- What kind of person sees UFOs? Who looks up and sees
mysterious lights, strange craft longer
than a football field, things that move
silently through the sky that flash out of
view in an instant? Who goes to UFO conventions and calls themselves believers? Do you know? Do you think you know? A UFO witness may be your
neighbor, or your friend, or a family member,
like Lamar Todd. Lamar Todd is a retired
Memphis police officer. He and his wife run an
auction and appraisal business on Summer Avenue. The auctions take place
Thursdays and Saturdays. Thursdays are a little quieter. The regular bidders
know Lamar Todd. They don't all know that
he is a UFO witness. - [Lamar Todd] Two and a half, 32 and a half, 35. 35?
- [Man in red shirt] Yep. [Lamar] 35, 37 and a half? Sold, $35, buyer
number 250, 250. - He's seen a UFO on
two separate occasions. The first time was 1973. It was the dead of night. Todd was alone in
his police car, cruising slowly with
his headlights off, in order to observe
possible suspicious activity in the neighborhood. He thought the sudden
bright light from above was a police helicopter
that had spotted him. - I got on the radio pretty
quickly and asked the dispatcher to advise Air One that
I'm north of Old Suwanee, see if they were
checkin' that car. The dispatcher came
back and advised that Air One was not airborne. I'm thinkin' now, "I don't
know what's goin' on." I stop, get out of
the car, look around, and it is a circle of
white light around the car. You can see the edges of it on Suwanee, on the
street, and on the sides. Looked up, extremely bright
light, which was similar to what the lights would be on Air One. Got back in the car, closed
the door, and when I did, the light went out. In my mind, I still
can't explain that one. - [Voiceover] It's
a strange story, but Lamar Todd is not alone. Join me as we take a look at UFOs Over Memphis,
A Close Encounter. This first sighting
was one Todd decided he was better off forgetting. - They didn't take
me up into the ship. All I saw was that light. I did not report it, other
than askin' the dispatcher if Air One was in service,
because, first of all, very few people would
believe it to begin with, so keep your mouth shut and
go on about your business. - Fast forward to the
early morning hours of May 17, 1977. This time, Todd was not alone, he was with his
partner, Jerry Jeter, on patrol in South Memphis, when they observed
something out of this world. - As we approached Norris, and just north of it,
Jerry says, "What is that?" I'm thinkin', "What
are you talkin' about?" He said, "There's somethin'
above the power line." I didn't see it, I'm drivin'. He saw it, I didn't. Went on north to North Parkway--
excuse me, South Parkway, turned around in the parkway, and soon as we came
back south, I saw it. It was right above
the power lines, right above the power
lines that go into Pine Hill Golf Course
and Pine Hill Park. Pulled off the exit ramp
real quickly, got to the top. We got out, stood and watched. It was hoverin' above
the lines pretty close. It was hard to judge the
distance to the lines and it, but it was triangular in shape had three lights on the sides, we could see that very well. We watched it for about
four or five minutes. Jerry jumped into
the van real quick, he was a sniper assigned, took out the rifle with the
scope that he was assigned, to look at it closely
with the scope. As the rifle came out,
it started to move off. In a matter of a second,
it took off north. No wind noise, no motor noise, no rocket propulsion
noise, nothin'. It disappeared
across the horizon, which was roughly
14 to 16 miles, in a matter of a second,
second and a half. I contacted the police
dispatcher and I asked her to contact Memphis Ground to see if they had an
unidentified in that area. The response was,
"Negative, it was not." In a few minutes, the
dispatcher asked me to give her a
call, I called her. She said she had several more
reports of the same type, same description,
that had come in from some of our officers
at the north precinct. There was three more up there, and a trooper in Brownsville, and a trooper in Alamo. This is a matter of
about the same time I'm puttin' it out,
she ended up there too, so, very quickly. - All told, five police officers reported the same observation, making this one of the
best documented UFO cases of the 1970s. The sighting received national,
as well as, local attention. Bob Pratt, an editor at
the National Enquirer, who had reluctantly taken charge of the paper's UFO coverage and become a believer
in the process, named the Memphis incident,
the sighting of the year. The five witnesses
were given prize money totaling $7,500,
with Todd and Jeter splitting the bulk of the award. A former Milwaukee
police officer, who currently lives in
Southaven, Mississippi, Bridgett Sanders is a field
investigator for MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network. - Captain Lamar Todd's reports, or both of his
sightings, they are the second sighting in 1977. That one definitely
stood out because it was seen by multiple parties in different areas
across the city, so that's definitely where
that one stands out the most, and it's not just Captain
Todd that made this report. Like I said, there were
several other police officers that saw it, as well
as citizens that saw this particular sighting,
and it was reported on the news, as well as, your
newspaper, during that year, so that's the way that
that one stood out, and not only that,
it hovered low. Low enough where we don't
normally get those reports where, "This craft
is hovering low." I think the only other
report that I can remember, in recent times, that something
was hovering pretty low was in Phoenix when
that craft hovered low over the city and tens
of thousands of people reported that
particular sighting, so those are very unusual, but the first sighting
with the lights, that would be one of
the typical sightings. We're talking in different
cities, in different times, and when I say different
times, I'm saying 1977, 1967, 2015, so these are in
different periods of times that people are
reporting these items, and probably someone
that never even heard of Captain Todd in Memphis
is reporting exactly what Captain Todd is seeing. Someone halfway around the world that doesn't even speak English is describing exactly
what Captain Todd saw. - In 2015, the Tennessee and
Mississippi chapters of MUFON held Memphis' first
celebration of World UFO Day, on July 2nd, the
anniversary of America's most famous UFO incident. In 1947, near the town
of Roswell, New Mexico, a large silvery object
crashed in the desert. Initially described
as a flying disk, with witnesses claiming
to have seen wreckage, and even bodies, it was
soon being described by the US Government
as a weather balloon. The town's become
the United States' premiere UFO shrine. Pine Hill Park has yet to
become a major destination for international UFO tourism, but Memphis' first
celebration of World UFO Day may change all that. - We knew that World UFO
Day was gonna be coming up. Normally, MUFON puts
on a yearly event in Memphis, but it's never
like a big conference, or anything like that,
it's something small, just to get together
all the people that's interested in
the UFO phenomena, and bring in a guest
speaker to talk to everyone. So I said, "Why not let's just
make a festival out of it? "Roswell has a
festival every year. "We have a very specific event
that happened in Memphis, "and that was with Captain Todd, and people should
know about that event," so Memphis does have a staple with the UFO phenomena. - Memphis isn't exactly a UFO
hotspot, compared to Roswell or any number of other
locations in the US with higher reported
numbers of UFO sightings, but there is a history
here that goes back way before the 1970s. I asked author, Wayne Dowdy, archivist of the Memphis
and Shelby County Room at the Benjamin L.
Hooks Public Library, what he could tell me about UFO
sightings in the Bluff City. - There were several
sightings of UFOs throughout the 20th
century, actually. The first that we
were able to find was in September of 1920, when a group of firefighters
were at Engine House Number One at Union and Monroe, Front
and Monroe I should say. They saw, in the
sky, a ball of light. It was about 300 feet
above the Mississippi River and it was slowly moving north, and they sat there
and watched it until they can no longer see it. At that time, it was thought
as simply being a meteor. The newspaper account actually
says that it must've been a meteor from another
planet, quote unquote, so there's no point of
reference really for sort of a modern view of an
unidentified flying object. In the 21st century, we
have all kinds of ideas about what something in the
sky might be, but in 1920, science fiction is not a
mainstream genre at this point, there's hardly any discussions
of life on other planets. There's a little bit, but not
what it would become later, so these guys see this,
and they're like, you know, "No big deal, it's just
a streak in the sky," but in the 1950s, there's a
second sighting in Memphis. About a hundred people see
flashes of light in the sky, but even though there's
a lot of concern about the Cold War
with the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons,
all of these things, a lot of anxiety in the 1950s
about these kinds of things... but, at the same time,
the news reports were, "Well, maybe it was a meteor, maybe it was men from
Mars," quote unquote. It gets a small notice in the
newspaper and that's about it, but fast forward 20 years
later, a little over 20 years, into the 1970s, and the
country's a lot different. There's still the anxiety about atomic weapons and the
Cold War, but there's also a lot of concern about
government conspiracy, perhaps. The three major events of
the 1960s and early 1970s, President Kennedy's
assassination,
Vietnam, Watergate, for a lot of Americans, there's a new-found sort of
suspicion of the government, and perhaps the government's
covering something up, so when they start
seeing lights in the sky, then they're thinking that
perhaps there are aliens from another world who
are visiting Earth, and the government is
not telling us about it. There are all these books
that are being published in the 1970s. There are films that
are being made about aliens visiting the Earth,
not only in terms of, and there's some of that
in the '50s too about, you know, Invasion
of the Body Snatchers and that kind of thing, but
you also have in the '70s, Star Trek, which
is very popular. Star Wars, that debuts just
a couple of weeks after the 1977 sighting by
the police officers, so not everyone sees it as an invasion. Some see it as, "Perhaps
you're gonna come and join with us
and do good perhaps," but there was a time when people really thought that it was possible that
aliens were visiting Earth through crafts that
were flying in the sky. '77 is the largest UFO sighting that we have in Memphis, and, arguably, the most detailed because other people had
seen just a light in the sky, but with this, very
descriptive of the officers that Officer Todd and
Officer Jeter see, and they become sort of
point men, and, in fact, I remember when this happened. It was on the TV news as
well, it was a big deal for a couple of days, so they were very
specific, cuz, of course, they're trained to be observant and to make reports and
everything, so they see this, and what's interesting is The Commercial Appeal's
drawing of what they saw, so we get a visual
representation. The others, we don't
have anything like that. It's not a photograph,
but, nevertheless, it's good to see, visually-represented,
what they saw. Memphians were very,
very interested in this. This was a big story. The others, small stories, but this was a very
big story in '77. - What does it mean
to be a believer? To go through your daily life believing you have
first-hand evidence of something most other
people dismiss out-of-hand? - A believer, to me,
is someone that has undisputed belief that there
is life outside of Earth. What I mean by that
is they believe that life exists on different
planets, either planets from our solar system, obviously, we haven't
found any life down on any planets in
our solar system, but they may feel that life came from some of those
planets, like Mars. They feel like life
once existed on Mars, that it was used
as a way station, and they moved down to Earth. Now, they also believe
that there's life on different planets
outside of our galaxy, on the several hundred billions
of planets that there are in the universe. - I'm not one of the kind
that's gonna run around with a pyramid on my
head and all that stuff. I do believe in the fact
that we are not alone. In our galaxy and
universe, there's gotta be more than just us here because, with our
technologies now, we've done a lot of things. We're lookin' to go to Mars,
we're lookin' to do all this. We've been to the moon. I'm not sayin' that
there are not other more intelligent lifeforms out there that are travelin' at
the speed of light, when we're tryin' to
get up to moped speed. I am a believer, but I'm
not one that's gonna be out poundin' the drum
and tellin' everybody that Area 51 is a conspiracy
and all that stuff, but I do believe. - [Voiceover] I thought,
"I should find out "what mainstream
scientists think "about the UFO phenomena, "and what they could tell me
about the bigger questions -- "Are we alone in the universe? Are there other worlds out
there with life on them?" You might think that
mainstream science and UFO believers
would be at odds, and, in some ways, they are, but there may be more
points of agreement than you might think. - I'm Dave Mannes,
I'm supervisor of The Sharpe Planetarium. I have often been asked about whether there's life in space, or life on other planets. Scientists are looking for that, and we're just now discovering
that there are more planets out there
around other stars, than we ever knew before,
so, just by chance, there is a possibility,
there's always a possibility, but, right now, we
only know of one place, and that is planet Earth. School children often ask about whether there are aliens, whether aliens have
ever visited our planet, and whether they're
on other planets. That's definitely something
we're all looking for. and the next place we're
gonna look for that is Mars, at least by going there. Astronomers use telescopes
and various instruments involving telescopes, and even radio telescopes, searching for possible
transmissions from other worlds, if they seem intelligent, then that would be, certainly, a definite indication of life. What I tell schoolchildren,
usually, is that I'd have to shake hands
with an alien to believe that they have
visited planet Earth. Now that we know about
all those other planets around other stars,
scientists are gonna start looking at those
planets when they pass in between us and those stars, and as the light is affected by a planet's possible atmosphere, we can see the spectrums
that are coming out, and, with that
spectroscopy information, we can tell whether a
planet, for example, has an atmosphere like
Earth's atmosphere, one with carbon dioxide
or oxygen in it. Earth's atmosphere
also has nitrogen, but life on Earth is, really, using
carbon dioxide and oxygen, so if we find those elements in any concentration on
some of those worlds, that happen to be in what's
called the Goldilock Zone, around another star,
that's a habitable zone, then, wow, we could've
found something that indicates life,
Earth-type life. There's some little
tantalizing things that are about Mars, such
as methane outgassing. It could be a natural thing, but we know that
creatures on Earth give off methane as well. Mars is not a very
habitable place, but it's probably the
most Earth-like world in our own solar system,
so it's conceivable that there are little
pockets, maybe underground, of areas that life may have adapted to. There's the idea that maybe we didn't originate on planet Earth and that we were, and it's called the transpermia, that we actually were coming from microbes
from another world that settled on
Earth by meteorites blasted off of, maybe, Mars, so when we go to Mars, we may
be going home (chuckles). - Okay, so, on my quest to
investigate the UFO phenomena, I sought out one of
Memphis' leading experts on local history, and one
of Memphis' leading experts on astronomy and
science education. Next, I thought I'd
talk to Chris Davis. - Part of your job as a reporter for an alternative news weekly is to listen to
people with ideas that others might
find kooky (laughs) because, sometimes, those
people, they're on to something. Not usually. Oh, Mongo?
- [Voiceover] Mm-hm. That guy is not
from outer space. Have you ever listened to him? I mean, I'm thinkin'
maybe Frayser, cuz he's got that
James Rhode accent. Billy Lee Riley,
on the other hand, 1957, Flying Saucer
Rock 'n Roll. His band, Little Green Men, Jerry Lee Lewis playing piano. I think it's gotta be
more than a coincidence when you look at the global influence
of Memphis music and you think that in this
city you had Sun Records, Sam Phillips, you
had Moon Records, Cordell Jackson. You have Meteor Records,
which I think is Roland James. You have Galaxy Records, the Stax Record
Shop, the Satellite. You've got a lot of
this cosmic energy. You can't convince me that
that was just the result of post-war modernism
and the space race. Memphis was probably the
ultimate modern city. So much of its architectural
flourish is mid-century or very space-influenced. Like I said, you got
sun, you got moon, you got galaxy,
you got satellite. This is where the aliens
would probably feel most comfortable, I'm convinced,
but not because of Mongo. Now, are you guys talkin'
about the '77 cops? - [Voiceover] Mm-hm,
do you know anything about that incident? - I don't know much about
it other than it was a pair of, they were
like tactical squad cops. Was it over a golf course? - [Voiceover] For World
UFO Day in Memphis, MUFON organizers
brought four speakers to Pine Hill Community Center. Lamar Todd was featured, as well as local author,
James Renford Powell. Author and UFO
expert, Peter Robbins, came from New York City, and, finally, Travis Walton
was scheduled to appear. Walton's dramatic 1975
abduction experience in Arizona's Sitgreaves
National Forest, formed the basis
for the 1993 movie, Fire In The Sky. A new biographical film,
Travis, is nearing completion. Peter Robbins is one
of the UFO experts who appears in the film. - It was very
important to us to have Peter Robbins come
to this event. For 25 years, he has been
investigating the UFO phenomena. He had an actual
sighting himself, he and his sister, when
they were much younger. He also wrote a book
called Left At East Gate. That was about the
Bentwaters incident that happened over in Europe, where there were some
American soldiers that touched a craft and
they received injuries from this craft in a forest. - Roswell, of course, is a
small city in New Mexico, well, not so small,
53,000 people, but it's best known worldwide as being associated with the crash of a truly anomalous object, seemingly under intelligent
control, well out of the city, in the summer of 1947. Many of us theorize
that the reason that these unknowns
were in the area was because, at that
time, there was only one nuclear strikeforce
in the entire world. The Army Air Corps was still, I think two months
away from becoming the Air Force. The 509th Bomb Wing
was stationed at the Roswell Army Air Field. We now have an extensive history of UFO incursions,
appearances, sightings in areas where there's
nuclear activity, whether it's a military
installation or a power plant. Again, it's purely theoretical, but something went down there and a great deal of effort,
officially, was expended in covering it
up, minimizing it, and establishing a
culture, quite literally, in which the media
overwhelmingly, but decreasingly, over
the decades, like now, wired up the subject of unknown
objects from parts unknown with mental dysfunction,
or mysticism, or wanting to feel
special, or hoaxes, when, in fact, the reasons
for it make no sense if one studies the news
coverage at the time, but Roswell, indeed,
is the seminal event that kicked off what we call the modern age of UFO sightings. - In 1978, Robbins was a
young research assistant who worked on the United Nations
Secretary General's Report, for the establishment
of a UN UFO department. The special hearing
on November 28, 1978, was undoubtedly a high point for serious UFO-ologers. - I was, literally, a
year or so into the field. It had obsessed me
for several years. I made friends with a
senior investigator. A gentleman who was a former staff officer of the
Hungarian military, who was in charge of photo analysis for
the Hungarian army during World War Two, who emigrated to the
states in the '50s. Having a military background, he established a number
of extraordinary contacts over the years, and
was friendly with the secretary
general at that time, as well as the one
who preceded him. The one who he was
networking with was Kurt Waldheim. This was before the
embarrassment of Waldheim being revealed to have been
an SS member during the war, but he had first introduced the
idea in the '60s to U Thant, who took the idea
very seriously. Waldheim had asked Colman
von Keviczky, my mentor, to write a paper on a theory that Colman took
very seriously, that it was not out
of the question, especially at that
point in the Cold War. If the Russians or the
Americans saw an unknown coming into their air territory, that they might interpret it as a beginning of
an enemy strike, and strike first, and it was very important
to the United Nations. Now, because of the
ridicule factor, this was a very unpopular motion among the delegates, and, yet, the head of the
nation of Grenada, a very small Caribbean country, sponsored the resolution,
and it ended up being several remarkable
days of hearings with some of the leading
international authorities, scholars on the subject,
speaking to them. I had the experience of
sitting in the gallery, watching this happen. Many of the delegates
refused to show up, using the excuse of a snowstorm
that weekend in New York, but that was an excuse,
they all lived in the area. Watching their faces
was fascinating to me, the resistance to this idea. I think they would've
rather had another war than go home and report
to their host governments that the United Nations
should take UFOs seriously. The amendment
passed, technically, but then was allowed
to die in committee, and has never been revived, and it was simply
for Study Committee to learn what we could about
this phenomena and separate the truly anomalous,
which may be an exceedingly small
portion of unknowns that can be explained
in conventional terms. It was, for me, a
fascinating window into the way that the power structures in the
world regard this situation, which we know from a plethora of declassified documents
that are not questioned, has been of extraordinary
interest and importance to our government, since, at
least, the summer of 1947. The Russians as
well, we now know, since the collapse
of the Soviet Union and seeing a lot
of their documents, which reflected our
feelings at the time, a genuine concern that
we were dealing with, they felt, something
extraterrestrial, which, I think is almost a
conservative explanation. I do feel that certain UFOs are representative of
off-Earth technology, but after more than 40
years of studying this, I'm humbled to say, "I
don't know, I don't know, "and I'm sure I don't
know, but, at least, "I can make better
educated guesses, based on 40 years of study." Not that I ascribe more
or less credibility to people in
certain professions, but law enforcement personnel
are trained observers. They're also trained
to keep their heads, to a greater degree
than a lot of civilians, in a crisis or a
high-stress situation. Many courageous police
officers around the country, over the decades,
have come forward, along with civilians,
as witnesses to very legitimate UFO sightings. In the case of this one, one
of the things, for me, that distinguishes it, was
the extraordinary size of the object encountered, and the very slow
speed it was moving at. This defies every
law or concept of our understanding of physics. Whatever these things
are being powered by, may be purely beyond
even theoretical for us, but it's a very
important account. It reminds me a bit of
the one that was, I think, in 2008 or so, over
Stephensville, Texas, where, also, a number of
police officers were witnesses. I almost hesitate to
repeat their descriptions cuz they sound so impossible. One officer described it as twice as large as
an aircraft carrier. Somebody else estimated its
size at over half a mile across. These things are
impossible, and, yet, to dismiss them as exaggerations or the meanderings of a mind that is not very disciplined,
is not appropriate. We are dealing with a
genuine unknown presence. I am convinced that a lot
of modern UFO sightings, not of that scale, are the
result of black projects, craft that we, human
beings, have in the air that are so
extraordinarily advanced that, to a lay eye, it
would appear to be something from another world. - James Renford Powell
is a local writer, and host of the local
public access series, The Book Man Show. He's also the founder of The Renford Institute
for Applied Metaphysics, an online learning center. Powell reads ancient stories,
including the Old Testament, for clues to the
origin of humanity, and the history of encounters
with beings from the sky. - James Renford Powell, he
began to make the connections with the Bible, as well as the
stories that were being told in ancient times about
different sightings. Once he began to put
those two together, it became very clear to him
that there was a connection between UFOs and what was
actually written in the Bible. He's spiritual, as well as,
he's very knowledgeable. I'm not sure of the
exact count of books, but he's written several
books, I'm sure it's over ten, on different things
relating with metaphysics, the Bible, and the connection of UFOs in our ancient past. - Well, I think,
like a lot of people, I read Chariot of the
Gods by von Daniken, and that was very interesting, but I lived overseas 20 years. I was in Vietnam in 1966
with a mission program, Church of Christ
Mission Program, and had a school there. Then, after four and a
half years in Vietnam, from '66 to '70, I
moved to Hong Kong, and there was an incident where
we were out in a rice paddy, early in the wee
hours of the morning, walking over to
another house, and what looked like a helicopter
with bright lights on came up. We stood there, it was
a very clear night, and it turned to the right
and then just disappeared, just a white light disappearing. I joked about it at the time. I told Diane, "That's
probably a UFO." It certainly was something
that we couldn't identify, but the next day, it
was all over the papers. The Cathay Pacific
pilots had seen it. This would've been in the early '70s, '73, '74. That was my only experience. I'm not a UFOlogist and I didn't come to
this subject from there. I'm the author of
the Renford books. I have 15 books in
print, and they're mostly either metaphysical or... different types
of interpretation of different scriptures
and different things, different religions, both
from the Mahabharata, and the Sumerian texts. This is where my
interest came involved in what led to the
publication of the book. I came into this from the
standpoint of witnesses. We talk about witnesses here. We talk about Captain Lamar Todd and his officers, what they saw, but when you study
the ancient texts, whether Hebrew,
Mahabharata, Indian texts, or Sumerian texts,
you read things that sound more like a
witness trying his best. They have their problems
with point of reference. If you take, for instance, Elisha is going out with Elijah, in the Hebrew text,
and he keeps tryin' to make Elisha go back. He obviously has an appointment. This is not something that he's just wandering
around in the woods. He has to be at a certain place, it's a pickup time, really, and Elisha keeps
tryin' to follow, Elijah keeps tryin' to send
Elisha back, he won't go. Finally, Elisha
describes a fiery chariot with fiery horses
that comes down, picks up Elijah, and flies away. What point of reference
does this man have? He's never seen
anything but a chariot, and he's never seen a chariot
that wasn't drawn by horses, and he's never seen electricity. How else would you
describe this fiery chariot that comes down, picks up
Elijah, and flies away? If we see an object today,
that we don't recognize, we look and say, "That looks
sort of like a helicopter, "but it's moving too
fast and it's all lit up. They must be doin',
you know, some lights." That's what I did
when I saw that thing. I thought it was a helicopter
with a spotlight on it, was my first impression. I have those points of
reference to work with. These guys didn't. They never seen
anything but fire and never seen
anything but a chariot, so it's a very limited
perspective and and that's what I'm talking
about in these slides. You have so many different
incidences in the text. You have, for instance, Yahweh's on top of the
Mount Sinai with Moses. He says, "I'm gonna come
in three days in my glory." "What do you mean, God? "You're glory itself. "What do you mean
you're gonna come in three days in your glory?" Glory, literally translated,
I think you can find, from your Hebrew scholars,
it means heavy things. He's tellin' Moses, "I'm
gonna come in my heavy thing." He has a great deal
of security around the bottom of the mountain. He makes Moses go down
and make sure that they can't even
touch the mountain, and if they touch it,
they would be stoned, or killed with arrows, and the bodies are to be
left alone, not touched. That's in the Bible. Everything I'm telling you
is straight out of there. On the third day, he comes
back and he tells Moses to go back down and
check the perimeters of the mountain, and make sure that nobody's touched
that mountain. Then it describes him
comin' in his heavy thing. The scripture says that it
made a loud, searing noise like many trumpets with
thunder and lightning, and sat down on the
mountain in smoke. Whatever it was, sat down
on the mountain in smoke, not clouds, in this case. Many times, clouds is the cloak, but this case, he sat down
on the mountain in smoke. That's the scripture. Later, he comes out
of this heavy thing on something that's just
described as tile work, like sapphire and,
in some cases, the scripture says, crystalite. That's a very shiny substance. It could be any type of metal,
it could be any kind of thing but that's what is described. Then, the 72 elders are
allowed to come up and the covenant is made,
"I'll be your guide and you'll be my people." Most of these things
in the Hebrew texts, the stories of Babel, the stories of the
deluge, Cain and Abel, all of these also are found
in the Sumerian texts, which is the oldest
writing known to man, even before the hieroglyphics. Sanskrit has an argument
about which is older but, basically, these are
very, very old texts. Some of these texts
are just mind-bogglin' when you read them, I
mean, how in the world did they come up with this? If you go to the Mahabharata,
they're talkin' about how to make planes
and what the material should be made out
of these vimana. They called them the vimana, and what the pilot should eat, and what kind of cloaking
device is it for? How to do things
that we know today as radar, and different
things like this. They're talkin' about it, four
or five thousand years ago, in that text, so this is
very interesting for me. I'm not starting a church of UFOlogy or anything
of that nature, nor trying to convince anybody. It makes very little
difference to me whether anybody believes what I think about it
or not, but I can share what I've come to
know over 35 years of working and
studying in the area, and you can take it or leave it. That's basically the
way I feel about it. - We're here at the Pine
Hill Community Center for Memphis' first
celebration of World UFO Day. Let's go on inside and
check out the activities. The celebration of World
UFO Day hit a few snags, with expected bad weather prompting the cancellation
of the outdoor event. Bad luck also
prevented Travis Walton from making his flight. - [Voiceover] Travis
Walton wasn't able to make it to the
plane, but you... - Figured it out. Absolutely, I figured that out. Basically, what we did
is, we had him Skype in, and he's actually
speaking now on Skype, to the audience,
taking questions and showing his slides. - [Voiceover] He
definitely, you can tell, those people are
sitting in there, lookin' at a computer
screen, wrapped. I wanted to talk to
Peter but I was like, "No, he's watchin'
that interview." - That is just so wild and anything that can go
wrong kind of did, but I think we bounced
back very well. - [Voiceover] You know
who never showed up for World UFO Day? The little green men. As the stereotyped emblem
of kooky UFO believers, the little green men don't
get a lot of love these days, but the jokes are
easily spotted. There were comedians
to warm up the crowd, a tough crowd, it must be said. Any feedback on what's
working, what's not working, in terms of UFO jokes? - I think the premiere thing
is to make sure everybody knows you're not making fun of
them or their beliefs. You don't want to
disrespect why they're here, or why they're comin' together, or the types of things
that they're into. - Like we, here on Earth,
we just rename a planet, but that's like a
whole group of people that have to change. Like the entire
Correlle population is now the entire
Kepler 256f population. They have to get used to it. They have to change
their licenses. Their entire lives are
completely different, just because we shot
somethin' in space and stared at them for a minute. - [Voiceover] What drew most
of the participants together was their desire to
connect with other people who've had the same
kinds of experiences. - I'm a believer
and I had to come just to see what
it was all about and for listening to
the guest speakers and what they had to say. Also, I wanted to just make
a testimony on what I saw. - [Voiceover] You
saw something in '75? - 1975, same year
that I graduated. - [Voiceover] Can you tell
me a little bit about that? - I had woke up from a nap. It was around 3:00 or
4:00 in the evenin', I woke up from a nap, gettin'
ready to walk to the store. I was walkin', it
was on South Memphis, on Kerr Avenue, between like Woodward Street and
Englewood Street, so I was walkin' and I'm
seein' few cars pass by, as well as few people
walkin' on the streets. Then, all of a sudden,
I'm lookin' up, I see a bright light,
it's in the daytime, bright light
hooverin' around me, just flyin' all around. No noise, just the bright
light movin' all around, in like a flyin'
saucer kind of deal. It was like, all of a sudden, I'm just the only
person in the world, and that's what it was, an
unidentified flyin' object. Same thing that happened to me, other people is talkin' about. - We had about 600 people to actually register
for the festival, and, actually, more people
walked up and paid today than the ones that actually
registered for the festival, so I'm thinking that the
rain kind of scared them off, but I think we probably
have anywhere between 300-, 350 people that
have come through today. - You got four speakers from completely four
different angles. You've got a man who's been working in UFOlogy
investigations for 30 years, plus? - Forty. - Then you've got
Travis, who had encounter of the third kind. I'm comin' out of
left field, from totally different angle
of research, into it. Then, Todd is somebody
who's sittin' there and lookin' at it, you know? Here, a local guy. - I've said a hundred meters. Jimmy Carter tried to
go to the metric system, and we don't like it, so it was a hundred yards long. Length, about 75 yards wide. If you look at the
high-tension towers, it's gonna be hangin'
over on both ends. It's beyond those,
and it's roughly 300 yards above us. Red lights, green lights,
and when it pulled off, them two big red lights. Then, on the side,
there was a glow. I'm not sayin', I don't
know if it was portholes, or a simple glow on the craft. I don't know. We didn't get a
chance to look at it. Jerry didn't get enough
time to look at it to see if that light on the side was a glow from it
or porthole lights or whatever, on it. I tried to get Jerry. Jerry Jeter, to
my last knowledge, is in Phoenix, possibly. He's either somewhere
on this planet, or in this planet somewhere, but I don't know. Now, there were three others. John Birdsong, Eddie Barlett, and Michael Davidson. Davidson and Birdsong
are both dead. Eddie Bartlett's
still alive, I think. Most of us are gettin'
long in the tooth now, so we never know for sure. I couldn't find Jerry, if
I could've found Jerry, we'd both be here, but,
yeah, we both accepted it, we both, later on,
not rationalized it, but just discussed it and
we accepted what it was. That's exactly what it was. - You know, police work
is a macho culture. I couldn't agree
more with James. If you're gonna have like
a one-day conference, to have four of your
presenters coming at it from completely
different angles, especially if you're
new to the subject, and this is an introduction
for you, again, this part of the
states, you've got a lot of people of
faith, and I thought James' approach,
to talking about the worlds' holy books,
the Bible, of course, it was courageous and
it was very respectful of people in the room. Just that admonition
to read X, Y, or Z passages in the Bible, as
though it was a report. I know I've already learned
quite a bit from James, especially when people
ask me questions about UFOs and the Bible,
and things like that, just a way, in a very
human, very respectful way to present the material. We all learn from each other. I'm proud to say I have an awful
lot of friends in the field that I've made over the
years, and a lot of colleagues that I'm not very friendly with, but it's also a great
opportunity to connect with folks who have gone
through their own little transformation, enough to say,
"I'm gonna be in that room. "I don't care, I hear people
make fun of this subject, I'm curious." - I've been hearing
people tell their stories to other people, but because
I've been runnin' around so much, I haven't
had a chance to stand and listen to the stories,
but from just earshot, I could hear the stories,
and I think they're great. - Some people come
because they wanna know if somebody's gonna
talk about something that matches their experience,
and I've already had them come around and ask
me about the orbs and the different things, because when they've
had the experience, they don't ever
forget it (laughs). You just don't forget that. - Captain Todd was
a great example. - After World UFO Day, things
settled back down to normal. Lamar and Helen Todd
went back to work at Todd's Auction House. Some days, the topic
of UFOs may come up. Most days, it won't. - The flying pig has
been our mascot symbol since we started
because we talk about people gonna pay a lot of money
for antiques when pigs fly, and they don't pay much
for antiques anymore, no. It's pretty well a bygone day. - There are many phenomena,
natural or man-made, that are not often seen, that may appear strange or
mysterious to the observer, but most unidentified objects
don't have to stay that way. - Most of the ones
I've had have been very, very simply
explained, although, people didn't believe
what I was telling them. What they were seeing,
generally, was FedEx planes, or meteors. - People often see objects
that are natural objects, and if they don't know
what those objects are, they may be mysterious to
people, such as, tonight we have, and this is June 30th, we have a conjunction
of a couple of planets going on in the sky, two of the brightest
planets that we have, Venus and Jupiter, and they're
getting as close together as they just about ever get. - I would say the 80% of
the UFO stories that I get, turn out to be nothing
more than aircraft. - Based on her experience
as a MUFON investigator, Sanders is largely in agreement that the majority of UFO
sightings submitted to MUFON through its website
at mufon.com, turn out to be
fully explainable. - I would say, let's
say, out of ten cases, you're gonna be able to
identify eight of those, then, those other two cases, will be very difficult
to determine exactly what it is that the witness saw. We talk to the police
officers in the city, see if anything else
has been reported. We talk to other witnesses in
the city to see if they, or, not other witnesses
per se, but, let's say, if they have neighbors, we'll
try and contact the neighbors, see if they saw anything during
a certain period of time, but without disclosing
who the witness is, we will just come out,
talk to different people, talk to the airport, see
if there was anything, the Meteor Society,
we will contact them to see if there was anything. Also, we check the weather, so we don't try to mislead
people to think that what they saw was
extraterrestrial, nor do we try to, debunk is
the word that most people use, we're not trying to debunk
what people are saying, we're, more so, trying
to drill down to find out exactly what it is a person saw. Because if you see
somethin' weird and you have no clue what it
is, you can't identify it. You're like, "Okay, that's
weird, what was that? Can somebody help me
try to figure that out?", and that's what
we are here to do, is to try and help people
figure out what it is that they actually saw. - Skepticism is a very
healthy thing in life. I have too many colleagues, who
I like very much personally, but who are so enthralled,
so caught up in the work, and also, like myself, based
on a preponderance of evidence, the kind of evidence you
can bring into a courtroom, that we are dealing with
a very genuine phenomena. However, it's incumbent
on people like me to be especially skeptical in
every new investigation I do. I can't simply
assume that this is what the witness has
said or, perhaps, what the physical
evidence may indicate. My reputation moves
forward or dies on public pronouncements
I make on the subject. At the other extreme,
I guess you'd call it a segment of skeptics, who are not really
skeptics, they're debunkers, they exhibit the
intellectual arrogance to actually say, "We
know this can't be. "How do we know it can't be? "It can't be, it can't
be, therefore, it isn't. "Therefore, we're here
to explain to you, "you believer types, "that it was a meteorite or some anomalous weather
condition or what have you." - The strange thing,
though, is how the jokes and the beliefs aren't
as crisply separated as you might expect. There are scrupulously
respectful skeptics and irreverent believers,
and a lot of people who, maybe, aren't sure exactly which category they fall into. - Have I ever seen a UFO? I think I have, yes. I was home from
college for the summer. I was staying with my family. As I'm walking from
one house to the other, I happen to look up and I saw a large triangular dark spot in the sky, that seemed to be kind of illuminated
from underneath. It was more the silhouette
of this thing in the sky and it was odd. I couldn't figure out what
in the world this would be, and this is out in the country,
way out in the country. I went on in to my grandparent's
house and I thought, "I'm going to call my parents "because they should be
aware that there's this thing that is hovering
over their house." Then I looked out the window and there wasn't anything there. Was it a dream? Maybe, it could be one of those vivid things that you remember. It could be a cloud, but there was just a moment
of, "What the hell is that?" Yeah, so that's my, I don't know what I'm
looking at in the sky story. - So, is there life out
there beyond our world? Are there strange
craft that come from other galaxies,
other dimensions, even, other times? What evidence would you
need to make up your mind? That's a question many of
the people I've talked to have asked themselves. Most are still looking for answers, and
for new questions. Where did life come from? Are we alone here? Will we find a way to
travel to the stars? Have others found a way to
travel here to visit us? Does Memphis' fame as
a music destination attract tourists from
outside our solar system? Is it true that there
are no stupid questions? Perhaps not, but like the old saying goes, "If you don't ask,
you'll never know."
