THE DISTORTION THEORY: A NEW FRONTIER FOR UNDERSTANDING ENCOUNTERS WITH THE "IMPOSSIBLE"

For decades, the UFO phenomenon has been approached mainly from two major explanatory frameworks: the classic extraterrestrial model, which posits that reports point to the clandestine visits of beings from other worlds, and the psychosocial model, which interprets sightings as cultural constructs, perceptual errors, hoaxes, or modern mythologies (substitutes for religion). However, both approaches have shown limitations: one tends toward excessive credulity without conclusive evidence, while the other toward a skeptical reductionism that ignores the richness and complexity of the phenomenon.

In this context, the Distortion Theory would represent a middle path. It does not deny the reality of the phenomenon, but it redefines it beyond its apparent literalness. It does not reject witness testimony but reinterprets it, understanding that what is perceived is not necessarily what one thinks they see.

1. THE CORE OF DISTORTION: AN INDUCED AND PERSONALIZED EXPERIENCE

The Distortion Theory (DT) proposes an idea as simple as it is controversial: close encounters are real—yes—but what we see is not. They are not spaceships or biological beings. What the witness perceives and feels is a kind of immersive projection, a vivid experience that seems to come from outside but actually arises in part from their own mind. Still, it is triggered by an “external agent” that, so far, remains a mystery but operates from what could be considered hidden portions of reality.

We would be facing the same phenomenon that witnesses have interpreted throughout history through specific sociocultural filters. In fact, Kenneth Arnold’s sighting in 1947 offered a new interpretive framework, a worthy successor to fairies, ladies in white, or demons of antiquity. The trigger of these experiences—about which nothing is known except for its ability to interact with the human mind in unimaginable ways—uses the witness’s reservoir of memories, ideas, emotions, and beliefs to build a unique and unrepeatable experience which, in many cases, proves to be profoundly transformative. We would thus be facing a distortion of reality that activates very deep and archaic mental archetypes as a form of communication. Many experiences begin with similar phenomena, such as the observation of lights, strange sensations, voices, sounds, or vague entities. In some encounters, these acquire a more defined appearance, shaped by latent beliefs, though in most cases they remain so ambiguous that they could fit into almost any category of the supernatural or Fortean. It is the filters of investigators that ultimately assign them a label.

2. THE DARK POINTS EXPLAINED BY DISTORTION

NON-REPETITION: The diversity of forms and entities.

From flying cauldrons to humanoids in tight suits with antennas, to figures with animal traits or robotic presences—the sheer variety has long been a headache for classification. DT explains this endless gallery of “space troops” as the outcome of an interaction between the external agent and the psyche of witnesses, a process whose results will never be exactly the same. According to this view, the human mind does not perceive the event as it is but “translates” or symbolically overlays it using elements available in its cultural, emotional, and imaginative environment. This adaptive process acts as a kind of mental filter or earthly coating, necessary to make the experience comprehensible.

This symbolic overlay has a dual purpose: it allows cognitive processing of the experience and integrates it into a framework of personal, social, and cultural meaning. Thus, what might otherwise be an unbearable or alien reality is transformed into an acceptable—if ambiguous—narrative that aligns with the mental coordinates of the witness or society. Importantly, this is not just a cognitive adjustment: the manifestation itself assumes this role, both in how it presents itself and in how it behaves toward witnesses. In this way, the filtering process truly operates on the “substance” of the phenomenon.

THE ABSURD.

Most researchers have never been able to account for the omnipresent absurdity in many UFO events. Many encounters resemble dreams: disconnected actions, contextless symbols, sudden disappearances, spacetime anomalies, and so on. Within DT, this is understood as the result of an experience not subject to ordinary physical laws but to the logic of the unconscious, since the manifestation process occurs through the human channel (even if its origin is external). The setting is a slice of reality that could be considered intermediate between external and internal, physical and psychic.

THE PSYCHIC LOAD.

Witnesses often recall the experience as intensely real, even if it sometimes feels illusory, dreamlike, or imaginal. This aligns with the idea of an experience designed to impact human consciousness, not necessarily to be understood within our usual parameters.

THE LACK OF PHYSICAL EVIDENCE.

Although the manifestations can appear physical, they maintain an ambiguous dual existence—external and internal—at a level beyond the reach of our mechanistic understanding.

3. THE WITNESS AS CO-CREATOR

One of the fundamental elements of DT is its conception of the witness as coauthor of the experience. They are not a passive recipient observing an external object but an active participant whose mind, at the critical moment, provides the material with which the phenomenon cloaks itself. This does not mean that everything is subjective or imagined. Quite the contrary: the experience is imposed from outside but built from within.

This model opens new pathways for understanding not only UFO encounters but also extraordinary visionary phenomena such as religious apparitions, experiences of the deceased, shamanic journeys, or even manifestations from ancient folklore. All of these could be cultural variants of the same core of Distortion.

4. BEYOND CONSCIOUSNESS

DT does more than offer an explanatory framework for anomalous encounters; it also raises profound questions about the nature of reality, consciousness, and the limits of the human. Who—or what—is the external agent? To what end is the experience induced? Is this distortion a form of symbolic contact with a non-human intelligence? Or is it a kind of test—a simulation meant to confront us with the unknown within our own psyche?

CONCLUSION: A NEW FRONTIER

DT does not seek to eliminate the unknown component of the phenomenon but to rethink the concepts and ideas present in ufological literature since its beginnings. It does not claim that witnesses are lying, nor does it deny that something real is happening. Instead, it proposes a new way of interpreting the phenomenon: not as a physical intrusion by extraterrestrial entities, but as a symbolic interaction with an as-yet-undefined reality—one capable of expanding human consciousness toward new and revealing cognitive frontiers.

JOSE ANTONIO CARAVACA

DOES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DREAM OF ELECTRIC UFOs?

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has burst into our lives, radically transforming the way we work and entertain ourselves. But above all, AI that generates images has offered us a new and surprising way of looking at the world. They have produced scenes and videos that seem to come straight out of a dream... or the imagination of some interstellar explorer. Many of their creations inspire awe and bewilderment due to their original and almost alienating nature. These images are unlike anything we have seen before, yet they exert an inexplicable and irresistible magnetism.

AI-generated images often have an unsettling air because they mix the familiar with the strange, creating faces and scenes that seem almost real but with details that don't fit and are disturbing. They are highly unique compositions—true oddities. A new way of presenting reality from a perspective that does not entirely belong to humans. We were not trained for their “art.”

Curiously, this unreal, almost supernatural atmosphere that appears on our screens, halfway between the grotesque and the sublime, finds an unexpected echo in another realm—one where one would not expect to find this kinship.

In stories of close encounters with UFOs.

Since the mid-20th century, thousands of witnesses have reported alleged contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations. The content of their narratives was not what was expected. Far from presenting themselves as coherent alien visitations, the archives of ufologists showed a confusing and disordered narrative, where the most mundane was coupled with the extraordinary. There are cases in which a flying saucer lands next to a corral to steal some rabbits, causing astonishment like the protagonists of a bad B movie, as well as events where humanoid-looking occupants, dressed in astronaut suits, move as if walking on the surface of the moon. There are even dozens of accounts of creatures apparently emerging from the depths of the cosmos who act with clumsy or ridiculous gestures, aided by technologies that, seen through the eyes of 21st-century humans, seem outdated or fake—like cardboard cutouts.

Such was the explosion of strangeness brought about by these UFO bombs that researchers were forced to expand their hypotheses almost to infinity in an attempt to make sense of them beyond extraterrestrials. For this reason, the study of UFOs is fertile ground for confusion and anarchy of thought.

The curious thing is that, both in the material generated by AI and that collected in the field notebooks of ufologists, a disturbing pattern appears: the composition does not quite fit with what our mind expects, although, on the contrary, it is capable of recognizing traces that function as perfect handles for the construction of an “identification.”

AI uses millions of images, combining styles, eras, and objects in a non-linear way, producing “errors,” impossible perspectives, and extremely chilling compositions. Similarly, close encounters with UFOs resemble a poorly assembled collage—a succession of hypnotic images that seek to convey an idea, but whose meaning is not entirely clear. It is as if it were an incomplete, defective transmission or one broadcast by a source that does not process language in a way analogous to our form of communication. Flying saucers were humanized as if aliens had developed a science modeled on our own.

In both cases—AI and UFOs—the absurdity can be interpreted as more than just a failure, understanding it as an essential part of their language that perhaps seeks to synthesize and express something beyond our reach but not too far away. There is, however, one clear feature shared by both AI-generated images and visions of flying saucers: a disturbing quality. They break our mental patterns and force us to think... or rather, to rethink.

They break our cognitive automatisms, our perceptual routine is blown apart, and they open up a new space for interpretation. The vision of a machine piloted by UFOnauts in the middle of our garden forces us to rethink what we understand by real, coherent, and meaningful. It could be said that AI, in attempting to imitate our complex world without fully understanding it, creates images that speak their own language—a bizarre, hybrid code that is neither human nor entirely computational. Similarly, many UFO encounters seem like attempts to copy and process our way of thinking, our technology, and even our culture. Both are replicating and parasitic systems.

They create something from something that already exists.

Both AI and the hypothetical “alien” from another world seem to be trying out forms of communication that inevitably clash with our cultural and aesthetic conventions. Perhaps our psyche intrudes on this communication with its filters and triggers the storm of “visual” noise we encounter in close encounters. Just as AI connects to our databases to learn, this unknown phenomenon could use its interaction with the psyche of observers to craft its manifestation. We are the “database” for UFOs.

But it is not only artificial intelligence or close encounters that display this extravagant and enigmatic language. There is another agent, older and deeply human, that shares these characteristics: the dream world. Is it possible that dreams hold some clues to unlocking the secrets of these manifestations?

THE HIDDEN INTERFACE BETWEEN DREAMS, AI, AND UFOs

No one can deny that dreams also masterfully transform the everyday into cryptic symbols night after night and build worlds from scratch to present complex narratives indistinguishable from reality. In dreams, the irrational and the familiar coexist side by side, creating images or scenes that defy conventional reason—although we are unaware of this while we sleep. It must be remembered that dreams are the liminal territory par excellence, the border between the conscious and the unconscious, and where sometimes disconcerting phenomena such as premonitions emerge.

In this sense, the dream universe functions as a bridge between human experience and forms of perception or communication that transcend rational logic, much like what happens with AI creations and encounters with the inexplicable.

The modus operandi of dreams, with their ability to articulate archetypes, metaphors, and fictions that do not follow the rules of conscious logic, could offer a fundamental key to understanding these visionary phenomena. It is possible that what we call close encounters are the result of a complex interaction between the human psyche and an unknown external agent, where the mind, in attempting to make sense of the communication, generates a symbolic and perceptual layer that acts as a “translating” filter. This “interface” would be nothing more than a manifestation of an ancestral cognitive phenomenon—a shared space where the internal and the external intertwine, shaping experiences that transcend our usual understanding but which, at the same time, deeply reflect human nature in its constant attempt to translate the unknown into its own language.

In a way, the UFO sightings of the 20th century were the most “viral” manifestation of an adaptive phenomenon, whose “technological” content is nothing more than the modern packaging of a deeper, more atavistic message. It must be understood that a vision that borders on the supernatural or the extraordinary produces a fissure in our psyche, mobilizing deep, unexplored areas. After all, beyond the paraphernalia of a spectacular staging, these apparitions encourage us to reconstruct the notion of “reality” from frames of reference other than our everyday logic, which has been culturally conditioned since childhood. That may be the starting point.

It is possible that this learning process, which we have called encounters with flying saucers and their occupants, is expressed through a new language loaded with symbols, errors, and moments of pure absurd poetry. Perhaps, in the end, AI, dreams, and UFOs are all communicating the same thing to us: that reality has more versions than we can conceive, and that the most surprising of all may be the one we have not yet learned to read.

JOSE ANTONIO CARAVACA