Kitabı oxu: «NON-HUMAN CONTACT»

1 THE UFO PHENOMENON

»It is an intelligence that provides enough evidence that something profoundly important is at work, but it does not offer the kinds of proof that would satisfy an exclusively empirical, rationalistic way of knowing. It is for us to embrace the reality of the phenomenon and to take a step toward appreciating that we live in a universe different from the one in which we have been taught to believe.«²

Prof. John E. Mack, 1994

UFOS IN THE MEDIA

Once upon a time there was a UFO. Nobody liked it, nobody wanted it … one mocked it, one chased it away, one even denied its existence. But it kept coming back. People became curious and some of them began to ask questions. The kings didn’t like that at all and forbid them to talk about the mysterious UFO. With all sorts of tricks they tried to distract their subjects from it. They invented new, even more fantastic stories and threw the worst UFO rebels into a dark dungeon, because something had to be prevented at all costs. This one thing that frightened them more than enemy armies and violent storms that devastated the land: It must never happen that the people questioned their royal power … because there was possibly something out there that even the kings could not explain and was superior to them.

In this or a similar way, childlike language could be used to describe how governments and the media have dealt with the UFO phenomenon over the last seventy years … until December 2017. When UFOs were mentioned in the media before that date, it was usually not a serious coverage. The reports often resembled a satirical pamphlet. The structure of those reports often followed a typical pattern. To create a certain entertainment value, a mysterious UFO sighting was first described. With narcissistic satisfaction, a (correct or false) scientific explanation was then presented, ranging from illuminated drones, comets, flares, satellites, LED balloons to the planets Jupiter and Venus. And if there was no conventional explanation available, the end of the story could still be kept open with a mocking undertone (»maybe it was the famous little green men …«). In any case, there was no doubt for the reader or viewer that any thought of an extraterrestrial background of such sightings is absolutely ridiculous and unacceptable. UFOs don’t exist. That’s it. And there can’t be any UFOs because media has (almost) never reported a »real« UFO sighting. So why should this change all of a sudden …

It is indeed true that most sightings of mysterious lights in the sky can be easily explained. After all, human perception and the human mind can very easily be deceived. Thus, the flickering light of the planet Jupiter behind a moving cloud cover at night is quickly perceived as an object that seems to be moving in the sky while radiating strongly. Such dubious »sightings« are not worth reporting at all. The fact that this happened nevertheless reinforced the view among the population that »real« UFOs do not exist. If we assume, as will be shown below, that not only UFOs but non-human intelligent beings indeed exist, this makes such reporting – to put it mildly – extremely questionable. Finally, according to its mandate, the press should be interested in providing the public with facts. This is all the more true when the facts are as exceptional as they are significant for mankind.

EVIDENCE

It really does not take any investigative journalistic talent or even scientific training to realize that the evidence for unusual flying objects in our skies is simply overwhelming (even before the campaign started in December 2017). This book is not aiming at proving the reality of the UFO phenomenon.

Since the U.S. mainstream media, in the meanwhile, have accepted the existence of UFOs there is no need for that. Furthermore, anyone can convince themselves of this fact by means of freely accessible, serious sources. The reader can find a conscientious compilation of important UFO cases on the internet at www.das-ufo-phaenomen.de (German internet page but mostly English documents and documentaries); further evidence is available at https://siriusdisclosure.com/evidence/ for example.

For his or her own research I would like to give the reader a little help in the form of the following facts. They are all worth a closer look and should have been part of our common knowledge for a long time – just like other important political or historical events. But even most journalists who write about the topic are not familiar with these things. One must therefore ask oneself how serious reporting on the UFO topic is (was) possible on such a deficient information basis. Why don’t you test yourself to see if you’re aware of some of the most important facts about the UFO phenomenon?

1. Are you aware that many countries (including France, the United Kingdom and the United States) maintain or (officially) maintained UFO investigation authorities?

2. Are you aware that since about the middle of the last century there have been dozens of well-documented UFO cases in which military and/or civilian witnesses have visually observed objects with extremely unusual flight characteristics, while at the same time they were detected on airborne and/or ground radar?

3. Are you aware that on 13 March 1997, hundreds of witnesses in the vicinity of Phoenix, Arizona, saw an aircraft carrier-sized object floating slowly and silently in the sky, and that the then Governor of Arizona, Five Symington III, admitted about ten years later having observed this object at close range – although he had ridiculed the subject at a press conference in 1997?

4. Are you aware that between 1989 and 1992 thousands of Belgians were observing unusual flying objects over their country and that the Belgian military was unable to find an explanation for the phenomenon after an intensive investigation into the incidents, including the use of fighter jets in order to intercept the UFOs?

5. Are you aware that UFOs have been sighted several times near nuclear installations of the U.S. military and that precarious malfunctions of the missile launch facilities occurred during these sightings?

6. Are you aware that in 1999, high-ranking French military officials and scientists published an investigation report on the UFO phenomenon (UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For? the so-called COMETA-Report) which comes to the conclusion that the so-called extraterrestrial hypothesis is the most likely explanation for the UFO phenomenon?

7. Are you aware that in 2001, at a Disclosure Project press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. more than a dozen former military and government officials and pilots publicly testified about their UFO sightings and further knowledge of the phenomenon?

I can only advise everyone to do their own research on the questions listed above, which make up only a fraction of the total material.

Of course, you should always be skeptical, especially when doing research on the internet, as it is often difficult or impossible to check the reliability of the source. Documents that can be accessed directly at official government sites, or recordings of press conferences and interviews with prominent witnesses, such as Arizona’s ex-governor Five Symington, are particularly helpful.

The starting point for research in this field are observations that have increasingly been made since the middle of the last century. Especially after the first atomic bombs were detonated by the U.S., objects whose appearance and flight characteristics were incomparable to anything ever seen before were frequently spotted in the sky and on radar. Countless sightings were made over U.S. territory in particular, which not only alarmed the population but – in times of the Cold War – also the U.S. military. That’s how the UFO phenomenon was born. It is known that as a result, the United States Air Force established a division called Project Blue Book (formerly Project Sign/Project Grudge) to record and investigate such sightings. Captain Edward Ruppelt was head of the Project Blue Book from 1951 to 1953. He gives an authentic and objective description of this particularly exciting time for the U.S. military in his 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. But not only the USA, also other countries – including France, Great Britain, Chile and Argentina – set up UFO investigation authorities. The reason for this was that the phenomenon became strikingly present and often seemed to affect national security or aviation safety.

In addition to regular waves of sightings (like in Belgium), there have always been convincing individual sightings (e.g., the case of Japan Airlines flight JAL 1628 on 17 November 1986 over Alaska), and the mantle of silence or disinformation was often placed over both. An example of how German media dealt with this topic was provided by Harald Lesch in 2016 in a Terra X episode (German popular science TV show) on the subject of extraterrestrials. There, Professor Lesch claimed that the Belgian wave of UFO sightings can now be explained: it had just been Belgian military helicopters. What a blatant tall story! How stupid would the Belgian military be if during its investigations it had simply forgotten to think of its own formation flight? Instead, the Belgian military had specifically asked the NATO allies and especially the Americans whether they had carried out secret test flights over Belgium. In the end, the military leadership even held a press conference and admitted in unprecedented openness that the objects observed were not a conventional phenomenon and that the military has absolutely no explanation for it. In addition, the poor investigation for the Terra X episode on UFOs is revealed by two facts: First, the observed objects were described as noiseless, and they demonstrated flight maneuvers that a helicopter could not have performed. Second, the then commanding Chief of Staff of the Belgian Air Force Major General Wilfried de Brouwer, now retired, had explicitly rejected the helicopter thesis put forward by skeptics in the 2010 book UFOs by investigative journalist Leslie Kean – as well as in an interview from 2014 – and reaffirmed that the Belgian military found no explanation for the sightings over Belgium even after intensive investigation.³

Skeptics also liked to ignore the authenticity and standing of the eyewitnesses (before the December 2017 paradigm shift). Since the press conference of the Disclosure Project in 2001, the number of high-ranking UFO observers from the military and government has steadily increased. These include, for example, General Parviz Jafari of the Iranian Air Force, NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper and John Callahan, former Division Chief of the Accidents and Investigations Branch of the FAA, to name but a few. If you want to know more about this, you can read the testimonies of numerous witnesses in Leslie Kean’s book UFOs. Also, the Apollo astronaut and sixth man on the moon, Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who died in 2016, publicly announced that he had been informed about the existence of UFOs. In addition, there are hundreds of other witnesses, mostly former members of the military and employees of secret research projects. The website of Dr. Steven Greer’s Disclosure Project provides access to testimonies that last more than several hours.⁴

And there is not only witness testimony when it comes to UFOs. A number of previously classified documents that are dealing with the UFO matter are now freely accessible. A well-known example is the so-called Wilbert B. Smith memo from 21 November 1950.⁵ The radio engineer Wilbert Smith headed Project Magnet, a UFO investigation program of the Canadian government’s Department of Transport. In this »Top Secret« document from the Department of Transport, Smith notes the following:

»I made discreet enquiries through the Canadian Embassy staff in Washington who were able to obtain for me the following information:

 The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.

 Flying saucers exist.

 Their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush.

 The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be of tremendous significance.

I was further informed that the United States authorities are investigating along quite a number of lines which might possibly be related to the saucers such as mental phenomena (…)«⁶

I have insider information that Smith was communicating with Admiral Herbert Knowles. Both discussed not only the UFO phenomenon but also the topic of direct communication with extraterrestrial beings and the content of received messages. In addition to Smith’s note, there are dozens of other documents which prove the great interest of the U.S. military and the CIA in UFO sightings. Many of these documents can now be consulted directly on the CIA’s website.⁷ One example is a memo to the Director of the CIA dated 2 October 1952.⁸ According to this document, »flying saucers« pose an element of danger that »concerns the vulnerability of the United States to air attack«. Action recommended: »That the Director of Central Intelligence advise the National Security Council of the implications of the ›flying saucer‹ problem and request that research be initiated.«

Another advice reads as follows:

»In order to minimize risk of panic, a national policy should be established as to what should be told the public regarding the phenomena.«

As mentioned before, the question on the existence of UFOs can now be considered as settled. On 16 December 2017, the New York Times, the Washington Post and POLITICO unanimously reported on a UFO research program of the Pentagon funded with 22 million dollars between 2007 and 2012.⁹ The program was called The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) and was officially confirmed by the Pentagon. Not only radar and video (infrared) recordings of encounters between U.S. military pilots and flying objects, whose flight behavior seems to contradict the laws of aerodynamics, were examined. Materials originating from UFOs were also stored and analyzed in modified buildings. In a radio interview, physicist Dr. Harold Puthoff explains that the analyzed exotic material did not contain new elements but consisted of an unusual composition of layers of materials »that you wouldn’t expect to be able to be layered« and that had »certain unusual characteristics that you wouldn’t have predicted in advance«.¹⁰

In the following, three now globally known videos of the on-board cameras of U.S. Navy fighter jets showing unknown objects have been published:

 The so-called »GIMBAL« video, captured by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet using the Raytheon AN/ASQ-228 Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) pod, was the first of the three videos that has been through the official declassification review process of the United States government and has been approved for public release.

 The second declassified video (»FLIR1«) is the only official footage captured by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet present at an incident in 2004 off the coast of San Diego regarding the USS Nimitz, a nuclear powered U.S. Navy supercarrier (also using ATFLIR). The Navy pilots described the UFO as a large bright white Tic Tac with a size of approximately 40 feet.

 »GO FAST« is another authentic DoD video that captures the high-speed flight of an unidentified aircraft at low altitude by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet with an ATFLIR pod.

Luis Elizondo, former head of AATIP, stated in an interview on CNN that the observed flight characteristics of the objects cannot be explained either by U.S. military arsenal or by known foreign technology. Asked for his personal opinion on the matter, he offers a surprising explanation: »We may not be alone!«¹¹ Likewise, according to Navy pilot David Fravor, the object he had encountered was not from this world.¹²

A large part of the money from the U.S. defense budget went to Bigelow Aerospace, a space research company of billionaire Robert Bigelow. It is well known in UFO research circles that Bigelow has been funding the work of leading UFO and abduction researchers for decades. In May 2017, in an interview with CBS, Bigelow even expressed his conviction that extraterrestrials are present on Earth since a long time.¹³

The December 2017 reports are the official starting point of an extensive disclosure campaign in which former blink-182 punk band singer Tom DeLonge plaid a leading role along with former senior Department of Defense (DoD) and intelligence officials.

DeLonge is the CEO of a company called To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science (TTSA), which covers the three areas of science, aerospace and entertainment – see https://dpo.tothestarsacademy.com.

The company’s goal is the advancement of our current understanding of scientific phenomena and its technological implications. Further members of the management team were, inter alia:

 Luis Elizondo, former head of AATIP (in the meanwhile, Elizondo left TTSA);

 Christopher Mellon, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and Bush Administrations;

 Steve Justice, former Program Director for Advanced Systems from Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs – also known as »Skunk Works«; and

 Dr. Harold Puthoff, a physicist who advised the CIA on the research and application of remote viewing, at which we will have a closer look in Chapter 4.

The UFO media campaign continued in April 2019 with reports according to which the U.S. Navy is drafting new guidelines for pilots and other personnel to report encounters with »unidentified aircraft«.¹⁴ About two months later this was followed by reports on classified briefings on UFO sightings for not only Senators but also President Trump.¹⁵ During the following two years, numerous reports on the UFO/UAP topic were published by mainstream media. Then, in April 2021, the authenticity of further UAP videos was confirmed by the Pentagon.¹⁶ This was followed by the preliminary highlight of the ongoing disclosure campaign: the release of an unclassified UFO report by the Pentagon on 25 June 2021. Even before that date it had been leaked that the Pentagon report is ruling out the possibility of U.S. military black projects but not ruling out an extra-terrestrial explanation for the phenomenon.¹⁷

The rather vague 9-pages-assessment speaks of 144 reports that describe incidents that occurred between November 2004 and March 2021.¹⁸ The executive summary on page 3 states:

»Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation.«

According to the report, UAP sightings tended to cluster around U.S. training and testing grounds. In 18 incidents observers reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics. Thus, the Pentagon publicly acknowledges for the first time that UFOs/UAP are real, that they are physical objects and that this is an extraordinary phenomenon. However, according to the Pentagon’s preliminary assessment, the origin of these objects remains unexplained due to insufficient data. In particular, the report does not present any evidence for a non-human intelligence behind the phenomenon.

On the other hand, as mainstream media underlines, it does not rule out an alien origin either. This is in line with what a senior U.S. official told REUTERS:

»Asked about potential alien explanations, one of the officials said: »That’s not the purpose of the task force, to evaluate any sort of search for extraterrestrial life. … That’s not what we were charged with doing.«

»Of the 144 reports we are dealing with here, we have no clear indications that there is any nonterrestrial explanation for them – but we will go wherever the data takes us,« the senior official added.¹⁹

Against the background of all the above (being just a small part of the UFO material), there can be absolutely no doubt about the reality of the UFO phenomenon. The sheer volume of evidence is simply overwhelming. Therefore, it is high time for us to finally leave behind the tedious and unnecessary discussion about the reality of UFOs and to continue from here.

But what does it actually mean when we acknowledge the reality of UFOs? First of all, it is only that objects with extraordinary flight characteristics move in our atmosphere, the origin of which is unknown. However, this observation leads to the crucial question: WHAT are UFOs? The answer to this question is indeed a matter of widely differing opinions. Even previously unknown natural phenomena could be considered, there are no limits to the imagination. Such a natural phenomenon should, however, be able to explain the repeatedly observed properties of UFOs in all their complexity. For example, the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung believed in a mental phenomenon. According to his theory, the collective unconscious creates the UFO appearances by projecting the inner psyche into the outer reality. Why and how the hypothetical collective unconscious achieves this remains open.

Maybe we don’t have to go so far as to explain something unknown with something else unknown. Behind the mysterious celestial phenomena could quite simply be a secret advanced technology of earthly origin, such as that of the U.S. military. And finally, of course, the so-called extraterrestrial hypothesis is offered, according to which UFOs are flight devices of an extraterrestrial civilization. While evidence for one of these theories seems difficult to grasp or at least inaccessible to us (at the moment), we can try to gather enough evidence from publicly available sources to give preference to one of these options.

Our natural sciences, especially physics and biology, have undergone an unprecedented evolution over the last hundred years. We have advanced into areas of knowledge that were previously closed to mankind. In miles-long particle accelerators we observe the behavior of elementary particles, while elsewhere we try to decipher our genetic structure. Could it be that in this flood of new data we have overlooked something decisive? Is there possibly a natural process that can explain the sudden appearance and flight characteristics of UFOs as well as other often associated (e.g. paranormal) effects? A simple natural phenomenon, which is subject to the laws of our known physics, should in any case be eliminated. The strange objects often show an »intelligent« behavior, for example when they track airplanes or appear above nuclear installations and apparently render them inoperative. There is really not the slightest hint of a natural process that could demonstrate such purposeful behavior.

Luckily, there are other options left. First of all, there is still the possibility that the many thousands of sightings can be traced back to an extremely advanced but nevertheless earthly technology. In this case, however, it will be necessary to differentiate. Undoubtedly, it is absolutely possible to explain some of the more recent sightings with secret military developments, such as novel espionage and stealth technology. But the many early UFO sightings after the end of the Second World War remain problematic. It was precisely the flood of UFO sightings over U.S. territory by civilian and military witnesses that urged the U.S. military to set up Project Blue Book. It is also not conceivable that a nation other than one of the two superpowers had the necessary technical capabilities at that time. In the end, neither the Soviet Union nor the USA can be considered as originators. The Russians would hardly have tested such progressive knowledge above American soil. Otherwise they would not only have run the risk of the sophisticated technology falling into the hands of their opponents, but also, quite incidentally, of a Third World War being triggered. Therefore, Luis Elizondo as well as former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe have both stated in several interviews that in their opinion Russia and China cannot be made responsible for all these UFO sightings, especially not the early ones.²⁰

It can also be ruled out that the Americans used secret test aircraft to panic the crews of their own nuclear launch facilities and provoke an atomic war (now confirmed by the Pentagon: »The report also found the vast majority of incidents documented over the past two decades did not originate from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology …«²¹). At least in one case of such a UFO sighting, an atomic launch sequence was even set in motion temporarily. Renowned UFO researcher Robert Hastings details these incidents in his book UFOs and Nukes, for which he researched for decades including interviews with over one hundred and fifty witnesses. But also the UFO researcher and author Raymond Fowler reported already in 1990 about the special interest of UFOs in nuclear weapons and the concern of the U.S. military about the appearance of unknown flying objects over neuralgic facilities like the Los Alamos Atomic Energy Commission Project.²² Fowler quotes from a document formerly classified as secret dated 2 January 1952, addressed to the Director of Air Force Intelligence, Major General Samford.²³ The document mentions »persistent reports of unusual flying objects over parts of the United States, particularly the east and west coast and in the vicinity of atomic energy production and testing facilities«.²⁴ In the same year, General Samford held a press conference at the Pentagon on UFO sightings, extracts of which are available on YouTube.²⁵ Raymond Fowler also reports that employees of the Minuteman nuclear missile program informed him in 1966 on the disruption of launch control equipment during UFO sightings over the missile sites on Strategic Command Bases.²⁶ Robert Hastings describes similar cases in his 2008 book.

THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL HYPOTHESIS

This only leaves the so-called extraterrestrial hypothesis, which is also preferred by the authors of the famous COMETA Report from 1999 (»strong presumptions exist in its favor«).²⁷ The authors of this investigation report on UFOs and the witnesses cited therein include, among others:

 — Denis Blancher, Chief Inspector of the Gendarmerie in the Ministry of the Interior

 — Edmond Campagnac, former Technical Director of Air France

 — Joseph Domange, General of the French Air Force

 — Professor André Lebeau, former Head of the French National Space Agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales)

 — Bruno Le Moine, former General of the French Air Force

 — Denis Letty, retired Major General of the French Air Force

 — Christian Marchal, Chief Engineer in the Corps des Mines and Research Director at the French National Space Research Institute ONERA

 — Bernard Norlain, four-star general, former commander of the tactical air force of France and former head of the Institut des Hautes Etudes de Défense Nationale (IHEDN)

 — Jean-Jacques Vélasco, head of the French investigation group on unidentified airspace phenomena SEPRA (now GEIPAN), part of the French space agency CNES.

Even though COMETA is not a governmental research group, an investigation report that has been drafted by such heavyweights as the former head of the French space agency CNES, Professor André Lebeau, as well as General Letty and General Norlain, must be taken seriously. Why only very few media reported about it remains a mystery. The extraterrestrial hypothesis cited in the COMETA Report states that the UFO phenomenon is the result of alien intelligence. Specifically, it suggests that the objects observed must be spacecraft of extraterrestrial beings, wherever they come from.

When you talk about the existence of extraterrestrial beings, a psychological observation is very interesting. Most people (including scientists) nowadays probably have no objections to the assumption that there is other intelligent life out there somewhere. The unimaginable dimensions of our universe already speak for it. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a diameter between 150,000 and 200,000 light-years and is home to about one hundred to four hundred billion stars and more than one hundred billion planets.²⁸ Until now it had been assumed that our universe, which is about 13.8 billion years old, contains about one hundred to two hundred billion galaxies. Recent analysis of so-called deep-field images of the Hubble Space Telescope indicate that this number must be corrected significantly upwards. It is said now that there are at least two trillion galaxies.²⁹ On a large scale, these galaxies form huge patterns in the form of so-called clusters and superclusters that span the entire universe through filamentous structures. All these galaxies, in turn, contain hundreds of billions of stars. And what is even more important: Almost every day new planets are discovered around these stars. At the beginning of 2016, the number of these exoplanets was already at two thousand.³⁰ In February 2017 it was reported that the star Trappist-1, forty light years away, is orbited by seven earth-like planets.³¹ Thus, the number of exoplanets increases steadily. As of 12 February 2021, there have been detected 4,680 planets in 3,457 solar systems.³²

Due to such discoveries, it is considered more and more likely that the immeasurable vastness of our cosmos harbors other life-forms.

Things are quite different – from a psychological point of view – if one takes an all too earthly perspective on the question of extraterrestrial life. Too disturbing is the thought that an alien intelligence might already have visited »our« Earth or that even an interaction is taking place. Without the protective distance to such technically and intellectually superior beings, our beloved everyday life would be in massive danger. This fear of the ideological, social and religious consequences of direct contact makes many people resort to childlike protective mechanisms. Irrespective of all facts and evidence, what simply must not be is defiantly denied.

A popular objection to the extraterrestrial hypothesis are the huge distances to other stars and the speed of light as a speed barrier for massive objects. It is important to know that our nearest neighbor, the star Proxima Centauri, is already 4.24 light years away from us (one light year corresponds to about 9.5 trillion kilometers or 5.88 trillion miles; one light second is the distance light travels in one second, i.e. about three hundred thousand kilometers or 186,282 miles). Albert Einstein stated in his Special Theory of Relativity of 1905 that no object with mass can reach the speed of light or even move faster than light.

Especially for many physicists it is therefore completely impossible that an alien civilization could have ever visited us or will be able to do so.

However, it seems somewhat naive, if not arrogant, to explain interstellar journeys as impossible on the basis of our current physical knowledge. Even if our current technology gives the impression to the layman that we have already understood everything in physical terms, this is clearly not the case. For example, we still cannot decide whether gravity must be explained by space-time curvature according to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity or by quantum mechanics using hypothetical particles (gravitons). We know nothing about the nature of the dark matter that makes up much of our universe. Neither can we say anything about the negative energy that expands our universe at an accelerated rate. We have no idea what is actually behind quantum mechanics, what the true nature of elementary particles is, whether there is a need for numerous other dimensions – as string theory demands – and whether there is perhaps an infinite number of parallel universes.

All these are open questions in physics. So how do we dare, with all these huge gaps in knowledge, to decide whether or not the technology and knowledge of a civilization thousands or millions of years ahead could realize interstellar journeys? We just have to admit that we have not yet discovered decisive laws of nature.

The extraterrestrial hypothesis, in my opinion, is supported by two main points:

Point 1: There are thousands of reports studied by researchers and therapists of people claiming to have been taken by alien beings against their will and subjected to certain examinations. These reports appear worldwide and show an unmistakable pattern. Those affected often report having seen a flying object in the sky before or after their experience and even having been brought into the interior of such an object. The connection with the UFO phenomenon is obvious. This is what the so-called abduction research deals with, which I will go into in detail.

Point 2: The second indication that supports the extraterrestrial hypothesis is an event known as Ariel School Sighting. This is the sighting of a UFO and its crew by over sixty pupils of the Ariel Primary School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe. The pupils reported unanimously that during the breakfast break an object landed near the school grounds and two non-human-looking creatures came out. Immediately after this incident of 16 September 1994, the students were interviewed by the well-known African UFO researcher Cynthia Hind and John Mack, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

They described the appearance of the beings and also the telepathic communication with some of them. In a recent documentary, the witnesses of that time still emphatically confirm this life-changing experience today.³³

I had the privilege to meet one of the witnesses in Frankfurt, Germany.

In addition to radar recordings, there are other physical indications that UFOs are real aircraft and that they might have an extraterrestrial origin. In particular, radioactivity was measured at presumed landing sites and conspicuous changes in vegetation were observed. This includes the case of 1 July 1965 in Valensole, France, as described in the COMETA Report. Under the UFO’s trajectory, the lavender plants were suddenly withered, and the witness could not grow any new plants there for years. Captain Edward Ruppelt reports another case in his book on Project Blue Book.³⁴ Grass samples were sent from an alleged UFO landing site to a laboratory. He was surprised to find that not the blades of grass, but the roots of the grasses were scorched. Another case comes from Great Britain. Significantly increased radiation values were measured at the landing site of the famous Rendlesham Forrest UFO in December 1980 near the military bases Bentwaters and Woodbridge operated by the U.S. Air Force.

And there are likely to be many lesser-known cases. Budd Hopkinks, for example, reports in his book Invaders that in a case he investigated, a UFO apparently landed near a family house on 30 June 1983, leaving behind a circular spot of burnt lawn and four symmetrically arranged holes; the circle was also the starting point for an approximately fourteen-meter-long and two-foot-wide stripe of dead grass.³⁵ After the incident vegetation was gone and wild animals avoided the place.³⁶ Even years later almost nothing flourished on most of the circle, although new grass had been sown in the meantime.³⁷ The various physical aftereffects of the people who stayed at this location will be dealt with later. Another example is reported by Dr. Clarke. The 82-year-old Native American Leland showed the author a perfectly round barren circle in his field.³⁸ He explained to her that this was the spot were a spacecraft repeatedly hovered above the ground and that nothing grows there anymore. And New Zealand experiencer Suzy Hansen reports how conspicuous marks in the mud were found after she had a UFO sighting and associated memories.³⁹ There were three circles, each about 1.5 meters in diameter, spaced about 8 meters apart, forming an equilateral triangle. Her last memory of the nocturnal incident was of a disc-shaped craft standing near the ocean on tripod legs.

The allegations that UFOs have already crashed and been recovered by the U.S. military certainly go even further. One should know that there was indeed a corresponding press release in relation to the famous alleged crash of a UFO in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, which referred to information from the Roswell Army Air Field (later known as Walker Air Force Base). There is also a number of testimonies to the events of that time, such as the testimony of Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer stationed at Roswell Army Air Field.⁴⁰ Colonel Philip Corso’s report in his book The Day After Roswell also supports these assertions. In addition, Apollo astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell publicly announced that he had been informed of the Roswell crash by both long-time Roswell residents and senior military officials.⁴¹

It is even possible that the U.S. military has been working since that time on rebuilding the propulsion mechanism of recovered aircraft (so-called reverse engineering). The controversial physicist Robert Lazar claims to have been involved in this himself. Lazar said he was working on alien aircraft at a secret test site near Groom Lake in Nevada. The Lazar story was researched over many months by the award-winning investigative journalist George Knapp. Even though some points remained open to Lazar’s disadvantage – such as the lack of evidence of his claimed degrees in physics – there was, on the other hand, a number of indications that spoke for Lazar’s story. For example, further eyewitnesses were massively intimidated, and the team of reporters was followed during their work. However, I do not want to deepen these areas of UFO research further. Experience has shown that all traces of such seemingly crystal-clear, tangible evidence always end up in a thicket of diligent disinformation, fantasy products and isolated true clues that cannot be penetrated.

With this, let me summarize the sequence of thoughts up to here as follows:

First: UFOs are a real phenomenon. Anyone who takes a closer look at this topic cannot seriously deny this. The amount of evidence is simply overwhelming (now confirmed by the Pentagon).

Second: The extraterrestrial hypothesis is the most likely explanation for the UFO phenomenon. In other words, no one has been able to provide a more convincing and valid alternative rationale.

Third: Thousands of documented abduction cases indicate that not only the UFO phenomenon is caused by extraterrestrial intelligence but that countless contacts between these beings and humans have already occurred and still occur (evidence for this follows in the next chapter).

Fourth: If for at least sixty years – probably even much longer – there have been contacts between humans and non-human intelligent beings, then of course we should know who these beings are and for what purpose the contacts are made at all.

However, I would like to make one very important point before proceeding. The UFO phenomenon, including contact experiences, is extremely complex and diverse. It is also, as we shall see, associated with paranormal phenomena. It can therefore be assumed that the extraterrestrial hypothesis alone is not sufficient to explain all these processes and events. The objects in the sky and the bizarre experiences with strange beings, which have been investigated for about forty years, cannot simply be explained by curious aliens visiting »our« Earth. It is becoming increasingly clear that a comprehensive explanation requires profound changes in how we understand the world, both in scientific and physical terms and in terms of the diversity of non-human intelligent life. And yet, in my opinion, it is still completely open whether the human mind is capable of grasping the deeper layers of this hidden reality.

In any case, it should be clear to us that the answers to such questions have unforeseeable social, ideological, religious, political, technical, economic and, if necessary, spiritual implications. I do not wish to go into this point any further since it is ultimately a matter of pure speculation. In their book A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact, historian and UFO researcher Richard Dolan and his coauthor Bryce Zabel discuss the scenario of an official recognition of the UFO phenomenon. With a little imagination one can easily think of possible consequences the public confirmation of an extraterrestrial presence might have. First of all, each individual would have to try to integrate the fact that we are not alone into his or her personal world view and religious beliefs. Religious communities would also be forced to respond to this challenge. Presumably many religions would try to preserve their doctrines to the largest extent possible. For example, the chief astronomer of the Vatican, Father José Gabriel Funes, made the following statement:

»The discovery of intelligent life does not mean there’s another Jesus. The incarnation of the son of God is a unique event in the history of humanity, of the universe. If there was intelligent life (on another planet), I don’t see that as a contradiction with the Christian faith.«⁴²

Thus, the Church will presumably claim that the idea of extraterrestrial life does not contradict the Bible and the Christian doctrine.

Nevertheless, it is to be expected – as it has become apparent in our society for some time – that people will increasingly turn to spiritual topics and thus to themselves and their own place in the cosmos. Just as our present social structure would be questioned, so the old political systems would be put into question as well. Especially authoritarian systems, which enable a small elite to oppress the masses, would be deprived of their basis in the face of a superior non-human intelligence. Instead, there would be an increased need for global structures to enable the peoples of the Earth to communicate uniformly with extraterrestrial powers. Such contact would probably be accompanied by a massive transfer of knowledge. Our physical understanding would fundamentally change and expand in many respects. This would inevitably result in new technical achievements, including the use of so-called free energy (or at least new energy generation methods that are behind the UFOs’ propulsion systems).

In many contact reports from different sources, the concern of the aliens about the destruction of our environment is raised. This, too, would certainly be a central issue. The access to new, clean energy sources (possibly in the form of the vacuum or zero-point energy that has long been speculated on) would result in drastic economic and thus also geopolitical changes. Oil, the most important energy resource to date, would considerably lose importance within a very short period of time – with corresponding consequences for the associated power structures.

But all this must remain vague speculations for the time being. How humanity will react to a confirmed ET presence depends decisively on the motives of the strangers as well as on the way in which the extraterrestrial powers publicly reveal themselves for the first time. It is also unclear whether and to what extent (quasi-) governmental institutions are already in contact with certain extraterrestrial races or at least are informed about their existence. I will go into this in more detail at the end of this book.