I think that the overwhelming majority of UFO sightings reported over the years can be explained in conventional terms. People often see things in the sky that they can’t immediately identify, and what might be a commercial aircraft reflecting sunlight at a strange angle, or a weather balloon caught in unusual wind patterns, can easily be interpreted as something extraordinary. Celestial bodies like Venus, Mars, or bright stars can also appear unusual to an untrained observer, especially when atmospheric conditions distort their appearance. That said, I believe there’s a small percentage of cases that can’t be explained so easily. These cases usually involve credible witnesses, such as military pilots, radar operators, police officers, or scientists, and sometimes come with physical traces, radar confirmation, or even photographic evidence. I think these specific incidents represent a real mystery, and I don’t believe they can be explained as mere misidentifications or hoaxes. For this subset of reports, I find the extraterrestrial hypothesis to be the most reasonable explanation. I don’t claim to know which planet or star system these craft come from, nor how they travel here, but I believe they’re not of human origin.
However, I personally don’t believe that any alien spacecraft has ever crashed on Earth, been recovered by the U.S. military, or reverse-engineered to develop advanced weapons and aircraft. I understand that this may sound surprising, especially given how common these stories are within UFO literature. But in my opinion, once you take a closer look at the evidence behind most of these claims, they simply don’t hold up. The overwhelming majority of UFO crash stories are based on hearsay, second-hand testimony, or accounts that only emerged decades after the event supposedly occurred. And when a UFO crash-retrieval report doesn’t turn out to be a hoax, it often turns out to be something mundane, such as the fall of a bolide or the crash of a classified military aircraft. This skeptical stance is shared by many researchers who aren’t, in principle, opposed to the idea of UFO crashes. A good example is Kevin Randle, who’s considered one of the most prominent advocates of the Roswell incident. Despite his opinions on Roswell, he has acknowledged that the vast majority of alleged UFO crashes don’t hold up to scrutiny. In his 2015 book Crash — When UFOs Fall from the Sky, Randle examined dozens of crash-retrieval stories and concluded that nearly all of them could be explained through conventional means, lack convincing evidence, or are demonstrable hoaxes.
And despite Randle’s continued support for Roswell as the most credible crash-retrieval case, I believe that this UFO crash, like all the others, also has a reasonable terrestrial explanation. Specifically, I think the theory put forward by British UFO researcher Nick Redfern offers a much more convincing explanation than both the crashed flying saucer theory and the official explanation given by the U.S. Air Force. In his two books Body Snatchers in the Desert and The Roswell UFO Conspiracy, Redfern argues that what came down near Corona, New Mexico, in July 1947 wasn’t extraterrestrial at all, but rather the result of a classified experiment. The craft consisted of a large polyethylene balloon, possibly coated in a reflective material similar to Mylar, tethered to a crude glider based on flying-wing designs developed by the German Horten brothers. On board were four or five human test subjects, likely captured Japanese prisoners with physical deformities. The purpose of the entire experiment was to study the effects of high-altitude exposure on the human body. When the contraption broke apart, the huge balloon disintegrated and landed on Mack Brazel’s ranch, while the glider and the Japanese prisoners on board came down a few miles away. To bury the truth and create confusion, the military deliberately released two conflicting stories: a sensational press release claiming that a flying disc had been recovered, followed by a second press release claiming it was just a weather balloon. I find this explanation to be the most convincing, because it manages to offer a compelling terrestrial interpretation for the weirdest and seemingly extraterrestrial elements of the case.
Therefore, I think that if there’s a government cover-up related to UFOs, it has nothing to do with crashed saucers, recovered alien bodies, or reverse-engineering programs. Rather, I believe the cover-up has probably taken place in two main ways. On one hand, the U.S. military, especially the Air Force, has been quietly and covertly gathering evidence in the form of high-resolution photographs and detailed radar data, while simultaneously using debunking and ridicule to make the entire subject seem unworthy of attention. There’s a substantial body of evidence suggesting that the Air Force was quietly gathering data behind the scenes, while at the same time using Project Blue Book as a public relations tool to dismiss and debunk as many UFO sightings as possible, often offering explanations that didn’t line up with the facts and ridiculing credible witnesses. This was confirmed by General Carroll Bolender, who openly stated that Project Blue Book was essentially a farce and that all UFO cases with potential national security implications were kept out of the Blue Book system entirely, with the data from those incidents being collected through other, more restricted channels. On the other hand, the Air Force has also promoted sensationalistic, implausible, and convoluted UFO stories, with the goal of flooding the topic with so much confusion and absurdity that any serious investigation would be drowned in noise. In fact, there’s strong evidence suggesting that the Air Force Office of Special Investigations was heavily involved in the creation of the Roswell/Majestic-12 mythology and encouraged the spread of some of the wildest and darkest stories that have circulated within the UFO community since the early 1980s, including tales of underground alien bases where extraterrestrials carry out horrific experiments on human test subjects in collaboration with U.S. military personnel.
Alongside the stories of crashed and reverse-engineered flying saucers, another area commonly linked to the UFO phenomenon that I view with a great deal of skepticism is alien abductions. In my opinion, the majority of these experiences can probably be traced back to sleep paralysis episodes, which are fairly common and can be extremely vivid and disturbing. Once a sleep paralysis experience gets filtered through a hypnotic regression session, it can end up being reshaped into something far more dramatic and detailed than it really was, especially when you consider how easily hypnosis can distort people’s memories or even create false ones, and how frequently hypnosis is used by abduction researchers to “recover” the memory of the abductee. That said, there’s a small percentage of abduction accounts that are harder to dismiss. For example, the cases where the testimony of the abductee is accompanied by physical evidence (such as marks and scars on the body) can’t be explained away with sleep paralysis. In these cases, I think it makes sense to suggest that the person was indeed abducted by someone. However, I believe that attributing the abduction to space aliens is too hasty, because there are perfectly plausible earthly explanations that can account for these incidents. For instance, in his book The Controllers, researcher Martin Cannon suggests that some abduction experiences could be the result of covert human experimentation carried out by some branches of certain intelligence agencies. Cannon refers to declassified programs like MK-Ultra, and suggests that a mixture of hallucinogenic drugs, hypnotic suggestion, and mind control technologies could potentially be used to induce trance states, implant false memories, and then wipe out every trace of what really happened. According to this hypothesis, some of the classic alien imagery might actually be screen memories, deliberately implanted to obscure the true, human source of the trauma. As far-fetched as that might sound at first, Cannon backs up his arguments with solid research and documents that show just how far intelligence agencies were willing to go in experimenting with human consciousness. While it’s difficult to verify everything he claims, I do think his hypothesis deserves far more attention than the alien interpretation.
I also reject the Ancient Astronaut hypothesis. I don’t believe that aliens had any role in creating the human race, building the megalithic structures we still see today, or guiding early civilizations. In my opinion, ancient human societies were perfectly capable of constructing megalithic structures and developing agriculture, writing, astronomy, and mathematics on their own, through intelligence, observation, and hard work. The idea that they needed help from spacefaring visitors not only lacks evidence but also underestimates the ingenuity of our ancestors. I believe these cultures deserve full credit for what they accomplished independently. For the same reason, I don’t believe that the gods described in ancient myths were extraterrestrials. I believe they were simply imaginary characters created by early humans to explain natural forces they couldn’t understand. Those who interpret ancient mythology as evidence of extraterrestrial intervention in ancient history are simply engaging in a form of retroactive reasoning, projecting contemporary concepts onto ancient cultures. That said, I think it’s plausible that aliens may have visited Earth in the distant past. There are ancient reports of strange flying objects, like the “flaming shields” seen by Roman soldiers or similar accounts from other cultures, that might be interpreted as early sightings of alien craft. While these descriptions are open to interpretation and could have mundane explanations, they remain intriguing and difficult to completely dismiss. However, I believe these events, if they did happen, were rare and isolated incidents rather than part of any sustained or deliberate contact. I don’t think they influenced human development in any significant way or altered the course of history. If extraterrestrial visitors did come here long ago, I believe their presence was infrequent, brief, and subtle, compared to the more concentrated activity that seems to have started in 1947.
All things considered, you could say that my approach to the UFO phenomenon combines healthy skepticism with open-mindedness. Most sightings can be traced back to ordinary causes, such as aircraft, satellites, weather phenomena, or hoaxes. However, there’s a small percentage of genuinely puzzling cases involving credible witnesses and solid evidence. For those, I find the extraterrestrial hypothesis to be the most reasonable explanation, though I don’t claim to know where these alien visitors originate from or how they got here. I’m not convinced that ancient aliens created the human race, built the megalithic structures, and guided the development of ancient civilizations. I’m also not very fond of tales involving crashed flying saucers, recovered alien bodies, and reverse-engineering programs, though I believe the governments of the major world superpowers are definitely hiding information about the phenomenon. Overall, I maintain a balanced approach, ready to reconsider my views if compelling, verifiable evidence emerges. Until then, I rely on rational inquiry, neither rejecting the phenomenon outright nor accepting unfounded speculation.