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Craving more aliens after congressional hearing? Here are 3 UFO docuseries on streaming
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Date:2025-04-16 19:27:46
Last month's explosive congressional testimony about mystifying flying objects and nonhuman pilots whose bodies were recovered at crash sights was met with equal amounts of disbelief and fascination.
Maybe you heard about it?
As bipartisan pressure mounts on the executive branch to unveil more information about possible extraterrestrials visiting Earth, three former military members appeared July 26 before the House Oversight Committee to share what they know. For more than two hours, the witnesses provided captivating accounts of unbelievable UFO sightings, as well as alleged shadowy government programs to retrieve downed spaceships and duplicate the technology.
Revelations and claims made at the hearing proved so sensational that even weeks later, many UFO and alien enthusiasts are still buzzing.
For those craving more alien content in the wake of the hearing, streaming services offer several docuseries about UFOs, some of which transcend the realm of crackpot conspiracy theories to focus on verified sightings and firsthand knowledge of just how seriously the government takes them.
Here are three you can watch now:
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'UFO'
With a premise as straightforward as its title, Showtime's "UFO" sets out to analyze America's fascination with UFOs and the interstellar beings suspected of piloting them.
Decades of stigma around UFOs began to soften following the 2017 release of a bombshell New York Times report uncovering a Pentagon program that had been tracking so-called unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) for years.
In Showtime's 2021 series, former Navy pilots, journalists and civilian eyewitnesses offer their testimony across four episodes. Their accounts detail strange encounters with mysterious craft in the sky, as well as the influence the government may have exerted in shielding the information from the public.
In one of the more jaw-dropping interviews, a former Air Force intelligence officer recounts the alleged 1947 discovery of a live alien that crashed a spacecraft in Corona, New Mexico. The officer claims that the alien exchanged information with intelligence officials about extraterrestrial technology estimated to be 50,000 years ahead of humankind's.
But is all the talk of aliens just part of a complex disinformation campaign orchestrated by a U.S. government intent on covering up its own tests of top-secret military technology? The series examines that question, too.
Number of episodes: 4
Where to stream: Showtime
'Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified'
This 2021 series was trending on Netflix in the U.S. in the weeks following the hearings.
And it's no surprise why. Across its six-episode run, "Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified" examines some of the wildest conspiracy theories that have captivated the UFO community for years.
Buckle up for deep dives into everything from Project Blue Book — the secretive Air Force program studying UFOs from 1952 to 1969 — to allegations that the military has been reverse-engineering spacecraft and performing autopsies on recovered aliens.
The miniseries also explores what the many reported sightings around nuclear sites might say about potential extraterrestrial interest in the weapons.
Number of episodes: 6
Where to stream: Netflix
'Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation'
For years, Luis Elizondo led the Defense Department's shadowy program to investigate UFO sightings from deep within the walls of the Pentagon.
When Elizondo went public to the New York Times, he also resigned from what's known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program as a protest of the secrecy surrounding it. In this History Channel docuseries, which ran for two seasons between 2019 and 2020, Elizondo leads a team to investigate UFO sightings by interviewing those who have reported wild encounters.
At the time, Elizondo and another former Defense Department official had joined the commercial venture called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a San Diego-based company co-founded by Blink-182 frontman and guitarist Tom DeLonge. The docuseries and other public efforts are part of their mission to bring awareness to possible national security threats posed by UFOs and to raise money for additional research.
The team claims it played a central role in the Pentagon's release of three grainy videos of objects maneuvering through the skies in ways believed to be beyond human capabilities — including the now-famous video of a Tic Tac-shaped object captured in 2004 off the coast of Southern California.
With Elizondo and Mellon leading the way, this docuseries was a pivotal moment for Navy pilots, other military members and even commercial airline pilots to come forward about what they've seen.
You may even recognize a few former Navy pilots — Ryan Graves and David Fravor — from their recent testimony before Congress.
Number of episodes: 14
Where to stream: Hulu and Discovery+
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Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com.
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