Craig Charles: UFO Conspiracies

In 2016, multiple witnesses in and around the village of Pentyrch, South Wales, describe seeing a vast triangular UFO appearing in the night sky, ejecting smaller red and green craft before engaging in a battle with the British Air Force, culminating in its apparent shooting down. Residents describe shaking buildings, violent explosions, inexplicably damaged trees and mysterious teams of unknown people involved in a clandestine clean-up. The official military line was that this was merely a training exercise, but those who saw the event first-hand refuse to accept this explanation. Craig and Sarah go deep in this gripping UFO case as they attempt to discover if there’s been a top- level cover up.

Every year, thousands of UFOs are encountered by civilian and military pilots around the world. Many go unreported. Craig and Sarah scrutinise the phenomenon and take a closer look at an astonishing case that took place in November 2018 off the west coast of Ireland, in which multiple pilots saw bizarre lights through their cockpit windows. Ted Roe, Director of Research at NARCAP (National Aviation Reporting Centre) shares extraordinary insights into the sighting, while an ex-NATO air traffic controller, under the cover of anonymity, acts as a whistle-blower, spilling more secrets of the sky and the shocking lengths that governments are prepared to go to hide the truth.

In this extraordinary episode Craig and Sarah take on the US Navy UAP videos: the ‘Tic-Tac’ footage, filmed from the USS Nimitz in 2004 off San-Diego, and the ‘Go-Fast’ and ‘Gimbal’ videos filmed between 2014 and 2015 off the East Coast in the Atlantic from the USS Theodore Roosevelt. US Navy Petty Officer Jason Turner (since retired) – who served on the USS Princeton, which was alongside the USS Nimitz at the time of the ‘Tic-Tac’ incident – shares his first- hand experience of seeing the crew react to the footage as it arrived back on board and believes there’s more footage the public hasn’t seen.

Over the past 50 years a fascinating pattern has emerged, linking UFOs with military personnel and installations. One of the most significant of these events took place on British soil, deep in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, in 1980. The now infamous ‘Rendlesham incident’ involved numerous witnesses from the American Air Force who were stationed in nearby RAF Woodbridge. Craig and Sarah pore over every scrap of available evidence relating to the Rendlesham incident, including the audio recording made by based commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt when he and a patrol of men went to investigate lights in the forest that fateful night.

Central Scotland has its very own Area 51, known as the ‘Falkirk Triangle’, encompassing the now infamous village of Bonnybridge, which claims the highest concentration of the region’s UFO activity. The team examine cases including the 1991 sighting captured on camera flying over Polmont Reservoir, and the flying saucer over Craigluscar Reservoir in 1994.

In 1997, over the city of Phoenix, Arizona, one of the most spectacular mass UFO sighting of all time took place. Thousands of people witnessed a series of bright orange orbs moving in formation silently overhead. Despite hours of video and photographic evidence this case remains unexplained. Craig and Sarah take on the extraordinary ‘Phoenix Lights’ case, first speaking to eyewitness nurse David Parker who provides a vivid description of his close-up encounter with a huge boomerang-shaped UFO that passed directly overhead.

In this episode, Craig and Sarah take on the extraordinary Chicago O’Hare case of November 2006 – a mass sighting of a flying saucer hovering over a United Airlines airport gate. The incident was witnessed by multiple aviation professionals, pilots and passengers. The immediate aftermath of the event was captured in real time by audio recordings of communication between the airport’s Air Traffic Control tower and airline staff, but the sighting was dismissed by the US government’s Federal Aviation Administration as a weather phenomenon.

This episode delves into the most mystifying and alarming of alleged extra-terrestrial experiences: alien abduction. The most remarkable case to have ever taken place on British soil was the infamous abduction of Yorkshire policeman Alan Godfrey in November 1980. The team stop at nothing to get to the bottom of Godfrey’s compelling claims he was confronted head on by a diamond shaped craft hovering in the road as he was coming off his night shift more than 40 years ago.

In January 2008, a shadow was cast over the town of Stephenville, Texas, when a UFO passed overhead at supersonic speed. The event was witnessed by scores of stunned locals who remain desperate for answers on what exactly they saw that winter’s evening. Craig and Sarah speak to eyewitness private pilot Steve Allen who was with friends when he saw a vast UFO passing overhead at a speed estimated to be 2000mph.

In October 2017, astronomers at the Pan-STARRS observatory saw something strange in our solar system - an object they named ‘Oumuamua’, the very first observed visitor from interstellar space. Its highly unusual properties and inexplicable acceleration have left scientists divided, with some believing this ‘UFO’ was alien in origin. Craig and Sarah talk to Senior Astronomer Dr Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute, who shares his theories of what Oumuamua could possibly be and postulates that the very fact it entered our solar system at all is the best argument of all for it being alien.