Post by auntym on Oct 1, 2021 13:35:40 GMT -6
thedebrief.org/the-experience-the-cultural-rise-of-alien-abductions-and-those-who-encounter-them/?utm_sq=guryjkwkfz
THE EXPERIENCE: THE CULTURAL RISE OF ALIEN ABDUCTIONS AND THOSE WHO ENCOUNTER THEM
Former New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal explores the rise of the alien abduction phenomenon, and the people who experience it.
by RALPH BLUMENTHAL /
SEPTEMBER 24, 2021
Don’t ask the Pentagon about aliens. Tracking UFOs flying hypersonic circles around F/A-18F Super Hornets is job enough without speculating on extraterrestrial origins or who (or what) could be behind the wheel.
The long-awaited June 25 “Preliminary Assessment” to Congress on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was silent on what these…things are — although it acknowledged they “probably do represent physical objects” and “clearly pose a safety of flight issue.” But the report pointedly avoided the question of whether they might be off-earth vehicles.
Yet some humans say they know what they know: We are not alone.
They are called experiencers – a word that describes nothing – because their experiences seem so impossible to imagine: Encounters with non-human entities, which sometimes involve UFOs and sometimes do not. Kary Mullis, who shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, wrote of a night in Mendocino County, California, in 1985 where he encountered a glowing, talking raccoon who greeted him with “Good evening, doctor,” after which Mullis found himself the following day some distance away with no recollection of the intervening time or any memory of a spacecraft.
Ordinary people acknowledge these experiences. So do celebrities. The rapper Kendrick Lamar told the Howard Stern Show in 2017 that at age 6, he had seen a UFO fly by and was asked if he thought he’d been abducted by aliens. “I probably did,” he said. “That’s probably why I’m doing music right now. Who knows? They probably gave me the energy.” Earlier, he had told JoJo Wright’s radio show, “I’ve seen ghosts before, for sure. I’ve seen UFOs too. I’ll never forget that, and that was my encounter, and still to this day, I know there is something else out there.”
The singer Demi Lovato has referenced their own “experiments” as well, announcing in May that they were producing and starring in a forthcoming four-part UFO series, “Unidentified with Demi Lovato,” for the NBCUniversal streaming service Peacock; Episode 1 is scheduled to air on the 30th of September. “Demi is a true believer, and during this courageous adventure, [Demi] hopes to convince [their] friends, family, and [their] millions of followers that not only are there intelligent beings beyond Earth but that they are already here!” the announcement said. “Demi plans to learn enough about the extra-terrestrials through interviewing scientists, alien abductees, and [their] own experiments to initiate those close encounters and make peace with the aliens, and ultimately save ourselves.”
The rapper Lupe Fiasco told a Los Angeles radio station in 2012 of an “extra-worldly experience” at age 11 when he saw a black disc at his window and felt paralyzed, “surrounded by all this electricity.”
Representatives of Mr. Lamar and Ms. Lovato did not respond to numerous interview requests. A publicist for Mr. Fiasco said, “he’s passing on speaking about his experience.” Other stars with reported UFO encounters include Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, and Tom DeLonge, who founded a study and entertainment group, To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science.
Jay Christopher King, a 42-year-old Jersey City artist who co-hosts an online support group of some 200 fellow experiencers, remembers his childhood fright at seeing a short grayish creature crouched in front of the family’s basement washing machine rummaging through the dirty laundry. More recently, he says, he has encountered spindly mantis-like beings that communicate telepathically in florid English — and Latin.
He knows it sounds crazy. “Now,” he says, “you’re diving into the deep end of the swimming pool.”
For Karin Austin, a 52-year-old former interior designer, construction project manager, and small business owner in Colorado working with an online group of fellow experiencers to advance Disclosure of secret UFO data, it was finding herself one night in her twenties far from her bed in a crowd of other humans in pajamas in a forest clearing near an abandoned roller coaster. There, she says, a tall skinny being presented her with a strange-looking little boy as her hybrid son.
Incredible, she agrees. But she’s convinced it happened, in some unknown dimension of reality, especially after finding a sketch of the same scene she remembers in a book by another experiencer. She has given up hope of being taken seriously. “People just think we’re…nut jobs.”
Other experiencers who also agreed to share their stories are participants in the support group co-hosted by Jay Christopher King and organized by Stuart Davis, an experiencer, artist, musician, and filmmaker in Boulder, Colorado, with a podcast “Aliens & Artists.” (Their accounts, below, have been condensed.)
Human encounters with gods, angels, fairies, ghosts, spirit animals, and other entities have been staples of folklore, religion, and myth since the dawn of recorded history, but space creatures quickly permeated mass culture with the postwar flying saucer boom. The lack of scientific evidence of extraterrestrial visitations did little to slow the avalanche of bestselling books and blockbuster movies.
Skeptics have laid the experiences to delusions, sleep paralysis, or other natural aberrant conditions.
Recent years, however, have brought growing physical confirmation by Navy ships and warplanes of unidentified flying objects, what the government now prefers to call unidentified aerial phenomena. In 2017, in The New York Times, we revealed that a secret Pentagon unit called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP, was documenting their astounding aerodynamics while leaving aside questions of their origin, intelligent control, or occupants.
CONTINUE READING: thedebrief.org/the-experience-the-cultural-rise-of-alien-abductions-and-those-who-encounter-them/?utm_sq=guryjkwkfz
Ralph Blumenthal was a New York Times reporter from 1964-2009 and co-wrote the 2017 Times story that broke the news of a secret Pentagon unit investigating UFOs. His 2013 article in Vanity Fair Online, “Alien Nation: Have Humans Been Abducted by Extraterrestrials?”, about Harvard psychiatrist John Mack who risked his eminent career to study the alien abduction phenomenon, was a work-in-progress for his book, “The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack,” published March 15, 2021, by High Road Books of the University of New Mexico Press.
THE EXPERIENCE: THE CULTURAL RISE OF ALIEN ABDUCTIONS AND THOSE WHO ENCOUNTER THEM
Former New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal explores the rise of the alien abduction phenomenon, and the people who experience it.
by RALPH BLUMENTHAL /
SEPTEMBER 24, 2021
Don’t ask the Pentagon about aliens. Tracking UFOs flying hypersonic circles around F/A-18F Super Hornets is job enough without speculating on extraterrestrial origins or who (or what) could be behind the wheel.
The long-awaited June 25 “Preliminary Assessment” to Congress on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was silent on what these…things are — although it acknowledged they “probably do represent physical objects” and “clearly pose a safety of flight issue.” But the report pointedly avoided the question of whether they might be off-earth vehicles.
Yet some humans say they know what they know: We are not alone.
They are called experiencers – a word that describes nothing – because their experiences seem so impossible to imagine: Encounters with non-human entities, which sometimes involve UFOs and sometimes do not. Kary Mullis, who shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, wrote of a night in Mendocino County, California, in 1985 where he encountered a glowing, talking raccoon who greeted him with “Good evening, doctor,” after which Mullis found himself the following day some distance away with no recollection of the intervening time or any memory of a spacecraft.
Ordinary people acknowledge these experiences. So do celebrities. The rapper Kendrick Lamar told the Howard Stern Show in 2017 that at age 6, he had seen a UFO fly by and was asked if he thought he’d been abducted by aliens. “I probably did,” he said. “That’s probably why I’m doing music right now. Who knows? They probably gave me the energy.” Earlier, he had told JoJo Wright’s radio show, “I’ve seen ghosts before, for sure. I’ve seen UFOs too. I’ll never forget that, and that was my encounter, and still to this day, I know there is something else out there.”
The singer Demi Lovato has referenced their own “experiments” as well, announcing in May that they were producing and starring in a forthcoming four-part UFO series, “Unidentified with Demi Lovato,” for the NBCUniversal streaming service Peacock; Episode 1 is scheduled to air on the 30th of September. “Demi is a true believer, and during this courageous adventure, [Demi] hopes to convince [their] friends, family, and [their] millions of followers that not only are there intelligent beings beyond Earth but that they are already here!” the announcement said. “Demi plans to learn enough about the extra-terrestrials through interviewing scientists, alien abductees, and [their] own experiments to initiate those close encounters and make peace with the aliens, and ultimately save ourselves.”
The rapper Lupe Fiasco told a Los Angeles radio station in 2012 of an “extra-worldly experience” at age 11 when he saw a black disc at his window and felt paralyzed, “surrounded by all this electricity.”
Representatives of Mr. Lamar and Ms. Lovato did not respond to numerous interview requests. A publicist for Mr. Fiasco said, “he’s passing on speaking about his experience.” Other stars with reported UFO encounters include Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, and Tom DeLonge, who founded a study and entertainment group, To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science.
Jay Christopher King, a 42-year-old Jersey City artist who co-hosts an online support group of some 200 fellow experiencers, remembers his childhood fright at seeing a short grayish creature crouched in front of the family’s basement washing machine rummaging through the dirty laundry. More recently, he says, he has encountered spindly mantis-like beings that communicate telepathically in florid English — and Latin.
He knows it sounds crazy. “Now,” he says, “you’re diving into the deep end of the swimming pool.”
For Karin Austin, a 52-year-old former interior designer, construction project manager, and small business owner in Colorado working with an online group of fellow experiencers to advance Disclosure of secret UFO data, it was finding herself one night in her twenties far from her bed in a crowd of other humans in pajamas in a forest clearing near an abandoned roller coaster. There, she says, a tall skinny being presented her with a strange-looking little boy as her hybrid son.
Incredible, she agrees. But she’s convinced it happened, in some unknown dimension of reality, especially after finding a sketch of the same scene she remembers in a book by another experiencer. She has given up hope of being taken seriously. “People just think we’re…nut jobs.”
Other experiencers who also agreed to share their stories are participants in the support group co-hosted by Jay Christopher King and organized by Stuart Davis, an experiencer, artist, musician, and filmmaker in Boulder, Colorado, with a podcast “Aliens & Artists.” (Their accounts, below, have been condensed.)
Human encounters with gods, angels, fairies, ghosts, spirit animals, and other entities have been staples of folklore, religion, and myth since the dawn of recorded history, but space creatures quickly permeated mass culture with the postwar flying saucer boom. The lack of scientific evidence of extraterrestrial visitations did little to slow the avalanche of bestselling books and blockbuster movies.
Skeptics have laid the experiences to delusions, sleep paralysis, or other natural aberrant conditions.
Recent years, however, have brought growing physical confirmation by Navy ships and warplanes of unidentified flying objects, what the government now prefers to call unidentified aerial phenomena. In 2017, in The New York Times, we revealed that a secret Pentagon unit called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP, was documenting their astounding aerodynamics while leaving aside questions of their origin, intelligent control, or occupants.
CONTINUE READING: thedebrief.org/the-experience-the-cultural-rise-of-alien-abductions-and-those-who-encounter-them/?utm_sq=guryjkwkfz
Ralph Blumenthal was a New York Times reporter from 1964-2009 and co-wrote the 2017 Times story that broke the news of a secret Pentagon unit investigating UFOs. His 2013 article in Vanity Fair Online, “Alien Nation: Have Humans Been Abducted by Extraterrestrials?”, about Harvard psychiatrist John Mack who risked his eminent career to study the alien abduction phenomenon, was a work-in-progress for his book, “The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack,” published March 15, 2021, by High Road Books of the University of New Mexico Press.