The Real 'X-Files'?

I coined the term this called the Roswell e'en syndrome and that is we have a report and exciting report of something extraterrestrial then we have it shot down if you will and it goes away but it never really goes away people's memories start playing tricks on them so if they're all put into this burgeoning folklore of the hidden saucer I can't help but believe that I was the only one that witnessed what I witnessed and I know they're just as real as I know that you're sitting there right there you start getting the believers coming in asking leading questions and suddenly you have all these witnesses all these stories of things hidden away in controversy and cover-up so it comes back like a virus that has been dormant for all these years and it comes back with a vengeance and Roswell has never gotten over that so we're in the middle of the desert in Roswell New Mexico this is ground zero for this country's endless fascination with all things alien it was here that in 1947 an alleged UFO crashed and what did or didn't happen that day is still up for debate fast words the 1990s I'm a little kid watching the x-files every single week at the time I kind of fancied myself a Fox Mulder but in reality I think I was a little bit more of a Dana Scully so that's why we're here in Roswell New Mexico we're gonna talk to some true believers talk to some skeptics and see if the truth is really out there I decided to start at the UFO Museum in downtown Roswell which is a safe space for all of our true believers UFO researchers call themselves ufologists and a huge contingent has descended upon Roswell for the annual UFO festival some of these alien researchers have come in contact with what they claim are extraterrestrials but even if they haven't actually seen flying saucers they've all devoted their lives to convincing the public the aliens have touched down on earth well I've got a UFO series the newest book is essentially the encounters there's a sexual aspect to it there appears to be a breeding program there's quite a number of people young ladies who believe they have been the mothers of hybrid babies I spent a lot of time in South America and in certain areas UFOs almost do what I call milk runs you see them all the time going the same routes we saw a lighted area we attacked and what we thought was a compound flew off when it crossed the moon it was your typical oval UFO we attacked we were shooting at it the rounds were bouncing off luckily it didn't retaliate it's gotten pretty chill of all the ufologists in town the most well-known is Stanton Friedman a modern-day Mulder Stan was the leading civilian investigator of the Roswell crash and he's one of the biggest names in the field today I'm hoping he can give me an expert perspective on why I should believe actually looks exactly like what I would imagine a prominent UFO researcher look like my name is Stanton T Friedman I've had an interest in flying saucer since 1958 my name is on five books I do a monthly column for the muons journal I'm the big mouth that ufology you might say I'm sort of a retired nuclear physicist my basic rules is have facts in hand before putting mouth and gear you'd think everybody would have that rule but they don't they get away with whatever lies they can get away with they have their own agendas what's the most convincing type of evidence crash retrieval is nice I also like cases where police officers are involved we're respected citizens of the community whose word you'd accept about anything else are involved I'm trying to lift the laughter Kurt which is a major problem and part of that problem is caused by these nasty noisy negative is making stupid statements that imply that no respectable person or whatever see anything do you know Joe Nickell yes he's sort of he's a nasty noisy negative is if I can put it that way Joe Nickell is a controversial figure in the ufology community he's the resident paranormal investigator at the Center for inquiry a pro secular pro science organization outside of Buffalo New York it's the Center's mission to expose superstition and pseudoscience and they take on everyone from climate change deniers to phoney psychics for his part Joe travels all over the world investigating claims of UFOs haunted houses Bigfoot and other spooky stuff he's been called the real-life Dana Scully and he's even written a book about his work called the real-life x-files ufologist takes serious umbrage with Joe's mission and they he's a close-minded debunker out to make them look like a bunch of crazies but according to Joe the truth is out there it's just a lot less fantastic than the molders of the world might like let me give you one of my Wooden Nickel of what I way of introduction sure this looks solid it's actually made of made of rubber yeah if we take it like this and just squeeze it no it's over here oh I started out I was a stage magician of course noting that Houdini had spent the last years of his life as a paranormal investigator exposing phony spiritualist I realized pretty early on that magic background helps you see the illusions for example people who see a longneck multi humped serpentine creature on the water may be seeing two or three or four otters swimming in a line it's powerfully deceptive I had a way of looking at things where I was aware of illusions more than the average person and so I started with a world-famous private detective agency it was great for me because I got to do all kinds of investigations and play all kinds of roles when I see these ghost hunter types saying their paranormal investigators and I think no you're not they don't want it solved they absolutely don't want solved they want to sell you the mystery it's what a detective's motivation is is to solve a mystery this is probably the largest bank of case files on the skeptic side I dare to say all most in the world does this to note that these are specifically UFO files this is here's one on the Kelly Kentucky little green man a case in which and guys were attacked by Martians yeah and I think they were attacked by a pair of territorial owls it's very difficult to talk to someone who's believer some of the flying saucer people are mostly male when they get hysterical they you know begin to threaten you and the shriek and they're pretty cold angry bunch this battle between believers and skeptics has blurred the line between fiction and reality Joe is friends with William B Davis who played the cigarette smoking man on the x-files as the show's main villain he was the mouthpiece for every conspiracy from Roswell to the JFK assassination but in real life he's actually a skeptic just like Joe Davis and I played the he's technically I guess the villain of the piece he's a man was great too Authority a great power the cigarette smoking man has made a deal with the aliens because that will save something of humanity the problem with doing that of course is they can start turning the screws and make it worse at worse and worse that's a lot of what I think happened to the smoking man eventually he's just been forced into a role that he just has to hollow out his emotional life in order to function I mean really the fallacy of Mulder's position is that he wants to believe and and therefore he believes but the show of course is slanted in his directions his hunches turn out to be valid most of the time it has always surprised me how many skeptics are x-files fans that's why I got involved just with skeptical inquirer and with Joe Nickell and a lot of famous skeptics Joe is an extraordinary person he now it has become the premiere investigator of paranormal claims in the world it's a phenomenal set of abilities and Joe has the whole complete package he uses scientific methodology but he also uses the tools of a critical detective Sherlock Holmes type skills I'm working on the Roswell metal wreckage where a Mac Brazel the rancher comes into town and he has some debris and he says that consisted of foiled paper with grommets just what you would think would be weather balloon type device or as we now know a secret United States government spy balloon from Project mogul they had pieces of this medal and they would try to tear it and it was the wooden on tear is tough and they said you could pound it with a sledgehammer and it wouldn't have any effect on more significantly and this is a big one if you crumpled it up what happens to tin foil it stays crumpled not this this is they had never seen this before was like magic to them this stuff it is polyethylene plastic but it has been metallized so what you have is aluminum coated plastic silly to think that this was part of extraterrestrial craft I think yeah and now it's as common as dirt it's magic it was a new thing in the early 50s when it when it showed up I can always find something new to investigate for example at Roswell you can look at the whole cultural thing what is what is what is it about conspiracies and aliens that are attracting people like a magnet also the economies and these are all well worth asking and keeps me endlessly fascinated right so not just exactly what is tricking people but why they believe in what they saw or heard for me everything's of interest even after visiting Joe's lab the Mulder and me wanted to talk to someone trying to make contact with aliens in a super scientific way so we headed to the SETI Institute where researchers have been looking for alien life for over 30 years my name is seth shostack i'm senior astronomer but i'm also the director for the center of SETI Research said he of course is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence the SETI project involves using big antennas and trying to eavesdrop on radio signals from planets that would be around other stars and so we're trying to find life that's at least as smart as we are I would be astounded if there's nobody out there we're one planet out of a trillion planets just in our galaxy there 100 billion other galaxies if you're going to say that this is the only place where intelligence has arisen then you're saying you didn't just win the lottery you want Honore 20 times in a row Seth is looking for life that's potentially light-years away but now it's time to talk to someone with a more personal perspective on the ET issue Randi owns a shop in Roswell and he claims to have witnessed alien activity much much closer to home we're sure glad have you guys come visit us most of our products here at alien zone are you know our own products we develop and you know and design our own products here it's probably what you know basically puts us on the map is the fact that we've designed you know some sets and you know have folks come over here to take pictures with a different you know anything's we got here and so when did you sort of get interested well the first time I saw one was in 1976 you know and banking Texas so this is sort of what is it's an autopsy yeah the song tops you saying like say we just have popular or famous you know type of events like you know the bar scene everybody like belying up to the bar you know and I know I've bellied up to a bar with a few aliens my time yeah yeah yeah you know everyone so I just got cool out you know take it easy with the alien so that's how we do it over here when we first got in the business and you know the fact that matter is I came to make some money you know what when around here was you know UFOs and aliens so what did I jump on you know and some people think because I am so you know creative and because I have a UFO store that you know that it'd be very peculiar that I'd be the one that would spot what I was presided but you know fact the matter is it doesn't change the fact that you know I've seen what I've seen everybody need to know that this is reality you know if you're gonna speak the truth then why it was that matter you know I'm a faith field man you know I believe in faith issues you know I'd say put your faith in Jesus and also believe that UFOs exist too also what races the UFO fest I've been into UFOs since I was 15 years old I used to live in like a weird forest I've seen a lot of like weird stuff in sky maybe there are other intelligent beings even right here that we can't see because they're not four armed with green faces they're so different that we can't even conceive of them we invited Joe to come with us to the UFO festival in Roswell New Mexico so he could see firsthand the culture that had sprung up around the crash we ran out of aliens there oh there look at the streetlamp globe yeah I hadn't noticed those before I call myself a detective I love the tinfoil hats alien hats what's the problem with people choosing to believe in something that's not there are different degrees of harm what I worry about is that some people have a life in which this UFO fantasy is so dominant it's become so very much like a cult that it's disconcerting to me if there are any values and any of any kind of human beings kind of a bottom line of that it's gonna be true I'm a skeptic on on Roswell I know skeptics aren't welcome in the city limits but but I haven't been I haven't been mistreated yet I'm not here to convince you aliens are real I'm here's I mean I've talked to a number of people here and people will tell you that the UFO idea drives the Roswell economy look a lot of the hotels restaurants all that are flourishing we don't have factories we don't have industry what's bringing people to Roswell I said what would happen if this one away and he said you know be a disaster I don't doubt that there's life out there at all and I think there's probably been some alien contact on earth but after talking to a bunch of ufologists here I think 99.9% of people who are out there being the most vocal are really doing a disservice to the truth they play with facts some of them are hoaxers they need to use the same sort of rigor that the skeptics are asking them to use and then maybe we'll get to the truth I should say that on the other side of the equation the skeptics need to get the giant skeptic stick out of their ass and allow themselves to respect the people who have made these claims I think they need to work together that's how we're gonna find out whether aliens exist polls have shown there's something like 1/3 of the population think that the aliens are actually here in their flying saucers crashing into towns like Roswell but I used to go to conventions and I would ask people how many of you believe that there are aliens among us and maybe half the people who put their hands up that I would ask how many of you believe in conspiracies and every single hand whether the claim is that the evidence has all been confiscated by the government they've got a hidden somewhere I think that our experiments may strike some people in the UFO community is threatening because we actually have equipment we do experiments it's based on science we still haven't found anything that sounds pretty discouraging and I don't get discouraged and the reason is to begin with we're learning more about the astronomy we're learning how many stars have planets that might support life but beyond that the the equipment keeps getting better we can build some equipment now that would speed up this search by several hundred times so if you ask will the next generation know that we have some cosmic companionship up there yeah I bet a cup of coffee that they will point taken that yeah you can you can come off as a little strident or something but when you see how much nonsense there is it's hard not to occasionally be a little strident and there's a point to be made maybe about this that if there weren't any silly paranormal stuff I would not have been needed and you know I could just go back to being instead of being Scully I could just be you know me you

Channel: VICE

Views: 1,470,538

Rating: 4.5469728 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, interview, interviews, culture, wild, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, funny, funny videos, journalism, vice guide, vice presents, vice news, vbs.tv, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, roswell, ALIENS, x-files, mulder, scully, area 51, conspiracy, conspiracy theory, space, outer space, detective, paranormal, skeptic, The Real?

Id: o92V9JEzbIU

Length: 18min 56sec (1136 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/dogasiramo]

I used to have respect for Vice. Now I just practice in it.

[u/[deleted]]

Shallow generalities all around. Why even do a segment? You can't give Stanton Friedman 1 minute of screen time and then walk around talking about "why people want to believe" with a career debunker and pretend to be impartial. And SETI... as if listening to deep space would somehow give them any experience with UFOs in our own atmosphere. Framing the debate as "Aliens" and calling it nonsense is like shooting fish in a barrel. If people's belief in unprovable things is the topic, talk about religion. Good job VICE, muddying the waters...

[u/oscaralexander]

VICE's reach today is insane. I think we should applaud the fuck out of popular mainstream channels for producing high quality content on the UFO subject. Keep em coming.

[u/khufumen]

What I find most annoying about skeptics is that they take a few obvious forgeries and then use that to buttress their argument that all UFO sightings are simply hoaxes or natural phenomena. They conveniently leave out the ones for which there is little explanation. Granted this video was mostly about aliens and not UFOs. I do think skeptics are important but sometimes they go overboard. Sometimes it's just better to say "I don't know" versus trying to push through some convoluted explanation.

[u/[deleted]]

it's great to know VICE is continuing to hold their videos to a high standard of quality /s

interesting to hear from some people i don't know of, but as usual VICE goes about as deep into the story as a sidewalk puddle.