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The Unexplained: UFOs vs. The Government

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Apart from giving the final word almost exclusively to scientists and debunkers, this is a pretty good look at the UFO question. From the title, I thought it might spend a lot of time talking about some of the UFO-related documents that investigators have managed to get their hands on thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, but the only such document it mentions is the memo Deputy Base Commander Colonel Charles Halt submitted after his unexplained encounter with something highly unusual in Rendlesham Forest back in 1981. In point of fact, UFOs vs. the Government focuses its attention on some of the most compelling UFO cases in the annals of ufology, featuring interviews with witnesses, ufologists, and skeptics.

The first case to be examined is the aforementioned sightings at Rendlesham Forest in late December 1980. Anyone with the slightest interest in ufology should already be quite familiar with this particular case, as it's one of the most compelling on record. The forest itself lies in close proximity to two military bases, RAF Woodbridge and RAF Bentwaters (both since closed), which were under the control of the American Air Force at the time. Just after Christmas of that year, strange lights appeared in the forest over the course of two or three nights. Soldiers investigating the lights on the first night report the actual close-up sighting of an unexplained craft, while Col. Halt's investigation the next night records a series of maneuvers by unknown lights in the sky. What makes this particular case highly significant is the fact that the observers were all highly trained Air Force personnel, there was physical evidence in the form of unexplainably high radiation levels in the forest, and Col. Halt recorded his real-time observations on audio cassette. Debunkers claim the men were just confused by the lights of a nearby lighthouse, but that explanation doesn't even begin to explain the facts.

The video then moves on to the wave of triangular-shaped UFOs spotted over Belgium in 1990. The Belgian UFO Wave is particularly fascinating because, besides the thousands of reported sightings from civilians, you actually had the Belgian government acknowledging the phenomenon and admitting they could not explain the source of the lights. Of course, when you scramble fighter jets to follow an object being tracked on radar, and then see the object zooming away at impossible speeds whenever the jet pilots manage to lock on to the target, it's pretty hard to pretend nothing happened. The third case examined in the video is the unique story of Stefan Michalak's 1967 encounter with a UFO in the Canadian wilderness. After watching the object land, Michalak eventually drew close to the object to examine it, whereupon he was blasted with some kind of exhaust discharge. The grid-like burns he received, which reappeared periodically over the rest of his life, could never be explained by even the most distinguished of doctors. Debunkers declare it all a hoax, although they never even try to explain how or why Michalak would administer such unexplainable, not to mention painful, burns to his chest and stomach, burns which periodically reappeared years after the incident took place. Next, we're off to Michigan, where three UFOs were spotted over Lake Michigan by numerous witnesses in 1994. More importantly, the same objects were simultaneously tracked on nearby weather center radar. It is very rare to have hard radar returns matching up with the reports of witnesses, yet skeptics dismiss the evidence and chant "temperature inversion."

After a brief visit to Area 51, the documentary concludes. Skeptics get the last word, as I mentioned earlier, which tends to warp somewhat the fair and balanced presentation of the earlier sections of the video. Hearing the declarations of professional debunker Philip "Temperature Inversion" Klass and astronomers who have steadfastly refused to study UFOs in a scientific manner is bad enough, but hearing them give credence to the Condon Report (which reached its conclusions before it even met for the first time) is pretty disappointing. Take out the last three or four minutes, though, and you'd have yourself a five-star UFO documentary.