James Gilliland
James Gilliland is an American extraterrestrial contactee, author, and UFO researcher who has maintained ongoing telepathic and physical contact with Pleiadian and other non-human entities since childhood, and who founded the ECETI Ranch (Enlightened Contact with ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) near Mount Adams, Washington, from which he has hosted sky-watching events and contact workshops for over 36 years. He describes receiving intelligence from higher-dimensional ET sources regarding an incoming extraterrestrial fleet and a broad planetary liberation process underway on Earth.
Biography
Background
Gilliland grew up in the high desert of the American Southwest, where his family regularly observed craft at night and had both positive and unsettling encounters with extraterrestrial entities. His grandmother, a schoolteacher in Carlsbad, New Mexico, received a firsthand account of the Roswell crash from the first responders themselves, who she described as white-faced and trembling. At age five, during a near-fatal bout of bronchial pneumonia, a luminous being dressed in blue visited him repeatedly over several nights and administered a white crystalline substance that he credits with his recovery; he later identified this being as Mother Mary, whom he situates within an ancient Lyran genetic lineage rather than within Catholic tradition.
As a young adult, Gilliland survived a drowning incident that produced a near-death experience in which he entered what he describes as a bliss state and communicated with a vast unifying consciousness across what he identifies as the 7th dimension. Following this experience he began studying with lamas, yogis, and indigenous elders from multiple traditions, and his contact with higher-dimensional beings became more structured and explicit.
Contact experiences
Pleiadian contact and memory restoration
Lifelong contact has been maintained with beings eventually identified as Pleiadians: humanoid entities he initially perceived as angelic figures who withheld their identity until he deduced it independently, after which they confirmed it and showed him past-life memories in the Pleiades and in the Orion system's Council of Light. In a pivotal experience, a gold beam of light struck him in the chest while he was meditating, and three spheres of golden energy descended the beam and transferred his complete memories of past-life identities in the Pleiades and Orion before drawing him aboard a plasma craft occupied by a six-dimensional being named Malia of the Orion Council of Light. He returned with a burn mark on his chest that shifted from triangular to heart-shaped before resolving, which physicians described as resembling a radiation burn.
Ongoing telepathic communication
Continuous telepathic contact is maintained with multiple ET groups, distinguished by the side of the body through which he perceives them — left-side signals indicating feminine Pleiadian energies, right-side signals indicating more objective masculine energies such as feline lion-beings, Andromedans, and Orion Council entities.
Key claims
Extraterrestrial fleet at Ganymede
In early 2022, Gilliland's sources informed him that approximately 500 large extraterrestrial craft had arrived in the solar system and were stationed near Ganymede and Jupiter. Two of those craft were described as engaged in active disclosure operations over Earth, while the broader fleet was said to be working across multiple dimensions — influencing human consciousness through frequencies and dream-state contact — as part of a planetary liberation process.
Planetary liberation and the cabal
A multi-dimensional struggle exists between positive ET coalitions — primarily Pleiadians and the Orion Council of Light — and a "cabal" comprising reptilian, grey, and AI-linked forces that have controlled Earth's institutions for thousands of years. The liberation is non-linear — "two steps forward, one step back" — with positive forces repeatedly clearing negative leadership only to find subordinate elements reconstituting the same structures. Mars and other locations are said to be further along in the liberation process, with various races on Mars working through governance challenges following the removal of Dark Fleet and corporate control.
ET councils and post-liberation governance
Earth's current two-party political system will ultimately give way to a planetary governance model aligned with higher ET councils operating under what he calls universal law, mirroring how advanced civilizations select leadership based on demonstrated spiritual development and track record of service. The Orion Council of Light — with which Gilliland has direct contact — is distinguished from the Council of Five and Council of Nine, some of whose historical incarnations were infiltrated by intelligence agencies and linked to darker forces.
ECETI Ranch
At ECETI Ranch, Gilliland hosts extended sky-watching sessions, workshops on channeling discernment, and methods for clearing negative ET influence. Craft appearances at the ranch are routine; a large craft was sighted directly over the property the night before his January 2022 interview with Michael Salla. The high vibrational environment of Mount Adams draws what he characterizes as nature spirits, Bigfoot, morphing light beings, and Pleiadian presences in addition to physical craft.
Citation by other researchers
Michael Salla, in a 2024 roundtable discussion with Dan Willis, cited Gilliland alongside Alex Collier, Elena Danaan, and JP as independent sources offering parallel accounts of regressive extraterrestrial forces having departed the Solar System: "Alex Collier says the same, as does James Gilliland. JP has been on missions where Space Command sent out a delegation or a flotilla to actually meet up with the arrival of these advanced benevolent extraterrestrials."
In a 2020 interview, Journey to Truth Podcast host described visiting Gilliland in Sedona, where Gilliland taught him to connect with his spirit guide and with lion beings, demonstrating the experiential contact techniques that are central to his workshops: "James Gilliland taught me how to connect with my Canadian guide and then also the lion beings, and he had them come in and he let me feel what it was like when they were around so I could know when they're around."