Introduction
The UFO or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) subject, as an object of study and public discussion, has received the most robust attentive examination on the aspects of this subject involving sightings of unidentified craft and mysterious lights in the sky and on the issues related to an alleged government coverup. The aspects of this subject that involve reported and vetted encounters of the third and fourth kind have been traditionally ignored or at least downplayed even among ufologists, oftentimes out of a concern that such data would inhibit serious public attention to the subject and suppress an interest by academics in examining any aspect of the subject. Many people, including those in the key public-informing sectors of journalism and academia, have been conditioned into a cynical or apathetic stance by decades of a cultivation of an atmosphere of ridicule and denial around this subject.
This short briefing is offered with hopes that attention will begin to gravitate towards the large body of data existing through the investigative and analytical efforts that have focused since the early 1950s on reports of sightings of and even interactions with a variety of non human entities associated with observed UAP and extremely advanced technology.
This paper will describe the history of investigating close encounter cases and the developed databases relating information and granting opportunities for insight from analysis.
There will also be some basic characterizations and conclusions suggested by the report data, including regarding descriptions of different types of entities consistently observed and the varying activities, including interactions, offering suggestive clues to agendas.
Investigation History and Manifesting Databases
In the earliest decades of the 20th Century a NYC recluse named Charles Fort catalogued many reports of anomalous events, including sightings of what he concluded were extraterrestrial craft and encounters with ET beings.
Charles Fort compiled anomalous events by poring over old newspaper accounts, historical documents and records etc for years in the NYC libraries. Later in life he published books which became classic, well-known works. This spawned the Fortean movement of exploring anomalies of all sorts that people report.
UFO historian Jerome Clark (here in The UFO Book, 1998) identifies Fort’s work:
“After these two failed efforts [to submit his works] Fort found his own voice in The Book of the Damned (1919), written with the distinctive blend of mocking humor, penetrating insight, and calculated outrageousness that soon would be described as ‘Fortean’. In this and 2 other books, New Lands (1923) and Lo! (1931), as well as in correspondence with readers and in letters to newspapers, Fort outlined his evidence for otherworldly visitation.”
The first real focusing in on close encounters that went beyond sightings of craft in the sky and included reports of landed craft and sightings and even encounters with the craft’s occupants came from the work of a wife/husband team who formed the first major UFO organization in 1952.
Coral and Jim Lorenzen didnt feel that occupant sightings and encounters should be ignored, and by developing over time an extensive international network of field investigators as well as panels of scientific consultants, they gathered reports of ce3s from newspaper accounts and their own investigations.
The other major UFO organization, formed in 1956, would in its initial years be very reluctant to address these types of cases. The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) focused on sightings of craft in the sky and the occasional cases involving the craft affecting power systems (of cars, for example, that come in close proximity.
During these early years, the head of NICAP, Marine Major Donald Keyhoe, would especially focus on the government coverup issues in his tv appearances and in his popular books.
The Lorenzens, on the other hand, shared many ce3 cases in their also best selling paperbacks as well as their APRO Bulletin. The cases they shared would become a significant part of the compilations others would develop from multiple sources and investigations. Issues of the APRO Bulletin from 1952 to 1977 are freely available at:
“Close encounters of the third kind” is a categorization offered by Dr. J. Allen Hynek in his 1972 book, The UFO Experience, A Scientific Inquiry. These cases were ones “in which the presence of animated creatures is reported”. Hynek was an astronomer who for decades served as a consultant to the Air Force programs investigating UFOs.
In the late 1970s and early 80s, ufologists Ted Bloecher and David Webb compiled decades of close encounter of the 3td kind cases up through 1977 reports.
That compilation is archived here:
Webb and Bloecher used 7 categories to the HUMCAT cases (showing different evident features):
Type A: Entity is observed inside the object (the true ‘occupant’ report.
Tupe B: Entity is observed entering and/or leaving the object.
Type C: ‘Inferred’ association: entity is observed in the immediate area of a UFO sighting, but is not seeing entering or leaving the object.
Type D: ‘Circumstantial’ association: entity is observed during period of general UFO activity in the area, but no object is reported by the witness of the entity.
Tupe E: No association can be established between entity and UFO activity.
Type F: Situation in which no entity or UFO is physically involved, but information reportedly is conveyed by means of telepathic ‘contact’ or psychic experience.
Type G: Witnesses experiences an on board situation, either voluntary or by abduction. Entities may or may not be present, but their presence is implicit or explicit.
The earliest index of cases in the HUMCAT database covers 1790 thru 1896 and following indexes cover subsequent time periods.
Aside from old historical records, many old cases came to light as described here, by Jerome Clark, pg 261 of Vol 1 of The UFO Encyclopedia:
“As is the case with most pre-1947 20th Century UFO reports, whether of objects in the air or occupants on the ground, we must rely in large part on retrospective testimony from—and the fallible memories of—persons who came forward in the years when it became possible to talk about such things, or simply to put such experiences in a perspective unavailable to witnesses before the onset of the UFO age. Sometimes such testimony comes spontaneously from persons who contact UFO writers or organizations; at other times it has come from children or grandchildren who urged reluctant witnesses to report what for years were stories known only within families.”
A much expanded version of the Webb/Bloecher Humcat compilation was developed, up until recent years, by Albert S. Rosales:
Rosales is based in Miami, working there in law enforcement for 30 years. He has been motivated by strange experiences he began having as a child in his native Cuba (born in 1958, he and his family migrated to the US and he is a long-time citizen).
For years, Rosales posted his growing compilations online but very recently the last remnants of that went off line. Instead, as he reported years he ago he was planning, he has published 15 volumes (inexpensively available via Amazon).
Rosales adopted the catergorization system Webb and Bloecher used for HUMCAT and added 2 more categories:
Type H: When there is a report of an alleged crash or forced landing of a UFO with recovery of its occupants or when an anomalous entity is captured or killed either by a witness or military personnel.
Type X: When the situation is so uncanny that it doesnt fit any of the previous classifications. A new classification, there are several such cases in the files already. I would call these cases “extremely high strangeness”.
I can remember (at his former website) him alerting readers of his archive that the bad cases (hoaxes, tall tales, delusions, etc) were not filtered out.
In the 1980s and beyond an enhanced focus on the cases Webb and Bloecher had classified as Type G (which includes “abduction” by aliens) would come to the forefront.
The Type G cases are commonly identified as “close encounters of the 4th kind”.
In the 1980s and 1990s (and beyond), 4 persons in particular would bring us many encounter stories that found a wide audience:
Budd Hopkins, NY artist
David Jacobs, Temple University historian and professor
Whitley Strieber, an author who at the time was rapidly becoming the next Stephen King.
John Mack, Harvard psychologist and professor, Pulitzer Prize winner.
Key Books by Budd Hopkins:
Missing Time; A Documented Study of UFO Abductions, New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1981
Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods, New York: Random House, 1987
Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge Abductions, New York: Pocket Books, 1996
Key Books by David Jacobs:
Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992
The Threat: The Secret Alien Agenda, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998
Walking Among Us: The Alien Plan to Control Humanity, San Francisco, CA: Disinformation Books 2015
Early key books by Strieber on his experiences:
Communion: A True Story, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1987
Transformation: The Breakthrough, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1988
Key books by Dr. Mack:
Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994
Passport to the Cosmos, New York: Crown Publishers, 1999
In concrete terms, the picture comveyed by this story-sharing suggested a network of beings were engaged in a genetics/reproduction program.
Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs used hypnosis to uncover memories from people reporting “missing time”. As did Dr. Mack. Strieber’s stories are largely based on normal recall but in the earliest years he also resorted to being hypnotized.
Over time, Hopkins and Jacobs developed a picture from their cases which made them very nervous about the alien agenda. Whereas, Strieber and Mack felt features of this type of encounter were suggestive of an alien agenda of midwiving our growth and transformation.
In the August 24, 2011 NY Times article by Margalit Fox for the Art and Design section, written soon after Hopkin’s death from cancer, Hopkins’ conclusions were characterized:
“These narratives, Mr. Hopkins wrote, led him to a distasteful but inescapable conclusion: The aliens–‘or “visitors”, as he preferred to call them—were practicing a form of extraterrestrial eugenics, aiming to shore up their declining race by crossbreeding with Homo sapiens.”
While that was certainly what Hopkins thought in the early years, he later came closer to the developing view of Jacobs that the agenda was to supplant our dominant role here with a large number of hybrids suspected by them after the results of a 1992 Roper survey was published.
In a 2003 book he co wrote with filmaker (and his wife) Carol Rainey, it was suggested that these “transgenic” hybrids could pass for humans while following directions from the aliens while they live among us.
David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins teamed up with sociologist Ron Westrum in 1992 and devised 5 questions for a Roper poll. The questions they crafted were related to experiential signs in people experiencing missing time and who later uncovered memories of abduction by aliens. A few percent of respondents reported at least 4 of the 5 signs. To Westrum, Hopkins, and Jacobs that meant millions of us could be abductees and not know it.
In more recent years, criticism of methodology has arisen.
Thomas Bullard, PhD (academic folklorist) in writing the “Abduction Phenomenon” entry for the 3rd edition of The UFO Encyclopedia reports on the sharp critical eye turned on to the work of Hopkins and Jacobs [pg 12 vol 1]:
“The most damaging attacks on the quality and integrity of abduction investigation have come from people with firstand experience of it. Carol Rainey was the wife and coworker of Budd Hopkins during the writing of “Witnessed” and coauthor of “Sight Unseen”. Familiarity with scientific research led her to perceive a litany of faults and the well-meaning but amateur investigations she observed. Critics denounce lax standards of inquiry, lack of oversight or review, use of techniques that enable confabulation [ie hypnosis], and uncritical acceptance of claims so long as they fit the investigator’s agenda—naive and unregulated activities that would never be tolerated in therapy or research outside of ufology…”.
By the late 90s, Whitley Strieber and his wife Anne, who was most “hands on”, had collected and organized letters from many people who shared their own encounter experiences.
Anne Strieber often did followup interviews with correspondents. No hypnosis was used. So, this database is based simply on the collection and sharing of stories, and then published “as is”. It also represents a compilation of cases with much more detail shared about the cases than those identified in compilations noted earlier here by me.
The Communion Letters, Whitley and Anne Strieber, Harper Prism, 1997
Subtitled: Authentic, vivid, first-person testimony selected ftom the hundreds of thousands of letters reporting actual encounters, abductions, and visitations.
The Communion Letters (many thousands, not published in the book) are now archived at Rice University:
During the late 1980s thru late 1990s there were 4 key studies on CE4s by two individuals preparing academic papers for the Fund for UFO Research and for MUFON (Mutual UFO Network):
1) Comparative Study of Abduction Reports. Vol 1 of UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery. Mount Ranier. MD; Fund for UFO Research 1987 by Thomas Bullard.
In The UFO Encyclopedia, 2018 3rd edition, vol 1, Thomas Bullard describes this paper as “a catalogue of reports in the literature up to 1985 [that] contains about 300 cases, 103 of which offer both extensibe information and a reliable investigation”.
2) The Sympathetic Ear: Investigators as Variables in UFO Abduction Reports; Mount Ranier, MD; Fund for UFO Research 1995 by Thomas Bullard.
Bullard in his UFO Encyclopedia article discussing alien abductions reports that this was “a survey of 13 abduction investigators’ draw on their collective experience with some 1,700 cases.”
3) “Commonalities and Disparities: Findings of the MUFON Abduction Study Project” in MUFON 1995 International UFO Symposium Proceedings by Dan Wright pgs 163-203.
Bullard describes this paper (pg 13 of The UFO Encyclopedia Vol 1): “Dan Wright’s MUFON Abduction Transcription Project results are based on 142 accounts directly from abductees”.
4) “What’s New in UFO Abductions? Has the Story Changed in 30 Years?” MUFON 1999 International Symposium Proceedings, pgs 170-99 by Thomas Bullard.
Bullard notes this was a comparative study of 437 cases from the literature.
Today, the Mutual UFO Network has an expansive investigatory network like it's predecessor the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO).
The variety of databases presented by MUFON include their monthly journal and online postings of cases reported and undergoing investigation and analysis. Only members, lowest tier at $60/year, have access after logging in:
MUFON has a growing and trained network of field investigators and expert consultants especially focused on experiencers of encounters of the third and fourth kind, the Experiencer Resource Team:
Aside from MUFON today, another vehicle for experiencers to approach has been individual therapists who often help with memory retrieval and support help. From 1993 to 2014 there was a non profit, now dissolved, called the Academy of Clinical Close Encounter Therapists (ACCET). Some of the still living therapists, like ACCET’s last director Barbara Lamb, are still active on an individual basis.
While the ACCET organization may have dissolved there is still a similar organization active, named Opus:
(The author identified on that page, Lester Velez, is a consultant also for the MUFON Experiencer Resource Team.)
They describe their Mission:
“OPUS, through its educational services and position of neutrality, provides a safe and caring meeting place for people and groups with the intention of working together to further our overall knowledge in these areas and better support people to integrate their anomalous experiences into everyday life. You can read more about this on our Experiencer Support page.”
A prolific MUFON investigator, Preston Dennett, has written many books of cases that he has personally investigated, and gets us all around the proverbial campfire at YouTube in a sharing of reported encounters:
Over the past five years there has been a massive research effort based on an in-depth surveying of “over 4,200 individuals from over 100 countries”. This project is the product of a non-profit calked The Dr. Edgar Mitchell Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Experiences (FREE).
This study had 3 phases involving people responding to online questions via “survey monkey”. The pool of respondents for the 3rd phase was smaller, about 1000, as many open-ended questions (requiring detailed written responses) were asked to enable a qualitative analysis. The first 2 phases provided data that underwent quantitative analysis.
A wide variety of contributors took up the task of analyzing aspects of the data in a first volume work:
Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness and Contact with Non-Human Intelligence, volume 1, edited by Rey Hernandez J.D., M.C.P, Dr. Jon Klimo, PhD, and Dr. Rudy Schild, PhD.
A retired professor from Montana State University, Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, for over 35 years quietly collected encounter stories with over 4000 taped interviews in her hands and 4 published books of well-described cases in our hands. Serious academically oriented ufologists like Jerome Clark and Thomas Bullard have reviewed her work and praised the added depth and insight gained from her published cases.
The summary description by Montana State University of her career illustrates how she could have been exposed to so many people (often community leaders) who would trust her to hear their stories, assured that confidentiality would be secured:
"As founder and director of the Center for Bilingual and Multicultural Education, Ardy SixKiller Clarke secured $27 million in grants to support outreach and fund scholarships for Native Americans and for women. She provided over 450 scholarships to Native American students and women and worked with 27 tribal groups in the Northwest. Clarke received numerous research grants to study high risk youth and families which took her off campus to work with American Indian school districts, Alaska Native village schools and Native Hawaiian Charter Schools. She wrote a well-known book, Sisters in the Blood: Education of Women in Native America, which became a best-seller and is used nationwide in women’s studies. Her research has also examined PTSD, trauma, depression and its impact on learning among Native youth. She is the co-founder of the Native Nations Education Foundation that works for the rights of indigenous women and children in the America and South Pacific. Using personal funds to establish a scholarship program, Clarke continues to support the education of Native students by contributing 10 percent of the profits from her books to the scholarship fund. Clarke earned her Ph.D. from Monana State University in 1981.Ardy SixKiller Clarke established the first Center for Bilingual and Multicultural Education at MSU, providing over 450 scholarships to Native American students and women."
The 150 cases presented in print by Clarke illustrate a balanced picture of the apparent presence of a wide variety of entities, engaged in varying activities with seemingly a range of agendas. In the next section the group whose activities cause the most concern among informed students of the UAP subject is profiled. From the works of Clarke and others, though, there are shown quite a variety of other beings whose activities are viewed generally in a much more positive way (from our human perspective). That will be covered in a following section. A concluding section will discuss the elements of "high strangeness" and the "Oz factor" in encounter reports. These elements have contributed to people dismissing the reality of encounter reports.
Features of Abduction/Encounter Experiences With Most Familiar Group of Non-Human Intelligences
In 1992 a M.I.T. physicist named David Pritchard and a Harvard psychologist named John Mack were co-chairs of a five day conference held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The invitation they had sent out stated: "We are organizing a scientific conference to assess the similarities and differences in the findings of various investigators studying people who report abductions by aliens, and the related issues of this phenomenon...."
That conference was attended by a well known and respected author named C.D.B. Bryan who in 1995 had his detailed reporting on that published by Alfred A. Knopf in the book "Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs, and The Conference at M.I.T.".
The two co chair each had great reputations, assuring a well attended and covered conference: Pritchard the recepient of the Broida Prize for experimental advances in atomic, molecular, and optical physics and Mack the recepient of the Pulitzer for his biography of Lawrence of Arabia.
Among the presenters at this conference were individuals who had been working with people reporting abduction experiences. This included Budd Hopkins (NY artist), David Jacob's (Temple University historian), John Carpenter (licensed clinical social worker) and John Mack (Harvard psychologist).
Another key presenter was Thomas "Eddie" Bullard, an Indiana State University academic and folklorist who had a valuable role as a cataloguer and analyzer of cases.
Bryan in his book covering this conference quoted Jacobs on the size of the abductee caseloads that he and his colleagues had at that time (1992): Hopkins had 1500, Jacobs 350, Carpenter 50 and Mack 50.
Bryan reported that invited attendees were tasked with 2 reading assignments:
David Jacob's 1992 book "Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions" and a 1987 paper by Thomas Bullard published by the Fund for UFO Research, "Comparative Study of Abduction Reports".
Decades later, Bullard developed a chart for the 2017 3rd edition of the UFO Encyclopedia, showing the frequency of reported aspects and features of abduction experiences. It was based on four studies of compiled cases, including the second required reading by Bullard assigned for the 1992 M.I.T conference:
1) Comparative Study of Abduction Reports. Vol 1 of UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery. Mount Ranier. MD; Fund for UFO Research 1987 by Thomas Bullard.
In The UFO Encyclopedia, 2017 3rd edition, vol 1, Thomas Bullard describes this paper as “a catalogue of reports in the literature up to 1985 [that] contains about 300 cases, 103 of which offer both extensibe information and a reliable investigation”.
2) The Sympathetic Ear: Investigators as Variables in UFO Abduction Reports; Mount Ranier, MD; Fund for UFO Research 1995 by Thomas Bullard.
Bullard in his UFO Encyclopedia article discussing alien abductions reports that this was “a survey of 13 abduction investigators’ draw on their collective experience with some 1,700 cases.”
3) “Commonalities and Disparities: Findings of the MUFON Abduction Study Project” in MUFON 1995 International UFO Symposium Proceedings by Dan Wright pgs 163-203.
Bullard describes this paper (pg 13 of The UFO Encyclopedia Vol 1): “Dan Wright’s MUFON Abduction Transcription Project results are based on 142 accounts directly from abductees”.
4) “What’s New in UFO Abductions? Has the Story Changed in 30 Years?” MUFON 1999 International Symposium Proceedings, pgs 170-99 by Thomas Bullard.
Bullard notes this was a comparative study of 437 cases from the literature.
In addition to developing a chart for the UFO Encyclopedia demonstrating the "sequence of episodes and events in the abduction story", Bullard developed tables using the data from the above four studies to show "location and duration of abductions", "description of entities' appearance and behavior", "description of craft", and "descriptions of mental and physical control". What follows are the specifics in data for each of these factors as noted by Bullard in his long encyclopedic article on the "Abduction Phenomenon" (with the relevant portion for this from pages 14 thru 22 from Volume 1, 2017 3rd edition, UFO Encyclopedia edited by Jerome Clark).
Demographics:
"An international cast comprises the samples, with abductees from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, France, Poland, Spain, South Africa, and other countries, including Russia and China....Abductees appear to be a cross-section of society...No obvious characteristics distinguish Abductees from their neighbors."
"Abductees report encounters from early childhood to old age, but one pattern that emerges from the distribution of ages is a distinct preference for the young. Few people 35 years or beyond are likely to experience abduction for the first time. Adult abductees often recall encounters as children followed by increasing attention from puberty through adulthood, but a noteworthy drop-off in frequency usually sets in with middle age."
Circumstances:
"Abductions can happen anywhere, at home or away. In the early days of the phenomenon, highway captures predominated as people noticed and puzzled over interruptions of travel, but by the 1980s an intrusion in the night, with beings removing captives from their bedrooms, became the prevailing mode. An encounter may last as many as 20 minutes or as much as five days, but the usual duration is between one and three hours. Most abductions happen at night, but some 10-20% are daylight encounters. Most abductions involve a single captive, but some 10-20% include two or more captives, and cases with three or four testifying witnesses are well documented in the literature."
Sequence of Events:
Bullard notes that there are 8 possible episodes in an abduction event that occur in the following sequence:
~~Capture
~~Examination
~~Conference
~~Tour of the ship
~~Journey/Otherworldly Journey
~~Theophany
~~Return
~~Aftermath
"Few reports contain every episode; only capture and return are universal....and theophany is quite rare."
(Theophany means a religious or spiritual experience.)
Bullard reports that when any of the above episodes do appear they usually do so in the sequence shown above.
"A rigid order extends to events in the capture, examination, and return episodes as well. Capture unfolds in an escalating sequence of strange happenings as the abductee passes from observer to captive by gradual degrees. When driving or awake in the open, the subject first sees a UFO and soon notices changes in the environment such as stillness or silence, then begins to lose volition and mental control as paralysis or involuntary behaviors take over and entities appear to escort the abductee to the craft. When asleep in bed, the abductee usually awakes to find the abduction environment has already closed in. Light may pore through the window, and night sounds have fallen silent as the captive lies unable or barely able to move, while small beings approach and float the subject to their craft. Entry into the ship is frequently sudden, or often, the occasion for a momentary lapse of consciousness."
"The examination begins soon after entry, and the beings seem impatient to carry it out. The procedures follow a rigorous and recurrent itinerary in most reports. After preparation by undressing and sometimes by a cleansing process, the abductee lies on a table while a team of gray entities undertakes a manual examination by poking or touching the captive from head to toe. Handheld instruments may play a part at this time; then a device such as an eye or x-ray machine scans the captive's body. Other devices with tubes or wires may attach to the body, and the examiners may collect samples of blood, skin, hair, or other bodily materials."
"A key examination procedure is inspection of the reproductive organs, sometimes followed by the extraction of sperm from males and the apparent removal of eggs from females, sometimes by means of a needle inserted into the abdomen. Besides the reproductive system, the only other aspect of human physiology of seeming interest to the entities is the neurological system. The examiners may insert or remove a tiny implant from the head or spine of the abductee, and an entity may stand near the abductee's face to stare intently into his or her eyes. Performance tests or staged psychodramas which present illusory scenes and seem to probe human emotions and behavioral reactions may follow. These examinations progress with businesslike, even ruthless efficiency."
It should be noted that communication is via telepathy throughout all phases of the experience.
Bullard describes the next possible phase following examination:
"The entities often relax after the examination and become friendlier, sometimes conversing with the captive, sometimes drawing him or her into a formal conference. In some cases the conference merely extends the examination as they ask questions of interest to them. At other times the entities respond to questions, though their responses usually turn out to be evasions, lies, or nonsense. Sometimes an entity teaches or instructs the abductee for some future mission of an unclear nature, though the messages typically revolve around a coming cataclysm, some future disaster that the entities prophesy, or some consequence of human folly, such as ecological collapse..."
The next identified episode, "Tour", includes an experience that seemingly reveals something about the purpose behind these reported alien activities. "....Captives visit an incubatorium where fetus-like forms float in jars or tanks, or a nursery where cradles contain small, fragile, seemingly sick babies. On other occasions an abductee may report older children, half-human and half-alien hybrids. The entities encourage the abductee to touch and hold the listless babies or children, who seem to gain vitality from the interaction."
While onboard, some report either physically real journeys (where preparations for travel are made, like being placed in a liquid substance presumably for space travel) or visionary ones and ones that are like movie-peojections. That possible experience of taking a journey, and the next possible experience of have some sort of religious experience, are rare.
But, the final two episodes are common in most reports, the return of the abductee and the aftermath effects.
"The return episode largely reverses the procedures of the capture. The entities may bid their captive farewell, promise to meet again, and instruct the captive to forget the experience. Feelings of joy and rapture, or sadness at having to leave, are common among abductees at this time. The beings float or escort the abductee back to her or his previous location, though some abductees find themselves turned around in bed or their clothes improperly replaced. Once the ship departs, the abductee re-enters normal life, driving off again or going back to sleep while recollection of everything that happened since early in the capture sequence fades away to leave only a vague and troubling impression, an elusive sense that something strange occurred."
Bullard reports three stages for the "aftermath", immediate or short term, intermediate, and long term.
The immediate aftereffects include physical signs: eye irritation, nosebleed, sunburn, etc with indications of exams from hairline cuts, scoop-like marks and puncture wounds. There may be a typical behaviors like obsessive bathing.
Intermediate effects are psychological: anxiety in circumstances that may be akin to that involved with abductions (like doctor exams), phobias (fear of large eyed animals for example), nightmares, and flashbacks and memory return.
Noted long term effects include changes in lifestyle, development of psychic sensitivity, experiences with poltergeist activity and experiences or encounters with lurking "men in black".
Description of the entities:
"The predominate humanoid type most often takes the form of a short, hairless, gray-skinned with a bulging cranium and narrow jaw, enormous elongated eyes, a slit mouth, and vestigial nose and ears. Such beings range from two and a half to five feet tall, typically have a thin, frail build and hands with fewer than five digits....Their usual dress is a coverall or one-piece jumpsuit, often skintight, perhaps even so snug that the beings appear (or are) nude. They glide by flotation or levitate much of the time, though when they walk they seem either clumsy or stiff and rapid with military precision. By far the usual means of communication between entities and abductees is telepathy, though the beings may converse among themselves with gibbering sounds. Abductees seldom distinguish gender among humanoids, though in some cases one of them may seem more feminine than the rest. Tall Grays (5 to 6 feet) look like short Grays and appear in 20 to 25% of reports."
Other types of beings observed have been reptilian humanoids as supportive security and tall, spindly insect-like humanoids similar to mantis-type beings that some abductees feel are in charge of operations.
In about 20% of the case samples spanning 1957 to 1996, a human-looking being known as "Nordics" is reported being in the mix onboard. They are more dominant in British reports. They are described as tall, blond, blue-eyed and friendly.
Ordinary humans have been seen also working with the Grays.
Bullard describes the atmosphere around them: "Abductees often feel like guinea pigs or livestock being processed, thanks to captors that are cold and businesslike--not cruel but indifferent to the fear or pain of their captives and concerned first and foremost with the rapid, efficient completion of the onboard procedures. As the beings instruct Abductees and coax them along, they often couch their messages in polite and reassuring terms, but the politeness seems a formality without substance and strikes Abductees as insincere or manipulative. The beings often evade questions or offer deceitful answers. Emotions are few among the Grays. They may react with surprise to some unexpected discovery..., show impatience if the abductee moves along too slowly, or become annoyed if the abductee looks too closely at them. A few abductees find the entities warm and considerate, but these qualities most often belong to Nordics or leader-liason humanoids, not the crew in general."
"Not all Abductees feel alienated from their captors. A few not only react favorably to them but sense some deeper tie, either a kinship with them or an origin on another world. Such people receive no better treatment from their captors but feel more comfortable with the abduction experience. In recent years, more abductees have been willing to accept that the entities have good intentions, if not good manners, and are trying to save the world."
Description of the craft:
The most common shape is the familiar disc with cylindrical, sphere, delta, boomerang and other shapes reported. Sometimes no shape is evident, just a luminous source.
A beam of light is often seen issuing from craft as a means to transport abductees onboard.
Bullard describes the commonly reported features of the interior: "Inside the craft abductees may see a small antechamber where they await examination, an examination room itself, a conference room or lecture hall, an incubatorium or nursery, a control room, and an engine room. Tunnel-like corridors may connect these parts of the ship. Furnishings are sparse, with computer-like instruments in the control room and a device with crystalline rotors in the engine room. On rare occasions abductees describe a transport room with a tank or protective chair where the abductee stays during a journey. No one sees living quarters for the crew...."
The exam room is described as round with smooth surfaces and soft light from unseen sources. The atmosphere is often misty or hazy and a little cold.
The Overall View of the Variety of Beings Associated with UAP Events
In his Close Encounters of the Third Kind article for the 2018 edition of The UFO Encyclopedia, historian Jerome Clark notes what is apparent after absorbing a reading of cases (p.279, vol 1):
“In four out of five CE3 reports, the aliens are described as humanoid or even humanlike. (A surprising number of accounts involve beings of strikingly human appearance.) But under the broad heading of ‘humanoids’ we find a variety of beings.”
There is a clear verdict coming from the CE3 database on the forms of at least some advanced forms of extraterrestrial life: they are beings exhibiting “bilateral symmetry” in their bodily form in all but the most rarest of cases. And, they are predominately “humanoid” or exhibiting a bilateral symmetry of sense organs (eyes and ears) and limbs (enabling locomotion and creative action).
Bilateral symmetry entails a dividing midline (through the torso, aligned with the vetebrae or spinal line) for left and right sides which mirror each other. There are a large number of cases where the beings are even very human-like, but with clear differences: in cranium size, eye shape and size variations, both very small and exaggerated signs of ears and nose, height variations of beings from 3 feet to 8 feet or more, muscoskeletal variations, and more.
Living organisms on earth are categorized most generally as plants, animals, and micro organisms. Ninety-nine percent of “animals” (which includes the class of beings identified as mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and insects) are structured with bilateral symmetry.
The popular science Magazine, Discover, had a SETI Institute scientist (aligned also with NASA Astrobiology Institute projects) ponder the question of what aliens would likely look like. From “What Are Alien Species Like? Symmetrical, Solid, and Seeing (Probably)”, June 19, 2009, Discover, Rocco Mancinelli of SETI answered this question by Discover’s Amos Zeeberg:
‘What is the most likely form an alien would take? Life’s architecture is difficult to predict because it depends on many factors involving the interaction of the environment and life through evolution and natural selection. We can, however, make some generalizations based on the vast number of morphological forms that life takes on earth.
Life on earth ranges from microscopic spheres and rods to macroscopic creatures exhibiting wide variations in their morphologies (e.g., spiders to humans). Nevertheless, nearly all life (everything except sponges) exhibits symmetry—either bilateral or radial symmetry. In bilateral symmetry (also called plane symmetry), only one plane, called the sagittal plane, will divide an organism into roughly mirror image halves. An organism with radial symmetry has no left or right sides, only a top and a bottom (dorsal and ventral surface). An alien life form, therefore, would most likely be symmetrical. The type of symmetry would be influenced on the environment in which it lived. From our basic knowledge of survival of macroscopic organisms whether they be aquatic or terrestrial it seems that bilateral symmetry dominates.”
Near the end of 2021, articles appeared based on an interview of a Cambridge University scientist by the BBC’s Science FOCUS magazine that gives an explanatory basis for why we appear to see so many humanoid beings in these close encounter reports.
While most cases reveal beings who are human-like, there are notable variations in the biological features from the homo sapiens appearance. These variations can be understood to be due to different types of suns, atmospheric pressure, atmospheric content, gravity and other planetary conditions.
Simon Conway Morris, an evolutionary paleobiologist in the Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences, asserted with confidence that evolution in other settings around the universe has led to the rising of human-like beings. The theory underlying this proposition is called “convergent evolution”. An online definition: “In evolutionary biology, convergent evolution is defined as the process whereby distantly related organisms independently evolve similar traits to adapt to similar necessities.”.
Another Cambridge scientist (a zoologist) named Arik Kershenbaum also has addressed the question of evolution on other planets and came to the same viewpoint, as he is quoted here in a Quanta magazine article from early 2021: “Because evolution is the explanatory mechanism for life everywhere, then the principles we uncover on Earth should be applicable in the rest of the universe.”
In the large number of reported close encounter of third kind observations and interactions, there are evident variations in how beings seem to adapt to our mixture of atmospheric gases, gravity force, air pressure, and other conditions. Some beings are seen with breathing apparatus, others don't seem to need that type of aid.
Humans observing a scene, or interacting with most types of Non-Human beings (including those close to human appearance), generally experience communication via telepathy. People have also heard beings make different sorts of sound amongst themselves.
Commonly observed and/or informed of activities:
~~~examination and sometimes collection of minerals, plants and animals.
~~~collecting or siphoning water.
~~~repair or maintenance checks of craft.
~~~close monitoring of military facilities, nuclear sites, research and development facilities, war zones, military training exercises, and more.
~~~witnesses of landed craft and exited beings sometimes invited onboard, and sometimes undergo medical tests or exams. Even tours and informative exchanges have happened. There are even cases of healings reported by credibly reporting witnesses.
~~~witnesses have been immobilized by energy beams when entities have been shot at or assaulted.
~~~witnesses have been told of a variety of purposes: biological resources here have been transplanted to developing planets or to aid conditions on home planets; all sorts of developments here are monitored and studied; different types of entities express concerns over degrading environmental conditions or risk of nuclear war; witnesses often told that the entities do not and will not intervene in or direct our affairs.
~~~while non-intervention into the course of human affairs seems to be the case, different species of beings (beyond the Mantid-Gray group) have relationships with human individuals who willingly aid in NHI projects or provide supportive space even (to do maintenance, take on water, etc).
The Elements of High Strangeness and the Oz Factor in Reported Encounters Inhibit Public Examination of the UAP Mystery
On June 20 2023, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein interviewed writer/reporter Leslie Klein and shared his discomfort with "fringe" expressions from a scientist associated with aerospace companies and government contract work that apparently included him being aware of inside-government UFO knowledge. Journalists, academics, government leaders and, in the end, all of us will likely find it difficult to face reported elements at the core of UFO phenomenon that have been characterized as examples of "High Strangeness". Facing all that will entail going into "fringe" spaces, arousing discomfort.
In a historical overview introducing the 2-volumed content of the 2018 3rd edition of The UFO Encyclopedia, historian Jerome Clark observed that "certainly, where UFOs are concerned, an object that shows up on radar or leaves anomalous traces on the ground where it was seen to land may be assumed to exist in the world" yet "no comparable evidence exists for the reality of many of the high-strangeness phenomena". Clark states that few reporting encounter witnesses or experiencers are afflicted with mental illness and hallucinating, so that along with outright attention-seeking hoaxsters, do not account for the bulk of reports that include puzzling high strangeness elements. It could be as Clark ponders: "Most high-strangeness phenomena are evidence of nothing so much as our ignorance, or of our constricted view of the possibilities of human experience."
In 1978 the UN General Assembly was considering a proposal from Grenada for the establishment of a UN agency that would address the issue of UFOs. At that time Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a university astronomer who served decades also as a consultant on UFO cases for the United States Air Force, addressed the Assembly and noted the impact and importance of "high strangeness", a term he created:
"It is a phenomenon so strange and foreign to our daily terrestrial mode of thought that it is met by ridicule and derision by personsd organizations unacquainted with the facts...."
He further observed:
"We have a record of many tens of thousands of UFO reports...[They] include extremely intriguing and provocative accounts of strange events experienced by highly reputable persons....[These are] events which challenge our present conception of the world about us and which may indeed may signal a need for a change in some of our concepts". (Quote taken from the 2004 book by Laura Knight-Jadczyk, "The High Strangeness of Dimensions, Densities,band the Process of Alien Abductions")
Looking at the traits evident in close encounters of the 3rd and 4th kind, we see beings with capacities and an awareness far beyond the common attainment of human beings. In fact, based on those types of cases, the Pentagon program known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) produced a slide for apparently internal presentations and which we know about from it emerging after it was found at an unsecured page at Christopher Mellon’s website. (Mellon is a former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.)
It is now known famously as Slide 9. Its contents:
'DoD Threat Scenario (AATIP Sub-Focus Areas)
The science exists for an enemy of the United States to manipulate both physical and cognitive environments in order to penetrate U.S. facilities, influence decision makers, and compromise national security
— Psychotronic weapons
— Cognitive Human Interface
— Penetration of solid surfaces
— Instantenous sensor disassembly
— Alteration/Manipulation of biological organisms
— Anomalies in the space/time construct
— Unique cognitive interface experiences' .
DoD Advantages
— DoD has been involved in similiar experiments in the past
— DoD has relationships with renowned subject matter experts
— DoD controls several facilities where activities have been detectedWhat was considered “phenomena” is now quantum physics."
The above list matches much of what has been frequently reported as aspects of encounter experiences: communication via telepathy; ability to instill or trigger virtual reality images and memories; affect a person's neurology, level of awareness; ability to move through solid objects (bright light energy seems to enable alien actions here); ability to just appear and disappear. And, more that puzzles and shocks.
It is safe to say that for many academics and academic institutions these phenomena don't exist outside literary imaginings and hallucinatory psychotic perceptions. Since academics seem to generally regard these types of reported things as pseudoscientific delusions, the high strangeness features have effectively served as a barrier for any significant scientific examination being directed towards the UFO/UAP mystery.
Many online discussions among students of this long-standing mystery have reflected a widespread anxiety over any attention being directed to what is often called the "woo". The "woo" aspects, it's often said, should be downplayed, the "nuts and bolts" aspects (more understandable to us) emphasized. But, there's a grudging or reluctant acknowledgement that facing the "woo" is inevitable.
Mike Jamieson
Ukiah, CA
