Netflix's ‘Unsolved Mysteries’: True story behind ‘Berkshire's UFO’ in 1969, were the four families drugged?
"Guess what, years ago — I saw it... All these years, we never spoke of it." The eerie tale begins on the evening of September 1, 1969, when an unexplained phenomenon occurred in Berkshire County, Massachusetts and the residents recalled baffling, terrifying experience with UFO sightings. Netflix's reboot of 'Unsolved Mysteries' delves deeper into one night that changed four different lives.
An Unidentified Flying Object! Wow, what is that? That thought may have been in minds of the four families from Great Barrington, Sheffield, Stockbridge and Egremont— all part of Berkshire County, known as the Berkshires, in Massachusetts. Thom Reed, his brother Matt Reed, Tom Warner, Nancy Reed, Jane Green, and Melanie Kirchdorfer candidly shed light on their experiences.
"This is the house that I lived in," Nancy Green, Thom Reed's mother recalls. A lot of things were happening back in 1969. Reed then goes on to say: "I would have been just 10. I was meant for something else." Melanie Kirchdorfer says, "My whole life changed right here. Something weird took place. We were a part of it." It happened almost fifty years ago and yet, it feels just like yesterday.
Jane Green then talks about an explosion of lights while driving down the street. "I pulled over to the side and got out of the car and I will never — if I get Alzheimer's – that one memory will stick to my mind," she says. Describing the object, they say, "I can't tell you whether it was bronze, silver or gold but it was immense and there was no noise. No motor. And these lights were coming."
Tommy Warner was just coloring in with his friends on Labor Day weekend and talks about how "he was running constantly at the same place". "I was running but I wasn't moving. It gave me the chills. There was a rock and the beam of light from the UFO came onto me and the air got sucked out of me. In a blink, in a dash, he was gone." Barely six at the time, Thomas says he is missing three hours of his life and in the car, his mother and grandmother were reversed. Moreover, Tommy and Melanie have a bizarre memory of spotting each other on the ship after both were blinded by white light as their last memory. Were they drugged off?
How did it change their lives? The residents of the city say no one believed them. "People say they don't want to hear it. It's too scary," one said. Finally, a painting depicted the incident. "I had to paint it. I never intended to show this painting. I never wanted to tell my story. Doing this painting was kind of like therapy for me," Warner says. The episode has left hundreds of fans in deep shock and they still suspect that the families may have been drugged. "Those Berkshire UFO stories are f**king chilling and I find it highly suspicious such a gem would drop during this climate with all the ufo shit going on. Aliens are real," one said and another posted, "It’s almost as if the whole town was high on acid that night. It has happened before. There’s a myth about a town’s bakery accidentally making a whole batch of bread with psychedelic mushrooms. #BerkshiresUFO #berkshire #UFO@Unsolved #unsolvedmysteries."
Was it true or just a figment of imagination? The episode ends with the dialogue: "It's real. It's real. People have gotta understand that."
If you haven't watched it yet, catch the episode on Netflix. 'Unsolved Mysteries' dropped its six episodes on July 1, 2020.