Introduction
There’s something mysterious about UFOs. They call to us, like a secret of the cosmos, whispering outside our door and knocking quietly. We listen carefully but struggle to hear. Is someone there? Louder and louder these noises grow — until eventually, they become thuds. We can no longer ignore them. Someone is at the door. And for better or worse, we must open it.
I remember when I first stumbled onto this topic. I remember reading the famous cases as a child— Socorro, Ariel, Roswell, Rendlesham — and finding them quite strange. It was difficult to sort out what I was hearing. Something didn’t add up: ordinary experience told me this wasn’t real. Society told me UFOs were science fiction (non-human craft). I knew nobody that believed in them. No one outwardly expressed interest, anyway.
But I couldn’t just move past them, because I couldn’t understand: why were there so many reports of this stuff? Why did so many people have such similar, heartfelt stories? Deeply personal and detailed accounts of Earth-shattering encounters? Were they all just misidentifications and crazy people? And why did so many prominent figures support these claims — the last people you would expect to hear it from? Former presidents, military leaders, astronauts, scientists? Why were there so many investigations concerned with it, funded by governments, armies and premier research organizations?
It’s tempting to try to relay the initial experience of having your paradigm changed. I’ll never forget that first feeling — having your mind reprogrammed. It’s wild. You may not register it at the time, but later, you notice its effects. You see the mark that was left. And it whispers to you, calling you to return to it. You can’t silence it. Your subconscious knows there was something there. The quiet knock at the door.
I remember learning about Lonnie Zamora, for example, and his close-encounter in Socorro, New Mexico. Here was this man: an apparently soberly-minded, respected police officer, talking about strange creatures. Creatures that operated an engineered, egg-shaped craft. That sort of crash-landed, got out, saw him, and scurried off. An episode that changed him until the day he died. That he never forgot.
The case was picked up by the US Air Force’s UFO investigation, Project Blue Book. It convinced the then-skeptical and now-famed top advisor, astrophysicist Dr. J. Allen Hynek, that UFOs were real. It simply didn’t make sense to him, nor to me, to dismiss Lonnie. There were scientifically measurable impressions on the ground matching his description. There was evidence of plant life that was disturbed and burned. Not to mention, there were 5 other witnesses. The case couldn’t be tossed aside.
While this case was fascinating, it didn’t sway me. But it did spark something. You read such a report and keep expecting to find obvious red flags — any flags, really. You keep waiting to hear about how he was drinking on the job, or liked to make up wild stories. But you don’t. So you think, maybe he was hallucinating — this was a misinterpretation or a peculiar manifestation of the mind. But you remember the physical evidence and the other witnesses. You reason it must be a prank, military test, or something similar. Perhaps, but how? In 1964, kid-sized people manned an advanced aircraft completely unlike any vehicle at the time (and today), to prank six random people in the desert? And the key witness was sure that that what he saw — up close — was clearly not human?
Occam’s razor.
Realizations
You read enough cases — especially the good ones — and you start realizing a few things.
Firstly, the conventional explanations generally aren’t very strong. This might sound biased — it probably is — but once upon a time I was a skeptic! I noticed that they typically miss key details. They’ll declare hoax, but forget about the radiation readings. They’ll say natural anomaly, but ignore the radar track. They’ll insist on manmade, as if we know how to build a flying tic tac — or would. When these fail, some will just dismiss the main data point entirely: the testimony of those who were actually there. The people with first-hand information, folks like you or me. Such doubters see no issue speculating after the fact, sitting half-way around the world.
Secondly, you realize that we’re probably not alone. Dare I say: we are not alone. In light of this data, how can we be? How can we rationally dismiss quality cases? How can we dismiss the Ariel school incident when we weren’t actually there? How can we brush over 60+ kids — and at least one teacher — that had nearly identical, independent accounts of a close-encounter? And all maintain that story today, some 30 years later? Or the Nimitz encounter and its video? Or Varginha? Or Westall? Or the other hundreds of thousands of known cases? How can we declare every one of these false and not the one thing they all claim to be?
Every believer is puzzled by the person that manages this, particularly because they tend not to be as informed. Let me ask you: why do we behave like we’ve all sat down and reviewed every shred of data, when most of us know <1% of it? How can we plausibly account for a phenomenon which spans decades, exists in every country, and indiscriminately affects every demographic? How can we dismiss the conclusions of prominent psychiatrists, like Dr. John Mack, who maintain that only real phenomena produces such psychological consistency?
Thirdly, you start to understand that — crazy as it sounds — the world you’re living in is not the one you were told. You don’t learn this until it happens. The things you thought had value suddenly look peculiar — like they have a new layer to them. You can’t help but think to yourself, what the heck is actually going on? What is life all about? Who is piloting these UFOs? Who are these beings? What are they doing here? How long have they been here? What is there relationship to us? Are they engaging in ways that might require us to rethink our goals — my goals?
Fourthly, you learn that topics of this magnitude do funny things to the mind. For many believers, it has a magnetizing effect — almost religious. It becomes a thing you cannot learn enough about. You see no bigger opportunity, and no bigger threat. This even happens to some non-believers. You need not travel far to find a skeptic far more obsessed with UFOs than many devout believers.
And while the average skeptic would simply rather not think about UFOs, a completely understandable position, it is not uncommon to hear confusing defences of their position. Of course, some are more reasonable than others, but the range of rebuttals can stretch from easily refutable to more unconventional, more creative, than the prospect of other life.
Personally, I’ve heard all kinds of things from skeptics. The thing that tends to stand out is lack of awareness about the evidence. But it’s interesting — genuinely strange to be honest — how some will bend over backwards to guard their stake. Many believers will know what I’m getting at.
I can recall one time when somebody explained the Nimitz incident as an unknown natural phenomenon. I inquired about how this phenomenon demonstrated intelligence — as the main witness, David Fravor, reported that the object seemed to “notice” him, mirror his movements, then move to an encrypted location tens of miles away in seconds. This person suggested (truthfully) that it could be a single-celled organism, currently unknown to humans, that lived in the sky and could shift between dimensions. I again inquired about how this creature (which all witnesses thought was a craft) appeared to demonstrate intelligence. The response did not address this point — I could not get them to address that, in fact — but added that this creature did not have any real intelligence.
It is as if some forget that non-human intelligence is acceptable in our scientific framework. We seem oblivious to the fact that a significant portion of our lives is guided by things that would seem like magic 100 years ago, let alone 1000. Every major discovery is a crazy idea until it isn’t.
It is also not unusual for the skeptic to simply refuse to provide a counter-assessment — which I can understand, but do find rather odd, given that there isn’t much inconsistency in reporting. I actually feel the subject is pretty straightforward on the surface — it’s just a lot of people saying the same thing, over and over again. But some are happy to label this inconclusive. And implicit in that decision to not accept the conclusions of first-hand experiencers is the belief that UFOs are something else — what?
What is so complicated here?
More, to propose that some of their beliefs are more fantastic and less supported by evidence is no deterrent. The prospect that nuclear weapons are not real, that space is not really so vast and infinite, or just that they might not be as open-minded as they think — these are ridiculous concepts.
To be clear: I believe in nukes and space, despite not seeing much footage of either (as you can mostly trust people). And I can agree with anyone that a UFO reality is hard to accept. It’s very hard for a lot of experiencers, too. But it’s also not unrealistic. Is other life not bound to eventually appear?
Which leads to a final word on skeptics, as the intention here is not to attack them, but rather to share a perspective. It’s to share my journey becoming a believer, and why I departed my former mindset:
You begin to suspect that some just don’t want this to be true.
Which, obviously, is not an argument against UFOs being real. But how prominent, true or even important this perspective is, isn’t clear. It’s just a feeling. Sometimes it’s true of believers as well. You start recognizing that, often, you’re not debating the logical half of a skeptical mind. You’re debating defence mechanisms. You’re debating pre-existing beliefs, the ones that ground them to reality. You’re contending with a personality. You’re unravelling much deeper thoughts and feelings — fear of the unknown, fear of being lost. These people are not stupid — you’re just not engaging with the parts of them you think.
You also sense that, perhaps, what distinguishes believers from skeptics is a willingness to trust and belief about what’s possible.
My assessment (which could easily be wrong): the skeptic tends to be more coloured by negative social experiences. They don’t seem to trust as easily. When they aren’t religious, which isn’t unusual, skeptics seem to have more desire to disassociate from power beyond them. I have observed, for instance, that while the skeptic tends to agree that alien life probably exists, this takes longer to conclude, especially the notion that some is almost certainly more intelligent than us.
The believer is quick to accept this, and tends to — overall — feel more positively connected to it (but certainly not always). The believer has ideas about how such knowledge relates to others and to themselves, which can be foreign to the skeptic. It is not because they can’t understand it, but because they don’t care to. They don’t focus on it. They see little practical utility in chasing UFOs — which, again, is understandable. They tend to be more concerned with day-to-day matters. To the extent they can identify a connection, there is often more downside. What’s the point? Why would they help us? Who cares? And while both might agree that we know very little about the cosmos, the believer is usually more half-glass-full, the skeptic usually more half-glass-empty. And at the extreme end, you probably wouldn’t be wrong to point out that some skeptics dislike or even downright despise UFOs.
Regarding the second idea, some think intelligence is the deciding factor that separates believers and skeptics. I’m not convinced. There are plenty of smart and not-so-smart folks in both camps. I’m tempted to say it plays a role, but I feel more that open-mindedness is the culprit. While this typically correlates with intelligence, here it is its own beast. It is probably safe to say that believers tend to be more open-minded. I might even caveat that and say specifically concerning what’s physically possible.
That’s not to say that skeptics are not open-minded. There are plenty that are imaginative and truly curious. But perhaps fewer. And I have a sneaking suspicion that more open-minded skeptics tend to be “experiencers” of some variety. Not of UFOs, or not necessarily that, but of other things. Things they wouldn’t have believed unless experienced.
I think this is partly why it’s so hard to convince many skeptics. How can you communicate the vastness of Existence if they don’t see it?
Implications
Returning to that story, of the boy that stumbled on this UFO topic, I couldn’t shake the feeling that not only was there truth to this, it was the biggest story ever. There was another intelligence on the planet! And it was significantly smarter than us! I felt it was so important that to ignore it would be an exercise in insanity. We would dismiss it at our peril. It would be like choosing to continue living in the dark ages, or choosing to ignore a threat that could destroy the world. I felt that, regardless of how nice these other beings were, the leadership and technology to traverse the cosmos and end disease was now here — staring us in the face.
I thought, we’re going mad trying to treat illnesses and build rockets, trying to stop madmen from destroying the world, when the solution is literally floating above us. Maybe — just maybe — we don’t even have to die anymore. Maybe we don’t have to lose people anymore. Maybe we could bring people back. We could use this golden ticket to not only make science fiction real, we to push the boundary far beyond that. We could make a meaningful jump in our evolution — and end so much of our terrible suffering.
Obviously, I don’t fully understand the logistics of this. But I believed then and I believe now: with a will there’s a way. I figured, if we all just learned this evidence, and understood that UFOs were real, then perhaps we could generate the interest necessary to attempt contact. And from that contact, we could create a lasting alliance to move us forward. Or we could acquire what we need by some other means.
Believe it or not, for a time I dropped the topic. For years and years. At an impressionable age, I was told that only crazy people believed in such things. And while I couldn’t square away that something felt sincere and important about this — that for something that wasn’t real, it sure was becoming more widely discussed — I understood where my chief discourager was coming from. I knew that UFOs attracted eccentric personalities. I knew there weren’t any clear videos of them. I knew it was mostly stories. And I knew it seemed like a distant dream. So, my interest with the Phenomenon faded — almost entirely.
Almost.