My 1986 UFO Dream Gave Me Crash Coordinates. 31 Years Later, I Went to Greenland to reconnect.
A few weeks after my sighting and the journal headlines I had a strange dream. The memory of it has never felt like my own. It feels borrowed, imprinted on my mind one night in 1986. It began not as a dream, but as a violent awakening into another place.
I found myself on the bridge of a ship not of human design.
Dream reconstruction
Around me, a frantic crew moved with a desperate, failing grace. The air was thick with a cacophony of shrieks that I understood not with my ears, but with my soul: they were terrified. Through a viewport, I saw a sea of ice churning below, rushing toward us. In the chaos, my eyes locked onto a single point of clarity: a digital display, flickering with a sequence of numbers.
They were the last thing I saw before a final, violent lurch plunged everything into darkness.
I awoke with a gasp in my own bed, the digits seared into my memory. Before they could fade, I scrawled them onto a notepad. For two days, they stared back at me, a meaningless string of numbers. But a thought began to form in my mind. The numbers weren’t random. They were a location.
Discovering Disko Island: From Dream to Destination
At the public library, an old atlas confirmed my suspicion. My fingers traced the lines to a desolate patch of icy water off the coast of Greenland, near a place called Disko Island.
“Disko Island,” I thought, a smile touching my lips. “A bit on the nose, isn’t it?” The idea that my dream was some kind of psychic mayday from a crashed UFO seemed utterly ridiculous, but the chain of events was too compelling to ignore. I hadn’t “known” that the coordinates pointed to a location in the Arctic Circle. Despite this, what I had seen from the alien bridge were Arctic waters. This made sense.
In the following days I filed the experience away, a fascinating but seemingly unsolvable mystery.
For thirty-one years, that knowledge festered. A splinter in my mind. What really happened that night? Was it a warning? A memory? An echo of a tragedy that bled through space and time into my sleep?
Turning Curiosity into Action: The Journey to Greenland
In 2017, I finally had the opportunity to know. After a redundancy I was given a severance cheque. I used part of it to travel to Greenland, to the edge of the world, to confront the ghost that had haunted me for decades. My search started from a distance, poring over satellite images, hunting for any anomaly, any scar on the seabed that could betray a secret. The best I could do however, was to scour the coastline of Disko Island.
Disko Island: the discovery of the shipwreck of the steam whaler Wildfire from 1868, by Erich Habich-Traut
But the sea holds its secrets close. The true coordinates, the point of impact from my dream, are out in the crushing deep. A place where oceanographic data is a modern myth and the icy darkness swallows all light. It’s down there, a place I can point to on a map but can never reach by myself.
The author (right) before the dive to the shipwreck from 1868
I discovered a ship along the coastline of Disko Island, but it wasn’t the vessel I had hoped to find. Instead, I uncovered an even deeper mystery. I journeyed to Greenland for answers, yet only encountered a cold, silent confirmation that something waits in the abyss. My experience taught me that we shouldn’t fear the unknown, but embrace it with hope and curiosity.
And it knows I have its address.
Some may now say that this is the Holy Grail. I have waited 39 years to talk about this. Are you ready?
The Salthill UFO encounter occurred on a cold Sunday morning in Galway, 23 February 1986. When I first recorded the event in 2016, I believed it was the only time I had witnessed something that did not belong in our skies. Later, however, I came to realize that this was not the case. The sighting unfolded in Salthill, but the object itself hovered out over the Claddagh.
An Unexpected Adventure
The 1986 experience kicked off an unexpected adventure, one that took me from the hills of Salthill to the icy shores of Greenland.
The pleasures of life in Galway were simple. For me, one of the finest was walking along the coastal promenade: “the prom,” as everyone called it. My neighbours in Fairlands Park had a boisterous ten-month-old puppy named Rocky, and I often took him out to burn off some of that boundless energy.
That morning was a fine one: after a spell of rain, the skies had cleared to a mostly blue expanse, bright with sun. A crisp layer of frost still clung to the grass in the field.
“Come on, Rocky,” I said, tugging at his leash. “Let’s get a move on before the weather changes its mind.”
It was about eleven o’clock when we began making our way up the hill on Dalysfort Road toward Salthill Beach.
The sky was a patchwork of moody grey and brilliant blue, and I was trying to guess whether we’d get soaked. As I tilted my head back, scanning the clouds, something caught my eye.
The Cigar-Shaped Object
Framed perfectly between the rooftops of a row of houses a solid, grey, cigar-shaped object hung silently in the air. It was utterly still. Rocky, meanwhile, was far more interested in a promising-looking patch of grass.
I didn’t have my 35mm camera with me, a fact I’d regret for years. The object seemed to be hovering a mile or two away, just above the rooftops, as motionless as myself, as I stood there contemplating it and looking for a “rational” explanation.
“It looks like a Zeppelin,” I finally murmured to myself, and dismissed the idea that I was seeing a UFO.
So, I continued the walk. And I kept the object in my sights. Due to the change in perspective, a house and some trees slid in front of it, temporarily, for few seconds, blocking my view.
Naturally, I expected the object to reappear on the other side as we cleared the obstruction.
But it didn’t. The patch of sky where it should have been was empty.
Searching for Answers
“Hold on a minute,” I said, turning around. Rocky looked up at me, confused. I walked back to the exact spot where I’d first seen it. Nothing. The sky was just sky. A slow-moving blimp would still be there, or at least nearby. This was just… gone.
It had vanished in a matter of seconds. I paced back and forth three times or more in disbelief. I had to see it again. It was impossible that it wasn’t there anymore. Rocky started whimpering, having had quite enough of this strange game of walking back and forth. We carried on our walk.
Western House corner store, Salthill
Down at the Salthill promenade, we turned left at the corner store. The green across the road was buzzing with activity. In spring 2016 a full-blown festival was underway. At the seafront, I scanned the wide-open sky one more time. Clear.
Seeking Witnesses
A question crossed my mind: could others have seen the same object as me? I overcame my naturally shy nature to quiz a few people milling about:
“Have you just seen a blimp or any balloons in the sky here?” It felt like being a market researcher. I just got shrugs and shakes of the head in response
I’d already given up hope of finding anyone else to ask when I spotted my friend, Jim, who owned the local amusement arcade. “Jim, good to see you!” I shouted over the noise of a live band. “What’s all this then?”
“College Week, Eric!” he grinned. “Or Rag Week, depending on how much of a mess they make. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Not a ghost,” I said, lowering my voice. “More like… a blimp? Did you see anything up there in the sky? Big, grey, cigar-shaped?”
Jim laughed. “The only thing I’ve seen in the sky is my profits from the slot machines. You’ve been working too hard, mate.” He gave me a funny look, and we left it at that. College week carried on and came to a close on the 1st of March.
Galway Advertiser archive, 27th February, 1986 pg. 21: “COLLEGE Week is in full swing at the moment. Tonight is a fancy dress Rock ‘n Roll night at Leisureland with John Keogh and Full Circle.“
From this, College week 1986 ran from Sunday, February 23, to Saturday, March 1, 1986. There are no other records for the timing of College Week in 1986.
About two weeks later, I went on another walk to Salthill promenade. I went inside inside the Western House corner store to buy cigarettes. Scanning the magazine rack, a headline suddenly jumped out at me:
“UFO flap reported over Irish coast and England”. My heart hammered in my chest. I grabbed the magazine and read the article right there and then. It turned out I wasn’t the only one who had seen strange things that week.
It was a small piece of a much larger puzzle.
Parallel Sightings at about the same time
“Charles in UFO Riddle” On 23rd February 1986: according to the Sunday Mirror, Prince Charles was flying over the Irish Sea in a RAF VC-10, returning from the USA. The pilot reported a glowing red object to Shannon air traffic control that had lit up the cockpit. The Ministry of Defence confirmed there was no danger. Other aircraft in the area reported the same object.
Miles Johnston, an investigator in Belfast, saw a red fireball with a tail over the Irish Sea on 23rd February and reported it to Armagh Observatory. This account appears in “Northern UFO News, number 118” from 1986.
In his book “Extra-Terrestrials Among Us,” George Clinton Andrews recounts the Prince Charles incident. Prince Charles is quoted as saying, “I felt I was in the presence of something outside our knowledge or control,” though the book cites tabloid sources.
Five witnesses reported nocturnal lights over the Irish Sea during this period (the website that held this reference is offline 13.09.2025).
From Salthill, Galway, the Irish Sea lies to the east, less than 200 miles away – a distance any aircraft or UFO could easily cover in minutes.
30 years later
I banished this memory for almost 30 years. In 2016 I reengaged and reconstructed what I had seen that day in 1986, close to Mutton Island in Galway. I would soon discover that this spot had a history of strange sightings.
Reconstruction MUFON #82139, the Mutton Island lighthouse is in the background.
When I revisited my 1986 Salthill UFO sighting in 2016, I reported it to MUFON for the first time. Trying to remember as much detail as possible, I decided to remotely investigate the beach over which the object had been hovering.
I was surprised to find on Google maps various odd circles. They reminded me of the X-Files episode “Biogenesis.” I measured them.
Top: Claddagh circles, Bottom: still photo from X-Files “Biogenesis”
Wait, hadn’t I seen this before on Claddagh Beach in 1999? I remembered discovering this and taking a photo of a circle from the ground for my website, “Virtual Galway.” Afterwards, I walked around Claddagh Beach, asking numerous people if they knew what these circles were. I didn’t get an answer.
Photograph taken from Claddagh beach in 1999.
How strange. Since no one knew what these were, I wondered if these circles were perhaps a new type of “permanent crop circle” – a remnant from when I saw my UFO there thirteen years earlier. I was very hopeful.
After some research, however, they began to remind me of the Miami circles, remnants of prehistoric roundhouses discovered in Florida. Eager to get to the bottom of this, I contacted the archaeological department at the University of Galway to find out if they had any information on these circles.
Within two hours Dr. Sherlock (that’s really his name), the Director of the Galway Archaeological Field School, responded: the structures were designed by Martin Byrne and Padraig Conway as part of the ‘Solas Atlantis Galway 1993’ art project. I thanked Dr. Sherlock, telling him that I had actually contacted the archaeologist Martin Byrne five days earlier.
I also mentioned that I had linked the circles to a UFO sighting, and that Martin was probably laughing all the way to the pub about that:
I wrote that email in jest. How could Martin have any information on unidentified flying objects, right? Surely, there was no connection between an art installation and any cosmic conundrum.
Then, the creator of the circles, Martin Byrne, got back to me. He had named the circles “Solas Atlantis,” apparently from Old Irish solas (“light, brightness”), related to solus (“light”) in Latin. The source of light was originally always the sun (sōl).
Martin said that this was an environmental art project, loosely inspired by Native American medicine wheels, Irish megalithic art, and the proposed sewage plant on Mutton Island.
The position and direction from which I saw the “Salthill UFO” in 1986.
What Martin Byrne didn’t mention explicitly was the connection of his art installation to the origin story of the Irish people: the legend of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
There are two interpretations of the legend of how the Tuatha Dé Danann arrived in Ireland: via the Northern route or the Southern route. The Southern route was particularly popular during the 18th and 19th centuries. Supporting this version is the fact that antiquarians of the time interviewed local people and travelers, recording their folklore. Sir William Wilde, the father of Oscar Wilde, wrote extensively about the Southern route in his book Lough Corrib: Its Shores and Islands (1867).
The reconstructed position of the UFO was the Claddagh, near the site of Martin Byrne’s “Solas Atlantis” geoglyphs.
In my recreation of the Tuatha dé Danann arrival route I concentrate on the Southern route, first landing at the Claddagh. Because that is corroborated by my UFO sighting, however unlikely that may sound.
The Tuatha Dé Danann came in great ships like clouds, that flew through the air and brought with them magical items, for instance a sword of light (light-sabre, anyone?) They were God-like beings, sometimes called “the shining ones”, immune to ageing and sickness, with the abilities of healing and shape-shifting. They brought civilization, arts and advanced skills to Ireland. The legend of the Tuatha was written down by monks in the eleventh century, well before George Lucas wrote Star Wars.
Was it over Galway Bay, that the mythological Tuatha Dé Danann arrived in dark cloud ships, burned some of them, and then landed on a mountain further inland?
In a sense, the Salthill UFO sighting and connected events are a verification of the Southern route…
The Tuatha Dé Danann as Ancient Astronauts: From Galway to Cong
The legends of the Tuatha Dé Danann read less like an ordinary migration tale and more like the memory of an extraordinary descent. In ancient astronaut interpretations, these figures are seen as otherworldly beings whose arrival reshaped Ireland’s landscape and whose legacy survives in the great stone monuments scattered across the island. Where later ages saw impenetrable cairns and massive tombs, the myth supplied an answer: they were built by gods who came from the sky.
The manuscripts describe them arriving in “ships that flew through the air,” a phrase that resonates uncannily with modern visions of spacecraft. They brought with them shining artifacts of immense power – tools or technologies that early chroniclers could only describe as magical treasures. Their arrival story functions as a mythic technology-transfer: beings descending from above, demonstrating feats of construction and energy beyond the scope of any human community of the time.
The Southern Route through Galway
In this retelling, their landing at Galway Bay takes on the quality of a controlled descent. The Claddagh becomes a liminal zone, the chosen beachhead for their craft. From there, they did not disperse aimlessly; instead they advanced inland in formation, following the River Corrib into the vast inland sea of Lough Corrib (Oirbsean). Each landmark became etched with their presence: Galway linked to a maiden of their retinue, Maigh Cuilinn named for their navigator, the lake consecrated to the sea-lord Manannán, perhaps remembered as a commander.
Knockma as a Signal Hill
The imposing limestone mass of Knockma (Cnoc Meadha) rises along their route. Crowned with ancient cairns, it becomes in this reading a natural command post, a hilltop transformed into a beacon or observation point. Later folklore remembered it as the seat of Fionnbharr, king of the fairies, but in the ancient astronaut perspective it recalls the elevated stations from which the newcomers might have surveyed or directed their activities.
Cong and the Cairns of Moytura
The culmination of their advance is at Cong, the battlefield of Moytura. Here the legends place their great war with the Fir Bolg. Ballymacgibbon Cairn, massive and unopened, could be read as a repository or installation; Ecohy’s Cairn, bound to a fallen king, may in fact mark a burial with cosmic significance; Daithi’s Cairn, vast like the monuments of Sligo, forms part of a great terrestrial network. These are not random tombs but nodes in a prehistoric system, aligned with myth and memory.
A Landscape Reforged
What emerges is a cognitive map transformed into a sacred grid. Galway Bay, Corrib, Knockma, and Cong become stages in a procession of beings from beyond. Their story sanctifies the land, but it also encodes memory of technology and power beyond ordinary human means. Whether remembered as gods, fairies, or ancestors, the Tuatha Dé Danann fit within the wider pattern of ancient astronaut lore: those who descended from the skies, forged landscapes into symbols, and left behind monuments too great to forget.
In a more modern context, the Claddagh, Galway’s oldest district, was selected as the site for the “Solas Atlantis” environmental art project, which created geoglyphs and Medicine Wheels inspired by Irelands megalithic designs, highlighting its role as a nexus. From the Claddagh beach, one can see both the cairn-dotted landscape of the Burren and the ancient stone forts of the Aran Islands, making it a symbolic bridge connecting the urban present to the monumental past.
Creating map of the arrival of the Tuatha DeDanaan,
The Arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danann – Southern Tradition (Galway → Cong)
1. Galway Bay / Claddagh — First Sight of Ireland
Coordinates: 53.269037, –9.056382
Event: The fleet of the Tuatha Dé Danann appears out of sea-mist, entering Galway Bay and beaching near the Claddagh.
Mythic detail: Here they perform the ritual burning of their great ships — symbolically severing ties to the Otherworld.
Interpretation: This act need not mean the destruction of every vessel; rather, it marks their irrevocable settlement. Smaller craft (or magically preserved ships) could still carry them inland.
Archaeological echo: Across the bay, the Poulnabrone Dolmen (53.0426, –9.1373) and other Burren tombs anchor this landfall in a Stone Age landscape.
2. The Passage Inland — River Corrib and Lough Oirbsean
Event: After their landing ritual, the Tuatha Dé Danann move inland via the River Corrib into the vast expanse of Lough Corrib (anciently called Oirbsean, linked to Manannán mac Lir).
Mythic detail: This inland voyage is described as a fleet moving through an inland sea, carrying the host of gods toward battle.
Archaeological echo: Shores of Corrib are dotted with cairns, crannogs, and megaliths — prehistoric staging points.
3. Knockma (Cnoc Meadha) — The Fairy Hill of Connacht
Coordinates: 53.48186, –8.96054
Event: En route northward, the Tuatha are tied to Knockma, the limestone hill later famed as the seat of Fionnbharr, king of the Connacht fairies.
Mythic detail: Cairns atop Knockma (including Cesair’s Cairn) link this site to the earliest layers of invasion lore.
Archaeological echo: Neolithic cairns at the summit, later reused in fairy lore.
4. Cong — Plains of Moytura (First Battlefield)
Coordinates: 53.555384, –9.289087
Event: The Tuatha Dé Danann reach Cong, the narrow neck between Lough Corrib and Lough Mask. Here they meet the Fir Bolg.
Mythic detail: The First Battle of Moytura unfolds across the plains; Nuada loses his arm, King Eochaid of the Fir Bolg is slain.
Archaeological echo:
Ballymacgibbon Cairn (~53.530, –9.280): vast unopened passage grave, linked to the slain of Moytura.
Ecohy’s Cairn (Carn Eochaid) (~53.568, –9.270): said to be the burial mound of King Eochaid.
Daithi’s Cairn (~53.628, –9.225): immense cairn further north, reinforcing the sacred battlefield landscape.
Stone circles, standing stones, and other cairns cluster around Cong and Cross.
Map 2: The Northern Tradition (Sligo)
This tradition is based on 20th-century scholarly analysis, which argues that a mistranslation moved the site of the First Battle of Moytura to Cong. This perspective holds that both great battles occurred in County Sligo, a region with an unparalleled concentration of Neolithic monuments that provide a fitting backdrop for a race of master builders.
Route and Key Locations:
Arrival Point: Sligo Bay While not explicitly stated as a landing point, the concentration of the most significant and earliest Neolithic sites around Sligo Bay, such as Carrowmore and Knocknarea, makes it the logical entry point for this tradition.
Heartland of Danann Activity: Instead of a linear route, this tradition proposes that the entire Sligo region was the primary center of the Tuatha Dé Danann’s power and the locus of their conflict with the Firbolg.
Key Archaeological and Mythological Sites:
The traditional site of the Second Battle of Moytura is located on the plain of Kilmactranny, east of Lough Arrow and in the shadow of Carrowkeel. The geographical coherence of the Second Battle’s location lends strong support to the argument that the First Battle also took place in Sligo.
Myth and Mystery: The Arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danann
The story of the Tuatha Dé Danann arriving in ships that landed on a mountain is most prominently featured in the Lebor Gabála Érenn (The Book of the Taking of Ireland). This collection of poems and prose recounts the mythical origins of the Irish people.
According to these accounts, the Tuatha Dé Danann – a race of god-like beings with mastery over magic and craftsmanship – arrived in Ireland under a shroud of mystery. The texts describe them coming in “dark clouds” or “flying ships,” which enveloped the land in shadow for three days. The striking image of a people making their initial appearance on a mountaintop enhances the mythical nature of their arrival.
Reclamation, Not Refuge
Their journey is best understood as a reclamation of ancestral lands rather than a flight to asylum. Some scholarly interpretations draw parallels between the story of the Tuatha Dé Danann and the biblical narrative of the Israelites returning from exile.
… and the lasting folklore of the Tuatha Dé Danann is that they will return. In fact, some folk prophecy states that they will return for one last great battle, some end-of-the-world scenario, some apocalypse, and that they will be victorious.
I have made several FOI requests, regarding Irish and British UFO sightings for 1985-1986 and I will update this page when they are released (date of writing 27.August. 2025). This is regarding the Prince Charles UFO and Shannon ATC. More information is on Facebook.
The digital age began with a spark of innovation the day before Christmas in 1947. Some speculate that Roswell reverse engineering influenced this era, sparking much intrigue and debate over the years.
Transistor One
On December 23rd, 1947, researchers Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain at Bell Labs demonstrated the world’s first working transistor to their colleagues. This revolutionary semiconductor device would become the foundational building block of modern electronics, fundamentally reshaping human civilization by ushering in the digital age.
The Roswell Connection
Yet, a tantalizing question lingers about the origins of this revolution, tied to a mysterious event that occurred just six months earlier in the New Mexico desert. In July 1947, an object crashed near Roswell, New Mexico.
Could the reverse engineering of Roswell finds have given birth to modern electronics?
Roswell, NM,
While officially labeled a weather balloon, eyewitness reports from the time painted a far different picture. The debris was described as a strange, foil-like material with extraordinary properties. Witnesses, including Major Jesse Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group, claimed it was impossibly strong and possessed a kind of shape-memory; it could be crumpled into a ball, only to unfold itself without a single crease.
The timing is provocative. An alleged craft of unknown origin, made of materials beyond our comprehension, crashes. Within months, a breakthrough occurs that hinges on semiconductor materials, launching the digital revolution. This has led to speculation: did the Roswell wreckage contain a piece of technology, perhaps a communications chip, that was recovered and successfully reverse-engineered?
The Probability of Visitors
For such a scenario to be plausible, we must consider the likelihood of alien visitors. The Copernican Principle provides a philosophical foundation, stating that Earth holds no privileged position in the cosmos.
Our planet is one of countless worlds orbiting one of countless suns. If the conditions for life arose here, it follows that life has likely arisen elsewhere throughout the universe.
Our sun (M) is one amongst many. Illustration by Iohannes Kepler, Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, 1618
This creates a paradox. If life is common, why haven’t we heard from anyone? Why the silence? Are we listening for the wrong signals?
The assumption that advanced civilizations would use interstellar radio waves might be flawed. It’s possible they have reasons not to broadcast their existence intentionally by radio. For one thing, conventional radio transceivers are awfully slow, given the enormous distances between worlds. Secondly, they may be afraid to expose their location (Dark Forest theory.)
If they aren’t communicating via radio waves, are they perhaps visiting or sending probes?
Since 1947, thousands of UFO testimonies have been logged. While many are misidentifications of mundane objects like the planet Venus, a significant number remain unexplained by conventional means.
If these reports are considered evidence of a physical presence, then accidental encounters, like the alleged crash at Roswell, move from the realm of impossibility to probability. The ultimate “message” from such a civilization might not be a radio signal, but something else waiting to be understood.
Re-evaluating First Contact in Light of New Technology
The Old Challenge: Sagan’s Paradox
Carl Sagan calculated in 1969 that to initiate the first contact between humans and aliens, we would need to launch 10,000 spaceships into space annually to have even the remotest chance of success. This endeavor would collectively consume about 1% of the mass of all stars in the universe for building materials. Therefore, it makes the task seem impossible.
The Modern Solution: Breakthrough Initiatives
Today, billionaires Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg challenge this paradox. Their “Breakthrough Initiatives” is a scientific effort to find extraterrestrial intelligences. They aim to contact them and explore nearby planets.
Programs like “Breakthrough Starshot” want to send inexpensive unmanned probes, called “StarChips,” to nearby solar systems. They plan to first target Proxima B. The “StarChip” is a marvel of miniaturization. It contains a camera, battery, radio module, solar cells, a photon drive (an LED), and various instruments. Remarkably, it weighs only a few grams.
These nanoprobes will attach to solar sails. This enables laser-assisted accelerations of up to 15-20% of the speed of light. At those speeds, we can reach Alpha Centauri in 20-30 years. Unlike past concepts like the Longshot project, which would require billions of dollars for a single probe, a StarChip nanoprobe costs only around $20.
The launch laser constitutes the biggest cost factor. The project estimates a one-time investment of 5-10 billion dollars for the entire system. Once built, this laser could launch millions of probes. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb suggests we could send these probes to every corner of the cosmos every year, without breaking a sweat.
So, we now see that the material required to send 10,000 probes to the stars every year is only about 40 kilograms. It doesn’t require a significant proportion of the mass of the universe. That’s good.
This technological leap invites a profound question. What influence could the sighting or salvage of a StarChip-like probe have on extraterrestrial intelligent beings on their planets?
Cosmic Mirror
Think of the search for aliens as holding up a giant mirror to all of humanity. By looking for others out there, we end up looking for ourselves. It forces us to think about the signals and objects we’re sending into space and what it means to a planet full of people.
Erich Habich-Traut
The “Cargo Cult” Hypothesis
Could an alien “Starchip”-like probe have landed on Earth in the past?
Sagan himself did not rule out that Earth had been visited by aliens, a priori. Yet, he was a strong opponent of Erich von Däniken’s idea that aliens were directly involved in building the pyramids. Nevertheless, the origin myths of humankind, particularly from Mesopotamia and Egypt, pose intriguing questions.
Carl Sagan’s A Priori.
Mythological Parallels: Echoes of a Visitation?
The cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt play a major role in the origin myths of humankind.
According to the Egyptian creation myth of Heliopolis, in the beginning, there was endless, deep, dark water. From this roiling abyss a solitary, pyramidal mound called the Benben stone arose; the first point of order. Here a solitary intelligence, the sun god Atum-Ra, came into being. Alone, he brought forth two sentient forces: his son and daughter. He sent them out, to begin the great work of building a universe.
For a time, his children were lost. In his desperation, Atum-Ra decoupled a fragment of his consciousness, a sentient probe he called an Eye. He then sent it out to find his children. The eye roamed the vastness, found and returned the children to the pyramidal mound. Atum-Ra’s tears of joy fell on the Earth, and humanity was created.
Thereafter, Atum-Ra began sailing across the heavens in the solar boat of a million years.
Benben stones…
…had great spiritual importance, they were the capstones of pyramids or obelisks. They represented the primordial mound from which the world was created.
The Great Pyramid of Khufu on the Giza plateau reveals eight-sides during the spring and autumn equinox.
Intriguingly, some solar sails, for instance those from the Breakthrough Starshot program, can bear a striking resemblance to a pyramid shape:
Notice the similarity to Khufu’s pyramid in the paper model. A solar sail would be folded similarly.
From the Egyptian creation story to the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic and the Bible, scout birds or flying eyes are common motifs. These epics also feature great bodies of water and voyages to find land.
In these tales it has always been the task of scout birds and divine messengers to find or return to a home for humankind. According to myth and legend, humanity arose on Earth from pyramidal “ships” or mounds – whether through offspring or tears.
Noah’s Ark as a pyramid?
There are a number of examples in art that depict the Ark as a pyramid.
The Gates Of Paradise
And it is not only some Renaissance sculptors and painters that depict Noah’s Ark as pyramidal. How did they come to this notion anyways? Haven’t we been taught in Sunday school that the Ark was a rectangular type boat shape? Maybe with a sloping roof?
Well, the idea of a pyramid -shaped Ark had been suggested much earlier, for instance by Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd century:
“I think that the ark, as much as is clear from the things that are described, had four angles rising from the bottom that gradually narrowed as they came to the peak and came together in the space of one cubit. Thus the cubit is the length and width of the peak.”
Torah Scholarship
This is echoed by the rational-mysticism school within the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Orthodox Judaism. They explain that the Torah’s measurements prescribe a pyramid-shaped ark. I followed their instructions and drew this image:
These interpretations are backed up by a recent analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It suggests that Noah’s Ark was described as having a pointed, pyramid-like roof.
This discovery was made possible by a project at the Israel Antiquities Authority. It used high-resolution scanning technology to reveal previously illegible text on the ancient parchments.
A Monument to a Memory
The convergence of evidence from archaeology, mythology, religious texts, and astronomy does not suggest that aliens built the pyramids.
Rather, it points toward a more compelling and profoundly human explanation. The pyramids are the ultimate expression of a prehistoric cargo cult. The argument is not that extraterrestrials directed their construction. Instead, our ancestors witnessed a singular, awe-inspiring event: the arrival of an autonomous or crewed probe from another world, perhaps resembling a modern solar sail, i.e. pyramidally shaped.
In any case, this “visitor,” with its pyramidal shape, would have been interpreted through a religious lens. It wasn’t a technological marvel; it appeared as a divine messenger. The recurring motifs across cultures – the pyramidal Benben stone from which life arose, the pointed roof of Noah’s Ark that saved humanity from the water, and the “Eye” of Ra sent to search the world – can be understood as fragmented cultural memories of this single technological apparition.
Faced with an event far beyond their comprehension, ancient peoples did what humans have always done: they sought to understand it, venerate it, and reconnect with it. They built pyramids not under alien instruction, but as a monumental act of imitation and worship.
These structures were humanity’s attempt to recreate the form of the “divine” object. They hoped to summon its return. Therefore, the pyramids are not an alien artifact, but an enduring monument to human awe and our innate drive to make sense of the unknown.
Alignment of the Giza plateau pyramids with Orion?
Sons of Orion
“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterward – when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.” Genesis 6:4
In the Aramaic language, a Semitic tongue closely related to Hebrew, the constellation Orion is known as Nephila (נְפִילָא). This has led some scholars to propose that the Hebrew “Nephilim” might be linked to this Aramaic term.
The article moves from the general historical context of SETI to a specific, modern candidate for life, then to a mysterious signal from that candidate, critiquing the scientific response to potential extraterrestrial signals, presenting an alternative theory for the signal, and finally broadening the discussion to the overall limitations of the SETI methodology.
A Sagan-Sized Question
For decades, the search for extraterrestrial life was haunted by a daunting sense of scale. In a 1969 lecture that laid the foundation for modern UFO skepticism, Carl Sagan imagined our cosmic neighbors searching for us by a random principle: sending a spaceship to any old star and simply hoping for the best. More often than not, he assumed, they would find nothing. The universe was a colossal haystack, and intelligent life was a single, lonely needle.
It is a triumph of modern astronomy that this picture has been completely overturned. Today, we know of promising candidates for life-bearing planets right in our cosmic backyard. The proverbial haystack, it turns out, might just be a needle factory.
Proxima b’s orbit is in the habitable zone, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be habitable.
From Random Hopes to Targeted Searches
We are no longer searching blindly. Armed not with metal detectors but with powerful telescopes, we can pinpoint the most likely worlds to harbor life. An intelligent civilization on Earth would not send probes randomly into the void; we would send them to these promising targets. And there are many.
In 2016, astronomers discovered one such target: Proxima Centauri b in the Alpha Centauri system: a potentially habitable planet orbiting the closest star to our sun, a mere 4.2 light-years away. While its parent star’s fierce solar winds make surface picnics unlikely, life could theoretically thrive in subterranean shelters.
In an unrealized project, NASA studied in 1987 the possibility of reaching the orbit of Proxima Centauri b within just 100 years at 4.5% the speed of light. This project was named Longshot, and it was about sending an unmanned probe using nuclear propulsion.
If our initial observations of such a world prove inconclusive in the search for life, what would we do? We would do what we are already doing with Mars: we would send probe after probe until we could be certain. Why would an alien intelligence, having discovered a promising blue dot called Earth, be any different? And from a distance, what do our own Martian space probes look like, if not unidentified flying objects?
In a remarkable coincidence, just as we began to focus on Proxima b in the search for extraterrestrial life, a potential signal emerged from its direction. In April and May of 2019, the Parkes radio telescope in Australia detected a strange, narrow-band radio emission. Dubbed Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1 (BLC1), initially it was classified as a possible sign from an alien civilization.
The signal’s characteristics were puzzling. Its Doppler shift—the change in its frequency—appeared to be the opposite of what would be expected from the planet’s orbit. Curiously, the signal appeared 10 days after a major solar flare from Proxima Centauri, though no link has been established. The primary investigators were two interns, Shane Smith and Sofia Sheikh. They worked cautiously to rule out terrestrial interference.
BLC1 – Breakthrough Listen’s First “Signal of Interest”
Some senior researchers did review the results but found nothing of note.
Long Delay
The BLC-1 signal was first reported publicly 1.5 years after its detection, and only because it was leaked to The Guardian newspaper. The public then had to wait another year for the final results. People were puzzled by the secrecy which fueled speculation.
Delays in announcing a discovery—or non-discovery—within SETI and astronomy are standard practice. Data are not released to the public until they have been verified. For instance, when radio stars were first discovered in 1967, it took two years before the discovery was published. The scientists held on to their data until they found what they considered a plausible natural explanation. The supposed Pulsar mechanism remains a mystery to this day.
PULSAR SHOCKER—SCIENCE’S BIGGEST BLIND SPOT!
Pulsars have puzzled scientists for over 50 years.
This delay practice by SETI can give the impression that data are withheld until “natural explanations” have been found; radio-frequency interference (RFI) is one such explanation.
“Ultimately, I think we’ll be able to convince ourselves that BLC-1 is interference.”
– Andrew Siemion, SETI Principal Investigator for Breakthrough Listen
Within the SETI community, Siemion’s statement exemplifies scientific humility and the cautious process necessary to distinguish genuine signals from interference. Outside SETI, analogous statements can be understood as masking underlying biases or reluctance to accept paradigm-shifting discoveries. This highlights how context influences the interpretation of such remarks.
The Mysterious Signal from Proxima Centauri
It was the perfect alien signal… until it wasn’t. This is the story of BLC1, a radio signal that appeared to be a message from Proxima Centauri.
How long did Earth listen for the BLC-1 signal?
Breakthrough Listen reserved 30 hours on the Parkes telescope to observe Proxima Centauri, but the putative signal was detected during only about three of those hours—roughly 10 % of the total observing time.
During the next six months the team logged another 39 hours of follow-up observations. Out of the 4,320 hours in that half-year, just 0.9 % was spent searching for a repeat—about one-tenth of the effort devoted to the original scan.
The question remains: Was a longer campaign warranted? More generally, aren’t extended observing campaigns in radio-astronomical SETI necessary? We cannot presume that extraterrestrial civilizations broadcast continuous signals; those transmissions may be the only ones we ever detect, and even then only by chance.
BLC-1 has underscored that, when practicable, observations of potential technosignatures should be conducted from at least two different observing sites simultaneously. That this wasn’t done in the case of BLC-1 is inexplicable.
What would be the worst case when announcing the discovery of extraterrestrial technological intelligence?
A mass panic? That later investigations prove the discovery to be wrong and it has to be retracted? Thus discrediting the field of SETI? Or that humankind no longer occupies the pinnacle of evolution in the Cosmos? Would this discovery temper humankinds worst instincts, such as warfare, to the detriment of despotic rulers?
A “Galactic Communications Grid” and BLC-1
At first glance, detecting a narrowband radio signal (e.g., BLC-1) from Proxima Centauri—the star system next door—seems fantastically unlikely. Astrophysicist Jason T. Wright countered that, from an engineering standpoint, Proxima is exactly where we should expect to find such a transmission.
If a galactic communication network exists, Proxima would be the most likely “last mile” transmitter to the Solar System. Instead of every civilization trying to beam powerful, targeted messages to every other star system they want to contact, they would establish a network of communication nodes or relays.
Proxima as the Solar System’s “Cell Tower”
Proxima as the Solar System’s “Cell Tower” In this scenario, Proxima Centauri—the closest star to our Solar System—serves as the logical “cell tower.” A message intended for our region of space would be routed through the galactic network to the Proxima Centauri system. A transmitter located there would then handle the “last mile” broadcast to the Solar System.
These nodes in the Galactic Communications Grid would need to ping each other regularly. But since radio waves travel at the speed of light, a single ping would take over eight years (accounting for the 4.24-light-year distance and signal processing time). Given this limitation, perhaps there’s another way to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI)?
The speed of light is fixed for electromagnetic radio waves—but what about physical objects? And I’m not primarily referring to warp technology, but rather to objects that might already be here.
The Trouble with SETI
ET to SETI: can you hear us now?
SETI’s foundational premise is that extraterrestrial civilizations would likely be light-years away, not operating stealthily in Earth’s atmosphere. The hundreds of thousands of reported UFO sighting are perceived by SETI as being mostly the product of wishful thinking, misinterpretations and fakes.
Because UAPs/UFOs have no confirmed extraterrestrial link, SETI has no scientific basis for allocating resources to them. Consequently, no scientific efforts are undertaken to attempt contact with UAPs by radio or other signalling methods (e.g., lasers).
To qualify as a genuine ETI radio signal, the signal must come from far away and its detection must be reproducible. Otherwise it risks being classified as interference outright.
Highly directional, sensitive radio telescopes are not suited for close-range communication. For this reason, the Contact Project has suggested involving amateur radio operators (hams), whose omnidirectional antennas could be used in communication attempts with UAPs.
SETI with directional AND omnidirectional antennas, for far-and close-range Rx/Tx searches
Scientific Observational Attempts to Detect UAPs/UFOs
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has been leading the Galileo Project, one branch of his project is the detection of possible radio emissions from UAPs.
With new observatories online Avi Loeb is challenging the scientific establishment by taking UAPs seriously.
He sensationally declared he’s looking for intelligent life in deep space, blasting: “I’m interested in intelligence in outer space because I don’t find it very often here on Earth!”
The definition of his job is simple. “What is it to be a scientist?” he asks. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s the privilege of being curious.” It is this foundational principle that now drives one of the most ambitious and controversial scientific endeavors of our time: the Galileo Project. In an age of polarized opinion, the project aims to rise above the noise by focusing on a single, unimpeachable authority. “In science,” he declares, “the arbitrator is the physical reality.”
The project, which is now in full swing in the summer of 2025, was born from a frustration with a scientific community he sees as often too quick to dismiss the unknown. The turning point was the baffling 2017 interstellar visitor, ‘Oumuamua. Its strange, flat shape and its acceleration away from the sun without a visible cometary tail led him to suggest it could be an artifact of an alien technology. The backlash was swift. He recalls a colleague, an expert on rocks, confiding that ‘Oumuamua was “so weird I wish it never existed”—a statement project leader Avi Loeb sees as the antithesis of scientific curiosity.
What If We Were About to Make Contact? The Hypothetical Implications of Confirmed Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Explore the potential consequences of an extraterrestrial discovery. What could happen upon contacting extraterrestrial intelligent life?
Sagan’s UFO Paradox: Fostering Scientific Rigor Through Skepticism and Advocacy
A landmark event highlighted the Carl Sagan UFO controversy: the 1969 symposium he co-organized for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). This meeting notably brought together leading UFO proponents, such as J. Allen Hynek.
Cameo of J. Allen Hynek in “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind”, an UFO encounter category he defined himself..
The meeting also included prominent skeptics, like the first theoretical astronomer of the United States, Donald Menzel. In 1968, Menzel testified before the U.S. House Committee on Science and Astronautics – Symposium on UFOs, stating that he, Menzel, considered all UFO sightings to have natural explanations.
While critics accused Sagan of legitimizing what they considered a “pseudoscience,” Sagan defended the AAAS symposium. He argued that significant public interest in UFOs warranted serious scientific scrutiny.
Carl Sagan was a prominent advocate for the search for extraterrestrial life. Yet, he remained a skeptic regarding Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) as evidence of alien visitation. This seemingly contradictory stance fueled the ongoing debate between UFO skeptics and believers. This is often referred to as the Carl Sagan UFO controversy.
Sagan’s influence on UFO studies produced its most significant beneficial effect by pushing researchers to ground their investigations more firmly in scientific methods. This emphasis on rigor contributed to the emergence of two distinct categories of researchers in the field.
SKEPTICS VS. BELIEVERS: The Secret War Over UFOs
A: Serious UAP researchers who set themselves the goal of identifying and cataloging UFOs, with the main focus on the assumption that there can be no extraterrestrial UFOs. Their focus was on finding conventional, or “banal,” explanations for sightings. They aimed to demystify the phenomenon and bring it within the realm of established science. The Carl Sagan UFO controversy played a role in how these explanations were pursued.
B: Marginalized Fringe UFOresearchers, who in contrast remained open to, or actively pursued, the hypothesis of extraterrestrial intelligence behind UFO sightings found themselves increasingly on the periphery. This group, while not necessarily uncritical or prone to accepting every hoax, was willing to explore unconventional explanations. These were explanations that the “serious” camp often dismissed outright.
UAP or UFO? The Government’s Sneaky Word Game to HIDE the Extraterrestrial Truth!
The contemporary preference for the term UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) rather than UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) starkly reflects the divide between serious and fringe research.
While both terms essentially refer to the same core mystery—observed objects or phenomena in the sky that are not immediately identifiable—’UAP’ has gained traction among those seeking to legitimize their research. They want to avoid the cultural baggage and stigma associated with ‘UFOs,’ which are often colloquially synonymous with alien spacecraft. This shift is part of the Carl Sagan UFO controversy, as different terminologies affect the perception of research.
Researchers, particularly those affiliated with governmental or academic institutions, often opt for ‘UAP’ to protect their professional reputations. They use it to signal a more data-driven, agnostic approach, free from preconceived notions of extraterrestrial involvement.
“BANAL” OR ALIEN? Inside the Bitter Feud Splitting UFO Hunters in Two!
The comparison between a case like the authors “Mufon UFO case #111680” and a frame from the Pentagon’s “Gimbal UAP” video can illustrate this division:
A MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) case, typically investigated by citizen researchers often aligned with the “fringe” category (though MUFON itself has varying methodologies), might present evidence and interpretations that lean towards or explicitly suggest an extraordinary (extraterrestrial) origin.
A government source released the “Gimbal” video, and serious UAP researchers—including military and intelligence analysts—analyzed it. They discussed its flight characteristics, sensor data, and possible but elusive mundane explanations. Although they acknowledge the video’s anomalous nature, they focus their rigorous approach on ruling out known technologies or natural phenomena.
In contrast, the “fringe” perspective may treat the footage as evidence supporting an extraterrestrial hypothesis. But this is due to careful consideration.
Unusual Flight Characteristics in Navy’s 2015 Gimbal UAP Sighting
A study by Yannick Peings and Marik von Rennenkampff analyzes the Gimbal UAP video.
“FRINGE” RESEARCHERS FIGHT BACK
In essence, Carl Sagan’s legacy in UFO studies is complex. His insistence on scientific rigor undoubtedly elevated the quality of investigation in certain quarters. It helped to filter out less credible claims. However, it also contributed to a climate where exploring the more speculative, yet potentially profound, extraterrestrial aspects of the phenomenon became scientifically and academically challenging. As a result, these inquiries were pushed to the margins. This is a key part of what makes the Carl Sagan UFO controversy so enduring.
In essence, Carl Sagan’s legacy in UFO studies is complex. His insistence on scientific rigor undoubtedly elevated the quality of investigation in certain quarters. It helped to filter out less credible claims. However, it also contributed to a climate where exploring the more speculative, yet potentially profound, extraterrestrial aspects of the phenomenon became scientifically and academically challenging. Consequently, such inquiries were pushed to the margins.
SAGAN’S PARADOX: Did His “Science First” Rule KILL the Search for Alien Life?
Was Sagan a hero of reason—or did his skepticism accidentally suppress the truth? The ongoing debate and the terminological distinctions highlight this enduring tension between cautious, mainstream scientific inquiry and the persistent, more speculative allure of the unknown inherent in the UFO/UAP enigma. Discussions continue over his role and influence in shaping public perception and scientific investigation of unexplained aerial phenomena. The Carl Sagan UFO controversy exemplifies this tension.
“Extraordinary?” Sagan’s 1977 Standard Stuns UFO Dreamers
In 1977, when the film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was released, Washington Post readers first heard of the “Sagan Standard”: that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.“
Carl Sagan uttered this aphorism in relation to the first film scene. In the scene, planes were found in the Sahara which years earlier disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. The notion of extraordinary claims was central to Sagan’s skepticism about extraterrestrial causes.
“There is no evidence that lights in the sky or the disappearance of ships or planes are due to extraterrestrial interference (in the Bermuda Triangle)”, Sagan said.
Reference: Second View, Sagan on ‘Encounters’
NEW YORK — Carl Sagan, the 43-year-old glamor boy of astronomy, is hunched down in the fifth row of the Ziegfeld Theater on West 54th Street, waiting for the five o’clock matinee to roll. Whoooooosh! A sandstorm rages across the screen, enveloping viewers in a yellow haze.
Bermuda Triangle, 1986: Nine years later, in the shadowy depths of the North Atlantic, the Russian nuclear submarine K-219 vanished beneath the waves. It left a chilling mystery in its wake. As the vessel settled silently on the ocean floor—nearly 18,000 feet (5.5 kilometers) below the surface—a more disturbing discovery emerged. The submarine’s full arsenal of nuclear warheads had inexplicably disappeared, raising extraordinary claims about what might have occurred.
Any attempt to retrieve or remove the warheads should have been impossible at such an unfathomable depth. It was beyond the reach of all human technology in 1986. Yet, the weapons had vanished nonetheless, leaving behind only unanswered questions and a silence as deep as the ocean itself.
Official records claim that the catastrophic incident aboard K-219 took place hundreds of miles from the Hatteras Abyssal Plain. This spot was the very location where the lost submarine ultimately came to rest (Wikipedia).
Yet this contradiction is curious, to say the least, inviting extraordinary claims and speculations.
Deep-Sea Riddle: Vanished Russian Nukes Hide Under Triangle
Consult the Marine Gazetteer Map, and you’ll notice a small dot nestled between Miami and Bermuda. This is the location of the Hatteras Abyssal Plain. In other words, it is inside the notorious Bermuda Triangle.
Science moves forward through doubt, evidence, and the enduring patience to pursue both. But in a case like this, extraordinary claims about the vanished nukes cannot help but intrigue those. These claims make people wonder what secrets still lie hidden beneath those mysterious waters.
Location of the sunk Russian nuclear submarine K-219. Until now, no publication has linked it’s sinking and the disappearance of it’s nuclear arsenal to the presence of the Bermuda Triangle.
Cosmos Mania: Sagan Turns the Universe into Prime-Time TV
In 1980 the name Sagan finally became a household name when Carl presented his extraordinarily successful TV series “Cosmos.”
The series covered topics ranging from the origin of life to a perspective of our place in the universe.
The Sagan Standard, first phrased in the Washington Post article from December 1977, that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” became the mantra of the series. Carl claimed that nearly every UFO sighting is based on optical illusions and misinterpretations.
Carl Sagan wrote regarding UFO claims:
“When confronted with a claim for which there is no compelling evidence, we should reserve judgment. I know of no evidence for visits to Earth by beings from other worlds.”
Commemorating the historic Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting—24 June 1947 (Full transcript and link to original radio interview from the 26th of June, just two days later.)
THE SIGHTING THAT STARTED IT ALL
Seventy-seven years ago today, a 32-year-old Idaho businessman and experienced pilot named Kenneth Arnold unwittingly ignited the modern fascination with unidentified flying objects. While flying his CallAir A-2 over the Cascade Mountains on 24 June 1947, Arnold spotted nine silvery objects weaving in formation near Mount Rainier. He later described their motion as “like a saucer if you skip it across water,” a phrase newspapers soon shortened to “flying saucers,” forever branding the phenomenon.
ON-AIR EXCLUSIVE
The broadcast of the first radio interview with Kenneth Arnold itself has its own remarkable backstory: for over forty years, the KWRC interview existed only in second-hand reports—until researcher Pierre Lagrange uncovered the original vinyl in 1988. This pristine recording finally lets us hear Arnold’s exact words and raw emotion in the immediate wake of his sighting and the media storm that followed.
Kenneth Arnold interviewed by Ted Smith, KWRC, 26 June 1947:
“Every newspaper across the nation has made headlines out of it, and this afternoon we are honored, indeed, to have here in our studio the man himself, Kenneth Arnold, who we believe can give us a first-hand account of what happened. Kenneth, first of all, if you’ll move a little closer to the microphone, please tell—in your own words, as you told us last night in your hotel room and again this morning—what you were doing and how this entire thing started. Go ahead, Kenneth.”
ARNOLD RECOUNTS THE FLIGHT
(Kenneth Arnold) “Well, at about 2:15 p.m. I took off from Chehalis, Washington, en route to Yakima. Every time any of us fly over the country near Mount Rainier, we spend an hour or two searching for the Marine plane that’s never been found; they believe it’s in the snow somewhere southwest of that area, at an elevation of about 10,000 feet.
I had made one sweep close to Mount Rainier and down one of the canyons, looking for any object that might be the Marine ship, and about fifteen minutes later, as I came up out of the canyon, I was approximately 25–28 miles from Mount Rainier. I’d climbed back to 9,200 feet when I noticed, to my left, a chain that looked like the tail of a Chinese kite—weaving and moving at terrific speed across the face of the mountain.”
FIRST IMPRESSION
“At first I thought they were geese, because they flew like geese, but they were traveling so fast that I immediately decided it had to be a formation of new jet planes.”
TIMING THE OBJECTS
“As the objects reached the edge of Mount Rainier, heading about 160° south, I thought I’d clock them. It was such a clear day, and I could use Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams as reference points—pilots love arguing about speed. They flipped and flashed in the sun like mirrors, and the glare through my Plexiglas windshield nearly blinded me.”
TAILS—OR LACK THEREOF
“It was about 2:59 p.m. when I started timing them with my sweep-second hand. I kept looking for their tails; they had none. Thinking something might be wrong with my eyes, I turned the plane around, opened the window, and looked out—still no tails.”
BRIEF BUT MEMORABLE
“The entire observation lasted no more than two and a half minutes. I could see them clearly only when they tipped and reflected the sunlight. They looked like a pie plate cut in half with a convex triangle at the rear.”
UNCONVENTIONAL FLIGHT
“I thought perhaps they were jet planes with their tails painted green or brown and didn’t think much of it, but I kept watching. They didn’t fly in the conventional formation taught in our Army; they wove in and out above the mountaintops and even dipped into canyons—probably by about 100 feet. Against the snow on Mount Rainier and Mount Adams, they were unmistakable.”
INCREDIBLE SPEED
“When the last one passed Mount Adams, I checked my watch: 1 minute 42 seconds. Later, using my map, I calculated their speed. Allowing for error, it was roughly 1,200 mph—even if I stretched the flight time to three or four minutes, they’d still be exceeding 800 mph. To my knowledge, nothing but some German rockets could do that.”
LEVEL FLIGHT, NO DIVES
“They maintained a more or less constant altitude—no climbing or diving, just straight and level. I joked with the fellows at the airport that they must have had a tailwind, but the joke didn’t help much.”
HAND ON THE BIBLE
“To the best of my knowledge, that is exactly what I saw. As I told the Associated Press, I’d be glad to confirm it with my hand on a Bible.
Kenneth Arnold in front of his CallAir A-2 plane
Whether it involves our Army or Intelligence, or some foreign country, I don’t know. But I did see it, and I did clock it. I just happened to be in the perfect position, and it’s as much a mystery to me as to anyone who’s been calling me for the last 24 hours.”
NEWSROOM FRENZY
(Newscaster Ted Smith)
“Kenneth, thank you very much. I know you’ve been busy these last 24 hours—I’ve spent some of that time with you myself—and both the Associated Press and United Press have been after you every minute. This story has been on every newscast and in every newspaper I know. United Press in Portland has made several telephone calls to Pendleton—to me and to you—and New York is clamoring for details.”
LOOKING FOR ANSWERS
“We may have an answer before nightfall. If it’s some new type of Army or Navy secret missile, there will probably be an announcement and that will be the end of it—or perhaps we’ll finally get a definite explanation. I understand United Press is checking with the Army and Navy now, and we hope for something concrete soon.”
STAY TUNED
“We certainly want to thank you, Kenneth, for coming into our studio. We’re pleased to give our KWRC listeners this first-hand report. Listeners, keep tuned to this station: any time we get something on our United Press teletype—from New York, Chicago, Portland, or any bureau across the nation—we’ll have it on the air.”
A CALL FOR SERIOUS INVESTIGATION
“We’ve seen something—hundreds of pilots have seen something—in the skies. We have dutifully reported these sightings, yet it seems we need fifteen million witnesses before anyone looks into the problem seriously. This is utterly fantastic—more fantastic than flying saucers or people from Venus or anything else, as far as I’m concerned.”
Most of us will never see a strange light dart across the night sky, let alone claim to be whisked aboard a craft not of this Earth. Yet, tucked away in public databases, government archives, and academic journals lie more than 200,000 firsthand accounts from people who insist such events happened to them. It makes one wonder if there is an extraterrestrial message hidden among the accounts.
No, I don’t have the time to read all those accounts personally, so I told Gemini AI DeepResearch to analyze them all for me. That’s what Large Language Models are good at. An unexpected picture emerged from the mountain of testimony: the alleged visitors, if real, seem far less interested in dazzling us with technology than in warning us about the way we run our planet.
How Many Cases Are We Really Talking About?
• Public databases: Roughly 170,000 sighting and contact reports sit in the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) catalogue, with hundreds added every month. • Declassified government projects: Project BLUE BOOK’s 12,618 files and the FBI’s post-war “Vault” documents add a further trove. • Academic & clinical work: Thirty-plus peer-reviewed psychology papers (from Harvard, Goldsmiths, and others) and at least half-a-dozen social-science surveys have examined self-identified abductees and “channelers”—people who claim to relay telepathic messages from non-human intelligences. • Independent qualitative studies: Another six to ten book-length investigations—by scholars such as the late Harvard psychiatrist John Mack or the late Temple University historian David Jacobs—bring the formal research count to “just over forty.”
Summary
The tenor of over 200,000 UFO reports from credible experiencers, military personnel, and contactees is delivering the same urgent warnings, and it’s time we listened. There appears to be a deliberate, intelligent effort to guide humanity away from self-destruction. Here’s what they’re telling us:
Cosmic Wake-Up Call: Five Urgent ET Messages for Humanity’s Survival
“Disarm Now—Or Face Extinction” (Nuclear Warnings: A Clear Pattern) Resonance: Moderate to Low, with pockets of High Concern. Politicians & People in Power: While there’s widespread acknowledgment of the catastrophic potential of nuclear weapons, the urgency of immediate and complete disarmament is a highly contentious issue.
UFOs didn’t just happen to appear over nuclear facilities during the Cold War—they were intervening. Missiles mysteriously deactivated. Radar systems jammed. Military witnesses confirm: Something was sending a message. The message? “Your weapons are a threat to the entire cosmos.” This isn’t speculation—it’s documented.
“Earth is Dying—Act Immediately” (Environmental Crisis: A Dire Alert) Resonance: High in Acknowledgment, Moderate to Low in Sufficiently Urgent Action. Politicians & People in Power: There is now widespread, almost universal, acknowledgment among world leaders and major institutions that climate change and environmental degradation represent a significant, even existential, crisis.
From Jim Sparks to countless abductees, the message is consistent: “Your planet is in critical condition.” Crop circles, telepathic warnings, and visions of ecological collapse aren’t coincidences—they’re a galactic SOS. ETs aren’t just observing—they’re urging us to change before it’s too late.
“You Are Starseeds—Awaken” (Spiritual & Evolutionary Guidance) Resonance: Extremely Low to Non-Existent in mainstream political discourse. Politicians & People in Power: This type of message, rooted in specific spiritual or esoteric beliefs like the “Starseed” concept (which posits that some humans originated from other planets or dimensions to help Earth), generally does not resonate in mainstream political circles or among those in positions of secular power.
The most profound encounters aren’t about fear—they’re about ascension. Contactees describe downloads of cosmic knowledge, sudden healing abilities, and an overwhelming sense of universal connection. This isn’t fantasy—it’s a consciousness upgrade. ETs are trying to help humanity evolve beyond war, greed, and separation.
“Unite or Perish” (A Call for Global Solidarity) Resonance: Moderate, with Fluctuations based on Context. Politicians & People in Power: The idea of global solidarity is frequently invoked in international forums, especially when addressing transboundary challenges like pandemics, climate change, economic crises, and major conflicts.
The idea that ET contact could end human conflict isn’t wishful thinking—it’s inevitable. Once we accept we’re not alone, borders, religions, and ideologies will seem trivial. The message? “You are one species. Start acting like it.”
“The Great Filter is Real—Don’t Fail” (Warning of Civilizational Collapse) Resonance: Low in terms of the specific “Great Filter” terminology; Moderate in terms of underlying concern about civilizational threats.
Politicians & People in Power: The specific astrobiological/futurist concept of “The Great Filter” (a hypothesis suggesting that some event or condition prevents life from becoming an advanced space-faring civilization) is not commonly part of mainstream political discourse.
Advanced civilizations may have already fallen to the same traps we face: war, environmental abuse, and technological recklessness. UFOs could be survivors—or even guardians—trying to steer us away from the cliff.
The Truth is Here—Will We Listen?
This isn’t random noise. The patterns are too consistent, the witnesses too credible, and the stakes too high to ignore. The messages are real. The question is: Will humanity wake up in time?
1. Disarm Nuclear Arms 2. Heal a Dying Planet 3. Awaken Your Cosmic Heritage 4. Foster peace and unity 5. Avoid the Great Filter
An Overview of Online UFO Experiencer Reports: Accessibility, Themes, Hostility, and Messages for Humanity
The Enduring Mystery of UFOs & UAPs
The phenomenon of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), now more commonly referred to as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), continues to captivate public imagination and spark intense debate. At the heart of this mystery are the firsthand accounts of individuals who claim encounters with these unexplained objects—or even their alleged occupants. These UFO experiencer reports serve as a unique body of qualitative data, offering insights into personal interpretations of extraordinary events.
This report examines: ✔ The accessibility and estimated number of online UFO reports ✔ Core themes and narratives in experiencer accounts ✔ The spectrum of reported interactions—from hostile to benevolent ✔ Potential messages for humanity embedded in these encounters
Given the diverse and often controversial nature of these reports, a comprehensive approach is necessary—one that acknowledges both scientific skepticism and the profound personal impact these experiences have on those who report them.
🔍 Accessibility & Estimated Number of Online UFO Reports
The internet serves as a vast repository for UFO-related information, with numerous platforms hosting firsthand accounts, government documents, and independent research.
Archived websites from MUFON, NUFORC, and UFO forums.
📌 Estimated Total Online Reports: 200,000+
NUFORC: ~170,000
Project BLUE BOOK: ~12,000
CORGIS/GitHub datasets: ~80,000
FBI & other archives: Thousands more
👽 Core Themes in UFO Experiencer Reports
Analysis of these reports reveals recurring patterns in abduction narratives, entity descriptions, and emotional responses.
🛸 The Abduction Narrative
Many accounts follow a structured sequence:
Capture – Sudden inability to move/resist.
Examination – Invasive medical procedures (often reproductive).
Communication – Telepathic messages or warnings.
Return – Often with missing time or physical marks.
👾 Reported Alien Entities
✔ Grey Aliens (most common in North America) Small, large-headed, slanted black eyes. ✔ Nordic Aliens (often described as benevolent) Tall, human-like, blond hair. ✔ Non-Humanoid Beings (less common but reported globally).
✔ Fear & Trauma (most common in abduction cases). ✔ Mystical or Spiritual Awakening (some report profound love/connection). ✔ Sense of Purpose (belief in being part of a “cosmic plan”).
⚠️ Recurring Warnings
✔ Environmental Collapse (“Our planet is dying”). ✔ Nuclear Danger (UFOs frequently seen near nuclear sites). ✔ Humanity’s Self-Destruction (warnings about technology outpacing wisdom).
⚔️ Hostility vs. Benevolence in Alien Encounters
Reports vary widely—from terrifying abductions to uplifting contact.
🔴 Hostile Encounters
✔ Forced Abductions (loss of bodily autonomy). ✔ Medical Experiments (often described as painful). ✔ Animal Mutilations (linked to UFO activity in some cases). ✔ Military Concerns (UAPs in restricted airspace seen as potential threats).
✔ Early Contactees (1950s) – Aliens as peaceful guides. ✔ Spiritual Experiences – Feelings of universal love. ✔ Even modern abductees sometimes report healing, guidance, or spiritual uplift. ✔ Environmental Warnings – Urging humanity to change.
⚖️ Neutral/Ambiguous Cases
✔ UFO Sightings Without Interaction (most common). ✔ Observation-Only Encounters (no clear intent).
🌍 Potential Messages for Humanity
While no verified extraterrestrial communication exists, recurring themes suggest:
🌱 Environmental Crisis – Urgent warnings about Earth’s future. 25-35%
🕊️ Call for Unity – Speculation that contact could unify humanity.
🚀 Technological Caution – Fears of self-destruction via unchecked advancement. 15-25%
📌 Key Takeaway: These “messages” may reflect human anxieties.
How is society responding?
Popular culture, for one, has embraced the subject with gusto. Streaming platforms feature dozens of alien-abduction docuseries, while TikTok’s #uaptok hashtag has sailed past half a billion views. Mental-health practitioners quietly report more clients looking for “experiencer support groups” rather than traditional PTSD counseling, suggesting that people who believe they were taken no longer feel entirely alone.
Mainstream science moves more cautiously. In 2023, NASA convened an independent study that called for “serious, stigma-free data collection,” and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics followed suit with its own UAP committee. Medical literature still explains abduction memories largely in terms of sleep paralysis, dissociation, or fantasy proneness, yet outright dismissal is no longer the reflex it once was.
Politics remains the slowest arena. The 2024 U.S. National Defense Authorization Act ordered every federal agency to hand historically significant UAP files to the National Archives, marking an unprecedented bid for transparency. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has already analyzed more than 800 military encounters and promises a civilian reporting portal. France, Japan, and the United Kingdom have reopened or expanded their public UAP desks. Even so, no head of state has addressed the substance of the alleged messages—neither the nuclear warnings nor the environmental pleas. The United Nations has never tabled a resolution on them. In the halls of power, stigma still whispers more loudly than data.
Are we listening?
Polls by Pew and IPSOS show that a slim majority of Americans now believe intelligent life is visiting Earth. Only twelve percent, however, think their elected leaders treat the subject seriously. Meanwhile, global carbon emissions continue to rise, and the world’s nuclear stockpile just grew for the first time in two decades. If the visitors’ messages are real, we remain stubbornly off script.
A quiet crossroads
The existence of the data is no longer in dispute: more than 200,000 public reports and at least forty formal studies document the phenomenon. Stripped of lurid headlines and Hollywood tropes, the core warnings are surprisingly consistent—dial back nuclear brinkmanship, mend the biosphere, and evolve beyond tribal conflict. Governments have begun to lift the veil of classification, but policy inspired by those warnings is still in its infancy.
Perhaps the most telling statistic is not how many files exist, but how few decision-makers have read them. Disclosure, in other words, is happening. Whether we choose to heed the cosmic nudge remains an open question—one whose answer may determine whether humanity, too, becomes just another cautionary tale in someone else’s sky.
ContactProject.org: Is humanity ready for contact with extraterrestrial intelligence?
ETI is already near Earth, either in the form of drones, UAPs, or UFOs—whatever you prefer to call them. That is the premise of the Contact Project. The project proposal is therefore simple: instead of broadcasting a pinpointed message to a potential civilization far, far away, we can use simple, inexpensive, and widely available omnidirectional antennas to invite communication from objects or phenomena in Earth orbit. Moreover, this effort should not be limited to a short period of time; it should be sustained and undertaken with the broad agreement of people on every continent.
The message in the Contact Project might resemble the following:
“A Beacon in the Galaxy: Updated Arecibo Message for Potential FAST and SETI Projects” https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.04288, by Jonathan H. Jiang, Hanjie Li, Matthew Chong, Qitian Jin, Philip E. Rosen, Xiaoming Jiang, Kristen A. Fahy, Stuart F. Taylor, Zhihui Kong, Jamilah Hah, Zong-Hong Zhu.
A potential ETI is, of course, capable of decoding any human transmission we are already broadcasting, but the point of the Contact Project is to address ETI directly, acknowledge their presence, and actively seek contact.
Demonstrating such openness would prove humankind’s readiness for contact. By doing so, we would not be giving away anything new—such as our position—beyond what we already broadcast. It would simply be a friendly hello, as envisioned by the Contact Project organization.
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