Non-Extraterrestrial UFO Hypotheses

This thread is devoted to discussing hypotheses about UFOs that do not involve extra-terrestrials. Topics or approaches to the subject of UFOs appropriate for discussion in this thread include metaphysical, paranormal, fortean, mythological, folkloric and similar approaches to UFOs.

Discussion of the ideas and insights of persons including but not limited to Karl Jung, Jacques Vallee, John Keel, and Robert P. Hansen are appropriate.

Discussion of the collective unconscious and archetypes, trickster phenomena, liminality and similar topics as applied to UFOs are appropriate.

Discussion of Jacques Vallee’s hypothesis about a control system, Martin Cannon’s screen memories hypothesis, black ops/mind control, hypnosis and the possible creation of a new religion and similar topics as applied to UFOs are appropriate.

Not appropriate for discussion in this thread are conversations about the literal existence of extraterrestrials or government-coverups of the literal existence of or cooperation with extraterrestrials. There are plenty of other threads that focus on extraterrestrials.

originally posted by: Tangerine
This thread is devoted to discussing hypotheses about UFOs that do not involve extra-terrestrials. Topics or approaches to the subject of UFOs appropriate for discussion in this thread include metaphysical, paranormal, fortean, mythological, folkloric and similar approaches to UFOs.

Discussion of the ideas and insights of persons including but not limited to Karl Jung, Jacques Vallee, John Keel, and Robert P. Hansen are appropriate.

Discussion of the collective unconscious and archetypes, trickster phenomena, liminality and similar topics as applied to UFOs are appropriate.

Discussion of Jacques Vallee’s hypothesis about a control system, Martin Cannon’s screen memories hypothesis, black ops/mind control, hypnosis and the possible creation of a new religion and similar topics as applied to UFOs are appropriate.

Not appropriate for discussion in this thread are conversations about the literal existence of extraterrestrials or government-coverups of the literal existence of or cooperation with extraterrestrials. There are plenty of other threads that focus on extraterrestrials.

I am very excited for this thread. It is my third post in as a Newby!
I've always liked the theory that what we are perceiving as ET crafts are time travelers from a distant past or very far future.
Will edit this post when I'm not on mobile with a couple theories.

a reply to: Skyhigh00

Thank you for you comment. I look forward to your posts but remember this is specifically not a thread for posting about ET.

Tangerine, you've made a thread!

Is the cryptoterrestrial hypothesis appropriate?



Plenty of reports of very strange objects coming out of (and going into) the world's oceans so maybe the 'Non-Extraterrestrial UFO Hypotheses' does have some merit - unless of course it's actually ET hiding under the waves.

USO Research

Also aspects like collecting water or syphoning electricity pylons is an interesting factor in many UFO reports (not to mention hanging around nuclear/atomic facilities) so I wonder how that factors in?

a reply to: karl 12

We're trying to get away from literalist/materialist answers to the UFO question on this thread so if cryptoterrestrial refers to purely physical beings/species who share the earth with us and simply live under water or underground that topic is probably more appropriate for another thread. It's certainly an interesting topic though and deserves a dedicated thread! Why don't you start one?

a reply to: Tangerine

This is a very Interesting subject that I do not think is discussed enough, the notion of these entities as non - physical phenomena or as I believe, they are projected externalisation of areas of human consciousness.

I suppose my theory comes somewhere between that of J. Allen Hynek, Jacques vallee and Karl Jung and I authored a thread on this subject a year ago which I "coincidentally" read over again just an hour ago, I believe for for the first time since I've wrote it.

Please if you have the time, read my thread in my signature and although I need to get some sleep just now, I'll be checking back into this thread in in a few hours and would like to contribute more, I look forward to seeing how this thread develops.

Thanks for starting it and I hope you get the time to read my thread as it is very relevant to the topic at hand.

Kind regards,
Elijah23

a reply to: Elijah23

Thanks. I'll read your link. I, too, need to get some sleep. I look forward to more of your thoughts.

What gets me is how do we go from lights in the sky to aliens. Just because we can not explain the lights doesn't make them aliens by default. One big point in all this is we do not know all the nature of our universe. We do not know all the capabilities of even us the human race. We do not know the effects of everything we do. We have no way to rule out every common event that might contribute either, so this take us down the path that a UFO is just that, A UFO.

a reply to: Xtrozero

Yes, I don't conceive of this thread solving the UFO puzzle but, rather, expanding the horizon of discussion. Perhaps cross-fertilization of hypotheses seemingly far-afield from each other will yield new insights.

What about some Breakaway Civilization piloting UFOs? That is a theory that has been tossed around a bit.

originally posted by: Bloodydagger
What about some Breakaway Civilization piloting UFOs? That is a theory that has been tossed around a bit.

That seems to be more of purely physical beings/species hypothesis akin to the cryptoterrestrial or extraterrestrial (in the sense of humans no longer here on earth) hypotheses and, thus, more appropriate for another thread. It would make an interesting thread of its own.

No, bro, every light in the sky is "not of this world!"
Don't you listen to the first 15 seconds of every single UFO doc ever made?
If you question it, you will have to show proof that ufo's ARE man made, not that they are NOT, like in my thread on the same topic: www.abovetopsecret.com...://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thre ad915875/pg1
Don't you know that's how it works?
Occams Razor is stated repeatedly about everything else on ATS BUT this topic.
Get used to NOT denying ignorance if you wanna talk about flying disks here.

a reply to: Xtrozero

What gets me is how do we go from lights in the sky to aliens.

We didn't. The aliens came first.

The UFO flap began at the dawn of the Space Age, about the time Enrico Fermi was asking 'where is everybody?' We were about to make it into space ourselves, and it was borne upon ordinary people that if we could travel through space, other intelligent beings could make the same trip, too.

The blueprint already existed in popular culture — pulp science-fiction magazines, comic strips of the Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon variety and Orson Welles's radio version of The War of the Worlds — but it had always been a niche market, almost countercultural. The Sputnik launch and the US space programme took it mainstream, and the 'flying saucer' craze was born. We haven't looked back since (though we've spent a lot of time looking up).

Flying saucers apart, my own favourite manifestation of the mass hysteria occasioned by the Cold War/space programme nexus is this gospel song. Not particularly catchy or even pleasant to listen to, but it beautifully exemplifies that paranoid side of American popular culture of which the UFO phenomenon has been such an enduring — and now, global — manifestation.

a reply to: Tangerine

What does extraterrestrial even mean?

In ufology terms, it was conscripted to account for reported sightings of solid, metallic objects that flew in the skies and frequently in formations. Early Project Grudge illustrations even included objects that were 'dirty and spotty (p86).' Radars went off throughout 1947 and flights were scrambled to intercept, but were seemingly thwarted by evasive manoeuvres.

From assumptions that 'Foo fighters' and flying 'saucers' were Soviet or German advanced technology, views became split between other explanations. Misperceptions and hallucinations took precedence with 'secret technology' coming second and 'interplanetary' somewhere down the list. Pretty much the same weighting of opinions as today.

The historical point I'm hoping to make is that 'extraterrestrial' was a rational explanation to explore. It still is, in my opinion, until we can reduce the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin.

There's an interesting progression in sightings reports that suits the psycho-social hypothesis as, like all stories, they grow in myth and complexity. So we might have seen a simple disc in 1947 and by the 1970s were seeing psychological effects and complex narratives. For example, back in the early 50s, some (like APRO and NICAP) thought there was a military 'silence group' and a 'laughter curtain' to cover-up what was going on. By the late 70s, this had developed into abductions and military complicity.

In many ways, society went through a liminal phase - or parts of society and specific sub-cultures. The West came out of WW2 as victors, but security wasn't there as we entered into the Cold War years. The appearance of these flying objects seemed to step on the cultural ego by one-upping our state-of-the-art technology we had. It seemed to be like a century or so in advance of us and whilst it was alarming, it didn't entirely represent a mortal threat like the Soviets did.

At the same time, we were shifting our focus up and towards the stars and planets - more liminality. Satellites began to orbit Earth and post-V2 rocket tech was pointing the way to the Moon. Human culture and consciousness expanded to seriously consider local space. Popular culture had featured a backwater of such aspirations in the early works of science fiction. Here we were dreaming of living out the stories of the science-fiction writers and watching the growth in TV shows like Outer Limits.

Possibly ironically, it doesn't matter whether the saucers were *real* or not. Their appearance in the public consciousness drove developments in science and culture. In terms of liminality, the period represented progression from an Earth-based civilisation to a space-faring one - metamorphosis. There began a discussion about how advanced we really were and whether there might be stronger forces amongst the stars? Threading through these cultural discussions were the stark warnings of the Contactees and (much later) Abductees. They consistently warned of atomic disasters, epic floods and conditional rewards if humanity didn't moderate its behaviour.

Herein is where we might find fingerprints of Vallee's 'control system.' At the height of Humanity's achievements (atomic power/bombs and spaceflight), something included itself and dampened the collective ego. People draw on the Trickster motif to explain how the UFO phenomena could be so self-conflicting as to reduce itself to an experience devoid of physical evidence. The 'control system' could be an expression of the wider human consciousness and would then pose interesting questions about the instrumentality of beliefs and fears. It appears to speak in metaphors and communication is informed by archetypes and deep mythological memes. Rather similar to dreams; just as real, effecting percipients and leaving little by way of evidence.

a reply to: Kandinsky

'Mythology rules at a level of our social reality over which normal political and intellectual action has no power.' — Jaques Vallée

From your source.

I agree with Vallée entirely. And Jung, in the context of whose work the above remark is intended to be seen, has always been one of my guilty intellectual (and aesthetic) pleasures. But being a vulgar mechanist myself, I have always been drawn to the idea that myths and the archetypes that form them are a projection of our evolved instincts in action. You used the word liminal earlier — archetypes are a liminal stage, a transition between unconscious instinct and the consciously apprehended workings of myth. There is support for this in Jung himself (he once called the archetype 'the instinct's perception of itself, or a self-portrait of the instinct') and some of those who developed his ideas after his death have stressed this also.

Love the post — a miniaturized college course in the topic under discussion. I urge all who read to click on the links.

a reply to: Tangerine

Before the True Believers arrive to burn you for heresy, I would like to suggest a number natural phenomena both known and as yet unknown that might be considered, in order of "strangeness":

1) Ball lightning
2) Other not yet fully understood electromagnetic phenomena
3) Telluric currents (eg; "earth lights" associated with earthquakes
4) Particle interactions not yet predicted by theoreticians
5) Phenomena associated with intersecting or colliding branes

All of these possibilities suggest that accurate and objective observation of the phenomena could open entire new worlds of understanding physical reality. That is why I find the hoaxers, fantasists and True Believers to be so counter-productive.

There is just so much going on within the human mind at any one time to come away with a complete picture for the phenomenon. Even if ET is really responsible for those lights seen, we still have to deal with perceptions, memory, brain chemistry and liminal states! There really is n way around the discussion but such talk (anything non ET) is met with such harshness and resistance that such reactions really exemplify that plain ol' psychology is playing a major role here. I will add more later...nice thread

originally posted by: Tangerine
Topics or approaches to the subject of UFOs appropriate for discussion in this thread include metaphysical, paranormal, fortean, mythological, folkloric and similar approaches to UFOs.

Hold on...WHERE'S YOUR TESTABLE EVIDENCE FOR THIS?

posted by: TrueMessiah

...WHERE'S YOUR TESTABLE EVIDENCE FOR THIS?

I was wondering how long it would take for this comment to appear. But really the evidence for all non ET type explanations is in all the threads where there is no evidence for ET! All we really get are assertions and stories to back up those assertions. Just link any random thread in the forum and we can observe. There is your testable evidence for a mythology

Lately I've been pondering something. What if some stars and planets are alive? What if they are hyper-psychic?

As I'm sure you all know, consciousness transcends time and space. The psychic projections of a star would not be limited to the speed of light. Suppose they are reaching out with their minds, and we perceive their psychophysical projections in symbolic, mythological form? Forms that we can comprehend? Forms that can alternate between the physical and the non-physical?

That would explain any statistical correlation between UFOs and sidereal time, and it would explain why their form keeps changing from culture to culture, age to age, until finally we arrive at the form of ET. And why they are so bizarre and elusive.

In any case, the days of Little Green Men from Mars are over.

👣