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.
- Loading papers…
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.
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.
- The Sol Foundation symposia (Stanford-linked, founded by Garry Nolan). Academic talks on UAP across disciplines; the 2023 and 2024 Stanford symposium presentations are free on YouTube. Events.
- Archives of the Impossible (Rice University), 2022 and 2023 conference talks. Rice University's landmark conferences, with Jacques Vallee, Diana Pasulka, Jeffrey Kripal, Garry Nolan, and others. Archive.
- Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU), Anomalous Aerospace Phenomena Conference. Volunteer scientists and engineers; annual conference talks free on YouTube. All conferences.
- Society for Scientific Exploration convention videos. Frontier-science talks, including UAP and consciousness, free to watch. Video library.
- Society for UAP Studies annual conference and Limina journal. An academic society; conference sessions and the free peer-reviewed journal Limina. YouTube.
- Durham University: Grounding the SETI and UAP Debate, 2025. A UK university law-school symposium with full recordings and materials, and the Durham Declaration on SETI and UAP research.
- New Paradigm Institute, including the Global Disclosure Day 2024 replay. Talks and panels on disclosure and policy. Learn library.
- European UAP and NHI Disclosure Summit 2025 (Ubiquity University). An international summit bringing experiencers, researchers, and officials together.
- MUFON Symposium archive. Decades of symposium talks and speaker archives. Membership applies for full access.
- UAP News Center conference directory. The most complete, up-to-date listing of upcoming and past UFO and UAP conferences.
- International UFO Congress. One of the longest-running conferences, with many talks via its video portal. Tickets or streaming apply.
- Contact in the Desert. A large annual gathering of experiencers, researchers, and authors, with virtual streaming options.
Findings and the official record
- United States Department of Defense UAP file releases (PURSUE), 2026 onward. Official The government's public archive of declassified UAP records: military reports, witness interviews, pilot accounts, memos, photographs, and videos. Announcement and coverage.
- Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, ODNI, 2021. Official The report that made government study of the subject official; most of 144 cases could not be explained with the data available.
- UAP Disclosure Act of 2023, U.S. Senate (Schumer and Rounds). Proposed law Legislation that writes "non-human intelligence" and "technologies of unknown origin" into a proposed disclosure process modeled on the JFK Records Act. Introduced as an amendment; several provisions were later set aside.
- House Oversight hearing on UAP (Graves, Fravor, Grusch), U.S. Congress, 2023. Official record Military pilots describe firsthand encounters in plain terms many experiencers will recognize.
- The Galileo Project, Avi Loeb and colleagues, Harvard. Peer-reviewed A scientific effort to catch the phenomenon on calibrated instruments rather than blurry phone video.
- Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles, Knuth, Powell and Reali, Entropy, 2019. Peer-reviewed A quantitative analysis of the 2004 Nimitz "Tic Tac" radar and pilot data.
- First Field Expedition of UAPx, Szydagis and colleagues, 2023. Peer-reviewed Physicists run a real instrumented field study and report honestly what they found.
- Faculty perceptions of unidentified aerial phenomena, Nature, 2023. Peer-reviewed A survey of 1,460 professors finds witnessing UAP is far more common, and far less fringe, than people assume.
- Psychological aspects in UAP witnesses, De la Torre, 2023. Peer-reviewed Finds witnesses are deeply engaged by what they saw, not mentally unwell.
- A History of Scientific Approaches to UAP, Tim Lomas (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health), 2024. Academic essay A Harvard researcher argues the subject deserves serious scientific engagement rather than dismissal.
- Limina: The Journal of UAP Studies. Peer-reviewed The field's first peer-reviewed academic journal spanning the sciences and humanities. Free to read.
- Journal of Scientific Exploration. Academic journal A peer-reviewed journal for rigorous study of topics at the edge of science, including UAP and consciousness.
- Incommensurability, Orthodoxy and the Physics of High Strangeness, Jacques Vallee and Eric Davis, 2003. Academic paper A widely cited framework for why the phenomenon resists easy study, and how to approach it anyway.
- AIAA UAP Integration and Outreach Committee. A committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics publishing technical work on detecting and characterizing UAP.
Government records and archives
- All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Official The U.S. Department of Defense's standing UAP office: portal, case resources, and reporting.
- CIA Reading Room: UFOs collection. Official Declassified files including Project Blue Book and the Robertson Panel.
- National Archives: UAP records. Official The gateway into Blue Book and adjacent declassified collections.
- U.S. Navy FOIA Library. Official Where the FLIR, Gimbal, and Go Fast videos were officially released; browse the originals.
- The Black Vault. John Greenewald Jr.'s long-running FOIA archive of roughly four million government documents.
- FBI Vault: UFO records. Official The FBI's own declassified UFO files, free to read.
- Project Blue Book records (National Archives). Official The U.S. Air Force's decades-long UFO investigation files, held at the National Archives.
- Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). Founded by J. Allen Hynek; free conference proceedings and the Journal of UFO Studies.
- Isaac Koi Archives. A large, organized collection of historical UFO documents and research.
- Barry Greenwood UFO Archive. A respected researcher's archive of historical UFO documents and periodicals.
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.
- John E. Mack Institute. Continuing the work of the Harvard psychiatrist who took experiencers seriously; education, dialogues, and referrals.
- International Coalition for Extraterrestrial Research (ICER). A global coalition of researchers, clinicians, and experiencer advocates.
- Consciousness and Contact Research Institute (formerly FREE). Founded with Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell; home of one of the largest experiencer studies, with findings made public.
- uNHIdden: Exceptional Experiences and mental health (white paper), 2024. White paper A UK mental-health charity calls on governments to recognize that anomalous experiences are real and to give experiencers better, non-judgmental care.
- Engaging the Phenomenon. Peer-led conversations and practical guides on contact, with good first-time introductions.
- OPUS (Organization for Paranormal Understanding and Support). A long-running nonprofit offering confidential support and practitioner referrals for experiencers.
- MUFON Experiencer Resource Team. Compassion-trained volunteers and vetted-professional referrals for experiencers.
- Spiritual Emergence Network. A free referral network for people moving through spiritually intense or transformative experiences.
- ACISTE. The American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences; support groups and a practitioner directory.
- IANDS (International Association for Near-Death Studies). Support groups, a research journal, and resources for near-death and related experiencers.
- Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). A research nonprofit, founded by Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell, studying consciousness and extraordinary experience.
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
- Sleep paralysis and the night-time "intruder", Cheyne and colleagues, 1999. Peer-reviewed Maps the sensed presence and fear of a bedroom intruder onto a known sleep state.
- Cultural explanations of sleep paralysis, Jalal and Hinton, 2015. Peer-reviewed The same event is read as witches, jinn, the Old Hag, or aliens depending on culture.
- The body's response to abduction memories, McNally and colleagues, 2004. Peer-reviewed Experiencers react as strongly as combat veterans do: the distress is real, whatever the cause.
- Entity encounters occasioned by DMT, Davis, Griffiths and colleagues, 2020. Peer-reviewed Most of 2,500 people described contact with a sentient "being," with no UFO context at all.
- How memory can distort, Clancy, McNally and colleagues, 2002. Peer-reviewed Why memories surfaced under hypnosis should be held loosely.
- Near-death experience in cardiac arrest survivors, van Lommel and colleagues, The Lancet, 2001. Peer-reviewed A large hospital study; NDEs are common and not explained by medication or oxygen levels.
- Standards for the study of recalled experiences of death, Parnia, Greyson and colleagues, 2022. Peer-reviewed Mainstream scientists agree these experiences are real and worth studying carefully.
- The brain basis of out-of-body experiences, Blanke and colleagues, Nature, 2002. Peer-reviewed Stimulating one brain region can reliably trigger an out-of-body sensation.
- Division of Perceptual Studies (University of Virginia). University research Decades of case research on near-death and children's past-life reports; rigorous in method, contested in the mainstream.
- The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena, Etzel Cardena, American Psychologist, 2018. Debated A review in a flagship psychology journal arguing the evidence deserves serious attention. The same journal later ran a rebuttal.
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.
- National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). The largest public, searchable witness database, operating since 1974, with a report form.
- Enigma Labs. A standardized, searchable database of 400,000+ reports, with a mobile app for reporting in real time.
- UAP Database (UPDB). A searchable database of UAP reports, with filters by location, date, and water encounters.
- MUFON (Mutual UFO Network). A long-running investigative network with a structured field-investigation program and a case report system.
- National UFO Historical Records Center. A nonprofit collecting and digitizing historical UFO records for researchers.
- Archives for the Unexplained (Sweden). The world's largest physical library of UFO and paranormal literature, with a digitization program.
- UAP Discovery: report a UAP. A respectful reporting form, with pages for pilots, law enforcement, and first responders.
- Near-Death Experience Research Foundation. A large, searchable collection of near-death accounts you can read and contribute to.
Journalism and long-form
- The Debrief. A science-and-defense outlet that has broken several major UAP stories.
- Liberation Times. A UK outlet with strong UK and U.S. government sourcing.
- Douglas Dean Johnson. Meticulous, documentation-focused analysis of what testimony actually says.
- Christopher Mellon. A former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence on the policy and disclosure arc.
- Americans for Safe Aerospace. Ryan Graves's pilot-led nonprofit; a channel for aircrew reports and a steady stream of testimony.
- Need to Know (Coulthart and Zabel). A weekly news show with strong sourcing and minimal speculation.
- Theories of Everything (Curt Jaimungal). Long-form interviews with physicists, philosophers, and UAP figures.
- UAP Guide. A short, illustrated primer built from verbatim quotes by generals, pilots, and officials; the fastest "is this real?" briefing.
- Lehto Files (Chris Lehto). A former F-16 pilot's analysis, strong on the aviation and physics side.
- That UFO Podcast. A UK-hosted program with a broad mix of journalists, researchers, and experiencers.
- Witness Citizen. Investigative citizen journalism with deep dives into specific cases and documents.
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.