Steven Spielberg's Netflix Docuseries 'Encounters' Tells the Incredible Story of the Stephensville, TX UFO That Was Spotted by 300 Eyewitnesses

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If you need any convincing that you're squandering your one and only existence on this planet, accomplishing nothing (and if you do need that, please get help) consider the following: Stephen Spielberg was just 30 years old when he wrote and directed Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which in the opinion of most UFO enthusiasts, including me, is the finest movie about the topic yet made. Even 46 years after it was released. Thanks in part to masterful, haunting scenes such as this:

So when Spielberg releases a documentary series documenting the stories of UFO/UAP experiencers, there is every reason to hope that in his gifted hands, this one will cut through the dreck that pervades virtually every streaming service. Like all paranormal topics, there is a glut of UFO documentaries, the vast majority of which are lazy, amateurish, tedious, unscientific nonsense. The equivalent of all the ghost hunting shows where a motley group Gen-Zers traipse around abandoned nuthouses pointing night vision shaky cams around until someone yells "Did you HEAR THAT?!?" and they sprint down a hallway. Only with flying saucers. 

Well, nobody is more qualified to produce diamonds in the midst of all the dogshit, and give this consequential, weighty subject the respect it deserves. And it would seem the world agrees with me, since as of lunch time today, Encounters was No. 1 in Netflix's TV Show category. As well it should be, considering the way it presents the astonishing story of the Stephensville, Texas mass sighting in 2007:

Daily Mail - For five months after Halloween of 2007, more than 300 locals living 80 miles southwest of Dallas/Fort Worth in Texas began reporting something strange in their skies: a  giant 'delta-shaped' UFO.

Estimates of its size ranged from 'over 300 feet to one mile long,' as the large 'V-shaped formation,' sometimes seen with seven orange-red lights, hovered above campfires, cruised past major highways and sped silently across the horizon.

Now, Netflix's new UFO docu-series 'Encounters,' which premiered Wednesday, has delivered fresh details on this larger-than-life object witnessed by over 300 locals high above the desert.

The four-part, Steven Spielberg-produced film brought on several eyewitnesses and the nanotechnology engineer whose investigation helped capture the giant UFO via Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) radar data.

'Next time I asked,' that engineer, Robert Powell, told the DailyMail.com, 'I couldn't get that radar data.' 

Powell, who along with Glen Schulze, an electrical engineer who did radar work for the US Army at White Sands Proving Ground, had to file 10 FOIA requests to get that information, goes on to say that was the last time the FAA released such data. It continues:

The most widely publicized incident occurred on January 8, 2008, when 19 witnesses spotted a UFO as it passed west from Dublin to Stephenville and then back again, pursued by US military fighter pilots. …

These records, plus transponder data — signal beacons that all military and civilian flights must emit by law — allowed Powell and Schulze to [identify] 'an unknown target' on radar that corresponded to sightings by six witnesses. …

'If the two unknown objects picked up on radar are one and the same,' Schulze and Powell wrote, 'then the object moved at about 2100 mph.'

Well, nothing to be alarmed about. I mean, what's so impressive about 19 eyewitnesses watching US military aircraft persue an object maybe as big as a mile long? One that the government's scientific data clocked at 2,100 mph? If the speed of sound is 761 mph, that means it was only going roughly three times faster than sound. But silently. And with no known propulsion system we can comprehend. I'm sure there are plenty of weather balloons of that size capable of instantaneously kicking it into warp drive that way. Or swamp gas. Or, as in the case of other encounters between jets and unidentified aerial phenomena, we could blame it on the pilot chasing the planet Venus. And those 19 plus the other 281 or so other witnesses over those same five months mistook the same planet for a craft 300 feet-to-one mile across, amirite?

Look, I'm not getting paid to promote Steven Spielberg film projects. (Though if he's willing, I'd even shill for The Crystal Skull or his West Side Story remake that bombed as bad as CATS.) After 50+ years of being the best director in history, he doesn't need the help. But when we've got a story of this magnitude and importance in his masterful, creative hands, it deserves all the promotion I can give it. If it were up to me, I'd put him in charge of the entire UAP program. But for now, Encounters will do just nicely, thanks.