Ancient Aliens s21e12 Episode Script

NARRATOR: All over the world,
there are people
who claim they have
been abducted by aliens.
SELMA SYREK:
I heard a thump from my bed,
and at the edge of the bed
were two gray individuals.
ERIK NANSTIEL: It felt like
a needle had been inserted
into my femur bone.
WHITLEY STRIEBER:
As soon as I realized I had
an implant, my immediate response was,
"My God, they're tracking me.
I want this out of my head."
NARRATOR: Since the 1970s,
a growing number of researchers
have dedicated their lives
to uncovering what is behind
this disturbing phenomenon.
Are humans really being taken off Earth
by extraterrestrial entities?
And if so, what is their agenda?
GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: The fact of the matter
is, as far as abductions are concerned,
they're not a modern-day phenomenon.
It has been happening
for thousands of years.
Weekly news and culture
newspaper The Village Voice
publishes a sensational article
titled "Sane Citizen
Sees UFO in New Jersey."
The author is
New York resident Budd Hopkins.
WILLIAM HENRY: Bud Hopkins
was not a ufologist, he was an artist.
His fascination with UFOs
began when a neighbor,
a local businessman
named George O'Barski,
told him about a strange
sighting that he had
where a craft descended from the sky
and landed in a nearby field.
Hopkins writes about
this in The Village Voice,
and at the end of
the article, he invites people
to share any similar
experiences they might have had.
And he's inundated
with hundreds of responses
and is deeply impacted by that response.
NARRATOR: The public
response to The Village Voice article
was beyond anything Budd Hopkins
could have imagined.
As hundreds of UFO witnesses
shared their stories
over the following weeks,
Hopkins was compelled
to dedicate much more
of his time to researching the subject,
and what he began to find
is that many experiencers
not only saw strange objects in the sky,
but also claimed to have
been abducted by aliens.
KATHLEEN MARDEN: Budd
Hopkins started to collect evidence,
and he started to have
meetings of experiencers
in his apartment in New York
where they could gather together
to speak with one another.
He was outstanding
as an investigator, as a researcher.
GRACE HOPKINS: My father
liked bringing people together.
He liked the idea of
people helping each other,
'cause that's what, in
his mind, this was all about,
was just trying to get
to the bottom of the truth
and help people
and figure out what it was
that happened to them.
LINDA MOULTON HOWE:
Budd had the courage, had the guts
to take on what was
happening to people who said
they knew that these
strange lights in the sky
were connected
to when something entered
their bedroom at night.
NARRATOR: Peter Robbins,
a fellow New York artist,
was one of the experiencers
who reached out to Hopkins.
PETER ROBBINS: I cold
called him. I told him that I had
had a sighting when I was a kid
and my sister had an experience.
Budd invited me over for coffee.
We talked about UFOs, and the time
when my sister and I had our sighting.
NARRATOR: Peter's
encounter occurred in 1961,
when he was just 14 years old.
ROBBINS: One afternoon
my sister and I
were in the front of the house
that we grew up in, playing,
and I caught something out of
my right peripheral vision
and called her attention
to it immediately.
Six silvery-white disc-shaped objects
stopped over the neighbor's house.
I don't know how long it lasted.
It could have been several minutes.
And at a certain point,
bang, I'm out.
NARRATOR: Peter woke up on the ground
after losing consciousness,
and the disc-shaped objects were gone.
But many years later,
he learned that his sister
Helen's experience went much further.
At the time, Helen was 12 years old,
and she not only saw
the same disc-shaped objects
that Peter witnessed,
but she also remembered
being taken aboard one of the craft.
ROBBINS: She said, "I saw a blue light
"shoot out of the bottom
of one of these things.
"And I rose off the ground.
"Then my memory is, I'm inside,
"and I'm being walked through
"a curved metal hallway
by a number of small beings,
"and one large one
who talked to me in my head.
"The big one.
"And the next thing I know,
"I'm on a metal table.
"I have no clothes on. I'm surrounded by
"half a dozen or so of these
beings, and the big one.
And then, I'm on the ground."
NARRATOR: The story Peter
told of his sister Helen's encounter
was one of the first abduction accounts
Budd Hopkins ever documented.
Sharing a fascination
with this strange phenomenon,
the two men began to work together,
cataloging the hundreds of
other alien abduction accounts
Hopkins was receiving.
The first couple of years,
there really was no area
of UFO abduction research.
He was creating it, in great part,
along with a very small
handful of other people,
approaching the subject
as scientifically as he could.
He's a real intellectual.
He was extremely well read.
Insatiably curious.
I think there are many backgrounds
that are great for being a ufologist,
and we think, technically, first,
scientist, psychologist, whatever.
Being an artist is valuable.
It lets you think out of the box.
NICK POPE: Budd Hopkins
made a number of observations
about alien abductions
which are, I think,
key to understanding
the wider phenomenon.
RICHARD DOLAN: Budd
Hopkins particularly started noticing
that a lot of abductees
would have these bizarre marks
on their body as if
a piece of skin was taken out
for examination and so forth.
POPE: Also, he
noticed, for example, that
very often, these were
not isolated accounts.
People had had
a lifetime of experiences,
starting in childhood.
He also discovered
that it ran in the family.
NARRATOR: Hopkins
was surprised by how many
alleged alien abductees reported that
other members of their family
had also been taken.
And perhaps the most intriguing example
of generational abductions
began with the famous case
of Betty and Barney Hill.
POPE: The Betty and Barney
Hill case from September 1961
is really the best-known
early account we have.
Betty and Barney Hill,
from New Hampshire,
are travelling in their car
late at night. They see a UFO.
They become distressed,
and then they get home
and they find that their journey
has taken longer than
they expected by several hours.
Subsequently, they recalled
being taken on board a ship
and encountering extraterrestrials.
Years later, Betty's sister Janet
and Janet's daughter Kathleen
had their own abduction experience.
It occurred when
they were at a relative's house
and a strange craft was
witnessed landing in the yard.
There were two witnesses
to the craft that night.
And my mother and I recalled
finding ourselves
in a strange environment,
confused. I was lying on a table.
There were tests being done on me,
and I had physiological
changes in my body
the following day.
Pain that was abnormal.
I did have other abduction experiences
periodically throughout my lifetime,
and they stopped about ten years ago.
NARRATOR: Multiple
abductions occurring within families,
experiences continuing
throughout a person's lifetime,
and strange physical marks
appearing after abduction events
are just a few of the many commonalities
Budd Hopkins discovered
during his research.
But perhaps most importantly,
he found evidence that there
could be millions of people
who are completely unaware
that they have been abducted by aliens.
NARRATOR: Budd Hopkins
publishes his first book
on alien abductions.
The title, Missing Time,
is based on a phenomenon
experienced by nearly
every alleged alien abductee.
POPE: Often, these
alien abduction accounts
are associated with a UFO sighting,
but part of the experience
will be wiped from the memory.
So, they have a period
of so-called "missing time."
Then they get dreams
or flashbacks that something happened.
There are a number
of theories about this.
Maybe some sort of
mind control technique,
maybe some sort of hypnotic,
implanted suggestion.
Often, abductees
only have vague recollections
that something unusual
and disturbing took place.
These entities might want
to induce amnesia
to protect the human
from the traumatic experience.
Or it might be
for their own purposes, as well.
NARRATOR: One person who claims
to have experienced missing time
is retired Navajo Nations
Ranger Jon Dover.
Through my 31-year career
in law enforcement
up on the Navajo Nation,
I've had a lot of travel time
on the roads.
And I started having incidences
where I'd lose
half hour increments of time
over several years.
In one case,
I blinked,
and when I opened my eyes,
I was 15 miles further down the road.
NARRATOR: Is it possible
that Jon Dover's
missing time experiences
are connected to alien abductions?
While he has no recollection
of what happened
during these periods of missing time,
curiously,
Jon has also had recurring dreams
involving a giant, disc-shaped craft.
DOVER: When I was young,
I had a reoccurring dream
that me and my sister left the house.
Across the street is a little park.
And in my dream, we go up there,
and there's a disc sitting there.
And that's where my dream ends.
Years later, my older sister tells me
that she had the same dream,
and we started comparing notes.
She says there was a hatch.
And I remember the hatch.
And she says,
"You ran right into that thing."
And I For the life of me,
I don't remember.
I've had people tell me
that what I experienced
was an abduction event.
I am still skeptical,
and I don't have a good explanation,
other than
it was something really weird.
NARRATOR: Might the fact
that people commonly experience
missing time
but have no recollection
of what happened to them
indicate that there could be
many alien abductees
who never realize they have been taken?
Budd Hopkins considered this
a very real possibility,
and went in search of a way
to help unlock the missing
memories of abductees.
At the end of 20th century,
regression hypnosis
became a popular tool
used by psychiatrists and psychologists
for helping people
retrieve traumatic memories.
Budd Hopkins starts
to use hypnosis as a tool
for retrieving missing time experiences
and retrieving memories en masse.
HOPKINS: A lot of
times, Dad thought of it as,
it's a trauma situation,
and so you chose to forget it.
And that's, I think, why
he got involved in the hypnosis,
because it was kind of going past
that trauma to try to find out
what actually happened.
HENRY: Now, hypnosis has
its critics and its controversy.
The hypnotist can be implanting
false memories
and leading subjects into areas that,
simply, they'd never experienced.
DOLAN: You got to be careful about this.
But Hopkins often did publish
a lot of the transcripts
of the sessions that they did,
so you can actually read along
what they were doing and,
you can say, "This looks legitimate.
"I'm not seeing anything
"in what this person is doing
to elicit false positives.
"I'm therefore going
to provisionally say,
"'This looks like
it could be happening.'"
NARRATOR: One of the most
significant abduction events
Hopkins helped to uncover
through hypnotic regression
was that of author Whitley Strieber.
Strieber had established himself
as a horror writer
with books like
The Wolfen and The Hunger.
But one night at his cabin
in upstate New York,
he had a terrifying encounter
that, as far as he was concerned,
was very real.
I had an experience in December of 1985
where I woke up in a room full of these,
what appeared to me to be large insects.
And I was immobilized,
and they invaded my body
in various ways.
And I ended up back home,
in a state of complete confusion.
NARRATOR: Unable to comprehend
what had happened to him,
Strieber searched for ways to
explain his traumatic encounter.
Before long,
he came across the research
being done by Budd Hopkins.
I looked him up, and he lived
a few blocks from us.
So my wife Anne and I went to see him.
And he proceeded to get me
to one of the world's
leading forensic hypnotists,
Dr. Donald Klein,
and he wanted to hypnotize me,
because he said hypnosis
would help me concentrate
on my memories.
And it was just absolutely terrifying.
NARRATOR: Under hypnosis,
Strieber revealed details of
numerous harrowing experiences
with what he believed
to be otherworldly visitors.
After piecing together
what happened to him
as best he could,
Strieber wrote about his encounters
in his best-selling book, Communion.
STRIEBER: When I published Communion,
Budd and I thought
there were maybe 50 or 100
or 200 people in the world
who had had this experience.
To my astonishment,
after the book came out,
we began to get letters.
We got a few letters,
a few more letters.
Then one morning, two postmen came,
and poured boxes of letters onto
our living room floor, in heaps.
NARRATOR: Strieber's
accounts of his alien abductions
resonated with millions
of people across the world.
And as more experiencers came
forward to tell their stories,
new revelations would begin to emerge
about the phenomenon and a potential
alien agenda.
NARRATOR: It's nearly dawn,
and five-year-old Selma Syrek
is asleep in her bed,
when suddenly,
she is awoken by an event
that will have a profound impact
on the rest of her life.
SYREK: I heard a thump, and I see
this small individual that
I thought was maybe a child.
I was five years old,
and of average height.
And this person was smaller than me.
And he turns around,
like, suddenly, and I stop in my track.
His eyes are large, but actually
quite beautiful in some way.
They kind of, like, look like
they're wet and luminous.
And not frightening.
But of course, you know,
I've never seen an individual like this,
with the dent in the top of the head,
and a pointy chin.
So, having a sort of
an insect-like face,
but still child-like.
And it turned out
there were two individuals.
They were performing an exam
right through the blanket.
Mostly what I remember
my arms and my legs.
They were just looking and holding them.
They had a conversation of some
kind between the two of them.
NARRATOR: The encounters continued
sporadically
throughout Selma's childhood.
But as she entered her twenties,
her experiences took on a new dimension.
According to Selma,
the beings began taking her to a place
she calls, simply, "the classroom."
SYREK: I have experienced many episodes
of being put in a classroom.
And I don't know if the
classrooms are holographic,
or if they're inside a craft,
but it feels real.
The teaching was done via a screen.
And it could be anything from cosmology,
archeology,
ancient documents
that apply to science today.
And they would show you how
early groups of humans
had this knowledge.
And they would show how humanity
evolved with assistance.
We have been completely assisted.
They had an agenda,
they were performing it.
And I think it's for mankind,
for humanity's benefit.
NARRATOR: Selma Syrek's
extraordinary account
resonates strongly, not only
with abduction researchers,
but also with
ancient astronaut theorists.
A key tenet of
the ancient astronaut theory
is that humans are the creation
of extraterrestrial visitors.
The ancient astronaut theory proposes
that humans are the result
of a genetic modification
that extraterrestrials performed
on Homo sapiens
thousands of years ago.
And these visitors then conveyed
important information
to our ancestors
to help accelerate the
advancement of civilization.
And sometimes they even
took certain people off Earth
to give them this special knowledge.
So, what's really interesting
about these modern-day abductions
is the fact that we have similar
stories in ancient times.
HENRY: This abduction phenomena
goes all the way back to the bible.
There's the story of Elijah,
who ascends into the heavens.
The story of Enoch,
who's taken up into Heaven
by the archangel Michael.
TSOUKALOS: Enoch was
said to have been taken up
into the heavens,
and there he received knowledge
by the so-called angels.
For example, that angel
showed him out the window,
and said, "The moon that you can
see is full of light,
but the moon receives the light
from the sun."
So, you know, this has been happening
for thousands of years.
NARRATOR: Could it
be that extraterrestrials
are abducting humans
in order to relay information,
just as ancient astronaut
theorists believe happened
thousands of years ago?
Numerous experiencers have
claimed to receive information
from an otherworldly source
in a variety of ways.
While Selma Syrek describes being taught
in a classroom-type setting,
author Whitley Strieber claims
that advanced knowledge
is communicated to him
by means of an alien implant.
He believes the device
was implanted in his ear
during an encounter that occurred
four years after the publication
of his autobiographical novel Communion.
STRIEBER: It was about 11:00.
I somehow ended up
lying on my right side,
and there is something
pushing my head down
into the pillow in waves.
There were these dark figures
standing around.
A few minutes later,
there was a flash of light
and they were gone.
A few days after, it became clear
that there was something in my ear
because you could feel it.
And it hadn't been there before.
My immediate response was,
"My God, they're tracking me.
I want this out of my head."
NARRATOR: For years, Whitley had no idea
what the purpose
of the implant might be.
But then, one day,
it suddenly activated.
The ear gets warm. You can feel it.
There's just this little slit
that opens up in my eye.
And I can see words racing past in it.
And the result is that I can
write the most detailed things
about genetics and so forth.
I wouldn't have been able
to do that without the implant.
NARRATOR: Could Whitley
Strieber really have an alien implant
that is feeding him information?
Incredibly, dozens of alien abductees
have had strange metallic objects
surgically removed from their bodies.
DOLAN: The most interesting
physical evidence of abductions
might very well be the implants
that were removed
through the auspices of Dr. Roger Leir.
And he collected
close to a dozen of them.
Roger Leir wrote
and talked about these implants
at great length,
and they had been studied,
by himself and by chemists
and electrical engineers.
Leir actually said they
gave off a radio frequency.
They were incredibly sophisticated.
NARRATOR: In 2014,
Dr. Roger Leir died of a heart attack,
and his collection
of alleged alien implants
mysteriously disappeared.
DOLAN: Roger Leir is no longer with us,
but what I would like to know
is where the heck
those implants are today.
It was a fascinating, fascinating,
piece of potential evidence
that I think should be followed up on.
NARRATOR: Do accounts like
Selma Syrek's and Whitley Stieber's
along with mysterious implants
extracted from alleged abductees
reveal that alien abductions
are about the transfer of information?
Researchers suggest
there is more to the story,
and point to the many abduction accounts
that involve the harvesting of DNA.
NARRATOR: Through a mutual friend,
famous alien abduction
researcher Budd Hopkins
is introduced to Harvard
professor Dr. John Mack.
POPE: John Mack was
professor of psychiatry
at Harvard Medical School.
He was an establishment figure.
Budd Hopkins approached
John Mack and said, "Look,
I'm getting all these cases.
What do you think?"
John Mack, his initial,
almost jocular response was,
"Well, I think they're crazy,
and I think you're probably
crazy, too, for believing them."
But John Mack looked at
some of Budd Hopkins' case files.
Then he started to meet
with some of the abductees.
MARDEN: John Mack wondered
if this was some kind
of new mental illness.
Was this public hysteria?
Why were, suddenly,
all of these people coming forward
saying that they had had these
experiences with nonhumans?
He opened a center
at Harvard University.
He conducted a study of 200 individuals.
He did psychological testing.
He did interviews on camera.
DOLAN: By and large, John Mack found
exactly what every other
researcher into this found,
which is that most
of these people are very stable.
They've all had these very consistent
types of experiences.
HOPKINS: It's not anything
anybody wants to have happen,
And that's what I always
sort of went back to
when I met these people:
they have nothing to gain,
everything to lose,
and they're all in pain,
and it's the same pain.
CAROLINE CORY: John
Mack had to take it seriously,
because his patients
were truly suffering.
They displayed trauma telling the story.
They were experiencing
very strong PTSD symptoms.
They were literally
reliving these stories,
and shaking, crying,
having all sorts of anxiety come up.
As a trained psychiatrist,
he could tell what is truth
and what isn't.
POPE: Slowly but surely,
John Mack became convinced
that this was a real phenomenon.
And so, here you have this intellectual,
academic heavyweight
saying alien abductions are real.
What is extraordinary about it
is the consistency of the stories
amongst people who are of sound mind,
who come forth very reluctantly,
who doubt their own stories,
who describe what they've
gone through with great emotion.
So, something is occurring
that is entering our world.
NARRATOR: In 1994,
Dr. Mack published his research
in his best-selling book
Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens.
While the book was highly controversial
among his colleagues
and drew sharp criticism
from the board at Harvard University,
it also led to
the alien abduction phenomenon
being taken more seriously
than ever before.
And as Dr. Mack met
with more and more patients,
he found that one particularly
unsettling experience
came up frequently.
HOWE: It was very clear to Dr. Mack
that we were dealing with nonhumans
extracting tissue, blood,
sperm from the males
and eggs from the females.
What this taking of eggs,
taking of sperm from the men
What the aliens will tell us
is that it has
something to do with evolution,
that we're moving
to another level of creation.
NARRATOR: Are the incredible revelations
that emerged during Dr. Mack's research
evidence of an alien agenda
for humanity?
Perhaps further clues can be found
by examining the account
of a man who claims
to have had genetic material
extracted from his body
on multiple occasions.
Graphic artist Erik Nanstiel
begins to experience strange occurrences
in his bedroom late at night.
It started with things
being disturbed in my bedroom
that I noticed were changed
between when I'd go to bed at night
and then when I'd wake up
in the morning.
I did not know if I was being taken,
I just had an intuition
that there were intruders in my bedroom,
and after two weeks, something happened.
I woke up in my garage
and I was suspended off the floor
and I was looking down at a small Grey.
NARRATOR: After the
encounter in his garage,
Erik began to have reoccurring
and often violent experiences
with the same Grey beings.
According to his account,
they would use some kind of
medical equipment
to extract blood
and fluids from his body.
NANSTIEL: Typically, what they would do
is they would collect semen.
But there were times where I suspected
they were taking bone marrow.
I believe they took some
from my left arm.
My left arm was killing me.
I could only move it
a few degrees of movement,
and it was swollen for an entire month.
I suspect that they took
bone marrow from my hip.
It felt like a needle had been
inserted into my femur bone.
They're determined to take
genetic material from me
one way or another,
and I absolutely felt like a lab rat.
NARRATOR: Could
extraterrestrials be harvesting
genetic material from humans,
as John Mack and many abductees
have claimed?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest that otherworldly visitors
could be creating alien-human hybrids.
NARRATOR: Over the
course of five decades
that have passed since Budd Hopkins
first started investigating
alien abductions,
researchers have found that one
of the most common experiences
reported by abductees
is the extraction of genetic material
such as blood, semen and ova.
And Erik Nanstiel believes
he was shown what happens
with that material.
There was an abduction where
they took me into a room
where I was faced with
a pewter-grey, featureless wall.
And suddenly, it turned into
some kind of an image screen
and I was shown
three rows of
rectangular portraits of faces.
They told me that
"These are your offspring,
these are your children."
And the children that I saw
were of varying ages,
so they've been coming for me
and making hybrids for some time.
NARRATOR: According to Erik,
during one surreal experience,
his abductors brought him into
some kind of examination room
where he encountered
one of his alleged children.
I did actually meet
one of the offspring.
He was on a metal table
and I got a glimpse of him
and I could see he was a boy.
And the very tall Grey
that was there with me
he was, like, seven feet tall
he said, "He's yours,
"but he has a genetic problem,
"and we have you here to provide samples
so we can correct his problem."
NARRATOR: The children
that Erik says he was shown
did not appear abnormal in any way.
But he believes they are part
of an extraterrestrial experiment
and are not entirely human.
I believe they're hybrids.
I believe they're part human,
part who knows how many other species.
NARRATOR: After being
shown images of the children,
Erik shared his experiences
with his immediate family.
NANSTIEL: I've told
both my brothers about it,
My eldest brother, he's very supportive.
He has his own religious interpretation
of what these things are.
I do not take
a religious interpretation.
These are flesh-and-blood beings,
they're from somewhere else,
they have the technology
to come here from somewhere else,
and I think they maintain bases here
and I think they're running
a breeding program.
My only question at this point is,
what do they plan to do
with these offspring?
NARRATOR: Could Erik
Nanstiel's incredible account be true?
Did extraterrestrials
not only abduct him
but also use him
to create hybrid offspring?
As sensational as it may sound,
alien abduction researchers today
have heard dozens of similar stories.
Alien abductees often report
a similar set of very consistent details
regarding being
in a medical-type facility,
a sanitized room,
whereupon medical procedures
soon follow.
If it's a male abductee,
they often report extraction of semen,
often by very uncomfortable
and even painful means.
If it's a female, they report
artificial insemination.
Later, they report being introduced
to alien-human hybrid children,
with an inference that these
are in fact their own children.
POPE: Very often, one hears
accounts of a hybridization program.
This is thought to involve,
sometimes, crossbreeding
humans with extraterrestrials,
perhaps to save their race.
Talk about a dying race needing an input
of fresh DNA, fresh material.
Or to create a new race
merging them and us
to create new life.
NARRATOR: Is it possible
that extraterrestrials
are abducting humans as part
of a breeding program?
And if so, why?
Researchers believe
that some alien abductees
may already be hybrids themselves.
We do hear about stories,
even since biblical times,
where, for example,
someone is being abducted,
and when they come back, their babies
have been replaced with another baby.
We hear about hybrid children.
We do hear these stories
since the beginning of time.
When John Mack started
working with abductees
he begins to find
some of his cases involve people
who recall almost having,
literally, a dual identity
as extraterrestrial and human.
So, perhaps this program,
this breeding program,
this hybridization program,
has been going for longer than
maybe we figured,
and John Mack is getting
some of these people
who were produced
as a result of this program.
Yeah, the whole hybridization
idea is a fascinating one.
So, then that leads to the question of
is there evidence of alien DNA
in the population?
Are these people actually
in human society or not?
There's a lot
of unanswered questions here.
NARRATOR: As more people come forward
to openly discuss their abductions,
researchers are finding
that the harvesting of genetic material
and the passing on of information
are two of the most widely
reported experiences.
And as far as ancient astronaut
theorists are concerned,
the accumulated data
is beginning to point
to an undeniable connection
to humankind's very beginnings.
NARRATOR: Today, UFO phenomena
has become an important part
of our modern society.
NARRATOR: UFOs are openly
investigated by the government,
reported by both civilians
and military personnel
and captured on video.
NARRATOR: But alien
abductions still remain
mostly a fringe topic.
We don't hear as much
about abductions nowadays as we used to.
I think part of that
is just the fact that we've had
the New York Times article about AATIP,
we've had the U.S. Navy videos
and everything that led to
in terms of whistleblowers,
in terms of congressional inquiries,
in terms of the government
setting up a program again.
Abductions have taken
a bit of a back seat.
They've not gone away.
We know that UFOs
are still underreported.
And it's doubly, triply,
orders of magnitude
more the case with abductions.
And so, we can really only guess
at the numbers involved.
I mean, I know, just from
my own government work,
that there are thousands,
maybe tens of thousands,
if not more, cases out there.
NARRATOR: While the
U.S. government is focused
on investigating UFOs,
there is a growing number
of civilian researchers
that are now dedicating their time
to the alien abduction phenomenon.
POPE: It's been left to
private research groups.
So, we have, for example, ICAR,
the International Community
for Alien Research.
MUFON, as well, the Mutual UFO Network,
have put a lot of resources into this.
They actually have their ERT,
which is "experiencer resource team."
And they will run, effectively,
a sort of network support group
for these people.
And that's needed.
There's really not much
out there for these people.
NARRATOR:
While there are now many groups
studying the alien abduction phenomenon
and speaking with experiencers,
there is still no consensus as
to why abductions are happening.
But one rather surprising revelation
has emerged from the statistical data.
MARDEN: 71% of our survey takers
said that if they could end
their experiences today,
they would not.
Among the group identified as abductees,
74% said that they would
not end their experience
if they were given a choice.
After an individual has worked
through their initial trauma,
they gain an understanding
of what is occurring.
Then, they can lose that fear
and work cooperatively
with these nonhumans.
NANSTIEL: Generally, I would
say I wish it'd never happened.
But I have to admit,
I'm very fascinated by all of this.
I don't believe that they're here
to invade the Earth
and impose their way of life.
I believe that they want
to upgrade humanity
so we will be a gentler, wiser species.
They want to make us into
responsible stewards of our planet.
STRIEBER:
At first, I was scared to death,
but I was also so damn curious.
My curiosity overcame my fear,
and eventually, we built a relationship.
What's it like now?
It's the center of my life.
I was changed for the better.
There's no question
in my mind about that.
SYREK: My life has been greatly
enhanced by these encounters.
Knowing that we are not alone
in the universe,
knowing that we are cared for
and taught?
There's a, just, tremendous hope
and joy in a future
that they see for us.
NARRATOR: Is the alien
abduction phenomenon
part of an extraterrestrial project
that dates to the very
beginnings of humankind?
Could it be that we are, in fact,
being directed and upgraded
by the very beings who created us?
And if so, might
the ultimate agenda be for us
to become like them?
Perhaps one day soon,
the true purpose behind these abductions
will be revealed
when we are reunited
with our alien ancestors.
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