The Why Files: Operation Podcast

Paul Bennewitz lived next to a large airforce base. When he saw colored lights in the sky, he assumed they were experimental aircraft.

Then he started picking up strange radio signals that seemed to be an alien language.

He took his findings to the Air Force. Publicly they denied the UFO/alien story.

But privately, they confirmed Paul's findings. The Air Force even funded his UFO research.

He spent several years gathering evidence and reporting it to the authorities.

Then, he ended up in a mental institution.

Let's find out why.

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November 28th, 1953. New York City. 

At 2:30 AM the body hit the sidewalk. A few seconds later, a shower of glass.

The doorman of the Statler Hotel yelled to the lobby that there was a jumper.

The night manager rushed out and saw him. A man, about 40 years old, lying on the pavement. He was on his back, wearing only his underwear and blood started to pool around him.

13 stories up, a single window was open; its curtain flapping through broken glass.

The night manager knelt beside the man, whose eyes were open and was somehow still alive. He desperately tried to speak but was choking on blood and couldn't be understood. After a minute or two of trying to communicate, the man took a final deep breath and was gone.

Nobody knows for sure what he was trying to say before he died.

But one thing is for certain, it was something about the CIA.

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In 1943, the USS Eldridge was made invisible and teleported from Philadelphia to Virginia. This event was known as the Philadelphia Experiment.

When the Eldridge reappeared, some crew materialized in walls and bulkheads. They died in agony.

But two sailors didn't reappear at all. The two men, who happened to be brothers, were presumed dead or lost.

They weren't dead. 

They traveled 40 years into the future; in a secret military base on the East end of Long Island.

They became unwitting participants of The Montauk Project.

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World War 2 has countless stories of bravery, sacrifice, camaraderie, and heroism.

But the war also has a lot of mysteries. Many of them still unsolved.

Like the legend of the Phantom Fortress.

A B-17 bomber that returned from a mission with no crew aboard; and somehow landed itself.

Let's find out why.

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On Mel Waters' property in the Manastash Ridge, west of Ellensburg, Washington, there is a hole in the ground that looks like a well -- but it's not a well.

Like the owners of the property before him, Mel used the hole as a trash dump. His neighbors used it too. Garbage, broken appliances, old tires, everything went in the hole.

After a while, Mel started to wonder: why doesn't it fill up? Then he started to notice other strange things about the hole. His dogs wouldn't go near it. It caused his radio picked up strange signals. And it didn't seem to have a bottom.

Mel's curiosity became an obsession.

Let's see if we can get to the bottom of Mel's hole.

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The Dark Watchers: Silent Guardians of the Pines

The Santa Lucia mountain range runs from Monterey and down the coast of California.

For hundreds of years, stories have been told about entities that keep watch over the mountains. Sometimes seen out of the corner of the eye, always from a distance. Stare too long and they vanish.

If you're ever hiking the wilderness of Big Sur and feel like you're being watched? 

It's because you are.

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On March 16, 1957, at 8 o'clock in the morning, a 300 ft long spacecraft landed in a field in Alexandria Virginia.

Two local police officers arrived on the scene. The door of the craft slowly opened. The officers drew their guns, not sure what to expect.

To their surprise, out walked a normal-looking guy. He smiled at the stunned officers and actually waved hello.

Before the policemen could say a word, the stranger said, in clear English: "I need to see the president."

Nine months after this event, NASA was founded.

This is the story of what happened in-between. This is the story of Valiant Thor.

If you don't know this one, hold on tight. We're going on a hell of a ride.

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In 12th century England, two children were found lost in a forest. They spoke only gibberish, wore strange clothing and had bright green skin. When the children finally learned to speak English, they described where they were from. And that's why, after almost 1,000 years, people still talk about The Green Children of Woolpit.  

In 1828, a teenage boy was shuffling through a public square in Nuremburg. He seemed confused and disoriented. He had trouble walking and speaking. When police finally approached him, he was holding an envelope containing two letters. And those letters sparked the mystery of Kaspar Hauser.  

In April 1922, in Brittany, France, 2-year-old Pauline Picard went missing. A massive search turned up nothing. The family was losing hope.  

A month later, Pauline was found wandering around a village over 200 miles away. Though her parents were overjoyed to have her back, they soon realized something wasn't quite right with their daughter.  

These are three unsolved cases of the most mysterious children in history.

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In the past year or so, three internet mysteries popped up that really got my attention. They may seem very different, but trust me, they're connected.  The first one is about a girl who found a door in the basement of her AirBnB. She opened it and inside was an abandoned shopping mall.  

The second story is about Javier aka Unico Sobreviviente, who woke up in a hospital in the year 2027, in an alternate universe. In his version of the future -- everyone on earth has vanished. He's the only one left, and he has video to prove it.  

The third mystery is known as the Backdoors. A reality adjacent to ours that, if the conditions are just right, you can accidentally slip into. Then you find yourself lost in an endless maze of dingy carpet, fluorescent light, and yellow wallpaper.   

And around every corner--

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The Moon is a Hollow Spaceship | Who Built it and Why?  

Despite it being humanity's constant companion through all of recorded time, the moon is still a mystery.  

Science hasn't been able to explain how the moon was formed, its unusual orbit, its distance from us, its density, its composition, its structure. These are all still questions.  

There are theories about the moon that solve some of these puzzles, but not others.  

There is only one theory that answers every scientific question about the moon. Just one.  

That the moon is a hollow, artificial structure, brought here by -- someone else.  

Let's find out why.

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