00:00When I was a child, I had a reoccurring dream
00:02where small alien heads would float into my room, bobbing around my bed.
00:07When is a UFO story no longer just a UFO story?
00:23When I was a child, I had a reoccurring dream
00:26where small alien heads would float into my room
00:29bobbing around my bed.
00:34Looking back, it makes sense.
00:37I watched a lot of sci-fi in the X-Files.
00:40And then there were my parents.
00:43Their faith told them that God had created more life than was just on Earth.
00:47But they almost take it as, like, matter of fact, like,
00:49yeah, of course, there's aliens out there.
00:53So what else was I supposed to believe?
00:57Fast forward to today.
00:59And I still can't put it down.
01:02I'm obsessed with this idea that the world is far bigger and stranger than we could ever imagine.
01:09I've dabbled in making films about strange and mysterious things before.
01:13But UFO films always seemed like a bridge too far.
01:17I just couldn't take them seriously.
01:20But I kept coming back to that conversation I had with my parents.
01:24How confident they'd been.
01:26So even though I lacked that kind of faith, or maybe because of it,
01:30I decided to risk ridicule and make a UFO film.
01:34But to take it seriously, I needed a serious subject.
01:40That's what drew me to Len.
01:42Now, I didn't take any of it seriously.
01:46Until maybe 13 years old.
01:48He was speaking at an event for experiencers.
01:51I didn't know, but I was struck by the UFO bug at that point.
01:55His story started out like mine, but in the 1960s.
01:59There was a magazine called Reader's Digest.
02:02Reading these witnesses, it seemed that they were telling the truth.
02:17One thing I discovered while talking to Len and others like him
02:21was that stories of close encounters rarely fit the mold of what I expected.
02:27Once you see something, it's just...
02:31It's a transformational, transcendental kind of experience.
02:39This was in the summer of 1967.
02:42My dad was in the living room on a chair.
02:46I put an old World War II sleeping bag over my shoulder,
02:51and he said,
02:52Oh, where are you going?
02:53I said, I'm going up to Tim's to look for flying saucers.
02:59Len and some friends had heard about some strange lights in the sky outside their town.
03:04They camped out one night and waited.
03:15And about 2 a.m.
03:17It came bursting, like, through a different dimension.
03:22A very large orange sphere
03:25with flames coming off the front of it and the side of it
03:30with a little white star orb following in its trail.
03:37It's very being, it's very fact that it's there, was screaming, we're from somewhere else.
03:53More than 30 residents from nearby towns and villages reported sightings that night.
03:58Several workers were taking a break at a factory saw our basketball coach, he saw us.
04:02New York State troopers saw us.
04:04Like I said, I consume a lot of UFO content.
04:07So when I encounter stories like this, I inevitably think of the work of Jacques Vallée.
04:13What we know today about the UFO phenomenon is considerably more than we knew 20 years ago or 10 years
04:20ago.
04:20And he's one of the few scientists who believes there's much more we can learn from these sightings
04:24other than just stories of strange lights in the sky.
04:28And we have to understand it at three different levels.
04:32The first level is the physical level.
04:35That thing came right over, right, as close as can be over our head.
04:41Almost all described it like Len did.
04:44Seeing the little white orb following in the trail, the articles appeared and they quickly faded away.
04:54I don't think I told very many people that it might have been somehow personal.
05:02It was like a beacon in the night.
05:04It was like a torch, if you will.
05:07This feeling came over me, this thought.
05:12They were giving me a hello.
05:16That's exactly how I felt.
05:18You've supported us.
05:19Keep the faith.
05:22When is a UFO story no longer just a UFO story?
05:31I have no idea what I saw, but it scared me to death.
05:35It was bigger than my house.
05:37It was just an enormous glowing object.
05:40Not everyone reports a craft, but luminous lights and orbs that appear and disappear.
05:46It was doing figures of eight.
05:48It was doing loops.
05:49All the while, it was changing color.
05:53Sometimes there are strange creatures.
05:55He was about seven feet tall and a silver-suited man.
05:59He was there for about two hours.
06:01People encountered psychic phenomena.
06:03I got seemingly a telepathic message while I was meditating.
06:10That voice switched over to Latin.
06:14Dreams and visions would follow.
06:16Oftentimes they would say, we are you and you are us.
06:19There were even cases of people being healed from physical ailments.
06:23A lot of experiencers even interpreted their encounter as religiously significant.
06:28Whether they are, you know, a cop driving on a lonely road or a PhD or a bank president.
06:34Whether they are religious or not religious.
06:37Their view of themselves, their view of the world around them, their view of the universe has been shattered.
06:44You see a UFO, and that is consciousness expanding.
06:49It's like a psychedelic flying in the sky.
07:06The second level is what happens to witnesses.
07:11What would happen to you and me if we were close to that source of energy.
07:15The physiological and the psychological correlations of a close-in caregiver.
07:23Len's sighting awakened him to a life filled with deep meaning.
07:27And what he describes were a series of mind-boggling experiences spanning several decades.
07:33Visions, physical sensations, premonitions, even a potential poltergeist.
07:39That started with his first UFO sighting.
07:42It's not a belief.
07:43These things happen to me.
07:45It would be a lot easier for me if I saw a UFO.
07:49And the next thing was another UFO.
07:52And it was all UFO.
07:54It doesn't fit one particular mold.
07:58It's a little bit too much for me.
08:01Yeah, seeing a light or a craft is one thing.
08:04But once you involve any sort of spirituality, consciousness, dreams, I don't know.
08:12People run away, demons, thinking about it.
08:16It's too much for me back in 67.
08:20The same night Len saw his UFO, 10 miles away there was a report of another sighting.
08:26There was a watchman at a nearby town of Churchville, New York, named Sidney Zipkin, who claimed that he pulled
08:36in to the park with his headlights on.
08:39And he saw a landed craft and two, as he called it, midgets in shiny black uniforms.
08:49And when they saw him, they got into their craft and they took off.
08:54And how close was this to your...
08:56Four hours earlier.
08:58Even I didn't believe him.
09:00I thought this guy was whacked.
09:03But as you move through the years...
09:09Maybe he was telling the truth.
09:14I don't know.
09:21There is a third level, which is a social level.
09:25The impact on our belief system.
09:28At that level, it really doesn't matter whether UFOs are real or not.
09:33If enough people believe that something is real, then it is real in its effect.
09:40Instead of delivering messages about faraway worlds, could UFOs have more to tell us about ourselves?
09:54Could the UFO phenomenon be manipulating us?
09:57Could it be a teaching system of some sort?
09:59Maybe there is a collective unconscious.
10:00It's a challenge to our concept of a series of images and technology.
10:04We are projecting the visions we need to survive.
10:06Our folklore.
10:12Just as my parents' acceptance of ET life was grounded in their religious beliefs,
10:18I realized that my own fascination might be rooted in a similar impulse.
10:22Some deep need for wonder or awe in a world increasingly stripped of it.
10:28I was an adamant atheist.
10:31But these experiences, over the years, were like something knocking at my door.
10:40And I finally opened the door a little bit.
10:45What did that transformation look like?
10:49Have you seen anything?
10:51I haven't. I would love to, but I haven't.
10:55No, you still may.
10:58No, you still may.
11:24There rather.
11:24There are people in the background James.
11:24Ben, you must ask for wonder or comprehend what you want.
11:24There's a question, what the meaning of Israel?
11:25There you are about, I daged blue, and pouring it.
11:25So sit to me, if you are on the front of the window.
11:25Obrigado.
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