightings were often accompanied
by bizarre malfunctions to their aircraft.
[Birnes] What the airmen found was the foo fighters
were sending an electric signal out
that got in the way of their radios...
...got in the way of their navigational instruments.
[Taylor] These orbs would fly near the airplanes,
even as close to the airplane wing,
and the pilots claimed that it interacted
or confused the controls,
or changed how it operated,
and might have actually made them, uh, nearly crash.
[Pope] It was as if these things were observing the pilots.
These balls of light would often keep track with the aircraft.
So, this was a-a real concern for the authorities.
But no overt hostile action, which leads to the question,
"What were these things, and what was going on?"
[Narrator] Allied airmen speculated
that the foo fighters were a secret weapon
that had been developed by the Germans.
But after the war, it became clear
that the flying orbs had been encountered
by forces on both sides of the conflict.
[Dolan] We learned that Germans and Japanese pilots
apparently were also reporting these.
Now, these foo fighters never seemed to be
weapons directed against them,
because they often just stayed very briefly,
and then maneuvered with incredible speed
either straight up or far away.
We don't know what they are, officially.
They strike me as classic UFO-type activity.
[Tsoukalos] I think the argument can be made
that some of these orbs
that we see today are those foo fighters of World War II.
[Narrator] Is it possible that the foo fighters
of World War II were extraterrestrial visitors?
And if so, could they be connected
to the glowing orbs that military personnel
are witnessing in the present day?
According to UFO researchers,
America's armed forces have not only been encountering
strange orbs for decades
but they sometimes appear in swarms.
In July of 2019, off the west coast,
ten U.S. Navy warships were buzzed by unknown craft,
one right after another.
One of those ships is the USS Omaha.
It was surrounded by more than a dozen of these things
that would fly toward it, then fly back.
And they were trying to get images of it,
and finally, on a thermal imaging system,
they got one of them.
It followed the ship for an hour.
It was a perfectly round sphere,
something like eight feet across.
No wings, no tail, no rotor.
That video showed that there were a bunch of these things
floating around the ship for a long period of time.
They'd zip in, zip out, disappear, appear.
What the hell was that?
[Narrator] Even more astonishing,
footage recorded by sailors on the warship
shows the mysterious orbs performing maneuvers
that defy explanation.
[Tsoukalos] Many of these orbs dive into the water
and come out and, oftentimes, you do not see any splashes.
It's as if there's an artificial bubble
that allows this thing to move through material
without any loss of velocity.
[Luis Elizondo] Transmedium travel
is a breakthrough technology from what we have.
We have no idea, even, whose technology it is.
The official response by the Department of Defense
and our government is that these still remain a mystery.
They remain unsolved, unattributed.
Is that a concern for the Navy? Well, absolutely it is.
And it's also a concern for our national security.
[Narrator] Two months after the USS Omaha incident,
in September 2019,
another swarm of glowing orbs
was filmed off the coast of North Carolina.
Cell phone video uploaded to YouTube by William Guy
shows what appears to be a swarm
of 14 orbs hovering over the water.
[Narrator] The video was shot from aboard a ferry
and was witnessed by other passengers on board.
But perhaps the most concerning encounter
occurred in December 2023,
when a fleet of orbs appeared
over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
[Elizondo] Langley Air Force Base is certainly
a sensitive facility, and the notion of orbs,
certainly, is a national security concern.
They're coming completely unattributed, unchallenged
over a controlled U.S. airspace,
and we have no idea what their intent is.
But it's not just military and intelligence eyewitnesses.
These orbs now have been seen by
huge swaths of the civilian population
all around the world.
It's a global phenomenon.
Every nation out there that has had to deal
with these orbs has come out and said
that "They're not our technology."
Meaning it's not Russian, it's not Chinese, it's not U.S.,
it's not Canadian, German, U.K.
We're dealing with something
that is being intelligently controlled.
We have, really, no other choice
but to consider the possibility
that some sort of nonhuman intelligence
is controlling these things.
One of the most extraordinary UFO sightings in history
occurred at an Air Force base in eastern England.
Over the course of two nights,
military personnel reported not only seeing
mysterious craft in the sky, but one witness claimed
to have touched an alien craft.
[Narrator] In Suffolk county, England,
there is a remote forest in the village of Rendlesham
that has become famous for being the site
of one of the most extraordinary UFO encounters ever reported.
And some of those who experienced it
believe this incident also involved time travel.
The event occurred on December 26, 1980.
Airman John Burroughs was performing
a routine security check at a U.S. Air Force base
when he received orders
to investigate a possible downed aircraft.
[John Burroughs] My supervisor called me on the radio
and asked me to meet up with him so we could check the east gate.
We're driving down the road leading to the east gate
to check on it when, all of a sudden,
he saw some strange lights in the forest.
So, I decided we'll call it in and let them know
something strange was going on.
They decided to send
one of the security units down,
which was Sergeant Penniston.
He got down there and he saw the same strange lights
that we were seeing.
[James Penniston] I could see all these multiple
color lights and things like that. And
the air felt different. I don't know how to...
really explain that.
But it did feel like there was electricity
on our skin and hair and stuff.
But that progressively got worse
the closer we got to the tree line.
And it got more intense.
[Burroughs] There seemed to be, like,
an electricity-charged atmosphere,
and then, also, there were points where there--
it seemed like everything was going in slow motion.
[Narrator] As the servicemen approached the strange lights,
Sergeant Penniston reportedly saw a large craft
just beyond the tree line.
[Penniston] The craft was triangular in shape,
measuring about six to seven feet high,
black in color.
I had come around to the far side of the craft,
and that's when I noticed that there was,
you know, inscription on the side.
You know, it is about three feet long,
maybe six inches high, um,
and, uh, so I'm expecting to find, I don't know,
some kind of prototype stuff, uh, USAF.
I'm-I'm looking for something very familiar.
Instead of something familiar,
I see these pictorial-type glyphs.
And got running my hand over the side of the craft.
I don't know how to explain this.
It's like someone was holding a picture up,
okay?
I could see it in my mind's eye.
Zeros and ones.
So, I recorded those, one after another.
[Heseltine] When Penniston touched
the craft, he then said
that he felt a strange download of information,
uh, to his mind.
And he felt compelled, the next day, to write down
a series of zeros and ones,
which we now regard as binary code.
[Pope] Years later,
a computer programmer took this information,
ran it through a translation program
and a message emerged.
The message read: "Exploration of humanity
continuous for planetary advance,
eyes of your eyes,
origin year 8100."
When one sees
"origin year 8100,"
one is forced to speculate, might we be looking
not just at extraterrestrials
but time travelers from the future?
[Narrator] After the incident, the U.S. military
conducted a brief investigation,
but allegedly tried to keep the eyewitnesses
away from the press.
But for Airman Burroughs and Officer Penniston,
the event wasn't easy to leave behind.
Both men had lasting physical effects from the encounter
and even reported strange dreams.
After the incident, I started having throat and eye problems.
At one point, my gums turned white.
I also had vision problems,
and when I went and saw the doctor,
one of his first questions was
had I been ever exposed to radiation?
I've definitely had dreams about it,
and I still have feelings about what happened
and what could happen in the future.
I got out of the service in 1993.
Then I was out about maybe three months,
and then I started getting these dreams
and, uh, nightmares.
During the dreams,
I could see that these were time travelers,
40 to 50,000 years in the future.
I see that their purpose to come back
was to correct things, was to fix things.
Something horrible has happened.
Something they have to correct.
But it requires time travel.
It requires going back into the past.
I never had a feeling of it being extraterrestrial.
It's always been that they were
simply us in the future.
UFO sightings reported by pilots
are some of the most reliable accounts to investigate,
because their safety depends
on being able to correctly identify
various objects flying through the sky.
And in 1986,
the captain of a jumbo jet made a shocking discovery
when he spotted an extraordinary craft
flying alongside his plane
that was larger than an aircraft carrier.
[Narrator] Alaska, November 17, 1986.
Japan Air Lines Flight 1628
is carrying cargo from Paris, France
to Narita International Airport near Tokyo.
The three-person crew
is led by Captain Kenju Terauchi,
an ex-fighter pilot with over 10,000 hours of flight time.
As the 747 approaches Anchorage,
Captain Terauchi notices two strange lights
out of his cockpit window.
It's dark, it's, uh, very early morning, before sunrise.
These lights are clearly maneuvering.
They are in relationship to each other,
one is on top of the other,
and they move directly in front of his aircraft.
Now, he's flying at about 500 miles per hour.
These things are pacing him.
[Narrator] Captain Terauchi realizes the lights
are strange oval-shaped flying objects,
and they are getting dangerously close to his aircraft.
As bright lights fill the cockpit,
Captain Terauchi radios
the Anchorage Air Traffic Control Center
and asks if they can identify the objects near his plane.
[Narrator] As Terauchi attempts a series of evasive maneuvers
to avoid a potential collision,
the two UFOs suddenly disappear.
In their place is another object.
One so large it dwarfs the 747.
[Dolan] His words for describing it were,
"gigantic spaceship,
the size of maybe two aircraft carriers."
Just immense.
Terauchi sees this massive thing in the sky,
and he's scared.
[Narrator] Concerned by Captain Terauchi's report,
the air traffic controller calls NORAD,
the North American Aerospace Defense Command,
based at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage.
Communication specialists at the airbase
confirm that there is a very large unidentified object
on their radar screens.
Traffic control told them that they could actually take
whatever evasive actions they needed to,
to avoid collision,
and they even dropped down to 4,000 feet
above sea level,
and the thing continued to follow them.
[Ryan Sprague] Air traffic control diverted
another commercial flight to come look at this UFO.
And by the time they got there, UFO was completely gone.
[Tsoukalos] One of the reasons
why the JAL report is such a big deal is because
the corroborating evidence is overwhelming.
Not only are there eyewitness reports,
but there is the records of the communication systems
that Terauchi was in touch with.
Actual dialogue that happened.
"Hey, we are up here.
We see this. Are you guys seeing this on your radar?"
All this stuff is recorded.
[Narrator] Once safely grounded,
Captain Terauchi, his copilot and flight engineer
were immediately interviewed
by Alaska Federal Aviation Administration officials
and other special agents.
[Pope] There's an FAA
investigation into this.
There's lots of documentation.
Uh, there's no real hard and fast conclusion about this.
And so, the pilot, perhaps out of frustration,
talks to the media.
[Narrator] In December 1986,
one month after the encounter,
Captain Terauchi contacted Kyodo News
and said he believed the mysterious crafts
were of extraterrestrial origin.
The unauthorized statements
prompted Japan Air Lines officials
to remove Captain Terauchi from pilot duty
and assign him to a desk job.
[Pope] I've spoken to pilots who have seen
amazing things out there,
but never report it
because of the fear of being disbelieved,
being ridiculed and,
perhaps, being grounded.
You won't be flying anymore. So,
what do they say? Most times, nothing.
[Tsoukalos] You have countless
commercial and private airline pilots
who spend an exorbitant amount of time up in the sky.
And in my opinion, I think they're the best people
to discern what is natural
and what is not.
When investigating UFO sightings,
one of the most important things to consider
is the credibility of the witness.
Which is exactly what makes a story from Germany
so compelling, when strange aerial activity
was experienced not just by one
but by hundreds of people.
[Narrator] Nuremberg, Germany.
At dawn on April 14, 1561,
the citizens of this Bavarian city
at the center of Europe
awake to a commotion in the sky unlike anything
they have ever experienced before.
People went outside and they saw
what they described as a celestial battle.
The witnesses observed seeing hundreds
of these strange-shaped objects.
What were these strange shapes that they were describing?
[Narrator] The aerial scene,
illustrated in this contemporary woodcut,
is described in the accompanying text
as "a very frightful spectacle."
Strange objects seemed to launch projectiles
as onlookers below watch in amazement.
This was actually witnessed by thousands of people.
Had it been a meteor shower or something like this,
then the reports would have been,
"Okay, this happened before because
we've seen this before." But that was new.
[Henry] The witnesses,
they wouldn't have had a conception
of some kind of a mechanical spacecraft,
but that seems to be exactly what they were describing.
And this has to be one of the greatest mass sightings
of a UFO phenomenon in all of recorded history.
[Narrator] Incredibly, a very similar incident
was reported in Basel, Switzerland, five years later,
and was illustrated in a woodcut that still exists to this day.
Is it possible that these two events,
witnessed by thousands,
represent the first mass UFO sightings on record?
[Tsoukalos] The UFO phenomenon is not modern.
It goes back as far as we can remember,
because we have accounts of lights and craft,
not only in modern times
but also in ancient times.
[Narrator] Ancient astronaut theorists
find it remarkable that the depictions
of these 16th-century sightings include every shape of craft
that has been reported by UFO witnesses in modern times.
But it also poses an important question:
if these are, in fact,
representations of alien vehicles,
what could explain all the different shapes?
[Birnes] So it well might be that different types
of UFOs are tasked for different purposes.
There are scout ships,
there are ships that only orbit,
there are mother ships.
They're all tasked for different purposes.
[Noory] If you look at our planet today,
almost every country has some kind of flying machine
that is different from what we have.
I think the same thing is the case with extraterrestrials.
Let's assume there's ten different E.T. races
within our Milky Way galaxy.
Each one could have a different shape to its craft
because that's just the way they created it.
And I think that's very conceivable
when we see cigar-shaped UFOs,
triangular-shaped UFOs,
round UFOs, they're coming
from different planetary systems
throughout the universe.
What did the people of Nuremberg and Basel
observe in their skies?
Was it simply a unique celestial event?
Or might they have witnessed extraterrestrial spacecraft?
Whatever the case may be,
there's no question that the vast number
of UFO sightings is certainly compelling.
From the foo fighters of World War II
to reports filed by commercial airline pilots,
and even the bizarre craft known
as the Spaghetti Monster--
as more sightings are reported,
it's only a matter of time
before we'll find undeniable proof
of extraterrestrial visitation.
CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY A+E NETWORKS