Phenomenon (non-human intelligence)

This article is about the paranormal subject. For the James Fox film, see

The Phenomenon (2020 film)

. For other uses, see

Phenomenon (disambiguation)

The phenomenon — in full the UFO phenomenon or the close-encounter phenomenon, and in the speech of those who study it simply "the phenomenon" — is the collective of anomalous experiences involving UFO sightings, close encounters, exotic craft, mental and physiological effects, and interactions with consciousness. It is attributed to non-human intelligence, variously held to be non-human intelligent beings, a systemic control system for human consciousness that Jacques Vallée leaves open between a natural process and "some superhuman will", or other paranormal agencies. Concealment and the denial of information and evidence run through it, from what Jason Reza Jorjani calls "the stealth employed by the entities themselves" to the official secrecy that David Grusch counts as "an aspect of the phenomenon". Its nature, including the identity of the UFO occupants, is the subject of competing theories: extraterrestrial, interdimensional, cryptoterrestrial, ultraterrestrial, temporal and others.

An early official use of the term, a 1947 opinion of the Army Air Forces' Air Materiel Command under Lieutenant General Nathan Twining, found that "the phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious", and the Disclosure Project briefing of 2001 holds that the testimony of retrieval-program insiders "establishes the reality of the phenomenon". Its mechanism is disputed, and those who attribute the reports to misidentification and hoax contest it.[citation needed] It resists any single explanatory framework — Luis Elizondo says of it that "we're all trying to figure this out together" — and whether the theories of those who study it can be reconciled is itself open.

Scope

The phenomenon spans the full range of contact events: physical sightings, abductions, implant cases, missing time, communication with non-human intelligence, initiated contact, and experiencer accounts. Whether this grouping names one reality or several is open. Jacques Vallée and John Keel extend it to encounters with Sasquatch, angelic and demonic manifestations, Marian apparitions and shapeshifter reports, which conventional categories treat as separate but which they hold to be expressions of a single underlying reality. The former Navy chief Sean Cahill cautions that "phenomenon" is not merely a better word for UFOs, since most of what he encounters, "regardless of whether it's unidentified or an object, it's certainly not exhibiting flight characteristics." Its reported scope includes:

Non-human intelligent beings met in close encounters, abductions and contactee experiences, of the many reported kinds — whether, in Jorjani's distinction, "humanoid time travelers" in physical craft or a genuinely non-human intelligence manifesting by paraphysical means.
Unidentified aerial phenomena — anomalous craft, disc-shaped, triangular, tic-tac-shaped or luminous, exhibiting the five observables and taken by many for exotic spacecraft of non-human origin, as in the USS Nimitz incident and the 1952 Washington, D.C., UFO incident, and the focus of AATIP and the AAWSAP. Some accounts add human-built exotic craft such as the TR-3B to the phenomenon.
Physical effects — crop circles, trace evidence, electromagnetic interference, biological effects, and radiation injuries on witnesses.
Consciousness-related effects — telepathy, missing time, implant activation, altered states, remote viewing, and non-verbal communication.
Its presence through human history — Vallée holds that "the phenomenon has been with us for a long time, actually as long as humans have existed", and Jorjani that it "has been with us through all of human history", with "a genetic connection between the beings behind UFO's or UAPs and the human race". The ancient-contact traditions read the same continuity in the Anunnaki, the Ancient Builder Race, the Watchers and Sumerian accounts.

David Grusch counts the secrecy around it as "an aspect of the phenomenon because it's like a reach out from the crash retrieval program", which joins it to the crash retrievals, the legacy programs built on them and the wider concealment of non-human intelligent beings; Steven Greer holds that the testimony of insiders to craft that "have crashed or been forced down and which have been retrieved" establishes "the fact that we have been studying this phenomenon for years". Jorjani ties UAP disclosure to it, warning of a reset of human advancement in which "no real UFO disclosure takes place and the phenomenon is able to retain its element of stealth". Whether the human order that grew up around it — the breakaway civilization said to have come out of the reverse-engineering programs, exopolitical relations with non-human groups, and the deep state — belongs to the phenomenon or is a human response to it is open.

Usage

Capitalized as the phenomenon, the ordinary word for an observable occurrence narrows to the single reality its users hold to lie behind non-human contact. Luis Elizondo, the former director of AATIP, traces the official vocabulary from "unidentified flying object" through "unidentified aerial phenomenon" to "unidentified anomalous phenomenon", a progression he ties to the multi-domain, transmedium behaviour recorded.

Investigators, insiders and experiencers use "the phenomenon" for what they report, each from their own standpoint.

Person	Context	Representative statement
John Keel	Investigative journalist; author of Operation Trojan Horse (1970)	"The real problems hidden behind the UFO phenomenon are staggering and so complex that they will seem almost incomprehensible at first."[1]
John Mack	Harvard psychiatrist; author of Passport to the Cosmos (1999)	Studied the alien abduction phenomenon as a genuine anomalous experience requiring new methodologies beyond conventional psychiatric frameworks.[20]
Jacques Vallée	Astronomer and computer scientist; pioneered statistical analysis of UFO patterns	"The phenomenon is not constant. It goes through waves."[21] "The phenomenon works on the culture at a very deep level."[22]
Steven Greer	Founder of the Disclosure Project; emergency physician	Cited General Nathan Twining's 1947 assessment that "the phenomenon reported is real and not visionary" as foundational evidence.[23]
Luis Elizondo	Former director of AATIP; author of Imminent	Asked what he tells his family about the phenomenon: "They need to find their own answers. We're all trying to figure this out together."[13]
Ross Coulthart	Investigative journalist; author of In Plain Sight	"Whatever this phenomenon is, it's psychometrics... It has the capacity to meddle with our minds and to meddle with our technology."[24]
James Fox	Documentary filmmaker; director of The Phenomenon (2020)	Titled his documentary The Phenomenon, surveying the history of UFO encounters and government responses from the 1940s to the present.[25]
Richard Dolan	Historian; author of UFOs and the National Security State	Recognized as "one of the planet's most respected authors and historians when it comes to the topic of UFOs and the phenomenon more broadly."[26]
Diana Pasulka	Professor of religious studies; author of American Cosmic	Explored the phenomenon's "spiritual aspect" and its connection to consciousness and specific neurological structures.[27]
Paola Harris	UFO researcher; worked with J. Allen Hynek	"The phenomenon itself is real and I found out by working with the best... a scientist and astronomer."[28]
Jason Reza Jorjani	Philosopher; author of Closer Encounters	Distinguished two sources of the phenomenon: humanoid time travelers in physical craft, and a genuinely non-human intelligence manifesting through paraphysical means.[4]

Theoretical frameworks

Main article:

Theories of the UFO phenomenon

Several competing frameworks attempt to account for what the phenomenon is:

Extraterrestrial hypothesis — that the phenomenon represents visitation by beings from other star systems.
Paraphysical / interdimensional hypothesis — that the entities and craft operate at the boundary of physical and non-physical reality, as proposed by John Keel, Jacques Vallée, and others.
Ultraterrestrial hypothesis — Keel's invitation to "place the UFOs into a terrestrial or ultraterrestrial framework."
Cryptoterrestrial hypothesis — that the intelligence behind the phenomenon is native to Earth and has coexisted with humanity throughout history.[citation needed]
Temporal hypothesis — that some or all of the phenomenon involves visitors from the human future.
Consciousness-based models — that the phenomenon is fundamentally a consciousness event, interacting with human perception and neurology in ways that conventional physics cannot account for.
Control system hypothesis — Vallée's proposal that the phenomenon is "not necessarily caused by extraterrestrial visitors, nor the result of misidentifications and hoaxes" but a control system that works like a thermostat, serving "to stabilize the relationship between man's consciousness needs and the evolving complexities of the world"; he asks whether the pattern of its waves acts on human belief as a "schedule of reinforcement". He has since said that the phenomenon "is not constant" but "goes through waves" and "works on the culture at a very deep level".

Open questions

References

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