INTERVIEW: New show ‘Alien Encounters’ investigates purported UFO sightings
Photo: Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction features co-hosts Mitch Horowitz and Chrissy Newton. Photo courtesy of Discovery / Provided by press site with permission.
Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction, a new reality series that investigates UFO sightings, will premiere Wednesday, June 19, at 10 p.m. on Discovery. The show comes at a most auspicious time for the study and scrutiny of UFOs, sometimes known as UAPs, or unidentified aerial phenomena. Questions about these sightings have reached an all-time high, thanks in part to serious journalism stories in respected news outlets, including The New York Times. Many more people are looking to the skies and thinking about Earth’s place in the larger universe.
“People are curious about it more than ever,” said Chrissy Newton, a UFO expert and co-host of Alien Encounters. “It’s just more in the mainstream than it’s ever been, but I think people have always talked about it. Unfortunately, earlier there was a lot of ridicule around it, and there’s less now.”
Newton’s career is steeped in the world of UFOs. She is an author with The Debrief, an online publication that explores the science behind these unidentified phenomena. For the website, she hosts the podcast Rebelliously Curious, two words that perfectly sum up her life and career.
On this new Discovery show, the team attempted to build a slightly different format compared to other “unexplained” TV fare.
“I’ve never seen a program that interviews people in a talk-show format, even though we’re not a talk show,” said Newton, who co-hosts the series with Mitch Horowitz, author of Occult America and many other books. “We’re one-on-one in a bar [located in Roswell, New Mexico], but I’ve never seen that before. It’s something that’s really different and really unique. … Usually within these types of UAP shows, you have documentaries, or you have one or two types of experiencers. You don’t have the cross-spectrum that we’ve had, from the first to the fourth kind, so that makes it really different, unique and special.”
Newton made reference to the scale of sightings outlined by UFO expert J. Allen Hynek. Of course, this scale was also employed in Hollywood for Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
“Looking at it from a journalistic perspective, I look for facts,” Newton said. “That’s really my job. I can’t have a bias on it. I’m supposed to be open-minded. I say that good journalism is like that, and original journalism is like that. We’re supposed to just share the facts and the news, so that’s how I look at it in this perspective for the show. But I wouldn’t say [I’m a] skeptic. Everyone should be a skeptic to some degree until there’s more information laid on the table. I don’t think you just go in believing. UFOs and the concept of aliens is not about belief; it’s about understanding what it is and trying to find out what it is. It’s not a belief system, so I think [I’m] going in with an idea of: I don’t know what this is, but I’m open-minded, but also realizing that we have to look at facts and really narrow in on those and find concrete evidence. Sometimes being skeptical is part of that, but there’s a difference between being overly skeptical and not open-minded, and being skeptical and open-minded. And that’s what I try to go for in the show.”
Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction also explains and examines the so-called five observables of UFO sightings. This scale, which includes everything from anti-gravity lift to sudden and instantaneous acceleration, was popularized by a former Pentagon official who was on the inside of the government’s response to UAP sightings.
“We have something called the five observables that we use to identify a potential UAP,” Newton said. “It was created within the Pentagon, and Lou Elizondo, a former counterintelligence official, came up with this. Yeah, I look at those five observables, along with my own. … I’m trying to do my best to distinguish between the data and what’s given to me and look at it from a journalistic lens to say, hey, this has a high potential that this could be a UAP. But we’re human. I make mistakes, too, and Mitch and I probably will, and we do. But we try to do our best, and I try to do my best with the data that was provided to me and listening to testimony as well, which is extremely important.”
Newton became interested in the world of UFOs thanks to her father, who had an alleged encounter back in the late-1970s. He was with a group of people in northern Ontario and apparently took a photo of what was believed to be a UAP.
“He had about three of the five observables in his experience, so for me it was legitly hearing this story and seeing this photo as a little girl when I was 6 years old, it lit up everything inside of me,” she said. “And so that’s when the curiosity really started. … Back then in the early ‘70s and ‘80s, especially in the ‘80s and ‘90s, through tabloids and ridicule, you didn’t talk about UFOs. It was laughable. … So when I was a little girl, he would talk about that and try to understand it, and I would just follow along. His journey became mine later on to prove and to find truth around this, and so in my 20s, I became really invested in going to conferences and learning, which I think people laugh about because they always say that UFO conferences are people with tinfoil hats, which it’s not. It’s not like that.”
Newton ended up attending the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies and “surrounding myself with really wonderful people that are smarter than I am, figuring out this phenomenon and trying to figure it out together. … It changed my life immensely, and my father has watched me through all this. I think he’s proud. I hope he’s proud, and I hope one day before he passes that I can … get closer to the truth than we ever have been before.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction, featuring Chrissy Newton and Mitch Horowitz, premieres Wednesday, June 19, at 10 p.m. on Discovery and later this summer on the Max streaming service. Click here for more information.
