“Within a year after I had launched my full-time UFO investigating effort in 1966 the phenomenon had zeroed in on me…. My telephone ran amok first, with mysterious strangers calling day and night to deliver bizarre messages ‘from the space people.’ Then I was catapulted into the dreamlike fantasy world of demonology. I kept rendezvous with black Cadillacs on Long Island, and when I tried to pursue they would disappear impossibly on dead-end roads…. Luminous aerial objects seemed to follow me around like faithful dogs. The objects seemed to know where I was going and where I had been. I would check into a motel at random only to find that someone had made a reservation in my name…. I was plagued by impossible coincidences, and some of my closest friends in New York … began to report strange experiences of their own – poltergeists erupted in their apartments, ugly smells of hydrogen sulfide haunted them…. More than once I woke up in the middle of the night to find myself unable to move, with a huge dark apparition standing over me. For a time I questioned my sanity….”
John A. Keel
A Musical Interlude
Last summer Steven Speilberg came out of retirement to suggest, by way of an entertaining movie titled Day of Disclosure, that extraterrestrial visitors have an important message. Meanwhile, a large subset of the population believes the U.S. Government has been operating a UFO crash retrieval program. One former intelligence official has testified that military contractors, operating without congressional oversight, have been reverse-engineering non-human propulsion and power systems. We are now hearing fantastical claims from military and intelligence “whistleblowers.” The tall tales grow taller by the day. But there is a problem insofar as present-day allegations about aliens were presaged in 1930s comic books and pulp fiction, where the “Little Grey (Green)” alien archetype – defined by smooth grey-green skin, oversized bald heads, and large black eyes – predominated. The foundation for these small creatures was firmly laid decades before anyone reported seeing them.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, science fiction pulp magazines, like Astounding Stories and Wonder Stories, and comic strips such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, frequently featured multi-colored extraterrestrials. While the exact phrase “little green men” wasn’t generally used, short green humanoids, Venusians, and Martians were staple visual tropes.
The first documented newspaper column explicitly tying “little green men” to an alien spaceship appeared on November 1, 1938, in the Corpus Christi Times. A reporter wrote a satirical column following Orson Welles’s famous War of the Worlds broadcast, joking that “thirteen little green men from Mercury stepped out of their spaceship.” The aliens of 1930s-50s pulp fiction offered green, silver, or vividly multicolored aliens, sometimes with antennae, pointed ears, spacesuits, or reptilian skin.
The handoff from science fiction to ufology occurred following the 1955 Kelly-Hopkinsville (Kentucky) incident, where a family claimed to have encountered small metallic-silver humanoid creatures. Journalists reporting the case took creative license, using the popular sci-fi phrase “little green men” to describe the entities. By the time the Betty and Barney Hill abduction case introduced distinctly “Grey” aliens into the cultural bloodstream, the public has adopted ever-after “little greys” as the standard depiction of the extraterrestrial visitor.
Today we continue to transition from the comic book depictions of the 1930s to sightings and alleged abductions all the way to congressional hearings about a super-secret Legacy Program and the reverse engineering of crashed non-human vehicles. A curious debate has arisen as to whether ufology is the stuff of myth or represents an actual extraterrestrial visitation, or something far stranger. Since 2020, when the Pentagon showed gun camera footage of strange craft eluding U.S. carrier pilots, the government has shown two faces: (1) the face of the concerned whistleblower with titillating revelations; and (2) the face of studied skepticism accompanied by denials that extraterrestrials have reached Earth. There came, as well, the landmark House Oversight Committee Session held on 26 July 2023 and the claims of David Grusch along with other highly credible military witnesses. Officially, the Department of War and mainstream scientific agencies strongly disputed the claims that the U.S. Government is hiding extraterrestrial technology. The AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) Historical Report Volume 1 concluded that there is no empirical evidence confirming that any UAP represents extraterrestrial technology or off-world material recoveries:
“To date, AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology or the existence of classified program that had not been properly reported to Congress. Investigative efforts determined that most sightings were the result of misidentification of ordinary objects and phenomena. Although many UAP reports remain unsolved….”
However, a very different narrative, based on witness testimony from military intelligence officials and scientists is leading the public to accept the notion of ongoing extraterrestrial visitation. In confronting this testimony, we are put in a peculiar position. On the one hand, the sensible analyst cannot say nothing is happening. On the other hand, we do not want to end up affirming the absurd pulp fiction notions that Stephen Spielberg and other purveyors of popular culture continue injecting into the subject. The ideological and cultural contamination of UAP/UFO investigations may already represent an epidemic of the popular mind. The existence of a growing mental contagion means that even government-sponsored scientific groups can get ahead of themselves, can offer up 1930s comic strips as something real, can jump to conclusions, can create mythologies and inspire demonologies; for the claims we are now hearing from supposedly serious people are so fantastical, and so distressing, that no sensible person wants to entertain such things.
Why is it distressing? Because of certain sinister implications that are growing more sinister by the day. Something is supposedly out there, lurking behind clouds and abducting people, or disappearing people from national parks, while refusing to appear openly as Columbus did at San Salvador. It leaves human observers with the impression of marked enmity or – on the part of the alleged aliens – disdain for humanity; for one does not send out delegations to lower animals, or make diplomatic relations with chattel. If, behind the UAP/UFO phenomenon we are dealing with physical beings, sharing our corporeal nature, then we have a problem. One thinks of a cow, a horse, a dog, etc. One might keep them in a pen, or in a field, and milk them or take their eggs, or butcher them for meat. One does not treat them as equals.
So how many whistleblowers are there and how many have come forward? No exact, verified number of UFO/UAP whistleblowers has been publicly released by Congress or the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG). But new books by former government officials seem to be popping out of publishing houses every couple of months. A particularly disturbing account is found in Jay Stratton’s book, Out of the Shadows. He was Chief of Air and Space Warfare at the DIA, and head of the Air, Space, and Maritime Defense Division, which is one of the highest-ranking civilian positions in defense intelligence. It is the equivalent of the military rank of two-star general or admiral. And Stratton says a non-human craft did indeed crash at Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. Stratton claims the craft broke into two pieces and that the military recovered both the wreckage and non-human bodies. According to those in the Legacy Program that briefed him, the recovered beings were dead on arrival, while others (from other crashes) were allegedly alive but later perished after refusing food or contact. Stratton states that private military contractors currently hold over 12 recovered vehicles of non-human origin as part of an 80-year-long monopoly and concealment program. And Stratton is not alone in making these claims.
In his official testimony before the U.S. House Oversight Committee, David Grusch, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, stated under oath that his allegations about recovered craft and bodies are built on interviews he conducted with over 40 individuals over a four-year period while working on the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force. Grush testified that he personally interrogated multiple individuals with direct, firsthand knowledge of these reverse-engineering programs to provide “protected disclosures” to the Intelligence Community Inspector General. The names of these first-hand witnesses remain highly classified.
And how has this testimony been received by leading experts and by Congress? Even the ever-skeptical octogenarian UFO researcher, Jacques Vallée, has gone through a profound shift in his thinking. In decades past his studies examined cultural factors, human deception, and the possible existence of extra-dimensional beings. He has been, in fact, the primary architect of the Interdimensional Hypothesis (which aligns with religious interpretations of the phenomena). In the past, Vallée viewed the Roswell incident through the lens of deception, folklore, or secret military operations. In the last and final volume of his journals (Journal 7), Vallée appears ready to accommodate a more complex reality, including physically solid visitors. In recent years he has personally involved himself with forensic fieldwork on alleged UAP crash sites – most notably his deep-dive investigation into the 1945 Trinity UAP crash. By teaming up with Dr. Garry Nolan, who has performed highly precise isotopic analysis on recovered metal fragments, Vallée admits the existence of a physical trail of evidence that cannot be readily dismissed.
Vallée now accepts that the whistleblowers are telling the truth about hidden government labs, retrieved crafts, and non-human bodies. Yet he does not jump to the conclusion that the existence of bodies proves the extraterrestrial hypothesis. He cautions readers that formal disclosure from the government may be highly managed and fragmented. Whatever the government has, Vallée strongly suspects these beings do not fit into our clean pop-culture definition of “aliens.” He suspects, rather, that even recovered bodies may represent a consciousness-altering force that is deeply woven into the fabric of human history. Here, the world’s most famous scientific skeptic of nuts-and-bolts craft seems to admit that the physical trail he spent decades questioning is now affirmed, however obliquely, by the very intelligence apparatus that has supposedly been trying to hide it. At the same time, Vallée emphasizes the existence of a very real spiritual dangers associated with a naïve belief in UAP/UFO beings.
Psychological and cultural shock is a real possibility here. Whoever and whatever they are, they may be inclined to deceive or even control us. More than that, the discovery that we coexist with an intelligence that can manipulate our thoughts, our perception of time, and transcend our dimension, is a serious threat to humanity’s self-concept.
Historically, whenever we encounter a phenomenon we cannot control or comprehend, we tend to stop thinking scientifically and start building mythologies, cults, and dogmas around it. Vallée’s greatest fear seems to be that a partial, highly managed “disclosure” by the government might cause humanity to worship these entities or turn them into a secular religion. Belief in extraterrestrial visitors does not merely change our history books; it fundamentally changes the context of our existence, and what it means to be human.
It is impossible to overstate the unusual nature of what has occurred within government itself. The ICIG found David Grusch’s whistleblower complaint to be “credible and urgent.” This effectively validated Grusch’s claim that UAP/UFO-related information was being illegally concealed from Congress. Since Grusch’s 2023 testimony, other former military intelligence personnel have begun speaking to lawmakers. During a 2025 House Oversight hearing titled “Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection,” former intelligence officer Dylan Borland testified to Congress about facing immediate professional retaliation and blacklisting after providing corroborating data on non-human technologies to the ICIG and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
Meanwhile, the Department of War and the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) continue to issue strenuous denials regarding Grusch’s testimony and other official complaints to the ICIG. Pentagon officials insist they have found no verifiable, empirical evidence of any active or historical government programs involving the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials. In fact, there is no physical, verifiable, or publicly available scientific evidence supporting David Grusch’s claims. What exists is a growing body of corroborating testimony that has progressively eroded the positions of skeptics on all sides. Famously, Grusch testified that while working on the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force, he was given access to highly sensitive foreign intelligence, program documents, and photographs detailing how the reverse-engineering operations allegedly work. During closed-door sessions with members of Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG), Grusch provided a list of specific coordinates, facility names, and individuals directly involved in the alleged crash-retrieval programs.
The scientific community, consisting of professional astronomers and physicists, generally remains skeptical of Grusch’s claims, saying that no hard proof has been presented. Grusch’s testimony is considered an “argument from authority” with no grounding in empirical data. Researchers at the SETI Institute and members of NASA’s UAP independent study team, noted that Grusch presented no public photos, satellite tracks, or physical debris samples that can be independently analyzed. Overall, the testimony of David Grusch is more political than scientific.
Last February, President Donald Trump formally ordered federal agencies – including the Department of War and the ODNI – to begin identifying, reviewing, and releasing the UAP/UFO records to the public. A multi-agency task force is carrying out a rolling disclosure by working within existing legal structures. Then Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard made an official statement supporting the UAP disclosure initiative. According to Gabbard, declassification of UAP/UFO files is a necessary response to a public demand for transparency. She stated,
“The American people have long sought transparency…. Under President Trump’s leadership, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is actively coordinating … to provide the American people with maximum transparency.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth likewise stated,
“The Department of War is in lockstep with President Trump to bring unprecedented transparency regarding our government’s understanding of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation – and it’s time the American people see it for themselves. This release of declassified documents demonstrates the Trump Administration’s earnest commitment to unprecedented transparency.”
Joining this happy chorus, where government’s priority is no longer the keeping of vital secrets, FBI Director Kash Patel said that the FBI “is proud to stand alongside President Trump and our interagency partners in this landmark release of UAP records.” Patel is evidently unaware that President Gerald R. Ford released a great many UFO files in the 1970s. His ignorance of the past notwithstanding, Patel insisted that,
“For the first time in history, the American people have unfettered access to declassified government files on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon – a level of transparency that no prior administration has delivered. The FBI remains committed to supporting this rolling declassification effort with the same rigor and integrity we bring to every national security matter.”
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said,
“I applaud President Trump’s whole-of-Government effort to bring greater transparency to the American people on unidentified anomalous phenomena. At NASA, our job is to bring the brightest minds and most advanced scientific instruments to bear, follow the data, and share what we learn. We will remain candid about what we know to be true, what we have yet to understand, and all that remains to be discovered. Exploration and the pursuit of knowledge are core to NASA’s mission as we endeavor to unlock the secrets of the universe.”
This is almost laughable. Is this “transparency” transparent? While many files, videos, and photographs have been released, we are not being shown non-human bodies or UAP wreckage. No explanation has been offered as to why so many credible people are coming forward, some of them entangled in serious legal difficulties or suffering alleged death threats. Furthermore, very little is being said about the agenda of the supposed non-humans. On its face, the messages given out by UAP/UFO occupants to witnesses have been banal and absurd; though Spielberg’s pop-culture rendering presents the old alien message as timely and urgent (so much so that he left retirement to make his disclosure movie). Imagine someone flying many lightyears to tell us what liberals and communists have been saying for decades. It is not that it sounds like a comic book story. It sounds like a very poorly written comic book story.
Should we believe it is a coincidence that the occupants of UAP/UFOs present us with messages that were Hollywood originals? Or are extraterrestrials so charmed by Hollywood that they cannot help repeating what they espy in our Hollywood movies? It would, indeed, be a strange case of reality imitating art. Of course, Hollywood producers are always copying or stealing from each other, so much so that most of our entertainment is purely imitative rather than creative; that is, with better special effects, better acting, and better cinematography. Just as Spielberg presents us with preachy aliens who contrive to put themselves before TV cameras with the admonition that we should “listen,” Hollywood long ago presented American audiences with a preachy alien named Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). This movie came out a full year before flying Saucer contactee Goerge Adamski claimed an encounter, in the California desert, with Orthon – a Venusian with a message nearly identical to that of Klaatu.
Consider the plot of The Day the Earth Stood Still: a dignified human-looking alien (Klaatu, played by Michael Rennie) lands in Washington, D.C., with a huge robot named Gort. Klaatu delivers an ultimatum to the people of Earth, explaining that other civilizations have been watching Earth’s development of atomic power. Klaatu warns that if humanity carries its violent nuclear tendencies into outer space, the galactic community’s robot enforcers will reduce Earth to a “burnt cinder” if only to preserve interplanetary peace.
In November 1952, Adamski claimed he met a Nordic, blond-haired, extraterrestrial named Orthon who was suspiciously similar to Hollywood’s Klaatu. The meeting allegedly took place in the California desert, where Orthon used telepathy to tell Adamski that nuclear tests and proliferation were endangering planet Earth. According to Adamski, the Venusian was highly concerned that drifting radiation from human atomic bombs would contaminate other planets. Orthon even used hand gestures and uttered the words “Boom! Boom!” to describe human weapons. With this preposterous story on his lips, Adamski launched the “contactee movement.” He alleged the existence of benevolent and wise “Space Brothers” – apostles of cosmic peace who stand in stark contrast to the terrifying, violent, abduction stories of little grey aliens using anal probes on abductees. Though these grey aliens are pushing forward the same old Adamski message in new, more sensational packaging, they are closer to ghouls insofar as they reportedly pass through walls, materialize and dematerialize, often accompanied by poltergeist-type phenomena.
The Quandary of the Other
While most Americans today believe intelligent life exists on other planets, a process has begun in which we agonize over the quandary of the “other” in relation to ourselves; that is, the framing of human identity through the eye of an outside observer. Previously the outside observers were gods or God, devils, angels, etc. These old relations are now intercepted by rumors of extraterrestrials belonging to science fiction rather than sacred scripture. Television broadcasts are now dedicated to the “Chariots of the Gods,” where the UAP/UFO signifies a “chariot.” Today’s fascination with this subject is linked to questions we have about ourselves, about our true origins and destiny. While religion has traditionally provided the answers to such questions, Spielberg’s movie offers a pop-secular answer. And while his narrative, through the character of a nun, denies any conflict between religious answers and extraterrestrial answers, the movie undeniably suggests that the extraterrestrial is providing truth of a religious kind – a truth with salvific significance.
The extraterrestrial visitor to Earth, in one sense, is a cosmic mirror. At the same time, he is the ultimate observer of humanity, the ultimate “other,” possessing no human biases, cultural conditioning, or earthly history. Our speculations about extraterrestrial visitors are less about the visitors themselves and more about a desire see ourselves in a cosmic mirror – distorted as it is by the perfervid imaginings of Erich von Däniken and Steven Spielberg. The reality behind UFOs is something far stranger and different from what Spielberg’s movie dares to depict. Spielberg delivers up a science fiction/conspiracy extravaganza, plagiarized from the Pentagon Papers, Harlan Ellison, and Bob Lazar – with halos pasted onto an alleged expedition of little grey perverts from Serpo, the fourth planet from Zeta Reticuli.
While there might be extraterrestrials piloting craft in our atmosphere, other explanations fit the facts better. In his book, Daimonic Reality, Patrick Harpur lists the various competing theories concerning UFOs as follows:
• Spacecraft built by the denizens of distant planets.
• Craft built by a superior race living inside the Earth, which is hollow.
• Craft built by humans or aliens in secret bases on the Earth’s surface.
• Craft which have been developed by humans in the future and are travelling back in time.
• Craft which come from ‘other dimensions.’
• Products of a subterraneous ‘earth energy’ which interacts with our psyches so that we perceive them as structured craft.
• ‘Purely psychological’ projections of the unconscious mind.
According to Harpur, our mythologies are “always imagined” spatially and temporally. Yet the soul of the world (a.k.a., Plato’s Anima Mundi) is itself nonspatial as well as timeless. Harpur observes,
“Like the traditional definition of God, [the UFO phenomenon] is ‘an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.’ But in order to talk about those models at all, we are forced to fall back on spatial metaphors….”
These invite prepositions such as “below” or “above,” “inner space” versus “outer space.” Harpur points out that the preferred metaphorical dimension of the soul is “depth.” Here is the original type of dimensionality applied to spirit or mind. Rather than talking about dimensionality, however, folklorists prefer the metaphor of the “Otherworld.” Modern society assumes that because the Otherworld exists only in the mind, that it is unreal. This is literalist, says Harpur, and is an error. The non-spatiality of the Otherworld, he explains, is multi-spatial – being everywhere and nowhere, as we find in the lore of the UFO alien. As explained in a long footnote below, the alien home world of Serpo (in the Zeta Reticuli system) does not exist literally. At the same time, many competing notions of “alien” origins coexist, including the notion that they are not aliens at all, but non-humans originating from under the oceans or from underground bases in mountains. This non-spatiality combined with the cognitive dissonance of multi-spatiality is characteristic of daimonic reality. Fairies, for example, are thought to live in the air and underground. They are also said to live in hidden offshore islands. The ancient Greeks described Hades as a subterranean place that also contains light and air. The Elysian fields were simultaneously accessible by sea and under the Earth, adjacent to Hades.
Examining ancient mythology, we are reminded that myths are not real. In terms of modern thinking, this means they are unimportant. Psychologists say that the voices heard by schizophrenics are also unreal; that is, they are hallucinations. Consequently, schizophrenic patients are given psychopharmaceuticals that are supposed to make their voices go away. Usually, these highly toxic medicines produce their effects by damaging the mental processes of the patient. Underneath it all, the voices remain. According to clinicians Jerry Marzinsky and Sherry Swiney, “Society has programmed us to believe that all our thoughts come from and belong to us. Schizophrenics believe this also until their thoughts start becoming so strange and malicious that they begin to wonder.”
UFO abductees, like schizophrenics, hear voices (telepathic messages) in their heads. And they also see images. Pilots who chase UFOs with gun cameras also see images, and these are often captured on their gun cameras. The assumption that the voices of the schizophrenic are hallucinatory follows the assumption that the images seen by UFO witnesses are hallucinatory. Such assumptions are due to a basic misunderstanding about reality itself. In the prologue of his book on flying saucers, first published in 1958, Dr. Carl Jung wrote of a “mysterious myth of things seen in the sky,” quoting the head of Project Bluebook, Edward J. Ruppelt’s attestation that, “Something is seen, but one doesn’t know what.” According to Jung,
“It is difficult, if not impossible, to form any correct idea of these objects, because they behave not like bodies but like weightless thoughts. Up till now there has been no indisputable proof of the physical existence of Ufos except for the cases picked up by radar. I have discussed the reliability of these radar observations with Professor Max Knoll, a specialist in this field. What he has to say is not encouraging. Nevertheless, there do seem to be authenticated cases where the visual observation was confirmed by a simultaneous radar echo.”
Indeed, as in the famous 2004 UFO-sighting case involving the USS Nimitz off the coast of California, carrier pilots saw a UAP and acquired gun camera footage while other sensors (including radars) confirmed the existence of a solid object. The main problem with this sighting, however, is that the object in question – tracked by the advanced AEGIS radar system for nearly two weeks – behaved in ways that defy the laws of physics; for example, after Commander David Fravor visually engaged the object, it vanished into thin air. Radar operators immediately re-acquired the target as being 60 miles away, exactly at the “assigned” Combat Air Patrol position previously assigned to Fravor. The object knew where Fravor was supposed to be, and in a demonstration of clairvoyance was waiting for him. Nimitz radar operators tracked multiple UAPs dropping from altitudes of 80,000 feet down to sea level in “a matter of seconds.” Senior military analysts studying the radar data calculated that during a specific segment of this descent, the object dropped from 28,000 feet to sea level (5.3 miles) in 0.78 seconds. To achieve these speeds instantaneously from a hovering position, scientific reports estimate the object pulled between 80g to over 2,000g of force. For context, human pilots lose consciousness at roughly 9 g, and modern fighter jets risk structural failure at 12g. Furthermore, the objects produced no sonic booms, no visible heat signatures, and no traditional aerodynamic displacement. These observations are well-documented and have been presented in congressional hearings by witnesses and experts. We might be inclined to accept that the objects described are of extraterrestrial origin, belonging to an advanced extraterrestrial race, yet the problem postulated by Dr. Jung goes deeper:
“Such an object provokes, like nothing else, conscious and unconscious fantasies, the former giving rise to speculative conjectures and pure fabrications, and the latter supplying the mythological background inseparable from these provocative observations.”
A process of mythologizing simultaneously triggers speculations in the form of motion pictures produced by Hollywood, which in themselves produce a shift in mass consciousness. In fact, the public is now passing from semi-disbelief to belief. As with Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, recent news coverage on UAP/UFOs is having a decisive impact. What was publicly ridiculed yesterday has been elevated to established fact in many people’s eyes, even as the evidence itself is frustratingly ambiguous. The mainstream position has been that UFOs are a subject favored by kooks and crazies. A schizophrenic might ask, “Do you hear the voices, too?” Today’s UFO witness asks, “Do you also see the saucers?” It is crazy to hear voices, since normal people do not hear voices. But this begs the question. If carrier pilots can see UFOs, and are considered normal, might schizophrenics be normal in the same sense? Of course, the voices they hear are not projected by sound waves – but they nonetheless show up on brain scans, animating the auditory cortex of the brain. The materialist says the schizophrenic suffers from an auditory hallucination. What about those cases where two people are experiencing the same auditory hallucination? And yes, the auditory cortex can light up for two people at once with the same hallucination, even when no sound waves exist. Here we have a psychotic disorder known as folie à deux. We condescend to the schizophrenic by saying that his voices are only in his head. But 1.7 to 2.6 percent of psychiatric hospital admissions involve what they call “shared delusions,” or “Shared Psychosis.” Let us dismiss the ridiculous theory that a “shared schizophrenic psychosis” can be explained by way of “subaudible whispering.” There is something more mysterious attending such cases.
Without explaining the mechanism involved, psychologist Sam Vaknin says that “Shared Psychosis” is a communicable disease. If you hear the voices, too, then you have been infected. If you see the flying saucer or tictac zooming by at impossible speeds, once again, you have been infected with a solipsistic apperceptive disorder which has, in Vaknin’s words, “many epidemiological dimensions; in other words, it is very reminiscent of a viral disease.” It is a disease, he hints, that produces a consciousness in the grips of “oblivion.” According to Vaknin, “mental illness is contagious.” Vaknin went on to explain,
“We have a series of studies, most recently in schools … where they introduce a single diagnosed boy or girl into a classroom, [and] about half the classroom developed mental health symptoms within a few weeks. [That is] Diagnosable mental health symptoms. Like everything else in human life, our states of mind are contagious. They are communicable. I would say, ‘a communicable disease,’ yes?”
Perhaps Vaknin is suggesting that our ideas about reality are also contagious. Therefore, our misunderstandings would be contagious, our criminal propensities – even our murderous thoughts would be contagious (when we have such thoughts). The more we are exposed to a schizophrenic, the more likely it is that we will hear the voices, too. And the more we listen to the testimony of UFO witnesses and abductees, the more likely it is that we shall also see the saucers. Please do not misunderstand. I am not saying that flying saucers are not real. I am not saying that the voices of the schizophrenic have no reality outside the schizophrenic’s mind. I maintain that these phenomena are objectively real; but they may involve phenomena we do not understand.
It is interesting to wonder if the voices heard by a schizophrenic are the cause of his madness rather than a symptom. Perhaps these voices represent something with agency and intelligence, something outside the patient. Joan of Arc listened to her “voices” and the English conquest of France was stopped and reversed. Everyone at the time (except the defeated English) held it as a miracle, as some kind of divine intervention. A milk maid defeated the invincible English armies. She predicted this would be so.
Materialist scientism holds that schizophrenics suffer from a chemical imbalance in the brain which causes their auditory cortex to “light up” with chatter. This explanation is incredible on its face. A chemical imbalance cannot produce coherent speech. Only an intelligent being can speak. But when a psychiatric patient tells a doctor about his voices, the doctor tells him that he is “hallucinating.” And where is the proof of this? Nobody has ever offered any proof. According to Marzinsky and Swiney,
“Most schizophrenics learn the hard way that others do not hear their voices and cannot relate to what they are encountering. This is especially true for younger patients, some of whom assume everyone hears voices but don’t speak of them. They are surprised to learn this is not the case, leaving them confused. Many strive to converse with others in an attempt to appear normal. The other person has no idea that the schizophrenic hears two dialogues, and struggles to decipher between them. To the other individual, the schizophrenic appears confused, disorganized, and unable to concentrate and follow the conversation.”
What, then, is the truth? Are UFOs related to schizophrenia? In an age of mass sightings, is humanity suffering from mass psychosis? Sweet songs of transparency waft from government leaders. From the lips of the bureaucrat to the door of truth – an integrative propaganda of “we are on your side, Mr. and Mrs. America.” But no serious researcher, politician, or commentator believes the government is showing the public everything it knows. Bipartisan consensus in Congress explicitly maintains that a vast web of over-classification and hidden compartmentalization protects what nobody is likely to discover anytime soon. What is disputed is why the information is being hidden, especially when it comes to the bizarre, paradigm-shifting aspects of the phenomenon (famously outlined in the writings of UFO researcher John A. Keel almost half a century ago).
According to Dr. Wilson van Dusen, most schizophrenics are wise enough to “hide the monster that rages within.” The voices they hear also encourage this, which is how the voices gain strength. The judgmental reactions of others encourage a general withdrawal from society. “One consistent finding was that patients felt they had contact with another world or order of beings,” noted van Dusen. “All objected to the term hallucination.”
Mainstream skeptics and official Pentagon narratives from the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) argue that the cover-up isn’t about aliens. This statement might be true. Then add the fact that classification of UAPs may be necessary if a social contagion is in the offing, especially when wars are beginning in various regions and people are seeing top secret U.S. weapons flying overhead. Aerospace technologies, especially stealth technologies, need to be protected from prying eyes. In addition, existing UFO/UAP files may disclose embarrassing intelligence failures on the part of U.S. officials. Opaque military bureaucracies are administratively predisposed to classify everything and anything remotely connected to sensitive projects. And this is perfectly understandable. A foreign power might, in fact, create a transparency movement if only to discover America’s most carefully guarded secrets.
But there is, as John A. Keel and Jacques Vallee have explained, a more serious reason to keep the phenomenon out of the public eye. Those who have investigated UAP/UFOs have discovered something so disturbing and shocking that the public may best be left in the dark. The high strangeness of these phenomena opens to the paranormal – to telepathy, prophecy, and missing time. Researchers like Keel and Vallee have long argued that the government is silent because traditional military science has no idea how to defend against such phenomena.
In fact, the most terrifying episodes have been reported by government officials. These are sometimes dubbed the “Hitchhiker Effect.” While investigating anomalous phenomena, shadowy beings follow the investigator home to plague the investigator’s private residence with poltergeist-like infestations. This is a well-documented aspect of the phenomenon. To paraphrase the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “If you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss will stare into you.”
Famously, the Pentagon’s official DIA-funded Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) sent elite military intelligence officers and scientists to places like Skinwalker Ranch to investigate anomalous phenomena. Contrary to expectations, a “contagion-like” effect occurred. Investigators reported that whatever entity or force was at the site seemingly attached itself to them. Upon returning to their suburban homes thousands of miles away, their families experienced a terrifying set of bizarre phenomena; including, shadowy figures, floating orbs, sudden spikes in gamma radiation, and aggressive poltergeist activity (doors slamming, objects flying around the house, etc.).
Because the phenomenon targeted the wives and children of scientists and investigators, the Pentagon began to view UAP phenomenon not merely as an aviation hazard, but as a biological and psychological threat vector. Here is the reality behind non-disclosure – a reality that Steven Spielberg is not going to present in a “feel-good movie.” Better to let the audience believe there are benevolent aliens than frighten them with stories of things that go bump in the night.
In the case of people allegedly abducted by UFO occupants and forced to endure humiliating examinations and sexual violations, the late Dr. John E. Mack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, began evaluating alleged abductees under the conventional psychiatric assumption that they were suffering from mental illness. However, he famously refused to diagnose them with a pathology after finding no evidence of mental illness to explain their claims. Mack published his findings in the bestseller, Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens. Because he went a step further and suggested that these events might be physically real or originating from another dimension of reality, he caused immense embarrassment to Harvard and the medical establishment. Critics accused him of “going native” and inadvertently using hypnosis to validate or plant false memories. Harvard Medical School took the rare step of appointing a committee to secretly investigate Dr. Mack’s clinical and research methods. After a tense fourteen-month review, Harvard ultimately dropped the investigation and issued no formal censure. Supported by heavy-hitting colleagues and lawyers defending his academic freedom, Mack retained his tenure and full professor status until his death in 2004.
Carl Jung, who was one of the founders of modern psychology, said that he was unqualified to say anything useful about the physical reality of UFOs. “I can concern myself only with their undoubted psychic aspect,” he explained. The UFO, he added, was a “rumor” that goes against “all our basic assumptions about the physical world….” We are inclined to assume, therefore, that UFOs are hallucinatory phenomena. Regarded as a “visionary rumor,” however, we find a deeper set of meanings. Jung then set about listing visionary rumors and categorizing them with: (1) the collective visions of Crusaders at the Siege of Jerusalem; (2) visions experienced by combat soldiers at Mons in the First World War, and (3) the Fatima apparition of 1917. Jung then discussed a spiritualistic séance he attended, where four out of the five people present saw a luminous orb floating about the abdomen of the medium. Jung was the only person who could see nothing.
“They showed me, the fifth person present, exactly where it was, and it was absolutely incomprehensible to them that I could see nothing of the sort,” wrote Jung. “I know three more cases where certain objects were seen in the clearest detail … and could afterwards be proved to be non-existent. Two of these cases happened under my direct observation.”
Jung makes the point that the first requisite for a visionary rumor is “an unusual emotion.” Like other rumors, curiosity and sensation-mongering play their part; but an emotion, springing from a deeper spiritual source, can do more. Jung then mentioned the “motif of an extra-terrestrial invasion” and the idea of machines controlled by intelligent beings from outer space. Many strange reports, full of ominous meaning, have been forwarded by reliable witnesses. Jung wrote,
“One’s hair stands on end when one reads such reports together with the documentary evidence. And when one considers the known possibility of tracking Ufos with radar, then we have all the essentials for an unsurpassable ‘science-fiction story.’ Every man who prides himself on his sound common sense will feel distinctly affronted.”
The phenomenon, whatever it is, provokes in us an awareness of our own limitations – of the limitations of our science, of the hopelessness of our most basic understandings. According to Jung, the UFO is a “living myth.” It taunts our addiction to literalist explanations of reality that may prevent us from realizing that the UFO is a metaphorical or meta-logical object. Spielberg wants us to listen to a literal alien talking to us on television. And this really is absurd. After several decades no such event has ever taken place, and I suspect that no such thing will ever happen. As a visionary rumor, the UFO has risen to the point where many are expecting imminent “disclosure.” What if the facts are so strange, and so disorienting, that the authorities dare not disclose what they have in their files for fear of ridicule – or an even worse, should the contagion spread.
- End
Links and Notes
Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality: Understanding Otherworld Encounters (England: Arkana Penguin, 1995), p. 251.
https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/little_green_men and also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men
https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116282/documents/HHRG-118-GO06-20230726-SD006.pdf
https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/16om7pk/clarifying_gruschs_urgent_and_credible_claims/b
https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/07/28/congress-holds-hearing-on-ufos/
Note: The lore about grey alien origins comes from a star map drawn by Betty Hill, who was famously “abducted” by alien beings in 1961 along with her husband Barney. Under hypnosis, Betty drew a star map showed to her by aliens. In 1969, an amateur astronomer named Marjorie Fish analyzed the map and concluded it pointed to Zeta Reticuli. The lore has been further expanded by conspiracy circles centered on “whistleblower” claims, like those of Bob Lazar, who specifically referred to the alien home world as “Reticulum 4” or “Serpo.” By way of coincidence, the Alien movie franchise, which depicts a ferocious man-eating xenomorph, posits an origin-point for the creature at a moon designated LV-426, which is inside this same Zeta Reticuli system. Readers should be aware that the Zeta Reticuli system has two stars, Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli. It is also worth noting that astronomers, using highly sensitive radio telescopes have found no evidence of planets, debris, or alien radio signals in the Zeta Reticuli system, which is 39.3 light years (or 12 parsecs) from Earth. For many years it was believed that Zeta Reticuli harbored a massive, asymmetric circumstellar debris disk, similar to our own Kuiper Belt. In 2007 and 2010, space-based infrared telescopes detected a strong “infrared excess” coming from the system, which looked like a two-lobed ring of cold space dust and comets orbiting the two stars. To confirm this, astronomers pointed the ultra-precise ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimenter Array) – a vast network of radio antennas in Chile – at Zeta Reticuli. The result showed the debris disks were an illusion. Instead, the two lobes of dust belonged to the background of galaxies millions of lightyears further away (as a kind of background noise). These galaxies just happened to align with the Zeta Reticuli system. That much being discovered, no exoplanets have been found orbitng Zeta 1 or Zeta 2 Reticuli. The SETI project has targeted this system with radio telescopes over the years in search of narrow-band radio transmissions. These scans have returned complete silence. Both stars of the Zeta Reticuli system are yellow dwarfs similar in size, age, and temperature to our own sun. Readers may be curious to know how soon will we be able to visit this system? At its current speed of 38,000 kilometers per hour, NASA’s Voyager 1 is the fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth. As such, Voyager would take 700,000 years to reach Zeta 1 and 2. Of course, Voyager 1 is not headed for any particular star because its flight path was engineered to pass by Jupiter and Saturn. No consideration was given to reaching stars further afield. Voyager 1 is currently headed in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchis, and will pass within 1.7 light years of an obscure red dwarf star named Gliese 445 in about 38,000 years.
See Harpur, p. 174.
Harpur paraphrased, p. 174.
Marzinsky and Swiney, An Amazing Journey Into the Psychotic Mind: Breaking the Spell of the Ivory Tower (Columbia, KY: Engineering Sanity, 2020), p. 65.
Carl Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 6.
https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/psychology/shared-psychosis-a-guide-to-recovery-and-management/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN5Wrzb1psQ&t=3483s. Please go to the 3 minute mark and the comments quoted will occur within a minute and ten seconds.
Marzinsky and Swiney, p. 68.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC523131/
Jung, pp. 8-9.
Ibid, p. 12.
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