Hangar 18 and predictive weirdness

the final film of the 1970's

I just watched the 1980 movie Hangar 18. It's a cheesy reworking of the Roswell story where the Air Force gets a hold of a crashed flying saucer. This movie was recommended by Christopher Knowles through a series of posts in THE SECRET SUN where he digs into this odd little film. These essays are required reading, linked below:

~ An in depth review of Hangar 18
~ Gary Collins, the star of Hangar 18

I was fascinated by what Knowles had to say, but I want to add a few more thoughts.

Hangar 18 was released in 1980, and this was a decisive year for the mythos of crashed UFOs. Even though the supposed event near Roswell New Mexico took place in 1947, it was effectively unknown to the public until it re-emerged in 1980. In February that year, The National Enquirer ran an interview with Jesse Marcel, a key witness who claimed to handle some of the wreckage. This introduced the Roswell incident to the world.

Researcher Terry Hansen states that a former CIA psychological warfare agent created the National Enquirer as a way to discredit UFO reporting.

The first book on the subject, The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore was published in 1980.

1980 was the same year that IN SEARCH OF (a television series hosted by Lenard Nimoy) aired an episode titled UFO Cover-Ups. This examines charges that the Air Force is hiding alien corpses and the remains of crashed space craft in Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. 

On one level, Hangar 18 is a buddy film where two astronauts work together to try to unravel a mystery, echoing both 2001 and I Dream of Jeanne.

The parallel plot line features a crew of scientists, under the direction of Darren McGavin (Kolchak: The Night Stalker). They are in charge of researching the crashed UFO. They examine the dead pilots of the crashed UFO only to find that they are essentially human. They also decipher documents on board the mysterious ship, and they come to the conclusion that these UFO occupants made an appearance here on earth at the dawn of human history. These aliens were seen as Gods, they interbred with human women and they orchestrated the evolutionary leap that created modern humans. And, these former Gods were about to come back in a mass world wide landing.

(There is a transcription of Darren McGavin's histrionic monologue where he shares the secret history of the aliens, it's at the bottom of this post)

So, there you have all the key plot points at the core of the Ancient Astronaut Theory (AAT). These same ideas were at the core of Erich von Däniken's CHARIOTS OF THE GODS. This immensely popular book was first published in 1968, the same year as 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as Planet of the Apes. These two sci-fi films explore the AAT and the evolutionary leap that created modern humans.

This parallels a secret Air Force report seen in 1983 by reporter Linda Moulton Howe, more on that below.

Spoiler alert:
The film Hangar 18 culminates with government officials at the highest levels making the decision  to destroy all the evidence of their cover-up. They have their underlings fill a jet plane with explosives and then fly that plane using remote controlled "joystick" technology right into Hangar 18. These same plot points are at the heart of the darkest conspiracies from the events of 9-11.

A remote controlled plane flying into a building? This concept was seen again in the pilot episode of The Lone Gunman, a spin-off from The X-Files. This episode was aired on March 4th 2001, just months before the actually events on September 11th. Christopher Knowles explores the what might be the source of this extremely weird predictive programming in an excellent essay on The Secret Sun, linked HERE. Let me add that this was posted on my 50th birthday.

 This movie started it all, in 1970.

Reporter Linda Moulton Howe had a very strange experience in 1983. It seems she was allowed to read a super secret Air Force report while in preparation for a documentary on UFOs.

The document that Howe saw could very well have been written by Darren McGavin from what he learned in the movie Hangar 18. Here is a link to a good article on what happened to Howe and what she saw in that report.

This Air Force document
included a long list of UFO weirdness:

~ Two different retrievals near the region of Roswell, NM, one in 1947 and another in 1949. The second crash resulted in the captures of a live Extraterrestrial that was taken by an Air Force officer to Los Alamos National Laboratories. The document said that the creature communicated telepathically and was held captive until 1952 when it died of unknown causes.

~ Other crashes listed were Kingman, AZ, Aztec, NM, Loredo, TX, and a place in Mexico just south of the border.

~ Extraterrestrials had manipulated DNA in an already evolving primate species to create Homosapiens.

~ Another paragraph went on to state that 2000 years ago the Extraterrestrials had created a being to put on this planet to teach homosapiens about love and non-violence. When Howe read this she said out loud “Are we talking about Jesus Christ?” Howe say that Air Force representative (Sgt. Richard Doty) in the room with her did not say a word, but that he turned red.

~ A secret project code-named Garnet was listed as having answered all questions and mysteries about the evolution of Homosapiens on this planet. (Curiously, Garnet is Linda Moulton Howe's birthstone)

~ Another issue was that Howe was told that she could use film footage from the vaults of the Air Force that was "Extraterrestrial related." This footage would be featured in the documentary she was producing. The chance to feature this elusive footage got the executives at HBO excited, but at the last moment the Air Force reneged on it's offer, and the entire documentary project fizzled. Howe believes that this was a tactic by the Air Force to stop her documentary from being made.

So, we have a reporter being shown a secret document by the Air Force in 1983, the conclusion is that they wanted this information floated out to the public. Three years earlier we have the movie Hangar 18 "floating" out the same information in the guise of an action film. Please note that Hangar 18 had the blessing an cooperation of NASA, and this is odd because this low budget movie is sort of dopey and it certainly paints NASA and the Air Force as a sinister bunch of secret keepers.

Now, I trust that Howe actually read this a document exactly as she claims. The real question would be if the information within the document is actually true. Researchers who study disinformation will state that in order for it to be effective it needs to be interspersed within REAL information.

Here is an article by Alejandro Rojas where he writes about Linda Moulton Howes' experience with the Air Force in 1983, and here's an audio interview with Howe on the same subject.

I know of two other similar stories where the Air Force promised exclusive film footage of UFOs to documentary film makers, only to withdraw it's offer in the final moments of the production. One offer went to Walt Disney in 1952. The other was Bob Emenegger, who's film credits include the music for Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp (again, the chimpanzee as a "Link" in human evolution).

~ Article by Robbie Graham on Walt Disney and his aborted UFO documentary.

~ Audio interview on Radio Mysterioso with Bob Emenegger and his aborted UFO documentary.

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Paranormal TV - Bob Emenegger on UFO Documentaries by paranormaltv

Bob Emenegger talks about his aborted UFO documentary 

and the odd role of the US Air Force.

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Also from 1970, the same year as the movie Chariots of the Gods.
(music by Bob Emenegger)
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The speech about ancient aliens 
worshiped as gods

There is a very odd sermon-like monologue within the movie HANGAR 18. It feels less like a scriptwriter's imagination and more like it was planted in there by someone with an agenda. Below is a transcription of this heavy-handed bit of this dialog, delivered by the every-hammy Darren McGavin. Note how this paralles into the document that Linda Moulton Howe was shown in 1983. The time count matches the youtube video at the top of this post.

[start time 1: 06: 20]

Darren McGavin as Harry Forbes enters the conference room with a manilla folder filled with papers. Serious looking assistants are seared around the table.

Darren McGavin: Council has deciphered the alien's language. This is a translation of a document found aboard the space craft. Now the translation is very rough and it's incomplete but if what we can read is true, and there's no reason to doubt that it isn't. Then all of the previous information that we have had about the origin of mankind and the human race is absolutely false!

Man: What are you talking about here?

Darren McGavin: This is a report of a previous visit of the spacemen to earth. This report speaks of the capture the training and the use of certain "animals" as slaves, both male and female, the slave worshipped them as gods,

Man: Then what they refer to as "animals" were pre-humans?

Darren McGavin: Yes. The report also speaks to the fact that the female slaves found it a great honor to be chosen to live with and to bear the offspring of the gods.

Woman: Good Lord.

Darren McGavin: You see, it's no coincidence that the spacemen are almost identical to us. It is not, Sarah, a cace of two species developing - evolving - independently of each other. Those ancient spacemen altered forever our evolution. They are the missing link.

Scientist in lab coat: Do you know what you are saying?

Darren McGavin: Yes. We, mankind, the human race, are their children!

(dramatic pause, music rises, thoughtful expressions)

What me must find out now is why they are monitoring us, why they are watching us.

[end time 1: 36: 55]

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