Narrated by Roddy McDowall and includes interviews with Whitley Strieber, Anne Strieber, Andrew Strieber, Bruce Maccabee, Dr. Frank Stranges, Betty Andreason, William Moore, Dr. Richard Haynes and Christopher Walken among others. Based on Whitley Strieber’s seminole and controversial 1987 book Communion, this film delves into the most unsettling accounts of alien interaction. From the Betty and Barney Hill abduction (1961) to the landmark 1992 MIT UFO Conference—where scientists, skeptics, and abductees clashed over credibility—witness how researchers like Dr. John Mack (Harvard psychiatrist) and David Jacobs (Temple University) grappled with stories of gray-skinned beings, telepathic communication, and lifelong trauma.
What happens when humans cross paths with beings from beyond our world? This chilling documentary explores Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind—cases where witnesses claim direct contact with extraterrestrial entities, often involving terrifying abductions, medical examinations, and "missing time."
Are these accounts psychological? Cultural? Or evidence of a hidden reality? With declassified files, survivor testimonies, and analysis of recurring patterns (implanted memories, strange symbols, and government secrecy), this documentary challenges you to question: Is humanity part of a larger cosmic experiment?
🔍 The truth isn’t just out there—it’s buried deep in our nightmares.
#UFOs #UAP, #Extraterrestrials, #Aliens, #Flying Saucers, #Disclosure, #Government Conspiracy,
What happens when humans cross paths with beings from beyond our world? This chilling documentary explores Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind—cases where witnesses claim direct contact with extraterrestrial entities, often involving terrifying abductions, medical examinations, and "missing time."
Are these accounts psychological? Cultural? Or evidence of a hidden reality? With declassified files, survivor testimonies, and analysis of recurring patterns (implanted memories, strange symbols, and government secrecy), this documentary challenges you to question: Is humanity part of a larger cosmic experiment?
🔍 The truth isn’t just out there—it’s buried deep in our nightmares.
#UFOs #UAP, #Extraterrestrials, #Aliens, #Flying Saucers, #Disclosure, #Government Conspiracy,
Category
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FunTranscript
00:00. . .
00:30Encounter of the first kind, a sighting of an unidentified flying object.
00:40Encounter of the second kind, physical evidence of a UFO landing.
00:47Encounter of the third kind, sighting of alien life forms.
00:53You are about to learn the startling truth surrounding the abductions of hundreds of innocent people by someone.
01:01Or something, not of this world.
01:24Good evening. I'm Roddy McDowell, your host for Encounters of the Fourth Kind.
01:30A report on communion.
01:32For the next 60 minutes, we're going to take an in-depth look into the world of the unknown.
01:38Occurrences that are making us ask a lot of questions about what seemingly has been hovering in our skies and making some very unusual visits to the human race and planet Earth.
01:48And keep in mind, what you are about to see in the next hour is not some old rerun of The Twilight Zone or a fabricated story from director Steven Spielberg.
01:58What you're about to see is real. And in some cases, frighteningly real.
02:06Author Whitley Strieber was a successful writer living a normal life with his wife and child until the impossible happened to him.
02:12All of a sudden, in the middle of the night of December the 26th, 1985, these small beings just trooped into the bedroom and carried me out of the room into the woods.
02:28I went up into the air after I'd been sitting in a little circle in the woods with them for a few minutes.
02:35I ended up in a small gray room where they performed various physical intrusions, I would say, including putting a needle into the side of my head.
02:44It was this unusual experience, and many more like them, that led Strieber to write the best-selling book, Communion, and to open to a mass public the story that he wanted to share with others.
02:56Tonight, you will meet Whitley and his family and hear how these strange occurrences continue to haunt the Strieber's lives, but that is only the beginning.
03:05We have also invited some experts in the study of UFO phenomenon to join us here in the studio to reveal that there's more to this UFO subject than the US government would care to reveal.
03:19Yeah, but first, what happens when you've had one of these experiences? What do you do? Who do you call?
03:27A good place to start would be with an organization such as MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network.
03:35The MUFON Network's main job is to investigate reported sightings of UFO sightings that may only get one line of copy in your local newspaper.
03:44Well, sometimes I may, say, find an article in the local paper where somebody in my neighborhood, say in LA County, has a sighting that I think is interesting or worth looking into.
03:57If there are more questions that the paper hasn't answered, I will contact the individual if I can find out who they are and do my own investigation.
04:09Some cases, though, can become extremely complicated and involve devoting a great deal of time to the investigation.
04:17Generally, you know, on a lights in the sky type thing, you should be able to finish that one, say, in maybe one or two days if it's got any interesting aspects at all.
04:26But an abduction case, you might spend or have to spend a month or two on it to do all the things, say, that are necessary, the regressions and the analyzing of anything going back and doing it again, perhaps.
04:44If a UFO investigator is lucky enough to explore an encounter where the witness snapped a few photographs of the sighting, a photo analyst is brought in to determine if the photos are indeed genuine.
04:57There can be a situation where if somebody hands you a photo and you look at it with your naked eye and you can't see all the information that's in it, it doesn't have enough contrast or something like that.
05:12If you knew how to look at it, maybe you could see it.
05:15For example, if there's a very faint line on the film, you might not be able to see it looking at it straight like this.
05:20So you tilt the film flat like that and you hold it in the right light and you rotate it around.
05:24If you can line up that line with your eyeball, then you can see it.
05:28Well, now, photographic analysis can bring out that line and make it evident to anybody who's looking at it without any trickery, you might say.
05:37For example, take a look at this photo of alien spaceships surrounding this unprotected building.
05:43But when you spin the photo around, you discover that the sources are actually rivets reflected from the surface of a wet bridge girder with the building in the background.
05:56And could this photo, taken by a passenger on a train, really be an invasion of UFOs into New York City?
06:04No, it's only the train car's ceiling lights reflected in the glass window.
06:08But here's one that isn't quite so easy to explain.
06:14This is the initial publication of classic UFO photos taken by farmer Paul Trent in the presence of his wife on May 12th, I believe it was, 1950.
06:28He got two photos, first this one here, showing sort of the bottom of the object and then this one over here, a side view.
06:34And then shortly after this one, within seconds, this object zipped off to the west.
06:40One search that would be made immediately for evidence of a hoax, since these lines up here in the photos are wires that ran between the house and the garage.
06:53Here's the garage over here and the house, it can't be seen, but it's just on the right hand side of the pictures.
06:59One could imagine somebody making a little model, tying it to a string, hanging it on the wires and going out and photographing it.
07:09Attempts to do that analysis involved things like computer aided enhancement.
07:13We had the original negatives to work with, and we used computer equipment to scan under this area very carefully, put it on a computer and then enhance it.
07:28What amounts to is, I wasn't able to find any proof that it was a hoax.
07:33What I found was a lot of evidence that indicated they were telling the truth.
07:36And therefore I conclude that this is a real thing.
07:40When we return, you'll meet two people who have had very different encounter experiences and see how it has changed their lives forever.
07:51I was suddenly awakened. It was like bolting out of sleep.
07:55You know how you have a bad dream and suddenly you're awake.
07:58This is what it was. My adrenaline was rushing, my heart rate was up and I looked above me and there was this being.
08:05UFOs are not a new subject.
08:09Reports of strange objects hovering in the skies can be traced back as far as Roman times.
08:15However, it wasn't until the 1960s that stories of alien abductions began to surface.
08:22One of the first and most prominent cases was that of Barney and Betty Hill,
08:27who in 1961, while traveling back to their New Hampshire home, could not account for where they had been for several hours on their trip.
08:35It was only later, through a series of hypnotic sessions, that they learned they were taken aboard an alien spaceship.
08:43Since then, thousands of other people have come forward with similar amazing tales.
08:48Stories like that of Deanna Dubay.
08:52I was born with this congenital birth defect and what it was as my heart was twice the normal shape and size.
08:58The left ventricle was larger than the right and it gave the appearance of a sock-like shape, so it took up half the size of my chest.
09:06I had two relatives that died of the same defect and my longevity span wasn't, you know, projected very well.
09:13They said that it would be doubtful if I lived to my twenties.
09:17Well, during the time I was about twelve, they gave me or they had me go under a testing period to see if there was anything that could be done for my heart.
09:27And in the middle of this testing period, I woke up in the night and I saw this being standing over me, a tall androgynous looking entity.
09:37And he told me not to be afraid that he was there to help me and he would heal my heart.
09:44And then he placed his hands over my chest and I felt this pressure come.
09:50And that's all I remembered. The next morning I woke up with minor chest pains.
09:53My mom took me back to the doctors who were testing me.
09:56And they took x-rays and found that my heart had shrunk to normal shape and size.
10:02That it had totally contorted itself into a way that medical science cannot explain.
10:09The fact that something happened to Deanna is evident from the shape of her heart in her x-rays.
10:14X-rays that have the medical community baffled.
10:18The doctors just, they look at it and one doctor said for all intents and purposes it looks like a totally different heart in the same body.
10:25They don't know how or what happened to me. I mean they can't explain it. It's just something that no one can explain.
10:36Deanna does realize just how strange and yet fortunate this encounter proved.
10:41But as to why her and not someone else is not as easy to grasp.
10:46I really feel for the people who may be watching this and who have life threatening illnesses.
10:54Who pray for a miracle, pray for things to happen. I don't know why I was lucky enough.
11:00I can only be thankful to whoever, the universe or whatever, that I was.
11:07And I just, I wish that everyone could be fortunate enough to have a miracle like this in their lives.
11:12Certainly one of the most intriguing cases of UFO abductions belongs to Betty Andreassen.
11:19Betty's story, like so many of these cases, began with only a memory of seeing an unusual light in the sky.
11:27Well, I had conscious memory of certain amount of the 1967 encounter.
11:33And I saw an article in a local newspaper put in by Dr. J. Allen Hynek's organization.
11:43And they were requesting any information concerning UFOs.
11:48And I thought, well maybe that reddish orange light had something to do with UFOs.
11:53I knew very little about the subject.
11:56What happened to Betty was revealed through a long series of hypnotic sessions.
11:59It was through these sessions that Betty began to discover that she had had contact with alien beings throughout her childhood.
12:08This was when I was 13 years old. It took place in Westminster, Massachusetts.
12:14It was in the back yard of my home.
12:17And I was going up into the woods, up some wooden steps my father had made.
12:21And I looked off to the right-hand side of me. And when I did, I saw it looked like a moon.
12:27But it was getting bigger and bigger and coming closer and closer to me.
12:31That's the only conscious memory I had of it at this time.
12:35And then under regressive hypnosis, I found out that I had been picked up by a craft at that time.
12:41But that wasn't the end of Betty's experiences with the beings.
12:45Seventeen years later, they returned.
12:49And this time, they visited her home.
12:52They told me that they needed knowledge tried by fire.
12:56And the only thing I could think of that was knowledge tried by fire was the Bible.
13:02And so we went into the living room.
13:05And I saw my mother and my children just sitting there in a state of suspended animation.
13:11As Betty made her way outside and into the spacecraft, she had little idea of what awaited her.
13:20The only part of the experience I didn't care for was the needles that the beings used on me.
13:26They said that they had to measure me and physically measure me rather than examine me.
13:33When they did, they thrust a needle into my left nostril, up into my head, and I felt it break through.
13:39It was very painful.
13:40Betty's amazing story can be read in the books The Andreassen Affair and The Andreassen Affair Phase 2.
13:48Unfortunately, the story hasn't ended there for Betty.
13:52Bob Luka, Betty's husband, believes both he and Betty are continually being monitored by unusual flying objects.
14:01Only this time, it might be from our own government.
14:04I couldn't help but notice that these aircraft were all black, they were totally unmarked, they showed no numbers whatsoever, and they flew at extremely low altitudes, all of which are illegal.
14:17It got to a point where even some of our neighbors were documenting these flights.
14:22So we thought, well, maybe it could be coincidence, maybe we're just in a flight path.
14:27But within a year, we moved to another home in Cheshire, Connecticut.
14:29Within two days of the time we moved to Cheshire, Connecticut, these flights of helicopters started to come over our house, even did figure eights, at altitudes sometimes less than 200 feet.
14:43Could these mysterious black helicopters be part of the government's plan to keep an eye on Betty and her husband, to stop them from spreading the word about UFO experiences?
14:56When we return, we'll be talking with some experts in the UFO field who do believe the US government knows a little more than you might think.
15:04There's three things that I'm absolutely certain of right now. One, the phenomena, the craft is real. Two, the beings are very real. And three, this government has lied to the people of this country for over 40 years. Those three things are absolutely certain.
15:19The UFO phenomenon is an area with a wide range of subject matter. And there are many, many people who have devoted their lives to trying to obtain answers to this unusual topic.
15:37Joining me now are five of the top people in the field, each with their own specialty.
15:42William Moore is the president of the Fair Witness Project, an organization that conducts investigations into these strange events across North America.
15:52Bill is also the author of the best-selling book, The Roswell Incident, an investigation into a crashed UFO in Roswell, New Mexico in the 1940s.
16:03Dr. Frank Strangers founded the National Investigations Committee on UFOs.
16:08Dr. Strangers has been investigating the phenomenon for nearly 40 years and has lectured on the subject throughout the world.
16:17Vicki Cooper is the editor of UFO, a bi-monthly magazine devoted entirely to the subject of unidentified flying objects.
16:27The magazine is in its third year of publication and is currently available throughout the United States.
16:32Dr. Richard Haynes is a former government employee of NASA and is on the National Board for the Fund for UFO Research.
16:42Dr. Haynes is also the author of several books on the UFO phenomenon.
16:47Ed Conroy is a feature writer for the San Antonio Express News and has written the book Report on Communion, which takes an in-depth look at Whitley Strieber and the effect his book Communion has had not only on Strieber, but also on the world.
17:04Mr. Conroy, let's start with you.
17:07Very well.
17:08How much attention has the book Communion had on the subject of UFOs and abductions?
17:15Well, I think that the effect of Whitley Strieber's book Communion is really incalculable in the sense that it has probably had more impact on the general public than any other first-person UFO abduction narrative ever published in English.
17:31It has sold over 2 million copies in both hardback and paper.
17:35A recent report in the New York Times stated that it's selling 18,000 copies in paper per month currently.
17:42And I believe that really the most significant thing that it has done, Roddy, has been to enable people to begin to talk about this in the sense that I believe that Strieber, because he was a well-known and well-respected author, broke through what I call the respectability barrier.
17:55Dr. Strangers, why have there been so many reports in recent years, so many more, about abductions?
18:04I believe the media has gotten a hold of this thing perhaps for the first time, and more and more people from every walk of life claim that they have been abducted.
18:13And my thesis is simply the same as our committee, that if this is true, the United States government owes it to the people to conduct a strict, serious, scientific investigation into the matter to find out exactly what's going on.
18:28Dr. Haynes, you've done a lot of research regarding the abduction victims. Is there a better way to go about this investigation?
18:37Yes, I think there is. First of all, there's a great number of people doing research in this subject who are not trained.
18:46And they are self-taught hypnotists, for instance. And without an understanding of the damage that can be produced...
18:56Are they taken seriously?
18:58Oh, yes. People are in great traumatic conditions after an event like this, and they're looking for any help they can find.
19:05Huh. Bill Moore, what prompted you to get involved?
19:12As far as the motivation, I got interested in UFOs back in the 1950s as a student.
19:21Maintained that interest after getting out of college in the middle 1960s, and got involved in a series of cases of UFO reports in upstate New York, where I was working at that time.
19:32Specialized work in the area of the United States government and what it knows about this phenomenon.
19:42Do you believe that the government has been covering up?
19:45Well, it's not a belief system. I believe that vanilla tastes better than chocolate.
19:48There is very strong evidence that the government is covering up. There is documentary evidence.
19:55What kind?
19:57Documentary evidence in the form of censored documents. In one instance, there was a case that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court against a government agency, which was willfully withholding documentation from the public.
20:09I see you nodding in agreement. As a journalist and one who's trying to get straight information to the public about a very bizarre and hard to understand subject, disinformation and the counterintelligence infusion of getting people off the track, and I'm certain that journalists are a part of that, make it very difficult to do my job getting the right pieces of information, accurate information.
20:31Do you think it's just this nation, or is it other nations?
20:35I absolutely think it's worldwide. And I think we're dealing also with a political espionage game that's right within the UFO field.
20:42Dr. Strangers, I understand that you were contacted by people in Russia recently.
20:48Yes, I received a phone call from the Soviet news agency TASS, and they wanted my point of view as far as the UFO landing outside of Moscow.
20:56And the following day, I got a call from the University of Moscow, and the gentleman was quizzing me very, very closely as to how that particular landing related to certain landings in the United States.
21:09And he said, do you have any advice? I said, well, if I was in charge of it, I would take each individual witness alone, by himself, individually, question them thoroughly, and then question them collectively, and then draw your bottom line and see what you have.
21:24Dr. Dr. Haynes, do you believe that these beings are trying to make specific contact with any of us?
21:33That's posing the question in a very difficult way to answer.
21:39Oh. I've done it again.
21:42Because I'm not yet convinced that we are being visited. I have not yet come to that point of view, and I'm trying to look at the evidence and draw appropriate conclusions.
21:51But I think it's premature to say that.
21:54There isn't enough evidence yet.
21:55Not as far as I'm concerned.
21:57Uh-huh.
21:58To quote our friend Carl Sagan, there are billions and billions of planets or star systems that might be capable of supporting life.
22:06Ms. Cooper, can you give us a little background on the Roswell incident?
22:10Well, as brief as I can, I'll try to, but actually, Bill is more the expert in that.
22:15On July 7th, I believe it was, 1947, a rancher in Roswell, New Mexico, a little town, found some very strange debris that looked to him as if it might be a problem that was beyond his authority.
22:27And so he went to the sheriff at Roswell and suggested that it may be, the sheriff did, a military problem.
22:36So that he, the sheriff, in turn, went to military authorities.
22:40The Army Air Force subsequently came by.
22:42Would you like to take it from here, Bill?
22:44It was a physical, you wrote the book, it was a physical evidence.
22:47A physical evidence.
22:49There is some military documentation to suggest that this occurred.
22:53In fact, the very first press release that was put out by the Army Air Force at Roswell on the 7th of July, 1947,
23:02stated unequivocally that the Air Force had, in fact, recovered the wreckage of a flying saucer.
23:08That was their words, not mine.
23:10And that made world headlines.
23:12The next day, General R.M. Ramey of the 8th Air Force, on orders from the Pentagon,
23:19countermanded the story, said it was all a big mistake that it had been nothing more than a misidentified weather device.
23:25The man who gave that story to the press, the adjutant to General Ramey, General DuBose, still living today in a man in his 80s,
23:34has stated to us that the whole weather device story was nothing more than a fabrication designed to get the press off of their backs.
23:41Were beings actually seen that incident?
23:45According to witnesses, there were bodies found on the ground. Four bodies.
23:49Mr. Conway, as a newspaper man, do you suppose what are the reasons the government is covering this up is that I'm afraid the public won't be able to handle it?
23:58Well, naturally. I think the thing that needs to be pointed out, however, is that there is a lot of cooperation in cover-up from the press itself in the sense that there is a tremendous fear among professional journalists to cover stories of recognizable importance, shall we say,
24:19against attaching themselves in any way whatsoever to a subject that has so much ridicule associated with it.
24:28And there is still a general flippant attitude among many of my colleagues towards this subject.
24:34And it's really, I think, based much on fears of losing their class status as serious journalists.
24:40And so I think that we ourselves bear much of the responsibility for the problem.
24:45I want to thank all of you very much for sharing your thoughts with all of us. It's been intriguing. I've loved it.
24:50And I want to wish you all the best of luck as you continue to search out your answers on this phenomenon.
24:55Thank you for being here. Thank you very much. You're welcome.
24:56And when we return, you'll get a first-hand look at the circumstances surrounding the amazing story in the book, Communion.
25:08The story behind Whitley Streber and his book, Communion, is certainly as frightening as it is interesting.
25:15However, what many people don't realize is that the area where Streber's cabin is located has been a hotspot for UFO sightings for years.
25:24Dr. Jalen Hynek was the world's foremost authority on the UFO phenomenon.
25:31He investigated this case personally with me.
25:34Dr. Hynek considered this the most important case in the history of UFO research.
25:39Why? Because there were so many quality witnesses and so many witnesses.
25:44Philip Imbrogno's book, Night Siege, details the thousands of reports of strange objects in the skies in the area known as the Hudson Valley, which compromises areas of upstate New York and Connecticut.
25:58The witnesses in the Hudson Valley reported that over the past five years they have been seeing an object, which is very well lit, sometimes in the shape of a boomerang, sometimes in the shape of a circle.
26:12And it's reported to be the size of a football field or greater.
26:17One eyewitness, however, has provided much more than the standard verbal descriptions to investigators.
26:23This is a video that was made July 24th, 1984 in Brewster, New York at about 10, 15 p.m.
26:33Here it's moving behind a pine tree and his camera's going out of focus.
26:37When it emerges from the other side of the pine tree, the lights have changed. This time there's more of them.
26:42As the Hudson Valley sightings continue into the 90s, certainly one of the most publicized and famous cases belongs to author Whitley Streber, whose cabin in upstate New York was and still remains the setting for one of the most bizarre cases in the files of the unknown.
27:00Streber's encounters with what he calls the visitors first came to the public's attention in the best-selling book, Communion, and later its follow-up, Transformation.
27:13Both book jackets feature that now familiar face.
27:17Throughout the world, there is a certain type of face, a being that's seen again and again and again with a long, thin face and big black eyes.
27:29Sometimes the heads seem quite big, as in the Betty Andreassen case. Others, like in my case, they seem smaller and the beings are taller.
27:36But that basic configuration, that basic sort of non-human configuration, seems to be repeated again and again and again in experiences all over the world.
27:47Dr. John Gleidman is a psychologist in New York City, who has talked with and examined dozens of abduction victims, including Whitley Streber.
27:56The one thing that I believe is that Whitley has had intense, complex, and immensely scary experiences, the ones that he's described.
28:12What exactly has been going on, as I say, I have to sound like a computer, insufficient data.
28:21The book Communion is about much more than the beings. It also profiles Whitley and his family fighting to keep their sanity under some pretty bizarre circumstances.
28:34This is ridiculous. They were small, bluish skin, and there were others. Long, thin faces and big eyes.
28:45This is the tough part. They did not appear to be human.
28:58People think that I must have been very upset when Whitley told me that he had met strange non-human beings, maybe from a UFO.
29:08Well, actually, I was quite relieved because before that we'd been having an awfully hard time and he was always unhappy and very grouchy and very moody.
29:16So when he told me that this is what was causing his problems, I was very relieved. It was a relief that it wasn't me.
29:22It was something in our relationship. I was actually happy to hear it.
29:26A common thread among abduction victims is that often the victim's child may also have had the same experience.
29:33And in the Streber household, this proved to be the case.
29:38I was sleeping. And suddenly, these lights came, a light, a big bright light came in my room.
29:45And sometimes my dad comes in to see how I'm doing in the middle of the night, but he doesn't bring in, he doesn't bring in the searchlight.
29:51So I'm sleeping and I get scared. I think it's a burglar or something. So I pull the covers over my head and sink down.
30:01And then something pulls it down and I see the face that's on communion.
30:07The cabin and its grounds, where most of these unusual events continue to take place, were open for the encounters of the fourth kind film crew, with Mr. Streber serving as host.
30:18When they come here, we often hear a sound immediately above the house that will come across into this area.
30:28And myself and a number of other people have seen things hanging over this deck or hanging in an immediate little clearing in the front yard, very small things, but quite large ones sometimes hanging over the deck.
30:43In December of 1985, when the visitors first took me, they carried me down through these woods, which I remember very vividly, to a clearing not too far from here, where I have since built a stone circle that I and the group of people who've had experiences here go to meditate at night.
31:04The strange occurrences outside the Strieber cabin can only be compared to what happened inside.
31:13This is where I was sleeping on the night of December the 26th, 1985.
31:19When the visitors came in from the door, across the room, and the next thing I knew I was being literally carried out of the room in a state of paralysis.
31:28When we return, we'll go behind the scenes for the making of the film, Communion, with its star, Christopher Walken.
31:38Christopher Walken.
31:39I said to Whitley the other day that I had never had such an experience, or really anything, including deja vu, right?
31:46That's not something that happens to me.
31:48And I said that I had, no, I've never had anything like that.
31:53And he looked at me very seriously and he said, well, you're about to.
31:57Strange visitors from another planet have long been a part of Hollywood's motion pictures.
32:05Pictures dating from as far back as the silent era through the campy saucer movies of the 1950s
32:11to the spectacular special effects of close encounters of the third kind have all left their mark on movie audiences throughout the years.
32:19But with the film, Communion, Hollywood chose not to tell a fictional story, but one based on fact.
32:29When the film version of Streber's best-selling book went before the cameras in June of 1988,
32:35those involved with making the picture knew that this was to be more than a movie about little green men from outer space.
32:43Those other films were fantasies, and Whitley is, this is a true story.
32:51That's what makes this picture different.
32:53It's a true story and it really examines the psychological side of what will happen to human beings
33:00if and when they encounter intelligent nonhumans.
33:05After Mora convinced Streber that his story should be told on the big screen,
33:09the two formed their own production company and set about finding the actors who would play the two pivotal roles.
33:17Selected to play Whitley was Academy Award winner Christopher Walken.
33:21Walken, whose gritty work in The Deer Hunter earned him an Oscar,
33:25quickly adapted himself to stepping into the shoes of the famous writer.
33:29The good thing for me here is that I like to work a lot and I took a job and, you know, I hope for the best always,
33:41but in this case it turned out to be very inventive, which I'm grateful for,
33:45and Whitley is responsible for that because he, you know, he was kind of like a good parent, you know, he let the bird fly.
33:55Equally as important as the role of Whitley was the question as to who would play Ann Streber, Whitley's wife.
34:03To fill this role, the director looked to actress Lindsay Crowse, an Academy Award nominee for her role in Places of the Heart.
34:10And another interesting thing about Lindsay is that she was very proud to be playing a wife.
34:19In other words, she was very keen on showing that there's a value in keeping the family together
34:24and that even though it looked as if her husband was going completely off the rails with the most cockamamie story she's ever heard,
34:30being abducted by little green and blue men, she still had faith in the marriage and in the family.
34:37You're going to go back in that woman's office. We're going to find out what's wrong with you
34:42and we're not going to have any marriage left.
34:47I'm sitting up. I'm sitting. I'm sitting. It's, you know, lighten up.
34:57Crazy women.
34:59Like the rest of the book, Streber insisted the recreation of the beings be as close as possible to what he saw in real life.
35:07Special effects whiz. Mike McCracken was assigned the task of creating the unusual beings.
35:13Whitley had a series of illustrations developed and from this we scaled up from those
35:20and so that what we have is accurate to within a half inch in terms of the height and the size.
35:29The movements and so on are also very accurate or as accurate as is possible to do with current technology.
35:39The colors and so on are very, very close to what Whitley saw.
35:45In none of these is there too much movement. I mean, in terms of their face and so on.
35:51On the blue people, there is a certain amount of movement. They move in an odd way in that their face is kind of a...
35:58Whitley says that there's kind of a gravity feeling. They have kind of a grim quality about them.
36:04And for those actors inside the costumes, it's sometimes proved a long day.
36:10Yeah, hi-ho, hi-ho. It's off to work I go. Boy.
36:14Getting into the costumes was only the beginning of their problems. Once in, they sometimes were required to stay in the outfits for a period of up to 12 hours.
36:24This, coupled with working on a hot smoking set and trying to gracefully abduct Christopher Walken from his bed, proved to be a real challenge for the little people.
36:34Take after take was shot to allow Philippe and the editors a wide choice to use to convey this integral part of the film.
36:42Take after the film.
36:44Take after the film.
36:46Take after the film.
36:48Take after the film.
36:49Take after the film.
36:50Take after the film.
36:51Take after the film.
36:52Take after the film.
36:53Take after the film.
36:54Take after the film.
36:55Take after the film.
36:56Take after the film.
36:57Take after the film.
36:58Take after the film.
36:59Take after the film.
37:00Take after the film.
37:01Take after the film.
37:02Take after the film.
37:03Take after the film.
37:04Take after the film.
37:05Take after the film.
37:06Take after the film.
37:07Take after the film.
37:08Take after the film.
37:09Take after the film.
37:10Take after the film.
37:11Take after the film.
37:12Take after the film.
37:13Take after the film.
37:14However, the most important visitor still had to be designed.
37:19Because it would be impossible to fit a human into the skinny body of this being, McCracken
37:24had to figure out a different way for the beings to move.
37:29What we did then is go back to some of the original ways of making films, which are actual,
37:38actually seem to be low tech, but are very appropriate for the circumstance, which namely
37:43just wires, flying them with wires.
37:46It creates problems filmically in terms of hiding the wires and so on, but for this, because
37:53it was very carefully controlled and so on, it just worked great.
37:58And so what did Mr. Streba think of Mr. McCracken's final creations?
38:03When he saw the communion figure for the first time and saw it moving, it was like suddenly
38:12his face just went white.
38:13He had a shock look on his face.
38:15And it took him, I sense that it took him like the rest of the day to recover from this.
38:23So it was that, there was kind of, there was a kind of trauma, even in seeing the reproduction
38:29of the figure.
38:30Streba believes there might be more to the being's face than what appears to the naked
38:35eye.
38:36A possibility that is explored with some thought provoking scenes in the film.
38:41Ultimately though, communion, the film, is more than just a look at the uninvited guests
38:47visiting the Streba household.
38:48So the film is very much about a family under pressure and how the family sticks together
38:56under the stress of these incredible events.
38:59So the story is about a family and that's dramatized, that's come up very well.
39:06It's not a special effects picture.
39:08It's much more a picture about human emotions and it's really a psychological thriller about
39:16someone who thinks they're going crazy.
39:31When Encounters of the Fourth Kind returns, we'll once again visit the Streba cabin to
39:36examine a bizarre incident that was shared by nine other people at the cabin in May of
39:421988.
39:44And through hypnotic regression with those people, we'll find out what really happened
39:49that eventful night.
39:50Well, it was wonderful because we woke up upstairs and we heard them all talking.
39:56And when we came down, they'd been talking for hours.
39:59It was just magical.
40:00It was like coming in right after a miracle.
40:05This is the couch where a reporter was sleeping last May, May of 1988.
40:11When the visitors came into this room, there were two other people in the room at the same
40:16time.
40:17They were all simultaneously awakened by the ruckus and the noise.
40:20As my son says, the visitors are noisy when they are around here.
40:22They certainly don't creep around.
40:25They couldn't move, these people.
40:26And they all had various experiences with the visitors right here in this room.
40:30Joining the Streba family that May was a host of friends, including Raven Dana, Dora Ruffner,
40:37and Colleen Langley.
40:39Also invited along were several reporters, including newspaper reporter Ed Conroy, and
40:45a reporter we'll call Mark, who chose not to talk to us about his experiences.
40:50If people knew what Mark had experienced here, that it was this person, his career would be
40:55ruined.
40:56It was like, you've got a guy's career on the line, he can't show up here and go public.
41:00I think it's a crying shame that he can't, because he had a beautiful, beautiful thing
41:05happen to him.
41:06But others were willing to talk.
41:09The fellow who had been sleeping, it was like a fold-out couch, and I was on a cot next
41:16to him, he sat up very abruptly, and he said, did you see that, or did you hear that?
41:25And at that moment, this field broke, and I could move.
41:29Up until that time, I was just totally paralyzed.
41:32But I could move, and I said to him, well, yes, I heard the voices.
41:39What he described was of also waking up, hearing that garbled voice, and footsteps, as though
41:46something was approaching the foot of his bed.
41:48And then he experienced paralysis, he couldn't move.
41:51He was fully conscious, and he was very annoyed, because he had wanted validation, he had asked
41:56for validation, and here it was, but he couldn't see them.
41:59To determine if there was more to the story than what the witnesses could consciously remember,
42:05hypnotist Fred Max, who had taken Betty Andreassen through her hypnotic regressions, was called
42:10upon to hypnotize the cabin visitors of May 1988.
42:13I do regressions.
42:16I see people who have had UFO encounters, people who wish to remember events previous in their
42:22life.
42:25And for these people, we call back that period of time.
42:29Because everything we've done is still in our head, and it's a matter of guiding that
42:33person back to that point in time.
42:35As the regressions began, it was evident that more had happened that night in May than was
42:40previously thought.
42:42Tell me what you're feeling.
42:47Fear.
42:50Why?
42:54something stands behind me, and doesn't want me to move.
43:06Are you seeing anything else?
43:10Seeing a stone circle.
43:13Okay.
43:14And what is that?
43:15Stone circle is a little stone hemmed behind the cabin.
43:29I feel a lot of fear, and I also feel this really exquisite feeling is incredible.
43:46Relax more.
43:47Why do you say we backtrack a little bit?
43:48Just relax.
43:49I want you to distance yourself from that feeling.
43:51I want you to...
43:53They feel they have been abducted.
44:07They may have been abducted.
44:11I'm reasonably comfortable they're not fabricating stories.
44:16And the similarities are intriguing.
44:19Something unusual happened at the Strieber cabin that night, but what was revealed in
44:23the regressive sessions appeared to be only the tip of the iceberg.
44:28So the production crew of Encounters of the Fourth Kind waited with cameras in hand to try
44:34and capture the elusive visitors on tape.
44:39When the sun rose the following morning, the Encounters TV crew was disappointed to find
44:44nothing but black darkness on the videotape that ran throughout the entire night while
44:49they slept.
44:51The beings were nowhere to be seen.
44:54Or were they?
44:55A very small, well, about maybe four feet high, being with very round, very dark eyes
45:02came through the window.
45:05And the most interesting thing was that there was no real fear, just at first a jolt of shock,
45:11but I felt in tremendous rapport with the being who raised his hand, his right hand.
45:19And I felt the weight lift just slightly from my body.
45:22I kind of propped myself up on my arm, and I also lifted my hand.
45:26And we touched palms.
45:28What happened at the Streber house that night?
45:31A dream?
45:32An elaborate stunt put on by Whitley Streber?
45:35Or the truth?
45:37But when we return, we will try to answer those questions.
45:41You know, it's no secret in this, that something happened in here last night.
45:45But you have no physical validation.
45:47All you have is a roll of film that's totally black with a few funny noises on it.
45:52Big deal.
45:53So, what am I to say?
45:56Except that you personally, as a human being, know something happened, but you can't validate it.
46:06What has happened to the Streber family, and to thousands of people who've had similar experiences,
46:12may never be completely accepted by the human race until the beings are ready to make themselves fully known.
46:21Meanwhile, the rest of us can only keep wondering, waiting, and hoping for that definitive answer to the question,
46:30Are we alone?
46:33Until then, I'm Roddy McDowell.
46:36Good night.
46:38Bye.
46:40Bye.
46:44You're alone.
46:54Yes, anyone else who again should turn me over?
46:57No.
46:58What does this mean?
46:59I shall climb up this.
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