Strange Arrivals

Interview with David J. Halperin, who taught in the Religious Studies department at the University of North Carolina until he retired in 2000, and author of The Intimate Alien, which pushes aside the believer/skeptic dichotomy to propose a new framework from which to view the UFO question. The question is not, what are they or where do they come from? The question is what do they mean?

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An interview with Chris Carter, the creator of a little television show you might have heard of called The X-Files.

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An interview with author Colin Dickey about his book, The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained.

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Photographs and videos are a critical component in UFO folklore, but there isn't a single example as iconic as ones for the Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster. But two photos taken in Oregon in 1950 might come the closest. Later in the episode, why has public interest in UFOs continued while other paranormal topics come and go?

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Popular culture has been important in UFO folklore, both absorbing the existing stories around UFOs and creating new narratives. The 90s television show The X-Files was probably the most important of all UFO-related media. Show creator Chris Carter and writer Glen Morgan talk about making the show and its relation to the UFO narratives at the time.

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Richard Doty makes a deal with Bill Moore to trade what the government knows about flying saucers for information about the UFO community. But what is this information that Moore receives and can it be trusted? 

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In the late 1970s and early 80s, an electrical engineer named Paul Bennewitz filmed lights over Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, NM, and recorded audio signals that he believed were alien communications. Instead of asking him to stop, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations convinced him that he was, in fact, seeing and hearing extraterrestrials. Why?

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The Roswell crash is perhaps the most famous UFO incident in history. But for more than 30 years after the debris was found in 1947, the case was relatively unknown. It resurfaced in 1980, amid an era of civilian UFO investigation and government disinformation, two efforts that would meet in the case of an electrical engineer in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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After Project Blue Book was shuttered, J. Allen Hynek was the best known authority on UFOs and cemented this perception with his Close Encounters classification system. But despite his scientific training, Hynek was very interested in and receptive to the paranormal. What effect did this have on his conclusions about UFOs?

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J. Allen Hynek arrives in Michigan to investigate a rash of UFO sightings. Under pressure to come to a quick conclusion, he delivers an explanation that prompts anger, ridicule and another official look at Project Blue Book's two decades of work.

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J. Allen Hynek joins the Air Force’s UFO investigation effort in its earliest stages. He finds most cases easy to explain, but become increasingly troubled by the ones that he can’t. During the Spring of 1966 in Michigan a series of UFO sightings, including by police and almost 100 students at a local college, seems to have the potential to spark the mass panic that the Robertson Panel feared.

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In 1964, a patrolman on a desert stretch of highway hears an explosion. Investigating, he sees two beings standing outside an egg-shaped vehicle. As he watches in terror, the vehicle takes off with a great noise and recedes across the landscape. To find answers, the Air Force sends Project Blue Book personnel to determine what has happened. With them is consultant J. Allen Hynek, who becomes a key figure in the development of how we view UFOs.

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The three main witnesses to the Rendlesham Forest encounters agree about the basic events that happened over the three nights. But there are parts where they don’t agree, and that's where things get even stranger. And what, exactly, did they encounter during those 72 hours? They don’t agree on that, either.

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The British tabloids get wind of the Rendlesham encounter and it becomes public in 1983. The news prompts a closer look at the Rendlesham narratives, and researchers put forward alternative explanations that don’t involve unknown craft entering the air space above RAF Bentwaters. Twenty years after the encounter, the UK Ministry of Defense releases its Rendlesham file. What’s inside is not what researchers were expecting.

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Two nights after the first encounter, strange lights are once again seen above RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge. The US Air Force dispatches a group into Rendlesham Forest to investigate. The leader of the group makes an audio recording of the hours-long incident that follows, involving multiple unidentified lights that seem to invade the airspace above facilities where nuclear weapons are stored.

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On Christmas night, 1980, a light is observed descending into a forest just outside RAF Bentwaters, a British military air base on the eastern coast of England. Three American servicemen leave the base and follow the light into Rendlesham Forest. What they see marks the beginning of a three-night incident known as Britain’s Roswell.

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In this extended trailer, we give you a sneak preview of the story at the heart of Strange Arrivals season two: The Rendlesham Forest Incident, sometimes known as Britain's Roswell.

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This season on Strange Arrivals, we explore the Rendlesham Forest Incident, one of the most famous UFO sightings in history, sometimes described as Britain's Roswell.

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An interview with documentary filmmaker Carol Rainey, who was the research partner and wife of UFO researcher Budd Hopkins in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

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An interview with Stephanie Kelley-Romano, an associate professor at Bates College who has done academic work on alien abduction stories.

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An interview with Sarah Scoles, author of They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers, a first-person anthropolical look at the people who make up the UFO community.

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The abduction phenomenon has largely faded from public consciousness. What is the current state of abduction research? And looking back to the very beginning of this season, why is it that some people are prone to belief in the paranormal while others are prone to skepticism? Finally, how should we regard abduction stories and other extraordinary claims?

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The search for ever-more-incredible stories led to strange theories about the purpose of alien abductions and eventually to the bizarre case of Linda Cortile. Budd Hopkins considered it to be the most compelling abduction case ever investigated. But was it real?

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Three researchers, Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, and John Mack, revolutionized the study of alien abductions in the 1980s and 90s. Their research, based on hypnotic regression of people they suspected were abductees, suggested that aliens could access anyone, anywhere, at any time.

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Betty and Barney Hill's experience established the framework for future tales of alien abduction. But the Hill story was just the jumping off point for abductee narratives that followed. Among the first abduction tales to follow the publication of An Interrupted Journey was Betty Andreasson's alleged kidnapping by friendly, spiritual aliens who took her on a journey to distant worlds; worlds that seemed a reflection of Betty's core beliefs.

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The Hills described their UFO encounter taking place over several miles, beginning with a bright light in the sky and ending with a craft hovering above a field. Nobody believes they were just making their story up. So what did they see that night as they drove through northern New Hampshire?

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Betty Hill had a series of intense dreams after her UFO encounter. How did these dreams inform the memories recovered during hypnosis sessions two years later? They way the Hills described the aliens they met changed over time, becoming less human. Why did the descriptions change and how did they finally arrive at a definitive answer to what these creatures looked like?

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Betty and Barney Hill's memories of being abducted by aliens were recovered through hypnotic regression. But does this technique uncover actual memories, or something else? How does what we know now about memory formation and hypnosis change how we look at the Hills' story of capture aboard an alien craft?

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While under hypnosis, Betty Hill told of being shown a star map by one of her alien captors. Years later, she sketched what she remembered of the map. This led a teacher named Marjorie Fish to create intricate models of the galaxy to determine the origin of the space craft, and set off a dispute about the accuracy of the map and the reality of their experience.

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UFO culture of the 1950s revolved around two competing visions; one of contact with advanced beings from within our solar system and another focusing sightings of distant flying objects in the sky. Under hypnosis, the Hills told a story that differed from both of these narratives, one of capture and examination by truly alien beings.

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More than two years after their UFO encounter in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Betty and Barney Hill underwent hypnosis therapy with renowned psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Simon. These sessions revealed that there was more to the Hill's story than they had previously remembered. This story was all the more remarkable because it was so different from the stories of the early years of America's fascination with UFOs - the 1950s.

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Driving through northern New Hampshire on a clear fall night in 1961, Betty and Barney Hill spotted a light in the sky that seemed to be following them. As they navigated mountain roads, the light came increasingly closer until the Hills found themselves face to face with a craft unlike any they had seen. Thus began one of the most famous encounters in UFO lore.

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On a September night in 1961, in the mountains of New Hampshire, Betty and Barney Hill encountered something they could not explain. What really happened that autumn night? Welcome to Strange Arrivals, where host Toby Ball will unravel one of history's most famous cases of alien abduction.

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