Ancient Aliens - The Top Ten Scariest Encounters

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Ancient Aliens is counting down the top ten scariest encounters that just might be evidence of extraterrestrial visitation. From an encounter in rural Texas that left onlookers with unexplainable injuries, to mysterious cattle mutilations, and a man who was abducted in front of a group of people. Are these frightening encounters proof of extraterrestrial contact?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

a military base that was targeted by a UFO, a plane that was hijacked by an other-worldly technology, and an encounter in rural Texas that defies explanation. On ancient aliens, we've examined dozens of unexplained encounters that have left witnesses not only astonished but terrified. Now we're counting down the 10 most frightening encounters ever reported. Encounters that add to the growing body of evidence, that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials.

There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. The future is right before our eyes. We are not alone. We have never been alone. Giorgio Suclos is an ancient astronaut theorist.

Every year, thousands of UFO sightings are reported, and experiencers are often left wondering what they actually saw. But some incidents are so intense and so terrifying that the witnesses are certain that what they encountered is not of this world. On this countdown, we're featuring some of the most frightening contact events we've ever examined on ancient aliens. And this first one was certainly, a hard-stopping incident. At number 10 on our list of the top 10 scariest

encounters, the UFO hijacking. Some of the most compelling and harrowing UFO accounts are reported by pilots who witness strange craft while flying thousands of feet above the earth. Instead of seeing a small disk or light way up in the sky, pilots often encounter UFOs at close range and they have the experience to know if they're looking at a man-made craft or something else. You have countless commercial and private airline pilots who spend an exorbitant amount of time up in the sky. And in my opinion, I think they're the best people to discern what is natural and what is not.

According to some pilots, not only is there an extraterrestrial presence in our skies, but they present a serious danger. Zeehwatanejo, Mexico, May 3, 1975. Pilot Carlos de Los Santos takes off from the local airfield on a routine flight to Mexico City. One hour into his journey, he witnesses something unusual, a gray wingless object off the right side of his plane. Richard Dolan is a historian and author of UFOs

and the National Security State. As he approaches Mexico City, he notices basically a small flying saucer just above his left wing. It's not as large as his aircraft. And he's flying a fairly small aircraft. And he's like, what is this? And then he looks over to his right, and he sees another one.

And then he looks ahead of them, and there's one coming at him. It goes below his aircraft. And he feels a bump under his aircraft. And he's scared out of his mind. Anyone would be. He then realizes that he's not really in control of his aircraft. This is Bill Burns. a best-selling author and euphologist.

The theory is that the UFO that came under the plane took control of his plane. And the UFO's own magnetic envelope is lifting the plane higher and higher and higher. The Los Santos is in a panic. He's giving Mayday calls. As the small aircraft races towards a mountainous area, the three UAPs disengage and veer off

towards the Mount Popocata pedal. volcano at lightning speed. As the objects disappear from sight, Carlos regains control of the plane. So he lands his aircraft, and the story doesn't end here. Now, he would have had his whole career reputation ruined, probably with this, except for the fact that Mexican air traffic control tracked these objects also. And this came out to support him. This story became a huge news story in Mexico. It's just one of the most incredible aviation UAP stories that you're ever going to hear. To me, pilots are some of the best UFO witnesses out there, because they are trained to discern between different objects flying through the sky,

which is what makes our next encounter even more frightening. It involved a cargo plane that reported an alien craft of enormous proportions. Number nine on our list, Japan Airlines Flight 1628. Alaska, November 17, 1986. Japan Airlines Flight 1628 is carrying cargo from Paris, France to Narita International Airport near Tokyo. The three-person crew is led by Captain Kenju Terauchi, an ex-fighter pilot with over 10,000 hours of flight time.

As the 747 approaches Anchorage, Captain Terauchi notices two strange lights out of his cockpit window. It's dark, it's very early morning before sunrise. These lights are clearly maneuvering, and they move directly in front of his aircraft. Now, he's flying at about 500 miles per hour. These things are pacing him. Captain Taraucci radio's Anchorage Air Traffic Control and reports the lights are strange, oval-shaped flying objects and are getting dangerously close to his aircraft. As the pilot attempts a series of evasive maneuvers to avoid a potential

collision, the two UFOs suddenly disappear. In their place is another object, one so large it dwarfs the 747. His words for describing it were gigantic spaceship, the size of maybe two aircraft carriers, this immense. Terrauchi sees his massive thing in the sky, and he's scared. On the ground, radar specialists confirm a mysterious object is in fact, in the sky near Captain Terauchi's plane. Here is David Childress, author of Technology of the Gods. This incident is more than just the witnesses on the plane. We have radar spotting the craft.

We have discussions between air traffic control and the pilots and them describing this. So we have other people also on the ground who can back up this siding. We don't know really what it was, but it may well have been. an extraterrestrial craft flying right over Alaska. There is no doubt that Alaskan pilots are some of the bravest aviators around.

They can adapt to sudden storms and dangerous conditions on a moment's notice. But even a pilot like Theo Chesley, who's been flying over Alaska for nearly four decades, found his heart racing when he encountered multiple objects in the sky that resembled no aircraft he'd have to be. aircraft he'd ever seen before. Number eight, on our countdown of the top ten scariest encounters, the Mount Shisholden incident. Anchorage, Alaska, October 19th, 2022. Author and researcher David Shildress has traveled to a local airfield to meet with pilot Theo Chesley.

In 2019, Chesley encountered a UFO while flying near Mount Shisheldon, an active volcano on the Unamak Island in the Aleutians. While the event left him shaken, Chesley took several photographs. So when was this occurrence? Well, we had a flight back in October 2019. We were northeast of the mountain. Now, we were probably 30 miles from the mountain. We spotted something in the sky. Did it seem to have a cloud around it or no?

It had like a tail on it, a little bit of a wisp coming out of the back. So I'm looking at it going, okay, what is that? As we started to come towards the mountain and fly by it, this horizontal disk turned vertical and came over and sort of parked by the mountain and held it shape. So it had been moving and then it stopped. It stopped by the volcano.

Then we had something fly out of the mountain. Now the mountain... A second object. A second object. So this object flies out of the mountain. And at the same time, we're still watching the sphere that's vertically parked. And we like looked at that and I said, no, we're done here. We're, we are leaving the scene here. And to be honest, uh, you know, my concern level was going

about through the roof at that point. Wow, that's fascinating. As an experienced pilot, Theo Chesley cannot explain the two events he experienced. I've seen a lot of things. I've been through a lot of storms, some great flights, some not so great flights. But I'm one of the of those kind of guys that have to see something that's extraordinary to believe it. And what I saw was just not anything ordinary at all. For more than 60 years, a disturbing phenomenon has been reported across the country. Ranchers have discovered livestock dead in their fields that appear to have been killed by a mysterious and possibly extraterrestrial force.

Number seven on our countdown of the top ten scariest encounters, animal mutilations. San Luis Valley, Colorado, 1967. On the King Family Ranch, a horse named Lady is found dead in a pasture. The skull is stripped so clean of flesh that it appears to have been exposed to the elements for weeks. Yet the King family had seen Lady alive just two days earlier. Even stranger, no blood, or animal tracks of any country. are found near the corpse. Authorities are shaken and perplexed.

Here's investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe. The skeleton was completely clean and white. Even brain tissue was gone. But the rest of the horse looked as if it should get up and walk. It was that fresh. The incident likely would have been lost to history, were it not for the fact that near identical slaughterers soon became commonplace, across the American Heartland.

Here's Nick Redfern, author of 365 days of UFOs. You had farmers and ranchers getting up in the morning and finding their animals dead in the fields. And these were clearly not attacks by mountain lions or coyotes or anything like that. The farmers actually reported how blood was drained from the animals, organs were removed, and it seemed as if the bodies of the cattle

have been opened up by some sort of high heat weapon or device. While mainstream medical professionals are unsure who or what could be responsible for these attacks, ancient astronaut theorists suggest the answers may be found by examining strange findings reported at other mutilation sites. UFO investigator Chris Pittman provides more detail. Sometimes the animals are lying on top of charred patches of ground. Sometimes those charred patches are exactly the same size and shape as the animals themselves. And very often there have been reports of strange lights in the sky, you're on the ground, in and around the time where the mutilations are taking place.

The deeper you get and the more people you interview, and I have literally interviewed thousands now, you hear, I saw this kind of light. I saw this beam lowering an animal to the pasture and it was mutilated. was mutilated. Somebody else, I saw this animal coming up in a beam of light, and later it was found mutilated. It was my work investigating animal mutilations that took me to the conclusion that the phenomenon that is behind the global animal mutilations of the last at least 100 years are extraterrestrial biological entities.

When it comes to encounters that defy explanation, there are none more confounding than what happened in the mountains of Russia in 1959. A group of nine hikers ascended a mountain that is actually named, do not go there. And what happened to them was so shocking, researchers are still trying to solve the mystery to this day. Number six on our list, the Ural Mountains Encounter. February 1959. A group of nine mountaineers embark on a winter trek into Russia's year-old mountains. Their destination? A mountain called O'Torten, which in the local Bansy language means, do not go there. Here is Paul Stonehill, author of Russia's U.S.O. Secrets and the Soviet UFO Files.

Among them were three experienced engineers, the rest were students. They were all young. I think the oldest was like 37 years old. They had conducted other hard tracks to the area. They were all all experienced, strong-willed determined people. On their fourth night out, bad weather forced the hikers to camp atop an area called Holat Sikial, which in Mansi translates to the mountain of the dead. It was a very inhospitable, very strange, very, very hard place to be. Snow, cold, freezing winds, and very few living things around. Ten days later, when the nine adventurers failed to show up at the

their destination, military rescue teams searched the area. They found the campsite abandoned, and a tent that had been torn to pieces. Curiously, the investigators determined that the tent was cut and ripped open from the inside, and the hikers appeared to have fletted socks and with bare feet. Something was pushing them to run away without taking any clothing with them, without taking any supplies. They were behaving like they were in a days confused. The investigators followed the trail to the edge of the forest, but what they eventually found was beyond belief. All nine hikers died.

They were discovered by Soviet troops in various stages of what can only be described as being mutilated. Their bodies were burned, some suffered radiation poisoning. In one case, a hiker's tongue was missing. They had prematurely aged, their skin was orange, their hair had turned gray. gray. What could have explained this? Three of them had injuries that could be sustained when somebody is hit by a speeding car. Except the injuries were in sight. Their ribs were

crushed like eggshells, but there was no effect on their skin. The official explanation was that the nine hikers died from hypothermia. But years later, members of the search party spoke out. According to their testimony, at the time of the incident, a mysterious ball of light was seen floating in the sky. This wasn't a craft like a plane, wasn't a craft like a rocket. It was a glowing, bright ball of light. One theory is that orbs, they're like cameras. They travel around, they surveil the area as if they're surveilling our dimension from another dimension, and then they disappear. Is it possible that the strange orb seen in the Ural Mountains was not of this world?

And if so, could there be a connection between it and the mysterious deaths of the Russian hikers? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest further evidence of extraterrestrial visitation can be found in a close encounter that left physical evidence. Some of the best evidence we have of extraterrestrial contact comes from the most harrowing events. Like in the case of three people whose dramatic encounter with a UFO left them not only traumatized, but with lasting physical injuries. Number five on our list of the top ten scariest encounters, the Cash Landrum incident. Dayton, Texas, December 29th, 1980.

Seven-year-old Colby Landrum is with his grandmother and her friend, driving along a desolate two-lane road when they have a life-changing experience. Here's Colby. Betty Cash, my grandmother, Vicki Landrum, and myself, headed back home towards Dayton. It was real late at night, nobody else on the road, and we encountered a bright object. It actually looked just like about the size of a water tower,

100 foot across, 100 foot tall, but in a diamond shape, I just panicked. I got in a flowboard. Ron James is the head of public relations for Mufon. Betty Cash and Vicki Landrum stopped the car to investigate, and the local environment is actually being heated by this object to the point where they try to touch their car, and it's hot to the touch.

You could feel the heat off of it. The heat was very intense. It was hot enough for when she grabbed the dash when we stopped. I mean, it was an indention of where her hand was sitting. Now, what makes this unique is that when they get home, after a couple of days, they start to show symptoms of being exposed to ionized radiation. After the incident, all three witnesses were treated for radiation exposure.

I got nauseous and sick. It probably lasted two or three days with me. My grandmother, she had the same symptoms, but she also had blisters on her skin. They would bust open, and she'd have sores for several years after that. Betty Cash suffered the most severe part. of it. She was out of the car the longest. According to the doctors, she had the most exposure to it. The women blamed the U.S. government for this. And this then became a very well-known

court case where they were suing the U.S. government, essentially. For help with their case, Betty Cash and Vicky Landrum turned to investigators with Mufon, the Mutual UFO Network. Nick Pope is a former official from the UK Ministry of Defense. Mufon investigators got the witness statements, gathered the evidence, including things like medical records, which were central to the legal case. And although the witnesses didn't win their case, what's important was that that gets it on the record. Today, the Cash Landrum incident is one of the most famous

and harrowing UFO encounters in recent history. I remember being there and I know what happened. I want somebody come forward and actually, you know, admit that something happened there. I just want to know the truth. To me, the most intriguing UFO encounters are those that can be corroborated by multiple witnesses. One mass sighting that I find particularly compelling happened to a group of school children in rural Oklahoma. And the experience was so intense. so intense it left them fearing for their lives.

At number four, the Miracle Mountains incident. Heartshorn Oklahoma, 1975. Randy Young is a 10-year-old student at the Miracle Mountains boarding school. One day his normal routine is shattered by a terrifying event. Here's Randy. My brother and I, we were out in the sandbox

and we saw this circular shining light that was in probably 2,000 or so feet up in the air. It didn't have the movements of an airplane. It was just hovering. And as it got darker, this craft got closer. It had lights that went through the midsection all the way around, and it had his classic saucer-type shape. We called the adults out.

There were a few children that were frightened to death of the thing. And we heard one of the girls scream. It seems to have been a landing. Some people say there are entities there. At one point, one of the older children got onto the roof with a gun, because they were that concerned about what was happening. It was a rifle, and that was the end of the story for us

because it took off and we never saw it again. Almost 50 years later, several people who attended the Miracle Mountains boarding school shared their story with Mufon in chilling detail. Here is Mindy Toutfest, State Director of Mufon, Oklahoma. I first reached out to Randy and interviewed him. The next person I spoke to was Philip Buchanan. Philip was one of the older children at the school at the time.

And then I spoke with the teacher via email. And the teacher described that some of the kids were hiding under the beds because they were very terrified. And some of the kids were looking out the window. They reported to see shape-shifting entities out there. What Mindy found out after doing all that work is that these kids were recalling the exact same thing. As these witnesses were telling their stories years later,

one of the things Mindy asked them to do was to actually draw the UFO that they'd seen. And the consistency is amazing. And not only are they telling the same story, but they're describing the same craft. This cold case is one of the most fascinating cases because students, they had not spoken to each others since 1975, and they all replied with the same answers, which indicates that something happened and everybody saw the same thing.

It was something that will always be a memory for us, and I've never seen anything like that ever again. I almost wish that it would never have happened. One of the most well-documented UFO sightings in history was reported by members of the armed forces. Over the course of two nights, multiple servicemen not only saw mysterious craft, but some claimed to have had an experience

that haunts them to this very day. Number three on our countdown, the Rendlesham Forest incident. In Suffolk County, England, there is a remote forest in the village of Rendlesham, that has become famous for being the site of one of the most extraordinary and frightening UFO encounters ever reported. The event occurred on December 26, 1980. Airman John Burroughs was performing a routine security check

at a U.S. Air Force Base when he received orders to investigate a possible downed aircraft. Here's Airman John Burroughs and James Peniston. My supervisor called me on the radio and asked me to meet up with him so we couldn't check the east gate. We were driving down the road leading to the east gate. the check on it when all of a sudden he saw some strange lights in the forest. So it decided we called in and let them know something strange was going on.

They decided to send one of the security units down to Sarton Penison. He got down there and he saw the same strange lights that we were seeing. I could see all these multiple color lights and things like that. And the air felt different. I don't know how to really explain that, but it did feel like there was electricity on our skin and hair. and stuff. But that progressively got worse, the closer we got to the tree line, and it got more intense. As the servicemen approached the strange lights, Sergeant Peniston reportedly saw a large craft just

beyond the tree line. The craft was triangular in shape, measuring about six to seven feet high, black in color. I had come around to the far side of the craft, and that's what I noticed that there was, you know, inscription on the side. It was about three feet long, maybe six inches high. Instead of something familiar, I see these pictorial-type glyphs and got running my hand over the side of the craft. I don't know how to explain this. It's like someone was holding a picture up, okay? There was this feeling of being drawn into it or being pulled into it, like someone was holding a picture of zeros and ones in my mind's eye. The strange vision Sergeant Peniston had upon touching the craft has made this one of Britain's most famous UFO encounters. But ancient

An astronaut theorists suggest that even more compelling is what happened after. Over the following two evenings, U.S. Air Force Colonel Charles Holt reported further strange sightings. He led his own search party to put an end to the confusion. But instead of finding a logical explanation, they discovered high levels of radioactivity where Burroughs and Penniston had previously seen the strange craft. They then spotted a light in a nearby field that suddenly came towards them through the trees at high speed. Here's Colonel Charles Halt. While we're walking around we also

noticed four or five objects in the sky, then one came at high speed, stopped directly overhead, three, four, maybe five thousand feet, and sent down a concentrated beam about eight or ten feet from us. I was really concerned then. At that point I was thinking, why did I ever get involved in this? How will I ever explain this? Now I did a cold case review for the Ministry of Defense. I am I'm still subject to the Official Secrets Act. But I can tell you, chances are, these craft were real. And if they're real, they might actually be extraterrestrial.

Today, the frightening encounter in Rindlesham Forest is known in the UFO community as Britain's Roswell. For Airman Burroughs and Sergeant Peniston, the event wasn't easy to leave behind. Both men had lasting physical and psychological effects from the encounter. After the incident, I started having throat and eye problems. At one point, my gums turn white. I also had vision problems. And when I went and saw the doctor,

one of his first questions was, had I been ever exposed in radiation? I've definitely had dreams about it. And I still have feelings about what happened. Prior to the incident, my views on any kind of phenomena, like UFOs, things like that. They didn't exist. I never believe that kind of stuff.

But after the life-changing event of December 1980, my views were different. It opened up the possibility that we're not alone. Without a doubt, some of the scariest encounters we've investigated on ancient aliens are abduction events. And one of the most famous involved multiple witnesses who watched in terror as their friend was abducted right before their eyes. Number two on our countdown to Travis Walton abduction. The Apache Sitgraves National Forest, Arizona. November 5, 1975.

22-year-old forestry worker Travis Walton and a group of co-workers are driving home after sundown when suddenly a strange light appears in the sky. Here's Travis Walton. I noticed some little glimmers of light coming through the trees, and the light seemed to be coming from higher than where ground level would be. It was only when we got to where this light was crossing the road that we had an unobstructed view of the craft. It was a clearly visible, clearly defined metallic object, a disc hovering there, outlined against the sky. I threw open the door thinking I'd get a closer look before it took off.

That's when this energy hit me. I felt like a physical blow, but with a sort of a tingling sort of an electric shock sort of feeling at the same time. Walton basically got zapped by this blinding light. The crew just hot-footed out the area quickly and then thought, well, we've got to go back. You know, we've got to get Travis. Went back, whatever this object was, was gone. And he was gone as well.

According to Travis Walton, the mysterious beamer. of light rendered him unconscious. And when he awoke, he found himself in a room surrounded by strange beings. These small beings were humanoid, but so unhuman. It's just terrifying. And I just flipped out.

It was just horrible. It was like they were looking right into me. He saw these hideous entities that scared him, maybe quite similar to the, modern idea of the so-called alien grays. And then these aliens seemed to go away, and then their place was taken by much more human-like aliens, and he calmed down.

In the case of these human-looking ones, I started to have serious misgivings that this was a rescue, and that's when they put this mask over my face, and I'm just blacked out real quickly. Now, the suspicion here was that actually these weren't different aliens. These were the same aliens, but they were capable of shape-shifting

into something else specifically to calm him down. Crews searched everywhere for the missing forest worker, but it wasn't until five days later that Walton reappeared outside of a nearby town. When I woke up, I was lying face down, outside in the dark, in the cold. It was on a highway in the middle of the woods. I looked around, I recognized the lights of the town down below, and I ran down into the town

and found a telephone and called my family for help. Travis Walton's story has become one of the most famous alien abduction cases ever reported and was even adapted into a movie in 1993. While some dismiss his account as a hallucination, Travis has no doubt that he experienced a genuine extraterrestrial encounter. What no one asked was, you know, what about the rest of the crew? How do seven people have an identical hallucination? And besides that, they were given light detector tests by state police, which they passed.

There's real-life things that occur out there that need to be understood. So take a look at the facts and then, Judge. I don't know the purpose that they had. All I know is what happened to me. This was unmistakable. Ancient aliens has investigated some of the most terrifying alien encounters ever reported, but this one truly gives me chills. It's one of the most vivid abduction accounts on record,

and the experience didn't end after just one incident, but has persisted for nearly 40 years. Number one on our countdown of the top ten scariest encounters, the abduction of Whitley Streber. Ulster County, New York, December 26, 1985. Best-selling author Whitley Streber is celebrating Christmas with his wife and young son at their cabin. In the middle of the night, he is awoken by a disturbing feeling. Here's Whitley.

I felt that there was something around me. In other words, there was movement that shouldn't have been there. And I opened my eyes, and I saw these big black eyes staring at me. and I had no idea where I was. It was a little round room, and I began to scream. This automatic voice turned on saying, what can we do to help you stop screaming? There were these other figures, dark blue little figures darting around.

And they assaulted me, basically. It was not easy. It was a very terrifying experience. To process this traumatic event, Whitley wrote about his close encounter, which became the basis of his best-selling memoir, Communion. He hoped the experience was behind him, but in May of 1989, Whitley had another strange, nocturnal encounter. I'm on my side, on my right side, and there's a hand pressing down on my left temple, pressing it into the pillow in like waves, like this, and I can't struggle, I can't move a muscle,

I can't see anything. I am completely immobilized. After a few seconds, that ends. And I think, was it a dream? Then the next day or the day after my ears started hurting, I reach up and I feel this bump here on my ear. And I thought, oh my God, it's an implant. There was an attempt to remove it.

It failed because the implant went from here, right down into here, on its own. and the doctor pulled out. Two days later, it went from my earlobe back up to where it is to this day. Could extraterrestrials really have implanted some kind of device inside Whitley Streber's ear? And if so, why? According to Whitley, whatever the implant is, it has had a profound effect on him. In 2015, I noticed a slit opened up in my right eye, and you could see words racing through it.

They were like someone who was typing very quickly in racing. And it had something to do with my writing because at the same time, my ability to do research changed dramatically and weirdly. I found that if I just thought about something I needed, no matter how obscure, one way or another, it would have come to me. Since receiving the alleged implant, Streber claims to have had regular interaction

with other worldly beings. The visitors are a part of my life now, very much so. I don't think I would be comfortable working without knowing that there was using the implant, that there was a connection. Now, what do they want from us? That is a very big, unanswered question. Much like Whitley-Streber, we are all left with unanswered questions by these incredible incidents. As far as I'm concerned, there is no doubt that extraterrestrials are visiting our planet.

But what do they want? Perhaps only through the careful study of these and other extraordinary accounts, whether they are mass UFO sightings, animal mutilations, or even frightening abductions. The truth may finally be revealed about Earth's extraterrestrial visitors.