“One measures a circle, beginning anywhere.” – Charles Fort
Introduction
Within the last three years numerous major studies of UFOs have been announced, conducted and concluded: by NASA, US Congress, and the US military – amongst others – and some are still ongoing. Most newspapers and other media outlets in the UK and elsewhere have carried stories on these developments, suggesting that whatever they may or may not be, UFOs -sometimes termed ‘UAP’, an initialism for Unexplained Aerial Phenomena -remain big news.
Having had a lifetime lifetime’s interest in the UFO phenomenon and spurred on by this renewed attention I embarked, in 2022, on a study of my own: using the resources of the Religious Experience Research Centre (RERC) as my database. This resulted in the publication, in 2023, of the results of my analysis of twenty-one cases: most hitherto unpublished and all discovered within the RERC archive currently housed at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David.[1]
I begin this article by citing some brief examples from my study in order to set the scene for what follows. The first, reported by a 62 year-old male witness, concerned a strange encounter he underwent at dawn on a June morning:
I saw what looked to be a flying saucer – before I could get out of bed – from the size of an egg it moved at great speed to the window – an object the size of a large crab – with fearsome underpart which watched me – at the only point to do so through the six inch curtain gap – I was petrified – even though I stared back – a set of valves pumped round the body which on going down another set took their place – I knew it could tell what I was thinking…(emphases in the original).[2]
A second example, written and sent to the RERC during its earliest years, contained the following description:
I was conducting investigations at a place called Keta near the Togoland border and had to stay at a Rest House near the sea. Going early to bed I was awakened by the cries of birds, the barking of dogs, etc and was amazed to see a large bright light ascend from the sea and sway in the sky within my vision, and after some time it moved straight over the Rest House, and by getting out of bed and looking upwards from the window I could see it immediately overhead.
A third account, sent to the RERC a few years later than the two already cited, was reported by a lady who in 1976 at approximately 21.30 one night looked up to see:
[A] small bright light [which] moved quickly across the sky…After a few seconds it appeared to be getting larger and very much nearer the ground. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This large saucer shaped apparition was now quite large and so startlingly brilliant that it lit up the sky. It circled around at furious speed, then came in and hovered around. It was now so large and brilliantly lit I could see the tops of the trees on the chase-land, less than a mile away. It hovered there for some minutes, as if searching for something. Suddenly it rose again to some height, then circled away at the same furious speed as before, leaving the sky vacant except for the stars.[3]
As odd as these accounts may appear they are somewhat typical of the very many testimonies to UFO sightings that appear in the massive – and still growing – UFO literature found world-wide. Indeed, some accounts found there are even stranger: for example those describing alleged encounters with the occupants of UFOs. Such cases have for many years been dubbed ‘Close Encounters Of The Third Kind’ and whilst not (yet) represented in the RERC database they have nonetheless been reported commonly enough to have given rise, a number of years ago, to a feature film of the same name.
Explanations
What are we to make of experiences such as those cited above? And of others like them? Over the last several decades three, broad, explanatory positions have emerged with regard to UFOs: the first two currently somewhat more popular than the third.
The first position is sometimes referred to as the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis: or ETH for short. This is the view that UFOs are interplanetary craft piloted by aliens: perhaps with a view to ‘mapping earth’, making contact with humankind, or some such activity. Given that reported sightings of UFOs have been occurring for decades it might be expected that cast iron evidence of such ‘nuts and bolts’ extraterrestrial visitations would have emerged by now: good photographic evidence, unambiguous attempts at contact, genuinely otherworldly ‘debris’ and the like. That such has not been the case – at least, not in a way as to put the matter beyond reasonable doubt – has damaged the ETH considerably and in so doing has helped give rise to a second view: one sometimes referred to as the Psychosocial Hypothesis (or PSH).
The PSH is the view that some underlying ‘UFO reality’ is ‘clothed’ by the popular cultural, social and linguistic mores, beliefs and paradigms of any given culture or society. Associated with researchers such as veteran UFOlogist Jacques Vallee, this position asserts that today’s ‘UFOnauts’ are comparable to the beings of folklore and mythology of previous times. Hence, for example, for Vallee the ‘fairy folk’ of yesteryear are today’s aliens.[4] In each case we are confronted with otherworldly beings who arrive from somewhere else and who behave in similar ways: playing ‘hide and seek’ with humans, for example, or presenting as odd and anomalous creatures and their ‘craft’; even, perhaps ‘abducting’ unwitting victims in isolated places. What has changed – and this is crucial – is the way in which such beings, their modes of arrival and their activities have been identified in accordance with the belief-systems, interpretive ‘lenses’ and expectations of our own (scientific) age and culture. In fact, a more extreme (not to mention reductive) view of this position posits that the phenomena themselves are entirely cultural and linguistic creations: that currently popular paradigms do not actually ‘clothe’ any underlying reality – fairy, alien or otherwise – but actually create it.
Both of these positions have dominated UFO discourse and debate for decades but it is worth noting that a third position has existed alongside them: one which, whilst nowhere near as popular as the other two, has nonetheless had several notable adherents. This is known as the Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis (UTH) and it posits that UFOs might usefully be considered not as alien ships from other planets or galaxies but as entities akin to spiritual beings: perhaps even malevolent ones. Hence – and crucially – the UTH has it that UFOs are not objects ‘piloted’ by beings but are actually the beings themselves.
This third view is the one which I will explore in this article. In Part I I will give a brief overview of its history to the present day. Following this, and carrying forward one major motif, that of shapeshifting, into Part II, I will show that, correctly understood, this motif is actually a key to the true nature and purpose of UFOs. By the end, it is hoped that the reader will have been persuaded that this third view might be usefully embraced as a viable – and in some key senses better – explanation of UFOs than those presented by the Extraterrestrial and Psychosocial Hypotheses. In these ways I hope to breathe new life into an old paradigm: that UFOs are best understood as entities with a particular nature and mode(s) of operation.
Part I
Spirits of the Air
Like the UFO phenomenon which it purports to explain, the Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis has a long history and has taken many forms. Recently, for example, it has emerged in the writing of Spyridon Bailey, whose Orthodox Christian response to UFOs is given detailed treatment in his book The UFO Deception. For Bailey, whose own thinking on the subject is traceable back to fellow Orthodox theologian Seraphim Rose, UFOs are demons. This is the central tenet of The UFO Deception: a detailed studyin which the subject is explored historically, theologically and consistently in terms of Orthodox belief.
Key to the Bailey/Rose contention is that the UFO-demons are shapeshifters: a point central to this article and one to which we will need to repeatedly return. Hence, Bailey writes, ‘the demons have adapted their appearance and behaviour to fit with contemporary man’s understanding of science and space.’[5] Note carefully where, for him, this contention takes us. It is not that our cultural-linguistic paradigms and expectations have clothed – even less, created – an underlying UFO ‘reality’ (however defined). It is, rather, that the underlying reality itself shifts its form in order to ‘create confusion and lead men away from God’ and hence into ‘forbidden practices.’ Bailey even scents a cover-up, writing that governments know full well what UFOs are, but ‘try to use this knowledge to favour their own agendas.’[6]
The upshot of all this, for Bailey, is that UFOlogy – the study of UFOs – cannot approach what it purports to study in any kind of open, objective and/or empirical way. For its subject-matter is simply not this kind of reality. In this regard he quotes J. Allen Hynek, for many years the scientific consultant to various US Air Force official enquiries into UFOs, to the effect that the ‘objects’ are ‘a phenomenon that undoubtedly has physiological effects but also has the attributes of the psychic world.’[7] Hence, the same something that has ‘spiritual’ or even paranormal mind-influencing properties can also leave circular depressions on the ground and/or burn vegetation at the site of any given ‘landing.’
Viewing UFOs as shapeshifters, for Bailey, locates them in a context shared by angels and demons. For these too, he writes, can and do shapeshift, but for different reasons. Angels do it so that people won’t be overwhelmed and to facilitate communion with human beings – hence the archangel Raphael travelled with Tobias for weeks without anyone suspecting he wasn’t an actual man – but, crucially, demons do it to deceive: hence the title of Bailey’s study. But there’s more to it, even than this, for the ‘domain’ of demons is one they share with UFOs: the air.
As far as I am aware, the aerial location of much of the UFO phenomenon as indicative of its demonic nature is the exclusive provenance of Orthodox theology. At least, I have been unable to locate it anywhere else. To this end, however, Bailey quotes Orthodox theologian Ignatius Brianchaninov (‘The space between heaven and earth, the whole azure expanse of the air which is visible to us under the heavens, serves as the dwelling for the fallen angels who have been cast down from Heaven’[8]) and he later cites Saint Philotheos Kokkinos, fourteen century Patriarch of Constantinople, and Saint Theophan the Recluse as putting forward positions supportive of this. Overall, he writes, seeing UFOs as ‘manifestations of these aerial spirits’ helps us ‘make sense of much of their activity [which] is without meaning, confusing and often bizarre.’[9] And this is, of course, because they are primarily deceivers who ‘threaten, frighten, confuse and mislead.’ In the face of this, Bailey asserts, our task should be one of self-protection and the extent to which we might go to achieve this aim might even match that of Saint Simeon the New Theologian who went so far as to aver that ‘the struggler of prayer should quite rarely look into the sky out of fear of the evil spirits in the air.’[10]
I suspect that much – if not all – of this might well be new to at least some readers. It was certainly news to me. But even when we turn our attention to Christian denominations closer to home we find at least some similar positions espoused: although not given theological treatment of anything approaching the same level of sophistication.
The Devil’s Devices
The modern ‘era’ of the UFO phenomenon is widely acknowledged to have begun with a life-changing experience undergone by fire extinguisher salesman and amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold whose sighting of nine gleaming objects in the skies near Mount Rainier, Washington on June 24th 1947 gave birth to the term ‘Flying Saucer”: an already extant term which had previously been used to denote the targets used in clay pigeon shooting. It would not be long before discussion and debate as to the objects’ place of origin began: with the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis quickly assuming centre stage.
But even back in the early days this was by no means the only hypothesis and other, competing, theories were not slow to emerge, with demons and the devil sometimes taking centre stage within them. As early as 1954, for example, British author Gordon Cove was suggesting that although the aliens were physically real, their home planets – either Mars or Venus – had been seized by the devil who was using them as a staging post for the invasion of Earth.[11] By the 1970s, with the charismatic renewal in full swing, the UFOs themselves were being touted as deceiving demonic entities set on misguiding and misleading humanity: a position not a million miles away from the Orthodox position already examined. Foremost amongst these was a study published in 1975 by John Weldon and Zola Levitt, whose charismatic ‘Christian Perspective’ on the UFOs led the authors to conclude that ‘They are a manifestation of demon activity. They are here to misguide the multitudes and they are doing pretty well. They have judiciously utilized their powers through selected people to fascinate the masses, and they have widely promulgated their doctrines.’[12]
Such a view was not just confined to authors such as Weldon and Levitt. Indeed, in a detailed and entertaining chapter in their ‘social history of UFOlogy’, Flying Saucerers, contemporary UK UFOlogists David Clarke and Andy Roberts have documented just how widespread such a position had become across the channel in the UK by this point. Here they list various dramatis personae holding the same or similar views: from the Rev. Ronald Cartmel, rector of Aldridge parish church from 1945 – 1969 who installed a telescope in his back garden (the better to observe such demonic activity) through to the Rev Eric Ingoldsby who claimed to have dealt pastorally with a number of people who had actually become possessed by demons as a result of their interest in UFOs and UFOlogy. By May 1977 there was even a UK-based Christian UFO Research Association (CHRUFORA) which, inspired by a letter from Ingoldsby to The Church Times, actively opposed the then-popular national screening of the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind despite having a membership that never rose above forty.[13]
And lest it be suspected that the UFOs-as-demonic-presences position was the sole province of ‘fringe’ Christian groups it is worth noting that a number of ostensibly secular writers on UFOs during this period held similar views, including editors of the then-prestigious Flying Saucer Review Charles Bowen and Gordon Creighton. By the end of the 1970s they had been joined by Roger Stanway, the founding president of the British UFO Research Association and engineer Graham Knewstub, chairman of the British Flying Saucer Bureau, Britain’s oldest UFO group. Clarke and Roberts use the term ‘peculiar web’ to describe this loose affiliation of believers in UFOs as malign entities but any temptation to see it as a peculiarly ‘British thing’ needs to be tempered by a consideration of how widely the position has been – and continues to be – held. Indeed, a form of it can be found in the writings of the massively influential US Fortean writer John Keel who, instituting the term ‘Ultraterrestrials’ to denote the ‘Ufonauts’, described them in his UFOlogical study UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse as ‘The demons, devils, and false angels [which] were recognised as liars and plunderers by early man.’ ‘These same imposters,’ he went on, ‘now appear as long-haired Venusians.’ The conclusion to which his research led him back in the 1970s still sounds stark: ‘We are biochemical robots helplessly controlled by forces that can scramble our brains, destroy our memories and use us in any way they see fit…They have been doing it to us forever.’[14]
Fire Spirits
Paranoid? Idiosyncratic? A product of the pressing into service of a distinctly Christian worldview – both Eastern and Western – in order to uncover the dark reality behind a deceivingly pseudo-technological phenomenon? We might take recourse to any one of these positions – or, conceivably, all three together – to explain how UFOs might have come to be seen as kinds of spirit-beings. But this would fail to account for a somewhat similar explanation found in a context very far removed from those we have so far considered: that of the Islamic view which lends itself to the intriguing possibility of viewing UFOs as jinn.
In his absorbing study of these curious beings, Legends of the Fire Spirits, Robert Lebling notes that the word ‘jinn’ is derived from an Arabic root word which means to ‘conceal’ or to ‘cover with darkness.’ As his analysis proceeds, we learn that Islamic theology has much to say about these ‘hiding’ entities which reveals various possible parallels between them and UFOs. One motif, in particular, stands out: whatever else they do, jinn are pre-eminently shapeshifters. Hence, Lebling quotes the thirteenth century Persian physician, astronomer and geographer Zakariya al-Qazwini who in his study of the universe defined jinn as ‘aerial animals, with transparent bodies, which can assume various forms.’ ‘[T]hese kinds of beings,’ al-Qazwini wrote, ‘are [usually] invisible to men but…they assume what forms they please, and when their form becomes condensed they are visible.’[15]
It is tempting to speculate at this point as to what, if any, essence these shapeshifters might have, and it is interesting to note that Islamic theology has a consistent answer to this. The clue is in the title of Lebling’s book, for, Islamically, jinn are said to be fire-spirits: beings whose ‘substance’ is fire. Here, the detail is somewhat complex, but the gist of the teaching is that Allah created a tripartite division of intelligent beings with varying essences: Angels (made of light), Jinn (made of fire), and Human Beings (made of clay). Lebling cites al-Qazwini in his assertion that some of the Jinn rebelled against God, having ‘transgressed and offended…and [thus] made wickedness to abound in the earth.’[16] Indeed, Islamically-speaking the Devil is said to have originally been a jinn himself whose refusal to bow down to Adam – a ‘lesser’ being because made from ‘mere’ clay – resulted in his banishment from the Garden of Eden. That he was also able to entice some other jinn to accept him as their king meant that Earth is now host to numerous ‘fallen’ jinn: a teaching analogous to the Biblical teaching that there is on Earth a cadre of rebellious angels who, like the Devil, are essentially fallen, supernatural rebels.
As interesting as all of this is, however, there is yet more. For Lebling quotes with approval the view of near-contemporary Islamic theologian Muhammad Assad (1900 – 1992) that the occasional crossing of paths of humans and jinn can ‘give rise to strange – because unexplainable – manifestations, which man’s primitive fantasy has subsequently interpreted as ghosts, demons and other such ‘supernatural’ apparitions.’[17] UFOs don’t make Assad’s list, here, but it is not difficult to see how they might fit.
Like the Biblical seraphim, jinn are sometimes portrayed as hybrid figures. According to Lebling, reliefs from Mesopotamia show a creature with a powerful human body, large wings and a beast’s head: in essence a cross between a bird of prey and a lizard. Might this be in some sense a reference to their essentially shape-shifting nature? Regardless: shapeshifting, invisibility, occasional manifestation, ‘fallenness’ and fire-essence appear consistent features of jinn within Islamic theology. The parallels between at least some of these features and the view of UFOs-as-beings which we have so far examined suggests that there is a consistent, cumulative argument for continuing to pursue the view of UFOs as in some sense creatures: although creatures very different to ourselves. In what follows I will continue to pursue it by directing more detailed attention to the feature of shapeshifting.
Part II
Shapeshifting UFOs
As we saw in Part I, whatever else the fallen beings of jinn and demonic lore might do, they shapeshift. This, in turn, raises an intriguing question: might UFOs do, essentially, the same thing?
The answer may come as something of a surprise. Because, it seems, they always have, and in a recent study of reported UFO shapes throughout history UFO researcher Chris Aubeck has demonstrated this both convincingly and statistically. Hence, and based on his ‘Magonia Exchange’ database of 40,000 accounts of UFOs, he asserts that up to June 4th 1947 – widely acknowledged as the ‘birth’ of modern-day UFOlogy because of the Kenneth Arnold sighting already mentioned – disc-shaped UFOs constituted less than 1% ‘of all reported sightings from antiquity [onwards]…’ Further, citing data from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), he shows that based on the NUFORC database of an impressive 145,500 sightings, disc shapes occur in ‘around 5.9%’ of cases: a percentage figure surpassed by a range of other claims of sightings including those of lights, circles, triangles, fireballs, ‘unknown’ and ‘other.’ Additionally, he cites the webpage of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a body within the US office of the Secretary of Defence, showing the percentage of sightings of objects said to be disc-shaped standing at 2% and surpassed by ovals (3%), lights (16%), ‘other’ (7%), Ambiguous Sensor Contact (19%) and spheres (47%). Discs are, in fact, way down, in such ‘company’ as Tic Tacs (1%), polygons (1%), squares (1%), rectangles (1%), triangles (2%) and cylinders (2%).[18]
A number of conclusions follow: even from such a cursory statistical overview as Aubeck’s. Firstly, the wide popular perception of UFOs as being ‘typically’ disc- or saucer-shaped is simply not true. Instead, diversity of reported shape is the norm and appears to have been from antiquity up to the present day. Secondly, the oft-encountered argument that UFOs somehow conform, shape-wise, to societal and/or cultural expectation also fails. Given the dominance of the ‘Flying Saucer’ idea within popular discourse – UFOs were even called ‘Flying Saucers’ until ‘UFOs’ and other initialisms began to supersede – we might expect saucer- or disc- shapes to have predominated within at least some of the eras contained within the databases cited by Aubeck. That they have not tends to reinforce the view that the UFO shape reported within such claimed sightings does not arise from cultural expectation. In fact, it is remarkable how many different shapes occur within the statistical analyses presented by Aubeck. It is certainly hard to conclude that any dominant or overriding ‘meme’ or set definition could have given rise to such variety. Might this all be down to hoaxing and/or misperception of ‘natural’ or man-made objects? Or might some ‘signal’ be lurking within this ‘noise’ that lends itself to the view that a shapeshifting reality is confronting – and in many cases confounding – us?
‘Transmorphing’ UFOs
Yet there is more, even, than this: for similarly lurking within various UFO databases is a small but nonetheless significant number of cases in which the objects appear to shapeshift as they are being observed. Hence, for example, in a study produced as a result of an analysis of approximately 1,200 taped interviews by the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) we find a number of remarkable accounts of UFOs shifting shape. Typical is an account of an object seen in San Diego California in 1978 in which an object which ‘mostly resembled a shiny brass balloon’ shrunk, expanded, began to move horizontally and then ‘transformed into two beautiful spheres of color with a connecting blinking bridge. The color seemed to be either red or pink, and the other color seemed to be blue…we just watched this and it was like watching a Disneyland fireworks parade.’ Telling, here, is the additional comment made at the time by one of the witnesses, a naval officer: ‘”It’s something…but I don’t know what it is.”’[19]
Compare this account with another from within the CUFOS database given by three security guards in respect of ‘six or seven very large disk-shaped objects flying in loose formation’ which flew silently for a while one night in Nah Tran, Vietnam in June 1968 in front of them and which abruptly ‘became one large disk – became one unit’ and yet another from Shelby, Ohio detailing an object seen on July 20 1952 at night which dropped down and hung over a field, presenting first as an egg-shape until it rotated, dipped down and re-emerged as a narrow crescent Moon before resuming its egg shape and ‘disappearing so fast that you had no feeling of movement. It was just gone.’[20] I could reproduce many such other examples: from the files of CUFOS and elsewhere. Adding to these the number of objects seen to change colour throughout any given sighting – a very, very large number both within the CUFOS database and elsewhere – and the already substantial total increases still further.
A particularly odd case appeared in the UK’s Flying Saucer Review in February 1978. The incident occurred at 22.20 on May 22nd 1977. The subject, a young man, had been visiting his girlfriend at Westley Heights, Essex, and was walking home. As he cut across a small green by a footpath that led, as a subway, under Laindon Link road he caught sight of a ‘large yellow sphere’ with a faint aura around its periphery moving soundlessly across the sky. Abruptly it stopped and moved upwards before shooting straight towards the witness who lost sight of it as he entered the 100 ft long subway.
Emerging from the other side he saw the object again, within 200 ft of him, spinning on its vertical axis. This was followed by a sound all around ‘like the air brakes of a lorry’ and the object disappeared like ‘a light bulb being switched off.
A few seconds later the object reappeared. Now it was a vertical cigar shape with ‘a large deep red pulsating light at the top.’ The cigar was dark in colour but when the light was illuminated a silvery grey colour could be seen in its central area. It also had two distinct outlines at a mid-part of it which looked like windows. Overall the witness judged the size of the cigar to have been smaller than that of the sphere. At the end of the episode the UFO simply moved off and the witness walked the final four minutes or so home.
The aftereffects of this encounter are of particular note. His mother later recalled that he was ‘physically shocked and frightened and…kept mumbling “It changed, it changed.”’ He was later seen by a doctor who prescribed a sedative.[21]
Why Did the ‘Car Stops’ Stop?
Shapeshifting may take many forms. For example, it need not necessarily be restricted to how UFOs look: as in, actual the shape(s) they assume. It might also be extended to what they do: as in, the ways they act – in some instances in direct relation to witnesses and their circumstances. Hence, it may be instructive at this point go beyond ‘mere’ UFO appearance in order to consider UFO action. Once again, here, the literature is vast and I will therefore confine the analysis to just one intriguing sub-set of UFO cases: those involving Vehicle Interference (VI).
The first major attempt made to catalogue such cases was undertaken by UFO researcher Mark Rodeghier. Published in October 1981, his document contained 441 short summary accounts of alleged UFO interference with vehicle ignition systems and other related functions such as the operation of car radios and headlights: all but three occurring between 1952 and 1980. The accounts cited by Rodeghier include numerous claims that cars were stopped altogether when in the proximity of UFOs and indeed such cases were dubbed ‘Car Stop’ cases for a number of years: a designation that was replaced in later years by ‘Vehicle Interference’ (VI) because it failed to include the fact that a wide range of other vehicles have also purportedly been affected by UFOs including tractors, motorcycles and vans.[22] Some years later, in September 2011, fellow researcher Herbert S. Taylor produced a ‘follow-up’ report citing a further 190 VI cases from the same period that Rodeghier had missed and which took the total recorded between 1952 and 1980 to well over 600.[23] A sample testimony-extract from Taylor’s follow-up piece provides a good example of such a VI case:
‘The strange flying vehicle approached us slowly from a clearing to our right, at an altitude of about 10 metres. At the same moment my engine started to cut out and vibrate. About 100 meters further on, the car stopped completely and the headlights died out. The car radio also went dead…The flying object passed the roadway ahead of us (distance now about 200 meters). It was still at some 10 meters altitude, but then seemed to land to the left of the road, some 75 meters from the roadway.’[24]
After winding down the side windows the occupants – the driver, his wife, and two children – heard ‘a sound like that which comes from a swarm of bees’ and through binoculars the object was seen to be ‘an egg-shaped structure some 10 meters long and a few meters high.’ Interestingly the UFO had by now changed colour from green to white. At this point the driver attempted to start the car but to no avail. He left the vehicle and the object then proceeded to take off with ‘a deafening roar’ and ‘a rocking motion.’ The green colour resumed and the object flew off slowly before ‘it accelerated to an unbelievable speed and disappeared in a thousandth of a second.’ The driver ends his testimony as follows: ‘Shaken by what we had seen, we entered the car and we immediately noted the music playing from the radio. The radio worked and, as I turned the starter key, our car started and there was nothing wrong with the headlights.’[25]
Readers familiar with the already cited film Close Encounters of the Third Kind will recall a scene with many very similar features occurring when the UFO hovered for several minutes over electric linesman Roy Neary’s car. From this point, at least – the film was first screened in 1977 – the seeming propensity for such objects to interfere with car ignition systems and other electronics had become (or would shortly become) embedded in public consciousness by being included within such popular media.
It is what followed shortly after this date that is, however, relevant here. For in the years following the completion of the 1952 – 1980 VI research the incidence of cases in which UFOs allegedly interfered with vehicles in various ways fell precipitously. Rodeghier himself would later write: ‘It is not an exaggeration to state that almost the moment I completed the research for my study, VI reports, as with all [UFO] close encounters, began to drop dramatically all over the globe, not just in the United States.’[26] By his own admission he noticed this change as it was occurring because the Center for UFO Studies, of which he was a member, was getting this information: or the lack thereof. Based on various sources he would later assert that ‘a reasonable estimate is that the number of VI cases…dropped by about 85% in the period since 1980.’ (Emphasis mine). Furthermore, he would note that other aspects of UFO experiences also declined by a similar proportion at the same time, including claimed encounters with aliens in the presence of allegedly ‘landed’ UFOs.
It is worth noting here that other researchers’ claims have tended to support Rodeghier’s observation. Herbert S. Taylor himself in his follow-up paper notes the same sharp decline, asserting that his own additional research of cases in the post-1980 period up to 2011 produced ‘several dozen’ cases: nothing like the more than 630 cases which his and Rodeghier’s research had uncovered in the almost three decades up to 1980 within a more-or-less directly comparable time span.
What Changed?
What might account for the remarkable decline in VI and other UFO ‘close encounter’ cases in the post-1980 era? As regards the distinct subset of vehicle interference accounts, we might posit changes in the designed and implemented electrical systems of the vehicles themselves: although it is worth noting that no credible research has yet emerged to this effect.
Might the decline be due, therefore, to another factor sometimes cited: the more ready availability of digital cameras and camera phones in the contemporary and near-contemporary eras? In view of the current widespread means of capturing just about any event for posterity – including claimed UFO ‘close encounters’ – the fact that the number of claimed VI and other close-up UFO events has fallen off so dramatically might simply be taken as evidence that they were ever and always hoaxed. For in the era of the ubiquitous camera, the question can easily be posed to the claimant: if the UFO was so close, why didn’t you take a picture? A disincentive to would-be hoaxers, surely: and one which might explain the dramatic drop-off in cases.
It is the dating that confounds such a sceptical objection. The first fully digital camera to be commercially released was the FUJIX DS-X, released by Fujifilm in 1989. The first commercial phone with a colour camera was the Kyocera Visual Phone VP-210 released in Japan in May 1999. And the first iPhone was released in the US on June 29th 2007. As we have already had cause to note, these ‘milestone’ photographic events significantly post-date the precipitous decline of VI and other UFO ‘close encounter’ cases by years: decades even. Indeed, in view of this simple fact it seems that any link between the ubiquity of personal cameras and the demise of claimed UFO ‘close encounters’ – including VI cases – cannot be established. The question remains, therefore: what is responsible for the radical drop-off in the number of such claimed events?
One possible answer, of course, is that the UFOs themselves have changed their behaviour. That their activity has shapeshifted for reasons unknown to us. Perhaps they saw the ubiquity of digital photography – in all its currently manifold guises – coming from a long way off and prepared accordingly (and well in advance). Or perhaps they are ‘playing’ with us in the same way that jinn and demons have long been said to do. The reader may have concluded by now that the last thing UFOlogy needs is another initialism. But at this point it is tempting to add one more: Something Is Messing With Us. Or SIMWU, for short.
Conclusions
Part II of this paper consisted of an attempt to rehabilitate and extend the view presented in Part I: that UFOs, far from being ‘spacecraft’ or psychosocial ‘projections’ are actually the beings themselves. It sought to do this by concentrating on just one area – that of shapeshifting – in its bid to show that these beings are consistent in their behaviour with the jinn, demons, and quasi-demonic entities encountered within a variety of religions and religious denominations.
However, my analysis could have encompassed other areas also: areas which I intend to explore in future articles and analyses. In no particular order, these will include animal reactions to UFOs, the fear and confusion created in experiencers by their UFO experiences, the UFOs-as-‘watchers’ motif found in very many UFO reports and the olfactory features reported within a significant number of UFO ‘close encounters.’ There may be others which I have yet to uncover and/or explore.
In closing I would like to add one final thought. For f it is the case that the UFOs themselves are shapeshifting then we are presented with a neat reversal of the psychosocial hypothesis as set out in the introduction. It would mean that the underlying phenomenon is not diversely ‘clothed’ in accordance with the changing cultural concepts and expectations of the witnesses but rather that the phenomenon itself changes its form: for reasons unknown. To mess with us, perhaps.
I intend to extend this and related lines of enquiry into UFOs in future blogs and would be delighted to receive any thoughts, comments and ideas via the ‘Comments’ page of this website.
Bibliography
Aubeck, Chris. Saucers: Tracing the Origin of Disc-Shaped UFOs. Amazon: 2023
Bailey, Spyridon. The UFO Deception: An Orthodox Christian Perspective. Great Britain: FeedA Read.com Publishing, 2021.
Clark, Jerome. Hidden Realms, Lost Civilizations and Beings from Other Worlds. Canton MI: Visible Ink Press, 2010.
Clarke, David & Andy Roberts, Flying Saucerers: A Social History of UFOlogy. Loughborough: Heart of Albion Press, 2007.
Collins, Andrew. ‘Shape-changing UFO at Laindon.’ Flying Saucer Review, Vol 23, No. 5, February 1978, pp. 10 – 11
Fox, Mark. ‘UFOs in the RERC Archive: An Analysis of Twenty-one Cases.’ Anomaly, Vol 42, May 2023, pp. 123-38
Lebling, Robert. Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2010.
Rodeghier, Mark. ‘UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference.’ Center for UFO Studies, 1981.
———————. ‘Commentary on VI Reports.’ International UFO Reporter, 33:4, May 2011, pp. 21-2
Swords, Michael. Grassroots UFOs: Care Reports from the Center for UFO Studies. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 2005.
Taylor, Herbert. ‘An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports Part 2.’ International UFO Reporter, 34:1, September 2011, pp. 14-21
Vallee, Jacques. Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact. London: Sphere, 1990.
Weldon, John & Zola Levitt. UFOs: What On Earth is Happening? California, Harvest House, 1975.
[1] Fox, ‘UFOs in the RERC Archive’
[2] Ibid.,132
[3] Ibid.,129
[4] Vallee, Dimensions, 75 – 109
[5] Bailey, The UFO Deception, 258
[6] Ibid., 277
[7] Ibid., 260
[8] Ibid., 264
[9] Ibid., 270
[10] Ibid., 270-1
[11] Clarke and Roberts, Flying Saucerers, 128
[12] Weldon and Levitt, UFOs, 137
[13] Clarke and Roberts, op cit., 124 – 38
[14] Clark, Hidden Realms, 256
[15] Lebling, Legends of the Fire Spirits, 3
[16] Ibid., 7
[17] Ibid., 4
[18] Aubeck, Saucers, 7 – 8
[19] Swords, Grassroots UFOs, 180-1
[20] Ibid., 181-2
[21] Collins, ‘Shape-changing UFO at Laindon’
[22] Rodeghier, ‘UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference’
[23] Taylor, ‘An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part 2’
[24] Ibid., 16
[25] Ibid., 17
[26] Rodeghier, ‘Commentary on VI Reports’, 21
This article first appeared in the Christian Parapsychologist, New Series Vol. 3, No. 4, Spring 2025 pp. 19 – 40