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00:00Are you hearing anything about these lights that are hovering up here?
00:04They're using a flying disc out by C-17.
00:07Among the quiet towns and bustling epicenters around the world,
00:11reports pour in of unusual aerial phenomena.
00:14It shoots high into the air. It's moving in an erratic way.
00:19This is not a terrestrial craft.
00:22Flying discs, hovering orbs, strange biological substances falling from the sky.
00:27To determine what it might have been, you'd have to eliminate all the other possibilities.
00:34The sensational becomes credible once it's crowdsourced.
00:37Thousands of people claim to see these orbs.
00:41UFO hotspots light up on the map.
00:43What's made these places the target of otherworldly attention?
00:47This might be the location of the vortex.
00:50As vessels reappear in the same locations,
00:53can we use the earthly to guess at otherworldly motives?
00:56Are these mysterious visitors' friends or foe?
01:00And should we fear their return?
01:02All over the world, repeat sightings of UFOs baffle researchers.
01:07UAP are in our airspace, but they are grossly underreported.
01:10A pattern begins to emerge.
01:12These sightings are not rare or isolated, they are routine.
01:15What is the meaning behind these hotspots?
01:17I can't go beyond what I've already stated publicly.
01:20The government is not prepared.
01:22Are we being mapped?
01:23July 4th, 2002.
01:29A retired police officer near Chicago, Illinois, and his wife celebrate Independence Day.
01:35Their eyes are fixed on the sky, where fireworks light up the night.
01:39Amid the exploding colors, something strange catches their attention.
01:44Three bright orbs glow red.
01:48Unlike the surrounding fireworks, they maintain a V formation as they glide across the night sky.
01:53They wait for the familiar boom of a firework and shower of sparks.
01:59But instead, the flying V moves towards them in silence.
02:04As it passes overhead, lights disappear to reveal what witnesses describe as a triangle with rounded edges.
02:10While their experience is undoubtedly unsettling, for residents of the surrounding Tinley Park, the unnerved feeling of watching something unexplained hovering overhead is all too familiar.
02:26Home to around 50,000 people, Tinley Park is located 48 kilometers south of Chicago, in Cook County, Illinois.
02:37A little over a month later, at approximately 10 p.m., a neighbor yells for Bill Dooley to look up to the sky.
02:43He witnesses three bright lights cruising toward him that appear to be stacked on top of each other.
02:53Suddenly, they maneuver into the shape of a triangle and hover in place.
02:58The mesmerizing event lasts for roughly 30 minutes before the UFO disappears into the night.
03:05This is no ordinary aircraft.
03:08Around the same time, Tinley Park resident T.J. Japkin is at a party with his family a few blocks away, when he sees something that stops him in his tracks.
03:22Three lights moving northwest in a triangle formation.
03:26They stop and hover right above him.
03:28T.J. Japkin has a camcorder, so he hurtles back indoors, grabs the camcorder, and starts to film.
03:38And what he films is unbelievable.
03:42I got it! I got it on that tape!
03:48What he sees in the sky are these three very disturbing orb-like shapes.
03:56And they're not moving across the sky.
03:59These objects are just still, almost as if they're observing.
04:05What could these orbs have been?
04:08Was it a plane?
04:09Was it a helicopter?
04:11Or was it something else?
04:15Beyond Tinley Park, police stations are flooded with reports from Oak Forest, Orland Park, Mokenna, Madison, and Frankfurt,
04:23all claiming to have seen the exact same thing.
04:28It is very surprising to learn how many sightings there are of UFOs in the Illinois area, that it is indeed a UFO hotspot.
04:38At the center of the American heartland, Illinois has become a focal point of inexplicable phenomenon and a beacon of UFO activity.
04:46With upwards of 4,000 sightings reported from 2000 to 2015 alone, the question isn't if some unidentified object is flying through their airspace.
04:59But rather, where did it come from, and when will it return?
05:03Something is going on in Illinois.
05:08Something is attracting our extraterrestrial friends.
05:13Could these sightings be explained by science or the supernatural?
05:18Thousands of people claim to see these orbs hanging in the sky.
05:23Now, there's two explanations.
05:25If you're a skeptic, you might say, well, this is some kind of crowd psychology.
05:29Everybody wants a piece of the action.
05:32But alternatively, there's something there, and there's something there that a lot of people saw.
05:38To determine what it might have been in the air, you'd have to eliminate all the other possibilities and hopefully come up with a conclusion.
05:47If you remove everything else from the equation, then what's left is either unexplainable or perhaps a UFO.
05:54For UFOlogists, mass sightings are incredibly valuable, as they can be used to find consistencies.
06:04When researching the unknown, identifying consistencies in sightings and reports is key.
06:10The repeated observation of the phenomena adds some credibility to the witness's initial accounts.
06:18The typical UFO sighting is just a light in the sky, and it lasts for a few seconds, usually very, very quick, very unidentifiable, say the least.
06:27And when you get that kind of sighting that's really interesting, but you just can't really do very much with it.
06:32But these Tinley Park sightings lasted for around 30 minutes in the sky, which is a very, very long time for a UFO sighting.
06:40There's immediately something more there.
06:43In the days and weeks that follow the events of August 21st, the region is abuzz with talk about the mysterious lights.
06:50No one claims responsibility, and no one can say for certain what caused the aerial anomaly.
06:58That same day, Chicago hosted its annual air and water show.
07:02With so many planes and different varieties en route to different airports, could locals have mistaken the glowing lights for a specialty plane?
07:10Probably the most typical way that people try to debunk UFO sightings is to just say it was a plane.
07:15And I am very sympathetic to that, and I think many UFO sightings actually are, in fact, just planes.
07:21But again, a plane has a particular characteristic to it.
07:25It moves, first of all. You can generally see it moving across the sky.
07:29And this isn't really what happened with the Tinley Park sighting.
07:32These orbs were stationary for the most part.
07:36That I think would generally throw the plane theory out the window.
07:39Other explanations for the Tinley Park sightings include weather balloons, flares, and stray lanterns.
07:50The explanation that I find the least convincing to debunk the Tinley Park sighting is the flare theory.
07:57Just because flares are very predictable.
07:59They have a certain motion in the sky.
08:02They go up, they fall down, and then, of course, they flare out.
08:06And this is simply not what happened with the Tinley Park sighting.
08:09There's flares that are shot from flare pistols that are used for identification.
08:15Very rare these days.
08:17And only in an emergency if the aircraft they're dealing with has no radio at all.
08:21You'd have to say, why would this be being done over a populated area?
08:27Another debunking theory that goes back a long time is that UFO sightings are balloons.
08:32And some of them definitely are, or have been, balloons move throughout the air, not as fast as a plane.
08:40They don't necessarily fall like a flare, but they generally move.
08:44They don't necessarily stay stationary for quite as long.
08:47Less than two months later, on October 31st, 2004, 77 people reported sightings eerily similar to those made on August 21st.
08:59It was a sign the lights have returned.
09:01What are the chances that so many people are seeing the same phenomenon as T.J. Japkin, and that they are making some kind of mistake, when in fact their stories all appear to corroborate each other?
09:18They return again on October 1st, 2005, and make a further appearance on October 31st, 2006.
09:28Despite hundreds of eyewitness accounts, these events remain unexplained.
09:34Why would someone or something make a return visit to this part of the state?
09:39Are they just passing through, or is there something drawing these UFOs to Tinley Park?
09:45To have any intelligent life come back to a location over and over again, there must be some reason.
09:56Illinois sits on the shores of Lake Michigan, a body of water with a long history of unusual weather events, unexplained disappearances, and unprecedented sightings of UFOs.
10:08Stretching across four U.S. states, Lake Michigan is the largest source of fresh water in North America.
10:15It spans approximately 50,000 kilometers square and reaches depths of about 280 meters, making it the second largest Great Lake by volume.
10:25The Great Lakes themselves are inland oceans, which tend to heat up at a different rate as the land, so they have a massive influence on the kind of weather that we get.
10:35I mean, if you think about the wintertime, snow squalls, but if you sort of jump over to the summertime, the thunderstorms we get in and around the Great Lakes are as violent as the ones we get in areas like Tornado Alley.
10:50That's two seasons. There's another season. In the fall, we can get squall lines, which are just these lines of violent storms that will come sweeping across the Great Lakes, and they can be moving as fast as 100 to 120 kilometers an hour.
11:05Those are the kind of systems that can surprise people, and I have been through more than a few.
11:13Those who live around the lake claim to see bright bursts of light over the water.
11:18Some attribute it to shooting stars made clear by the lack of light pollution over the lake.
11:24Meanwhile, others attribute the phenomena to paranormal activity or even proof that visitors from another planet are drawn to the water.
11:32The Great Lakes is in general a magnet for some high strangeness.
11:38It's known for lots of UFO sightings. It's known for some cryptozoology even.
11:45And there's been a lot of talk of strange otherworldly vortexes in the Great Lakes that bring down ships.
11:52Lots of strange incidents out on the water that can't necessarily be accounted for by conventional means.
11:59There's a lot of mystery.
12:02I think people would be surprised at how violent the weather is in and around the Great Lakes, especially over areas like Lake Michigan.
12:12March 8, 1994.
12:15Around 9 p.m., 911 dispatchers are bombarded with over 300 calls from concerned citizens,
12:22describing strange objects hovering over the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.
12:27911.
12:28We were just wondering, have you heard anything about these lights that are flickering up here in the, what is it, the east, east, southeast area?
12:40It's like a group.
12:43It's like a strange eclipse that's way up in the sky.
12:48And we wondered if you had heard anything about it.
12:50No, it's fine.
12:51Anytime you see strange lights over, especially a lake, over a body of water, it poses a certain number of questions.
12:58The basic one being, what could this possibly be?
13:00Why might they be moving in that particular way?
13:03Why that color?
13:03Why that shape?
13:05Where are they headed?
13:06What is unique about that particular body of water or general region that might be attracting them?
13:12By most accounts, the event lasts for 15 minutes.
13:17The objects are tracked moving towards Chicago.
13:20This would become one of the most widespread UFO sightings in history.
13:24In response, the 911 service alerts police forces in the area to take a look to investigate what is going on.
13:33Eventually, the National Weather Service is contacted, and they're put on the case to see if they can find something going on in the skies over this great lake.
13:45Around 10 p.m., Jack Bishong, a meteorologist working at the National Weather Service, receives a call from the Ottawa County 911 dispatch.
13:56They ask if his radar systems have picked up anything unusual.
14:00He was looking at his radar screen and seeing something tracking at 100 miles an hour, and he wasn't sure what he was looking at.
14:10Bishong decides to take matters into his own hands.
14:13He takes manual control of the radar system and begins to scan the coastline.
14:19Something catches his eye.
14:21What the meteorologist sees next is absolutely incredible.
14:25It defies reason.
14:28The object splits into three, and it moves at incredible speed.
14:34It shoots high into the air.
14:37It's moving in an erratic way.
14:39This is not a terrestrial craft.
14:43This is something from out of this world.
14:46If it was a physical object of any size, any dimensions, and it was traveling low in the atmosphere, it would, A, probably burn up, and, B, it would create a sonic boom that the whole shore of Lake Michigan would have heard.
14:59I think he saw something else.
15:03It's at this moment, Bishong realizes he is tracking something unprecedented.
15:09To give you an idea of just how bizarre this is, this craft, which is split into three, ascends to 60,000 feet in no time at all.
15:22I mean, this is something that an earthbound terrestrial vessel cannot do.
15:27I'm not afraid to say that there was probably something there.
15:31What it is, we don't really know.
15:34The more that we get sightings like this, the more physical evidence we get, possibly the closer we get to some kind of answer.
15:41So even if we are left not knowing what this is, it's still compelling.
15:45It still adds to what is a pretty large mountain of data about UFOs by this point.
15:52The three objects appear to jump forward, rearranging themselves in a triangular formation, and then hover in place for some time.
16:00Bishong can't take his eyes off his monitors.
16:05He tracks the strange objects for over two hours.
16:08At one point, dozens more objects appear on screen.
16:12He checks for any technical issues with his systems or unusual weather phenomena, but nothing makes sense of what he is seeing.
16:20If I was given a sighting by a meteorologist or someone in that kind of position,
16:26especially if it's corroborated by a radar reading, I'm more inclined to think that this is something to be investigated.
16:35The National Weather Service would subsequently confirm the presence of large objects above the lake that night.
16:41But officially, they do not say what those objects were.
16:45What kind of phenomena are we dealing with over here?
16:48Is this something natural or is this something which has intelligence behind it?
16:56Many have seen Lake Michigan as a source of inexplicable, even paranormal activity.
17:02Its history is long and sinister, prompting some to compare it to the Bermuda Triangle.
17:08An invisible border from Luddington to Benton Harbor, Michigan to Manitowoc, Wisconsin,
17:14creates what some refer to as the Lake Michigan Triangle.
17:17It is an area that has become known for a number of shipwrecks and plane crashes that have all occurred under unexplained circumstances.
17:26Coupled with sightings of UFOs, it is one of the most mysterious bodies of water on Earth.
17:31This might be the location of what some have called a vortex and we are familiar with the word vortex in some cases in bodies of water as well that it's, you know, a swirling area of the water caused by natural phenomena.
17:46But the vortexes that people typically invoke to explain something like the Bermuda Triangle or the Lake Michigan Triangle are often of a more supernatural, paranormal nature,
17:57that these are caused by very unnatural phenomena, possibly extraterrestrials, possibly something deep underwater.
18:05Within this Lake Michigan Triangle, for centuries, ships have gone missing, in more recent times, aircraft as well.
18:15And it's reached such a scale that there have been official investigations to find out what has happened to these ships, to these planes, and the poor souls never seen again.
18:28The idea of triangles, these devils triangles, or these mysterious triangles, comes from the work of Ivan Sanderson, who postulated that there are these vile vortices,
18:40which means areas of the Earth where the geomagnetism, the energy, is all messed up in a way which it will affect weather patterns, navigation instruments, and so forth.
18:53So this is especially treacherous territory for navigation.
18:58One of the most fascinating tales attached to the Lake Michigan Triangle is the disappearance of the two-masted schooner, the Rosabelle.
19:08On October 30th, 1921, a crew of 11 board the Rosabelle on High Island and set sail for Benton Harbor.
19:16The vessel is found awash, 68 kilometers from Milwaukee.
19:21A thorough search turns up no sign of the 11-strong crew.
19:24The people that simply went missing, who almost vaporized, just disappeared.
19:31Now, it could have been that the ship crashed into another vessel, but we have no record of that other vessel, which really begs the question,
19:40does something very unusual happen here within the Lake Michigan Triangle?
19:45Could these people and this vessel have encountered something from out of this world?
19:51While some see the vanishing vessels and crew as casualties of the unpredictable nature of wide-open waters,
19:59stranger cases of missing people, missing planes, make the idea of some sort of portal to another dimension all the more intriguing.
20:07One story that I think particularly highlights the strangeness of Lake Michigan and the Triangle that some people believe is there is an old story.
20:20It's quite a spooky story from 1937 of the ship O.M. McFarland that was on its mission.
20:26And Captain Donner goes below decks to his quarters and the crew later finds that he has completely disappeared wholesale from his quarters.
20:36And there's no explanation for this.
20:38It's extremely odd.
20:40No trace of Captain Donner ever shows up again.
20:43And nobody really understands what has happened.
20:46Was there a mutiny on board?
20:49Was he forced to walk the plank with the crew just covering what they'd done?
20:54Had he slipped off deck?
20:56I mean, entirely feasible.
20:57These things happen.
20:59Well, the crew were adamant that that was not the case, that he'd been seen going into his cabin.
21:04And then when they went in, almost like a magic trick, he'd gone.
21:09Now, this poses the question, had somebody or something taken the captain away?
21:19Another similarly mysterious disappearance occurs 13 years later, in 1950.
21:26Northwest Airline Flight 2501 is on its way from New York to Minneapolis
21:31when the plane enters a section of extreme and unexpected turbulence caused by an electrical storm.
21:38Just before 10 p.m., Captain Robert Lind makes his second request to descend to the cruising altitude of 2,500 feet.
21:47But he is denied.
21:48Lin decides to steer south to dodge the worst of the storm.
21:52What he and his crew don't realize is that they're headed straight for the Lake Michigan Triangle.
21:58Shortly after 11.37, the time of their last communication, the plane disappears.
22:05The plane is never really found.
22:06There are little bits and pieces of the plane that are found by rescue teams, but nothing substantial,
22:15nothing that you would expect from what people assume is the fact that the plane crashed, that it went down.
22:22There's no engine found.
22:23There's no large pieces of the plane found.
22:26It's just the smallest little bits here and there, which is unusual.
22:29In the 1950s, we don't have the same modern technology we have today, so we're not going to have a lot of warning about large and intense storms.
22:41We may not be aware of how fast those storms can develop, and we're still relying primarily on our compasses and on our analog gauges to tell us where we are.
22:53And the pilots and navigators still have to make a lot of decisions about where we're going.
22:58But when you fly into an electrical storm, specifically a large thunderstorm or supercell, it's really difficult to know where you're going.
23:07The electromagnetism that's generated in the storm by the generation of charges as a result of a thunderstorm can play havoc with compasses and with direction.
23:17The wind field in a storm, whether you're having downbursts or rising air masses or sudden wind gusts, can change a lot of what the pilots are seeing on the speed gauges and can lead to very confusing information to the pilots.
23:34If the pilots are relying on how they feel, it very quickly can lead to a plane crash.
23:40Two hours after the plane's last communication, two police officers report seeing a strange red light hovering over Lake Michigan.
23:50Despite ongoing efforts, the flight of 2501 remains a mystery.
23:57Lake Michigan is hundreds of miles long. It's tens of miles wide.
24:02There's thousands of square miles of surface area on this lake.
24:05It's a very difficult search and rescue operation.
24:10For many of these disappearances, no concrete answers are ever found.
24:20However, some scientific explanations have been proposed to make sense of why so many crashes are occurring here.
24:27The Earth has a magnetic field and there's lines of force that literally run from the North Pole to the South Pole.
24:35And when you put a compass in those lines of magnetic force, it will point in a certain direction.
24:42And when you get a little bit of deviation from those lines, the compass needle will change a little bit.
24:48For UFOlogists and those who study paranormal energies, the explanation for these anomalies lies deep within our Earth in what have become known as ley lines.
24:59One interesting theory that has been proposed to explain some of the weirdnesses around the world, like triangles, like vortexes, is the theory of ley lines.
25:11And this was developed in the 1920s by Alfred Watkins, an Englishman, who was fiddling around with the map one day and realized that if you draw certain lines, straight lines across the map, that they will intersect most, if not all, of the ancient sites that he was interested in.
25:30And these are ancient sites that typically people in this community have associated with supernatural activity or just unnatural phenomena of one kind or another.
25:40These energy vortexes have been associated with such ancient wonders as the pyramids of Giza, Chichen Itza, and Stonehenge.
25:50All are situated along ley lines.
25:52It's believed the presence of these powerful sources provided the inspiration and energy required to create structures that were far ahead of their time.
26:01Monuments that once defied the laws of architecture and continue to mystify us today.
26:07Ley lines have also been associated with both physical and psychological ailments, like insomnia, nausea, headaches, and other issues that could cause disorientation.
26:18Could this be why those who enter the Lake Michigan and Bermuda Triangle feel as if time and space have been warped around them?
26:25By connecting these sacred sites, they channel a kind of sacral energy.
26:32And to be at the kind of interconnections or along these ley lines, you experience something yourself as a human being.
26:40Then researchers took this idea further and then saw that possibly the nodes, which means the place where the ley lines connect, that they're supposed to be very powerful places which can make you change your way of thinking.
26:58They can bring about physical changes.
26:59As well as people have postulated ideas like that there are portals to other dimensions, things outside of ordinary experience can take place here.
27:12UFOlogists theorized that these ley lines could act as a guide to possible landing sites for UFOs.
27:19One of these lines runs almost directly down the middle of Lake Michigan.
27:23That if these ley lines truly are channeling immense energy, if you're an extraterrestrial traveling across space looking for potential energy sources in your long odyssey, they're almost like gas stations.
27:41They're somewhere to stop and recharge.
27:44And maybe this is why they interest extraterrestrials so much.
27:49One theory connected with the ley lines suggests that strange events and numerous sightings around Lake Michigan point to some kind of alien base hidden there.
28:02There is potentially some more credibility in the idea that UFOs would have bases underwater rather than in space, given that we have satellites and telescopes in space that could probably pick that up.
28:16We actually, interestingly, know more about outer space than we know about deep water on Earth.
28:24The ocean is vastly unexplored.
28:28It would frankly be probably easier to hide a UFO underwater than anywhere else.
28:34If this is true, we have to wonder, what are they doing here?
28:39I like the question, why would aliens want a base on Earth?
28:44We do that ourselves.
28:45We have bases all over the place.
28:48There is a race to colonize space that's been ongoing for some time.
28:53So if we're thinking of aliens having at least some similar interest to us, then it just simply makes sense.
28:59It's the next logical step that if they're going to study Earth for its resources, like we do, then having some kind of base is going to be helpful for that.
29:09And the more worrying part about it is that do these bases have a purely research goal in mind or is there something more nefarious?
29:21Some believe evidence of alien intent can be found in mysterious monoliths deep below the surface of our lakes and oceans.
29:32In 2007, a team of divers sets out to examine old boat wrecks in Grand Traverse Bay, Lake Michigan.
29:40What they discover has been billed as the Lake Michigan Stonehenge.
29:45These are vertical pillar-like stones arranged in a specific way, and one of them even has the petroglyph of a mastodon on it.
29:55How did they end up there?
29:57That's really intriguing.
29:59It's believed that these stones have been in place for something like 10,000 years.
30:06Now, if we take into consideration the whole theory of ley lines, these lines across the planet linking sacred sites,
30:15could it be that this ring of stones at the bottom of Lake Michigan, it's a marker for where ley lines intersect?
30:25It was put there deliberately for that purpose.
30:27We have magnetic anomalies.
30:31We have strange underwater monoliths.
30:35Is there some UFO-type phenomena underneath Lake Michigan,
30:39which is the root cause behind all of these anomalous and strange occurrences?
30:46Roughly six hours south, in Hardin County, southeastern Illinois,
30:51is a geological feature that could hold the answer.
30:54Spanning 12 kilometers in diameter, the state's one and only dormant volcano, Hick's Dome.
31:03Hick's Dome is a really interesting structure.
31:06It's basically a volcano that didn't come fully to fruition.
31:10Basically, magma rose up and forced the rocks upward, creating Hick's Dome.
31:17The limestone at the surface where Hick's Dome is located fractured,
31:23and the magma infiltrated those fractures, creating igneous rocks.
31:28So we see a really unusual structure in that we have both sedimentary rocks and igneous rocks within Hick's Dome.
31:36This structure formed about 270 million years ago.
31:41Despite its long history, geologists have only known about Hick's Dome since the late 80s.
31:47Since then, a handful of projects have been carried out to collect drill core samples and study the minerals in and around the dome.
31:55Igneous rocks often contain high levels of iron-bearing minerals like magnetite.
32:02Magnetite is highly magnetic, and it intensifies the Earth's magnetic field.
32:08So when we fly aircraft with magnetometers over Hick's Dome, we see that there's a magnetic anomaly here,
32:15and it's likely associated with that incipient volcano that was forming below Hick's Dome.
32:22Aside from an unusually forceful magnetic aura, the subterranean explosions that created this geological marvel
32:31were also responsible for creating a hotbed of valuable mineral deposits.
32:36The most important find is a surprising amount of REEs, or rare earth elements.
32:44These elements were discovered in 1952 by companies drilling for oil.
32:49Rare earth elements can have a lot of different properties,
32:52and they actually are becoming more and more common in our everyday life.
32:56There's rare earth elements in your telephone to help with the antenna.
33:00There's actually rare earth elements in the magnets in your cell phone
33:05that allow it to have that intense vibration when you do get a phone call.
33:09Now, could it be that beings from another planet or another solar system could be using or could want
33:18to mine these elements for their own technology, that they have seen where these rare earth elements are,
33:26and they want them, they need them in order to continue their mission?
33:31O'Hare International Airport, located in Chicago, Illinois, is a bustling aviation hub known for its strategic position
33:42in the heart of the United States and its role as one of the world's busiest and best connected airports.
33:49I call it an aerial zoo.
33:51There are so many airplanes in the area that absolute control over every one of them
33:58is vital for the functioning of the airport and for the safety of not only the people in the air,
34:04the pilots and the crew and the passengers, but people on the ground.
34:07On November 7th, 2006, at approximately 4.15pm, passengers and crew for flight 466 are stunned
34:19by what appears to be a flying saucer hovering above them.
34:24We have 12 employees at O'Hare Airport who look up into the sky.
34:31It's about 4.15 in the afternoon, it's November, so it's starting to get dark.
34:38In the sky, they claim to see a circle of lights.
34:42It's the kind of classic flying saucer, and this thing moves at incredible speed,
34:48it ascends at incredible speed, and they are unable to account for what they've seen.
34:55It's silent, that's a hallmark of UFO sightings,
34:58because they're often posited to be powered by energy unknown to us.
35:03And then especially for it to shoot up into the sky and disappear is a very classic UFO sighting,
35:09but nevertheless remains compelling because we just don't have any technology like that.
35:15UFOlogists, including those from the Illinois Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON,
35:20consider this an especially unusual case,
35:24because so many of the witnesses are trained aviation observers.
35:27Airports are highly controlled airspace.
35:30You have multiple planes taking off, coming in,
35:33and so air traffic control typically knows exactly what's in the air,
35:38what should be in the air, and what should not be in the air.
35:41So to have a craft of this kind right at the airport
35:44and making these kinds of motions without anybody really even noticing it until it was there,
35:50not noticing it coming in,
35:51and then to have a shoot-off like that, it's very, very strange, very unusual.
35:55Initially, United Airlines and the Federal Aviation Authority
36:00denied any official information on the alleged sighting.
36:04Unsatisfied with their response,
36:06the Chicago Tribune files a Freedom of Information Act request,
36:11forcing details of the event to be publicly disclosed.
36:14Phone calls from the United Airlines supervisor to a manager at the FAA come to light.
36:19You've got a United Airlines supervisor contacting the FAA
36:25and asking, have they seen this unusual, circular, disc-like object
36:32with all these lights in the sky?
36:34Now, it seems unlikely that in the kind of environment of an airport,
36:39somebody is going to waste the time of the FAA by making this kind of report.
36:44Why are they trying to withhold this information?
36:47Why did it take a Freedom of Information request to get this?
36:51Despite multiple witnesses claiming to see a solid silver disc floating in the sky,
36:57the FAA's official stance is that the incident is a weather phenomenon.
37:01No further investigations are made.
37:03Located in southwestern Illinois,
37:11Scott Air Force Base's strategic location places it at a crossroads of major transportation routes,
37:17making it a pivotal center for coordinating and facilitating
37:21military operations and logistics on a global scale.
37:24A very common theory to explain UFO settings is that
37:28it must be some kind of advanced, top-secret military technology
37:33that's in development, and this is certainly a good theory, I think,
37:38as far as it goes, because that's been the case in the past.
37:41There have been projects in development that then later become public knowledge,
37:45and so I totally understand the impulse to explain UFO settings away
37:49as top-secret military technology,
37:52especially because UFO settings often are close by military bases.
37:58Scott Air Force Base is located in the county of St. Clair, Illinois,
38:03home to one of the most famous mass UFO sightings in the state's history.
38:11At 4 a.m. on January 5th, 2000,
38:15Melvin Knoll stops by his miniature golf course in Highland, Illinois
38:19to check everything is secure.
38:21As he walks back to his truck,
38:23he looks up to see what he thinks is a star heading towards him.
38:28He was wrong.
38:29What Melvin Knoll is now confronted by is this vast object up there in the sky.
38:37It's the size of a football field.
38:40It's kind of darkish grey with red lights underneath it,
38:45and he is transfixed.
38:46He has no idea what the hell he's looking at.
38:51Knoll is just one of many St. Clair residents
38:54to report a strange sighting that night.
38:57By morning, units from eight police departments are inundated with calls.
39:02Officer Ed Barton is one of the first to respond.
39:05Officer Barton essentially backs up what Null has claimed,
39:09and this thing to Barton is absolutely real.
39:13There is no doubt about it.
39:15It's there, it's happening, and it's from out of this world.
39:18Barton continues to watch as the massive triangular craft pivots in place
39:24before darting towards the town of Shiloh.
39:27Shiloh officer David Martin radios moments later,
39:30describing his own experience,
39:32which is virtually identical to Officer Barton's.
39:36Again, the slow-moving object stops,
39:39suddenly accelerates, and vanishes in another direction.
39:42By now, the unusual radio transmissions
39:45had piqued the interest of officers on early morning duty
39:49in nearby small towns,
39:51each sharing similar stories of their encounters.
39:54Skeptics trying to make sense of the sighting
39:56suggest witnesses may have been misidentifying an advertising blimp.
40:01Blimps are actually really highly maneuverable aircraft.
40:05They basically have thrusters,
40:07and these are kind of like fans
40:10that we can change the angle and pitch on
40:14so that we can actually control the aircraft
40:18to cause it to move forward,
40:20to cause it to almost spin on a single point.
40:23So while these aircraft are huge and slow,
40:27they're actually quite maneuverable.
40:30So we can actually hover,
40:32we can actually stay in place,
40:33we can back up,
40:34we can almost turn in the same space that we're occupying.
40:39So very, very maneuverable aircraft.
40:43What the UFO was
40:45may be less important than what it was doing.
40:48The frequent stops and hovering behavior
40:50suggest whoever was piloting it
40:52was performing some sort of surveillance.
40:55Could someone have been trying to get a lay of the land
40:58near Scott Air Force Base?
41:01I think it raises some inevitable questions.
41:03Are they actually surveilling the military base?
41:06Is that possible?
41:06And I think absolutely,
41:08given again that humans do that.
41:10We did that all through the Cold War, for instance.
41:13We are intensely interested
41:14in the military bases of other nations.
41:17Is this a case of espionage
41:19where some other than earthly power
41:22is keeping tabs on what's going on
41:25in terms of armament and military equipment?
41:27If this is true,
41:31might these sightings be connected
41:33to the Tinley Park lights
41:34or the mysterious aircraft
41:36that appeared at the O'Hare Airport?
41:40Researchers studying the Black Triangle sightings
41:43reach out to the Scott Air Force Base
41:45in hopes of making sense of the situation.
41:48Scott Air Force Base
41:50has the radar tower in the area
41:52that could have confirmed
41:54that this thing was in the sky.
41:55But they're shocked when they're told
41:58that the radar tower
42:01was not working that night,
42:03that it was closed for maintenance.
42:05Now, that seems mightily convenient.
42:09I mean, that's going to arouse anybody's suspicion.
42:12Just when the police need confirmation
42:14about this incredibly unusual phenomenon in the sky
42:18seen by multiple people,
42:20including police officers,
42:22the one place that can confirm it,
42:25this air base,
42:26says our radar wasn't working that night.
42:31Radar systems are mechanical things
42:34and electronic things,
42:35and they do break.
42:36Sometimes they're down for routine maintenance.
42:39If we assume that these were
42:41some kind of extraterrestrial craft,
42:44then it's very likely that any intruder
42:48would like to mask his presence.
42:51So it's possible that they generated
42:53some sort of electromagnetic disturbance
42:55which broke down the radar
42:58or other surveillance abilities
43:00of this installation.
43:03The base insists they know nothing about the UFO,
43:07leading some to believe
43:08their denials are all the more suspicious.
43:10Given the amount of reports
43:13of unexplained aerial phenomena over Illinois,
43:16it's no surprise that commonalities have emerged.
43:19These consistencies lead us to wonder,
43:22are we seeing the same UFOs
43:25conducting some sort of long-term observation
43:27over the state,
43:28returning periodically to check on human activity
43:31or military buildup here?
43:33If there was some perceived conflict in the future
43:36with some kind of space-faring race,
43:38they would be equally interested
43:40in our bases and our capabilities,
43:42and that's certainly one way
43:43to find out about them
43:44is to surveil them from the air.
43:49You have the Lake Michigan Triangle,
43:53which could be exuding some kind of energy
43:56from that area.
43:58You have the hex dome,
43:59which could be a source
44:01of badly needed minerals
44:04for these UFOs.
44:06And you also have the presence of military bases.
44:09And we know from other UFO hotspots
44:12that military bases are of particular interest
44:15to beings from outer space.
44:19I would say that Illinois is not typically
44:21on the UFO enthusiasts' radar,
44:25but it probably should be
44:26because it has a number of unique aspects to it
44:30that draw in a lot of strangeness,
44:33a lot of strange sightings.
44:34Despite years of eyewitness accounts,
44:37both from locals
44:38and credible professionals,
44:39the answers to many of Illinois' greatest mysteries
44:42continue to elude us.
44:45I got it!
44:47I got an end tape!
44:48I got it!
45:16Transcription by CastingWords
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