Encounters- Episode 3

 

See here for my review of Encounters episode 2: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2023/10/encounters-episode-2.html.
This third episode of the new Encounters series is actually the first one in some countries; in those countries the Broad Haven case is episode three. This episode concerns a major UFO flap in early 2008 in a rural Texas community, a place called Erath County. This is a region of small towns and villages with a large number of dairy farms. A number of local people had sightings and close encounters, in some cases more than one. These witnesses included the sheriff and the headmistress of the school. This community is very religious and one of them believed that his experience was an apparition of angels instead of aliens. The local newspaper bravely ran with the story and it became an international sensation. The programme includes a news spot with James Fox, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2022/11/moment-of-contact-watch-party-review.html. After it was all over, one of the newspaper reporters was so keen to keep writing about UFO's that she ended up losing her job. A typical sighting involved a single or multiple very bright lights in the sky followed a few minutes later by jet interceptors from the US Air Force flying low overhead as they searched for them. Some encounters were more intense. A deer hunter called Ricky Sorrell saw a UFO that hovered right over him blotting out the whole sky. He thinks he saw a mantid alien aboard the craft. After he spoke to the media he was harassed by people who were either government agents or men in black; the two are not the same, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2016/08/kidlington-mib.html. One day these intruders left a bullet in his car, right on top of the dashboard where he could easily find it. It's as if they were saying: "One of these is for you if you don't shut up!"
 
The mayor organized a meeting about the UFO's in a local hall and so many people turned up they could hardly fit into it. This is reminiscent of the Warminster "thing" in 1965, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2015/08/ufo-disclosure-2015-warminster-50.html. Eventually there was an official explanation from the government; that the witnesses all saw reflections from an airliner overhead. "Reflections off my white ass!" retorted Steve Allen, one of the witnesses. The government later changed their story and said it was just the USAF doing exercises; and you know you're onto an interesting case when the cover story keeps changing, like with Roswell. The sheriff had a second sighting in which he captured dash cam footage, but it was partly ruined. As he said, it's as if the phenomenon is deliberately illusive; and I've found that in similar incidents. Cameras don't work, digital files are corrupted and film is obliterated. Robert Powell, lead investigator for MUFON Texas, went to Erath County to report on the incidents. He and a friend from Colorado managed to get hold of some Federal Aviation Administration radar logs from the time of the incident and worked out that there were unrecognized objects being detected at the time of the sightings. Probably as a result of this exposure, the FAA has classified all radar data since then. At the end of the programme, some of the witnesses contemplate the theological implications of extraterrestrial life, as you'd expect in such a God-fearing culture. I am an agnostic, but in my view there is nothing in this reality that contradicts Christianity; I provide more detail in UFO Truth magazine, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2023/05/ufo-truth-magazine-issue-60.html. In both the previous episodes in this series, there has been a brief introduction by a man called Matthew Roberts, a cryptologist for the US Navy. In this programme he is given a longer slot and speaks about his own personal ET encounters. Contrary to what the skeptics constantly assert, UFO witnesses often suffer problems in their personal and financial life as a result of speaking publicly about it; and that includes the people featured in episode three of Encounters. I'll look forward to watching the final episode.