This is made for entertainment above all else. The goal is to give the viewer reason to hide under their blankets at night. At times it succeeds, with creepy atmospheric music and a culture that exists in a permanent Halloween mode after the sun sets. Many times, I thought that there is something more profound to cover about these forsaken mining towns and their neglected people, who cling generationally to hopes of an otherworldly observer. Abandoned coal mines are truly haunted places, filled with tragic stories of crushed hopes and dreams, squashed beneath the light of day. Why then, does West Virginia want to preserve coal as the cornerstone of its economy? Perhaps that's what the UFOs want to know.
As someone who loves a well done UFO story but comes from a skeptical angle, I keep an open mind with shows like this, hoping for some new information to shift the needle toward belief. There are new accounts that I had never before heard, but many of the sightings seem to omit the most glaring possibility, that these UFOs are satellites. I was amazed to not hear a single mention of that possibility, particularly toward the end when they go into a field for a "dark sky" viewing of a tiny red object making a slow transit high up in the atmosphere. No one pulls out their iPhone to check if it's an iridium satellite passing overhead.
To truly break new ground, a documentary like this needs more honesty, and has to get the more common explanations out of the way and demonstrate why they don't completely explain the accounts. But this is mainly for entertainment, so we pretend along.
There is a great fictional UFO film to be made here, threading some of these accounts into a cohesive story, using this setting. I would gladly pay to see that.
