these are open questions in physics. So how do we dare, with all these huge gaps in knowledge, to decide whether or not the technology and knowledge of a civilization thousands or millions of years ahead could realize interstellar journeys? We just have to admit that we have not yet discovered decisive laws of nature.
The extraterrestrial hypothesis, in my opinion, is supported by two main points:
Point 1: There are thousands of reports studied by researchers and therapists of people claiming to have been taken by alien beings against their will and subjected to certain examinations. These reports appear worldwide and show an unmistakable pattern. Those affected often report having seen a flying object in the sky before or after their experience and even having been brought into the interior of such an object. The connection with the UFO phenomenon is obvious. This is what the so-called abduction research deals with, which I will go into in detail.
Point 2: The second indication that supports the extraterrestrial hypothesis is an event known as Ariel School Sighting. This is the sighting of a UFO and its crew by over sixty pupils of the Ariel Primary School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe. The pupils reported unanimously that during the breakfast break an object landed near the school grounds and two non-human-looking creatures came out. Immediately after this incident of 16 September 1994, the students were interviewed by the well-known African UFO researcher Cynthia Hind and John Mack, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
They described the appearance of the beings and also the telepathic communication with some of them. In a recent documentary, the witnesses of that time still emphatically confirm this life-changing experience today.33
I had the privilege to meet one of the witnesses in Frankfurt, Germany.
In addition to radar recordings, there are other physical indications that UFOs are real aircraft and that they might have an extraterrestrial origin. In particular, radioactivity was measured at presumed landing sites and conspicuous changes in vegetation were observed. This includes the case of 1 July 1965 in Valensole, France, as described in the COMETA Report. Under the UFO’s trajectory, the lavender plants were suddenly withered, and the witness could not grow any new plants there for years. Captain Edward Ruppelt reports another case in his book on Project Blue Book.34 Grass samples were sent from an alleged UFO landing site to a laboratory. He was surprised to find that not the blades of grass, but the roots of the grasses were scorched. Another case comes from Great Britain. Significantly increased radiation values were measured at the landing site of the famous Rendlesham Forrest UFO in December 1980 near the military bases Bentwaters and Woodbridge operated by the U.S. Air Force.
And there are likely to be many lesser-known cases. Budd Hopkinks, for example, reports in his book Invaders that in a case he investigated, a UFO apparently landed near a family house on 30 June 1983, leaving behind a circular spot of burnt lawn and four symmetrically arranged holes; the circle was also the starting point for an approximately fourteen-meter-long and two-foot-wide stripe of dead grass.35 After the incident vegetation was gone and wild animals avoided the place.36 Even years later almost nothing flourished on most of the circle, although new grass had been sown in the meantime.37 The various physical aftereffects of the people who stayed at this location will be dealt with later. Another example is reported by Dr. Clarke. The 82-year-old Native American Leland showed the author a perfectly round barren circle in his field.38 He explained to her that this was the spot were a spacecraft repeatedly hovered above the ground and that nothing grows there anymore. And New Zealand experiencer Suzy Hansen reports how conspicuous marks in the mud were found after she had a UFO sighting and associated memories.39 There were three circles, each about 1.5 meters in diameter, spaced about 8 meters apart, forming an equilateral triangle. Her last memory of the nocturnal incident was of a disc-shaped craft standing near the ocean on tripod legs.
The allegations that UFOs have already crashed and been recovered by the U.S. military certainly go even further. One should know that there was indeed a corresponding press release in relation to the famous alleged crash of a UFO in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, which referred to information from the Roswell Army Air Field (later known as Walker Air Force Base). There is also a number of testimonies to the events of that time, such as the testimony of Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer stationed at Roswell Army Air Field.40 Colonel Philip Corso’s report in his book The Day After Roswell also supports these assertions. In addition, Apollo astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell publicly announced that he had been informed of the Roswell crash by both long-time Roswell residents and senior military officials.41
It is even possible that the U.S. military has been working since that time on rebuilding the propulsion mechanism of recovered aircraft (so-called reverse engineering). The controversial physicist Robert Lazar claims to have been involved in this himself. Lazar said he was working on alien aircraft at a secret test site near Groom Lake in Nevada. The Lazar story was researched over many months by the award-winning investigative journalist George Knapp. Even though some points remained open to Lazar’s disadvantage – such as the lack of evidence of his claimed degrees in physics – there was, on the other hand, a number of indications that spoke for Lazar’s story. For example, further eyewitnesses were massively intimidated, and the team of reporters was followed during their work. However, I do not want to deepen these areas of UFO research further. Experience has shown that all traces of such seemingly crystal-clear, tangible evidence always end up in a thicket of diligent disinformation, fantasy products and isolated true clues that cannot be penetrated.
With this, let me summarize the sequence of thoughts up to here as follows:
First: UFOs are a real phenomenon. Anyone who takes a closer look at this topic cannot seriously deny this. The amount of evidence is simply overwhelming (now confirmed by the Pentagon).
Second: The extraterrestrial hypothesis is the most likely explanation for the UFO phenomenon. In other words, no one has been able to provide a more convincing and valid alternative rationale.
Third: Thousands of documented abduction cases indicate that not only the UFO phenomenon is caused by extraterrestrial intelligence but that countless contacts between these beings and humans have already occurred and still occur (evidence for this follows in the next chapter).
Fourth: If for at least sixty years – probably even much longer – there have been contacts between humans and non-human intelligent beings, then of course we should know who these beings are and for what purpose the contacts are made at all.
However, I would like to make one very important point before proceeding. The UFO phenomenon, including contact experiences, is extremely complex and diverse. It is also, as we shall see, associated with paranormal phenomena. It can therefore be assumed that the extraterrestrial hypothesis alone is not sufficient to explain all these processes and events. The objects in the sky and the bizarre experiences with strange beings, which have been investigated for about forty years, cannot simply be explained by curious aliens visiting »our« Earth. It is becoming increasingly clear that a comprehensive explanation requires profound changes in how we understand the world, both in scientific and physical terms and in terms of the diversity of non-human intelligent life. And yet, in my opinion, it is still completely open whether the human mind is capable of grasping the deeper layers of this hidden reality.
In any case, it should be clear to us that the answers to such questions have unforeseeable social, ideological, religious, political, technical, economic and, if necessary, spiritual implications. I do not wish to go into this point any further since it is ultimately a matter of pure speculation. In their book A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact, historian and UFO researcher Richard Dolan and his coauthor Bryce Zabel discuss the scenario of an official recognition
