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One of the better UFO documentaries (720p)

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Jason Raize '75 - '04 said:
Aside from touching upon the better known incidents, it is structured chronologically as to allow the viewer a timeline of events in better detail than most other documentaries have done in the past. Familiarise yourself with the history of the UFO phenomena, and how it was first perceived by both the public and the military.

Watch
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Sweet! Thanks man!
 
Kabouter said:
I suppose this is as good a place to ask as any. Are there any documentaries on the UFO phenomenon? As in, the whole thing surrounding these sightings, and more to the point the people who get really involved in it, dedicate their lives to researching it, who believe so strongly in alien visitors and what not. It seems like a fascinating community to watch a documentary on. I did watch the Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends episode on UFOs ages ago of course, but that wasn't quite what I was looking for, the interviewees were a bit too crazy, though Theroux's interview style would be appropriate for the sort of thing I am looking for.
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I unfortunately don't know any documentaries, but there's a pretty good chapter on it in Sagan's Demon Haunted World.
 
I'll watch it tomorrow and report back, only because I've read a lot of OP's posts in the past, and he's an interesting guy.
 
I don't believe that extraterrestrials have visited us, but I like the idea of them visiting after atomic bomb blasts. I'd bet that across the universe, the ability to manipulate atoms is a pretty good indicator that a civilization has reached a certain level, one where it is at least worthy of some level of observation. I doubt they'd visit us as consistently as all these reports seem to think, unless either "intelligent" life really is quite an anomaly in the universe, or all/most of the reports are from the same craft/crew/entity, or their numbers are vast beyond imagine. The third option makes sense if you look at the direct relationship between technological advancement and population growth. If you can travel the stars and you have post-fusion or even post-antimatter energy production, you can put a fuckload of people on habitable planets.

In the event that visiting aliens were real, I don't think they would be malicious (that's not to say they wouldn't kill every single one of us), if only because achieving such a level of civilization would likely require a post-scarcity economy, as well as how incredibly easy it would be to engineer any biological traits of fear, anxiety, greed, and ego out of the populace.
 
This one is even better than the Disney one. It's narrated by Rod Serling and Burgess Meredith.

It's called UFOs: It Has Begun.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7100303682843029418&hl=en

This movie is actually a longer unedited version of a shorter documentary originally called UFOs: Past, Present and Future.

The long version has some lengthy segments on cattle mutilations and other stuff like an interview with Jacques Vallee that was added to the original documentary. The Vallee segment starts at 8:45. There is another section with Vallee discussing cattle mutilations at 54:30.

Here's one of the best segments from it. It's an interview with the Army helicopter crew that encountered a UFO over Ohio in 1973.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKuRydtRqwg

There is also a round table discussion with Hynek and others starting at around 1:19:20

I recommend watching the whole thing when time allows. But I just wanted to highlight some parts in case someone didn't want to spend an hour and a half watching it.

One very interesting thing about this documentary is that the director, Robert Emenegger, had the official cooperation of the US Dept of Defense.

Nowadays, can you imagine the govt/military cooperating with a UFO documentary filmmaker, allowing them to interview a flight crew about a UFO they had seen ? There is no chance in hell.

The weirdest thing about this whole documentary is towards the end. Beginning around 1:23:00

It's a dramatic account of the infamous Holloman AFB UFO landing story. The guy who made the film claims he was told by some DOD liaisons this was an actual genuine event that happened. He says they promised him some govt video footage to include in the film, but at the last minute, the permission was denied.
 
I'll watch later. I had a UFO experience with my entire family years back. I'm a skeptic about everything so I'm not saying its aliens, but goddamn it was weird.
 
Kabouter said:
I suppose this is as good a place to ask as any. Are there any documentaries on the UFO phenomenon? As in, the whole thing surrounding these sightings, and more to the point the people who get really involved in it, dedicate their lives to researching it, who believe so strongly in alien visitors and what not. It seems like a fascinating community to watch a documentary on. I did watch the Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends episode on UFOs ages ago of course, but that wasn't quite what I was looking for, the interviewees were a bit too crazy, though Theroux's interview style would be appropriate for the sort of thing I am looking for.
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Hmm, I'm not entirely sure what you're asking for in regards to the bold segment.

UFOlogists, like other researchers, naturally don't focus on their personal motivations as much as they do the on their topic of investigation so you're not going to find anything in that regard beyond the rare written interview with them. They do, however, often dedicate a chapter on that in their books and sometimes go into it during their lectures (of which there are some videos of them on YouTube).

maquiladora said:
Will watch later but I have a real hard time believing any UFO story that paints UFO's as extraterrestrial. And thats despite the fact that I did see a 'UFO' when I was younger, a black equilateral triangle in a cloudless blue sky directly overhead moving slowly without sound. I just never believed it was 'alien'.
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You don't need to approach it from the angle that they are alien in origin - that is the best piece of advice I can give to anyone who has a curiousity about the topic and wants to delve into it further.

In regards to the triangles: sightings became prominent during the 80s, which was of course around the same time the F117-A Nighthawk stealth jet was in the air. So in that sense it is possible, perhaps even probable, that these aircraft are military. But UFOlogy, with its history of bizarre and exotic aircraft, is going to want to interpret these triangles from a less than conventional angle. What helps is the description of these triangles; sometimes unbelievably large, completely silent, change direction 90 degrees whilst travelling at high speed and - most interestingly - hover above both public areas and military bases; these are all the characteristics seen in e.g. disc shaped flying objects: characteristics that are difficult to rationally associate with the military.

So if these things exist, and according to you they do, and they are unlikely to belong to us, then who do they belong to. The problem is because descriptions of these sightings are so extraordinary, it is often difficult to even try to get past the first question (were they real and not imaginary).
 
Jason Raize '75 - '04 said:
Hmm, I'm not entirely sure what you're asking for in regards to the bold segment.

UFOlogists, like other researchers, naturally don't focus on their personal motivations as much as they do the on their topic of investigation so you're not going to find anything in that regard beyond the rare written interview with them. They do, however, often dedicate a chapter on that in their books and sometimes go into it during their lectures (of which there are some videos of them on YouTube).
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Well, how the whole thing got started, what motivates people to dedicate so much of their time to this pursuit, what drives people to keep going despite their beliefs not being taken seriously by others, how do people in the community perceive others with different beliefs on the subject (aliens/not aliens/maybe aliens/whatever) and so on and so forth. That's what fascinates me far more than anything else. The actual sightings don't hold much interest for me.
 
Kabouter said:
Well, how the whole thing got started, what motivates people to dedicate so much of their time to this pursuit, what drives people to keep going despite their beliefs not being taken seriously by others,
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Maybe this will help

The result spurned a new generation of interest; the belief that the truth was being hidden. If I could, I would become a full time researcher as well. What differentiates these authors from others is that they have the time and resources to carry this out. What drives them on? Well I think thats self-evident; the discovery of alien visitation would be the most important moment in human history. Personally I'm amazed there hasn't been a single investigation in the US since the infamous Condon Report.

how do people in the community perceive others with different beliefs on the subject (aliens/not aliens/maybe aliens/whatever) and so on and so forth. That's what fascinates me far more than anything else. The actual sightings don't hold much interest for me.
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Some are pretty hostile to it because they feel these other beliefs further damage the credibility of the topic. It's touched upon in the documentary in the OP, but there are groups who relate these sightings to a pseudo-spiritual event, for example. Researchers themselves are infamous for disagreeing sometimes on certain details of well known incidents. It is referred to as the 'UFO community', but in reality there isn't a single community invested in this but a myriad of ones. What's also interesting is that, whilst these researchers are considered authorities on the topic, they play little part in influencing the 'community' as it is so opinionated. That, of course, is just my observation of it. I read the message boards but rarely take part in discussion there. That may say something in itself
 
speedline said:
I don't know about anyone else, but I want to know your story-- do tell!
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Alright, many many years ago around Christmas eve me, dad, mother, uncle, aunt and two cousins were outside my uncle's house saying our goodbyes as we were heading back to our home. I saw an oval orange light off at the horizon. Now, being maybe 12 I wondered, what is that? I mean, can't possibly be Santa's sleigh! Perhaps a blimp? But it was lit up pretty uniformly. It started heading towards us against the wind at a very good speed. As it neared it appeared to be rather large. How large I could not tell you, but considering the size it was when it was near the horizon and how much larger it got as it neared us, the thing was at least the size of a blimp if not larger. I mentioned the object to my family and my uncle raced inside to get binoculars. He got the first view, then my dad, then me (which at that point it had flown into a low lying cloud very near our house, at which point it ascended and disappeared into the clouds). It was a large, orange, glowing object with a ring of small red lights around the circumference.

A few days later my father told me he asked someone he knew that lived near by if he had seen anything that night, without giving any details. The gentleman said yes, a giant craft had flown extremely low to the ground near his home which he described to be at least 100 meters across and was glowing orange.

The house we viewed it at was near an airport, but this did not appear like any plane. It didn't appear like any blimp I had seen before. In the next year or so my family had a few more odd objects sighted but then it had stopped.

Honestly, I don't know what it was, but considering what I've read about ball lightning and videos I've seen on youtube, this could well be a possibility. They seem almost alien, can be in the tens of meters, tend to be orange in some situations. Then again, I am not against the idea of aliens just visiting, who knows maybe it was a tourist craft lol, but I can only think of that as such a remote possibility, since I am a skeptical kind of person.
 
"Ufologist" must the be the most ridiculous term a community of has ever given itself.

What do these people do? Read wikipedia all day? Search local libraries and bookstores for books about UFOs? "I have found new data to corroborate my beliefs! It was only 25,99$ at my Barnes & Nobles!".

Seriously, implying there could be a science to reading and talking about UFOs is fucking insulting the scientific method and the scientific community.
 
Kurdel said:
"Ufologist" must the be the most ridiculous term a community of has ever given itself.

What do these people do? Read wikipedia all day? Search local libraries and bookstores for books about UFOs? "I have found new data to corroborate my beliefs! It was only 25,99$ at my Barnes & Nobles!".

Seriously, implying there could be a science to reading and talking about UFOs is fucking insulting the scientific method and the scientific community.
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The study of UFO's, ufologist. How does that offend you? Sounds accurate to me.

That's a pretty wild story Log4girlz, I wish I could witness something like that.
 
Kurdel said:
"Ufologist" must the be the most ridiculous term a community of has ever given itself.

What do these people do? Read wikipedia all day? Search local libraries and bookstores for books about UFOs? "I have found new data to corroborate my beliefs! It was only 25,99$ at my Barnes & Nobles!".

Seriously, implying there could be a science to reading and talking about UFOs is fucking insulting the scientific method and the scientific community.
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They interview witnesses and retired military personnel that were assigned to bases that, allegedly, had incidents. They collect flight and radar data from the FIAA and the Air Force (through FoA requests). They investigate public records, biographies, travel itineraries, try to collect soil samples (of alleged landing sites), or hire experts in e.g. atmospheric conditions to investigate an incident; they try to accumulate evidence to support a sighting and/or puts doubt on the official explanation. It's not a profession but a hobby for both regular members of society and scientists. There are even organisations of investigators e.g. MUFON. Anything, or anyone, that attempts to filter out interesting sightings from ones of less credibility isn't something to be ridiculed. Without ufologists, we'd never have heard of Roswell (or Project Mogul) - for example.
 
Thanks for the link, I do like a good UFO documentary, and this one was good. Sums up things fairly well, without falling into the trap of drawing in pop-culture references like Star Wars or X-files.

As for the phenomenon itself, I really don't know what to think. To me, it seems that something is happening, and most likely that there's something flying around at times. Too many witnesses and too many sightings of something. But what it is, I really don't have the data necessary to even begin to guess.

I mean, some of that is going to be experimental aircraft that got careless, sure, sightings of black triangles and then the reveal that the B-2 bomber was already in service seems to match up fairly well. The B-2 is an eerie craft even when you know what it is, so of course it has been responsible for some UFO reports. I'm sure there are other reports that have an equally mundane, if you can call a B-2 mundane, explanations, but there's still the issue of the sheer volume of reports.

But other than that, I don't know. I try not to draw any conclusions other than what has been observed with this. But there most likely is something. I'd like for there to be aliens, though, but I don't want to make a claim that sentient aliens have been visiting us without really solid proof. It'd be the greatest announcement of all time if it could be proven, without room for misinterpretations, though.
 
This should keep me entertained tonight. Just the kind of thing I like to watch. I'm not a believer, but I can't say they don't exist either. I love listening to Mysterious Universe, but I haven't really followed much UFO stuff beyond their shows. This should educate me a bit I imagine.
 
Great, this looks like intere--

"Look for the full 3-dvd - 337 minute version now on DVD..."


I want that, not some abridged version!
 
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