THE HUMAN ENIGMA: WHAT IF WE ASSUME UFOS DO NOT EXIST?

 

Let's do a small, fun thought experiment and place ourselves in the viewpoint that many skeptics have defended for years. Let's assume that UFOs do not exist and for a moment adopt the rationalist perspective to address this mystery. To simplify our experiment, we will set aside all the elements that usually occupy the center of the ufological debate in recent times: the supposed physical evidence, radar detections, blurry filmings, traces on the ground, and even the omnipresent Roswell case. Each of these aspects generates endless discussions and contradictory readings that, instead of clarifying the panorama, tend to muddy it even more (besides being open to more possibilities). Therefore, we are not interested in entering that territory in any way.

What we propose is to move towards a much firmer and undisputed area for both parties: human testimonies. That which remains standing even when material evidence is discarded; that which both skeptics and believers admit: that people recount "incredible" or "very strange" things. Similarly, we decide to exclude from this exercise incidents that have been correctly explained or are the result of inventions, whether by the witnesses themselves or by some investigators, as they do not contribute anything to the core of the problem we are interested in addressing here.

No one doubts that for decades, the UFO phenomenon has fueled the collective imagination, occupying newspaper headlines, books, and documentaries, presenting itself as a challenge to known science. From Kenneth Arnold's initial sighting in 1947 to close encounters reported on different continents with flying saucers and occupants, thousands of people claim to have seen, felt, or experienced something that defies conventional explanations. And, in many cases, their accounts coincide in striking details despite the witnesses not knowing each other, living in different contexts, and lacking apparent motivations to invent their stories. But the unusual thing is that it happens.

But let's start from that initial premise: UFOs have no real basis; that is, there are no extraterrestrial ships or visitors from other worlds or dimensions. If this were the case, a troubling question would still remain to be resolved: why do so many people, apparently sane and without signs of mental disorders, claim to have lived experiences that they believe are profoundly real?

Immediately, skeptics resort to their preferred arsenal of explanations: psychology, sociology, confusion, deception, or mental disorders. And it is that various scholars of the mind have been pointing out for years that the human brain is not a perfect instrument, like a hard drive that stores information perfectly, but rather a creative interpreter, capable of filling in gaps with its imagination and even seeing or remembering events that did not happen exactly as we perceive them. We tend to look for patterns, complete missing information, and grant coherence to ambiguous stimuli in order to interpret them. From lights in the sky to strange sounds, the cultural context can mold the interpretation of an event. This does not mean that the witnesses are lying. On the contrary, many of them are fully convinced that they experienced something extraordinary, supernatural, or extraterrestrial. Researchers often describe these people as balanced individuals, showing no signs of deception and with a solid account that they often integrate into their belief system.

Therein lies one of the skeptic's great arguments: the sincerity of the witness does not guarantee the veracity of the event, at least in its literalness, but, importantly, if it comes to that, it does not completely invalidate it either. Because the witness is reporting something. If one thing has become perfectly clear in the last 8 decades, it is that the UFO phenomenon moves in an intermediate territory where the subjective weighs more than the objective, although, occasionally, physical or physiological evidence is also presented that is difficult to evaluate and continues to baffle experts, but which we will set aside as promised. Because skeptics may eliminate the existence of the phenomenon, but not the extensive casuistry (case history). Here we are no longer talking about UFOs themselves, but about the accounts: thousands of testimonies that cannot be erased from the equation, even if we objected that flying saucers are the product of fantasy. These experiences narrated by thousands of people would still demand an explanation, reminding us that, beyond the objective reality of the phenomenon, the subjective reality of those who claim to have lived it remains an undeniable fact.

If UFOs were a chimera in any of their anomalous aspects, from the extraterrestrial to the most paraufological or Fortean theses, psychology would put at least three major propositions on the table, although none would completely resolve the puzzle of the casuistry:

Memory: Memory does not function like a video recording, but as a continuous reconstruction. A witness can fill in gaps with familiar cultural elements, especially when trying to make sense of an unknown event.

Perception Under Pressure: In situations of stress, surprise, or fear, the brain can interpret ambiguous stimuli as threats or anomalies. A flash, an airplane, or an atmospheric phenomenon can be transformed, from the personal experience, into something completely different.

Cultural Contagion: Cinema, literature, and the media have created a shared visual code about "the extraterrestrial". Even people from different countries can describe similar experiences because they all draw from the same collective imaginary.

But evidently, there are pieces missing here to close the case before a judge. This scenario that we have presented in this essay, despite offering explanatory elements, does not completely resolve the enigma. Evidently, and we can agree on this, the casuistry does not necessarily demonstrate the arrival of extraterrestrials to our planet, but it would reveal the existence of a fertile territory for psychology, sociology, and anthropology still to be explored. It would be necessary to understand why thousands of people, in different eras and places, have constructed experiences so vivid, so coherent with each other, and so profoundly significant.

What kind of visionary state do these people experience? Because, despite numerous attempts, skeptics have not yet identified any syndrome, disorder, or psychological mechanism capable of fully explaining how someone can "hallucinate" in such an elaborate, sustained, and, in some cases, even shared way with other witnesses. There is no diagnostic category that includes episodes of hyper-realistic daydreaming that generate structured and coherent visions with such a high degree of emotional impact. And this absence of a clinical explanation leaves open a fundamental question: if there is no pathological framework that explains these experiences, then, what human, cognitive, cultural, or perhaps something yet to be identified, process is operating at their origin?

Perhaps that is, in the end, the true challenge, regardless of the existence or not of aliens. The human mind appears to be the key to understanding these liminal phenomena that are situated between our Cartesian reality and a very different one, but which would have little or nothing to do with their literalness offered before our eyes. They are manifestations that contain too much of the human, as if they were acting through a psychological filter capable of reinterpreting or "translating" an unknown stimulus into images, archetypes, and narratives according to our cultural expectations. From this perspective, we would not be dealing with a simple perceptual error, but with a more complex process in which the original experience, whatever causes it, is molded, amplified, or distorted by the witness's own mental apparatus. The final experience, the one that is verbalized, would be a kind of mixture of external stimulus and internal construction, an encounter where the real and the imagined intertwine until they become inseparably unexpected.

In fact, it is worth noting that traditional skepticism has tended to deny the very existence of any anomalous manifestation because the proposed explanations have never convinced them: neither the extraterrestrial hypotheses in ufology, nor the supernatural readings of Marian apparitions, nor the Fortean interpretations of unusual events. The focus of their criticism is usually on the conclusions, on the final label assigned to what is observed, and not on the possible triggering phenomenon of these visions. Thus, they casually dismiss that extraterrestrials are visiting Earth, that the Virgin Mary appears before a shepherd, or that someone can encounter a spirit at a crossroads, but they rarely dwell on the obvious: the accounts exist, the experiences are narrated, and these experiences form part of a persistent body that remains over time, regardless of the interpretive framework assigned to them by researchers, witnesses, or believers.

To conclude, we can say that the distortions—that is, the ufological, Marian, supernatural, or Fortean scenarios—however erroneous they may be, do not necessarily invalidate the existence of a real trigger behind them. In any case, they remind us that the important thing is not to deny the explicit content of the experiences, but to understand how, and why, the human mind decodes them in that particular way. Then we will be able to undertake an in-depth, unbiased study of the origin of these manifestations.

JOSE ANTONIO CARAVACA

UFOZNAUTS: THE MYSTERY OF UFO ENTITIES

 

For eighty years, we have been calling them crew members, occupants, humanoids, extraterrestrial biological entities. And for eight decades, none of those labels has fit quite right with what witnesses report. That is why I proposed a new term to define those strange creatures and beings associated with flying saucers. The invention blends UFO with Oz, in a clear reference to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and also includes a nod to an earlier term coined by researcher Jenny Randles. The reference to the book is not a literary whim. In the novel, the great and powerful Oz turns out to be an elderly man hidden behind a curtain, pulling levers to appear as a terrifying deity. The suspicion raised by this new term follows the same line: that a large part of what we call UFO crew members is also an imposture set up using the cultural materials of each era—spaceships, silver suits, diving helmets, ray guns—so that people see precisely what their time expects them to see.

A ufoznaut, to be more precise, is that real or perceived entity that appears linked to a sighting or an encounter with an unidentified object—which also includes lights and flashes—and whose nature is not fully resolved by the traditional extraterrestrial hypothesis. What is interesting is that these beings show a very clear continuity with figures that were already there long before anyone talked about spaceships: fairies, daimons, Marian apparitions, incubi, beast-men, spirits, ghosts. The proposed term does not force one to decide what these beings are made of; it works equally well whether one believes they are projections of the witness's mind, prefers to think of other dimensions, or leans toward the archetypal realm handled by Jung. Rather, what it does is change the question. Instead of asking where they come from, it invites us to ask what function they serve and under what disguise they reappear time and again throughout history. If you strip any account of an abduction or close encounter of its modern stage props—spaceships, astronaut suits, weird technology—what remains is strikingly similar to what shepherds, monks, and peasants have been telling for centuries. Lights that appear and disappear without explanation, figures uttering disconnected phrases that lead nowhere, beings that enter and leave our reality as if stepping through a door only they can see. The aesthetic changes with each generation, but the underlying pattern remains fixed.

This is neither an isolated idea nor something fresh out of the oven. Ufologist John Keel, the same man who investigated the Mothman case in West Virginia during the late 1960s, reached a similar conclusion and coined his own term, "ultraterrestrials," to talk about entities capable of shape-shifting and disguising themselves as whatever each culture considers supernatural at any given moment—now demons, now men in black, now flying saucer pilots. A few years earlier, Jacques Vallée, the French astrophysicist who inspired François Truffaut's character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, published Passport to Magonia, a book that carefully compares accounts of UFO encounters with old fairy kidnappings from European folklore, finding the exact same ingredients: abductions, tests, physical interactions, relationships with these beings. Neither Keel nor Vallée thought the phenomenon was pure fantasy. They thought it was real and that, precisely because it was, it did not fit inside the astronaut suit we had placed upon it. British writer Patrick Harpur went even further in his book Daimonic Reality, where he argues that fairies, UFOs, Bigfoots, Marian apparitions, and ghosts belong to the same sphere that the Neoplatonists called the World Soul (Anima Mundi)—something that is neither entirely objective nor entirely invented. Harpur points out something that anyone who has read comparative folklore notices right away: that the old fairies who appeared as small humanoids in green coats have transformed, generation after generation, into humanoids in silver astronaut suits.

This is where the ufoznaut enters as something more than a traveler from another planet: an inhabitant of that borderland between the real, the dreamlike, the imaginal, and the supernatural—neither fully physical nor fully imaginary—moving through that murky terrain where the psychological, the religious, and the Forteana step on each other's heels all the time. Some even go further and speak of these beings as genuine psychopomps, mediators between two worlds that have been colliding forever. One does not need to swallow the most mystical part of the argument to recognize the underlying issue: we remain determined to solve through biology and physics a phenomenon that perhaps belongs, at least in part, to the realm of human consciousness and how it processes what it does not understand.

The morpheme "OZ" is not inserted into the word by accident. It points directly to the mechanism by which a manifestation presents itself with an aesthetic of authority or high technology tailored to what the observer of the time expects to see, while hiding its true nature beneath. Viewed this way, the ufoznaut ceases to be merely a traveler from another planet and becomes a form of otherness that, depending on the era and the cultural framework in which it appears, puts on whatever disguise that context offers as the most credible or terrifying. 

This scenic imposture points to a broader underlying problem: the role of the perceiver's consciousness in decoding and—more than likely—interacting with the phenomenon. It is not merely a matter of the interpretive bias inherent in any human experience—an obvious factor already assumed in all observation—but something of greater significance: the possibility that the phenomenon itself adapts to the sociocultural parameters of the witness, actively assuming that personalization in the way it manifests. In other words, the phenomenon would not be limited to being interpreted differently depending on who observes it, but would seem to show itself as malleable to the presence of the witness, adjusting its aesthetics, its symbolic content, and its mode of communication to the frame of reference of the person perceiving it.

 

JOSE ANTONIO CARAVACA

TRAPPED IN LITERALITY: THE QUICKSAND OF UFO THEORIZING

For decades, much of the theorizing around the UFO phenomenon has rested on ground that was thought to be solid and unshakable. For many ufologists, the analysis of thousands of recorded incidents worldwide seemed to offer a straightforward interpretation, pointing to a clear and undeniable conclusion: we were dealing with physical, technological machines piloted by intelligent beings visiting our planet. The premise was simple—if they weren’t human, then the only question left was: where did they come from?

But soon, something fundamental was forgotten: the cases themselves.

Once a broad overview had been drawn from hundreds of reports, it was assumed there was no need to dig deeper into individual incidents or revisit the details. Many even dismissed the stranger cases as irrelevant, not worth the time.

The core idea of the UFO phenomenon was reduced to a literal reading of the simplest accounts. But that approach carried a serious risk: it stripped away the nuances found in most experiences and obscured the true scale of the phenomenon.

Thus, the conclusion that UFOs must be crafts and their occupants intelligent beings—taken almost as unquestionable truth—may actually be a mirage that has limited our understanding. A great many interpretations about the nature of flying saucers have, in reality, been built on quicksand.

Most hypotheses—whether extraterrestrials from distant star systems, intraterrestrials, interdimensional entities, time travelers, or descendants of ancient civilizations like Atlantis—rest on an unstable foundation: taking sightings literally, as evidence of physical craft and beings. This does not mean denying the UFO phenomenon itself, but questioning the assumption that what is seen must necessarily be a material reality, a tangible object like a plane or a mountain.

And why should we doubt the spectacle put on by flying saucers? Some might ask.

Because the doubts are more than justified.

The body of UFO reports worldwide presents a picture that is far more complex, puzzling, and often incompatible with literalist interpretations that ignore the possibility of decoys or sensory illusions.

Perhaps what we are dealing with is not an “intrinsic reality” at all, but something that merely presents itself as real. In other words, what we see may be a construction of perception, entangled with an unknown phenomenon—one that doesn’t necessarily involve machines or visitors carrying galactic passports. Perhaps what we’re witnessing is a kind of sensory screen.

Witness accounts provide no certainty that the “objects” or “beings” observed correspond to an objective reality. After eight decades of research, doubts remain.

Reports frequently describe events that defy our physical and temporal expectations: appearances that vanish without a trace, constant shape-shifting, inconsistent observations, dramatic perceptual shifts in witnesses, and links with psychic or parapsychological phenomena.

And then there is the connection between UFOs and other extraordinary manifestations recorded throughout history: religious apparitions, encounters with supernatural beings, mysterious lights in the sky, or folklore phenomena. These parallels suggest the phenomenon is not exclusively modern but has adapted itself across centuries, reshaping to fit the cultural beliefs of each era. This makes it difficult to take observations at face value; the true nature of the phenomenon may be far more ambiguous and complex than conventional explanations admit.

Ultimately, what we perceive with our senses may not match objective reality at all, but instead may be altered, filtered, or distorted.

This means the dominant theories about UFOs have largely been built on a “sensory screen” produced by the interaction between witnesses and the phenomenon itself: the idea that “something” or “someone” is visiting us aboard physical machines made of nuts and bolts. For decades, this mechanistic and technological outlook shaped ufological thought, directing interpretations toward tangible space visitors while sidelining other possibilities.

And under that powerful framework, almost any origin story could fit: starships from Orion, dimensional portals, lost civilizations, humans from the future. Yet none of these conjectures adequately explains the weirder corners of the UFO archives beyond a superficial level.

This shallow narrative of “ships and beings” has also fueled some of the more curious directions in UFO theorizing. From this perspective, ufologists have interpreted the supposed actions and behaviors of “saucer occupants” through the lens of cultural bias. Thus, we hear of civilizations bound by “cosmic treaties” not to interfere with less advanced species, of genetic experiments on humans, of time travelers conducting anthropological studies, or of interdimensional entities manipulating us for sinister ends. But these stories simply project our archetypes and expectations onto the phenomenon, reinforcing a literalist view.

Instead of bringing us closer to the truth, this synthesis has created a tangled web of interpretations where imagination often substitutes for evidence.

The more ufologists speculate about the motives and actions of supposed UFO occupants, the more elaborate the theoretical scaffolding becomes. Over time, this scaffolding solidifies into a self-supporting system of beliefs. Once entrenched, it becomes difficult to abandon—even when many incidents contradict it. This dynamic explains why new approaches struggle to gain traction: accepting them would require dismantling the entire framework of ideas, a vast belief system that not only assigns extraterrestrial, interdimensional, or ultraterrestrial origins to the phenomenon, but also builds upon it with sprawling narratives about genetic experiments, cosmic guardianship, or malevolent controlling entities.

Even scientists and outside researchers who occasionally engage with the subject often fall into the same trap. While their intention may be to apply academic rigor, they usually reinforce the same surface-level idea: that UFOs must be “crafts and beings.” In doing so, they add layers of confusion instead of clarity, when the actual evidence suggests something far less concrete and far more elusive.

Today, many scholars argue that the real challenge is to shed old assumptions and re-examine the evidence with fresh eyes—ones open to unknown dimensions of reality, aspects of human consciousness, or even undiscovered principles of physics and perception. If the UFO phenomenon has shown us anything, it is its ability to overwhelm our categories of thought and resist simplistic explanations. After more than seventy years of investigation and debate, we are still no closer to a definitive understanding. The UFO enigma not only unsettles our most basic explanations—it forces us to rethink what we mean by reality itself.

In the end, any hypothesis that does not rest on a deep and rigorous examination of the ufological record will remain vague, partial, and biased—lacking the foundation to stand against the abundant evidence that has been collected over decades.

JOSE ANTONIO CARAVACA