GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: A UFO
sighting over multiple cities. MAN: I don't know
what the hell it is. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: An
extraterrestrial event that changed the
course of history, and an alien abduction witnessed
by no less than six people. On "Ancient Aliens,"
we've investigated dozens of extraordinary encounters. From among the thousands
that have been reported, here is what I consider to be
the most compelling stories. Each one adds to the
growing body of proof that we have been visited
by extraterrestrials for thousands of years. NARRATOR: The Apache-Sitgreaves
National Forest, Arizona. November 5, 1975. 22-year-old forestry
worker Travis Walton is driving home after
sundown, along with six coworkers, when
suddenly, a strange light appears in the sky. We'd just finished
a long, hard day, and it was starting to get dark. So we loaded up our equipment. We're headed home. And I noticed there were
some little glimmers of light coming through the trees. And the light seemed to be
coming from higher than where ground level would be. It was only when we got
to where this light was crossing the road that we had an
unobstructed view of the craft. Now Dallas in the back yelled
out, it's a flying saucer! And I said, Mike, stop! [car screeching] It was a clearly
visible, clearly defined metallic object, a
disk hovering there, outlined against the sky. I threw open the door,
thinking I'd get a closer look before it took off. As I got closer to it, the
sound that was making-- it was a sound you
both heard and felt. And the crew said
they could feel the vibration in the truck. They said it seemed like
something was about to happen. And it was. [chuckles] That's when
this energy hit me. The crew said that it was like
I'd stepped on a landmine, like an explosion
so violent that they thought it had killed me. But when this beam
of energy hit me, I felt like a physical
blow, but with a sort of a tingling sort of
an electric shock sort of feeling at the same time. I don't know whether I came too
soon after I was taken aboard, but I knew I was on some
kind of an elevated gurney or operating table. I was looking straight into
the face of this creature, and I just flipped out. NICK POPE: He saw these hideous
entities that scared him-- maybe quite similar
to the modern idea of the so-called alien grays. And he fought, and he panicked. And then, these aliens
seemed to go away, and then their place was taken
by much more humanlike aliens, and he calmed down. TRAVIS WALTON: In the case
of these human-looking ones, I started to have
serious misgivings that this was a rescue. And that's when they put
this mask over my face, and I just blacked
out real quickly. NICK POPE: Now, the suspicion
here was that actually, these weren't different aliens. These were the same
aliens, but they were capable of shapeshifting
into something else, specifically to calm him down. NARRATOR: Crew
searched everywhere for the missing forest worker. But it wasn't until
five days later that Walton reappeared
in a nearby town. I was lying face down,
outside in the dark, and there was a light above me. And I saw the
bottom of the craft there, right before it
shot up into the sky. NARRATOR: When details of
Travis Walton's close encounter were revealed to authorities,
they dismissed his account as a possible hallucination. But Travis has no doubt that
what he and his coworkers experienced was a genuine
extraterrestrial encounter. TRAVIS WALTON: What
no one asked was, what about the rest of the crew? How do seven people have
an identical hallucination? And besides that,
they were given a lie detector test by state
police, which they passed. There's real-life things
that occur out there that need to be understood. So take a look at the
facts, and then judge. I don't know the
purpose that they had. All I know is what
happened to me. This was unmistakable. NARRATOR: Northeast
Syria-- the Khabur River. According to the
Hebrew Bible, it was here in the sixth century
BC that divine beings descended from heaven and made
contact with a Hebrew priest named Ezekiel. PATRICK COOKE: Ezekiel
was by the River Chebar, and he said a great
whirlwind came toward him. He described it as a
fire enfolding itself. And out of the
fire was the color of amber, which is
the Hebrew word, which means polished
spectrum metal, which implies that it's metallic
and that it's spinning. And it lands in front of
him, and suddenly, out of this whirlwind
come four creatures. NARRATOR: In the Bible,
the prophet Ezekiel calls these spiritual beings
"cherubims," and describes them as having four faces,
four wings, and skin that shone like polished bronze. REV. BARRY H. DOWNING: He
says that he was taken up into the sky and taken
to different places where he could see
different things. And then, he was told
some of the future things that were going to come. This was a huge image of
hope that came to Ezekiel during his experience. NARRATOR: But is this the
story of a divine encounter, or could Ezekiel's
description of metallic wheels descending from the sky
in a whirlwind of fire and strange beings with skin
like polished bronze point to a different type of
otherworldly contact? He's got the best
description of a UFO that's anywhere in the Bible. Because he basically says that
the thing looked like a wheel within a wheel, kind
of a classic flying saucer description. TRAVIS TAYLOR: Ezekiel describes
that the outside of the wheel doesn't spin. The inside of the wheel spins. So he's telling us
that's the engines. None of this necessarily
has to be magic. This could all be technology. PHILIP COPPENS: He's
basically the kind of a guy who's been abducted, who has
been told certain things, and who's then returned
to the place of origin. It would be what we
today would describe as an abduction account. NARRATOR: Could it be
that the prophet Ezekiel's account of a heavenly
close encounter might have been something else? Perhaps one not involving
heavenly beings, but visitors of another
interplanetary nature? This concept was put forth
to the public by the ancient astronaut theory pioneer, Erich
von Daniken, in his 1968 book, "Chariots of the Gods?" And after hearing Erich
speak at a conference in the early 1970s, NASA
engineer Josef Blumrich was determined to debunk his
controversial interpretation. I had a speech at
NASA in Huntsville, and I spoke about Ezekiel. And the chief engineer of
that time, Mr. Joe Blumrich, came to me and said, Erich,
that was very interesting, but in the Bible,
you will definitely not find any technology. But he still said, I
will read, originally in the Bible, Ezekiel. NARRATOR: Blumrich
set out to find flaws in Von Daniken's theory. But when he read
the Book of Ezekiel, he was shocked to
find himself agreeing with the controversial author. So much so, in fact, that
he wrote a book called, "The Spaceships of Ezekiel," in
which he provided a blueprint for a practical landing module,
based on the description found in the biblical story. Several years later, a
German structural engineer named Hans Herbert Beier
also sketched out a blueprint of the second section
of the Book of Ezekiel, where Ezekiel is
told to construct an open-topped building to
house the flying chariot. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: Hans
Herbert Beier sent the blueprint to Erich von Daniken. Within five minutes of
looking at these blueprints, Erich was on the phone
with Joe Blumrich. And he said, hey, Joe,
can you bring a model of your spaceship of Ezekiel? And then, he called Hans
Herbert Beier, and he said, can you bring a model
of your construction of Ezekiel's temple? Both models were created
to the same ratio. And guess what? Ezekiel's spaceship fit
into the temple construction that Hans Herbert Beier
recreated according to the biblical measurements. NARRATOR: As far as
ancient astronaut theorists are concerned, the
biblical account of Ezekiel provides conclusive evidence
of an alien encounter. But more importantly,
it may also reveal that for thousands of
years, the destiny of humankind has been directed by
extraterrestrials. [inaudible] Qumran, Palestine. In 1946, a collection
of ancient manuscripts, known as the Dead Sea Scrolls,
is discovered hidden in clay jars deep inside a cave. Among the manuscripts
is the Book of Enoch, a so-called lost biblical text. In the Bible's Old
Testament, Enoch is the seventh of
10 patriarchs who lived before the Great Flood,
and the great-grandfather of Noah. But where the Hebrew Bible
only mentions Enoch briefly, the Book of Enoch,
which consists of more than 100 chapters,
greatly expands on his story. In it is a curious
passage that details Enoch's ascent to heaven. ERICH VON DANIKEN: According
to the Book of Enoch, he says he was 12 years old. The whole community of his
village wanted to sleep. But then, they hear
the noise in the sky. Two angels came
down from the sky. One of the two beings says to
Enoch, don't be afraid, human. Then, they went up to
the so-called heaven. WILLIAM HENRY: And
in the Book of Enoch, we learn Enoch himself
is taken into the heavens in a fiery chariot. ERICH VON DANIKEN: Enoch
goes up to the so-called sky. And there, Enoch sees
something over the Earth, which he cannot describe. He has no word like
spaceship or something. He says, it looked like
houses of crystals. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: It
is described that he sees planet Earth underneath him. He actually describes
his arrival-- how he has to walk through
these different rooms, where he sees jewels, and
he sees shiny surfaces and blinking lights. It is an eyewitness account. It's I, Enoch, did this. I, Enoch, saw that. The Book of Enoch is one
of the first abduction accounts written down
by a fellow human being. NARRATOR: Does the Book
of Enoch really describe an actual abduction event? One that took place
thousands of years ago? And if so, might
this incredible close encounter be documenting
communication with otherworldly beings? ROBERT CARGILL:
Enoch-- he was said to be at the right hand of god. In fact, Enoch was
said to be god's scribe in later tradition. So god would decree things, and
Enoch was the one who recorded everything that went on. So Enoch was the keeper of
all knowledge of heaven. WILLIAM HENRY: This is one
of the reasons why the Book of Enoch is so controversial. Enoch was the first human to
ascend to the throne of god, where he is given powerful
universal knowledge by angelic beings or
extraterrestrial beings. NARRATOR: If Enoch
was given information from extraterrestrial beings
to share with mankind, as ancient astronaut
theorists contend, what truths about
our otherworldly past might be waiting to be revealed? The extraterrestrials
want that in the far future of mankind, we start
to see these things. We start to translate
these books, and now, we start
to ask questions. We start to ask, for example,
how can we explain that? Have we maybe been visited
by extraterrestrials? And I think it's important
to think in this way. Because these extraterrestrials
have promised to return And one day, they will return. NICK POPE: I was taught not
to believe in coincidence. I was taught to
look for patterns. When you have all these
encounters, these sightings, these descriptions we have
from biblical times onwards, it tells you there's
something going on. Doesn't necessarily tell
you what it is, but it tells you there's something there.
