Ancient Aliens s21e09 Episode Script

1
NARRATOR: Dr. J. Allen Hynek
was a pioneering scientist
who developed smart weapons,
optical tracking systems
and space satellites.
But his passion was studying
unidentified flying objects.
LUIS ELIZONDO: J. Allen Hynek was
this very highly trained scientist
that was convinced that there was
something to this phenomenon.
NARRATOR: Dr. Hynek revolutionized
how UFOs are studied.
TRAVIS TAYLOR: J. Allen
Hynek took the scientific method
to the UFO-UAP problem, and he says,
"We need to take it serious."
That changed the community forever.
NARRATOR: And as far as
UFO researchers are concerned,
he helped to establish
that there is a presence
in our skies that is not of this world.
HYNEK: I'm quite certain
there is a real phenomenon.
It is not all nonsense.
♪
NARRATOR: In the 1940s,
people around the world became aware
of a startling new phenomenon:
flying saucers.
Over the next several decades,
a highly renowned astronomer,
astrophysicist and professor
became the leading proponent
for the study of flying saucers
and other unidentified flying objects.
His name was Dr. J. Allen Hynek.
Even the grossest skeptic can't deny
that the UFO reports not
only exist, but persist.
We have reports
from 133 different countries,
and the same pattern exists
around the world.
Many of the reports come
from highly, highly credible,
technically trained people, you see.
NARRATOR: At a time when
the government, the military
and nearly the entire
academic community mocked
and shunned anyone who spoke about UFOs,
Hynek had the courage
to treat the topic seriously.
And as far as ufologists are concerned,
Dr. J. Allen Hynek was the ideal person
to advocate
that UFOs are a real phenomenon,
because he started off as a skeptic,
hired by the U.S. Air Force
to debunk reports of UFOs.
J. Allen Hynek
is really the cornerstone,
I believe, of modern ufology.
He was a very serious
and credentialed academic
brought in by the government
to debunk the UAP topic,
only to be immersed in the topic
and realize that it's real.
DAVID CHILDRESS: Hynek was really viewed
as the king of ufology.
He was the one who was saying
that there's something
going on out there,
and it's worthy of scientific study.
TAYLOR: J. Allen Hynek
actually took the scientific method
to the UFO-UAP problem.
And I think that's the first time
someone actually started taking
the UFO situation seriously
and applying methods
that would enable us
to actually figure out what it is.
Dr. Allen Hynek,
who is the leading expert
on UFOs in this country
and probably in the world.
It's a very, very real phenomenon
of some sort is going on.
This all calls
for some very real research,
and no real research has been done.
MICHIO KAKU: Dr. Hynek was fearless,
saying, "I believe in science,
"I believe in testability,
I believe in pushing
the boundaries of science."
It is my growing feeling
across the years
that the UFO phenomenon,
not-not any hypothesis,
but the phenomenon itself is signaling,
I think, a coming change
in the scientific paradigm.
He is one of the,
if not the, founding father
of modern-day ufology.
I'm not sure we'd be here
if it wasn't for Hynek.
NARRATOR: While Dr. Hynek's focus
was the modern-day UFO phenomenon,
ancient astronaut theorists point out
that he was also intrigued
by the theories posed
by Erich von Däniken
in his groundbreaking book,
Chariots of the Gods.
PHIL IMBROGNO: Dr. Hynek
did mention Von Däniken
a number of times.
He said, "There are things
that can't be explained from
a historical point of view,"
and that we have to consider
that extraterrestrials
came here a long time ago
and interfered or helped human beings
develop their civilization.
He said, "You can't rule it out."
NARRATOR: But how did
a world-renowned scientist,
hired by the military to put an end
to the so-called "flying disc craze,"
end up becoming a champion
for the study of UFOs?
Joseph Allen Hynek is born
into a working-class family
of Czechoslovakian immigrants.
As a young boy, he's stricken
with scarlet fever,
which leads to
a formative moment in his life.
ROXANE HYNEK: In those days,
one of the treatments was
to keep the child in bed.
So it was almost a year,
something like that.
So, his mom got him a book on astronomy.
And that's what set
the whole thing in motion.
NARRATOR: By the time he was a teenager,
Hynek had also developed
an interest in mysticism,
theosophy and Rosicrucianism
an ancient society
of mystics and philosophers.
PAUL HYNEK: He thought there
was something implicit underneath
and perhaps behind the stars.
I think that's what drove him
to look there,
and astronomy was the method
for him to sort of reconcile
to take a flashlight to the dim edges
of mainstream science
and shine a bit of light out there
and find the magic in the universe.
NARRATOR: Hynek earned
his PhD in astrophysics
at the University of Chicago in 1935,
and quickly gained fame
as a highly respected scientist.
He helped develop
the world's first smart weapons
during World War II,
worked on technology
for space telescopes,
and pioneered satellite tracking.
JACQUES VALLEE: He was on the cover
of Life magazine after Sputnik
because he had been the man
to really build the entire
American tracking system from scratch
with special telescopes
that could move very quickly,
could track an object in the sky.
And it was also the administration
of a worldwide network
of observing stations.
Dr. Hynek had managed all that.
NARRATOR: By his mid-30s,
J. Allen Hynek had already
made a name for himself
as an astronomer and astrophysicist.
But a series of extraordinary events
would dramatically change
the trajectory of his career.
In June 1947,
pilot Kenneth Arnold
reported seeing nine disc-shaped objects
flying near Mount Rainier in Washington.
Less than a month later,
there is a report of a flying saucer
crashing outside the town
of Roswell, New Mexico.
And in January 1948,
Army Captain Thomas Mantell
tragically died in a plane crash
while chasing a UFO over Kentucky.
The U.S. Air Force was
really put on the spot
to have some kind of public
engagement with this phenomenon.
People wanted to know about it.
And they created in 1948,
something known as "Project Sign."
NARRATOR:
Project Sign was the very first
government investigation into UFOs.
To lead the scientific side
of the project,
they chose Dr. Hynek.
These three Air Force officers came by,
and for about a half an hour,
we just talked
about the weather and this and that.
JOEL HYNEK: My father liked to say
that he was like the innocent
bystander that got shot.
He had no idea what he was in for,
but he thought he should help
the Air Force calm the public,
you know, after the war, so,
that's why he did it.
CHILDRESS: Hynek would
explain all these UFO reports
as meteors, as comets,
as reflections off clouds,
as stars that were bright in the sky,
or the planet Venus.
Anything
that would explain this activity
as other than flying saucers or UFOs.
NARRATOR: Hynek served
as the scientific advisor
for Project Sign,
which lasted less than a year.
It was followed
by another UFO investigation
called "Project Grudge,"
which was terminated so quickly,
Hynek never had a chance to join it.
But reports of UFOs
only continued to increase,
prompting the government to launch
a much more substantial initiative
to study, and ultimately debunk, UFOs,
called "Project Blue Book."
But the longer Dr. Hynek studied
the UFO phenomenon,
the more convinced he became
that it could not be dismissed.
NARRATOR: In the aftermath
of World War II,
the United States has become engaged
in a Cold War with the Soviet Union.
There has also been
an increase in reports
of unidentified flying objects,
and some fear the UFOs
could be Soviet aircraft.
But with extraterrestrials
becoming a popular theme
in 1950s science fiction,
many others are genuinely concerned
about an alien invasion.
After the war,
there were strange sightings
of things in the sky,
and people began to wonder
what's up there?
People were afraid
of aliens in outer space.
And so, Project Blue Book
was created as a consequence.
NARRATOR: Project Blue Book was
the Air Force's third
and most significant investigation
into the UFO phenomenon.
And once again, they looked
to Dr. J. Allen Hynek
to be the scientific face
of the project.
MARK O'CONNELL: The Air Force said,
"We keep getting these reports.
It's still a problem.
"In fact, it's a bigger problem
than it was
"the last time we talked to you.
Would you be willing to come
back and help us with this?"
So Hynek agrees.
KAKU: The military wanted to
squash any of this speculation
about aliens from outer space
or what have you.
You see, the government wanted
to control the agenda,
and flying saucers did not fit
with that agenda.
We were in a race with Russia.
It was the McCarthy period.
Anyone who deviated from this agenda
would put their scientific
reputation on the line.
JOEL: I think being
patriotic is part of why
he worked for the Air Force
'cause that was, uh,
you know, after the war,
and everybody was very
gung ho and let's help
the government and the country.
You see, there's nothing more cocky
than a relatively young PhD,
just coming out of
NARRATOR: But shortly
after joining Project Blue Book,
Hynek's notion
that UFOs were nonsense
would be seriously challenged.
An air traffic controller
at Washington National Airport
is alarmed when he picks up
seven strange objects
on his radar screen,
and he quickly determines
they are unlike any man-made
aircraft he has ever seen.
PAUL: These objects that
were spherical shaped were
moving up to 7,000 miles per hour
in very unconventional fashion.
We scrambled fighter jets after them,
but as soon as the jets got
aloft, the objects disappeared.
NARRATOR: One week later,
the strange objects appeared
over the nation's capital again.
POPE: There was a press
conference at the Pentagon
which was the biggest
single press conference
that had been held since the end
of the Second World War.
Hynek got to see the various reports.
The debunking explanation
was that these were mirages
sometimes caused
by a temperature inversion.
In other words, a layer
of particularly dense air.
NARRATOR: While Hynek publicly supported
the Air Force's explanation
for the Washington UFO sightings,
privately he was conflicted
about the investigation's findings.
The official conclusion
that an optical illusion was the source
of the alarming events caused
Hynek to begin to question
his colleague, Dr. Donald H. Menzel,
Director of the Harvard Observatory.
VALLEE: Dr. Hynek
disagreed with Dr. Menzel.
Dr. Menzel had "explained,"
when people were seeing those lights,
there was a temperature
inversion over Washington,
and that's why the radar was reflected.
I looked at that later,
and I met someone
who had been in that radar room.
And he left the room to see, well,
if he could see something in the sky.
And he could see the UFOs.
So, this was a visual sighting.
It wasn't just radar, which meant
that the Menzel explanation
didn't make any sense scientifically.
It was wrong scientifically.
NARRATOR: Project Blue
Book had just gotten underway,
but already,
Hynek was beginning to think
UFOs could be something more
than just natural phenomena.
NARRATOR: Over the years,
Hynek would become
increasingly conflicted
about his role on Project Blue Book.
I remember one time driving up
to Canada in the family car,
and I think I was about 15,
and I noticed
he's fidgeting with his hair,
and and I said,
"Dad, what's going on?"
He said, "Well, I'm-I'm on the fence."
I mean, he was on the fence.
Having to toe the party line
of the Air Force's that
there's nothing going on here,
that it's all explainable,
took a toll on him.
CHILDRESS: The Air Force
continually insisted that every
UFO incident had
some natural explanation.
And Hynek knew that that was untrue,
that while many UFO reports
could be explained naturally,
there were some that couldn't,
but the Air Force wouldn't
allow him to go that direction.
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:
The more he did his research,
and the more people he interviewed,
the more he realized, "Wait a second.
Not all of these eyewitnesses
are crazy."
In many cases, these
eyewitnesses were not alone
when they experienced their encounters,
or when they saw something.
IMBROGNO:
He began to realize how long
and these are his exact words
"How long am I gonna call these people
"crazy or incompetent?
"Some of them were seeing something
"very, very unexplainable,
and it should be investigated further."
NARRATOR: For more than a decade,
Dr. Hynek helped the Air Force
carry out its agenda,
assuring the public that UFOs
were nothing to be concerned about.
But that would begin to change in 1963,
when Hynek gained
a fierce ally in his pursuit
to make the government take the
study of UFOs more seriously:
Dr. Jacques Vallee.
NARRATOR: J. Allen Hynek
is entering his 11th year
as the scientific advisor
to Project Blue Book,
and is now also the chair
of Northwestern University's
astronomy department.
In the spring,
the 53-year-old professor
meets a young French astronomer
and computer science student
named Jacques Vallee.
One of the most important meetings
that Hynek had in his life
was when he first
came across Jacques Vallee.
Jacques Vallee was himself
an astronomer,
an astrophysicist really,
and he was also
an early computer pioneer.
NARRATOR: While working as an astronomer
at the Paris Observatory,
Vallee had conducted extensive research
about UFO activity throughout Europe.
Hynek was eager
to see Vallee's research,
but what impressed him the most
was that Vallee
had created a computer database
to analyze all of the data.
VALLEE: What I found
in developing a catalogue
of sightings were a number
of patterns that were interesting.
And in late '63, I traveled to Chicago
and met with Dr. Hynek
and started to compare notes
to see if those patterns
in Europe are the same
as were patterns in the United States.
TSOUKALOS: When Jacques
Vallee came into the picture,
a dynamic duo was formed
that was unstoppable,
because Vallee helped Hynek
computerize everything.
That was the next level in UFO research.
HENRY: Vallee has a
very scientific orientation
towards the study of this.
Together, they both have an intuition
that this is
an extraterrestrial phenomena,
and it needs to be treated as such.
VALLEE: We started to look
at patterns in the behavior
of UFO phenomena,
and we started finding things
that had not been published before,
had not been understood before.
IMBROGNO: Dr. Hynek
said, "This fellow is brilliant.
"He's respected in the scientific world,
"and he's coming out
with these ideas that
I would like to explore more."
And I think when Jacques Vallee
said, "This is what I believe,
and I'm not afraid to say this,"
Hynek felt relieved.
PAUL: Jacques was
a-a very frequent guest,
along with his wife and kids,
at our house.
He had a great passion for astronomy.
He saw a fascinating phenomena,
and he wanted to go
where the science led them.
I could see this special
fondness and reverence
my father had for Jacques.
NARRATOR: Working
with Vallee and his database,
Hynek encountered more and more
UFO sightings
that could not be easily explained.
But perhaps the most compelling case
he would investigate
not only had a report
of an object in the sky, but evidence
on the ground.
Dr. Hynek is summoned to the small town
of Socorro, New Mexico.
When he arrives, he is told
that local police officer
Lonnie Zamora encountered a UFO
on the outskirts of the city.
RICHARD DOLAN: April 24,
Lonnie Zamora is chasing a speeder
when he sees this thing zoom
across the sky
and go over a hill and possibly crash.
He stops the chase, gets out of his car,
goes up on foot to this hill,
and he sees this perfect,
egg-shaped thing
with landing gear and everything.
ELIZONDO: Lonnie Zamora recalls
seeing what he describes
as a-a some sort of vehicle craft
that would appear to be in distress.
And even perhaps little beings,
what we now refer to as "NHI,
non-human intelligence."
And in his report, they very quickly
and hurriedly get
into the aircraft and flew away.
NARRATOR: According to Zamora's report,
the brush was burning in several places,
and there were four
perpendicular impressions
left on the ground.
PAUL: When Project Blue Book
got word of the Socorro case,
they sent my father there
to explain it away.
But when my father got there,
he found it
to be a very compelling case.
There was Zamora, who clearly
seemed to be traumatized.
HYNEK: I visited
Socorro a number of times,
trying, frankly, to break down
the man's character
to try to find out whether he's capable
of the hoax and whether
what his gravitation is like,
and I've inquired
of, uh, people
who have known him all his life,
and even some parents
of some of my students happen
to live in Socorro,
and I roundabout tried that.
And he, Zamora, has always held up.
His character has simply held up
as a solid American citizen cop.
ELIZONDO: J. Allen Hynek realized
that Lonnie Zamora was not a fabricator,
that what he was saying
was an experience
that he believed
he actually experienced.
(camera shutter clicks)
And that may have had something to do
with J. Allen Hynek perhaps starting
to come around the corner
and change his position on the topic.
PAUL: Jacques told
me that it was this case
that was more or less the straw
that broke the camel's back,
to make my father feel comfortable
talking about UFO reports
with sightings of aliens.
VALLEE: This was the
first case where he said,
"Yes, these were creatures,"
because there were traces
of footsteps there
that were not human footsteps.
It was a turning point
because there was no question
something had happened,
and he had to take landings seriously.
NARRATOR: Despite the
evidence collected in New Mexico,
the Air Force insisted
that Hynek toe the company line,
and he dropped the investigation.
Hynek's frustration
with the military's policy
of denial was at an all-time high,
and when another extraordinary
UFO event occurred
two years later,
the acclaimed astronomer
would no longer stay quiet.
NARRATOR: J. Allen Hynek,
now in his 14th year
with Project Blue Book, is at home
when he catches a curious
segment on the evening news.
According to the report,
a farmer in rural Michigan
named Frank Manor
witnessed a UFO flying
above his property.
I looked north of me,
and, uh, there were
It looked like a falling star, or
It was red
and kind of coming down and
And, uh, when it got to the top
of the trees, it stopped.
And a a blue
and a white light come on.
And, uh, I looked at it, and
I thought I was seeing things.
NARRATOR: In addition to Frank Manor,
many other residents
across southern Michigan
saw the UFO, including a member
of law enforcement: Sheriff's
Sergeant Newell Snyder,
who drew a sketch of the flying craft.
SNYDER: It, uh, moved
very rapidly at any speed,
or rather, any direction
it wanted to go.
REPORTER: What do you think it was?
SNYDER: Well, if they
call it a flying saucer,
that's what it is.
NARRATOR: Over the next few nights,
dozens more UFO sightings were reported.
CHILDRESS: The 1966
UFO flap over Michigan happened
over several days.
And hundreds of witnesses saw
these weird flying saucer
lights in the sky.
It was big news at the time.
O'CONNELL: Dr. Hynek calls
his boss at Project Blue Book,
and he says, "Hey, something big
is going on in Michigan."
And his boss says, "You go to Michigan,
wipe out the whole thing.
Make it like it never happened."
NARRATOR: Hynek traveled to Michigan
to investigate the sightings,
and on March 25, he released
his conclusions to the press.
He claimed that the most likely cause
of the lights seen by witnesses
was not extraterrestrial activity,
but marsh gas.
I cannot prove in a court of law
that marsh gas is the full
explanation of these sightings,
but it does appear
to me extremely likely.
REPORTER: Are you saying, Doctor,
that Michigan is now producing
non-existent saucers?
(laughs) Well, it's, uh,
one way of putting it, I suppose.
NARRATOR: Hynek's conclusion
sparked outrage nationwide.
He was ridiculed by pundits,
op-ed columnists and cartoonists
who viewed him
as the ultimate government pawn.
DOLAN: It's an absolute
embarrassing debacle for him.
No one believed this.
So, this became the national joke.
JOEL: Michigan
that was a tough moment for him.
He really didn't know
what to make of it, uh,
but he was under a lot of
pressure to say something, and
he went with that.
ROXANE: I remember
the swamp gas incident.
I remember actually seeing him on TV.
And I-I could just see
in his face that it was just
not something he wanted to do.
NARRATOR: After his
disastrous press conference,
Hynek was summoned to Washington, D.C.
to testify before Congress.
And for the first time,
he defied his superiors
on Project Blue Book
and revealed his true thoughts
on the UFO phenomenon.
CHILDRESS: Hynek gets
in front of this committee
and says to them,
"UFOs are a worthy study,
and it needs scientific investigation."
TAYLOR: He's had enough, and he says,
"No, there's a scientific problem
"with UFOs.
We need to take it serious."
IMBROGNO: Hynek said
that when he made his official statement
about how he felt about UFOs,
he got into serious trouble
with the Air Force.
I don't think they did much
of anything to him,
but they cut him off
from support is what they did.
NARRATOR: After Hynek's
controversial testimony,
the Air Force opened an investigation
into Project Blue Book
chaired by physicist Edward Condon,
called "the Condon Committee."
By the end of 1969,
the Condon Committee terminated
Project Blue Book,
and J. Allen Hynek was finally
free to speak openly about UFOs.
In my association
with Project Blue Book, I know,
and I know very well that
it was not a scientific project.
I also know that they never,
never would notify the media
when an interesting case came up.
They did everything they could to
- REPORTER: Keep it down.
- push it, keep it down.
TSOUKALOS: J. Allen Hynek became
a well-known figure on television,
on radio,
talking about aerial phenomena.
And in doing so,
he became, well, Mr. UFO,
I guess the first one there ever was.
And he really took this whole
research topic to another level.
ROXANE: My parents were
a bit concerned about his
mainstream reputation being damaged.
It was so different
than it is now as far as
if somebody talked about UFOs,
they could lose their careers,
their kids could be hounded at school.
So, there was a real stigma back then.
But I don't think
it slowed my father down.
It was a brave thing to do.
NARRATOR: After
spending more than 20 years
helping the U.S. government
convince the public
that there is nothing mysterious
in our skies,
Hynek was now leading the charge
to legitimize the study of UFOs.
And he would soon reach
a larger audience
than ever before with the help
of Steven Spielberg.
NARRATOR: After investigating
UFOs for more than 24 years,
J. Allen Hynek publishes his first book
on the phenomenon The UFO Experience.
HENRY: It's an instant
bestseller, mega bestseller.
One of the key elements in the book is
the "close encounter" classification.
This becomes a framework
for people to categorize
their UFO experience.
Is it a close encounter
of the first kind?
In other words, did you see something
less than 500 feet away?
Close encounter of the second kind
was there a physical effect
that was felt?
Was there a burn mark?
Is there physical evidence left
by perhaps a landing of the craft?
And then the close encounter
of the third kind,
which is the sighting
of an animated figure,
be it a humanoid being
or perhaps a robot
within or near that craft.
NARRATOR: Today,
more than five decades
after he introduced it,
Hynek's close encounters
classification system
remains the standard by
which UFO reports are defined.
But even more influential
was the research facility
he launched in Evanston, Illinois
just one year after the publication
of his first book, called
"The Center for UFO Studies."
TSOUKALOS: It essentially
became a global hub
for anyone to go
and report their UFO sightings.
But he couldn't do it by himself,
so he raised a whole bunch of money,
and all of a sudden, had staff.
He was able to do a lot more research
than he had ever been able to do before.
JOEL: My father felt it was important
to set up a 1-800 number,
and he was very free
giving his phone number,
the-the home phone number.
- (phone ringing)
- And so in those days,
the phone was always
ringing off the hook.
But he was always happy to,
you know, take the call.
What motivated him was the idea
that UFOs could open up
a whole new domain of physics,
that it could increase
our understanding of reality.
That really propelled him.
PAUL: My father traveled
more than anybody I've ever met.
And so, my mom was left
to take care of the kids
to a great deal.
She was fiercely independent,
very strong.
And at first, I think,
she must have been hesitant
to have my father go off on these
wild-goose chases for flying saucers,
but after a while,
she caught the bug, too,
and became an active participant
in the Center for UFO Studies.
And I think she really
helped comfort a lot of people,
gently coaxing them
into talking a little bit more
about what could be
a very traumatic topic.
ROXANE: It seemed a really
exciting time for my father,
a blossoming time.
I remember coming home, and
our house had been transformed.
My bedroom was no longer
my bedroom, and the same
with most of the others,
so it was this hubbub.
And files and papers and phones,
and it was just
it was an exciting time,
and I think
he really enjoyed that a lot.
NARRATOR: Ufologist Phil
Imbrogno worked with Dr. Hynek
in the early 1980s
investigating UFO sightings
in New York's Hudson Valley.
According to him, Hynek's passion
for investigating the phenomenon
was unmatched.
IMBROGNO: If he thought that
the sightings were worth value
to give UFOs more credibility
and more attention
in the scientific world, he was there.
And his energy was unbelievable
in the field.
I was only
30-something years old there,
and he was in his 70s,
and I was exhausted before he was.
And he just kept on going.
And when interviewing witnesses,
he made them feel so comfortable
that they just opened up to him.
NARRATOR: Three years
after launching
The Center for UFO Studies,
J. Allen Hynek received a phone call
from Hollywood's hottest
new director: Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg wanted
the distinguished Dr. Hynek
to consult on his new film,
called Close Encounters
of the Third Kind.
JOEL: Our father was all for it,
being a technical advisor
on Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
And people were taking it seriously,
and that's what he loved about it.
POPE: Hynek even has a cameo role.
Right at the end of it,
the climactic scene
where the mothership comes down,
you can see
there's one guy with a goatee
and a pipe, and that's Hynek.
ROXANE: I still, when I see it,
I always get a
just sort of a (gasps)
when he comes on for his-his cameo.
NARRATOR: Close Encounters
of the Third Kind premiered
on November 15, 1977,
and went on to become a box office smash
and a critical success.
But perhaps most important to Hynek
was the fact that the movie
established the UFO phenomenon
in the mainstream.
PAUL: The movie Close Encounters
of the Third Kind
was truly a watershed moment
in the phenomena.
The movie did so much service
for people who felt
they'd had sightings,
in legitimizing them to come forward.
The movie raised public awareness
of the UFO phenomenon to new heights.
One of the offshoots of
the popularity of this movie was
Hynek was able
to persuade Spielberg to print
the contact information
for his Center for UFO Studies
on every single movie poster
for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Bottom corner of the poster,
there's gonna be a little notation,
"If you've seen anything
unusual, contact CUFOS."
NARRATOR: Shortly
after the release of the film,
Hynek retired from teaching,
and eventually relocated
The Center for UFO Studies
to Phoenix, Arizona.
In his final years, he continued
to travel the world investigating UFOs,
and proposed profound new possibilities
for what might be behind the phenomenon.
NARRATOR: In 1981,
the residents
of this small mountain village
began reporting strange lights
of various colors, sizes and shapes.
Intrigued by the phenomenon,
Norwegian electrical engineer
Erling Strand
started a research project
to investigate it.
And on a whim, he reached out
to the world's foremost authority
on the UFO phenomenon:
Dr. J. Allen Hynek.
To his surprise,
Hynek was not only receptive,
but in 1985, at 74 years old,
he traveled to Hessdalen
to witness the phenomenon for himself.
STRAND: Everyone
in Scandinavia knew who he was.
When he came to visit us
out in the field in Norway,
that inspired us very much.
Such a great man.
Now the fact that they actually
saw those lights
against the mountain,
I think is very important.
NARRATOR: Most of the video
from Hynek's visit has been lost,
but the fragments that have survived
represent the last footage ever shot
of the pioneering scientist
and ufologist.
In it, he reveals
that in his final assessment
of the UFO phenomenon,
an extraterrestrial intelligence
is just one
of numerous profound possibilities.
ROXANE: One of the
things I really love, loved,
love about my dad is that
he was open to entertaining
things that weren't just
a fixed solution.
He didn't have to wrap things up
so that you couldn't continue exploring.
I-I love that aspect of my dad.
NARRATOR: Dr. J. Allen Hynek passed away
from a malignant brain tumor in 1986,
as Halley's Comet
was passing by the planet.
It was the first time
the comet had been visible
from Earth since 1910,
the year Hynek was born.
He came and went with Halley's Comet,
which is a really nice
kind of comforting,
cosmological bookend for a grieving son.
JOEL: I'm very proud of my father.
He was a serious scientist
looking into UFOs.
And it was not cool
for a scientist to be doing that
on this silly subject.
So, he battled that a lot,
and I think he will be
appreciated by UFO advocates
and serious scientists.
PAUL: My father's legacy is that
he was a very believable figure.
He was the archetypal professor.
And if this guy says there's
something happening here,
maybe it's okay if I believe that, too.
So I think he was able
to put the world on his back
and bring us just a little bit
closer to accepting the idea
that we are not alone.
VALLEE: Dr. Hynek used to say
that what's important
in science is the exception.
So much of science
and scientific discovery
is based on an exception
for the things that breaks a rule.
And I think that's why
UFOs are important.
Because they break the rule.
ELIZONDO: It's because of J. Allen Hynek
I think we are where we are
today in this topic.
J. Allen Hynek was the
right person at the right time.
NARRATOR: From a young boy
fascinated with astronomy,
to a government UFO debunker,
to a founding father of ufology,
J. Allen Hynek lived his life
with one foot planted in hard science
and the other in the unknown.
And in the end, his investigations,
both in the academic world
and the world of UFOs,
led him to conclude that whether
it's extraterrestrial,
interdimensional,
or something we have yet to imagine,
there is likely a non-human
intelligence on planet Earth.
Perhaps someday in the very near future,
we will discover that Hynek was right
and come face-to-face
with our alien ancestors.
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