[SAN LUIS CALLEY, COLORADO]
We've had pretty bizarre things happen here.
Most of the people I know down here have seen something,
bizarre at one time or another.
And we don't discuss it a whole bunch, but they believe.
They think there's something going on too.
[SPACED OUT MOTHERBOARD]
[VALLEY OF THE UFOS]
My partner and I move to the San Luis Valley to raise cattle.
We did not move here for UFO's, you know.
[JUDY MESOLINE OWNDER, UFO WATCHTOWER]
And the didn't even realize that this was a
hotspot of the nation for sightings.
And I knew nothing about them anyway.
Well then I started meeting some of the locals down here.
And they all had UFO stories!
I mean one, after another, after another.
Even to the point where there was a real estate company years ago
that would make people who bought land from them sign a disclaimer
saying that they were aware that this, there was UFO activity in this valley.
So anyway, it got to the point I giggle
and say we need a UFO watchtower.
Never, ever thinking I'd ever do it.
Well after four and a half years of struggling with cows
'cause they don't eat sand real well.
They about broke me, so I was talking to one of the farmers one day
And I said, "ya know,
I've had to sell the cows I don't want to sell my land."
And he said "you need to put up the UFO watchtower you giggle about.
You'd have fun!"
It was just gonna be a little old mom and pop business.
We'd be open in the summer, closed in the winter.
Catch that tourist traffic off the highway.
You know!
Never thinking we would ever see anything from here.
I mean that...that was not even a vision.
Well from the time we opened, we started seeing things.
And as of now, and this is November...
we have had 67 sightings from just here since we opened.
One night we had about 60 people over here.
And there was a couple sitting out front on the bench,
and the woman jumps up, just screaming "Do you see 'em? Do you see 'em?"
They were so high up if she hadn't pointed them out
I would have never seen 'em.
And there was one here, and one here and the were moving
remarkably fast towards the north.
The one in the front stopped and it waited for the one behind to catch up
And when that one caught up, the two of them took off
and there was a streak of light across the sky.
Another night it looked like um...
a shooting star and it was over here, on the other side of the sand dunes
and it's coming down, I'm watching this shooting star, okay?
and it gets below the peaks of the mountains
and like it lost its momentum and it started to float, like this.
Well see, that makes sense to my weird wind, but anyway, ha.
What didn't make sense, was that it went straight back up.
So that was, it wasn't a shooting star.
So many bizarre things have happened here in the last twelve years,
and I tell folks, maybe, you don't quite get all of this.
Okay?
But you better have an open mind, because something's
going on up there in that cosmos that we just don't know about.
And, do I believe now? You betcha!
-I've seen some pretty strange things.
I've seen things, that I've never even heard of...before.
I think there are a lot of things in this universe
that we don't understand and maybe we're not meant to.
Elvis!
Here buddy buddy!
Oh, there he is!
How you doing big dog?
Hey.
How's my big boy?
Yeah, how's my big boy?
I was born in Texas, but I had the good sense
to move to Colorado when I was six months old.
And been the valley almost ever since.
[JAY YOUNG MANAGER, COLORADO GATORS REPTILE PARK]
My name is Jay Young and I am manager of Colorado Gators Reptile Park.
I've known Judy for quite a while.
I guess I went to the UFO watchtower probably the first year she opened it.
It was a novel idea. She knew there was all
these sightings in the San Luis Valley
And as she's told you I'm sure, she's seen things since then.
You know about Snippy the horse right?
First documented animal mutilation...
possible you know, first UFO mutilation,
happened here in the San Luis Valley back in uh, the late '60's.
[SEPTEMBER 7, 1967]
And uh, it was a horse named Snippy the horse.
It was just totally stripped bare,
but where the meat ended on the neck, the flesh was cauterized,
And there was no blood in the horses body,
And there were no signs of...
any predators or anything strange around it.
They just found this horse, with the flesh missing of its head.
And we had an ostrich disappear.
It's missing to this day. It's been like four years now.
Nobody ever saw this ostrich.
So we decided to name him Snippy.
If he ever does show up.
I think the San Luis Valley probably...
draws a lot of supernatural or extraterrestrial activity.
Possibly because of the geothermal water.
And there's a lot of crazy people here, who probably see things
that they didn't actually see too, but...
The San Luis Valley draws strange people,
so it might as well draw strange aircrafts as well.
Some say that it't the vastness of the valley, because...
it's so huge and not highly populated.
Others say it's the spirituality of the valley.
Others say that there's and ET base in Mount Blanca over here.
Well...all of this sounds really good, you know?
But it didn't make sense to my mind.
And I got a magazine from Great Britain,
and in that magazine it said, that the majority of their sightings
was where there were hot water wells.
That, makes sense!
From one end of this valley to the other we have geothermal water.
Very little atmosphere, here at our elevation.
We have very little, uh, pollution.
Very clear skies.
You know, we do a lot of watching...just from our front yards.
Judy built a nice place for people to go and hang out.
Uh...that didn't have a front yard here.
The folks who come here to visit...
I always, the first thing I ask, is
"Have you ever had any UFO experiences?"
Some will come right out and say oh yeah, but
you know, folks have made fun of them...
for, for relating their stories and,
I said, how can people do that?
People have these experiences. Don't make fun of them.
[ACCORDING TO A POLL CONDUCTED IN 2007 BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND IPSOS 14% OF AMERICANS CLAIM TO HAVE SEEN A UFO]
Everyone...
[DAN VISITOR, UFO WATCHTOWER]
whether they're skeptical or not, everybody kinda wants to think
uh...we're not alone.
Yeah, I've seen lights in the sky.
And uh, objects that seem to hover,
And uh...
and take off quickly.
-I was up in the mountains with my friend,
[AMANDA VISITOR, UFO WATCHTOWER]
um, near Denver, and it as the middle of the day and we saw something,
that was just hovering for a long time.
It was just like an orb, um, that was brightening and dimming.
But it was still for a really long time and then it moved.
I was just left my house,
[JOE, EMPLOYEE, COLORADO GATORS REPTILE PARK]
I was on my way into town and had some lights coming over towards us.
from where Blanca is. And as it was coming towards us,
it seemed to come down, like
get brighter and brighter as it was coming down.
It was a pretty good ways up there though.
And all of a sudden, it went from going straight at us,
it took an immediate right and went off
and just disappeared off into the sky.
Uh, we have what we call the,
[KENNY, EMPLOYEE, COLORADO GATORS REPTILE PARK]
mystery lights, you know, lights we see over the top of the mountain...
not moving, not blinking, so not really an airplane or nothing.
Doesn't look quite like a star, so we don't really know it is.
So we just called it mystery lights.
Um, I'm driving up highway 17 one night,
I saw three lights up to the left,
And then they, they went over the mountains.
And uh, less than ten seconds,
I calculated it out, there was, there was no sonic boom,
from them taking off. From them breaking the sound barrier.
So that was strange.
And then, and then, I calculated it out, they were going
up, upwards of 21,000 miles per hour.
I've actually never experienced anything.
[JOSH EMPLOYEE, COLORADO GATORS REPTILE PARK]
And i've never seen anything myself in the area.
But, I believe it. You know, in the cities in Valley,
you know, there's a lot of stuff going on. A lot of buildings.
But out here in the open, you can really see everything in the sky.
So...I'm sure there have been plenty of sightings out here.
There's plenty of room for it.
If extraterrestrials were mean, we wouldn't be here kids.
Because they have, their technology is so much greater than ours.
We wouldn't be here.
There's a painting over there,
and the woman who did the painting is an abductee,
She has been abducted for, oh gosh...since she was just a child.
And she's fifty now.
And um, and now, she tries to make it a positive experience.
And yeah, she was scared, but that's human nature.
We're gonna be scared...about the unknown.
You know, I used to watch Mulder on TV and stuff,
As far as really being into it, I was a horse person.
I was not...somebody that was out there staring at the sky all the time.
Now, I kinda wish...
I would've taken the time to stare at the sky,
because...there's some amazing stuff that goes on up there.
You know, you look at all the...
the turmoil that we go through here on earth,
and the changes...there has to be something better.