Since then, congressional hearings, whistleblowers, and public discussions have fueled speculation about what the government truly knows. While some remain skeptical of extraterrestrial visitation, the era has unearthed questions about government knowledge, potential agendas, and the very nature of UAP experiences.
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Subscribe to the NewsletterReligious studies professor Diana Walsh Pasulka, who examines UAP experiences as a unique form of American religion, journey began during her research into Catholic history, specifically how belief in the afterlife and other worlds manifested in popular culture.
Pasulka’s archival work on the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory uncovered centuries-old documents detailing aerial phenomena witnessed by Europeans. These accounts, often interpreted through a religious lens, described “flying houses,” “little beings about three feet tall and shiny,” and even balls of light entering convents, believed to be souls from Purgatory.
These historical sightings struck Pasulka with their uncanny resemblance to modern UAP reports.
Her skepticism began to decrease after attending a MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) conference, where firsthand accounts of UAP encounters mirrored the historical narratives she had discovered.
“It sounded very similar to the log I had of reports of Catholics in Europe,” she said in “Interesting Times” podcast. This led to more intensive research and, surprisingly, communications from individuals within aerospace companies and the military.
Modern UAP encounters, Pasulka explains, often involve an individual witnessing an aerial phenomenon, sometimes leading to an intense “experiencer” event with perceived telepathic communication.
These experiences, which can be transformative, often involve individuals believing they’ve received special information, frequently concerning future cataclysms.
The common “alien abduction” trope, where individuals are taken aboard spaceships, also has historical parallels. Pasulka points out that paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries depict souls ascending into “aerial spaces,” mirroring the modern narrative of ascent into spacecraft.
“So in the classic image of the alien abduction, you see a farmer, generally, being abducted into a spaceship. That’s the meme that we see. We also see a cow — they’re ascending into a spaceship,” she said.
“If you were to see how souls in Purgatory are shown in paintings from the 1400s, the 1500s, you’ll also see them ascending into aerial spaces. So the ascent is there. Are people experiencing journeys into other spaces? Spacecraft? Are they seeing things that are not of our reality? Yes. They’re having those kinds of visions. Definitely.
Pasulka connects these phenomena to the work of Jacques Vallée, a prominent UAP researcher who linked modern sightings to historical folklore, particularly fairy abductions. Vallée argued that this “persistent phenomenon in human history” is simply reinterpreted with the advent of the space age.
Pasulka agrees, suggesting that the idea of the UFO “hijacks this perennial idea of angels and things like that” around 1947, when it became intertwined with concepts of space and alien life.
Pasulka posits that UAP belief constitutes a new, decentralized form of religion, unlike traditional organized faiths with a central authority. With the ability to record and share experiences online, individuals are less likely to seek a single prophet and more likely to engage in ongoing discussions about diverse interpretations.
While cults like Raëlism and the Nation of Islam (which incorporates an extraterrestrial narrative into an Islamic framework) represent more structured UAP religions, Pasulka believes the modern landscape is far more fragmented. The lack of a unified “pope” or singular narrative allows for a fluid, evolving “religiosity.”
Pasulka’s research led to surprising interactions with individuals from legitimate aerospace companies and those with security clearances, who would often refer to their UAP investigations as “hobby jobs.”
These individuals, who sometimes visited “crash retrieval” sites and sought scientists to analyze anomalous debris, provided Pasulka with insights into a covert world.
While she doesn’t explicitly state direct government payment for these “hobby jobs,” the implication is that these activities were off-the-books but conducted by people with official capacities.
These interactions, coupled with accounts from multiple individuals witnessing “aerial phenomena that are not ours, and they are not Russia’s or China’s,” convinced Pasulka of an objective reality to the UAP phenomenon.
“They have to do their own research. So I’m not advocating belief in U.F.O.s or U.A.P. But I became convinced that there was definitely something to this when I met so many people who interfaced with the phenomena through their jobs, which happened to take them high into the stratosphere, launching rockets into space so that they had a view of what was happening in space. They’ve witnessed aerial phenomena that are not ours, and they are not Russia’s or China’s”.
“And when you meet 10 of these people and they all have similar reports, it’s interesting. It changes one’s view. These people are not public — some of them are, but most of them are not. They don’t want to be associated with this work that they do. They don’t want people to know about it. And they’re everyday Americans.”
She also observed a “hitchhiker effect,” where individuals experiencing intense UAP encounters report persistent, often poltergeist-like activity that follows them. This phenomenon, strikingly similar to trickster figures in religious traditions, sometimes prompts individuals to seek resolution through their own religious practices.
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