Two Generations; One Mission: In Search of Elusive UFOs and Aliens

Special Interview with, Ahmad Jamaludin
By
SPI Mathwizard, Ong Yen Chin

 
1. Abductboy and Mathwizard; 2. Ahmad Jamaludin, a very famous UFO researcher in Malaysia
Visit and support his website: http://www.geocities.com/cenmyufos/foxbat.html
3. Dual photo of Ahmad and Mathwizard at the end of interview

 
Will the mystery of UFO, be resolved one day by the capable researchers?

.

Innumerable suns exist; innumerable earths revolve around these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun. Living beings inhabit these worlds. – Giordano Bruno, 1584.

Giordano Bruno was imprisoned eight years and then burned at the stake in Rome on 17th February 1600. Our modern society may be much more lenient towards such claims, but UFOs and aliens remain a controversial and sometimes even a taboo subject in our modern society.


The Beginning of an Other Worldly Passion: Why I Chase After Aliens

I was standing in a forest, just beside a lake. The water was calm, reflecting the scenery like a giant mirror. But the sight was anything but normal. Three huge UFOs were hovering in mid air just above the lake. They were emitting bluish intense light that strangely did not hurt the eyes. There was no sound. It was a very beautiful moment. The technology of the unknown crafts blended in perfectly with the forest and the lake. There was harmony between technology and nature that I have never experience before in any human cities. Then I woke up. It was just a dream; perhaps my subconscious was trying to satisfy my other worldly desire.

Have you ever look up into the starry night sky, at a place far away from any city? If you have, I am sure you would have remembered how splendid it was. You lost count of the stars. You stared into the Milky Way. And sometimes you were in awe of the amount of shooting stars that passed by. Our Sun is only one of the many billions of stars out there in our galaxy; and our galaxy is but just one of many galaxies in the infinitude of space. Isn’t it arrogant and stupid to think that we are alone in the universe? The history of astronomy is a good reminder of how stupid the human race used to be. We thought we were at the centre of the Universe; we thought the Sun revolved around the Earth. Could we now be wrong thinking that we are alone?

I still vividly remember the first time I encountered the word “Flying Saucer”. That time I was still a little child so I can’t remember my age back then. I was watching this cartoon that mentioned Flying Saucer. So I asked my dad what that means while he was about to leave for work. He tried to explain to me but of course I wasn’t able to fully comprehend. He even used his key to scratch an image of a flying saucer on the wall just outside our house, next to the staircases. The image remains until today. But I never expected Flying Saucers and their occupants to be real, until a truly other worldly event happened.

It was the year 1991. I am still a Primary 3 student. Our school was having either Children Day or Teacher’s Day celebration. So there was no lesson that day. Everyone was happily playing and talking. And then out of no where there was a panic. I saw my neighbor and his friend walking towards me. So I stopped him and asked what happened. He merely said “Little Men”. I was baffled. So I went back to my classroom. There were only a few students inside. By then I had heard enough to know that some students had supposedly encountered 3 inches tall humanoids at the backyard of the school. Some even say that these little men have guns and they have a spaceship on the tree! I tried to see into the trees through the windows of my classroom. But there was no spaceship. At least it was not visible from where I was. Students were so terrified that they cried and ran. One student even hit his bag with a broom just in case those little men were hiding in it. Of course the teachers tried to calm the students down, saying that there were no such things as little men. But recently I found out that the teachers actually searched for the little men that very evening but failed to find any.

Some words from my Secondary School friends. I was quite well known among students and teachers due to my fascination of UFOs, aliens, ghosts and other paranormal phenomena. Friends used to call me ‘alien’, ‘professor’ and other sort of weird names. At least they didn’t call me Spooky Mulder…

This incident had opened my mind. I was exposed to another realm: the possibility that there are other mysteries out there which no science can offer a satisfactory explanation. As a kid back then, I was prepared to believe in things that adults will dismiss as nonsense. And hence my interest in paranormal developed. I started to study paranormal phenomena, reading books mainly about UFOs and aliens, but gradually expanded to other weird phenomena as well. I started to collect newspaper reports and articles on the unexplained when I was in Secondary 1, and reading thick astronomy books in Secondary 2, and act that surprised some of my teachers.

Of course I was too ready to believe back then. Now with a much more rational mind and armed with more knowledge, I was much more skeptical about paranormal reports. But deep down inside my heart, I want to believe. I know something happened back then in 1991. I had a chance to try to catch a glimpse of those mysterious miniature humanoids, but I failed to take any action. Of course I can’t blame myself because I was merely 9 years old. But sometimes I do regret that I missed the chance. It was so close yet so far away. And now I am determined to search for the truth. Without those little guys, there will be no SPI agent Mathwizard. My entire fascination with the unexplained is all due to them. If shooting stars can indeed make wishes come true, I wish that I will be given another chance to see them and perhaps say Hello to them.

This article comprised of many different sections which can be read independently of each other. They are a mere tip of a very large iceberg of Ufology, and part of my view after a decade pursue of the truth that still eludes us all.


Unidentified Flying Objects: Myth and Truth

"What we need is not the will to believe but the will to find out." - Bertrand Russell, mathematician and philosopher.

I find it irritating when people always equal UFOs with alien spaceships. The media approach towards UFO mystery has contributed to this misconception when they always have headlines that read like “UFOs sighted. Aliens visited Earth again?” I often have to explain at length to people that UFOs, by definition, simply means “Unidentified Flying Objects”.

Being unidentified, how do we know that they are alien spaceships? They can be, but they need not be. In fact about 95% of all UFOs are misinterpretations of natural phenomena and man-made objects. These include the planet Venus, ball lightning, high-altitude balloons, air planes, kites, mirages caused by reflecting light beams, swamp gas, and even birds reflecting light from the city. Once investigations revealed their true identities, they were technically called IFOs or Identified Flying Objects. But I find it equally perplexing that some people will just look at these 95% of cases and consider the mystery solved. They have clearly missed the point. What about the remaining 5%? What are they? Why can’t we explain them? And how many report that actually contributes to these 5%?

 
Are these natural earth phenomenon or unidentified flying objects?

Brief History of UFOs

UFOs had been sighted all over the world. Records of these strange flying objects can be traced back to antiquity, when man first left their records by painting in the caves. Ancient men describe flying chariots and winged men. Are these imaginative stories, or misinterpretations of natural atmospheric phenomena? Or were they looking at the same UFOs that still elude us today? We may never know how true these reports are. But one thing is for certain: ancient records are full with mysterious flying objects. Here are just a few examples⁷:

• In 329 BCE, while Alexander and his army were crossing the river Jaxartes into India, two ‘shining silver shields’ dived repeatedly from the sky onto the military troops, causing panic among the soldiers, elephants and horses.
• Julius Obsequens, a pagan Roman of the 4th century of the Common Era, recorded in his work Prodigia that in 216 BCE, ‘things like ships were seen in the sky’ over Italy.
• A Roman historian Titus Livus (59 BCE – 17 CE) described a reported sighting in 213 BCE at Hadria, in the Gulf of Venice, Italy, in which what looked like an altar in the sky was surrounded by ‘the strange spectacle of men in white clothing’.

The following was an interesting account taken from ancient Chinese source. Do you think it is a mere legend, or could it be something more? The original Chinese passage is included for those who can read Chinese.

In the 30th year of the Emperor Yao, there was a huge ship seen in the western sea. It glowed at night and stopped glowing in the day. The light often changes its size, sometimes huge sometimes small. The ship always floats around the oceans. It appeared at the same place after 12 year cycle…winged men live on the ship…there had been countless sightings of the ships. People who went out to the sea often talked about this miraculous ship.

尧登位三十年，有巨槎浮于西海，槎上有光，夜明昼灭，其光乍大乍小，常浮于四海，十二年一周天，名曰贯月槎，亦谓桂星槎，羽人栖息其上，群仙含露以漱，庐夏之季，不复记其出没，游海之人，犹传其神伟也。
- <<拾遗记>>

The modern UFO era began in the year 1947, with the famous Kenneth Arnold sighting on June 24. Arnold was a civilian pilot. On that day, he was flying over the Cascade mountains in western Washington State searching for a lost Marine C-46 transport. He soon encountered nine shiny objects in a chain-like formation flying at an estimated speed of 1600 miles per hour. It was controversial whether the term “Flying Saucer” was accurate because in Arnold’s book, The Coming of the Saucers, co-authored with Ray Palmer in 1951, the term “saucer” was only used to describe the motion of the objects, not their shapes. “…They flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water…” was the famous quote in the history of Ufology. But Ronald D. Story confirmed with the reporter who coined the term “Flying saucers” after an interview session with Kenneth Arnold, that Arnold did use “saucer” to describe both the shape and the motion of the UFOs⁸. This seems to contradict other reports that the objects shaped like pie-pan, or even crescent. Did the media get confused over the description? We do not know. But we do know that there was a wave of sightings of “Flying Saucers” right after the case of Arnold was made famous. This could be due to a form of mass hysteria, in which people see what they expect to see.

Reports of untrained observers should always be taken skeptically. In his 1979 work The UFO Handbook, American investigator Allan Hendry showed how easily honest eye-witnesses could misinterpret what they saw:

• A witness who saw a balloon said “it looked like the saucers you read about”.
• A witness who watched a star for an hour said “it made a whirring noise”.
• A witness described an advertising plane as “something out of Star Wars”.
• Police officers who saw stars said they had “never seen anything like it all our lives.”

However, there are UFOs sightings made by trained credible observers, including experienced pilots, astronauts, astronomers and scientists in various fields. In short, we cannot accept every report but neither can we reject all reports of UFOs. A healthy dose of skeptism is necessary in Ufology and any other paranormal study. Most people fall within two camps: they are either believers or non-believers (though the latter often call themselves skeptics, they are not real skeptics).

 
Pictures like these, are very hard to be verified for real or not

To Believe or Not to Believe?

The believers will almost always believe in everything, including the idea that those missing cats in your neighbourhood had been abducted by aliens from Mars. They like mysteries, and often find it hard to accept the fact that a so-called UFO sighting is the result of mere misinterpretation. Ufologist Jenny Randles recalled that one day in 1978, planet Venus was shining through an ice-filled sky. She soon found herself desperately trying to persuade the world that this was not an alien spaceship⁹. Some people even accused her for being a secret agent who tried to cover-up the “truth”. Well, the truth is out there; but sometimes people are just more willing to accept mystery than truth.

The non-believers, on the other hand, will try their best to convince other people that there are no such things as paranormal phenomena. They ‘worship’ science almost as if science is the only truth. They forget that science is a growing body of knowledge. What they are doing is exactly to prevent science from advancing. The non-believers never learnt from history. If they do, they will know that scientists once dismissed sightings of meteors as nonsense. I think we are repeating the same mistake by refusing to acknowledge the existence of paranormal phenomena. The following quotes should be of interest:

"Skeptics¹⁰, who flatly deny the existence of any unexplained phenomenon in the name of 'rationalism,' are among the primary contributors to the rejection of science by the public. People are not stupid and they know very well when they have seen something out of the ordinary. When a so-called expert tells them the object must have been the moon or a mirage, he is really teaching the public that science is impotent or unwilling to pursue the study of the unknown¹¹."
– Dr. Jacques Vallee, astrophysicist and Ufologist, author.

“I propose that true skepticism is called for today: neither the gullible acceptance of true belief nor the closed-minded rejection of the scoffer masquerading as the skeptic. One should be skeptical of both the believers and the scoffers. The negative claims of pseudo-skeptics who offer facile explanations must themselves be subject to criticism. If a competent witness reports having seen something tens of degrees of arc in size (as happens) and the scoffer -- who of course was not there -- offers Venus or a high altitude weather balloon as an explanation, the requirement of extraordinary proof for an extraordinary claim falls on the proffered negative claim as well. That kind of approach is also pseudo-science. Moreover just being a scientist confers neither necessary expertise nor sufficient knowledge. (I wish it did, sigh.) Any scientist who has not read a few serious books and articles presenting actual UFO evidence should out of intellectual honesty refrain from making scientific pronouncements. To look at the evidence and go away unconvinced is one thing. To not look at the evidence and be convinced against it nonetheless is another. That is not science.”  – Bernard Haisch, astrophysicist, UFOSkeptic.org

I consider myself as a true-skeptic: one who is ready to look at the evidence and examine the cases at hand without any prejudice. We must be able to accept that not all paranormal claims are true. There are hoaxes and misinterpretations. And we as paranormal researchers need to identify these from true unexplained accounts. This is the correct way to search for the truth. Ufology is a serious study. Some countries like Britain have even proposed Code of Practice for UFO investigators. We have duties and obligations towards the witnesses, the public and Ufology itself, and we must act professionally in our quest for knowledge.


Characteristics of UFOs

The remaining 5% of UFOs that remain inexplicable may display some of the following characteristics:

• Amazing flying pattern include making zigzag turn, 90 degree turn at high speed that could kill a human pilot, and if in groups may form various formations.
• May suddenly disappear, i.e. vanish into thin air.
• Usually metallic in daylight but could display various colours at night. Usually the entire UFO glows in a single colour, mostly red, orange or white. But some may change colour.
• Usually no sound is audible, but upon close encounters witnesses may hear sound.
• Some sightings are accompanied with strong chemical smell, usually sulphur-like. It is controversial what the exact chemical substances are and how they are produced¹².
• May cause electromagnetic (hereinafter refers to as EM) disturbances to electrical appliances and petrol vehicles.
• May cause panic to nearby animals
• Shape of UFOs can vary from disk, to oval, triangular, elliptical or spherical. Some are rocket or cigar-shaped. Some are cylindrical. Other exotic shapes include teardrop, boomerang, torus etc.
• Some UFOs change their shapes and sizes.

These pictures look somewhat fabricated

Categories of UFO Reports

Most people are aware of Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But not many people care to ask what we mean by “Third Kind”. This is actually a categorical system first introduced by Ufologist Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who worked as a consultant to an official US Government UFO investigation unit known as the Project Blue Book (some people think that this is a cover-up project that used to mask the ‘real’ secret investigation). Three types of the following close encounters are first coined by Dr. Hynek:

• Close Encounters of the First Kind (CE-I): UFO was sighted within close proximity. But there was no interaction between the UFO and the witness or the environment.
• Close Encounters of the Second Kind (CE-II): There was interaction between the UFO and the environment. These may include EM interferences, imprints or burns on the ground, and physical effects on animals, plants and humans.
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE-III): There was sighting of the UFO occupants, which may be human-like, humanoids, robots or even monster-looking creatures. Usually there was no interaction between the entities and the witness.

Two more categories were introduced after Dr Hynek’s death in 1986:

• Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind (CE-IV): UFO occupants take the witness (willingly or unwillingly) to another place, either physically or mentally.
• Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind (CE-V): This category involves human-initiated contact with the UFO occupants either via signaling, languages, or telepathy, and receives a like response.

What Are UFOs?

"Let the mind be enlarged... to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind" - Francis Bacon

No one knows what the remaining 5% of UFOs that remain inexplicable are. Of course there are numerous hypotheses. But do remember that none of these hypotheses has been proven to be accounted for all the cases. It is highly possible that more than one of the hypotheses are in fact true, and different UFOs are indeed different things.

Secret Weapon Hypothesis

This hypothesis proposed that so-called UFOs are experimental aircrafts from the air force. This is actually more than a mere hypothesis. Declassified documents from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had admitted that the Government covered up various experimental aircrafts under the smoke screen of UFOs. Public interests in UFO mysteries had allowed the Government to fly their planes secretly in places or in ways which will not be possible otherwise. But this hypothesis failed to account for cases where non-human occupants of the UFOs were seen, or in cases where the UFOs exhibit technology which is far ahead of anything humans are capable of.

Space Animal Hypothesis

This is one of the earliest but the least popular hypothesis of all, but curiously was even mentioned in the conclusion of US Air Force Project Sign. It holds that UFOs are themselves a type of as yet undiscovered creature that solely lives in the upper atmosphere or even in space. Kenneth Arnold, whose sighting of UFOs started off the modern era of Ufology, is one proponents of this exotic hypothesis. He wrote:

After some fourteen years of extensive research, it is my conclusion that the so-called unidentified flying objects that have been in our atmosphere are not space ships from another planet at all, but are groups and masses of living organisms that are much a part of our atmosphere and space as the life we found in the depths of our oceans. The only major difference in the space and atmospheric organisms are that they have the natural ability to change their densities at will¹³.

It is true that some UFOs’ flight pattern seem to be like animal behaviour. However, this hypothesis also does not explain cases where occupants were sighted. Except of course, these occupants are parasites of the space animals, or had learnt how to tame and control the animals. Although everything is possible in the realm of paranormal phenomena, I found this thought hard to accept.

Atmospheric Phenomena

There is no doubt that the nature contains her own mysteries; some of which are still undiscovered. Scientists had discovered ball lightning, plasma balls, and other forms of atmospheric electrical discharges which are unknown decades ago. It seems possible that some UFOs are just exotic forms of electrical discharge. This explains its curious EM interference properties. Research has even suggests that high EMF from these phenomena could trigger hallucinations in some subjects’ brain, causing them to perceive things which are not there, e.g. spaceships and aliens. Ufologists had termed these phenomena Unidentified Atmospheric Phenomena or UAP, to differentiate them from other forms of UFOs that suggest other worldly origins.

Also note that some UFOs could be what geologists called “piezoelectric effect”: electrical discharges were released into the air by movement underground in which stone layers were crushed under high pressure. This has been demonstrated under laboratory condition. This could explain why UFOs are seen before, during, and after earthquakes. But also note that these do not explain all UFOs phenomena related to earthquakes.

Crafts of Unknown Origins

This is the hypothesis that suggests UFOs are manned or unmanned high-tech crafts from other civilizations. The origin of the occupants could be terrestrial or extraterrestrials. We will discuss these hypotheses in details after we discuss about their occupants.

 
Layered clouds that resemble discs are often mistaken as sightings of UFO

Varieties of UFO Occupants

Contrary to popular belief that UFO occupants only consist of big-head big-eye aliens, reports form all over the world suggested that there are many varieties of UFO occupants. In general, UFO occupants can be classified into six different types:

Human Entities: Human entities look exactly or very similar to humans, although most of them are taller than average humans. Both men and female entities had been reported. It is said that we won’t even recognize these entities as humans when we see them walking on the street. Their behaviour is essentially human. But some possess telepathic ability. Clothing is usually a one-piece jumpsuit. Classic example of human entity is a type of alien known as the “Nordic”. They are tall, blond, and of seemingly Scandinavian and Germanic lineage.

They are most commonly reported in early reports by the Contactees, i.e. people who claimed to have been chosen to make contact with the visitors. Their home world is unknown. Though some say they are from the Pleiades (see details below), we can only take this with a grain of salt. This is because human entities had told other Contactees that they are from Venus or Mars or other planets in the solar systems. Of course now we know that these planets are uninhabitable. Venus, for example, is a planet full with carbon dioxide and it rains sulphuric acid! Any life form on Venus, if any, will not look exactly like us.

It is very unnatural to assume that alien beings evolved on another planet will look exactly the same as we earthlings. If these entities are real, then either they disguise themselves as humans, or that we share a common ancestral history, or they are from Earth of another parallel universe. The Nordic is usually reported in European countries, though they are now gradually being replaced with humanoid entities known as the “Greys”.

1. M45, The Pleiades, is commonly known as the Seven Sisters. It is in the constellation of Taurus and is visible to the naked eye as patches of light. Contactee ‘Billy’ Meier, however, claimed that the Pleiadian system is several million years older than the M45¹³ that we know. It is also about 500 light years away, i.e. 70 light years further away from M45. Did the aliens he saw, if he did see any, came from another parallel universe, different Pleiades?
2. A Pleiadian allegedly photographed by Billy. Is this a real alien or just someone posting for a hoax photo?

Humanoid Entities: Human-like entities are the most commonly reported CE-III and abduction cases entities. Most humanoids are what we call “Greys”: They are short with disproportionately large head, and hairless. Their eyes are very huge and are most commonly reported as totally black. Some researchers suggest that their eyes are actually covered by protective lenses that make it appear black and shiny. Some have pupils that are cat-like or vertical. The name “Greys” originated from their greyish body colour. But similar entities with greenish and whitish toned skin have been reported but we also use the term Greys. Their clothing is usually silver or grey skin-tight jumpsuit. Most Greys, when seen unclothed, do not possess visible genitalia. Communication with humans is mainly by telepathy. Leaders seem to be taller entities. They are usually referred to as “the doctor”. Some humanoids entities are able to float.

Greys appear to be in a hive-like society and display no apparent emotions. In fact some researchers had suggested that one of the reasons they are here is to learn about human emotions. These could explain why so many people had claimed to be abducted by the Greys who are mainly interested in human reproductive system. Sperms and ova samples were taken and some female abductees had reported unexplained pregnancy following an abduction episode. Hybrid fetuses were then removed by the alien captors later. Abductees were encouraged to bond with the hybrid children. Another hypothesis is that the Greys are a dying race incapable of cellular meiosis, and reproduce solely by controlled cloning technique. The quality of the ‘copies’ eventually went down hill after generations of cloning. So they come to gather human DNA samples in hope of finding a way to replenish their gene pools. All these are of course, speculative, and we should not believe in these hypotheses blindly.

The Betty and Barney Hill abduction case is the most famous early abduction case on file. It happened on 19 – 20 September 1961. The UFO occupants are humanoids that look like the Greys, though not exactly fit its modern description. When Betty asked the aliens where they are from, the alien leader showed her a “three-dimensional” star map (what we now call hologram). Under post-hypnotic suggestion by psychiatrist and neurologist Dr Benjamin Simon, Betty drew the map. In 1972, Marjorie Fish, a school teacher, found a good match for the star map after a few years of research. This map suggests that the aliens’ home world could be in the binary star system Zeta Reticuli.

Recently around the year 2000, the Greys had become the icon of Ufology. Most people unfamiliar with the diversity of alien reports will think of Greys when aliens are mentioned.

The "Greys". Why many aliens are stereotyped by grey color skin anyway?

Animal Entities: These entities are rare in CE-III reports. They are much more likely to be reported in Latin America. They have mammalian, reptilian, avian or insect characteristics. They could have fur, scale, claws or tails. Some have large teeth or pointed ears. Eyes are usually with vertical snake-like pupils. Some entities even have glowing eyes. They may growl or display other animal-like behavior. Some are however, rather advanced and possess telepathic ability. Animal entities are usually not clothed, though there are exceptions like the Reptoids. Some entities come with foul smell. Encounters with animal entities can be violent and dangerous. The following are a few animal entities which are relatively more often reported:

Reptoid: Reptoids basically look like advanced velociraptors (fast-moving meat-eating dinosaurs with sharp claws on their hind legs. You see them in the movie Jurassic Park). They are tall, with lizard-like features, and scaly skin which appears greenish. Variations have been reported suggesting possibility of subspecies. Abductees reported many violent behaviors of these reptilian aliens. In one report, two Reptoids fought with each other and ended up one was killed. In other cases, female abductees claimed they were raped by Reptoids, something that goes beyond the usual genetic experiment conducted by other alien races. Reptoids had been seen together with the Greys, leading to a hypothesis that they are masters of the Greys. Some people even believe that the Reptoids consider Earth and human as their property, probably because they have occupied this planet millennia ago. It is interesting to note that they resembled velociraptors. The raptors are considered one of the most intelligent species of dinosaurs. Could some raptor species had evolved into an advanced race that left the Earth long ago? This sound like science fiction but some people take this idea quite seriously.

Could Reptoids be an advanced race of reptiles evolved from velociraptors?

Dolphinoid: These are aquatic alien which are rarely reported. They communicate with telepathy. While on Earth, they confine themselves to large bubbles filled with liquid. They are believed to be enemy of the Reptoids (now it sounds more and more like science fiction…)

Insectoid: These entities look like giant insects, mostly like grasshoppers or praying mantis (both happened to be my favourite insects I studied in childhood, hmm… I wonder why…). But we do not know much about them. One classic case of Insectoid was the entities encountered by Mike Shea, a University of Baltimore law student, in the year 1973 or 1974¹³. But since his recollection is via regression hypnosis, it could be that this event is purely imaginative.

Robot Entities: These entities appear to be made of metal or other inorganic materials. They sometimes float or fly. Some of them have glowing ‘eyes’. They come in different sizes, ranging from inches to 20 feet. They are usually bipedal. They may communicate by voice or even by telepathy. There are cases where robotic entities display hostile actions towards witnesses. They could be conscious intelligent race (it is not known whether machines can be conscious, though personally I believe they can) themselves, or they could be robots designed by other intelligent species to carry out mission on our planet, in which the environment may not be suitable for them.

Exotic Entities: These are entities which are combinations of more than one category, i.e. they exhibit characteristics of different categories. They have extraordinary physical characteristics and may appear repulsive to us. They come in various varieties such as bug-eyed monsters, human-animal hybrid (e.g. the Minotaur), or creatures with anatomical or physical abnormalities (e.g. one-eyed humanoids like the Cyclops). Of course abnormality is a relative term. To them, we two-eyed humans may appear abnormal!

Apparitional Entities: These entities appear ghost-like or angelic depend on your point of view. They materialize and dematerialize, changes shape and size, or even taking the form of other creatures and hence masking their identities. They may float or fly, or even passes through solid wall, but then reassume solid state. Some apparent humans or humanoids entities may sometimes exhibit apparitional characteristic, suggesting that these seemingly miraculous phenomena could be the result of advanced technology. It is also possible that some apparitional entities are merely holographic projections. Apparitional entities rarely communicate with human witnesses. When they do, this could be via verbal language or telepathy.

 
At any time, any where, day and night UFO would appear

Where Do They Come From?

Wherever the UFO occupants come from, they have been here for a very long time. Reports of weird alien entities can be traced back to antiquity. Some even believed that strange figures drawn by cavemen were not just images of ancestral spirits or shamans with costumes, but records of alien beings! What about ancient winged men and gods and description of flying machines in ancient scripts? For example, the epic of Mahabharata from India describe flying machine called vimanas and their destructive weapons that sound to us like nuclear explosion. This could just be mythology, or ancient science fiction. But who knows? It could be somewhat exaggerated form of stories inspired by true sightings of UFOs and its crews. Here is a possible alien encounter from medieval time:

During a Sunday mass at Gravesend, Kent, England in 1211, it is said that the congregation saw an anchor descend and catch on a tombstone in the churchyard. The churchgoers rushed outside to see a strange ‘ship’ in the sky, with people on board. One occupant of the vessel leaped over the side, but did not fall: ‘as if swimming in water’ he made his way through the air toward the anchor. The people on the ground tried to capture him. The man then ‘hurried up to the ship’ – presumably still ‘swimming’. His companions cut the anchor rope, and the ship then ‘sailed out of sight’. The local blacksmith made ornaments from the abandoned anchor to decorate the church lantern⁷.

What do we make of such cases? Perhaps people just describe unfamiliar phenomena with their familiar but limited terms. But did the ‘anchor’ really remain on earth as decoration? That would be a piece of remarkable artifact that may help us determine the origin of the ‘ship’. But of course it is impossible to track down the artifact after so many years. We can only speculate where do these alien beings come from.

Although we use the word “aliens” a lot, it must be noted that it need not necessary mean aliens from another planet. There are alternative hypotheses of where these entities, if they are indeed real, originated from. Unfortunately the media pays little attention to these hypotheses, and as the result, the public is largely ignorant of them.

 
There are several hypothesis for explaining these mysterious things

Underwater Civilization Hypothesis: This hypothesis was put forward when it is noted that many UFO reports are made near body of water, and in some cases, UFOs are seen flying into or out from the oceans. There are also reports of Unidentified Submarine Objects (USOs). Seamen had reported strange lights and objects beneath the sea surface for centuries. Modern USOs reports are numerous indeed. We will look at only one such example:

In 1963, a sonar operator on a destroyer taking part in a US Navy anti-submarine exercise off Puerto Rice, some miles north of Venezuela across the Caribbean Sea, reported that one of the submarines chased an unidentified submarine object which traveled at more than 170 mph. The USO was tracked on sonar by 13 ships for 4 days. Eventually it went down to depths of 27000 feet. No terrestrial submarine is able to move so fast or descend to such a depth underwater¹⁴.

Other rare reports include those where the occupants of USOs are also sighted. They were usually described as “frog-men”. So what are we to make of these reports? It could be that UFOs, wherever they come from, is capable of underwater operations and they could very well have a base in the ocean where human cannot detect. But it is also possible that these USOs that also have flight abilities are native to our planets after all: from an advanced underwater civilization. We have little knowledge of what lies in the deep oceans. There may well be large creatures as yet undiscovered by science (just consider how many sea monsters reports we have on Cryptozoology case files). So it may not be far-fetched to speculate that some other intelligent life forms had evolved in the sea. They may not be interested in us and therefore no attempt communication is made. If we indeed share our planet with another native, advanced species, the only thing they have to be afraid of us humans is that we may eventually pollute the ocean so much that they get extinct. But if they truly exist, would they allow us to pollute their environment to such an extent?


Hollow Earth Hypothesis: This hypothesis also holds that we share our planet with another advanced species. They come from inside the earth, where it is hollow and inhabitable. This hypothesis has largely been rejected because we now know that the core of the earth is not hollow and it is extremely hot and far from being inhabitable. But it is still possible for natural cavities to form underground which can be used by UFO occupants as bases.


Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH): The most well known of all hypotheses, it holds that UFOs are spaceships from another planet. Critics had claimed that the aliens look too much like humans (being humanoids and all), too much varieties of aliens to support ETH (why would all sorts of aliens be interested in visiting our planet?), and claim that interstellar travel is not possible, or at least not easily accomplished, hence contradicting the high frequency of UFO sightings. But of course this is based on human assumptions. We basically know nothing about exobiology to make any conclusion of how aliens should look like; nor do we possess enough knowledge to say for certain whether interstellar travel is possible. Physics has now entered a new realm where wormholes, hyperspace and exotic materials are being discussed seriously. Given the young age of human race, it is conceivable that a much older and technological advanced civilizations would have mastered technology which would only appear like magic to us. So ETH is still a very probable hypothesis.

Some have suggested that these aliens could be from the parallel universe next door. Parallel universes are ideas from quantum physics which I would not go into much detail. Suffice to say that these universes could come in different varieties. Some of these universes are basically the same as ours, complete with our duplicates which may look slightly different. For example, my duplicate may have red hair instead of black hair; or he may have gone to Australia to study instead of Singapore. Every conceivable world could theoretically exist. Some of these worlds may have different evolutional history, leading to advanced intelligent non-human species. We do not yet know whether inter-dimensional travel is possible. If it is, then these alien beings could be from other universes, whether alternate Earth or alternate planets in those universes. For simplicity, we categorize these aliens under ETH as well (this is not a convention and normally ETH only refers to ETs from our own universe).


Time Travel Hypothesis: Some researchers have suggested that the appearance of Greys is what to be expected from our distant descendents: bigger and more evolved brains, and smaller and fragile bodies because of over-dependent of technology. They could have mastered the technology of time travel to come back, maybe trying to change some histories or maybe to do something else (like collecting DNA samples to improve their degraded gene pool after generations of cloning). This is a much more difficult hypothesis to prove (or to disprove). It does not explain the varieties of aliens seen, unless they were the disguise appearances of our descendents. The fact is that this hypothesis is not very popular and being largely ignored.


Psychological Hypothesis: This opinion holds that the UFO occupants are not objectively real, and they are somehow the product of witnesses’ psychological states. There is no doubt many psychological elements in many UFO cases. For example, the well known cultural feedback phenomenon, in which films, movies and books somehow influence people to make claims of UFOs and alien sightings. The ‘Spielberg’s Effect’, for example, is rather interesting. Before the film The Encounter of the Third Kind, aliens with thin slender neck were rarely reported, and humanoids’ eyes usually have visible pupils. But after the film got popular, thin-neck aliens sightings increased, and humanoids are more often reported to have dark black eyes with hardly visible pupils. This suggests that these sightings could be driven by the film. But this does not necessarily entail that they were hallucinations or hoaxes. It is possible that the alien phenomena are real, but the witnesses’ perceive the phenomena differently based on their own belief systems and expectations. If this is so, we can now explain the varieties of UFO occupants: maybe there is only one type of phenomenon, but being perceived as different things by different people. What is their objective reality then? Could there still be such thing as objective reality? We do not know. In fact, human psychology definitely has influenced the types of entities, and even UFOs seen. For example, most medieval UFOs often appeared as crosses in the sky, depicting the Christianity notion at the time. And right before airships were available, there was a wave of mysterious airships in 1896 – 1897. Did people see UFOs and interpret them according to their own perceptions? If so it could well be that today description of flying saucers just depict our space age belief and may not at all be true description of UFOs.

The study of Ufology is now even more complex than ever before. If the senses, like what the famous philosopher and mathematician René Descartes once said, can and do deceive us, what can we really trust?