Ancient Aliens s13e09 Episode Script
The Taken
1 BRET OLDHAM: I remember raising my hand up and pulling back the curtains, and that's when I came face-to-face with what we now know as a Grey.
NARRATOR: Millions of people claiming to be abducted by extraterrestrials.
How many of you have had an experience - of having been abducted? - NICK POPE: Wow.
NARRATOR: Ancient stories of humans brought off planet by otherworldly beings.
ARIEL BAR TZADOK: Angels, demons, spirits are these the same extraterrestrial entities who are interacting with us today? My mother and I both had this dreamlike experience of being taken to a craft.
And I saw these nonhuman entities.
NARRATOR: Could these incredible stories really be true? And if so, why are humans being taken? DAVID CHILDRESS: You have to ask yourself what is really going on here? Because these cases simply defy explanation.
NARRATOR: Pasadena, California.
June 16, 2018.
Thousands of people from all over the world gather for AlienCon, a three-day event to discuss and explore the possibility that intelligent life exists beyond our planet, and may have visited Earth in the distant past.
POPE: It's one thing for people to say that not only have they seen a UFO, but they've had an experience, a contact NARRATOR: During one panel led by former Ministry of Defence investigator Nick Pope, a group of experts talk about a significant and controversial subject: alien abductions.
LINDA MOULTON HOWE: Looking out at all of you, one of the things that we would like to know is, how many of you have had an experience you think might involve having been abducted? Can you all put your hands up who think that you have been? POPE: Wow, that's a lot of people.
If anyone feels comfortable about coming up to the microphone, we would love to hear your stories.
So, uh, please, yeah.
ALICE GREEN: My name's, uh, Alice Green.
And, um, 40 years ago, uh, when I was 15, I, um, I had an abduction experience.
There was a huge spaceship over my house, and, uh, one minute I'm in my bed and the next minute I'm up in the spaceship.
I wanted to call it a dream, because I didn't want to call it an abduction experience for a long time.
KYLE SANCHEZ: I started having one of those experiences, out of body, but not just in the vicinity.
I kind of started entering the space realm, and I just kept going.
And it just got scarier and scarier for me.
I didn't know what was going on.
HAYLEY KINSNER: The alien that I spoke to was about to my shoulder, maybe four and a half feet tall, and he had three fingers.
He was like your typical grey alien.
And I had several encounters over the course of the next couple years.
I never wanted to tell anybody because I thought my friends and family would think I was crazy.
NARRATOR: Millions of people taken by extraterrestrial beings? If alien abductions are happening, as experiencers at this panel and many other alleged abductees claim, what evidence is there to support their stories? As the number of recorded abduction cases has increased over the last several decades, experts in a variety of fields have worked to find this evidence.
In 1991, my colleague Budd Hopkins and I got funding for a national poll about the abduction phenomenon through the Roper Organization.
We found that at least two percent of the American public, and at most, perhaps even five percent of the American public, were abductees.
Even with two percent, we're dealing with an enormous number of people who've been abducted throughout the world.
Of course, when people from the outside look at the abduction phenomenon, they think that this is just neurological.
I wish that was the case.
That would be wonderful if that were the case.
I can say, from having interviewed now about 1,600 people in the abduction syndrome, there are common denominators.
I would say the vast majority don't know details.
They just remember pieces.
They might remember, "I saw these eyes, and they were big and black and slanted.
" They will hear either a buzzing sound, or there might be a clicking.
Or in the room, there might be, like, a little orb of light, or several orbs of light.
They won't be able to move.
And the paralysis is always described the same way.
They can move their eyes, they can see.
They can't move their head.
They will say they see their bedroom wall just disappear.
Or they are taken right through the wall.
Or they're taken through a window.
Or they are taken through the ceiling.
And then 100% of people, their next consciousness is waking up, often the sun is up, and they know something's happened, but they don't know what.
JOE MONTALDO: Well, when you start adding it up across 40, 50,000 cases, the number one piece of compelling evidence is the credibility of the individual.
We have doctors, lawyers, politicians.
So these are people who have a lot at stake if they were to say, "Hey, I've been abducted by an alien," or something like this, so you have to take those people seriously.
There are really only two possibilities here.
Either we're dealing with a mass delusion on an unprecedented scale, or what these people are saying is actually literally happening in a physical sense, and these alien abductions are real.
NARRATOR: But if millions of people have been abducted by extraterrestrials or even a fraction of that number what could be the reason behind it? And why now? While what we call alien abductions may only have been reported in modern times, ancient astronaut theorists claim there is evidence that this phenomenon has been happening for thousands of years.
In ancient biblical texts, and also in other textual references, we have accounts of people ascending and descending from and to the sky with fiery chariots and flying type of craft.
And that to me indicates that what these accounts refer to are similar to modern-day abductions.
Those accounts are eyewitness accounts.
They're not told in the third person, but it's actually "I, Ezekiel, witnessed.
" "I, Enoch, witnessed.
" "I, Abraham, did this.
" "I walked through there.
" Also, in ancient China, and also, in ancient Egypt, are there stories of people having been visited or having gone up to the sky to visit with the so-called gods.
What better way to describe an extraterrestrial encounter? So today, we call it an "alien abduction.
" In previous centuries, it was called by different names.
But we recognize from the experience that they are identical.
And therefore, it adds validity to this not being a modern myth, but a very ancient problem.
Why today, then, is it such an important issue? It very well may be that we did not recognize in the past how widespread these experiences were.
Or it could be that there is a stepping up of the agenda, and that the experience is spreading greater, farther and wider than it was in the past.
NARRATOR: Could these extraordinary accounts, both past and present, be describing an ongoing program of human abduction, in spite of the skepticism with which they are viewed by the public? And is there a smoking gun that will finally establish that this phenomenon is real, and still underway? Perhaps further clues can be found by examining one of the most well-documented cases on record.
NARRATOR: Sheffield, Massachusetts.
June 11, 2018.
Well, we're pretty much here now.
NARRATOR: Author and researcher Mike Bara has joined abduction experiencer Thom Reed to visit the site where Thom says he and members of his family were abducted after encountering a strange UFO nearly 50 years ago.
Does it evoke any memories or emotions, bring back anything? Like an anxiety.
- Really? - Or nervousness I guess.
NARRATOR: The UFO was reportedly seen, not only by the Reed family, but also by multiple witnesses all across Western Massachusetts.
Okay.
So, I guess here we are.
- This is the spot, right? - This is it.
Can you kind of paint me a picture of what was going on that night, what happened the day - you drove up this road? - Sure.
Well, first of all, it was, like, 90 degrees.
It was a really hot night, and there were an awful lot of families outside because it was Labor Day.
It was September 1, 1969, which was a Labor Day holiday.
Okay.
Can you describe what people saw? I mean, did they see - just a light in the sky? - They all saw something - a little bit different.
- What do you remember about what happened to you and your family? There's a lot of time that went by, and I only remember little pieces of it.
But, uh, we were coming right down this road here, and we were heading through the bridge.
- Mm-hmm.
- And, uh, let-let me show you.
- Okay.
Sure.
- All right? NARRATOR: At 9:00 p.
m.
on the night of the sighting, ten-year-old Thom and his mother, grandmother and brother were just minutes from getting home when they crossed the bridge.
Well, I was in the back seat behind the driver, my mother.
- Mm-hmm.
- And my grandmother, who was sitting in the passenger seat, was the first one to notice that there was a an odd light that didn't seem to make sense.
There was a bleed of light coming through the bridge.
BARA: So light was coming through places it should not have been if it was just headlights.
REED: Yeah, it was coming through the walls a little bit, coming through the floorboards.
Then we exited the bridge.
This is the spot right there.
This is where we first saw it, Mike.
So, um, - can you describe what you saw? - Yeah.
It was like an orb, if you would, or a sphere, and it was about, I'm gonna say maybe 30, 40 yards round.
It was a perfectly round sphere, and it had rods of light that seemed to fire from it.
So it looked like a shiver cone, or an ice cream cone.
So, none of you has ever seen anything like this before? No, not like that, no.
NARRATOR: As Thom's mother continued driving slowly down the road, the object flew on a route parallel to theirs until it took an abrupt turn, cutting them off.
The car comes to a stop, and there's a feeling that came over the car, which was like a some type of a field.
And we were just gone.
We aren't in the car anymore.
And I remember seeing a light or a door of some kind.
And I was grabbed like this on my left arm.
And I was kind of pushed towards this door.
I went into the door.
And I was sitting on almost like a-an autopsy table.
And I saw what looked like some type of a large insect, like an ant, if you will.
Very stick-like legs, bamboo almost.
And that's what frightened me, and then I was out.
Then I remember waking in the back of the car.
If you could remember every single detail, every single thing that happened - to you, would you want to? - I want to know, but at the same time, I'm not sure I that's a good thing at this point.
It's-it's confusing.
You know, I kind of need to know everything that happened, but at the same time, there's really no way for me to do that.
NARRATOR: For years following the reported event, a number of local authorities and UFO investigators tried to find evidence that would validate the Reed family's incredible account.
One of these was a local judge named Kevin Titus, who has spent decades interviewing eyewitnesses and verifying their testimony.
It is his belief that enough evidence exists to conclude that something otherworldly did, in fact, happen on that summer night nearly 50 years ago.
Everybody couldn't explain what they were seeing.
People were saying calling in WSBS radio, and telling them that there's something going on over in this area.
- (high-pitched tone) - And, uh, nobody was able to completely say what it was, but everybody saw it.
There was well over 250 people that called in.
They were scared, hysterical.
Some people couldn't explain what they saw.
- They called the police.
- (garbled radio transmission) And they called the Army Reserve Air Base.
It's a fact, it did happen.
When you have over 250 people that saw something the same day, how can you say it wasn't true? NARRATOR: Over 250 callers? And all reportedly seeing the same unidentified flying object? For abduction researchers and local authorities, the incredible number of witnesses gave the Reed family's case an uncommonly high level of credibility.
So much so that on November 3, 2015, Massachusetts Governor Charles D.
Baker issued a citation which formally recognized that a verified UFO event had taken place, just as the Reed family and many others had described.
To date, no other alien encounter has received this kind of acknowledgement.
What I think is important in all this is that we were the first to be state-inducted as a true event.
And I think that opens doors, and paves the way for a lot of other people who deserve to be taken more seriously.
NARRATOR: Do the verified accounts of the Sheffield incident refute skeptics who claim that abduction stories are unreliable? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and they suggest that even more compelling evidence can be found by examining memories buried deep inside the human mind.
NARRATOR: At one of the AlienCon panels examining alien abduction phenomena, a member of the audience shares what he believes to have been a real-life alien encounter, one involving missing time.
MAN: In about 1996, I saw a UFO, and it scared me bad enough that I called 911.
And it just flew around a water tower across the street from my house, and went into Oak Riparian Park, and, uh, I grabbed my flashlight.
I wanted to see it, and I chased it.
And the next thing I remember, I'm-I'm walking back.
But I have this thing.
Every time I go back to that same park, I feel like I'm missing something.
It's a very common thing, missing time with the abduction experience.
And so, yeah, so, I've been helping a lot of people going you know, go through the regression.
There's different ways that you can do regression, but I definitely encourage you to do that.
NARRATOR: Caroline Cory is an expert in hypnotic regression a meditative practice used to release missing time memories that have been suppressed, but are still present in a person's subconscious mind.
For the past 16 years, she has specialized in helping people remember and understand what they believe to be an incident involving extraterrestrial abduction.
When people have a trauma, they tend to push it back into the subconscious mind, because, on a conscious level, it is associated with fear, anxiety.
Hypnotherapy allows you to bring the mind to a certain level so that the person is so relaxed, they're almost in a trance.
Then they can tap into their subconscious mind and relive the experience.
When you relive the experience, you right away, you begin to heal it.
That is what happens in hypnotherapy.
- Hey, Joe.
How are you? - Hi, Caroline.
NARRATOR: On June 11, 2018, Caroline met with Joe Cerletti for a hypnotic regression session.
Joe has had difficulty remembering the details of an incident that happened in the spring of 2008, when he and two friends were driving on a dark highway just after midnight near Oakland, California.
We were just driving down the road at an average speed, 65, maybe 70 miles an hour, and instantaneously, we weren't driving anymore and the car was shut off.
And we were parked about 45 minutes away in a parking lot for an amusement park after hours and we were locked inside the gate with no explanation how we got there at that time.
NARRATOR: Joe realized that he and his friends may have been abducted by extraterrestrials, extraterrestrials which he believes deliberately blocked his memory.
Today, Caroline will use hypnotic regression to hopefully help Joe remember more about what happened on that night.
You ready? - I am.
- Okay, here we go.
So, we're gonna sit up straight with the feet flat on the floor.
And close your eyes.
And take a deep breath in through the nose.
- And exhale through the mouth.
- (exhales) As you exhale (exhales) you let go of the stress, the tension.
Focus on your hands, on your arms on your heart.
We are now in the year 2008.
You are driving with two friends.
And then what happens? CERLETTI: A very bright flash of light just surrounds us and absorbs us.
Okay.
CERLETTI: I'm getting these thoughts in my head that I've never heard before.
- I'm trying to - Don't try.
Don't assess or judge or analyze.
You are in the experience, in the feeling.
You feel safe, protected.
And the light, where is the light coming from? Almost like a portal being opened.
It's being opened by a ship.
Okay.
What is the next thing that you experience? I'm starting to actually get a visual of guess you could call them faces.
- CORY: Who's there? - Just beings.
Do you get a sense of why you ended up there, not someone else? They're showing me just, like, a line from my family.
(clears throat) Goes, they're just going back in time.
They're saying that there's always been a connection to, a close connection, as far back as it goes.
Okay.
The biggest question that the abductees have is, "Why me?" "Why did this happen to me?" If they can sense that this happened not just to them, but to their parents and their grandparents, it brings some sort of closure, it starts to make sense to them and they start to feel that there's a real connection.
It wasn't a random thing.
Breathe in through the nose.
(inhales sharply) As you exhale through the mouth, you're purging all of this energy.
Let it go, let it go, yes.
And slowly, slowly, whenever you're ready, open your eyes.
(exhales) Wow.
- Excellent.
- Yeah.
Wow.
- Well, you did amazing.
That was awesome.
- Thank you.
You did - Thank you so much.
- Absolutely.
There was a time where I was scared to find the answers because, I think, the whole unknown factor is a basic human fear: not knowing, the unknown, the abyss, the dark.
But I needed those answers 'cause I needed some sort of explanation for what happened that night.
- All right, I think we're done for today.
-Okay.
NARRATOR: For Joe Cerletti, and others like him, hypnotic regression is an important tool in unlocking memories that may be buried due to trauma.
But are there other, even more authoritative methods, that might help prove that alien abductions actually take place? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and point to recent experiments that collect convincing scientific data from the human brain.
NARRATOR: Of the featured guests at AlienCon 2018, three claim to have had firsthand experience with extraterrestrials: consciousness researcher Caroline Cory, Kathleen Marden, the director of Experiencer Research for MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, and Bret Oldham, a man who claims to have had more than a dozen abduction experiences since the age of five.
So many, in fact, that he has authored three books on the subject.
Uh, I was first taken when I was five years old, and the memories were suppressed all the way up until I was in my early 20s.
And it was through the therapy that I discovered the truth of what had been happening to me.
The psychological damage of being taken and having sexual experiments performed on you, and being subjected to a lot of things like that.
I decided not to become a victim to it.
And it took me 20, 20 some years to get enough nerve to come forward and face what was out there, because I wanted to become a voice for others who have had these experiences.
For more than a decade, Bret Oldham has been an advocate for those who claim to have had similar experiences.
Like all abductees, he has faced both skepticism and scorn from the public.
This is a worldwide phenomena, it's happening in a grand scale and it's happening to all walks of life.
- (applause) - POPE: Thank you very much.
NARRATOR: Earlier this year, in an effort to learn if his abduction memories could be clinically proven, Bret agreed to submit to a scientific test.
- Why don't you come on back? - Sure.
-Great, thanks.
NARRATOR: If successful, the test, involving an EEG scan of Bret's brain, could go a long way toward proving that extraterrestrial abductions are actually taking place.
Conducting the test is neuroscientist Dr.
Dario Nardi, under the supervision of former British Ministry of Defence investigator, Nick Pope.
Okay, we will be using, um, this little piece of equipment today.
Are you familiar with EEG? I'm familiar with it.
NARDI: There are no wires or whatnot, there's just these little sensors.
And I will be placing this on your head like this.
Okay.
NARRATOR: An EEG, or electroencephalography, is a noninvasive method of measuring the electrochemical activity of the neurons in the brain.
It works by placing a network of electrodes over areas of the scalp, which can, in turn, register not only the area of the brain that is being stimulated, but also the degree of stimulation.
We can make a couple of inferences when we see the brain activity.
One is, if we see what are called alpha waves in particular, in the temporal regions of the brain, then that's gonna give us a good idea that the person is recalling something from memory.
On the other hand, if we see, uh, activity more in the front of the brain, where there's maybe not those alpha waves of some other kind of activity, then that's gonna suggest that the person is crafting something or coming up with an answer or explanation in the moment.
So we can differentiate sort of storytelling versus accessing the memory.
NARRATOR: Nick will ask Bret a series of questions about his abduction experiences, and Dr.
Nardi will observe the neural activity that occurs during Bret's responses.
If, for example, Bret is inventing or making up his answers, it should show up as activity on the part of the brain most associated with imagination.
NARDI: Okay.
We are ready to go.
Well, perhaps, uh, first of all, Bret, was there a single incident that started this? Uh, there was.
Um, we lived in Southern Illinois, in an old farmhouse surrounded by just cornfields and soybean and stuff like that, and I'd lived a pretty innocent life up until that point.
One night, I heard a voice, and I actually thought it was my stepdad, 'cause it's very, very quiet out in the country.
Did the voice say something? The voice was coaxing me to come to the window.
I got up and I walked across the floor.
I could see a light coming through.
It just kept coaxing me to come, and I was just a curious little boy.
And I remember raising my hand up and pulling back the curtains, and that's when I came face-to-face with what we now know as a Grey.
- So what did you think it was? - I had no idea.
I had never seen anything like that before.
And before I could scream for help or anything, the next thing I remember was laying on a table, surrounded by these things.
And you said, uh, before you could scream, so I presume from what you're saying - that you were very scared.
- Very scared.
That first incident made such an indelible mark in my psyche that I-I had nightmares about it, up until just several years ago.
Even now, after all the time, how does it make you feel looking back on that incident and what's your, what's your bottom line on this, in terms of what you think's going on? I don't think anyone really knows what their true agenda is.
You know, some people speculate that they're gonna take over our planet.
Uh, I don't.
I-I think if they were gonna do that, - they would have already done it.
- Right.
NARRATOR: After Nick and Bret finish their session, Dr.
Nardi shares the EEG results, and what they reveal about Bret and his story.
So we had about 45 minutes worth of data.
You asked questions that truly were speculative questions, versus ones that were asking for literal recall.
And we saw that, really, they were activating in very different parts of the brain.
Consistently, when you asked him to speculate, like, "Why do you think that they do this," then clearly, we see this region of the brain in the left hemisphere sort of by the left temple here, that that would get active.
So that, that was a really good baseline.
In contrast, there were at least a half a dozen moments which really strongly activated over on this side instead, which is associated more with literal recall.
In other words, uh, we're just gonna give the facts, and the details, or rather, recall without embellishment.
Indicative of an actual memory? Most of the time.
NARRATOR: "Recall without embellishment?" Could this result be evidence that Bret's story is true, and that these abductions really took place? Those moments that you described like sitting with the tall Grey, that's what that looked like in the brain.
By differentiating between memory and speculation, in one sense the EEG machine acted as a sort of polygraph.
The fact that the part of the brain involved in memory lit up and was activated, says to me that this is a genuine experience.
This is not a hoax.
This is not somebody who's making the whole thing up.
Well, Dario, thank you very much.
This has been very interesting, and I think we've got lots of great data here.
- Thank you.
- Absolutely.
- It's my pleasure.
- Really appreciate it.
OLDHAM: The journey is always going to continue for me.
I'm always going to want to delve deeper into these events, into what I remember, and find out what I don't remember.
And I still don't have all the answers.
NARRATOR: If, as the EEG data suggests, Bret Oldham's claims of extraterrestrial abduction are true, does it help prove that alien abductions are really happening? But why? And for what purpose? Perhaps further clues can be found by examining evidence that aliens have been altering human biology.
And not just for generations, but for thousands of years.
NARRATOR: Lancaster, New Hampshire.
September 19, 1961.
Betty and Barney Hill are driving late at night when a large flying saucer intercepts them and hovers over their car.
Above them, the Hills observe otherworldly figures in the windows of the craft.
Days later, the couple reports missing time and after participating in hypnotic regression, they claim to realize that they were abducted by extraterrestrials.
In the decades that follow, the Betty and Barney Hill case becomes the most well-known and investigated abduction encounter in modern history.
But according to Betty and Barney's descendants, the incident in Lancaster is only one part of a much larger story, a story that actually began three years prior with an incident involving Betty's sister.
Betty Hill was my aunt, my mother's sister.
Something that we have never revealed before is that my mother had a close encounter in 1958.
She saw this huge, cigar-shaped craft hovering over a field.
She had no explanation for what had happened as far as she knew.
She had gone shopping and she had driven home.
My mother eventually underwent hypnosis and through hypnosis, she recalled having been abducted as well.
And I also had this uncanny sort of dreamlike experience of being taken to a craft.
It bothered me for many, many years.
Eventually, I did talk to my family about it and that's when I found out that my mother had the same memory.
NARRATOR: Could it be that extraterrestrial beings are abducting not only individuals, but also families? And if so, why? The abduction phenomenon is intergenerational.
When a man and a woman marry and either the man or the woman is an abductee, their children will be abductees.
POPE: It seems that specific bloodlines are involved here.
And if that's the case, it raises the intriguing possibility that the extraterrestrials are interested in human biology, that they are monitoring specific genetic lines for some purpose.
NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists and UFO researchers, the notion that extraterrestrials are conducting experiments involving human biology is not a new one.
Many believe the practice has been going on for thousands of years.
TZADOK: Maybe there's some truth to these entities which we call shedim.
These are old legends of people who are abducted, sexually seduced and some taken away.
And when we hear today about the numerous stories of alien abductions throughout history, they are identical.
NARRATOR: For proof that their theories about the biological nature of alien abductions are valid, researchers point to the fact that a relatively high number of abductees, more than 60%, have an extraordinarily rare blood type: Rh negative.
The subject kept coming up from the abductees: "I'm Rh negative.
" "Could it have anything to do with why I'm being abducted?" I got to collaborate with a doctor, Dr.
John Altshuler, and he did pathology; he did blood work.
And he gave the conclusion that Rh negative blood might actually be a genetic data point about why humans could be hybrids, that every Rh negative would be coming from a history of abductions.
MONTALDO: Rh negative is a very peculiar thing.
First off, it didn't exist until 35,000 years ago.
It may have been that 35,000 years ago, E.
T.
introduced this into our society through whatever breeding programs they've been running.
The ancient astronaut theory suggests that for thousands of years, extraterrestrials meddled with our DNA.
There was a time when we were Homo sapiens.
And then we became Homo sapiens sapiens.
And that happened within only 50,000 years, which by Darwinian evolutionary standards, is too short of a time span for that to happen.
Our brain volume increased by up to 30% in 50,000 years, which is absolutely crazy.
Now, the reason why I think that modern-day abductions occur is because maybe we are still being manipulated with our DNA from extraterrestrials in order to turn us from Homo sapiens sapiens into Homo sapiens sapiens sapiens.
NARRATOR: Have extraterrestrials been abducting people in order to monitor the evolutionary progress of humans? Or have they been deliberately manipulating our biology in order to achieve some ultimate purpose? Ancient astronaut theorists claim that both possibilities are likely true and for this reason, it is more important than ever for us to hear the stories of those who say they have been taken.
NARRATOR: Pasadena, California.
June 16, 2018.
Throughout a discussion about alien abductions during a panel at AlienCon, both the panelists and members of the audience remark on how difficult, but also important it is to speak out about abductions.
I hesitated coming up here for a couple reasons.
Um (sighs) Every topic that you guys have mentioned has connected dots actively right now today.
As far as lineage, as far as bloodlines, as far as families, so generational.
My mom, um, myself, my daughter.
I had night terrors as a child, missing time as a child throughout my life.
I literally have short-term memory deficits and specific things, real spontaneous phenomenon that ultimately touches on everything that - you guys are talking about.
- POPE: Thank you very much.
These hardly ever seem to be one-off experiences.
Thank you for sharing your story.
I'd like to say, uh, I applaud you guys for your courage to come forward in front of all these people and share your story.
I'm blown away by the amount of people that, uh, show up at this panel.
And when I see this kind of, uh, support, it's very encouraging and I think that's very important to bring this phenomenon out into the light where it needs to be because a lot of answers lie with the experiencers.
So I just thank you for that.
Coming forward to admit that you've had some type of a close encounter, whether it is seeing something or maybe you've been abducted, that is a very difficult thing to admit.
And that is why I think we really should look at all the other pieces of evidence: abduction cases or close encounters and say, "Okay, what if?" I'm happy today that I'm finally able to say it's not only real, it's happening.
Great.
Hearing those stories is of help to any of you out there who have had these strange experiences.
And you are not alone with this, as you can see.
So thank you to you and thank you to my fellow panelists.
When you look at the vast body of data that we have on this phenomenon, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that something is going on here.
Why should we, therefore, cast away the stories of the abductees just because we may feel a little uncomfortable with the place that takes us? NARRATOR: Each year, thousands of people are bravely coming forward with personal accounts of alien abductions.
But is the world's growing willingness to hear them and believe them a sign that humanity might be on the brink of an exciting new period in its evolution, one where we will discover that centuries of alien contact has changed us in ways we could never have previously imagined or accepted? Perhaps a greater acceptance that alien contact is being made will prepare us for the future, a future where we will become the extraterrestrials on other worlds and encounter other life-forms not so different from our own.
NARRATOR: Millions of people claiming to be abducted by extraterrestrials.
How many of you have had an experience - of having been abducted? - NICK POPE: Wow.
NARRATOR: Ancient stories of humans brought off planet by otherworldly beings.
ARIEL BAR TZADOK: Angels, demons, spirits are these the same extraterrestrial entities who are interacting with us today? My mother and I both had this dreamlike experience of being taken to a craft.
And I saw these nonhuman entities.
NARRATOR: Could these incredible stories really be true? And if so, why are humans being taken? DAVID CHILDRESS: You have to ask yourself what is really going on here? Because these cases simply defy explanation.
NARRATOR: Pasadena, California.
June 16, 2018.
Thousands of people from all over the world gather for AlienCon, a three-day event to discuss and explore the possibility that intelligent life exists beyond our planet, and may have visited Earth in the distant past.
POPE: It's one thing for people to say that not only have they seen a UFO, but they've had an experience, a contact NARRATOR: During one panel led by former Ministry of Defence investigator Nick Pope, a group of experts talk about a significant and controversial subject: alien abductions.
LINDA MOULTON HOWE: Looking out at all of you, one of the things that we would like to know is, how many of you have had an experience you think might involve having been abducted? Can you all put your hands up who think that you have been? POPE: Wow, that's a lot of people.
If anyone feels comfortable about coming up to the microphone, we would love to hear your stories.
So, uh, please, yeah.
ALICE GREEN: My name's, uh, Alice Green.
And, um, 40 years ago, uh, when I was 15, I, um, I had an abduction experience.
There was a huge spaceship over my house, and, uh, one minute I'm in my bed and the next minute I'm up in the spaceship.
I wanted to call it a dream, because I didn't want to call it an abduction experience for a long time.
KYLE SANCHEZ: I started having one of those experiences, out of body, but not just in the vicinity.
I kind of started entering the space realm, and I just kept going.
And it just got scarier and scarier for me.
I didn't know what was going on.
HAYLEY KINSNER: The alien that I spoke to was about to my shoulder, maybe four and a half feet tall, and he had three fingers.
He was like your typical grey alien.
And I had several encounters over the course of the next couple years.
I never wanted to tell anybody because I thought my friends and family would think I was crazy.
NARRATOR: Millions of people taken by extraterrestrial beings? If alien abductions are happening, as experiencers at this panel and many other alleged abductees claim, what evidence is there to support their stories? As the number of recorded abduction cases has increased over the last several decades, experts in a variety of fields have worked to find this evidence.
In 1991, my colleague Budd Hopkins and I got funding for a national poll about the abduction phenomenon through the Roper Organization.
We found that at least two percent of the American public, and at most, perhaps even five percent of the American public, were abductees.
Even with two percent, we're dealing with an enormous number of people who've been abducted throughout the world.
Of course, when people from the outside look at the abduction phenomenon, they think that this is just neurological.
I wish that was the case.
That would be wonderful if that were the case.
I can say, from having interviewed now about 1,600 people in the abduction syndrome, there are common denominators.
I would say the vast majority don't know details.
They just remember pieces.
They might remember, "I saw these eyes, and they were big and black and slanted.
" They will hear either a buzzing sound, or there might be a clicking.
Or in the room, there might be, like, a little orb of light, or several orbs of light.
They won't be able to move.
And the paralysis is always described the same way.
They can move their eyes, they can see.
They can't move their head.
They will say they see their bedroom wall just disappear.
Or they are taken right through the wall.
Or they're taken through a window.
Or they are taken through the ceiling.
And then 100% of people, their next consciousness is waking up, often the sun is up, and they know something's happened, but they don't know what.
JOE MONTALDO: Well, when you start adding it up across 40, 50,000 cases, the number one piece of compelling evidence is the credibility of the individual.
We have doctors, lawyers, politicians.
So these are people who have a lot at stake if they were to say, "Hey, I've been abducted by an alien," or something like this, so you have to take those people seriously.
There are really only two possibilities here.
Either we're dealing with a mass delusion on an unprecedented scale, or what these people are saying is actually literally happening in a physical sense, and these alien abductions are real.
NARRATOR: But if millions of people have been abducted by extraterrestrials or even a fraction of that number what could be the reason behind it? And why now? While what we call alien abductions may only have been reported in modern times, ancient astronaut theorists claim there is evidence that this phenomenon has been happening for thousands of years.
In ancient biblical texts, and also in other textual references, we have accounts of people ascending and descending from and to the sky with fiery chariots and flying type of craft.
And that to me indicates that what these accounts refer to are similar to modern-day abductions.
Those accounts are eyewitness accounts.
They're not told in the third person, but it's actually "I, Ezekiel, witnessed.
" "I, Enoch, witnessed.
" "I, Abraham, did this.
" "I walked through there.
" Also, in ancient China, and also, in ancient Egypt, are there stories of people having been visited or having gone up to the sky to visit with the so-called gods.
What better way to describe an extraterrestrial encounter? So today, we call it an "alien abduction.
" In previous centuries, it was called by different names.
But we recognize from the experience that they are identical.
And therefore, it adds validity to this not being a modern myth, but a very ancient problem.
Why today, then, is it such an important issue? It very well may be that we did not recognize in the past how widespread these experiences were.
Or it could be that there is a stepping up of the agenda, and that the experience is spreading greater, farther and wider than it was in the past.
NARRATOR: Could these extraordinary accounts, both past and present, be describing an ongoing program of human abduction, in spite of the skepticism with which they are viewed by the public? And is there a smoking gun that will finally establish that this phenomenon is real, and still underway? Perhaps further clues can be found by examining one of the most well-documented cases on record.
NARRATOR: Sheffield, Massachusetts.
June 11, 2018.
Well, we're pretty much here now.
NARRATOR: Author and researcher Mike Bara has joined abduction experiencer Thom Reed to visit the site where Thom says he and members of his family were abducted after encountering a strange UFO nearly 50 years ago.
Does it evoke any memories or emotions, bring back anything? Like an anxiety.
- Really? - Or nervousness I guess.
NARRATOR: The UFO was reportedly seen, not only by the Reed family, but also by multiple witnesses all across Western Massachusetts.
Okay.
So, I guess here we are.
- This is the spot, right? - This is it.
Can you kind of paint me a picture of what was going on that night, what happened the day - you drove up this road? - Sure.
Well, first of all, it was, like, 90 degrees.
It was a really hot night, and there were an awful lot of families outside because it was Labor Day.
It was September 1, 1969, which was a Labor Day holiday.
Okay.
Can you describe what people saw? I mean, did they see - just a light in the sky? - They all saw something - a little bit different.
- What do you remember about what happened to you and your family? There's a lot of time that went by, and I only remember little pieces of it.
But, uh, we were coming right down this road here, and we were heading through the bridge.
- Mm-hmm.
- And, uh, let-let me show you.
- Okay.
Sure.
- All right? NARRATOR: At 9:00 p.
m.
on the night of the sighting, ten-year-old Thom and his mother, grandmother and brother were just minutes from getting home when they crossed the bridge.
Well, I was in the back seat behind the driver, my mother.
- Mm-hmm.
- And my grandmother, who was sitting in the passenger seat, was the first one to notice that there was a an odd light that didn't seem to make sense.
There was a bleed of light coming through the bridge.
BARA: So light was coming through places it should not have been if it was just headlights.
REED: Yeah, it was coming through the walls a little bit, coming through the floorboards.
Then we exited the bridge.
This is the spot right there.
This is where we first saw it, Mike.
So, um, - can you describe what you saw? - Yeah.
It was like an orb, if you would, or a sphere, and it was about, I'm gonna say maybe 30, 40 yards round.
It was a perfectly round sphere, and it had rods of light that seemed to fire from it.
So it looked like a shiver cone, or an ice cream cone.
So, none of you has ever seen anything like this before? No, not like that, no.
NARRATOR: As Thom's mother continued driving slowly down the road, the object flew on a route parallel to theirs until it took an abrupt turn, cutting them off.
The car comes to a stop, and there's a feeling that came over the car, which was like a some type of a field.
And we were just gone.
We aren't in the car anymore.
And I remember seeing a light or a door of some kind.
And I was grabbed like this on my left arm.
And I was kind of pushed towards this door.
I went into the door.
And I was sitting on almost like a-an autopsy table.
And I saw what looked like some type of a large insect, like an ant, if you will.
Very stick-like legs, bamboo almost.
And that's what frightened me, and then I was out.
Then I remember waking in the back of the car.
If you could remember every single detail, every single thing that happened - to you, would you want to? - I want to know, but at the same time, I'm not sure I that's a good thing at this point.
It's-it's confusing.
You know, I kind of need to know everything that happened, but at the same time, there's really no way for me to do that.
NARRATOR: For years following the reported event, a number of local authorities and UFO investigators tried to find evidence that would validate the Reed family's incredible account.
One of these was a local judge named Kevin Titus, who has spent decades interviewing eyewitnesses and verifying their testimony.
It is his belief that enough evidence exists to conclude that something otherworldly did, in fact, happen on that summer night nearly 50 years ago.
Everybody couldn't explain what they were seeing.
People were saying calling in WSBS radio, and telling them that there's something going on over in this area.
- (high-pitched tone) - And, uh, nobody was able to completely say what it was, but everybody saw it.
There was well over 250 people that called in.
They were scared, hysterical.
Some people couldn't explain what they saw.
- They called the police.
- (garbled radio transmission) And they called the Army Reserve Air Base.
It's a fact, it did happen.
When you have over 250 people that saw something the same day, how can you say it wasn't true? NARRATOR: Over 250 callers? And all reportedly seeing the same unidentified flying object? For abduction researchers and local authorities, the incredible number of witnesses gave the Reed family's case an uncommonly high level of credibility.
So much so that on November 3, 2015, Massachusetts Governor Charles D.
Baker issued a citation which formally recognized that a verified UFO event had taken place, just as the Reed family and many others had described.
To date, no other alien encounter has received this kind of acknowledgement.
What I think is important in all this is that we were the first to be state-inducted as a true event.
And I think that opens doors, and paves the way for a lot of other people who deserve to be taken more seriously.
NARRATOR: Do the verified accounts of the Sheffield incident refute skeptics who claim that abduction stories are unreliable? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and they suggest that even more compelling evidence can be found by examining memories buried deep inside the human mind.
NARRATOR: At one of the AlienCon panels examining alien abduction phenomena, a member of the audience shares what he believes to have been a real-life alien encounter, one involving missing time.
MAN: In about 1996, I saw a UFO, and it scared me bad enough that I called 911.
And it just flew around a water tower across the street from my house, and went into Oak Riparian Park, and, uh, I grabbed my flashlight.
I wanted to see it, and I chased it.
And the next thing I remember, I'm-I'm walking back.
But I have this thing.
Every time I go back to that same park, I feel like I'm missing something.
It's a very common thing, missing time with the abduction experience.
And so, yeah, so, I've been helping a lot of people going you know, go through the regression.
There's different ways that you can do regression, but I definitely encourage you to do that.
NARRATOR: Caroline Cory is an expert in hypnotic regression a meditative practice used to release missing time memories that have been suppressed, but are still present in a person's subconscious mind.
For the past 16 years, she has specialized in helping people remember and understand what they believe to be an incident involving extraterrestrial abduction.
When people have a trauma, they tend to push it back into the subconscious mind, because, on a conscious level, it is associated with fear, anxiety.
Hypnotherapy allows you to bring the mind to a certain level so that the person is so relaxed, they're almost in a trance.
Then they can tap into their subconscious mind and relive the experience.
When you relive the experience, you right away, you begin to heal it.
That is what happens in hypnotherapy.
- Hey, Joe.
How are you? - Hi, Caroline.
NARRATOR: On June 11, 2018, Caroline met with Joe Cerletti for a hypnotic regression session.
Joe has had difficulty remembering the details of an incident that happened in the spring of 2008, when he and two friends were driving on a dark highway just after midnight near Oakland, California.
We were just driving down the road at an average speed, 65, maybe 70 miles an hour, and instantaneously, we weren't driving anymore and the car was shut off.
And we were parked about 45 minutes away in a parking lot for an amusement park after hours and we were locked inside the gate with no explanation how we got there at that time.
NARRATOR: Joe realized that he and his friends may have been abducted by extraterrestrials, extraterrestrials which he believes deliberately blocked his memory.
Today, Caroline will use hypnotic regression to hopefully help Joe remember more about what happened on that night.
You ready? - I am.
- Okay, here we go.
So, we're gonna sit up straight with the feet flat on the floor.
And close your eyes.
And take a deep breath in through the nose.
- And exhale through the mouth.
- (exhales) As you exhale (exhales) you let go of the stress, the tension.
Focus on your hands, on your arms on your heart.
We are now in the year 2008.
You are driving with two friends.
And then what happens? CERLETTI: A very bright flash of light just surrounds us and absorbs us.
Okay.
CERLETTI: I'm getting these thoughts in my head that I've never heard before.
- I'm trying to - Don't try.
Don't assess or judge or analyze.
You are in the experience, in the feeling.
You feel safe, protected.
And the light, where is the light coming from? Almost like a portal being opened.
It's being opened by a ship.
Okay.
What is the next thing that you experience? I'm starting to actually get a visual of guess you could call them faces.
- CORY: Who's there? - Just beings.
Do you get a sense of why you ended up there, not someone else? They're showing me just, like, a line from my family.
(clears throat) Goes, they're just going back in time.
They're saying that there's always been a connection to, a close connection, as far back as it goes.
Okay.
The biggest question that the abductees have is, "Why me?" "Why did this happen to me?" If they can sense that this happened not just to them, but to their parents and their grandparents, it brings some sort of closure, it starts to make sense to them and they start to feel that there's a real connection.
It wasn't a random thing.
Breathe in through the nose.
(inhales sharply) As you exhale through the mouth, you're purging all of this energy.
Let it go, let it go, yes.
And slowly, slowly, whenever you're ready, open your eyes.
(exhales) Wow.
- Excellent.
- Yeah.
Wow.
- Well, you did amazing.
That was awesome.
- Thank you.
You did - Thank you so much.
- Absolutely.
There was a time where I was scared to find the answers because, I think, the whole unknown factor is a basic human fear: not knowing, the unknown, the abyss, the dark.
But I needed those answers 'cause I needed some sort of explanation for what happened that night.
- All right, I think we're done for today.
-Okay.
NARRATOR: For Joe Cerletti, and others like him, hypnotic regression is an important tool in unlocking memories that may be buried due to trauma.
But are there other, even more authoritative methods, that might help prove that alien abductions actually take place? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and point to recent experiments that collect convincing scientific data from the human brain.
NARRATOR: Of the featured guests at AlienCon 2018, three claim to have had firsthand experience with extraterrestrials: consciousness researcher Caroline Cory, Kathleen Marden, the director of Experiencer Research for MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, and Bret Oldham, a man who claims to have had more than a dozen abduction experiences since the age of five.
So many, in fact, that he has authored three books on the subject.
Uh, I was first taken when I was five years old, and the memories were suppressed all the way up until I was in my early 20s.
And it was through the therapy that I discovered the truth of what had been happening to me.
The psychological damage of being taken and having sexual experiments performed on you, and being subjected to a lot of things like that.
I decided not to become a victim to it.
And it took me 20, 20 some years to get enough nerve to come forward and face what was out there, because I wanted to become a voice for others who have had these experiences.
For more than a decade, Bret Oldham has been an advocate for those who claim to have had similar experiences.
Like all abductees, he has faced both skepticism and scorn from the public.
This is a worldwide phenomena, it's happening in a grand scale and it's happening to all walks of life.
- (applause) - POPE: Thank you very much.
NARRATOR: Earlier this year, in an effort to learn if his abduction memories could be clinically proven, Bret agreed to submit to a scientific test.
- Why don't you come on back? - Sure.
-Great, thanks.
NARRATOR: If successful, the test, involving an EEG scan of Bret's brain, could go a long way toward proving that extraterrestrial abductions are actually taking place.
Conducting the test is neuroscientist Dr.
Dario Nardi, under the supervision of former British Ministry of Defence investigator, Nick Pope.
Okay, we will be using, um, this little piece of equipment today.
Are you familiar with EEG? I'm familiar with it.
NARDI: There are no wires or whatnot, there's just these little sensors.
And I will be placing this on your head like this.
Okay.
NARRATOR: An EEG, or electroencephalography, is a noninvasive method of measuring the electrochemical activity of the neurons in the brain.
It works by placing a network of electrodes over areas of the scalp, which can, in turn, register not only the area of the brain that is being stimulated, but also the degree of stimulation.
We can make a couple of inferences when we see the brain activity.
One is, if we see what are called alpha waves in particular, in the temporal regions of the brain, then that's gonna give us a good idea that the person is recalling something from memory.
On the other hand, if we see, uh, activity more in the front of the brain, where there's maybe not those alpha waves of some other kind of activity, then that's gonna suggest that the person is crafting something or coming up with an answer or explanation in the moment.
So we can differentiate sort of storytelling versus accessing the memory.
NARRATOR: Nick will ask Bret a series of questions about his abduction experiences, and Dr.
Nardi will observe the neural activity that occurs during Bret's responses.
If, for example, Bret is inventing or making up his answers, it should show up as activity on the part of the brain most associated with imagination.
NARDI: Okay.
We are ready to go.
Well, perhaps, uh, first of all, Bret, was there a single incident that started this? Uh, there was.
Um, we lived in Southern Illinois, in an old farmhouse surrounded by just cornfields and soybean and stuff like that, and I'd lived a pretty innocent life up until that point.
One night, I heard a voice, and I actually thought it was my stepdad, 'cause it's very, very quiet out in the country.
Did the voice say something? The voice was coaxing me to come to the window.
I got up and I walked across the floor.
I could see a light coming through.
It just kept coaxing me to come, and I was just a curious little boy.
And I remember raising my hand up and pulling back the curtains, and that's when I came face-to-face with what we now know as a Grey.
- So what did you think it was? - I had no idea.
I had never seen anything like that before.
And before I could scream for help or anything, the next thing I remember was laying on a table, surrounded by these things.
And you said, uh, before you could scream, so I presume from what you're saying - that you were very scared.
- Very scared.
That first incident made such an indelible mark in my psyche that I-I had nightmares about it, up until just several years ago.
Even now, after all the time, how does it make you feel looking back on that incident and what's your, what's your bottom line on this, in terms of what you think's going on? I don't think anyone really knows what their true agenda is.
You know, some people speculate that they're gonna take over our planet.
Uh, I don't.
I-I think if they were gonna do that, - they would have already done it.
- Right.
NARRATOR: After Nick and Bret finish their session, Dr.
Nardi shares the EEG results, and what they reveal about Bret and his story.
So we had about 45 minutes worth of data.
You asked questions that truly were speculative questions, versus ones that were asking for literal recall.
And we saw that, really, they were activating in very different parts of the brain.
Consistently, when you asked him to speculate, like, "Why do you think that they do this," then clearly, we see this region of the brain in the left hemisphere sort of by the left temple here, that that would get active.
So that, that was a really good baseline.
In contrast, there were at least a half a dozen moments which really strongly activated over on this side instead, which is associated more with literal recall.
In other words, uh, we're just gonna give the facts, and the details, or rather, recall without embellishment.
Indicative of an actual memory? Most of the time.
NARRATOR: "Recall without embellishment?" Could this result be evidence that Bret's story is true, and that these abductions really took place? Those moments that you described like sitting with the tall Grey, that's what that looked like in the brain.
By differentiating between memory and speculation, in one sense the EEG machine acted as a sort of polygraph.
The fact that the part of the brain involved in memory lit up and was activated, says to me that this is a genuine experience.
This is not a hoax.
This is not somebody who's making the whole thing up.
Well, Dario, thank you very much.
This has been very interesting, and I think we've got lots of great data here.
- Thank you.
- Absolutely.
- It's my pleasure.
- Really appreciate it.
OLDHAM: The journey is always going to continue for me.
I'm always going to want to delve deeper into these events, into what I remember, and find out what I don't remember.
And I still don't have all the answers.
NARRATOR: If, as the EEG data suggests, Bret Oldham's claims of extraterrestrial abduction are true, does it help prove that alien abductions are really happening? But why? And for what purpose? Perhaps further clues can be found by examining evidence that aliens have been altering human biology.
And not just for generations, but for thousands of years.
NARRATOR: Lancaster, New Hampshire.
September 19, 1961.
Betty and Barney Hill are driving late at night when a large flying saucer intercepts them and hovers over their car.
Above them, the Hills observe otherworldly figures in the windows of the craft.
Days later, the couple reports missing time and after participating in hypnotic regression, they claim to realize that they were abducted by extraterrestrials.
In the decades that follow, the Betty and Barney Hill case becomes the most well-known and investigated abduction encounter in modern history.
But according to Betty and Barney's descendants, the incident in Lancaster is only one part of a much larger story, a story that actually began three years prior with an incident involving Betty's sister.
Betty Hill was my aunt, my mother's sister.
Something that we have never revealed before is that my mother had a close encounter in 1958.
She saw this huge, cigar-shaped craft hovering over a field.
She had no explanation for what had happened as far as she knew.
She had gone shopping and she had driven home.
My mother eventually underwent hypnosis and through hypnosis, she recalled having been abducted as well.
And I also had this uncanny sort of dreamlike experience of being taken to a craft.
It bothered me for many, many years.
Eventually, I did talk to my family about it and that's when I found out that my mother had the same memory.
NARRATOR: Could it be that extraterrestrial beings are abducting not only individuals, but also families? And if so, why? The abduction phenomenon is intergenerational.
When a man and a woman marry and either the man or the woman is an abductee, their children will be abductees.
POPE: It seems that specific bloodlines are involved here.
And if that's the case, it raises the intriguing possibility that the extraterrestrials are interested in human biology, that they are monitoring specific genetic lines for some purpose.
NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists and UFO researchers, the notion that extraterrestrials are conducting experiments involving human biology is not a new one.
Many believe the practice has been going on for thousands of years.
TZADOK: Maybe there's some truth to these entities which we call shedim.
These are old legends of people who are abducted, sexually seduced and some taken away.
And when we hear today about the numerous stories of alien abductions throughout history, they are identical.
NARRATOR: For proof that their theories about the biological nature of alien abductions are valid, researchers point to the fact that a relatively high number of abductees, more than 60%, have an extraordinarily rare blood type: Rh negative.
The subject kept coming up from the abductees: "I'm Rh negative.
" "Could it have anything to do with why I'm being abducted?" I got to collaborate with a doctor, Dr.
John Altshuler, and he did pathology; he did blood work.
And he gave the conclusion that Rh negative blood might actually be a genetic data point about why humans could be hybrids, that every Rh negative would be coming from a history of abductions.
MONTALDO: Rh negative is a very peculiar thing.
First off, it didn't exist until 35,000 years ago.
It may have been that 35,000 years ago, E.
T.
introduced this into our society through whatever breeding programs they've been running.
The ancient astronaut theory suggests that for thousands of years, extraterrestrials meddled with our DNA.
There was a time when we were Homo sapiens.
And then we became Homo sapiens sapiens.
And that happened within only 50,000 years, which by Darwinian evolutionary standards, is too short of a time span for that to happen.
Our brain volume increased by up to 30% in 50,000 years, which is absolutely crazy.
Now, the reason why I think that modern-day abductions occur is because maybe we are still being manipulated with our DNA from extraterrestrials in order to turn us from Homo sapiens sapiens into Homo sapiens sapiens sapiens.
NARRATOR: Have extraterrestrials been abducting people in order to monitor the evolutionary progress of humans? Or have they been deliberately manipulating our biology in order to achieve some ultimate purpose? Ancient astronaut theorists claim that both possibilities are likely true and for this reason, it is more important than ever for us to hear the stories of those who say they have been taken.
NARRATOR: Pasadena, California.
June 16, 2018.
Throughout a discussion about alien abductions during a panel at AlienCon, both the panelists and members of the audience remark on how difficult, but also important it is to speak out about abductions.
I hesitated coming up here for a couple reasons.
Um (sighs) Every topic that you guys have mentioned has connected dots actively right now today.
As far as lineage, as far as bloodlines, as far as families, so generational.
My mom, um, myself, my daughter.
I had night terrors as a child, missing time as a child throughout my life.
I literally have short-term memory deficits and specific things, real spontaneous phenomenon that ultimately touches on everything that - you guys are talking about.
- POPE: Thank you very much.
These hardly ever seem to be one-off experiences.
Thank you for sharing your story.
I'd like to say, uh, I applaud you guys for your courage to come forward in front of all these people and share your story.
I'm blown away by the amount of people that, uh, show up at this panel.
And when I see this kind of, uh, support, it's very encouraging and I think that's very important to bring this phenomenon out into the light where it needs to be because a lot of answers lie with the experiencers.
So I just thank you for that.
Coming forward to admit that you've had some type of a close encounter, whether it is seeing something or maybe you've been abducted, that is a very difficult thing to admit.
And that is why I think we really should look at all the other pieces of evidence: abduction cases or close encounters and say, "Okay, what if?" I'm happy today that I'm finally able to say it's not only real, it's happening.
Great.
Hearing those stories is of help to any of you out there who have had these strange experiences.
And you are not alone with this, as you can see.
So thank you to you and thank you to my fellow panelists.
When you look at the vast body of data that we have on this phenomenon, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that something is going on here.
Why should we, therefore, cast away the stories of the abductees just because we may feel a little uncomfortable with the place that takes us? NARRATOR: Each year, thousands of people are bravely coming forward with personal accounts of alien abductions.
But is the world's growing willingness to hear them and believe them a sign that humanity might be on the brink of an exciting new period in its evolution, one where we will discover that centuries of alien contact has changed us in ways we could never have previously imagined or accepted? Perhaps a greater acceptance that alien contact is being made will prepare us for the future, a future where we will become the extraterrestrials on other worlds and encounter other life-forms not so different from our own.