WILLIAM SHATNER: Massive objects,
hovering over major cities.
Close encounters, with strange glowing orbs.
And high-speed chases in the sky...
above America's capital.
Every year, thousands of people report looking up to the sky
and catching sight of what can only be described as
unidentified flying objects.
And remarkably, a vast majority of these strange,
and sometimes disturbing, incidents take place
in the same locations here on Earth.
Is it possible that extraterrestrial spacecraft
are repeatedly visiting our planet at
so-called UFO hot spots?
Well, that is what we will try and find out.
♪ ♪
SHATNER: At 6:55 p.m., police in this small desert city
receive reports of a massive, V-shaped,
unidentified flying object in the night sky.
Over the next three hours, the craft is witnessed
by thousands of people as it journeys
southeast into the state of Arizona.
Because most of the sightings were reported by the residents
of Phoenix, the incident is known...
as the Phoenix Lights.
For me, it was just another night.
I was at home, I was upstairs in our bedroom.
And I'm lying in bed, I see three lights pop up.
I grab my video camera, I run outside on the balcony,
and I did capture video of formations of these
lights or actual craft,
arranged in a V or triangle.
We're talking mile to eight miles wide
gliding silently, some at a distance
but most at rooftop level.
Some people said they could have thrown
a rock at it, it was that close.
NICK POPE: Phoenix is a city of about five million people.
And here they are, looking up and seeing this immense UFO
flying at fairly low altitude quite slowly.
This was a sighting on an almost unprecedented scale.
SHATNER: The giant, V-shaped object reportedly
hovered above Phoenix for three hours,
before it finally disappeared over the horizon.
The "Phoenix Lights" incident
made headlines across the country.
Many eyewitnesses were convinced that what they saw
was-- not a man-made airplane-- but rather...
an extraterrestrial spacecraft.
Lots of people saw this.
You have a lot of general consistency
with how this was reported.
But you had skeptics saying, well, the thing that people
saw going down the state was actually just aircraft.
And then a spokesperson from the National Guard
made an announcement and said, "Yeah, those lights that people
"saw over the city, that was actually
"flares that we dropped
by A-10 Warthog aircraft."
Not if you talk to the witnesses.
There were a number of witnesses who were quite adamant
that this was extraterrestrial.
And one of the witnesses, turns out, was actually
the governor of the state, Fife Symington.
As a pilot and a former Air Force officer,
I can definitively say that this craft did not
resemble any man-made object that I'd ever seen.
KITEI: With the Phoenix Lights phenomena,
what's really exciting is that more and more
credible people have come forward.
All I knew is that it was so beyond anything
I ever imagined being here on this Earth.
To date, the Phoenix Lights phenomena has
never been recreated or explained.
SHATNER: While the Phoenix Lights is one of the most
extraordinary UFO encounters in history...
it is just one of many mysterious sightings
that have taken place in the state of Arizona.
According to the National UFO Reporting Center,
there have been approximately 5,000
UFO reports in Arizona, going all the way back to the 1940s.
On July 7, 1947, William A. Rhodes,
an amateur photographer, saw an elliptical, metallic object.
He managed to capture two excellent photographs
of this object at very low altitude.
And he sent them into the Arizona Republic Newspaper,
which published them on the front page.
And if you look at these photographs,
you can see they show a very
solid-looking metallic-gray object at low altitude.
These photographs have never been debunked.
So, this is a very important case.
RICHARD DOLAN: There was, what I believe is a genuine UFO crash
that occurred in Kingman, Arizona, in May of 1953.
This was apparently the recovery of
a-a virtually intact downed flying saucer.
The witnesses came out and this was quite a significant case.
And then probably the most famous of the many
UFO sightings Arizona has had
is the Travis Walton abduction experience from 1975
that took place in November of that year,
and made national news.
And so, Arizona has its own long history
of anomalous activity, for sure.
SHATNER: According to researchers, Arizona is one
of several locations around the globe
where UFO sightings are reported far more often than normal.
These places are referred to... as "UFO hot spots."
A hot spot is an area where
there are more UFO sightings
than chance alone would allow, even factoring in
concepts like population density.
We see some areas where, frankly, there are very,
very few sightings, but conversely, some areas
where there are a lot of sightings.
So, if we're being visited by extraterrestrials,
certain areas interest them for some reason
that we maybe yet haven't discerned.
DOLAN: There do seem to be certain areas where these
unusual or unknown things are seen more than others.
So, for example, Catalina Island off the coast of L.A.
has an incredible high-density number of very bizarre things.
It's definitely a place
where there has been documented
and recorded high level of UFO activity.
Also, you get a lot of these UFO hot spots throughout Europe.
Germany's interesting from a UFO point of view because
most of these cases are really baffling and don't make sense.
What we see in these areas is a disproportionately
large amount of UFO activity.
And that's absolutely what we're seeing here in Arizona.
Arizona has played a very powerful role
in our understanding of the UFO phenomenon.
KITEI: There is a vast history in Arizona
of UFO anomalous sightings.
And people ask me, "Do you believe in UFOs?"
For someone who has had an unexplained
phenomena experience, it isn't a belief.
It's a knowing.
The amount of strange sightings in the skies of Arizona
is fascinating, and makes you wonder,
could there really be extraterrestrials
visiting us from somewhere in the vast universe?
Well, there's a notorious UFO hot spot
in Northeastern Utah
that just might provide the answer.
It's a place called Skinwalker Ranch.
SHATNER: Tucked away in the shadow of a rocky plateau,
is a 512-acre property that is famous for having
a long history of eerie UFO sightings.
This mysterious place is known...
as Skinwalker Ranch.
WINTERTON: Skinwalker Ranch may look like any other ranch on the surface,
but you get to the ranch, you realize that
just below the surface lies one of the strangest
and most unexplainable places in the world.
Skinwalker Ranch is a hot spot of many reported phenomenon,
such as a large number of UFO sightings,
along with a lot of strange energies, cattle mutilations,
and all kinds of unexplainable phenomena.
ERIK BARD: Through the years, folks have reported unusual
atmospheric phenomena, and UFOs or what we call UAPs today.
But also, so-called "orbs," balls of light
moving around on the property or in the sky.
Really, just a lot of strange things
that affect human beings viscerally.
This has been going on for quite some time
and so, there must be something unseen
that makes this a very special place.
The lore associated with the ranch goes back at least
as far as the Native American tradition of the skinwalker,
from which the ranch receives its name.
WINTERTON: The story is told that back in the early 1800s,
a Navajo shaman cursed this particular
piece of ground with the Curse of the Skinwalker.
And the skinwalker is this shape-shifting,
demonic being that can take on the form
of many different animals, including that of a man.
We have stories of the skinwalker traversing
Skinwalker Ridge, which runs the entire
east/west length of the ranch.
SHATNER: For more than a century,
local Indigenous tribes
have firmly believed that Skinwalker Ranch
is cursed by a shape-shifting creature.
And in modern times, many people consider
the property to be a UFO hot spot.
The ranch attracted so much attention, that in 1996,
billionaire aerospace tycoon,
and UFO enthusiast, Robert Bigelow
bought the ranch to try and solve
the long-standing mystery of this remote location.
After the ranch was sold to Robert Bigelow,
he created the institution known as NIDS,
the National Institute for Discovery Science.
And he hired some very excellent scientists
for the purpose of setting up a genuinely scientific
investigation of the phenomena that were happening there.
DENNETT: Robert Bigelow was able to, in fact,
record a lot of UFO activity of all kinds.
However, they were never able to discover the mechanism
behind this or what is truly going on at Skinwalker Ranch.
SHATNER: In 2016, Robert Bigelow sold Skinwalker Ranch,
effectively ending his UFO investigation there.
The property was purchased by real estate mogul Brandon Fugal,
who assembled a team of scientists and investigators
that has spent the last several years
conducting the most comprehensive
investigation of Skinwalker Ranch in history.
Our team has demonstrated
an unequaled dedication to finding
the truth at Skinwalker Ranch.
Oh, oh, oh! Right here!
-Over here! -Right there.
FUGAL: We may be embarking on some of the most
important work of our time.
We are looking for the nature of the universe
and I truly believe that Skinwalker Ranch is a place
where some of these questions
may be answered or at least better understood.
TAYLOR: I'm a scientist who is looking at the question of
what are the UAPs and UFOs,
and are we alone in the universe?
There are so many different phenomena
that happen at Skinwalker Ranch.
And we have physical evidence of these phenomena existing,
with actual, real scientific equipment.
Whereas the previous researchers were dependent upon
VHS technology for recording things in time-lapse format,
we're taking full, high-definition video using
a combination of what are called bullet cameras--
PTZ or pan, tilt, zoom cameras--
that allow us to look around and zoom in on features of interest,
to discern between the mundane and the exceptional.
You can't do that without these tools.
SHATNER: In the course of their investigation,
the Skinwalker team has
successfully documented numerous UFOs
that defy explanation.
One of the most intriguing theories about
this hot spot is that UFOs are visiting Skinwalker Ranch
by traveling through a portal in the sky, that acts as a doorway
between our planet and a distant part of the universe.
Curiously, this notion can be traced
back for hundreds of years,
in the traditions of the local Indigenous nations.
The idea of dimensions and portals is
the one thing that kind of ties everything together.
If you look up at the top of the mesa,
there are these rocks in a circular pattern around there.
There's a large mound in the middle with
a spiral set of rocks coming off of it.
The Navajo oral history
tells us that this spiral is indicative of a vortex
or a dimensional gate that can be used by people
that have come from the stars.
So, we're seeing these things as
indications that the Natives back then were seeing unusual
things happening and were recording them, too.
SHATNER: The current investigators on Skinwalker Ranch have conducted
numerous experiments looking for evidence that might support
this incredible theory.
And in 2021, what they witnessed while
tracking a UFO in the sky... left them baffled.
-TAYLOR: Wow! That's crazy. -FUGAL: It's moving.
It's moving way too fast for it to be a satellite.
BEDARD: This thing's really clipping along.
Oh, my gosh. It disappeared.
-Can you replay that? -Yeah.
-Hold on. -TAYLOR: What did it
-disappear into? -I'm gonna go back
and replay this.
FUGAL: Is it a portal?
Are we seeing portals open?
TAYLOR: Looking at videos and instrument data that had
come in, the UFO suddenly vanished in the sky.
-That's crazy. -FUGAL: Unbelievable.
TAYLOR: Now, people think that it's all sorts of things.
There's been a lot of speculation
that Skinwalker Ranch is
the site of a portal or a wormhole
that alien civilizations are using for moving in and out
of underground bases hidden in the mesa.
But right now we only have data to say
that there is some strange phenomenon here,
that's not in other places across the world.
SHATNER: After documenting a UFO simply vanishing
above the ranch in 2021, the following year
the team conducted a new experiment in the same area
by launching a rocket into the sky.
Oh, we got a malfunction! Everybody watch out!
SHATNER: To their shock and amazement,
the rocket exploded in midair.
(all shouting, clamoring)
Incredibly, video analysis showed that the rocket seemed to
collide with something
that was invisible to the naked eye.
But just what it was, remains a mystery.
TAYLOR: Since I've been out there at Skinwalker Ranch,
I've seen so many different things that before,
I would've not really believed they existed.
However, we are getting more data
that might give us new insight on what they really are.
Could an interdimensional portal or an underground alien base
really exist at Skinwalker Ranch?
Well, it will be more than interesting to see
what is ultimately revealed there.
But some say that the question of whether or not
aliens exist may have already been answered
more than 60 years ago.
SHATNER: A quiet evening in the control tower is interrupted,
when Air Traffic Controller Harry Barnes
detects numerous unidentified objects flying
in the sky 15 miles south of the city.
And these objects are headed directly towards the heart
of the United States government.
This air traffic controller saw an echelon formation
of seven objects he couldn't identify.
Not only did he see these, but they estimated
they were flying at 7,000 miles per hour.
Faster than any conventional plane
anywhere on the planet.
DOLAN: At the same time, Andrews Air Force Base,
which is less than ten miles away,
is also tracking what turned out to be
the same targets in the same location.
But in addition to that,
there were commercial pilots
in the air at that time who also
saw these objects, whatever they were.
So, you have two radars plus visual confirmation.
And here's what was really crazy.
These objects were seen over-- guess where?
The Capitol and the White House.
So, at that point, the decision was clearly made
to scramble a couple of F-94 fighter interceptors.
The jets were vectored towards the area
where some of this UFO activity had taken place.
The UFOs then departed.
Then when the jets got low on fuel and had to
return to base, the UFOs came back.
It's almost like they were playing cat and mouse
with the military.
SHATNER: The unidentified flying objects finally disappeared
for good around 5:30 a.m., after being tracked by both
civilian and military radar for nearly six hours.
News that UFOs had been detected and pursued by military jets
in the air over Washington, D.C.
astonished the public and triggered widespread panic.
BIRNES: The sightings of UFOs were on front pages of
newspapers across the country.
There was so much excitement,
so much panic
about who are these things,
what are these things,
who's piloting them, where are they from.
That's how crazy this was.
DOLAN: At that point, UFOs, flying saucers were
dominating so much of the news.
This was really becoming a serious,
if nothing else, public relations problem
for the military,
if not a national security problem, frankly.
SHATNER: The national panic escalated one week later,
on Saturday, July 26,
when unidentified objects were detected moving at high speed
over Washington, D.C., for a second time.
The following weekend, the entire scene repeated itself.
Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base
were tracking up to a dozen of these objects simultaneously.
Multiple times, F-94s would approach.
But every single time,
these objects just sped away.
And, uh, this went on, actually, through the night.
This is David Brinkley in the radar room
at Washington National Airport.
On these radar screens last Saturday,
they saw something strange and unusual
and, at the moment, unexplainable.
It was not an airplane. It was not a cloud.
Nobody knows what it was.
GREG EGHIGIAN: As a result of the panic that ensued
in the wake of all this,
the U.S. Air Force
felt it was necessary to bring out a major general,
John Samford,
to explain what was going on at the time.
I am here to discuss the so-called flying saucers.
EGHIGIAN: His explanation was that these things could be explained
very simply as temperature phenomena.
It does not contain any pattern of purpose
or of consistency that we can relate with any--
to any conceivable threat to the United States.
And that, therefore, nothing really need concern the public.
Um, that did not really resolve the matter for a lot of people.
SHATNER: The extraordinary sightings over Washington, D.C.,
convinced many Americans that the city
was a hot spot for UFO activity.
And ever since 1952,
people have continued to report
seeing strange objects in the sky
above the nation's capital.
What a lot of people don't realize is
that this wasn't a one-off.
You get incidents over a series of years.
BIRNES: For over 70 years,
there are reports of UFOs flying over the District.
Washington, D.C, ever since the 1950s,
has been a UFO hot spot,
because that's where the seat of government is.
And if whoever is piloting the UFOs
wanted to contact the United States,
they go to Washington, D.C.
SHATNER: For decades, the U.S. government has dismissed
UFO reports over Washington, D.C.,
and denied having any knowledge
about potential extraterrestrial spacecraft.
But in recent years,
UFO sightings have once again attracted
mainstream media attention.
And so the federal government has been forced
to both acknowledge and investigate this phenomenon.
Just recently, in 2022...
ANDRE CARSON: We will now turn to the business of this hearing...
...Congress held the first congressional hearings
in about 50 years,
and this is a landmark event in UFO history.
Unidentified aerial phenomena
are a potential national security threat.
DENNETT: For the first time, our own government has said
that UFOs, UAPs are real.
EGHIGIAN: These congressional hearings really were dedicated
to just getting an update on UFOs.
We didn't get a lot of new, kind of, information
that was terribly substantive,
uh, except to know and to acknowledge that, in fact,
the American national intelligence community
is interested in UFOs
and keeping tabs on the phenomenon.
Has the United States government
really been withholding information
about extraterrestrials since the 1950s?
And if so,
could that mean that other nations also know more
about the UFO phenomenon than they are letting on?
Perhaps the answer can be found by investigating
the many mysterious sightings that have taken place
in a tiny village known as
the UFO capital of the United Kingdom.
SHATNER: This small village lies about 30 miles east
of the city of Edinburgh.
On the surface,
Bonnybridge seems to be merely a quaint rural community.
But appearances can be deceiving.
Because even though the town has a population
of less than 10,000 people,
there are approximately 300 UFO sightings reported here
every year.
(camera shutter clicking)
So many, in fact,
that Bonnybridge has become known
as the UFO capital of the United Kingdom.
According to locals,
the sightings began in 1992.
EGHIGIAN: James Walker describes having witnessed
a strange set of lights that really caught his attention.
And that seemed to be the spark
for what was going to become a wave of sightings
over the ensuing years.
SHATNER: In the past 30 years,
there have been more than 6,000 UFO sightings over Bonnybridge.
Many of them have been reported
to a local councilman named Billy Buchanan,
who is concerned about what is causing the phenomenon.
SHATNER: For years, Billy Buchanan and other local officials
have asked the British government to investigate
the UFO reports over Bonnybridge.
But, curiously, their requests have been denied.
SHATNER: Is the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence trying
to cover up the UFO sightings at Bonnybridge?
Some researchers believe that it's a distinct possibility.
And they further claim that Bonnybridge sits in the middle
of an even larger Scottish UFO hot spot that is referred to
as the Falkirk Triangle.
DOLAN: If you look at Glasgow and Edinburgh
and you go north in a kind of triangle,
you'll get to a place known as the Falkirk Triangle.
And when you look at the sightings,
there's a lot of video and photographic evidence
that's available of some of these,
and they are quite interesting indeed.
SHATNER: In recent years, some researchers have theorized
that the British government dismisses all of these sightings
in order to hide the truth
not just about extraterrestrial spacecraft
but also...
classified military technology.
POPE: There are
some people who believe
that some of this UFO activity,
not necessarily all,
is attributable to secret prototype military aircraft
from a particular remote Scottish airbase
called Machrihanish.
Could the UFOs that appear over Bonnybridge
actually be extraterrestrial spacecraft?
Or perhaps classified military airplanes?
While experts in Scotland remain at a loss
for definitive answers,
in Germany,
a group of scientists are testing a new camera system
that may help identify strange aerial phenomena.
The technology was developed because many people believe
that the entire country
is one giant UFO hot spot.
SHATNER: At the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg,
researchers announce an exciting new technology known as SkyCAM.
SkyCAM is a visual tracking system
specifically designed to search the skies
and scientifically identify UFOs.
DENNETT: The German government
is very interested in this technology
and has invested 2.6 million euros,
which is quite a lot.
And this is significant because it shows
that they are taking this subject very seriously
and are interested in investigating it
and determining whether UFOs are flying around
over their country.
SHATNER: But why is the German government so eager to learn
about unidentified aerial phenomena?
Well, as it turns out,
Germany appears to have a UFO problem.
According to the German Association for UFO Research,
there have been more than 140,000 reports
of unidentified flying objects in the last 50 years.
And nearly 7,000 of these cases
continue to defy explanation.
Perhaps the best-known German UFO incident
was a mass sighting
that took place in 1990.
DOLAN: In August of 1990,
there were a series of sightings
throughout that entire month of August
that were really quite interesting.
They're known as the Greifswald Lights.
People were seeing these luminous spheres
over the Baltic Sea by Greifswald.
And the lights were hovering, maneuvering.
These were photographed and video-recorded
by a lot of people, including, uh, several scientists.
DENNETT: These were seen by hundreds of people.
And what's interesting is this was not a brief sighting.
These objects stayed in place for over an hour.
And when they would depart,
people reported there would be a huge flash of light
that would cover most of the sky.
SHATNER: The so-called Greifswald Lights incident
continues to baffle experts
more than 30 years after it took place.
But there was a more recent UFO sighting in Germany
that had an even bigger impact on the country.
POPE: In January 2014,
an entire airport in Germany,
Bremen Airport,
was temporarily closed because of a UFO sighting.
A number of flights were either canceled,
diverted or delayed.
The air traffic control people were obviously concerned
that there was something mysterious and unknown
flying in restricted airspace
and-and creating a flight safety hazard.
POPE: The fact that a major national airport
was temporarily closed
just shows that whatever you think is going on,
this raises some fairly important issues.
SHATNER: Do UFOs pose a threat to public safety in Germany,
as recent events suggest?
And if so,
will the new SkyCAM system help solve the mystery?
Perhaps.
But Germany is not the only nation
that is trying to learn more about UFOs.
In June of 2022,
NASA announced the creation of a new team that will investigate
unidentified anomalous phenomena.
EGHIGIAN: What's unique about this is
this is a government-sponsored initiative
that is aimed at scientifically investigating the phenomena,
rather than looking at it through military intelligence.
That's unusual,
because NASA has never, ever
wanted to be seen as interested,
let alone investigating, the UFO phenomena.
That now grants this all a great deal more legitimacy.
Without question,
we are at a new stage
in the study of UFOs.
The fact that scientific studies
are being conducted all over the world
suggests that, someday soon,
we may finally learn the truth about the UFO phenomenon.
And there are those who believe that day can't come soon enough.
Because there's growing evidence
that UFOs are monitoring our nuclear facilities.
SHATNER: In the early morning, a soldier is patrolling the grounds
of this highly guarded nuclear missile base
when he suddenly spots a glowing red light
hovering in the sky.
Malmstrom Air Force Base is where we have
many intercontinental
nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
(Klaxon alarm sounding)
And this red glowing light
showed up right at the front gate.
The whole base was on red alert
as this object was reported to Captain Robert Salas,
who was underground monitoring this base.
At that point, Salas sees the controls
for 10 ICBMs that were right there in front of him,
and he sees 'em all go offline.
Bing, bing, bing, bing.
-All ten of them. -(beeping)
They could not find any scientific explanation
as to why those missiles should have gone offline,
and they were concerned about it.
SHATNER: Reportedly, when Captain Salas dispatched a team
to investigate the UFO,
it quickly departed.
And then the missile launch systems came back online.
Due to the alarming nature of the encounter,
the Air Force Office of Special Investigations
classified the Malmstrom incident
at the "top secret" level.
DENNETT: Our government has refused
to acknowledge that this event even happened,
though documents released
through the Freedom of Information Act show
that this incident did, in fact, take place,
and it's one of many
in which UFOs have hovered over nuclear power stations
and nuclear missile sites.
If you scour the databases of various UFO organizations,
you will see that these UFOs are hovering over
nuclear power stations, nuclear missile sites,
nuclear-powered vehicles,
ships and submarines of all kinds.
SHATNER: For many, the idea that nuclear facilities are hot spots
for UFO visitation is alarming.
But on the other hand,
some researchers suggest that extraterrestrials
do not intend to attack these military bases.
Rather, they propose that otherworldly beings
simply want to protect us from ourselves.
DOLAN: From the end of World War II
until the end of the 20th century,
this world detonated over 2,000 nuclear devices
in the upper atmosphere.
It was incredible.
So I don't think there's any surprise
why any alien or extraterrestrial group
would be interested in our nuclear technology
and wonder, like,
"Are these people gonna blow themselves up?"
POPE: Frankly, there are different viewpoints
on these UFO hot spots.
Any day now, it is possible we will have
definitive, smoking-gun proof
of the nature of what we're actually dealing with here.
Maybe something seen with a telescope.
Maybe something buried in an old government file.
But I think we're closing in on the most exciting discovery
that humanity has ever made.
So, what do you think?
Could extraterrestrials really be visiting our planet?
And if so, is it for reasons that we should embrace...
or fear?
Perhaps these so-called UFO hot spots will play a key role
in our finally understanding
what we're seeing in the skies above us.
But until we can truly identify
these remarkable flying objects,
they will remain...
unexplained.
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