The film might have been put together in 1991 but the footage is by no means from the 90s.
Oh yeah, the researcher I couldn't remember the name of in the film is Wendell Stevens (RIP).
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/tuc...d=22237408
He is very young in the film.
I found this link in the youtube notes:
https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/19...rville.htm
Here is what it says:
William Herrmann, aka "Bill Hermann" or "Herman" or "Hermann", was a diesel mechanic, born-again Christian, church custodian, living in a mobile home in North Charleston, South Carolina, USA, who claimed contact with aliens.
Tough at the time he reached some fame in the Press, magazines, and even Japanese TV, and managed to get the attention of ufologist because of his claims, he was soon forgotten, like many so-called "contactees".
In 1977, aged 26, he claimed, he saw a "glowing disc" on several occasions, and once managed to capture it on 9 photographs. He claimed he wasn't alarmed, first thinking it was some sort of military aircraft flying out of nearby Charleston Air Force Base.
He explained to a newspaper later: "I'd never been interested in science fiction. I thought that was all hogwash. Garbage. But I've had two contact experiences and 15 sightings of UFOs, and I've also investigated 40 sightings statewide."
The first encounter wasn't remembered until months after it happened, March 18, 1978, he says. At about 9:25 p.m., he had gone out of his home to a field to get a better look at a UFO in a marshy area, flying low over his home. He watched it through binoculars, and walked toward it for a closer look. The next thing he remembered was finding himself in a "strange area" with the UFO whirring away above him, in Summerville, 15 or 20 miles (depending on the versions) away from his home. One report says he found himself standing in a plowed field about midnight, surrounded by a light glow, and ran hysterically toward a distant road where he could see cars. There he was picked up by a policeman who phoned his family.
Another report says he was terrified, flagged down a car and found that he was in a wooded clearing near Bacons Bridge Road near Summerville, several hours later than he thought it should be.
Later, he "recalled" - under hypnosis - what happened during the several hours he could not account for: he watched the UFO from some railroad tracks, when it suddenly zoomed toward him, and projected a blinding beam of aquamarine light at him. The UFO "dropped, and I was scared." "A green light came up around me. I was disoriented. At my feet there was an orange circle of light..."
"I tried to run, but my legs wouldn't move, I was like I was paralyzed. I couldn't yell. I thought Oh God, I'm going to die." Later, he says he was "on this low examination table only 2 feet above the floor" inside the UFO, with three strange-looking being watched him, using a "blinking X-ray-like device." They told him there are three races of intelligent beings from space that visit Earth and conduct experiments and observe life here.
He said he distinctly remembered the craft was a molded metal, two-decked contraption about 70 feet in diameter and 25 feet high. The occupants were about 4 1/2 feet tall, with marshmallow-colored skin, hairless, and without eye pupils. "Their skin was the color of a marshmallow. Their eyes were long and dark with a brown iris. Their heads looked like overgrown human fetuses with no ears or hair" he told later.
They spoke English with no accent and told him not to be afraid, but he was. The UFO crew callously referred to him as a "subject" and said that he, along with certain other earthlings, had been chosen for their experiments. They anticipated his questions, and they spoke without moving their lips.
He claimed he had no memory of this "UFO abduction" for a year, but on April 21, 1979, a mysterious metal bar shaped like an ingot and bearing the letters "MAN" and some mysterious symbols, suddenly "materialized" in "a globe of blue-green light" in his bedroom.
One source said after the first close encounter he suffered insomnia and general nervousness and unrest, and was submitted to hypnosis under the guidance of James A. Harder of APRO some days later.
In this version, we learn that one of the three beings spoke to him while his mouth did not appear to move, that he was given a brief tour of the spacecraft and then lost consciousness. He had learned that the beings were from Zeta Reticuli and had been observing Earth for half a century, being concerned about humanity's tendencies toward war and warning that our violent natures would destroy human civilization.
In the weeks following the hypnosis session, Herrmann claimed other UFO sightings, and told he had a compulsion to write, from right to left, pages of a script in an unknown language, channeling messages from the people who had abducted him.
Herrmann said he had just finished writing about three pages of such messages, on April 21, 1979, when he felt his home shake, saw his lights flicker and go out and saw "a globe of blue-green light" begin to grow on his desk. "I was so frightened I couldn't look at it. When the glow subsided I saw the bar lying on the edge of the desk. I thought it would be hot but it felt cold."
Herrmann claimed a second encounter on May 16, 1979, after that bar "appeared" in his home. He voluntarily climbed aboard the UFO after feeling an urge to go to a spot where the UFO met him, he said.
"It was a 3 1/2 hour trip down to Florida and back. We flew above an orange grove and over the (Kennedy) space center. I remember looking down through some kind of monitor at the face of people looking up at us." The aliens told him they were from Zeta Reticuli, "a solar system 32 light years from here," Herrmann said. "They said I'll see them again, but I haven't. Not that I am looking from them. December 1982 was my last sighting. But I won't be afraid next time."
Omni magazine had a sample of the bar scraped from the bar and analyzed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; which found the bar was made of ordinary elements, a cast alloy of lead and 6 percent antimony, approximating the composition of lead pipes or grid from an auto battery. Herrmann said the aliens told him the bar is of a substance worthless to humans but of great value to the extraterrestrials.
A major player in the case was retired Air Force Colonel Wendelle C. Stevens of Tucson, then investigator for Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO). Stevens, like he often did even with "contactees" who were proven liars, supported Herrmann's story entirely. He said he spent 11 days investigating Herrmann's first encounter story and that it really happened because he had "a lot of data to support it."
Stevens said he collected testimonies from "a number" of Charleston-area residents who told they saw a similar UFO, including sightings on the same night as Herrmann reported his encounters. He also said Herrmann's color photos, which include a shot of a purpoted UFO trailing an Air Force jet near Charleston Air Force Base, are genuine. He apparently sent Herrmann's UFO photos to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena for enhancement and computer evaluation, but I found no report of the findings.
It seems Stevens also had APRO test the metal bar, though I did not find what was concluded. But Stevens said the markings on the bar, molded in the metal, included a map of the star group Reticulum, from which Herrmann says the aliens told him they came. Stevens argued that as the star group is visible only from the Southern Hemisphere, and the star map puts the star in a configuration never seen from Earth, Herrmann could not have made it up: "Only one star chart shows such a projection, and the chart is in Hungary and printed in Hungarian. Most people have never heard of the chart, and there is no way Herrmann could have ever seen it. The chart is only known to highly advanced astronomers." He explained that the bar is "a form of recognition, given only to a few Earth people, for having overcome the trauma and maintaining communication" with aliens. Herrmann similarly claimed he was told by aliens on his second encounter with them that the bar "was a gift for me signifying they were thankful for and appreciative of the way I handled the situation" after the first abduction.
Stevens also investigated Herrmann's automatic writings, and said an IBM design engineer examined some of the script and told it could represent a formula for "accelerating matter to a dematerialized state."
It was reported that he underwent "psychological stress evaluation, polygraph tests" that convinced "investigators" that he believes he was actually aboard a UFO, but the tests, "however, are incapable of determining whether the encounter actually took place." Apparently the test was given by one Charles R. McQuiston of West Palm Beach after Herrmann reported his first encounter of the aliens. McQuiston said his test measured stress in speech patterns which would detect attempts at deception in a manner similar to that of a polygraph, and he told: "I don't remember any fraud" and" I didn't find anything wrong with his story at all. That's what he believes, and that's as far as I can go." McQuiston said he had performed the same test on hundreds of purported UFO witnesses and contactees each year for magazines and ufologists, and that about one-half of the purported UFO stories he tested came out classified "for no further consideration."
A major film and record making firm headquartered in New York, Abcko Industries, put together plans for a film documentary on UFOs, and wanted to include Herrmann. Malcolm Clarke, film director, expressed his belief: the sheer numbers of persons with stories similar to Herrmann's which can't be disproven indicate "that some are telling the truth." "The point is there are a number of people like Herrmann", he argued.
Abkco brought Herrmann to New York for "hypnosis tests". At the time, many believed hypnosis sessions was a valid manner to get "recovered memories" of forgotten events such as having been in an alien spacecraft.
Dr. Bernard Stern, a New York physician and teacher of hypnosis therapy at Columbia University and UFO witness himself, questioned Herrmann under hypnosis and was also convinced Herrmann believes his own story to be real. Stern specified that it does not prove the reported events actually happened. Though "Herrmann is honest. He honestly believes he was in a UFO", Stern said questioning under hypnosis "doesn't prove anything. It doesn't mean the abduction is so" and Herrmann may have been able to "hypnotize himself" into believing his UFO encounters, fantasizing without knowing it. Stern added, "In all fairness to Herrmann, I didn't challenge him in great detail. I asked him to describe what he was seeing in the UFO and he gave a vague description." Stern also said Herrmann was the only "abductee" he has questioned under hypnosis.
His story appeared in
Omni Magazine in November 1978. Then a Japanese film crew visited him, to film a documentary film including his claimed experience. In 1981, Stevens self-published a book about Herrmann's stories, "UFO Contact from Reticulum: A Report of the Investigation". Herrmann said 5000 copies were sold.
There were also vague claims that Herrmann was the victim of "insidious attacks" by "a mysterious group of government operatives whose purpose appears to be to frustrate both himself and the team of UFO researchers who were investigating Herrmann's multi-year contact case." Apparently, from a visit by ufologist Thomas Olsen, grew a story that it was not really Thomas Olsen who came but someone posing as him, as Olsen denied having been at the meeting. Though the alleged impostor was not described as a "man in black", it later appeared as one of the so-called "Men in Black" case.
It seems that on November 10, 1981, Herrmann was fired from his position of children's church teacher, because they believed he was involved in satanic things when he spoke about UFOs on TV. Four days later, he allegedly received by "telepathic transmission" from his alien friends a sketch if a "power unit which contained a pair of eyes". The same day, apparently, he wrote an essay titled "Inevitable Destruction" in which he warned that the entire Earth would soon be engulfed in an "eternal firestorm" because of "geopolitical events."
After his last UFO sighting in 1982, Herrmann was occasionally interviewed in local newspapers. He told "I've gone through all kinds of medical batteries, and I don't have any radiation or side effects. And no implants [...]" He told that his life had changed, regretted the "harassment" he was subjected to, insisted that he had not looked for any publicity.
Like many cases that first appeared as classic "CE3" to ufologist but then developed in repetitive encounters with "messages" from benevolent aliens, the Herrmann case was soon forgotten as one more contactee tall-tale. It was however still mentioned in several catalogues od close encounters of the third kind with no word of caution or doubt.
The latest echo I could trace was a remark on the "Above Top Secret" ufology forum, in which an anonymous participant gave news of Bill Herrmann: "Bill now denies everything and chalks his whole experience up to demonic possession or something ever since he became a fundamentalist evangelical." "He's also traded in the Reticulan ships for Star Trek ships and become some sort of uber-Trekkie".
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Full youtube notes:
On a crisp spring night, Bill left his home to take a closer look at the eerie bright object hovering over the electrical lines near the Charleston Air Force Base...four hours later he was dazed, frightened, confused and standing in a field miles from his home. Months earlier he had taken remarkable photographs of a disc-shaped craft that had intruded into military airspace near the base, prompting inordinate interest from the military and a "credentialed UFO investigator" who, in fact, was an imposter. Naively, Bill agreed to a hastily contrived polygraph unaware that the imposter intended to use drugs as a catalyst for the answers. Harassment and surveillance from an unknown source entered his life and the lives of those around him, including the witnesses that collaborated his story and the international team that was now investigating the case. Hypnotic regression was his only key to piecing the puzzle together, dramatically revealing...who the abductors are...where they come from...and why they have come to earth. ENGLISH SUBTITLES/CAPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE - CLICK THE CC TAB. Apologies for the bad audio in places (It was transferred from an old VHS tape). A few minor parts are still difficult to hear so if you know what is said or find any mistakes, please write in the comments section below. All Herrmann's best photos, diagrams and sketches here:
http://bagofbones.org/blog/24-ufo-abd... For more info and newspaper cuttings on this case:
http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/ce3/... There are 2 books on this case by Wendelle Stevens:
http://www.amazon.com/Contact-From-Re... http://www.amazon.com/UFO-Contact-Ret...
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