Encounters (2023) s01e04 Episode Script

I am the high priest
of the Enmyoin Temple.
The 29th chief monk.
Many visitors have spotted UFOs
at this temple.
I've seen one here too.
It was a huge UFO.
It was hovering right above here.
And it was moving like
I was surprised by how big it was.
I was stunned.
Mm-hmm. But I saw it with my own eyes.
Mm-hmm. It was undeniably real.
I saw it before the earthquake,
so about 12 or 13 years ago.
Breaking news.
A large earthquake has just struck
off the east coast of Japan here.
A big quake,
magnitude 8.9. It struck at 2:46 p.m.
Sendai was the closest population.
That's the ocean over there.
There used to be lots of houses here,
but the ocean swelled up very high.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning
Center issued a tsunami warning for Japan,
Russia, Marcus Island,
the Northern Marianas
Waves are rushing through.
Devastated by the tsunami
was the port city of Sendai,
the closest city
People near the coast
should evacuate to higher ground.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Nuclear officials are warning
of a possible nuclear reactor meltdown.
We keep hearing
that the coolant system is not working.
A "China syndrome" meltdown
and radiation leaks are
The clock is ticking.
Every minute that passes,
we come closer to the time
when there could be a secondary
The UFOs
came after the explosion.
There were so many of them.
I was shocked.
From the beginning of recorded time,
men have been seeing
unexplainable things in the sky.
Are we alone in the universe?
Somewhere in the data
will be something worth real inquiry.
We have not been hiding anything.
There are such things
as interplanetary spaceships.
I thought it was an alien,
and he had big eyes.
There's something
profoundly important going on here
that is authentic and real.
I came here on March 14th,
right after I heard
about the Fukushima nuclear accident
because I wanted to help my friend.
They lived further away, towards the sea.
But, still, I thought,
"I have to come and help them."
Unfortunately, my friend passed away.
However, I knew
I couldn't go back without helping,
even though I had lost my friend,
so I stayed here as a volunteer.
Many people lost their lives.
Many others ran away
and left everything behind.
I saw so much in those five years,
and I heard so many mysterious stories.
Many people had been swept away
by the tsunami,
so we'd come and search the beaches
to see if we could find anyone.
It was right after the disaster.
So, when you looked in this direction,
it was just a lot of debris,
and over there, there were
all kinds of things scattered around.
It was a tsunami after all.
It took people, houses,
anything it could reach.
One day, a group of us came here,
looked up and saw these balls of light
out over the ocean.
They were these bluish-whitish
balls of light,
off in the distance.
There were so many of them,
and they were all lined up in a row.
It was beautiful.
They were such beautiful lights.
Ishinomaki is a small town.
A simple port town.
Truthfully, I don't think
anyone ever imagined
it would be hit by a tsunami,
much less destroyed by one.
This is where my mom was born.
She actually became a teacher
and taught at the elementary school here.
She really loved the elementary school.
She talked about her students here
all the time.
The tsunami destroyed the school.
Everything has gone.
It wasn't long after
the nuclear disaster at Fukushima
that many people
began to see UFOs near the facility.
We didn't exactly know
what they were or what they were doing,
but there they were, in broad daylight,
and they were clearly
working on something.
I think
there is a very clear connection
between UAP activity
and nuclear power plants,
and I think
that this has gone back for decades.
My personal view, on the basis of over
30 years of very extensive research,
is that there is an advanced
extraterrestrial presence operating,
basically, here on Earth
and in the oceans.
And one of the biggest things
that we have to come to grips with
is the fact that this is happening.
Some of
the declassified US government reports
that go back decades are amazing.
And they're not the least bit ambiguous.
FBI documentation. CIA documentation.
It goes back to the 1930s,
to when the science and research
was being done to understand fission.
But then it really heats up in the 1940s,
in particular, right after the detonation
of the two atomic bombs in Japan in 1945.
Then it is decisive. It's conclusive.
You see one after another event occurring
in proximity, specifically,
to sites associated with nuclear weapons.
So, Los Alamos in the 1940s.
Sandia National Labs.
Kirtland Air Force Base
where nuclear weapons were stored.
Just boom, boom, boom. They are thorough.
They, like, don't miss anything.
If you look at a lot of the UAP displays,
as they are recounted by witnesses,
really credible witnesses,
there is a kind of signaling to us.
You know, in the Fukushima disaster,
there were many reports of UFO activity.
But not only in Fukushima.
In 1986, in Chernobyl,
when Unit 4 malfunctioned,
there was a lot of UFO activity
reported there also.
At the height of the fire in Chernobyl,
the reading was 3,000 milliroentgens,
which is a unit of ionizing radiation.
And right at the height of the fire,
many people observed a UFO come,
stayed for three minutes,
shone a light right at Unit 4, departed.
They took another reading,
and it had apparently dropped to 800.
Just in a few minutes.
That seems like a very conscious attempt
to remediate the danger
caused by the malfunction there.
When the plant exploded,
everybody began to panic.
Of course, I evacuated right away
with everyone else.
"We're going to be exposed," they said.
"Hurry!" So we did.
It was terrifying at first.
24 hours ago
was a town of 71,000 people,
now completely underwater.
No structure still standing.
But then I learned
that, miraculously,
the temple was untouched.
That's why it's called the Miracle Temple.
I don't know if it was some god
or some powerful being in a UFO,
but I believe that some invisible power
really did come to save us.
UFOs and aliens
and the whole question of outer space
were depicted in various ways
in Japanese popular culture,
and many anime and manga stories
take place in outer space.
You know, when people
ask me about Astro Boy,
like, "How could they create this hero
powered by atomic energy
so soon after the nation
was devastated by a nuclear bomb?"
And then the other more important aspect
is that Astro Boy is half-boy, half-robot.
His father, the doctor, created Astro Boy
because his own son was killed.
So it doesn't take a very big leap to say,
"The father's family members
were killed in the war."
And so, "Let's use technology
to create something new
and give us a future."
So there was an enormous faith
in technology,
born out of trauma.
In a way, that was the
expression of the subconscious
of Japanese in the post-war period.
And what you see,
you know, starting with Astro Boy,
is these characters
that are half this, half that.
Ultraman's character
is so wonderful because
Ultraman is from a planet, another planet,
and he screws up
and has an accident,
and he crashes into a human ship,
which is piloted
by this Science Patrol guy.
And Ultraman decides, "I'm so ashamed
that I hit this guy's ship."
"I'm gonna merge with him."
So they merge together,
and that becomes Ultraman.
It's an alien merging with a human,
and, of course,
Ultraman embodies that notion
that some aliens are really good.
They're actually trying to protect people.
And as a kid, I loved that idea.
When I was seven years old,
I became fascinated with aliens.
I can't really tell you why,
but even when I really couldn't picture
what they looked like,
I could sense their warmth and kindness.
It was powerful.
They do exist.
I was certain of that by the age of seven,
and I still believe it now.
They don't show themselves to us,
but they're always watching us.
I know they are.
I don't know
what you're hoping to get,
but I am a professor.
And I just
I mean, I'm not a ufologist.
So, I'm a professor of religious studies.
And so I study religion.
To focus on whether it's real or not
is actually focusing on the wrong thing.
We really should be looking
at the meaning of these events for people.
Because it has completely shifted
not only individual lives,
but also the belief in UFOs
is now a new global belief system.
It's different than a religion,
but it's religious-like.
If you look at my research,
there's a continuation,
a theme, of looking up at the sky
and seeing things that are unknown
and then trying to identify them.
And today, we're still seeing
that people see things in the sky,
but what they're seeing in the sky today
is what they believe to be,
like, advanced technology.
Whereas a thousand years ago,
they would think, "Maybe that's an angel."
Or, "Maybe that's a demon."
Today, they look up,
and they say, "Well, that's a UFO."
Personally speaking,
I wish there were aliens,
but I dislike the feeling
that I'll be deceived
by people making up stories.
I hope to find true evidence one day,
but as far as I can tell,
there's been no definitive proof yet.
The urban legend of the UFO
began in America
with the first sighting in 1947.
No photographic evidence
had been found prior.
However, during my research,
I found another urban legend in Japan
dated much earlier,
the legend of the Utsuro-bune,
or the hollow ship.
They were in these kawaraban,
each dated to 1803.
During the Edo period,
a kawaraban was a tile-block print
that was like a modern-day newspaper.
At first, I thought the story
was about a foreign shipwreck.
But that's not what it was.
In my research, I've yet to discover
any ship in this period
that matches the descriptions
in these documents.
Every account of the ship's appearance
makes a note of these three windows.
And perhaps most notably,
many of the incidents make reference
to the presence of a strange woman.
Some people call this "space language,"
but the proper term is "light language."
When I speak it,
I take the wavelengths I receive
and output them into sound.
Sometimes it's musical.
Other times, it's words, like
This is how to make contact.
Both with space and with the aliens.
I am an alien.
I have been to many stars.
Currently, the Earth
is going through a great ascension,
and so I came here
to satisfy my curiosity.
Here we go.
Ready.
Japan doesn't really have a religion
the way we use the word in English.
An institutionalized religion.
There's nothing like the Ten Commandments.
Ethical characteristics
in Japanese culture
are learned through school
and through family.
So behavior and identity
is rooted in context.
In this context, you behave a certain way,
you can be a certain identity.
And then in this other context,
you can be something else.
And not blink an eye.
You could be a teacher,
you could be a performer,
and at the same time,
you can speak light language
and be channeling the aliens,
and know, perhaps,
that you're one of them.
Now I want you to recall
how you came to Earth
and what you wanted to do
when you got here.
It's a mystery,
but it's also a strength
in that Japan can embrace
what we think of as paradox
and go forward.
Three months after the earthquake,
my wife and I had
a close encounter ourselves.
That was a big turning point for me.
Our entire perspective
towards life changed.
It was a complete 180
in how we saw things.
How we saw everything.
It was some time after two in the morning.
My wife had woken up
in the middle of the night
and felt someone was watching us.
I woke up when I heard her scream,
so I immediately got out of bed
and went to look outside,
and right in front of us was a real UFO.
The first thing I saw
was this round, bright light,
and then it just got
closer and closer to us.
Of course I was blown away.
A gold UFO was hovering
right in front of our eyes.
He began to speak to the UFO,
and then the UFO would respond
by flashing its lights.
Suddenly,
it began to change colors.
Its gold light changed
to this deep pink shade
I had never seen before.
It was almost as if they were saying,
"You are all right." You know?
"You are welcome." Or something like that.
I think the aliens
were able to understand us
because we believed in them.
For a long time, no one knew
exactly where the Utsuro-bune
had been spotted.
It appeared to be a fictional place.
And so the logic follows
that if the place where
the ship was spotted doesn't exist,
then the story would have to be fictional.
That's what I believed at the time.
However, a new document
was discovered in 2014.
One of the most famous
ninja families in Japan, the Ban family,
is known for
their historical record keeping.
And in 2014, another record was discovered
and cited the location as
Hitachihara, Sharihama.
When I saw that, I was certain
that was the name I'd been searching for.
The Utsuro-bune was washed ashore
on this beach in 1803.
It had been spotted in the distance,
and so a group of local fishermen
used their boats to grab the Utsuro-bune
and drag it to the shore.
The legend says
that when they reached the shore,
they opened it,
and to their surprise,
they discovered a beautiful woman inside.
The first UFO sighting is still accredited
to the American pilot.
However, this sighting has been dated
all the way back
to the late Edo period in 1803.
Therefore, the Utsuro-bune is probably
the world's first that involves
an otherworldly visitor riding in a UFO.
One time when I was sleeping and lucid,
five aliens appeared to me.
The one in the center was a green alien,
and on either side of them
were these luminous white aliens.
I had been waiting for them for so long,
so I said, "Oh, you're finally here."
And then I told them, "Do what you want."
So I opened my hands
and spread my arms out like this.
I let go of everything
and gave everything to them. I felt happy.
Like I'd been reunited
with a long-lost friend.
The green alien beamed a light at me
and beamed my chakras here.
All five of them did, and then
I was enveloped in this supreme bliss.
I think that the five beings
appeared to me in the form of aliens
so that I would be able to recognize them.
They were light itself,
but they appeared to me
in the form of aliens.
Um, okay.
So, this question
of what we see in the sky,
is this objective,
or is it just subjective?
Did we just actually just see that?
And is it real?
And if you go back
into the historical record,
especially in the West,
you see that there are things in the sky
that actually do produce
real effects on people, okay?
So one case would be
the Stigmata of Saint Francis.
Saint Francis sees what he calls a torch.
And it emits some sort of light.
It basically zaps him with this light.
And he gets what in the Catholic tradition
are called the stigmata,
or the wounds of Christ.
So he gets burned.
The things of religion
are also unbelievable.
Angels coming down and speaking to people.
Walking on water.
These are also things
that are unbelievable,
and we only have
eyewitness accounts of those.
And we tend to believe those
without question.
So why do you separate
the categories of belief?
You believe this unbelievable thing,
but we don't believe in things
that we actually have some evidence for,
which are UFOs.
I find that people are usually frightened
by ghosts and mysterious stories
and spirits.
They view these spirits
as something to be scared of,
but they shouldn't be.
The people in Fukushima,
Miyagi, and Iwate,
those who were directly affected
by the earthquake,
still feel the presence
of their loved ones,
as if the ones they had lost
are coming back to them.
When we were searching for people
in the aftermath,
usually when we checked cars,
we would see
these bright blue-white lights
kind of hovering above a spot like this.
They seemed to be floating
over where someone had died.
So, if it was here, that meant
someone had died in this driver's seat.
If it was up here, then it meant
their spirit would be right here.
So you can kind of imagine it like that.
In Japanese folklore,
there's something called a hitodama.
It's like a fireball
or a bright ball of light
that floats in the air.
At the time,
I saw a number of them out there.
It's believed that when a person dies,
their soul ascends to heaven
as a hinotama, a fiery ball of light.
I find it hard to believe
that, in the aftermath
of catastrophes like these
where so many lives are lost,
most people would see
these balls of light as UFOs.
I think most of us
would interpret these things as hinotama,
the lingering presence of the human soul.
To me, these mysteries
are just normal experiences
that are a part
of our regular, everyday lives.
And I think it's important
to remember that.
I was born and raised here.
There has always been
strong chi energy in this place.
You can feel how strong it is.
Some people believe
this place leads to heaven,
that's how nice it feels.
I believe that the frequent presence
of UFOs here
is because they want to come
and feel the energy for themselves.
Because it feels so good to be here.
Take a deep breath.
Hold it.
Japanese folklore
is full of these stories
of the spirits in the world around you.
Hayao Miyazaki,
one of his most popular films in the world
is My Neighbor Totoro.
And Totoro is this big, fuzzy creature
that could be terrifying.
You see his mouth
is full of these huge teeth.
But when I've interviewed
Miyazaki himself and asked him,
"Mr. Miyazaki, what is Totoro?"
You know, his answer was very quick.
He just said, "Totoro is Totoro."
"It's just Totoro."
I would say that the supernatural
and the natural in Japanese art,
in Japanese sensibility,
are both interconnected and intertwined.
But at the same time,
you wouldn't even think of them
as separate entities.
So they don't need to be intertwined.
They're not two things
that need to be together.
They are of a piece. One thing.
Call the newspapers! There are UFOs!
Here's a UFO!
I can't see anything.
Look! There's the UFO again!
I've never seen a UFO before!
There are so many of them!
There have been numerous
eyewitness accounts of aliens and UFOs.
But that's just it. Eyewitness accounts.
It's tricky because even if a witness
does see something,
they could be confusing
an aircraft with a UFO.
This likely applies
to the sightings from March 2011.
I don't need evidence.
I don't need
anything materialistic to believe.
- To me, it's
- we better to feel, the echo.
I try not to talk
too much about aliens.
I don't want people to think
I'm even crazier.
Honestly, I don't mind
if people think I'm crazy,
but it would be a shame
if they don't get the message.
In March 2011,
there was a light.
UFOs came in order to help
protect this world,
probably in hopes
of preserving the balance.
There was so much going on at the time.
It is not strange for this to happen.
I think if I were an alien,
a life-form beyond Earth,
and I saw such a massive,
almost catastrophic amount of energy,
I would want to have a look.
If you have hundreds
of well-documented UAP events
around your nuclear sites,
that's a really clear message.
My name is Robert Salas.
In, uh, March of 1967, I was stationed
at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana,
uh, as a missile launch officer.
I was downstairs 60 feet underground,
in a capsule,
monitoring and, uh, controlling
ten nuclear-tipped missiles.
I looked at 39 accounts
from the '40s to the '90s.
So about a 50-year time period.
All of the witness accounts have
a certain degree of consistency to them,
which is, a UAP arrives at the site
I got a call that morning,
uh, that they were seeing
strange lights flying in the sky.
Uh
I disregarded that call, uh,
told them to call me
when something more significant happened.
It doesn't matter
if it's Malmstrom Air Force Base
or F. E. Warren or Minot
It just doesn't matter.
I got another call, uh,
subsequent to that call.
And this time, it was a more, uh,
intense tone in the guard's voice.
He was very clearly very frightened.
Um, he said there was a, uh,
a bright, glowing, red object
hovering outside the front gate.
It's in restricted airspace. It hovers.
It shines a light
on these nuclear weapons.
Right after that call,
my weapons start going down,
uh, one after the other.
They went into a no-go condition.
What we call a "no-go condition."
They were unlaunchable.
And that's not the only site
where that has occurred.
Uh, again, that morning, we were
after reporting it to the command post,
we were informed that a similar,
very similar incident happened
at Echo Flight.
They lost all ten of their weapons,
in under similar circumstances,
very similar circumstances,
where UFOs were sighted
over the launch facilities.
Radioactive energy was leaking everywhere.
I believe the UFOs came to readjust
the flood of radioactive energy
in order to save us.
That's my theory anyway.
And I think that's why
the Fukushima nuclear power plant
was not totally devastated.
Mm-hmm.
When Japanese people
talk about extraterrestrials,
or UFOs, or why they're here,
a lot of it is about achieving
or restoring balance.
That life, modern life, is out of harmony.
And the benevolent view is that aliens,
whatever you wanna call them,
are coming in, or are concerned,
and are trying to restore
a sense of balance to the world.
If we could hear them, they'd say,
"Oh, earthlings,
our brothers and sisters."
"You've begun to use
nuclear energy, haven't you?"
"That's wonderful," they'd say,
"that you earthlings have evolved so much
with your technology and all,
but we can't leave you unsupervised."
Nuclear power can be very dangerous.
Think of it like this.
Say there's a kitchen
and a child who goes to the stove
to cook with a frying pan.
We all see how dangerous that is.
The parents have to make sure it's safe.
I think that's why the aliens came.
To look after us.
Should we be scared?
Of aliens?
You don't have to be scared of them.
Think of aliens
as being on the side of humans.
I've never met one that was mean.
I think
they came at that time
to make sure
things were properly in balance.
I believe that's how
they expressed love for us.
I think
this is an intelligence that recognizes
the depth of human creativity
and wants to preserve it.
I think this intelligence cares about us.
I think this intelligence
does not want us to go extinct.
That's what I think
is really being communicated.
"We're,
we're right here with you."
"Just open your hearts, open your minds."
"We'd like to help you."
"And, you know,
let's get to know one another."
I think that's really what the message is.
The earthquake
was a very painful experience for me.
The encounter we had with the UFO
was so vivid that it transformed me.
It both transformed me
and completely healed me.
So, to me, their presence
is really comforting.
Kind and comforting.
A UFO is an event.
When a person has an experience,
say they see a UFO,
they're different afterwards.
I know this sounds really strange,
but the relationship to the cosmos
changed for these people.
Almost like a religious
conversion experience.
It changes their worldview.
It changes the way they work.
It changes their relationships to people.
It fundamentally, completely changes them.
In 2016,
I experienced an "astral abduction."
That is the abduction
of one's astral body,
where it enters a UFO.
There was a screen in front of me.
I'll tell you what they taught me
inside the UFO.
The Earth is alive.
So much happens to us.
Everybody experiences trauma.
In the midst of trauma,
people can learn to hate each other.
We feed off of the negativity
and feel negative ourselves.
And it's because of that,
all that negative energy,
that we lose sight of what's important.
So we all need to change our perspective.
We need to remember
what we felt like as young children.
We need to remember our innocence
and return to that unbiased state of mind.
We need to clean up our consciousness
and cleanse ourselves
to lead humanity to cosmic civilization.
And at the very end,
I saw the Earth aglow with golden light.
I saw it on the screen, and I understood.
The future of the Earth is bright.
And I could see
a Golden Age is coming to Earth.
Human beings
are born into this world for a reason.
I believe that we have to work hard
with one another
to bring peace to the world.
And with the support of invisible power,
gods and UFOs, peace is possible.
When you talk about UFOs,
I think the Japanese story about it
is the ability to embrace mystery
and let it be.
It's not that what is seen is different.
It's the way the story is told
about the experience
that I think differs
between Americans and Japanese.
It's much less
about this complete otherness.
The mystery of the UFO and of the alien
just is.
And that's enough.
When I looked at those lights,
I saw how beautiful the human soul is.
How beautiful we as humans are.
That goodness resides in each of us.
At least, I think that's
what the lights showed me.