Major UFO experiences are specific to the observer

[Edward Current]

After talking for a short while with someone who believes strongly in non-human intelligence on Earth, it often comes out that the person has had a life-changing experience witnessing something extraordinary. The object(s) described and the experience typically fits a pattern:
1. It often has a "TR-3B" description of a black triangle with lights, or some other triangular thing, occupying a significant portion of the sky, the experiencer getting a good look at it
2. It appears and leaves suddenly (rather than for example slowly advancing from the horizon)
3. The experience often happens at nighttime
4. The phenomenon is visual only — the "craft" and its flight are silent
5. The experiencer is too stunned and in awe to think of getting a picture or video, or it happened too fast, it was before cell phones, etc.
6. Sometimes the experiencer is in a small group (2 or 3 people) who share the experience and report seeing the same thing
7. Critically, no independent observers report seeing such an object
8. Critically, no land- or space-based device captures images or other evidence of such an object

In talking to these people, I am moved by their stories. The experience forever changes the way they see the world. However, except in rare cases, they are convinced that the thing they saw was real — it was a feature of objective reality, and would have been available to all observers at that time and place ("I know what I saw").

Additionally, there seems to be a strong distinction between this kind of up-close, astonishing experience and more generic sightings. The latter can happen at any time of day, and the object is always small or far away (SFA) and in the low-information zone (LIZ), and nothing prevents the witness from getting a picture. This tweet exemplifies the distinction:

Unfortunately these categories are often conflated, to where an "up close" experiencer is much more likely to believe that a SFA object in the LIZ is extraordinary, and they become intensely interested in the more mysterious cases like Gimbal.

These experiences affect people deeply, yet they are often brushed off by skeptics, including myself not long ago. I can empathize with experiencers' visceral reaction against the ECREE standard of skepticism: Experiencers have their own extraordinary evidence, and being disbelieved by others, having that personal evidence rejected, is not their problem.

To me it seems rather obvious what is going on. The least complication explanation, as well as the one with the greatest explanatory power, is that these experiences are unique to the experiencers. They are purely neuro-chemical in nature — they are not happening "out there," material or energetic objects perceived by the eyes and transmitted to the brain in the way that we see the Moon or lightning, but rather, they initiate in the brain. Perhaps there is a natural pharmacology involved, such as DMT or a related chemical (DMT occurs naturally in the body in small amounts). In the case of "my friend saw it, too," sociological factors such as peer pressure and the power of suggestion are at play — most dramatically, in the Ariel School sighting.

Now, you have to be careful approaching an experiencer with this hypothesis. In addition to "I know what I saw," the near-universal reaction is, "I'm not crazy" and "I wasn't hallucinating." A guy recently told me that he and his lady friend were on a rooftop in downtown Los Angeles and witnessed a giant UFO hovering over the city. He showed me a clip of his call in to Coast To Coast AM, imploring other people in L.A. at the time to come forward. And he got downright angry when I suggested it was anything other than an object in the sky at some altitude. It must be disturbing that such a life-changing experience cannot be corroborated by independent observers or devices.

I often bring up the Chelyabinsk meteor: Here was a once-in-a-century event, captured by enough dashcams from various angles, with enough clarity, to calculate the meteor's trajectory through the atmosphere to precision. But, how many giant-thing-in-the-sky experiences have individuals had over the years and decades? Not one of them has been corroborated by a single dashcam, cell phone, Ring camera, traffic camera, etc., etc.

You would think such questions would make an experiencer reconsider their conviction. Instead, it only cues heavily motivated reasoning.

We all want to believe that our perceptions and memories are an accurate reflection of objective reality. But the brain is a biological mess — extraordinarily complex, unpredictably unreliable and unreliably unpredictable, and subject to innumerable influences, both internal and external. It disturbs people that their perceptions and memories could be anything other than objective and accurate — something that can be seen in the popularity of social controversies such as the "Mandela effect" and "The Dress."

What's the best way to approach experiencers with this hypothesis? Are there illustrative examples that can help create a bridge to a common understanding? My go-to is usually an optical illusion, wherein I ask if they see yellow in this image:

...but it is a long way from a routine optical illusion to a giant life-changing triangle in the sky (they know what they saw).

This seems like a ripe topic for neuroscience research, and maybe it already is. But it's not like you can put someone having a UFO experience in an MRI.

 

[Mick West]

It often has a "TR-3B" description of a black triangle with lights, or some other triangular thing, occupying a significant portion of the sky, the experiencer getting a good look at it

I've been thinking something similar specifically regarding the black triangles for a while. People are convinced they saw them (they "know what they saw"), but it's never corroborated by photos or independent testimony.

I've been wondering if the triangle shape has a specific neurological cause, like suddenly being able to see your blind spot, or something like is theorised with DMT geometric visions reflecting the actual shape or physical connections in the brain.

Article:

Many observers see geometric visual hallucinations after taking hallucinogens such as LSD, cannabis, mescaline or psilocybin; on viewing bright flickering lights; on waking up or falling asleep; in "near-death" experiences; and in many other syndromes. Klüver organized the images into four groups called form constants: (I) tunnels and funnels, (II) spirals, (III) lattices, including honeycombs and triangles, and (IV) cobwebs. In most cases, the images are seen in both eyes and move with them. We interpret this to mean that they are generated in the brain. Here, we summarize a theory of their origin in visual cortex (area V1), based on the assumption that the form of the retino-cortical map and the architecture of V1 determine their geometry. (A much longer and more detailed mathematical version has been published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 356 [2001].) We model V1 as the continuum limit of a lattice of interconnected hypercolumns, each comprising a number of interconnected iso-orientation columns. Based on anatomical evidence, we assume that the lateral connectivity between hypercolumns exhibits symmetries, rendering it invariant under the action of the Euclidean group E(2), composed of reflections and translations in the plane, and a (novel) shift-twist action. Using this symmetry, we show that the various patterns of activity that spontaneously emerge when V1's spatially uniform resting state becomes unstable correspond to the form constants when transformed to the visual field using the retino-cortical map. The results are sensitive to the detailed specification of the lateral connectivity and suggest that the cortical mechanisms that generate geometric visual hallucinations are closely related to those used to process edges, contours, surfaces, and textures.

Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11860679/

(and several other similar articles listed there)

But, as you say, it's hard to research such a thing. Perhaps someone might like to take some DMT and stare at the night sky?

 

[Mick West]

My go-to is usually an optical illusion

One I commonly suggest is the "illusory contours"

Article:

Illusory contours or subjective contours are visual illusions that evoke the perception of an edge without a luminance or color change across that edge. Illusory brightness and depth ordering often accompany illusory contours. Friedrich Schumann is often credited with the discovery of illusory contours around the beginning of the 20th century,[1] but they are present in art dating to the Middle Ages. Gaetano Kanizsa's 1976 Scientific American paper marked the resurgence of interest in illusory contours for vision scientists.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_contours

Which is interesting in the context of:

Article:

The results are sensitive to the detailed specification of the lateral connectivity and suggest that the cortical mechanisms that generate geometric visual hallucinations are closely related to those used to process edges, contours, surfaces, and textures.

Source: https://direct.mit.edu/neco/article-abstract/14/3/473/6598/What-Geometric-Visual-Hallucinations-Tell-Us-about?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Could it be that there's a class of brain-chemistry related hallucinations that amplify the illusory contours effect?

 

[gabelewis]

I made a post along these lines in another thread that sparked on off topic discussion, so it got moved. I still think it's relevant to this part of the conversation: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/meditation-discussion.12738/

TLDR - there is overlap between meditative states, drug induced states, and "environment" induced states (such as certain sound impulses, binaural beats, a loud jet engine etc.)

The other trend implied by your common factors list is isolation. Often people are on a walk, staring into the stars, probably having the first quiet moment with their brain in a good long while.

 

[Ann K]

A couple of thoughts:

From @Mick West 's source, "In most cases, the images are seen in both eyes and move with them. We interpret this to mean that they are generated in the brain." My experience of a quickly-glimpsed object (not chemically induced) is that I genuinely cannot tell if I saw it with both eyes or just one, although the sight or motion registers on the brain.

And this is entirely apart from the optical illusion phenomenon; in speaking with my MUFON-obsessed friend, I gather that her belief in UFOs stems from her childhood experience (whether real or imagined or misinterpreted) of witnessing some other phenomenon entirely and believing it (in the mind of a young child) to be a "paranormal" event. Over time that belief in one unexplained thing morphed into beliefs in UFOs, which apparently had nothing to do with the first event. It's as if "something strange once happened" turned into "therefore we know that strange things happen". It's much like people who become deeply religious after witnessing a thing they can only describe as a miracle, or who feel that their prayer was answered. Very few of them are willing to entertain alternate explanations.

 

[NorCal Dave]

in speaking with my MUFON-obsessed friend, I gather that her belief in UFOs stems from her childhood experience (whether real or imagined or misinterpreted) of witnessing some other phenomenon entirely and believing it

This is something I think happens often. One of the factors in many cases is memory. Some cases are reported very quickly, but there are a lot that are told months, years or decades after the event. "I know what I saw back in '98".

There is simply too much research into memory showing that it does not work that way. Our memories are malleable and change over time. A strange light in the sky combined with a cultural zeitgeist and maybe an emotional response transforms into the memory of a black triangle over time. A sincerely held memory.

I have a vivid memory of first meeting a now good friend of mine. We were out in the desert 2012, and he was camping in a blue Toyota Tacoma truck. It had a matching blue camper shell on the bed. I know what I saw.

But I didn't. Years later when I told him about that memory, he explained he had never owned a truck like that and wasn't in one in 2012 when we met. It was actually a white RAM. I had confabulated the memory somewhere along the way. And this was for a mundane memory that wasn't all that important.

 

[Mick West]

In many cases there's likely a combination of initial misperception, the early formation of memories, and the mutation of those memories over time.

There's a new (free) book on eyewitnesses:
https://www.academia.edu/101922617/The_Reliability_of_UFO_Witness_Testimony

One of the interesting things in it is the variance between eyewitnesses of the same event, the section "Misinterpretations of Fireball Swarms from Satellite Reentries" by James Oberg has some examples:

And suggests an evolutionary reason:

As already stated: the witness's misperception is NOT a failure of eyesight or of brain or of rationality – it actually reflects a survival-positive adaptation to sudden surprising ambiguous visual perceptions in which an observer must amidst urgent uncertainty quickly pick out from existing memories what threat or opportunity the perceived object offers so that fast response can be useful, even life-critical. False-positives are usually low-cost, so they are a preferred when-in- doubt strategy. At least, the genetic predisposition to this trait seems to survive to reproduce more offspring much more often over generations.

 

[JMartJr]

My experience of a quickly-glimpsed object (not chemically induced) is that I genuinely cannot tell if I saw it with both eyes or just one, although the sight or motion registers on the brain.

FWIW, I'm dealing with a pretty irritating "floater" in my left eye. It is very noticeably in one eye and only visible in that eye. (And, come to think of it, when I try to look directly at it, it zooms off at incredible speed since it moves more or less when the eye moves... hmm...)

I guess everybody knows what I mean when I say a "floater," but just in case:

Eye floaters are spots in your vision. They may look to you like black or gray specks, strings, or cobwebs. They may drift about when you move your eyes. Floaters appear to dart away when you try to look at them directly.


Most eye floaters are caused by age-related changes that occur as the jelly-like substance (vitreous) inside your eyes liquifies and contracts. Scattered clumps of collagen fibers form within the vitreous and can cast tiny shadows on your retina. The shadows you see are called floaters.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/eye-floaters/symptoms-causes/syc-20372346

 

[Duke]

The difference between the triangular UFOs and other common, distinct shapes (disc, spheres, cigars, etc.) is that triangle/delta aircraft have been common the world round going back to the advent of the UFO phenomenon in the late 40s. Similarly, night lighting can make even conventionally shaped a/c appear triangular. And as is the premise of this thread, the experience (and description) of a sighted object is specific to the individual as a function of their knowledge/experience/background.

And yes I get it, F-102s, Mirages, Vulcans, F-117s, B-2s (and at least a few that have never been made public) etc., are not as big as football fields, nor can they fly away at speeds as some have reported. The point is a/c of this general shape/appearance exist, and have existed, going back since Ken Arnold's groundbreaking sighting. Conversely, with the odd exception of a/c like the unsuccessful Avro Aerocar and Vought "Flapjacks," there aren't many disc shaped aircraft I'm aware of.

**Caveat...I'm talking here about manned, heavier-than-air craft, I'm not that knowledgeable unmanned aircraft, lighter-than-air craft, or rockets.

 

[John J.]

One I commonly suggest is the "illusory contours"

Intermediate-level visual processing thus involves assembling local elements of an image into a unified percept of objects and background. Although determining which elements belong together in a single object is a highly complex problem with the potential for an astronomical number of solutions, the brain has built-in logic that allows it to make assumptions about the likely spatial relationships between elements. In certain cases these inherent rules can lead to the illusion of contours and surfaces that do not actually exist in the visual field

In this case, the perceived shapes (light blue, on the right) are not only structured, but appear to convey information that isn't there - it's difficult not to "read" letter B's.

-From "NeuPsy Key" website, "Intermediate-Level Visual Processing and Visual Primitives"
(Link here), also demonstrates the Kanizsa triangle as posted by Mike West.


At this intermediate level of visual processing, and at higher levels where the interpretation and salience of an ambiguous stimuli might be influenced by previous experience, expectations and belief, our subjective understanding of what we see is influenced by processes that give us "the best" or "most useful" theory of what is actually there.

For our ancestors, a poorly-defined shape largely hidden by tall grass which might be an animal was probably (as a kind of pre-conscious default setting) best interpreted as an animal- a predator to avoid in the first instance, or an opportunity for a meal if they reacted quickly. A hypothetical Ms. Savannah-Dweller might well slink away from what she saw, believing it was a big cat, and tell the rest of her group that there was a dangerous creature near the copse over there- and believing her might have some survival value.
Of course, there are costs as well as benefits to acting on such information- if the big cat was actually a wounded zebra, a meal is lost. Moving camp to avoid a non-existent predator uses precious energy, and might mean abandoning a good location.
To this day we differentiate between reliable and unreliable witnesses- and there's the tale of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf".

The experience often happens at nighttime

Perhaps the majority (not all) of UFO sightings, and other reports of paranormal phenomenon, happen at night.
We are perceptually disadvantaged at night- we don't see as well; the cone cells responsible for our central field of vision, our area of greatest visual acuity, are much less effective in low light (which is why colour perception is so poor at night).
This means that we are more reliant (at the pre-conscious processing levels) on the brain "filling in" to make sense of what we see, and we are more likely to misinterpret what is actually there.
(This might have a knock-on effect on hearing; we are less likely to misinterpret a sound if, orienting towards it, we can clearly see the source).

And humans have a natural diurnal cycle. Major manufacturers operating 24-hour factories etc. are aware that productivity is lower at night, through no fault of the workers (and regardless of incentives). We are more prone to sleep at night- even if we wish to stay awake.

Edited to include pictorial example, removed somewhat pointless observation.

 

[JMartJr]

There's a new (free) book on eyewitnesses:
https://www.academia.edu/101922617/The_Reliability_of_UFO_Witness_Testimony

Thanks for sharing that, am reading it now. I have to confess to being very disappointed in case study on the Phoenix Lights, which makes the common error of conflating the early and later events into one event that would presumably require a single explanation. Bit I'm not letting that spoil my day!

 

[Ann K]

FWIW, I'm dealing with a pretty irritating "floater" in my left eye. It is very noticeably in one eye and only visible in that eye. (And, come to think of it, when I try to look directly at it, it zooms off at incredible speed since it moves more or less when the eye moves... hmm...)

When you try to look at something that is off at one side of the retina, it moves so you can never catch up to it. That's true of afterimages on the retina as well as floaters. I'm convinced that afterimages are the cause of most "ghost" sightings, and the ghost glides away, always ahead of one's focal point. If the afterimage is caused by an unremarkable but high-contrast object at a particular location, that allows different people at different times to see the same ghost traveling in the same direction ...aided and abetted by folklore, of course!

Another perfectly normal sight which gives an illusion occurs when two electric or phone lines are adjacent. If I drive underneath them, the apparent crossing point rapidly changes position, giving the impression of some object rapidly zipping across the road above me.

 

[Edward Current]

These visual examples are fascinating and informative. Obviously the "filling in of shapes" is at play in cases like the Twentynine Palms flares, which caused people to imagine a triangular craft behind them, or the recent convergence of Venus and Jupiter, which caused people to "see" a craft with headlights (primarily, though, at latitudes where the planets were aligned horizontally). But I suspect most of these sightings happen spontaneously, without associated visual cues.

Returning to my example of the experiencer in downtown L.A.: Immediately before the sighting, he said to his friend something like, "Wouldn't it be wild if we saw a UFO right now?" And, it happened. (This did nothing to weaken his conviction that a giant object objectively appeared over Los Angeles, just apparently on command!) So in that case either we have some kind of self-suggestion occurring, or the experiencer subconsciously felt a vision coming on, rather like a pre-epileptic aura, which put "UFO" in his mind.

Also in that case, the experiencer described the object not as opaque or with lights but:

The craft "looked" as if it were trying to manifest itself in this dimension. It was a full craft, some parts were solid, other parents transparent, the closest thing I've read about is what happened with Phoenix lights '97, people could see "through" the craft at the same time it appeared as a black mass.

So this can be about seeing more than simple shapes. In this case there seemed to be semi-transparency involved, and I've also heard experiencers describe distortion of the sky background (like a lensing effect), etc. The phenomenon is complex.

 

[DaveG]

You would think such questions would make an experiencer reconsider their conviction. Instead, it only cues heavily motivated reasoning.

So when a research team studies animals in the wild, they take care not to disturb the group by being too noticeable. This might involve placing trail cameras, using night vision or thermal scopes, observing from a distance, or using tracking collars. Why wouldn't the same apply if a more advanced civilization was observing us? This advanced civilization would surely be using artificial intelligence, not to mention optical camouflage. So we're now dealing with vehicles that are able to scan their environment for any potential equipment these humans may have that may detect their presence and operate unseen.

The skeptical person tends to think that they would just be flying around willy-nilly, no different from an ordinary plane, not taking into consideration any form of advanced technology, and we humans have got all our bases covered; it's just a matter of time until we snap a picture of one. But this just isn't so; the question of the ubiquity of cameras doesn't address or put an end to the legitimacy of these reports. It certainly raises interesting questions, as in, what systems would be capable of detecting these vehicles if they possessed such technology? I would add that this community here has also demonstrated that the majority of video evidence turns out to be prosaic in nature, which supports the hypothesis that whatever they are is capable of avoiding our devices, which is why such evidence is scarce.


This argument is continually brought up by skeptics, but it simply doesn't hold water, and I hope you can see where it fails.

 

[John J.]

This seems like a ripe topic for neuroscience research

Could it be that there's a class of brain-chemistry related hallucinations that amplify the illusory contours effect?

There's been a lot of work on visual perception and hallucinations in general, of course, but as Edward Current points out, it's hard to put someone in an MRI scanner while they're having a UFO "experience".
But we can compare people who believe in such phenomena with people who don't:

Riekki recently asked sceptics and believers to view simple animations of moving shapes, while lying in a brain scanner. He found paranormal believers were more likely to see some kind of intention behind the movements – as if the shapes were playing a game of "tag", say – and this was reflected in greater brain activity in the regions normally associated with "theory of mind" and understanding others' motives. Riekki has also found that people who believe in the supernatural are more likely to see hidden faces in everyday photos – a finding confirmed by another team at the University of Amsterdam, who showed that paranormal believers are more likely to imagine that they had seen a walking figure in random light displays.

Added to this, Riekki has found that believers may have weaker cognitive "inhibition", compared to sceptics. That's the skill that allows you to quash unwanted thoughts, so perhaps we are all spooked by strange coincidences and patterns from time to time, but sceptics are better at pushing them aside. Riekki gives the example of someone who is thinking about their mother, only for her to call two minutes later. "Is it just that sceptics can laugh and say it is just coincidence, and then think of something else?" he wonders. Significantly, another paper reported that paranormal believers also tend to have greater confidence in their decisions, even when they are based on ambiguous information.

BBC Future, "Psychology: The truth about the paranormal", David Robson, 31/10/2014
here https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20141030-the-truth-about-the-paranormal
It's quite a light but interesting read IMHO.

The abstract and introduction of the University of Amsterdam study- seeing if there was a difference between believers and sceptics in the perception of a walking human figure in a pattern of moving dots- can be seen here, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810013000974
"Paranormal believers are more prone to illusory agency detection than skeptics", Michiel van Elk,
Consciousness and Cognition Vol. 22, 3, September 2013.

...paranormal beliefs (i.e. Psi, spiritualism, precognition, superstition) were strongly related to illusory agency detection.

van Elk writes,

From an evolutionary point of view, incorrectly assuming the presence of another agent while there is none (i.e. a false positive) is associated with only little costs, whereas the false belief that no other agent is present while in fact there is one (i.e. a false negative) can cost one's life. Accordingly, it has been suggested that evolution has favored the selection of a hyper-active agency detection device (HADD) and that our perceptual systems are biased towards detecting the presence of patterns and other agents, such as animals or humans in the environment (Barrett, 2000).

[For "...other agents such as animals or humans..." we might include UFOs or aliens, or poltergeists, whatever, as other agents.]

The quote above parallels the quote in Mike West's post,

an observer must amidst urgent uncertainty quickly pick out from existing memories what threat or opportunity the perceived object offers so that fast response can be useful, even life-critical. False-positives are usually low-cost, so they are a preferred when-in- doubt strategy. At least, the genetic predisposition to this trait seems to survive to reproduce more offspring much more often over generations.

(although I feel both quotes perhaps underplay the costs of false positives, e.g. fleeing a non-existent predator expends energy and could incur injury, or might draw the attention of a real predator you haven't seen).

Again, van Elk:

It was found that paranormal believers had a lower perceptual sensitivity than skeptics, which was due to a response bias to 'yes' for stimuli in which no agent was present.

Significantly, another paper reported that paranormal believers also tend to have greater confidence in their decisions

(BBC Future, link as above).
This is the paper referred to, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810014000907,
"Exploring the perceptual biases associated with believing and disbelieving in paranormal phenomena",
Christine Simmonds-Moore, Consciousness and Cognition vol. 28 August 2014 (not all the paper is accessible for free).

Although believers and disbelievers did not differ in the number of guesses that they made (we all see things that are not there) believers display a greater tendency to exhibit other Type I behaviors, having more confidence in their guesses across study conditions and making more misidentifications

I think this is interesting- Type 1 errors are errors in experimental science that result, or might result, in the experimental hypothesis being accepted when it should be rejected.
(The experimental hypothesis is the relationship that the researcher is testing, e.g. "there is a positive correlation between wearing Lynx bodyspray and a successful first date").
The attribution of "Type 1 behaviors" to believers implies that they are more likely to see a relationship between one thing and another, even if that relationship doesn't in fact exist, and/or (as stated in the text) believers are more likely to have confidence in their conclusion about what they've seen, even if mistaken.
I think the latter might be a frequent (but not universal) trait in UFO witnesses.

In "Is it just a brick wall or a sign from the universe? An fMRI study of supernatural believers and skeptics", full paper here
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3831561/, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 8, 8, December 2013,
Marjaana Lindeman et al. say

...we hypothesize that when asked to imagine that they are about to experience critical life situations and then shown pictures of lifeless objects and scenery, supernatural believers will report seeing signs in the pictures more frequently than will skeptics.

-and their investigation, conducted while the subjects were in an fMRI scanner (one at a time, not all at once!) found this to be so. It also allowed the researchers to identify the brain regions involved, and enabled comparison between believers and sceptics:

Viewing the pictures activated the same brain regions among all participants (e.g. the left inferior frontal gyrus, IFG). However, the right IFG, previously associated with cognitive inhibition, was activated more strongly in skeptics than in supernatural believers, and its activation was negatively correlated to sign seeing in both participant groups.

Remember the study by Riekki, described in the BBC Future article?

...Riekki has found that believers may have weaker cognitive "inhibition", compared to sceptics.

(Link above).
Maybe Lindeman et al. have identified the neuroanatomical structures responsible for Riekki's finding.
(A bit off-topic, but I have some scepticism about claims made for some fMRI neurocognitive studies, nothing regarding any of the above, but there have been mutterings about poor replicability of some research using fMRI. Whatever the truth of this is,
fMRI is obviously a vastly powerful diagnostic and investigative tool in the clinical setting).

It should be noted that this study (and others above, IIRC) recruited people who believe in psychic phenomena, ghosts, astrology etc. etc. as the "believer" cohort.
For scientific rigor, we should replicate these studies with, specifically, UFO believers and sceptics.
IIRC there is a positive relationship between belief in UFOs and belief in other paranormal phenomenon- if I wasn't getting tired I'd look for supporting evidence, maybe tomorrow. However, there might be significant differences between UFO believers, as a group, and believers in other paranormal phenomena, as a group, even if there's a large overlap.

I think we should all remember that, despite our relative genetic homogeneity, there is tremendous human variation.
There won't be a clear-cut, dependable physiological predictor of belief, scepticism or credulousness at the individual level.
Do enough trials and we will find some sceptics who are prone to seeing connections where none exists, and some believers who don't. There will be believers whose right inferior frontal gyri activate as strongly as that of any sceptic, and sceptics whose right IFG appears to be taking a siesta. All will be equally likely to be healthy, decent human beings.

As a bit of a postscript, Metabunker Edward Current rightly says it's difficult to get a UFO believer into an MRI while they're seeing a UFO, but there have been instances of people being observed while apparently seeing a UFO, and even undergoing an "abduction".
If I remember correctly, Jim Schnabel's "Dark White: Aliens, Abductions and the UFO Obsession" (Hamish Hamilton, 1994) includes a brief account of a woman (in Australia?) undergoing an alien abduction experience- while her startled friends watched on, seeing nothing out of the ordinary except her strange behaviour.
-Can't remember if there was an explanation, someone borrowed my copy years ago. Probably a bit dated now, but a good read.
Book review from The Independent (UK newspaper), John Torode 15 March 1994,
"Little grey persons from fruitcakeland: 'Dark White: Aliens, abductions, and the UFO obsession" link here.

 

[Ann K]

The skeptical person tends to think that they would just be flying around willy-nilly, no different from an ordinary plane, not taking into consideration any form of advanced technology, and we humans have got all our bases covered; it's just a matter of time until we snap a picture of one. But this just isn't so; the question of the ubiquity of cameras doesn't address or put an end to the legitimacy of these reports. It certainly raises interesting questions, as in, what systems would be capable of detecting these vehicles if they possessed such technology? I would add that this community here has also demonstrated that the majority of video evidence turns out to be prosaic in nature, which supports the hypothesis that whatever they are is capable of avoiding our devices, which is why such evidence is scarce.

You've set up an untenable argument, sort of an all-purpose excuse: "The fact we can't get a good image means they're too advanced for us to see, so the lack of evidence is itself evidence for their existence". Nope, I'm not buying that. To believe that requires that you first believe aliens are here, then you propose characteristics for them, but those are the things we are trying to establish. We DON'T know they're here, and therefore we CANNOT know the capabilities of any such aliens. You've got a scenario in your head, but that's not evidence, and that's not sufficient.

 

[John J.]

Very much off-topic, DaveG,
but I think you're right. If a sufficiently advanced ETI were observing us (and a star-faring ETI would be sufficiently advanced),
and didn't want to make their presence known, I think it's unlikely we would detect them.

The skeptical person tends to think that they would just be flying around willy-nilly, no different from an ordinary plane, not taking into consideration any form of advanced technology

But I think you're wrong on this.

Frankly, it 's the "believer" community who think crewed alien craft keep crashing. Maybe the aliens shouldn't have copied their spacecraft designs from the covers of "Golden Era" SF pulp magazines, which existed before contemporary flying saucer sightings.

And it's the believers who claim there are hundreds (if not thousands) of reliable sightings each year despite the total lack of reliable photographic evidence.
The ETI of the believers have yet to invent TERPROM (or ejector seats). Considering their losses, you'd think they'd use UAVs.
And they're unaware that flashing coloured lights might draw attention.

 

[John J.]

"The fact we can't get a good image means they're too advanced for us to see, so the lack of evidence is itself evidence for their existence".

Precisely.
1. "If we have good photographic evidence, it's evidence".
2. "If we don't have good photographic evidence, it's evidence of how advanced they are. So it's evidence".

This is an unfalsifiable argument. Unfalsifiable arguments aren't amenable to hypothesis testing. So they're unscientific.

 

[DaveG]

You've set up an untenable argument, sort of an all-purpose excuse: "The fact we can't get a good image means they're too advanced for us to see, so the lack of evidence is itself evidence for their existence". Nope, I'm not buying that. To believe that requires that you first believe aliens are here, then you propose characteristics for them, but those are the things we are trying to establish. We DON'T know they're here, and therefore we CANNOT know the capabilities of any such aliens. You've got a scenario in your head, but that's not evidence, and that's not sufficient.

But it's an argument skeptics themselves use and, as John J. commented, agrees with. It explains the observations and the lack of evidence. You may not like it, but it may not be as untenable or unfalsifiable as you're imagining. That's why I was careful to say the "majority of video evidence turns out to be prosaic in nature." We saw how NASA was able to demonstrate in the Go Fast video that it was only moving relatively slowly, the same as wind speed. But in the Gimbal video, we have pilots describing a "fleet" of objects on their radar, going against the wind. What I'm saying is that perhaps with sufficiently capable instruments, as the military routinely uses, we may actually detect these things. With a concerted effort by observatories using specialized equipment, we may start to detect them in the public sphere too.

 

[DaveG]

Very much off-topic, DaveG,
but I think you're right. If a sufficiently advanced ETI were observing us (and a star-faring ETI would be sufficiently advanced),
and didn't want to make their presence known, I think it's unlikely we would detect them.


But I think you're wrong on this.

Frankly, it 's the "believer" community who think crewed alien craft keep crashing. Maybe the aliens shouldn't have copied their spacecraft designs from the covers of "Golden Era" SF pulp magazines, which existed before contemporary flying saucer sightings.

And it's the believers who claim there are hundreds (if not thousands) of reliable sightings each year despite the total lack of reliable photographic evidence.
The ETI of the believers have yet to invent TERPROM (or ejector seats). Considering their losses, you'd think they'd use UAVs.
And they're unaware that flashing coloured lights might draw attention.

So, I didn't mention crashing UFOs. And you're right, the "believer" community does think they crash often. I don't, and I've read enough to have serious doubts about any such crashes. I just hope you can listen to those of us in the UFO community who are a little more critically minded and skeptical of all the claims that get pushed to the front. The idiots and the grifters have the loudest microphones, unfortunately, and those of us with firsthand experience with an actual UFO sighting get drowned out and associated with all the fringe beliefs.

By the way, how is this off topic? Is this thread only trying to establish how UFO sightings are "specific to the observer," meaning all in their heads, with no counterarguments?

 

[Mendel]

So when a research team studies animals in the wild, they take care not to disturb the group by being too noticeable. This might involve placing trail cameras, using night vision or thermal scopes, observing from a distance, or using tracking collars. Why wouldn't the same apply if a more advanced civilization was observing us? This advanced civilization would surely be using artificial intelligence, not to mention optical camouflage.

If they use optical camouflage, why the sightings?
Or, if there are no sightings, you are proposing unknown unseeable visitors, but this thread is about the sightings.

So we're now dealing with vehicles that are able to scan their environment for any potential equipment these humans may have that may detect their presence and operate unseen.

That's a far-reaching claim straight out of Star Trek, where they can immediately scan a planet for life forms. It is actually impossible to scan for passive sensors (such as cameras or telescopes). Every insect has eyes.

The skeptical person tends to think that they would just be flying around willy-nilly,

No, "the skeptical person" doesn't think that. I think they'd approach from outer space and enter Earth orbit, where we would detect them, at the latest. 'Omuamua has, unfortunately, not exhibited that capability, but if that ever happens, it will be a "major UFO experience" for every observer with a telescope.

no different from an ordinary plane,

If it moves in air, and displaces air, it has to follow the laws of aerodynamics, whether it moves like an ordinary plane, a rotorcraft, a balloon, or a bird.

not taking into consideration any form of advanced technology,

Typically, those who consider "advanced technology" fail to consider the laws of physics, which is precisely why these "advanced technology" sightings are posited to contain a psychological element.

and we humans have got all our bases covered; it's just a matter of time until we snap a picture of one.

So we haven't snapped a picture of one?

But this just isn't so; the question of the ubiquity of cameras doesn't address or put an end to the legitimacy of these reports. It certainly raises interesting questions, as in, what systems would be capable of detecting these vehicles if they possessed such technology?

What systems wouldn't, and why not? You are positing a craft and cargo that is transparent to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, does propel itself without displacing air, but is still able to interact with us. Is this line of thought heading towards "beings of pure energy"?

I would add that this community here has also demonstrated that the majority of video evidence turns out to be prosaic in nature,

No. The majority of our results are that the video evidence is possibly (or even likely) of prosaic nature. You may still believe that the fuzzy blob flitting across the screen was an alien mini-drone disguised as a fly; since nobody caught the fly to examine it, we can't actually identify it. All we can say is that it's explainable, so it's not evidence for the supernatural.

which supports the hypothesis that whatever they are is capable of avoiding our devices, which is why such evidence is scarce.

That's a tautology, not a reasoned statement. "We can't see something that can't be seen" is not evidence that that "something" exists, otherwise every conspiracy theory would be true.
However, this thread is about "major UFO experiences", i.e. about things that were seen, whether they exist separate from the observer or not.

This argument is continually brought up by skeptics, but it simply doesn't hold water, and I hope you can see where it fails.

Your argument is continually brought up by believers and conspiracy theorists, but it simply doesn't hold water, and I hope you can see where it fails.

 

[DaveG]

If they use optical camouflage, why the sightings?

You could also ask why the lights. I would say "specific to the observer" can also mean some instances of explicitly being overt too.

It is actually impossible to scan for passive sensors (such as cameras or telescopes). Every insect has eyes.

You can quite easily see camera lens if you shine a light on them.

No, "the skeptical person" doesn't think that. I think they'd approach from outer space and enter Earth orbit, where we would detect them, at the latest.

I have to disagree here. An advanced civilization would be undetectable if it chose to be as undisruptive as possible.

If it moves in air, and displaces air, it has to follow the laws of aerodynamics, whether it moves like an ordinary plane, a rotorcraft, a balloon, or a bird.

No disagreement here.

What systems wouldn't, and why not? You are positing a craft and cargo that is transparent to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, does propel itself without displacing air, but is still able to interact with us. Is this line of thought heading towards "beings of pure energy"?

That's not what I'm positing. I'm saying that with highly advanced camera systems utilising infrared, thermal, radar, and other frequencies, we may have better success in capturing something.

You may still believe that the fuzzy blob flitting across the screen was an alien mini-drone disguised as a fly; since nobody caught the fly to examine it, we can't actually identify it.

I'm often the first to call out a bug when I see it on UFO forums. You're mischaracterizing my position and associating me with the fringe and idiots in ufology.

 

[Mendel]

You can quite easily see camera lens if you shine a light on them.

My point was that you can't easily tell a camera from a piece of glass. It is possible to scan for active sensors such as a typical radar, but passive sensors are hard to find and identify.
There is no way to reliably find and avoid observers if you're out in the open.

I have to disagree here.

That's disrespectful; I know what I think.
You made a claim about what "the skeptical person" (i.e. all skeptical persons) thinks; I disproved the claim by counterexample, citing what I think.
You can't support your claim by simply stating what you think?

That's not what I'm positing. I'm saying that with highly advanced camera systems utilising infrared, thermal, radar, and other frequencies, we may have better success in capturing something.

Why, though?

You're mischaracterizing my position and associating me with the fringe and idiots in ufology.

I wrote "you may" in the sense of "it is possible for you to do that". I didn't mean to imply that you do.

An advanced civilization would be undetectable if it chose to be as undisruptive as possible.

Definitely. But then they wouldn't be here and causing "major UFO experiences", so that's a straw man.

 

[DaveG]

There is no way to reliably find and avoid observers if you're out in the open.

My initial argument was to look at this from the perspective of humans studying a species in the wild. We take precautions to be as undisruptive as possible. The issue I had was with your assertion that it was impossible to scan for passive sensors. I can foresee that with a sufficiently advanced civilization, utilizing AI and other technologies designed to be as undetectable as possible, despite the ubiquitousness of our cameras, they would be more than capable of avoiding detection. But with certain resources, such as those that the military has with radar and fighter jets sent to intercept targets, we may have some capacity to capture them.

That's disrespectful; I know what I think.
You made a claim about what "the skeptical person" (i.e. all skeptical persons) thinks; I disproved the claim by counterexample, citing what I think.

I wasn't purposefully being disrespectful; in fact, I shouldn't have said "skeptical person" at all, but "people in general," myself included, before I had my observation. The fact is, the majority of people think of capturing a UFO as simply pointing a camera at the sky and expecting to film one as they would a plane passing by. This is too simplistic.

Definitely. But then they wouldn't be here and causing "major UFO experiences", so that's a straw man.

I don't see the connection to a straw man here. It may seem like I'm saying two contradictory things: being undistruptive and causing sightings. But perhaps if it turns out we're being visited, what better way would there be to acclimatize a species?

 

[Mendel]

I can foresee that with a sufficiently advanced civilization, utilizing AI and other technologies designed to be as undetectable as possible, despite the ubiquitousness of our cameras, they would be more than capable of avoiding detection.

Yes. I got that. But I don't see how you imagine that would work.
Your argument seems to be that we're no better at managing our environment than animals who operate on instinct, and it's not convincing me.
(How is AI associated with undetectability? Are you using "AI" to mean "magic"?)

The fact is, the majority of people think of capturing a UFO as simply pointing a camera at the sky and expecting to film one as they would a plane passing by. This is too simplistic.

I agree there. If you want to capture an actual spacecraft, such as the ISS, some forethought is required, and bringing specialised equipment helps.

However, there's no solid object in the lower atmosphere that can't be captured by a camera pointing at it if it's big enough, transparent balloons and kites excepted. The "major UFOs" people said to have experienced certainly qualify here.

It may seem like I'm saying two contradictory things: being undisruptive and causing sightings.

Indeed.

But perhaps if it turns out we're being visited, what better way would there be to acclimatize a species?

Obviously, by opening a line of communication first. SETI is predicated on that assumption.
If we had radio contact with Alpha Centauri, I'd think that'd be fairly undisruptive.

Or they could put a probe in orbit.

"Major UFO experiences" are not the way.

 

[LilWabbit]

Thanks @Edward Current for an excellent OP and introduction.

Based on the preceding discussion and other evidence especially from the field of human psychology, the varying combination of these following four psychological factors, imo, scientifically accounts for all claimed extraordinary UFO sightings far better than aliens:

(1) The power of human imagination together with the brain's visual perception functions, fuelled by cultural fiction and myth, in filling information gaps
(2) Strong personal motivation (one or a combination of a-c):
(a) Supernatural motive: Strongly wanting to believe in something extraordinary;
(b) Narcissistic motive: Wanting to feel like having privileged access to special knowledge that sets one apart from others;
(c) Social neediness and neediness for an identity whereby to feel good about oneself: Wanting to belong to a group of people that accept each other without judgment and who value one's unique experiences, thoughts and interests;
(3) Gullibility or superstition stemming from ignorance and/or a lack of critical/scientific thought
(4) Ego: Unwillingness to consider one might have been mistaken, forgotten or even undergone a short-lived psychosis of some type and degree (suggestive, hallucinatory or otherwise)

I would say ufologists and skeptics variously share 1, 2a-c and 4. Some skeptics may even have 2a, whilst acknowledging having found no evidence for satisfying 2a.

But the main difference is usually with factor no. 3 -- at least with respect to UFOs.

 

[Eburacum]

This is all highly speculative, A sufficiently advanced civilisation could be invisible if it wanted to be, but that doesn't explain the apparent fact that sometimes they fly around with bright, blinding lights or in vast triangular craft at slow speed.

One explanation for this bizarre behaviour is that they are inexplicably alien in psychology. Another explanation favoured by Jacques Vallee and other members of the invisible college is that these are manifestations of an extradimensional phenomenon - in other words, they come from a dimension where our limited logic doesn't apply. This is an explanation that has no real explanatory power.

 

[flarkey]

My initial argument was to look at this from the perspective of humans studying a species in the wild. We take precautions to be as undisruptive as possible. The issue I had was with your assertion that it was impossible to scan for passive sensors. I can foresee that with a sufficiently advanced civilization, utilizing AI and other technologies designed to be as undetectable as possible, despite the ubiquitousness of our cameras, they would be more than capable of avoiding detection. But with certain resources, such as those that the military has with radar and fighter jets sent to intercept targets, we may have some capacity to capture them.

These two positions are very close to being contradictory. You suggest that craft are undetectable by some surveillance systems, but may be detectable by others, whist at the same time being visually detectable by the human eye of the random witnesses? This very mysterious - almost inexplicable. But I suspect that a slight modification of the phrase 'God moves in mysterious ways'* might be used to explain this contradiction away.


*Delete God, add Aliens.

 

[flarkey]

After talking for a short while with someone who believes strongly in non-human intelligence on Earth, it often comes out that the person has had a life-changing experience witnessing something extraordinary. The object(s) described and the experience typically fits a pattern:
1. It often has a "TR-3B" description of a black triangle with lights, or some other triangular thing, occupying a significant portion of the sky, the experiencer getting a good look at it
2. It appears and leaves suddenly (rather than for example slowly advancing from the horizon)
3. The experience often happens at nighttime
4. The phenomenon is visual only — the "craft" and its flight are silent

I find @Edward Current 's observation of the pattern interesting, and I have wondered for a while why the popularity of 'black triangles' in UFO sightings. Is it because one or two lights in the sky are perceived a separate points of lights (ie orbs?), but the the observation of 3 points of light, when perceived by the human eye and mind, is the optimal number of vertices to create the illusion of a 3 dimensional object - ie a flat triangle - in any orientation?

And is this why, when a fourth vertices or light is observed, it is considered as a vertex in another dimension, and then we get sightings of pyramids - like in the Pentyrch Incident? (see video below - it should open at the 5min point).


Source: https://youtu.be/VJTGpxOqzjA?t=300

Edit - here's another one...

https://youtube.com/shorts/jHzQ5Y1D2h8

 

[DaveG]

(How is AI associated with undetectability? Are you using "AI" to mean "magic"?)

No, I'm using AI as a mode of tracking our behavior. This is the ARGUS-IS array from 10 years ago:

can be mounted on unmanned drones to capture an area of 15 sq/miles in an incredible 1,800MP - that's 225 times more sensitive than an iPhone camera. From 17,500ft.

ARGUS-IS array

 

[deirdre]

By the way, how is this off topic? Is this thread only trying to establish how UFO sightings are "specific to the observer," meaning all in their heads, with no counterarguments?

your counter argument should be on topic, not a gish gallop.

If you dont agree with observations/alleged evidence presented in this thread hit the disagree button, if you have evidence that contradicts evidence presented in this thread then present it..don't bring up other off topic arguments.


add note: you dont have to be insulted by this thread. observations would need to be analyzed on an individual basis. just because some sightings might be caused by optical illusions, a few more my vitamin deficiency, and a few more by floaters, and a few more by undiagnosed schizophrenia etc, doesnt mean ALL sightings would fall under any of the theories in this thread.

 

[Mendel]

ALERT: Human 910-25J-1Q38 has created a Youtube channel. Increase erratic jerkiness of flying by 30% until safely out of range.

Source: https://xkcd.com/2572/

 

[JMartJr]

there's no solid object in the lower atmosphere that can't be captured by a camera pointing at it if it's big enough, transparent balloons and kites excepted.

Transparent is not invisible. Heres a transparent sled kite... point a camera at it and you can capture it!

I can confidently say that I have never seen an invisible kite.

 

[Edward Current]

I shouldn't have said "skeptical person" at all, but "people in general," myself included, before I had my observation.

Let's hear about your observation, and what you agree with and disagree with in the premise of this thread. I'm glad you're here to provide a first-hand perspective on the matter.

 

[flarkey]

Let's hear about your observation, and what you agree with and disagree with in the premise of this thread. I'm glad you're here to provide a first-hand perspective on the matter.

I've asked @DaveG to recall his sighting before, but he seems reluctant.

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/davegs-uap-sighting.12906/post-288748

 

[tinkertailor]

I've mentioned before on here that I have had a UFO experience. So have my parents. It's surprising to me how similar these sightings are to what was described in the original post.

Mine was when I was small, and it was a classic black triangle: big, low, slow, silent, red lights shining from its belly. I remember being in the hot tub at my childhood home, looking up at the sky, and seeing this huge silent THING hover over the pine trees. I remember the awe I felt. It was phenomenal. My dad was with me, and I remember him casually mentioning that it was an experimental aircraft, as we lived near-ish an Air Force base in NorCal.

My mom and dad had one when they were dating, too: they were at a friend's house in a nearby-ish town stargazing and a far-up light slowly floated over them, stopped, and seemed to observe them. They both saw it. Fascinated, I once found my dad's daily journals for that year and found the date their sighting occurred, then looked up whether there were more sightings in that area in that time. Sure enough, there were reports of sightings in the days surrounding my folks' sighting in that exact location!

Having experienced this, it makes sense to me why people become believers after seeing something seemingly nonhuman. I remember the feelings of the moment more clearly than I do the actual moment. So do my parents. We see these as positive memories. I'm fascinated by them, but I don't consider them evidence of anything. In reading this thread, I wonder if I was maybe experiencing some kind of induced high from a super-hot hot tub, the vibrations of the jets, and the resulting endorphins. Or it was a weird plane out on a joyride late at night. For all I know, there's a 50-page top secret file out there about some kid pilot who got drunk and decided to buzz the local yokels.

I'm positive that my memory of my sighting is, at least partially, false. My dad doesn't mention it, for example. If it was the way I recall it, he would have mentioned it to me at some point in the last 20 years. I think that's the power of individuality in these kinds of sightings: everyone's emotions affect the memory they have. My child's mind saw it differently than my father's, thus my memory is different. I wonder if the "I know what I saw" crowd sees their sightings ths way, or are they completely convinced it happened as their memory tells them it did?

 

[Duke]

I'm positive that my memory of my sighting is, at least partially, false. My dad doesn't mention it, for example. If it was the way I recall it, he would have mentioned it to me at some point in the last 20 years. I think that's the power of individuality in these kinds of sightings: everyone's emotions affect the memory they have. My child's mind saw it differently than my father's, thus my memory is different. I wonder if the "I know what I saw" crowd sees their sightings ths way, or are they completely convinced it happened as their memory tells them it did?

I've mentioned this before as well, but as investigators we were trained that most witnesses are honest, but not necessarily accurate. They believe what they think they saw and report what they believe.

 

[Edward Current]

In the last 6 weeks or so of my mother's life, she started seeing things. One day I took her and her dog up to the lake, and when I came back from walking Jackie, she matter-of-factly told me there had been a Viking ship on the lake. I can confidently attest that despite being an avid fan of Tucker Carlson, she was "not crazy" in any way. However, she had been in and out of consciousness for a week in the hospital, so, her body was in a new place physiologically.

Later, she had more disturbing visions — of menacing children and adults getting in her face, and things in the air which she would swat away. Like the major UFO experiences, these things were not merely in her visual field but embedded in reality: She could turn her chair away from the menacing people and they would turn along with the rest of her surroundings.

I did some reading to try to figure out what was happening. The description of the visions matched Charles Bonnet syndrome quite well, except that syndrome happens to people who are losing their eyesight, and she wasn't. Nevertheless, Bonnet syndrome hallucinations (which are purely visual) may be related to the major UFO experience, which typically occurs not only when it's dark but also when looking up at the sky, where our usual visual cues of shape and depth are absent. Perhaps some people are prone to brief episodes of the syndrome or a related phenomenon, under just the right circumstances. (Importantly, the Bonnet syndrome visions, like my mother's, are persistent and repetitive, where a major UFO experience is a rare or singular event.)

I wonder what percentage of major UFO experiences happen when someone is staring at the night sky? Are there cases where someone is going about their normal evening but sees something out a window and rushes outside, to find a giant triangle hovering above?

 

[Eburacum]

My mother did have Charles Bonnet syndrome, and she saw a UFO. It was actually the full moon, which I saw myself. She was gradually losing her eyesight and saw a number of illusory images, which did not seem to worry her unduly. But I personally doubt that many UAP observations are caused directly by hallucinations, since only a small proportion of sightings can be directly traced to visual pathologies.

 

[Eburacum]

On the other hand, the neuroscientist Anil Seth thinks that all conscious experiences are a kind of 'controlled hallucination'.

In order to make himself understood with his characteristic effectiveness, Anil Seth speaks of reality as "controlled hallucination": "our experiences are the content that the brain predicts from the inside out, anticipating what is in the world, and the information from the senses ties us with what exists in the world in a way that's useful for our organism". Therefore, this hallucination is not a false perception or a perception of something that does not exist, but a perception modelled by our body and controlled by the brain, which applies a kind of prior template to give meaning to what we feel.

content from external source
https://lab.cccb.org/en/anil-seth-reality-is-a-controlled-hallucination/

Our only perception of reality is when we manage to co-ordinate these hallucinations into some sort of mutual agreement. Sometimes we mutually agree on incorrect versions of reality; it may be that the entire UFO phenomenon is an example of this.