NARRATOR: Kent Cliffs, New York, New Year's Eve, 1982.
[music playing]
Shortly before midnight, in this small town just north of New
York City, New Year's Eve revelers
are struck by the sight of an unusual aircraft in the sky.
The ship appears to be as large as a commercial jet,
but has a V shape, moves slowly, and makes no sound.
The incident is the first in a wave of UFO sightings
that would shape the surrounding area
known as the Hudson Valley.
PHILIP IMBROGNO: The Hudson Valley
is your classic hot spot.
Here, UFOs appeared from 1983 to 1986,
and was witnessed by thousands of people.
A triangular boomerang-shaped object, very well lit,
flew very low over the community,
and it was photographed, videotaped,
and it was seen from people from all walks of life, who
were sure they saw something strange
that was not from this planet.
This caused people to pull off the side of the road
and actually start calling home, thinking there
was some type of an invasion.
And they were executive, doctors, scientists, and so on,
meteorologists, and they all reported something that they
have never seen before.
NARRATOR: Over the span of three years,
officials received more than 9,000
reports from eyewitnesses describing
the same V-shaped craft.
Not only was there a UFO sighting in Hudson Valley,
but it came back night after night after night.
PHILIP IMBROGNO: These are people
who would not normally come forward
to say that they saw a UFO.
Yet, what they saw was so convincing and so frightening
to them that they went on record to report what they saw.
I mean, it's just amazing.
NARRATOR: During the two-year wave of UFO sightings
in the Hudson Valley, author Philip Imbrogno
investigated the area on behalf of the Center
for UFO Studies, which was founded
by J Allen Hynek after his work with Project Blue Book.
Imbrogno conducted hundreds of interviews
with residents of the area and even witnessed
the V-shaped craft himself.
PHILIP IMBROGNO: This object, whatever
it was, the size of a football field, came over the highways
and hovered and, at times, projected down a brilliant beam
of white light.
Usually, UFO researchers don't see the UFO
that they're investigating.
I saw this object three times.
So it was amazing.
NARRATOR: As Imbrogno spent months crisscrossing the area,
he noticed something curious.
The volume of mysterious reports during this time
were not only focused on a strange craft in the sky,
but also on bizarre sounds coming from somewhere
deep below ground.
WILLIAM HENRY: People start to wonder, why
are these hot spots hot spots?
And one explanation is that what is actually going on
is underneath the ground, that these hot spots are,
in fact, entrances to vast underground caverns, or even
secret bases.
CRAIG CAMPOBASSO: In the Hudson River
there, especially in the '80s, I spoke to a few researchers,
and they said that the locals used to hear things coming up
from underground, and they weren't really quite sure what
it was, but they figured there was a base below ground,
a military/alien base.
NARRATOR: Arguably, the most famous sighting
in the Hudson Valley hot spot concerned beings
from underground, as was the case with bestselling horror
novelist, Whitley Strieber, who wrote about his own experience
in his book, "Communion."
WHITLEY STRIEBER: My wife and I had bought a cabin
in the western extreme edge of the whole Hudson Valley,
and in December of 1985, I woke up in a room--
not my bedroom-- in the middle of the night, and the room
was filled with two kinds of figure,
these willowy figures with big black eyes
and dark blue short figures.
And then I began to hear a voice say, what can we
do to help you stop screaming?
And I thought, I'm screaming, and I was screaming.
And the next morning, I woke up extremely confused
and disturbed without any real understanding
of what happened to me.