PROGRAMMING NOTE
On The Trail Of UFOs: Night Visitors (2022) is currently available for streaming on all major web platforms. Interested parties are strongly encouraged to purchase and view the documentary. It’s a extremely high-caliber investigation into the unexplained activity surrounding Colorado’s San Luis Valley.
Even as a little sprite, I was fascinating with flying saucers and aliens.
When you’re an innocent wide-eyed urchin like I was in the early 1970’s, you’re blissfully unaware that there are darker components – very frightening factors – to the wider UFO enigma. It isn’t until I was considerably older that I could appreciate the discussion surrounding abduction, alien implants, and cattle mutilations. While Night Visitors doesn’t delve deeply into each of these areas, the 80-minute documentary hones in chiefly on encounters limited to San Luis Valley in Colorado, choosing chiefly to question what could be the source of these bizarre animal attacks and what do residents of the area make of it.
Though I could be wrong, I believe it was award-winning investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe who first risked her career by bringing these disfigurements to light: her documentary A Strange Harvest won an Emmy for daring to breach a little publicized phenomenon when few others would even acknowledge something was definitely amiss. Decades later, we’re no closer to answers, but thankfully writer/director Seth Breedlove isn’t one to let sleeping dogs lie: he and his host Shannon Legro take a trip back to the area for another attempt to stir the pot, though it’s clear just before these credits roll there’s still an incredible amount of work needing to be done.
Anyone who’s followed the UFO field alone knows the central problem to even launching a plausible investigation surrounding strange lights in the sky knows what a daunting challenge it truly is. Rarely is physical evidence left behind, and the supporting eyewitness reports can be contradictory if not confusing. However, in instances of cattle mutilation, experts are quick to dismiss the tangible because the recovered clues aren’t suggestive of any understandable conclusion. When the details don’t point to a relatable solution, officials tend to recklessly discount an entire affair for no other reason that it eludes their conception of the world … a sad state of affairs if ever there were.
Breedlove’s witnesses are everyday folk. They’re no different that you or me. They’re the kind of people who populate parts of the country where a wide frontier still exists. They’re not seeking fame and fortune, nor are they sharing their experiences with hopes of landing some lucrative film or television deal. They’re salt-of-the-earth types. And yet they’re surrounded by not only animals that won’t be tamed but a mystery that defies any conventional excuse. All they want are answers; I find it a tragedy that so few people are willing to listen to their questions.
As any fan of the Fox Television's stellar series The X-Files knows, "The truth is out there." Let's just hope that Breedlove and his confidantes keep searching for it.
On The Trail Of UFOs: Night Visitors (2022) is produced by Small Town Monster. According to the provided press materials I’ve viewed, the product is available for streaming on all major web platforms. As for the technical specifications? This production looks and sounds exceptional.
Highly recommended. What I’ve always found so compelling about the field of High Strangeness is that, typically, raising a single good question about a phenomenon leads to a seemingly endless series of other questions that are equally important. While there are no answers provided in On The Trail Of UFOs: Night Visitors, there is ample discussion surrounding the topics of UFOs, abductions, contactee experiences, and cattle mutilations, so much so that any reasonable person might ask, “Why is it that the government isn’t investigating and demanding answers?” Well, the truth is maybe they are. Maybe they’re behind all of it. Their absence in the public discourse regarding these phenomena only deepens the mystery … and it’s a mystery that isn’t going away any time soon.
In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that the fine folks at 1091 Pictures provided me with a complimentary streaming link of On The Trail Of UFOs: Night Visitors by request for the expressed purposes of completing this review; and their contribution to me in no way, shape, or form influenced my opinion of it.