Ancient Aliens s14e07 Episode Script

1 NARRATOR: Mysterious stone structures that defy explanation.
Look at that.
NARRATOR: Exhibiting electromagnetic anomalies - And you can see it's fluctuating.
See it there? - Yeah, right.
NARRATOR: That have even been linked to UFO sightings.
Thousands of people would witness these massive triangular spacecraft congregate towards where these chambers are.
NARRATOR: And perhaps most incredible of all, these ancient sites are located in the Northeastern United States.
WILLIAM HENRY: These mysterious stone structures are in fact Druid structures.
NARRATOR: Could an extraterrestrial culture have existed in North America centuries ago? BILL BIRNES: People were not only seeing UFOs, they were seeing creatures, they were experiencing missing time.
WHITLEY STRIEBER: I have experienced it directly for years now.
It's an extraordinary place of power.
NARRATOR: There is a doorway in the universe.
Beyond it is the promise of truth.
It demands we question everything we have ever been taught.
The evidence is all around us.
The future is right before our eyes.
We are not alone.
We have never been alone.
NARRATOR: New York's Hudson Valley.
December 26, 1985.
Author Whitley Strieber has an experience that becomes the basis of his blockbuster book Communion.
STRIEBER: My wife and I had bought a cabin.
And in October of 1985, strange experiences began to happen there that were memorable but not understandable.
And then, on December the 26th, I felt myself in motion and woke up in the middle of the night.
And the room was filled with these willowy figures with big black eyes, and dark blue, short figures moving around.
I assumed it was a nightmare, and I kept trying to wake up from the dream, and I couldn't.
Then I began to hear a voice repeating, a very gentle voice.
But it was like a mechanical voice: "What can we do to help you stop screaming?" And I thought, "I'm screaming?" And I was screaming.
That was the beginning of it, and that's when the rest of my life began.
ANDREW COLLINS: And to this day, he still doesn't know exactly who they were, where they came from.
Were they aliens? Were they inter-dimensional visitors? He cannot say.
NARRATOR: Unbeknownst to him at the time, Strieber's abduction was actually witnessed by a neighbor.
STRIEBER: After I published Communion, one neighbor shamefully admitted that he had seen what happened to me that night.
He and his wife had been driving home from a party at about 2:00 in the morning, and they had seen what they thought was the Goodyear Blimp landed in a field near our houses.
And suddenly, lights came on all over it.
He heard someone screaming inside.
His wife panicked, and he drove away.
And a year later, he said to me, "Whitley, I'm so ashamed "to tell you, I know it was you in there.
It was a man screaming.
It had to have been you.
" NARRATOR: Communion became a massive best seller, and ignited a cultural shift in people's attitudes towards the subject of alien abduction.
STRIEBER: When I published it, I thought there were, like, maybe 30 or 40 people who had had the experience, not millions.
But it was millions.
NARRATOR: But for UFO researchers and ancient astronaut theorists alike, of particular significance is where Strieber's encounter occurred.
The Hudson Valley stretches northward 150 miles, from New York City up to Albany.
STRIEBER: This occurred right at the western border of the Hudson Valley.
The area is full of this type of thing.
And after I published Communion, people from the neighborhood would come forward, one after another, to tell me their own stories.
NARRATOR: Kent, New York.
New Year's Eve, 1982.
(party horns blowing) Just a few miles from the Hudson River, New Year's Eve revelers spot a gigantic V-shaped craft throbbing with red, white and green lights.
As they watch in amazement, the colors vanish, replaced by white lights so bright they illuminate the ground.
Over the next months, authorities are bombarded with hundreds of similar reports.
PHILIP IMBROGNO: Usually, UFOs just appear to a small number of people, and they disappear.
In this case, people were stopped on the highways.
People were running out of their houses watching this enormous object pass over, the size of a football field.
BIRNES: They were so large that people standing between trees couldn't see the ends of the flying triangles 'cause they were so big.
That's how large they were.
NARRATOR: The sightings continued for more than six years, and became the most widely reported in American history.
DAVID CHILDRESS: The Hudson Valley UFO sightings continued, well, up to 1988.
It's estimated that as many as 5,000 people called in and made reports of this very large, lit-up UFO.
HUGH NEWMAN: Other accounts are of people seeing these strange balls of light, which move around in erratic and unusual ways.
IMBROGNO: UFOs were being seen all over the place.
Pilots were seeing them, police officers were chasing them.
It was like something out of a movie.
NARRATOR: But why were so many UFO sightings reported in this one particular area? Could there be a connection to Whitley Strieber's abduction experience? The thinking is that when you have so much UFO activity in one place, that place is going to be significant.
There's something about that area, it seems, that is attracting the UFOs.
They want something in that location.
There is a connection with something in that location.
Some have suggested the reason why these sightings have happened at the Hudson Valley is because they are on top of a vortex.
Now, what's a vortex? Well, there are varying opinions of what that is.
Some have suggested that they are magnetic points that are part of the Earth's magnetic grid.
Other's have suggested that vortexes are sort of these portals.
COLLINS: What we call "portals" are locations where paranormal phenomena and supernatural events occur on an extremely regular basis, and have done for many decades, if not hundreds of years.
NARRATOR: Some argue that New York's Hudson Valley and the adjoining region of New England, America's Northeast, may be just such a vortex.
STRIEBER: There is definitely an extraordinary place of power, the Hudson Valley.
If you want to call it a vortex, then sure it's a vortex.
I'd have to be completely nuts to say anything else, because I experienced it directly for years there.
NARRATOR: Could Whitley Strieber's story of Communion, and the frenzied Hudson Valley UFO sightings of the 1980s be just two small parts of a much larger story? A story that begins thousands of years before Columbus, when ancient visitors set sail for America, bringing with them secrets from the stars.
Perhaps further clues can be found by examining the hundreds of strange stone structures that dot the area, and their possible connection to an ancient people known as the Druids.
Salem, New Hampshire.
July 9, 1975.
At one of New England's most popular archaeological sites, Mystery Hill, also known as "America's Stonehenge," Harvard professor Barry Fell discovers a stone tablet with a mysterious script carved into it.
He identifies it as belonging to a writing system called "ogham," which was used by the Irish Celts who lived 2,000 years ago, and 3,000 miles away, in their traditional homeland of Ireland.
He translates the script as meaning, "Dedicated to Bel," the Celtic sun god.
But why would there be Celtic writing carved into an ancient stone tablet in New Hampshire? NEWMAN: There is some evidence that the Celts were in ancient America.
The megalithic stone chambers.
We have stone circles.
There's stone avenues.
There's also ogham writing that's been found.
And there's even some dolmens as well.
And it's all what you find in ancient Ireland and ancient Europe.
NARRATOR: In recent years, a growing number of people have come to believe that the Celts were present in the American Northeast thousands of years ago.
And some suggest that these mysterious Celtic priests believed that the land possessed a powerful energy.
Did the Celts travel to North America because of its connection to extraterrestrial activity? Or, in coming here, did they open a gateway that is still open today? NARRATOR: Harvard University, 1976.
Professor Barry Fell, who discovered what he believed to be ancient Celtic writing in New Hampshire one year earlier, publishes America B.
C.
In it, he argues that long before Christopher Columbus reached the shores of the New World in 1492, America was visited by the Druids, a high-ranking priest class of the Celtic people who first arose in Northern Europe around 800 BC.
As evidence, Fell points to the prevalence of strange stone chambers scattered over large areas of the Hudson Valley and New England.
NEWMAN: All over New England and New York state, hundreds of these unusual stone chambers.
Many of them are thought to be colonial root cellars, where local colonialists would place their vegetables in for storage.
(leaves rustling) If they're root cellars, if they're just for where the colonialists would place their vegetables, then why are they so far out in the middle of nowhere? And why were some of them being reported by colonial people as they moved into this area, even as far back as the 1600s? STRIEBER: There were stone structures all over the place.
But they weren't things made by settlers because there had never been any agriculture in those woods.
You can't grow anything there.
SALVATORE TRENTO: Many of them have stone flooring.
And stone is not the best material for keeping crops.
The cold seeps through and destroys the crops.
But there was something else.
We've dated charcoal that we found within many of these structures and they date back to about 3,000 years ago.
I think that the stone chambers, which are dismissed so often as root cellars, are not root cellars.
I've been in a couple of those chambers and that is no root cellar, believe you me.
NARRATOR: Professor Fell also noted that the chambers accurately line up with astronomical events like the solstice and the equinox, just like ancient Celtic megaliths in Europe.
Could Professor Fell have been right? Were these chambers built by the ancient Druids of Northern Europe? There's been a lot of discussion over the last century about if these chambers are actually part of an ancient Celtic or Druid tradition that came over from Europe.
HENRY: They're virtually identical to the Neolithic structures we find throughout Europe that were created by the Druids for the purpose of meditation, as observatories of stellar phenomena and perhaps even other more mysterious purposes.
IMBROGNO: There are all types of legends that people from Europe came here a long time ago and explored the East Coast of the United States from New York, Connecticut, all the way up to Vermont and Massachusetts.
And they actually built these structures with a Druid priest and they were used for ceremonial purposes.
NARRATOR: Did Druids visit America centuries before Columbus and build these structures? And if so, are they connected to the Hudson Valley sightings of the 1980s and even the abduction story told by Whitley Strieber in his book, Communion? Perhaps further clues can be found by more closely examining just who the Druids were and who they worshipped.
(wind whistling) Wiltshire, England.
Summer solstice, 500 BC.
As ancient Celts converge on the megalithic stone circle known as Stonehenge, the Sun's first rays shine directly into the center of the monument.
Like the stone chambers found scattered throughout the American Northeast, Stonehenge is aligned to this celestial event.
The Celts are led by their Druid priests who are believed to communicate with a higher realm.
RABBI ARIEL BAR TZADOK: The Druids, history shows us, the ancient inhabitants in both the British Isles and in Ireland.
They were allegedly an ancient priesthood.
Masters of magic, science.
They were political leaders.
They were judges.
They were essentially the elite.
Who exactly were they? Where did they come from? NARRATOR: According to Irish legend, the Druid priests were instructed by a race of godlike beings who descended from the heavens: "The Shining Ones" or Tuatha Dé Danann.
TOK THOMPSON: The Tuatha Dé Danann are probably the most important tribe in Irish mythology.
All the representations we have that the Tuatha Dé Danann were special.
So the "Tuatha" means tribe.
"Dé" means gods or divine, so, divine tribes.
Gods of the divine.
According to these ancient Irish books, the Tuatha Dé Danann had red hair and blue or green eyes.
They had magical powers.
And they arrived in airships with dark clouds.
They had all kinds of magical devices and weapons that they used.
The Shining Ones had access to strange pieces of weaponry.
For example, one of them is called the light sword.
This sword made out of fire (flames roaring) with which you could end any battle like this.
It is my opinion that those were the extraterrestrials who imparted the first type of knowledge to the local population of that area.
NARRATOR: Are the Celtic stories of the Tuatha Dé Danann actual historical accounts of an alien visitation in Ireland? And if so, were these teachers perhaps also present in the American Northeast thousands of years ago? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes.
And they suggest physical evidence may have been unearthed on a quiet New England beach.
Milford, Connecticut.
August 19, 1922.
The dean of American archeology, Warren Moorehead, makes a shocking discovery on the Connecticut shore.
His excavations uncover the remains of two massive giants.
Their discovery sparked a media sensation.
IMBROGNO: Warren Moorehead uncovered two skeletons of some strange beings which were over seven feet tall.
They had flat heads and extra rows of teeth.
NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists, an intriguing clue about the giants' origins can be found in the Native American oral tradition, which says that the giants had red hair.
COLLINS: Red hair is something that is traditionally associated with the Celtic peoples of Britain.
So is it possible that there's a relationship between the ancient British peoples and these giants? NARRATOR: If Druids came to the New World and built the stone chambers scattered throughout New England, did they do so with the help of extraterrestrial visitors? Perhaps further clues can be found by more closely examining these potentially ancient structures and the mysterious properties they exhibit.
NARRATOR: North Salem, New York.
April 2019.
Seeking a link between the Celts, Druids and the New World, ancient astronaut theorist David Childress and British megalith expert Hugh Newman set out to visit one of the most mysterious stone structures in America: - Balanced Rock.
- CHILDRESS: I'm excited about seeing this Balanced Rock.
And you, you think it's a dolmen.
- Is that what you're saying? - I'm convinced it's a dolmen.
It looks like something you would find in Britain.
NARRATOR: Thousands of ancient dolmens have been found throughout Europe.
Most are known to be at least 5,000 years old, and since rock cannot be carbon-dated, could be far older.
The dolmens were sometimes open tombs under which a body would be ceremonially placed.
COLLINS: This monument that is known as Balanced Rock resembles almost exactly the stone dolmens of Europe.
NEWMAN: It's a massive top stone.
60 to 90 tons are the estimates.
And it's just a remarkable place.
And so, geologists are saying that it's a glacial erratic and a-a glacier just brought it.
It's, it's totally natural.
As the glacier pulled out, it just sort of dropped them down on these stones.
That's what they say, but it just doesn't make sense 'cause it looks like it's constructed.
You can see the shaping on the, the stones underneath it.
NARRATOR: Just a few miles south of the mass UFO sightings that happened in Kent, New York in the 1980s, David and Hugh arrive at the mysterious formation.
Wow, look at that.
Oh, man.
That is huge.
NEWMAN: That is pretty impressive, isn't it? - CHILDRESS: That is a giant dolmen, isn't it? - I know.
- I know.
It's amazing.
- Cool, wow.
It looks like a European dolmen, doesn't it? It does, it's identical.
'Cause you have, we have these uprights; I mean, there were originally seven there.
- Uh-huh.
- There seems to be five or six there.
It's hard to tell because some split.
And the fact that it's granite is quite intriguing, combined with the gneiss rock underneath.
So there is a potential piezoelectric effect.
And this site is renowned for having kind of energies associated with it.
NARRATOR: In the so-called "piezoelectric effect," electrical energy accumulates in solids, rocks and otherwise lifeless matter.
Some claim that objects infused with piezoelectricity can produce strange and anomalous results.
Because this is granite, it's infused - with tiny quartz crystals.
- Yeah.
So, yeah, there should be some energy coming out of it.
I believe there is, and also, the landscape it's in, it sits right on top of a negative magnetic anomaly, directly under the main part of the stone.
So you think that this is some kind of vortex area, and there's a magnetic anomaly, and that perhaps they used that magnetic anomaly to move this giant boulder a-and place it here? It's quite possible.
And I think, if you place them in the right spot when there's magnetic anomalies or telluric currents underneath, which is both here, you have the piezoelectric effect.
So when you place seeds or grains there, it'll charge them up, and you'll get a higher yield and a better-quality crop.
CHILDRESS: Seeds that are charged under here for one or two days, and then other seeds that aren't charged, they grow 'em together, and the ones from here grow, like, twice as fast.
NEWMAN: This has been tested scientifically.
CHILDRESS: So, if there's some kind of energy vortex here, - you can measure that, right? - Yeah.
So, I've got this.
This is a TriField magnetometer.
This is a classic device where you measure different readings from magnetic fluctuations.
Also electric charge.
Even radiation.
Well, should we do some tests? Shall we see what we can find? - Yeah, let's do it.
- Yeah, let's go.
Okay, let's turn this on.
So what we'll do is, we'll get down a bit closer in.
- Uh-huh.
- Let's put this down here, right in the center.
And look, immediately We've got it on the magnetic, uh, setting, so we're getting fluctuations already.
CHILDRESS: So that means that there's an anomalous energy here.
Some magnetic field that's stronger than outside.
So this energy field is pulsing.
NEWMAN: This is a proper energy site.
So let's just keep walking around, see if we can pick up any other fluctuations or readings here.
And, yeah, this spot here seems to be the-the hot spot.
- CHILDRESS: It's stronger now.
- NEWMAN: It's much stronger.
- It's almost double.
- Uh-huh.
NEWMAN: We certainly have an anomaly here.
NARRATOR: While many rocks naturally carry a magnetic charge, the magnetic energy under and around Balanced Rock is unusually high From ten to 50 times normal.
STRIEBER: The great structures of the past, like Balanced Rock, were about experiencing the great energy of the Earth.
And, in fact, if you go to Balanced Rock, you can feel the power of the Earth there still, just as it was then.
NARRATOR: But is the rock generating all of this energy on its own? Or could it have been purposely placed here because it is a location that amplifies its magnetic properties? So, you're also thinking, then, that Druids or the Tuatha Dé Danann, they've come here from Ireland and England and Wales, and then they chose this area because it's a vortex spot, and then they chose this spot particularly to put this giant dolmen here? NEWMAN: I think that's the case, and I think this is really the center of the whole complex around this part of the country.
CHILDRESS: So, back in the '80s, there was this big UFO flap here in the Hudson Valley.
And some UFO researchers claim that the UFOs were coming up the valley towards this rock.
NARRATOR: Six years after Harvard University Professor Barry Fell published his controversial theory that the Druids had visited North America, the Hudson Valley UFO sightings began right over the mysterious stone chambers and Balanced Rock.
As investigators began tracking these many thousands of sightings in the Hudson Valley, they began to notice that there was a focal point.
A central point: Balanced Rock.
Appears to be a sort of a vortex that was either used as a portal by these craft, or as a guidance mechanism for these craft as they're travelling through this vortex.
It's no accident that these masses of sightings took place in the Hudson Valley.
NEWMAN: Some of the research that was carried out, they found that some of the balls of light which seem intelligent, were moving towards these kind of sites, like the dolmens, the chambers of the Hudson Valley here.
NARRATOR: Does the magnetic testing at Balanced Rock reveal that this area of the Earth generates an energy vortex? And if so, could this anomaly be connected to both the high number of UFO sightings in the Hudson Valley, and also the mysterious stone structures found throughout the region? Perhaps further clues can be found by examining an infamous site where some say time stands still.
NARRATOR: Upstate New York.
April 2019.
In search of further evidence that the ancient Druids came to America, David Childress and Hugh Newman head to a site just 20 miles north of Balanced Rock One of the mysterious stone chambers of Putnam County.
There's huge boulders here, and some walls.
Well Yeah, there's just so many of them, really.
I mean, some of them are probably still buried, to be discovered.
All right, I see a chamber right there.
Yeah.
NEWMAN: I'm really looking forward to seeing this one.
CHILDRESS: All right.
Yeah, this is one of the-the more famous ones.
When we get inside, it gets bigger.
So let's get these on.
Let's go in and take a look.
See what we can see.
CHILDRESS: Yeah, this is a big lintel.
NEWMAN: Yeah, look at this.
This is incredible.
CHILDRESS: Wow.
NEWMAN: It's well constructed.
This is one of the chambers where the strange lights would kind of congregate during the whole - Hudson Valley UFO flap that lasted for ten years.
- Is that right? And also, we've got massive megalithic block.
Especially this stone back here.
Look at this.
This is the classic sort of British megalithic design, and it proves, I believe, a connection with the ancient sites of Britain.
This entrance, what direction do you think that's pointing? Well, we can just check that, actually, while we're here.
If we're standing over this side, in that direction, it's going east.
But if we go over here, for instance, and we look in that direction, that's like northeast.
So we've got summer solstice alignment going that way, and if you're standing over there, we've got an eastern equinox alignment.
So, that's kind of intriguing in itself.
NARRATOR: Based on Hugh Newman's research, the chamber lines up with the solstice and equinox, like ancient sites all over the former Celtic territory of Northern Europe, such as Stonehenge in England, the Ring of Brodgar in Scotland, Newgrange in Ireland, and the Carnac Stones in France.
Were the Hudson Valley chambers constructed by the same ancient builders? And if so, how are the chambers connected to the spectacular UFO sightings that electrified the Hudson Valley 30 years ago? In the whole Hudson Valley UFO flap in the '80s, we did have accounts of these balls of light, these-these orbs coming down.
They would sort of almost orientate and kind of land, go inside the chambers.
And so, why would they do that? Then it was realized they may have been designed to trap magnetic and electric charge, and it would attract and move these natural balls of light around.
NARRATOR: If Druids armed with alien technology visited the American Northeast, could there be other signs of their passage through New England? Hartford, Connecticut.
November 20, 1654.
A settler named John Pynchon writes Governor John Winthrop about a newly discovered stone site known as Gungywamp, from which he says he is hearing "many strange reports.
" Gungywamp is a series of stone chambers, alignments of standing stones on a 24-acre hilltop in Southern Connecticut.
And people have been looking at this since the early 1600s.
Gungywamp is a place of mystery.
It's a place that has a lot of anomalies with it.
COLLINS: It's known for its magnetic anomalies.
It's known for the strange lights, the UFOs that appear in this area.
People have very strange experiences when they go there.
They burst into tears, becoming very emotional.
People have reported nosebleeds out of nowhere.
Bleeding from the eyes.
People have reported passing out, feeling nauseous.
I was there with a friend of mine, and we had to sit down because we got so nauseous and dizzy.
Some have claimed extraordinary experiences where time and space actually are freezing.
NARRATOR: Interestingly, Governor John Winthrop, who recorded the first reference to Gungywamp, also recorded the first report of a UFO sighting in the New World.
It occurred in 1639, 100 miles east of Gungywamp, on Boston's Muddy River.
He described an incident that fishermen had, where an object flew up out of the water, hovered in the sky Then, all of a sudden, these fishermen were back at the headwaters of this river, with no sense of passing time.
NARRATOR: Strange magnetic anomalies.
Unexplainable physical ailments.
Missing time.
UFO sightings.
Could Balanced Rock, Gungywamp, and the stone chambers be part of a larger "energy grid" that overlies vast swaths of the Hudson Valley and New England? One that contributes to the creation of a vortex? For ancient astronaut theorists, the answer is a resounding yes, and they suggest a connection to the Druids and their otherworldly mentors, the Tuatha Dé Danann, can be found by examining their darkest practice, human sacrifice.
NARRATOR: Mystery Hill, New Hampshire.
At this remarkable megalithic stone site known as America's Stonehenge, where Barry Fell first discovered evidence of Druid writing in 1975, can be found numerous celestial alignments.
NEWMAN: It's an area that covers 12 acres.
It has multiple stone chambers.
It has megalithic construction, such as standing stones, which have now been found to be astronomically aligned from the center of the site.
NARRATOR: The most famous artifact at Mystery Hill is a curious stone slab.
COLLINS: Among the many stone structures at America's Stonehenge is a huge, flat slab that is the size of a human body.
And around its edges is a channel that leads into a hole that very clearly would've been used to catch liquid that was running down the stone and that would eventually go through the channel down into the ground.
NARRATOR: A stone slab the size of a human body? With a channel for catching liquid? Could this slab have been used for blood rituals? The stone has, in fact, been dubbed "The Sacrificial Table," and some researchers believe it was used by the Druids.
Throughout Northern England, so-called "bog bodies" have been found, disturbingly well-preserved corpses of 2,000-year-old human sacrifice victims.
COLLINS: Bog bodies, as they're described, are human cadavers that have been repeatedly found in boggy environments, and the manner of their discovery seems to suggest that they could've been cast into the waters as a sacrifice.
There is powerful evidence that those responsible for these ritual murders were the Druids, and if the Druids did reach North America, that they carried sacrifice with them.
IMBROGNO: The Druids did sacrifice a certain way.
They would put a noose around the neck so that the pressure builds up in the carotid artery, then they would slit the throat so the blood had pressure to form a stream in the grooves of the rock.
NARRATOR: Could the Table of Sacrifice be physical evidence that the Druids came to America centuries ago and brought with them, not only their dark customs, but perhaps also left an indelible mark on New England and the Hudson Valley? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes and point out that Balanced Rock, the Hudson Valley stone chambers, the largest number of UFO sightings in U.
S.
history, and Whitley Strieber's famous abduction story, all happened within miles of each other.
I've had many conversations with Whitley Strieber, and he uses the Hudson Valley UFO sightings to give validation to his own experiences, which occurred in the Hudson Valley.
It validates his story.
NARRATOR: Strieber notes that, according to the ancient Celtic stories, the Tuatha Dé Danann, the so-called "Shining Ones" who descended from the sky, ultimately went underground and became the fairy folk of Irish myth.
In his own extraterrestrial abduction experience, the beings he encountered came from below.
There's a tradition in Celtic folklore that the old gods retreat underground.
I think they came up, and those people who came up were real, just as real as you and me.
So maybe there is something to the old fairy lore.
Let me put it this way, and we mustn't forget this, these fairy folk had nothing to do with Tinker Bell.
They're really a serious bunch.
NARRATOR: Is there an extraterrestrial presence that has existed in the American Northeast for more than 2,000 years? If so, is this what brought the Druids to this area? Or might the Druids themselves have been responsible for opening the door to otherworldly visitors? Perhaps further clues can be found in another eerie similarity between ancient Druid legends and the testimony of today's abductees: The strange phenomenon of missing time.
NARRATOR: More than 30 years after the publication of his book Communion, author Whitley Strieber remains convinced of a profound connection between his abduction and the mysterious stone chambers that dot the Hudson Valley.
STRIEBER: You sit in one of these chambers that's been carefully aligned to the earth and to the sky, and you will communicate with other levels of reality to the point that you will actually bring physical entities into your presence.
And you knew then the land is terribly sacred.
NARRATOR: Could these structures and Strieber's strange encounter, point to an extraterrestrial influence dating back to the age of the ancient Druids? Perhaps one final key can be found in famous tales of lost and missing time for which this region of the world is famous, and which played a major role in Communion.
STRIEBER: Like many close encounter witnesses, I have missing time in my experience.
It's not like going to sleep.
It's as if you and I are sitting here talking, I sense no change whatsoever, and then I discover that I've actually been here for over an hour in what seemed to me like five minutes.
NARRATOR: Missing time plays a role in many modern reports of alien abductions, but when it comes to the Hudson Valley, stories of missing time go back centuries.
200 years ago, Washington Irving published America's most famous tale of lost time, Rip Van Winkle.
It's the story of a Dutch American colonist who takes a nap in the woods and wakes up 20 years later.
Curiously, it's set in a village just a few miles away from Strieber's cabin.
And Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow takes place in the real village of North Tarrytown, New York, just a few miles from Balanced Rock.
STRIEBER: I think that Washington Irving sensed something up there, clearly.
He was very sensitive to what was going on in that area, what is going on to this day in that area, in my opinion.
THOMPSON: The well-known, uh, Rip Van Winkle story, uh, that was put into literary form, uh, by Washington Irving is, uh, kind of a fascinating story because even though it seems to be American, it's really lifted directly out of the Celtic fairy tradition.
NARRATOR: If the ancient Druids came to America thousands of years ago, were they attracted by an alien presence? Or is it possible that they used their vast and mysterious knowledge, that allowed them to harness the electromagnetic energy of the Earth, in order to create a vortex and open a gateway for extraterrestrials? And if so, could that gateway have been left open, making it possible for the scores of otherworldly encounters that have followed? In my opinion, the vortexes and the portals have been around for many, many thousands of years.
And with each generation, we interpret the supernatural events, the paranormal phenomena, that repeatedly occur in these areas in different ways.
Sometimes we see them as demons and devils.
Today, we see them as spacemen, as places of extraterrestrials.
Tomorrow, they may be the portals through which trans-dimensional beings are making contact with this world.
STRIEBER: I don't think that we should ever assume that we have always been alone here.
There's too much evidence that that is not true.
It's just that we don't like to look at that evidence.
NARRATOR: Did the Druids arrive in America centuries ago and forever leave their imprint on the land, creating an entry point for beings from other worlds, other dimensions, and even other points in time? Perhaps as we learn more about the ancient Druids, we will uncover the secret to harnessing this power ourselves, and finally be prepared to meet our ancient alien ancestors.