INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (Feb. 8, 2016)– Almost 14 years after The X-Files ended its run, paranormal federal agents Scully and Mulder are back in action for a six-episode miniseries airing Monday nights on FOX59.
Sci-fi isn’t just for the small screen. Some swear they’ve had close encounters right here in Indiana!
“I did not see flashing lights. I did not see little aliens. I did not see UFOs. I just know exactly what happened,” said Phil Leech.
It took two different decades, two rural roads in Grant County, and two unexplained encounters for Phil Leech to know something odd happened to him.
“I’ve had memory loss from this,” he said, “Maybe our brains aren’t hard wired enough to comprehend what’s going on.”
He said the first incident happened in 1980. He was driving home from work, and it was dark. Then out of nowhere, his car shut off. The next thing he knew, he was standing outside the car, and it was running.
He said he got home and noticed minutes and memories of his life disappeared.
“I walked in, and I (saw) I had lost 18 minutes,” he said.
Leech said he didn’t think too much about it and even kept the incident quiet, but it happened again 15 years later – a different road, a different vehicle, but same story.
“I was standing outside the truck. The truck was running. The windshield was quickly defrosted,” he said, “I drove home and lost about 15 minutes.”
Leech just recently started talking about what he believes are close encounters. He wanted answers and his experiences pointed him to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON).
MUFON is a national group that investigates UFO sightings. Leech is the state section leader in Indiana, part of a team of 14 state investigators that follow up on hundreds of reports each year.
“Some of these things are unusual stories to say the least,” said Leech, “It’s assigned to a field investigator who looks at the repot, makes contact with the witness, and then goes from there.”
Sightings have been documented for years across the Indianapolis area, with reports from Carmel and Zionsville.
It leaves many to speculate that we’re not alone in the universe, and with The X-Files back, Leech is glad to see the paranormal back in the spotlight.
“Anything to do with this type of phenomena is exciting to the public,” said Leech.
Dr. Bruce Betts is Director of Science and Technology at The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California.
He reminds us to take Hollywood with a grain of salt.
“One just has to keep track that there’s no evidence either on Earth or out there at the moment.” he said.
But science is giving us other reasons to be excited about space. In July, NASA announced they found a planet they termed “Earth’s cousin.”
The planet is bigger than Earth and more than 1,000 light-years away from us, but Betts said it’s in the habitable zone, meaning liquid water could exist on the surface there. And with water could come life.
“It’s a game changer,” he said, “The more we discover places like these out there, the more information we get, the more it confirms ideas that there have been in our solar system in the past and our solar system now places that might be habitable for life to evolve.”
Back on Earth, the government is even beginning to let people in on some of their closely-guarded secrets, by declassing decades-worth of investigative records into UFO sightings, hoping to prove there isn’t a government cover-up or a unit investigating real-life X-files.
Scientific evidence or not, Leech said he knows something or someone else exists, and he hopes more people speak up, because the truth is out there.
“It’s very hard for me to believe that everyone is wrong,” he said, “If you don’t believe in it, it’s fine. Maybe someday you will.”
