Research

Understanding the phenomenon, for you

A working library to help you make sense of what happened to you and see how it fits with what others describe. Start with conference talks you can watch tonight and the findings people find most striking, then go as deep as you like. You can also propose research of your own.

Read and participate

The papers

These are real, published resources. We note where the science is settled and where it is still debated, and we take no position on what ultimately causes these experiences. The aim is simply to help you understand.

Read the papers

Open-access research you can read in full right here. Open any one to read it, and, if you are a member, to talk it through with others in Journal Club.

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Community survey

Add your experience to the picture

Every experience that gets described carefully makes the subject harder to wave away. The community survey turns quiet, private experiences into a public record that a skeptic has to reckon with, and that researchers can actually use.

  • Anonymous by design. No email, no account, and no name required.
  • About fifteen minutes. Every question is optional; answer only what you are comfortable sharing.
  • Open results. Aggregate findings are published as answers arrive, so you can watch the picture you are helping build take shape.
Take the anonymous survey See the results so far

Source material

Watch, findings, and government records

Watch: talks from UAP conferences

Recorded presentations from researchers, scientists, and experiencers. Most of these are free to watch right now.

Findings and the official record

Government records and archives

Understanding

Organizations, reading, and the science of related experiences

Understanding your experience

Organizations that take first-person experience seriously, and the research that helps make sense of it.

A short reading list

  • Abduction and Passport to the Cosmos, John E. Mack, 1994 and 1999. A Harvard psychiatrist takes experiencers seriously and explores the meaning they make. Debated, and field-changing.
  • American Cosmic and Encounters, Diana Walsh Pasulka, 2019 and 2023. A religious-studies scholar on how people, including scientists, make meaning of the phenomenon.
  • UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record, Leslie Kean, 2010. A records-and-witnesses approach from the journalist who later helped break the 2017 Pentagon story.
  • In Plain Sight, Ross Coulthart, 2021. A deeply sourced investigative account of the modern disclosure arc.
  • The Invisible College and Passport to Magonia, Jacques Vallee. Classics arguing the phenomenon is stranger and older than a simple nuts-and-bolts story.
  • Communion, Whitley Strieber, 1987. The first-person account that brought experiencer literature into the mainstream.
  • The New Human, Mary Rodwell. An experienced counselor on contact-experiencer children and families.
  • After, Bruce Greyson, 2021. The psychiatrist who built the standard near-death-experience scale, in plain language.
  • Dimensions and Forbidden Science, Jacques Vallee. Deeper case studies, and the candid field journals of a computer scientist who shaped the modern study of the phenomenon.
  • Operation Trojan Horse and The Mothman Prophecies, John Keel. Classics arguing the phenomenon is stranger and more interwoven with human life than simple visitors from space.
  • Missing Time and Intruders, Budd Hopkins. Early, influential investigations of abduction accounts. Read alongside the memory science below.
  • The Flip and Authors of the Impossible, Jeffrey J. Kripal. A historian of religion on taking extraordinary experiences seriously without forcing them into old boxes.
  • The Super Natural, Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal, 2016. An experiencer and a scholar in dialogue about what these experiences might mean.
  • Extraterrestrial, Avi Loeb, 2021. A Harvard astronomer makes the case for treating anomalous objects as a serious scientific question.
  • Surviving Death, Leslie Kean, 2017. A careful journalist surveys the evidence around consciousness and survival.
  • The Messengers, Mike Clelland, 2015. On the strange synchronicities many experiencers report; validating for people who notice patterns others dismiss.
  • Consciousness Beyond Life, Pim van Lommel, 2010. The cardiologist behind the Lancet study, at book length on near-death experiences.
  • Lucid Dying, Sam Parnia, 2024. A resuscitation researcher on what science now knows about recalled experiences of death.
  • Irreducible Mind, Edward F. Kelly and colleagues, 2007. A scholarly case that mind may be more than brain, drawing on NDEs, OBEs, and related evidence.

The science of related experiences

Investigate and report

Search the record, log a sighting, follow the journalism

Explore and report

Search the existing record, and log a sighting where it will be taken seriously. Reporting through more than one is worth it: different systems share data with different researcher networks.

Journalism and long-form

Contribute back

Propose research

Propose research

Is there a question you wish someone would study, a pattern you keep noticing, or a paper you think belongs here? Suggest it. We pass good proposals to our research partners; the strongest, well-framed questions can become real projects.

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