Again, thank you everyone that read, participated, and took some time to entertain my thoughts.

This Part 5 and the final part in the series which serves as a short summary to the entire series. Based on my own belief, sightings, and journey in light of recent releases and information, I concluded the following:

Humans are dealing with some unexplained phenomena, which inherently is a natural human state of being over our entire history. There is not enough definitive data to say NHI or aliens exist. Sorry, hard truths first, but all the same there are other truths yet.

The UFO narrative is alive because of the community of believers, researches, and experiencers. When the USG pulled the plug publicly in 1969, the community stepped up, the narrative expanded – for better or worse – and the sacred fire of belief was kept alive. Now the USG is re-entering the room with new information and information seeking activities. It is acknowledging some truths across the board but the biggest one we know now is that UAPs are rea - albeit, they are unexplained.

We are breathing rarefied air in that for the first time we can say what was just said: UAPs, and therefore UFOs, are in fact a real phenomenon!

I still believe in aliens, but I cannot believe in recovered crafts, materials, and bodies because unfortunately evidence now exists to apply scrutiny to the topics. In absence of seeing more evidence of, i cannot shake my cognitive dissonance that there is more, but all the same I cannot ignore so many voices in the room saying there are. I have to default to the stance science and engineering taught me, which is to doubt until I am presented with enough data to disprove the hypothesis that they do not exist.

The evidence also points a much more foundational issue for me: Why are there UAPs given nearly 79 years of technological advancements in sensors, fusion, reporting, and the UFO narrative as a whole? What are we missing or what theory is wrong?

That said, as the information continues to make waves and hopefully come to us, we need a non-speculative method and classification system for what we actually know, what we think we know, and ultimately what we believe we know. Before “disclosure” we all believed and had whispers and echoes. After though, we cannot as a community continue to blindly believe in the face of mounting information.

The community must continue its work in light of the fact of the release of information. It spent three decades opposing government secrecy and now there are legislators, officials, and investigators united with and working for more transparency to further the cause. We owe it to ourselves, as a call to arms, to thoroughly recognize the varying levels of knowledge about the subject, the reporting, and the documentation process, otherwise we will never arrive at the truth, whatever it may be.

 

That’s why my opening and closing statement is: Disclosure stole my belief…but not in aliens.

Part 4 continues the framework introduced in Part 3 by applying it to the Dreamland and UAP Ages.

Part 5 will follow to sum it all up. Parts 1-3 are pinned on my profile.

Dreamland Age (1970-2000):

• The UFO narrative accelerates into often unsubstantiated areas of high strangeness and speculation without regard to official sources, being mostly “trust me” I worked on it or saw it in an official capacity, which now requires substantial classification of the narratives under a further taxonomical layer. In particular there is also a re-framing of classical events into these new areas:
  • Zoo-cryptids and their UFO role:
    • Big Foot
    • Folklore cryptids as fact
    • Mothman
    • Adjacent Phenomena
  • Para-psychological
    • Telepathic
    • hyperspatial/spiritual inferences for UFOs
    • Ancient Aliens
  • All things Area 51
    • Secret exotic aircraft and propulsion systems as explanations like Aurora
    • Eisenhower
    • “Whistleblowers” like Corso
  • Hidden Agendas and Experimentation
    • Dulce, The Gray Agenda, and secret treaties
    • JFK, Nixon, and Reagan angles
    • Faked moon landing counter-history
    • MJ-12 Document found
    • Animal Mutilations
    • Implants and abductions/abductees
  • Hackers
    • NASA Exotic weaponry, particle weapons, and secret space forces
  • Distinct and well-known alien races, motives, and characteristics
    • Nordics
    • Grays
    • Reptilians
    • Cult-based alien beliefs
  • Early Ancient Alien theory
    • Anunnaki/Chariots of the Gods
    • Print media
    • Documentaries
• What does it mean based on released/surviving evidence:
  • There is a large body of reporting on zoo-cryptids and well-established definitions for each – the fact of a taxonomy and belief based on testimonies despite definitive identification they remained well-defined and subjects of continued investigative efforts
  • Efforts also focused to try and unify the sightings of UFOs with other strange events to the point “aliens” became explanations for zo-cryptids or even entities like Big Foot became aliens – There’s a clear distinction between an exo/zeno-cryptid and zoo-cryptid and the line became blurred
  • Area 51 was acknowledged due to lawsuits against the USG in Clinton admin over ironically of all things the illegal disposal of toxic chemicals via burn pits
  • Area 51 was also shown to actually host secret programs like the A-12/SR-71, U-2, and Have Blue/F-117 as well as other high-performance classified aircraft
  • Reports of recovered materials, animal mutilations, and alleged abductions accumulated throughout this period. While many were investigated or documented to varying degrees, provenance, chain of custody, and attribution frequently remained unresolved, limiting definitive conclusions regarding their origin or cause.
  • Semi-official efforts existed despite the lack of an acknowledged effort: MUFON, CUFOS – The effort to document and keep reporting alive becomes a public and semi-official endeavor
  • The number of sightings, abduction reports, mutilations is more than ever – One key distinction here is that information accessibility and overall societal connectedness has dramatically increased by the end and people are more open minded than ever on the subject
  • Many official, semi-official, fictional, and falsified/false flag reports came out on various topics:
  • Officially Roswell is deemed to be at the core narrative of a weather balloon via the USAF report on Project MOGUL
  • Officially the CIA did conduct mind control and LSD experiments
  • Officially remote viewing and Project Stargate existed
  • MJ-12 Documents look official
  • Documentaries, interviews, and books are published more than ever on the subject and adjacent subjects
  • Conspiracy theories peak, especially due to “eyewitnesses” coming forward and claiming the public is being misinformed, groomed, or otherwise mislead/lied to
  • In light of all the reporting signal to noise decreases information-wise in that the community now knows less and is less trusting of the official government reporting/record overall
  • Absent of any fact or proof, portions of UFO community as a whole now believe: Aliens are real, there are multiple races, we’ve been visited, and this is what they look like.
  • Aliens like zoo-cryptids gain a uniform and well-defined taxonomy
  • Ancient alien theory begins to interpret the Pre-classical age in a new and interesting light by preposing alternative historical interpretations of all aspects of human history most importantly via the Classical age supposition that is x happened then y must be highly plausible or even fact – The key aspect here is that the interpretations use logical, well-argued and often-speculative scientific methods
• What role is played in the overall UFO narrative:
  • There is an overwhelmingly large dataset of sightings, testimonies, physical evidence, but forensically and otherwise it cannot be traced to anyone source or phenomena, while the core narrative continues to be maintained and often reinforced by it – This data is unexplained but not necessarily because it defies explanation but because of errors in collection, contextualization, chain of custody, etc
  • Reinterprets the Classical narrative, in many directions
  • Tries to one-size/unify too many disjoint things
  • Reignites the spirit of the classical age in newer directions, keeping the mythos alive and even mainstreaming it in pop-culture so as to no longer perceive the UFO narrative itself as solely a tin-foil hat theory
  • While unsubstantiated by historical records, it provides additional avenues for plausible explanations – no idea is bad and Ufology is born
  • There is now an ongoing concerted effort to reassess additional areas of strangeness and otherwise unexplained events and/or human history in association with the broader UFO narrative
  • Most importantly: Bridges the gap between the Classical UFO Age and the Release Age
  • I Want to Believe is now the mantra

UAP Age (2000-Current) (CAUTION – Current Events and possible speculation)

• This age embodies a re-engagement or reawakening of the Classic age official reporting while also providing actual sensor-based evidence for the first time in history as well as putting officials on record in front of Congressional committees for the first time since the classic age ended. Distinctions between official statements and evidence, on-the-record statements, and off-the-record/community/social media statements, as well as speculative claims are critical to the understanding and ultimately determines whether this is a form of discovery, disclosure, or yet another evolution of the broader UFO narrative. Information naturally may migrate categories as more data arrives and due to the timeliness of communication. Due to the nature of the Dreamland Age, there is a tension inherent to this age where the reemergence of official institutions is both a positive and negative and in some cases in contradiction to the long-standing UFO community left carrying the torch for thirty years and an expanding information rich environment. At times even some statements made from a position of authority are veiled in mystery. This is by far the most complex and information-rich Age but perhaps also the hardest to navigate with certainty due to the echoing nature of human connectedness through the internet. This warrants yet a further split in taxonomy, because it is no longer just a what does the evidence mean it’s a what does the evidence on record say, versus what an official on record said with no proof under oath, versus what that official may say off the record, counterweighted against what the community thinks…cliché maybe, but the truth is out there, maybe.
• What we officially have evidence of the supports the broader UFO narrative:
  • UFO is deprecated in favor of UAP, with the definition of the initialism changing over time changing over time
  • The UAP Security Classification Guide (SCG) is acknowledged and released somewhat redacted via an ODNI FOIA request and defines UAPs n terms of their mediums of operation which is one reason why the “f” in UFO was inconvenient – USOs enter regular conversation including underwater bases, and terminology is becoming more scientifically rigid again
  • UAPs outside their types were originally classified by shapes even in the Classical age but the terms are standardized by the To The Stars Foundation in terms of the observables of the sighting
  • The word disclosure is wantonly used and disclosure is actively supported by Congress, elected officials, and key technical and attributable USG “observers”
  • Official reporting is reestablished and re-institutionalized into the official record via the AAWSAP:
    • AAWSAP/AATIP (DIA) – 2007-2012 – But only acknowledged in 2017
    • UAPTF (ONI) – 2017-2020 – Acknowledged in 2020
    • AOIMG (DoD) – 2021-2022
    • AARO (DNI) – 2022-Present
    • [CURRENT EVENTS/SPEC] UAP Committee/Body is being discussed with a possible UAP Czar – 2026 post-PURSUE
  • Live Congressional Intelligence Committee hearings – the fact of
  • PURSUE happened in 2026:
    • Three “tranches” to date
    • Only the unexplained cases and many historical files which many help inform the Classical Age narrative
    • The videos – Videos were released showing extraordinary UAPs but the caveat most need to observe is they were second-hand uploads to USG information processing systems, more often than not classified and filed under the various UAP reporting programs re-initiated in the recent century.
    • Several incidents stand out with the USS Nimitz incident in 2003 being maybe one of the more compelling but only by a small shred – There are now many others with more observers in official capacities and similarities
    • The Classic age core narrative of orbs breaking apart, flying in packs is back into the mainstream after the Dreamland age introduced many other types like the black triangle
  • The most significant and concerning part of the Release narrative is:
    • UAPs are real
    • They have been observed on both singular sensors and across sensor fused networks and platforms
    • The readings of speed and characteristics are being reported officially by qualified observers
    • They are unexplained
  • The terms SAP, SCIF, and other security control system methodologies are mainstreaming to the public
• What evidence does not support the broader UFO narrative:
  • AARO issued a 2024 report stating there is no empirical evidence of alien technology
  • February 2023 balloon “Flap”
    • Official, acknowledged shootdowns happened
    • One Chinese balloon by an F-22 on Feb 4^(th)
    • Three other objects “of private origin” subsequently from Feb 10^(th)-12^(th)
    • The most interesting data point here is not the shootdowns but the fact that NORAD tweaked their AADS sensors to track the objects and allow detection due to normally “turning down” the system sensitivity because of overwhelming number of radar contacts that are detected if left on theme sensitive setting
  • NJ and subsequent unidentified drone Flaps
    • Reports of unidentified drones flying over rural and city areas of NJ initially followed by NY, and PA happened over the period of November to December 2024, which were later acknowledged to be FAA-authorized, but not after sparking DHS and other agencies to investigate at both the federal and state level, while also sparking Congressional reactions
    • Subsequent drone incursions happened later on over sensitive installations and military bases prompting further drone counter measures and investigations
  • Instances where declassification or FOIA responses contradict or otherwise undermine the narrative in trivial or mundane ways – i.e. if an important document was released like the Twinning memo but the declassification was missed, restricted due to living persons/privacy, or miscategorized
• What has been entered into the official record during hearings or through filed statements:
  • The legacy program exists and it is at <insert name of a defense contractor> and the program is called <Immaculate Constellation or insert over the top name> - Congressional testimony under oath
  • The materials exist and are with various defense contractors and they are hoarding them – Filed with DoD OIG
  • Many previous officials and engineers/scientists are afraid and have been injured – Both testimonial and also filed with DoD OIG
• What is a matter of public/internet record but not officially on-the-record:
  • Various ex-USG technical and authoritative officials are coming forward alleging all manner of things but the key areas are a matter of either public record via internet media or Congressional record both of which carry significant weight but don’t embody the same quality of evidence:
  • Claims on social media of recovery of materials, craft, biologics/bodies – may or may not be valuable observationally given flippant claims abound the internet and can be explained away as over-interpretation/mincing of words
    • I saw <insert evidence> at <insert institution> and I will get that released – This is the crux of the age: Release
    • I attended <insert SCIF, briefing, closed session> with <insert agency, person, official> and they told me these are the alien races, their intents, etc
  • The Dreamland Age categorizations still exist and, in some areas, have expanded in scope but the overall encompassing landscape is solidified now
  • The NSA claims they have no UAP info – IC and DoD as a whole is producing materials for release
• What is still in the speculative realm:
  • Ancient alien theory has via reality and pseudo-scientific TV series
  • UFO/Alien Documentaries and serials abound purporting to know or disclose the truth – Many tied to the same people in official hearings and many of high-production quality – This one can go both ways but carefully fits here due to the inherent bias of monetary/infamy considerations to make statements and provide interview
  • Pop culture movies and shows are more prevalent than ever and bordering on the truth-like as if only some of the facts have been changed
  • NHI/Aliens are viewed across a spectrum from mostly malevolent or hostile to helpful, depending on the “species”
  • Aliens are now not the only “source” for UAPs or why they visit/appear:
    • Jellyfish and Plasmids have been described – UAP video exist
    • Ultra terrestrial or significantly more advanced humans/Terran species are now in common use
    • NHI as AI, hyperdimensional/shadow people, or higher time travelers is now mainstream – PURSUE data exists
    • No longer simply Dulce/Gray Agenda
    • Hub network theory
    • Nuclear weapon hurting UAPs due dimensional or exotic effects
  • Mutilations continue
    • Ancient Aliens
    • Skinwalker Ranch
    • Theories abound – extinct animals
• What role is played in the overall UFO narrative:
  • This is still ongoing, so it would be speculative to say overall where the narrative goes
  • Many are calling this the disclosure age, many others are saying isn’t, and many others simply like seeing the videos – There may be a divide forming, but that’s where this categorical approach comes from – to determine what we think we do know in a sea of information
  • One key takeaway is that even the USG does not always know what it is doing internally in regard to drones, UAP investigations, and other secret programs due to intention and unintentional siloing – this may be a passive enabler for the fact of UAPs
  • Many objects enter US airspace which are not officially tracked or reported due to tracking saturation, which leaves open the possibility that sensor data for many civilian UAP sightings may be lacking militarily where it might otherwise exist if the system could handle it – this may have provide explanations for otherwise still unexplained UAPs.
  • Only time will tell…
• Disclosure Age (???? – Future, if ever, or is this now?)
  • We are not there yet…and may never be there. Or are we?

That's part 4. I'll be summarizing it all in light of my new insight into my own beliefs in a final, succinct Part 5.

Thank you all for the views, comments, and upvotes to date. I appreciate the outpouring given being new and not necessarily posting conventional styled posts.

Thank you for those who have stuck with me throughout the first two posts in this series

Parts 1 and 2 explained what and why I believed. Part 3 explains why I stopped thinking that belief alone was enough. Parts 1 and 2 can be found on my profile.

I broke it down in a taxonomical way for myself to try to establish a few things. As a community, we owe it to ourselves to not only permit flow of information to us, but also rationalize the data and forthcoming “disclosure” in a manageable and quasi-scientific approach.

We can derive the stronger credibility and determination of the facts this way. This will allow us be unified in our demands to our government for certain additional information, add credibility to the movement, and generally avoid commingling of topics. Sure the mind must remain open and questioning but also at some point, it comes down to not what you think you know, but what you can prove.

To re-frame this from a personal retelling of my past experiences, I want to point to my current experience with the disclosure movement, which is substantially different and the primary point of my series' thesis:

The greatest obstacle to understanding the UFO phenomenon is not necessarily a lack of information, but the accumulation of information without a consistent framework for classifying evidentiary strength. Historical documents, eyewitness testimony, sensor data, folklore, anonymous testimony, and speculative narratives have become increasingly conflated. Before we ask what the phenomenon is, we should first establish what kind of information we are dealing with, into which broader area of the UFO narrative it belongs, and most importantly whether it is new data, data we already had publicly, or data that supports and/or otherwise reinforces a long-held community belief. Only then can it be assessed whether humans have genuinely progressed toward disclosure or whether we have simply accumulated additional, albeit interesting, unexplained information.

Throughout this write-up, I may use the word "validate," which means in a historical sense rather than an ontological one. A newly released document may validate that a report, narrative, or concern genuinely existed within the historical record at a particular time without validating the underlying interpretation of that report. In other words, a document can validate that people were reporting "Men in Black" to the FBI without validating the objective existence of the Men in Black themselves. This distinction is central to the framework, and also a part of the PURSUE effort that is subtle and missed.

The purpose of this framework is not to determine whether UFOs, non-human intelligence, or any particular theory is true. Rather, it is to provide a structured methodology for organizing an increasingly heterogeneous body of historical, technical, and anecdotal information.

In turn the framework I arrived at is mainly that the history of Ufology and belief is not a serial thing, therefore there needs to be some taxonomical way to classify the information and assign it to the proper place in the narrative. To do so clear ages of the narrative need definition and once assessed, the information assigned to the age in which is most valid based on its value. This allows information vetting through the lens in spite of the mass of public information releases, stories, news conferences, on/off record comments, et al.

History should be established before facts are inferred. Events must be classified before they are pieced together into a narrative. Evidence should be evaluated within the historical context in which it originated before it is used to support broader conclusions.

DISCLAIMER: I may have some history in the wrong places, omitted, or otherwise misstated something below. This is in no way a final, polished thing, nor is a task that one person can do alone. This took me many hours to write-up and looking at it makes it look small and sparse, but I think it's the approach that should be reviewed, not the data...yet...and maybe someone else has already did this. If so let's chat and compare notes.

Pre-UFO Age (Pre-1940)

We don’t really have anything evidentiary here more than speculation and theories from future historical context; while fun and plausible, there’s no easy way to determine if the historical information for this age is factually about a UFO, NHI/alien, or other subject within the broader UFO narrative.

• A partial list of key events in this age:
  • Aurora Spaceman
  • Airships
  • Surviving textual experiences of historical figures
    • Biblical interpretations
    • Folklore
    • Religious and tribal beliefs
• What does it mean based on released/surviving evidence:
  • Humans have an active and strong historical base in strangeness and these accounts should not be discounted since we’re almost attuned to see strangeness.
  • We want answers and will derive them from a lack of data almost certainly.
  • Someone at the time of record believed something important enough happened to write it down and subsequent humans found it interesting enough to preserve is as history, but the interpretations require proper contextualization for the time in which the record was created.
  • Without definitive proof, or missing data being found, we cannot say it is truly included in the UFO narrative. It’s simply eclectic.
• What role does this play in the overall UFO narrative:
  • Despite being unable to prove UFOs/strangeness we can infer a strong foundation in that people didn’t just didn’t start seeing things post-1900
  • Unexplainable things have existed for all of human history and may become explainable with more evidence, but caution should be exercised that future confirmations of phenomena may be disjoint and do not necessarily prove adjacent events or theories.

Classic Age (1940-1970):

WWII, SIGN, GRUDGE, Blue Book, Condon - The classic flying saucer age we know as UFO pop-culture:

• A partial list of key events in this age:
  • Foo Fighters
  • Roswell
  • 1952 Washington Flap
  • Shag Harbour Incident
  • Various “monster” sightings
  • Men-in-Black
• What does it mean based on released/surviving evidence:
  • FOIA, PURSUE, BlackVault, et al releases plus special reports in many ways contain the same pop-culture UFO narratives, if only in events alone, and even unreleased ones seem to validate against the “known” public record despite being first time releases
  • The reports and sightings we treated as real enough to investigate - Twinning memo, Hoover HQ memos, and creation of SIGN, GRUDGE, Blue Book
  • Hoover and his office in particular took an interest, up to including continuing to forward what would be considered mundane correspondence of little to no investigative value to the USAAF
  • The historical record was in some way considered worth keeping, and keeping confidential at a minimum – Fact of unreleased period PURSUE documents
  • Reinforces the human experience and to the Pre-UFO age – there are some things we may not be able to explain, yet or even ever.
  • It is likely local clusters existed based on information exchange, yet also due to long communication lines of the time, certain clusters could plausibly experience similar unexplained phenomena in spite of this
  • Maturation of systemic classification of facts and official secrets
  • The USA was not alone in experiencing. Sweden, continental Europe, Canada, Russia, and others all had their own sightings – As shown through collected intel reports (caution: second-hand alteration and/or misinformation is possible)
• What role is played in the overall UFO narrative:
  • The validation of the narrative is this: there existed enough caution and concern that officials throughout the time period put significant effort and thought into investigating and explaining the unexplained
  • The classic Roswell narrative, at the time (not the eventual report on Mogul)
  • Based on this grouping of released documents, there is no conclusive evidence in support of or to negate NHI or aliens at this time
  • There existed a national security concern
  • Officials believed the source may not be Russian technology, missiles, or craft but concerns still were there for lack of intelligence that also couldn’t rule it out – Various USAAF and USAF memos and continuation of SIGN into GRUDGE and Blue Book
  • People saw or experienced something - We cannot definitively say what was seen is what the object was, but that the experiencers genuinely believed what they saw – which in turn generated official concern
  • People appreciated the concern enough to report despite the views of the time and the apparent “look” of it, especially qualified and technical observers

If you read this, and take anything away, understand that this started for me because of the sheer amount of information out there that ranges across the 79+ year history that needs to be framed.

As records from one age or another become available the most important thing to do is contextualize them not in whether they outright prove or disprove your sightings, visitations, experiences, or NHI/aliens, but what they mean in the grander narrative and what deeper insights they show. Despite being paper records that are now digitized and released, there are still valuable pieces of meta-information that can derive further secondary conclusions:

• Redacted information can be inferred if the amount is small using sentence context and structure giving possibly why it was removed or inferred details in some cases, but not all
• Classification banners, downgrade to, dates of downgrade/declassification, and if unmarked/unclassified - did it contain personal information which held it back this long maybe?
• Existence of secondary sources and comparisons to them (e.g. MJ Document Roswell memo vs actual FBI Roswell document in PURSUE Tranche 1 - only difference was PII)
• What type of document is it? A communique, perhaps - Why did x send a teletype to y on the subject?
• Missing documents - For instance I could not locate the FBI record group for the time frame around December 5, 1950 - That's allegedly when FBI was briefed about a recovered craft from Mexico. It may mean nothing, but then we have proof the MJ document on Roswell was real, so perhaps it is still worth noting with lesser quality evidentiary indicators
• What we think we know or have been told, but is missing - How is it if the Roswell dispatches were destroyed yet we have such a body of released USAAF/USAF records? Also note the Blue Book reports in some cases were transferred to custodians outside Ohio for archive. Things can get lost or otherwise misplaced to the point they don't end up at NARA
• One final thing on classification I learned reading publicly available DoD manuals on how classification systems work - There's an overall lack of additional markings or their redactions on these older documents. Most of them are collateral with a dissemination for intel. Sure you might say the systems weren't in place - BUT - there's that but again - If someone touched them to downgrade or otherwise transmitted them to another party, generally they should have been brought to the nearest modern standard including compartments, as applicable to any class guide (e.g. UAP SCG - I would link but the ONI FOIA Reading Room is gone!?)

https://preview.redd.it/odvk37qjvtah1.png?width=975&format=png&auto=webp&s=481c721f1401a70dd364a081381e1738aa7d6fe3

https://preview.redd.it/cibnenxivtah1.png?width=975&format=png&auto=webp&s=2571e1b714289a5de641d839eaa2d007ee0e9cc4

In any case that's just a partial list of things I learned to look for. Does it provide more evidence? Not necessarily, but it does help to frame things a bit better, despite them not expressly saying "aliens or UFOs exist and were recovered."

Part 4 will drop in another 24-48 hours and cover the 1970s-current events. Stay tuned and most importantly please keep believing and commenting.

Thank you to those hanging off Part 1 with bated breath, and without further ado…Here’s my story to date…

Edit: I don't really reddit. So naturally I had a draft prepared and I linked my first part of this and got that draft removed by the auto mods and had to improvise and so here we are.

*Disclaimer: This is an autobiographical account of why I came to believe and how the release of information has changed my beliefs and way I view the broader UFO narrative. This is not proof, nor am I asking readers to validate or otherwise explain my experiences. They are long since past and they now simply provide background to my evolving belief system against the backdrop of the current disclosure movement.*

When I was younger we lived in a townhouse one town over. It was a two-story townhouse with a 2nd floor master bedroom. There were two windows about two feet off the floor that opened out to the roof of the connected front porch giving a good street view towards the Catholic church. Mundane right? Strangeness incoming…I used to wake up some mornings and tell my dad stories about talking to the “red man” at night.

Apparently according to my own reports to my father, I would sit on the windowsill and talk to this red man entity at night. I don’t remember what we talked about but the last time I talked to it, it showed me its true intentions by showing me painfully boiling in a vat of oil or lava in a hell-scape and I told it “No! go away!” and it got mad. Despite the anger, it complied but only after climbing into my parent’s bedroom through the open window, walking out of the room, down the stairs, and going out the front door. To this day I cannot really look out windows at night for fear that it might be looking back.

This is also why the first time I saw the Mothman movie and subsequent documentaries on the subject, I could not shake the innate dread. Upon seeing that movie, I immediately asked my dad if I ever talked to him about the red man. The memory of it was buried deeply but still there and somehow shaken loose by the Mothman film, which I was unable to watch completely. For better or worse he said he remembered me talking about it and told me about my younger self conveying the story of the entity climbing in the window and leaving the house through the front door. I don’t know if it was the Mothman, a Japanese eve demon – yokai – I just don’t have an explanation for the entity or memories, but I will say given the red eyes, tall stature, and innate dread, the Mothman scares me in a way that no other zoo-cryptid does because I associate it with this red man.

The rational person in me says this was just the product of an overactive imagination in childhood which is likely true, but all the same my family was very much grounded in logic and reason and even as a child I would not be inclined to tell my father or mother some made up stories about an imaginary demonically-inspired friend. This leads me to the conclusion that I in fact did experience the encounter with whatever the thing was. It’s never come back but again I have a generalized fear of open windows at night, open blinds, and even find second story windows with moonbeams in particular hard to bear during full moons. This was more so a reaction after the to the facts of the Point Pleasant events and the descriptions of the red-eyed Mothman. The mind…is powerful.

That’s not my only encounter with UFOs and entities.

I’ve always believed in aliens from the first time I saw an orange flying football whoosh above the swamp behind my parent’s house in the dead of winter. My mom and three siblings also witnessed it the moment we got out of the car on that cold New England November night. This fascinated my father who is by far the biggest reason I believed in all of it.

Several months later my dad and I were at a cub scout backyard camping event at the den leader’s house, which happens to be across said swamp land over which the football passed. He went back to the swamp area but never found any physical evidence despite checking. We never saw the football again, but that would not be my last sighting in the area nor was it my first brush with strangeness.

I had two further sightings as a high schooler. One was a classical orange orb-like vehicle. My mother and I were driving north on a backroad near a farm and the cows were out that night, which I’ll admit was strange. This was directly east by maybe a mile of where we saw the flying football. It’s also eight years onward just after Thanksgiving, on a Sunday night. Again, a November night. Because I was studying Islamic religious holidays in history class at the time I knew of Ramadan and this was near the end of that fasting period. Remember this because it’s actually more important than the sighting itself.

I was sitting in the passenger seat and saw out my mother’s window a hexagonal arrangement of bright orange lights/orbs rise up from behind the tree line. The orbs froze above the tree-line and then tightened up their formation and shot off to upwards and to the west rapidly until they were no longer visible. At the time, I pointed it out to my mom and she slowed the vehicle, looked at the orbs, and then sped up not wanting to stop.

The strangest part of this sighting though wasn’t the sighting itself; it was the dream I had that predated it by about a few months. Skeptics will ask how I can remember the episodic nature of all of these things, but it’s just the nature of my memory. I always assumed everyone had a memory like that not knowing it isn’t common, but anyway, the dream…

I was in my dad’s Ford Ranger and we were driving south back to my parent’s house. It was in November near Ramadan. It was most definitely a Friday as I would sometimes take the bus to my aunt’s house to use the computer due to her having internet and my dad would pick me up on his way home from work. That means he would have both his carry weapon and his uniform on as he was a security guard.

The truck suddenly was illuminated by a bright light and a bunch of orbs started chasing us. He sped up to escape but they killed the truck. The door opens and they pull me out using whatever beam they are using. I’m paralyzed. My father, not wanting them to take, pulls his pistol and begins shooting at them. It doesn’t matter; they take me.

That’s the dream. The reality was they didn’t try to take me and my mom and I saw the orbs three days later, so what does it mean? I don’t know. I could say it was just a coincidental dream. The paralysis was sleep paralysis and not abduction paralysis. The fact of this Muslim holiday was recent learning and thus memory reinforcement during sleep. It’s not the only dream where knowledge like physics or ballistics come into play in my dream. Sure, all of it is explainable, except the actual sighting.

This leaves the sighting…my mom had a purple Chevy Lumina. Perhaps I was seeing the classic sodium orange-lamped streetlights hitting the glass or a dash lamp reflecting? I would say that dash lamp reflection would not change shape but a streetlight would as we passed, but how would it be a starburst/hexagonal pattern? To this day I do not know if I saw something or not.

My final sighting occurred maybe in 2004-2005, it was not as dramatic or memorable. I was at a friend’s house across the street and it was around midnight in the summer and I was peering out the window and happened to look up. A black, triangle craft came down to about 3-400 feet and had the classic triangle craft features. A central vortex, sharp equal length sides. It hovered for less than a minute then shot off upwards again at what I can best describe is immense speed. I made a few drawings for my dad and that’s about it. I saw something…I dunno what it was but that’s the description of it.

Some readers may point out these are not exactly unique sightings and could be from the common UFO psyche and lore. Fair…but...oh no that big fat, pregnant BUT...

I didn’t know much about it at the time until I went off to college a few years later and really started researching it. I didn’t know the classical UFO narrative more than flying saucers were a thing. I had yet to see the full X-Files series and had maybe seen one or two monster-of-the week episodes. I grew up on Stephen King horror, cartoons, and the usual. We only had two channels, dial-up, and I tended more towards WWII history, making catapults and trebuchets, and otherwise playing sports. The most pseudo-scientific stuff I had been directly exposed to and consumed was the Nazi SS oculist beliefs, zero-point energy stuff, hypothetical/fringe physics, etc. So, you might conclude there would maybe be pop-culture UFO contamination, but all the same I didn’t know about the alleged TR vehicles. I knew of the alleged Aurora from Command and Conquer video games and that’s what I believed the triangle craft could be.

Then I went to college and started reading about Dulce base, Roswell, Mogul - the whole lore. This is where we arrive at the current state of my journey and the main factual point of me self-narrating my journey: The PURSUE releases stole my belief - in light of new data, ironically, I have become less certain. Not because it proves anything, but because of what it doesn’t prove, what is outright missing, and because I can no longer blindly believe in these things due to having hard copy files that reinforce the core UFO narrative.

**My experiences made me believe. The released information to date made me question those beliefs and re-frame them in response to new data.**

*Parts 3-4 will drop in a few days and cover the introduction to my framework for digesting the disclosed files and releases that I have used to date.*

Longtime lurker, first time poster. Typical story I suppose…everyone seems to be coming out of the woodwork these days, right?

I am ready to talk about my journey, why I believed, and how those beliefs changed with current events. I will start with a few strange experiences that shaped my thinking, before explaining how those beliefs evolved into something much more evidence-driven.

Be forewarned, I have never been particularly open about my UFO beliefs with strangers in that if I were to talk to another person about them and why I feel it’s plausible given my personal sightings, I feel embarrassed and somewhat ridiculous. I also feel like I am telling tall-tales and hokum. It’s because I’m very grounded in evidentiary analysis and reasoning. Lack of evidence and explanation should require discounting the experience, right? But - and that is the truth of it - the big, fat pregnant “BUT…”

BUT…I believed and grew up in a household that believed. Even my religious mom believed in it, ghosts, and all that “superstitious” stuff. Belief was not because it was fun or convenient but because we all, at one point or another, experienced something we just could not explain by any other means.

Much of my story in future installments will take you through my journey and partially my family’s and will also provide the “but” factor in terms of wanting to believe, while allowing for other explanations given a lack of evidence or alternative explanation. At the end of the day though, I believed what I saw, in spite of having no evidence to support a definitive conclusion like many of the recent document releases for UFOs/UAPs also being “unexplained.” I think it likely is not that it was necessarily NHI or aliens, but there is also just not enough data to support a conclusion. Therefore, this still leaves open the ability to believe I experienced something of high strangeness.

Hume’s fork leaves me with two possibilities: Either I saw something strange I couldn't explain or a combination of atmospheric, psychological, and/or physical phenomena that gave me the idea I was actually seeing something not of this world. I don't know which is correct. What I do know is I experienced things I've never been adequately able to explain.

If the readers of this post are questioning me, or my belief, by all means do so. I found myself doing the same in recent months. I think what I’ve seen in all of this “disclosure” scramble is that we have to hold one another accountable to the words we use, the evidence we collect, and the conclusions we draw. It’s the only way to cut through the noise of it all and find the truth, whatever it may be. It also protects those of us who have experienced from those who have never experienced anything unusual but nevertheless tell stories. Or worse yet, those who seek to mislead or otherwise misinform – the worst of all being those who seek to suppress or conceal. Human history in and of itself tells us strangeness is a normative thing…a human condition.

*Insert Giorgio T.’s “aliens” meme*

If people are interested, I will tell my personal experiences before I move on to a more concrete approach to how my belief evolved and why despite negativity and the "just show us the bodies" crowd, the government releases deserve more careful attention than some of the UFO community are giving.

Part 2 will cover my personal experience that made me believe for thirty years that UFOs and aliens were real. Part 3 explains my viewpoint that the recent release of information changed how I evaluate all of those experiences and why I believe we need a different way of thinking about UFO history in the context of disclosure.