The Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis

What if the aliens are from Earth?

What if we've been living side by side, right here, for thousands of years?

That may sound like the plot of 'made for Sy Fy' movie or series, but it's a theory that's been kicking around since the 1970s, when Jacques Vallee began to compare UFO encounters of the 50s forward to fairy folk encounters of previous centuries.

Now of course the idea of 'ancient aliens' is so popular that cable TV can't seem to make enough shows about it, and any ancient artifact featuring big eyes or a bird in it gets interpreted as proof that we were visited by space beings in early antiquity.

In The Cryptoterrestrials, Mac Tonnies offers a focused essay on why aliens and UFOs may well be creatures from right here on earth. Tonnies died not long after the book came out, which is tragic. He had a nimble mind and brought a critical perspective to a topic woefully short on intelligent criticism.

Here are a few things to think about:

• Why would aliens abduct humans for the purpose of genetic merging? Why would we expect to be compatible in that way? Perhaps we are compatible because we are dealing with one branch of human creatures trying to borrow genetic qualities from another branch of human creatures, like Neanderthals and Cromagnons.
• Alien abductions make the most sense as theater. Using two of the most powerful human emotions--fear and sex--the typical alien abduction seems to parody our science and the way we treat animals in the name of science. Maybe this seeming parody is the point.
• Grey aliens look way too much like human beings. There are creatures right here on earth, countless creatures, which look nothing like us. Why do supposed creatures from 'outer space' look like more fragile, big-eyed versions of ourselves?
• Accounts of kidnappings by otherworldly beings (such as fairies) go back hundreds and even thousands of years. Perhaps 'alien abduction' is just the latest cultural explanation for a terrestrial phenomenon that is much older. 

I personally like the cryptoterrestrial hypothesis and would like to expand up on it future posts, even though it is not all the popular at present.

In the meantime, check out Mac Tonnies' book, if you can get your hands on it.

It's sure the be worth more once it goes out of print.

Aliens and Faeries

The ET hypothesis in ufology is more controversial than its adherents like to admit.

Briefly, the ET hypothesis is the notion that UFO sightings and alien encounters are instigated by intelligent creatures from outer space. Some branches of ufology even name the specific part of the galaxy the visitors call home.

Betty Hill, who was abducted with her husband Barney from a rural New Hampshire road in 1961, claimed under hypnosis that the aliens who abducted her had shown her a star map--a map which she was later able to reproduce and which coincided accurately with a cluster of stars around Zeta Reticuli.

Thereafter the Hill abduction came to be known as "The Zeta Reticuli Incident."

But many of the most prominent features of alien abduction experiences, as well as some of the features of UFO sightings (that is, experiences that do not include direct contact with alien beings) were present for hundreds of years in faery lore.

Today faeries mostly inhabit children's books. At least, that's what we tell ourselves. 

The faeries of old were experts in messing with human perception. They could appear to humans in any form them wished and could alter the experience of time. Like the aliens of today, faeries abducted children and young people, and were especially drawn to young women, with whom they were thought to mate in order to strengthen their line. Faeries sometimes took human babies and left faery children--called 'changelings'--in their place.

Faeries depicted as cute, Disney-like imps that flutter around trees and flowers are not the same faeries of medieval times and earlier. Before the rise of science, faeries were considered dangerous, and every culture had them. Being taken by the faeries was like being taken to the realm of the Dead. You might not ever come back, and if you did return, you might not be right ever again.

Like today's abductees, people taken by faeries typically went missing for a period of hours, days, or even longer, and then reappeared suddenly with no memory of what had happened to them and no sense of the amount of time that had passed. When the memories of faery abductees did begin to return, they included the recollection of coming upon small beings unexpectedly, and being invited into their circle.

Today's abductees usually do not remember what happened at first either, but only notice that some time is strangely missing from their lives. Their memories come later, under hypnosis, in dreams or in spontaneous surreal fragments.

Documented examples of fairies arriving in small airships are also plentiful The similarities between these creatures and the smaller 'grey aliens' described my modern abductees are striking, though saying so won't usually garner a round of applause in ufology circles.

It may not be the case that fairies and aliens are one and the same creature, but it seems to me at least worth considering that SOME 'aliens' are possibly not from outer space at all, but from right here on earth.

Every other culture, except ours has thought so.