Praise for The Metaphysics of UFOs
“Reading Jonathan Kendall, a medical doctor and expert on physical visionary experience and the resurrection of the body, is itself an ontological shock, a bracing provocation that the new revelations of the UFO or UAP phenomenon do not fit our worldviews, whatever those might be—religious, secular, political, military, or materialist. Each gives us something, but we remain stuck on a few mythological tracks. The implications of this book and its ‘best guess’ (which is my own, too) are immense; cosmic, really. There is even the Mothman! Jonathan Kendall thinks impossibly.”
—Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of How to Think Impossibly: About the Soul, UFOs, Time, Belief and Everything Else
“If all reported encounters with UFOs/UAPs were the product of deception or misperception, we wouldn’t have a problem. But that just isn’t the case, so we have a problem. A big one. If you want to know just how big, read Kendall. He presents the cases evenhandedly, analyzes them critically, and then stands back to ask how we might put it all together. Occupying the space between wanna-believe credulity and bar-none skepticism, The Metaphysics of UFOs will force you to think hard, will compel you to contemplate possible impossibilities.”
—Dale C. Allison Jr., Princeton Seminary
“If The Metaphysics of UFOs were Kendall’s closing argument to a jury, opposing counsel waiting their turn would be sweating. Kendall writes as an advocate for the evidence, bringing a commanding grasp of UFO cases and literature and a pointed critique of debunkers who wear the mask of open-minded
skepticism while defaulting to dismissal. Drawing on historical government material with care and discernment, he opens the inquiry toward larger and more provocative questions, such as: Might UFOs, Mothmen, Men in Black, and other non-human entities be, in some sense, apparitions produced by the living? A serious, thoughtful work that stakes out its place in the evolving study of anomalous phenomena.”
—Keith Thompson, author of Anomalous Phenomena, Angels and Aliens, and The
UFO
Paradox
About the Author
Jonathan Kendall is a board-certified medical doctor in internal medicine and nephrology. As a physician, he is in a relatively unique position to evaluate potential medical and psychological explanations for paranormal encounters. He is well versed in ufology literature, psychical research, quantum mechanics, and theoretical physics. The worlds of paranormal activity, metaphysics, religious studies, and science have always fascinated him.
The Metaphysics of UFOs: Evidential Case Studies on UAPs, Paranormal Phenomena, and Spiritual Experiences Copyright © 2026 by Jonathan Kendall. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd., except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.
First Edition
First Printing, 2026
Book design by Samantha Peterson
Cover design by Kevin R. Brown
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Other
Books by Jonathan Kendall
Seeing the Messiah
For Heather, my only unshakeable certainty in a book that questions everything.
Disclaimer
In his 1886 book, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote, “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes back into you.” * 1 Though Nietzsche may have had something else in mind here, I find his comments applicable to the study of the paranormal, especially the UFO phenomenon. As such, this book contains disturbing material. The implications of this study’s findings are that reality is not what many of us think it to be. If you are comfortable within your current belief system and wish to remain comfortable, this book is not recommended. Personally, I can no longer view the world in the way I once did. No less crucially, the reader should be aware that embarking upon the study of UFOs often leaves one vulnerable to confrontations with the phenomenon. A great many UFO and other paranormal investigators can and have attested to the abyss gazing back at them.
* Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, Oxford World’s Classics, ed. and trans., Marion Faber (Oxford University Press, 1998), 178.
Contents
Introduction: The 5 Percent That Should Not Exist 1
Chapter One: When the Mothman Came to Point Pleasant, West Virginia 19
Chapter Two: UFOs: Evidence and Issues 41
Chapter Three: Men in Black 65
Chapter Four: The Limitations of Hypnotic Regression 83
Chapter Five: Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind 87
Chapter Six: The Evidential Narrative Basis of Alien Abductions 103
Chapter Seven: The Physical Evidence Accompanying Alien Abductions 117
Chapter Eight: Mundane Explanations for the Abduction Phenomenon 139
Chapter Nine: Paranormal Explanations for the Abduction Phenomenon 155
Chapter Ten: How Should the Abduction Phenomenon Be Interpreted? 165
Chapter Eleven: The Interpretive Difficulty of UFOs: Analysis of a French Close Encounter 189
Chapter Twelve: Are UFOs and Aliens of Extraterrestrial Origin? 193
Chapter Thirteen: Are UFOs and Aliens of Extradimensional Origin? 207
Chapter Fourteen: Apparitions Produced by the Living 215
Chapter Fifteen: Occult Aspects of UFOs 229
Chapter Sixteen: Grounding Aliens in the World of Djinn and Faeries 253
Chapter Seventeen: Other Theories 261
Chapter Eighteen: UFO Crash Retrievals 267
Chapter Nineteen: Implications of the UFO Phenomenon 279
Chapter Twenty: What Are UAPs? 285
Conclusion: The 5 Percent That Changes Everything 313
Acknowledgments 315
Bibliography 317
Introduction
The 5 Percent That Should Not Exist
Contrary to the belief of many, UAPs are not confined to the realms of hoaxing, illusions of light seen in distant night skies, and yarns spun from non-credible witnesses, though admittedly there are plenty of these.1 Unidentified craft are sometimes seen by numerous, credible witnesses and often by trained observers. Despite protestations from world governments, including that of the United States, becoming acquainted with the literature makes it clear that the UFO phenomenon constitutes a threat to national security.
In 1947, pilot and businessman Kenneth Arnold spotted nine unusual aircraft on a collision course with his plane near Mount
1. UAP, or Unidentified Aerial (or Anomalous) Phenomena, is a new acronym that is virtually synonymous with UFO. I will be using these abbreviations interchangeably.
Rainier, Washington. The unknown crafts were traveling at least 1,200 mph. Having subsequently described the unknown aircrafts’ trajectory as if they were skipping along the surface of water, the “flying saucer” received press coverage on a national level. With this initial sighting, the modern UFO era began.2
In the immediate aftermath of Arnold’s sighting, flying saucers were being seen by thousands of observers across the United States. And the US government not only acknowledged what was happening, but expressed great concern. On September 23, 1947, the head of Air Materiel Command, Lieutenant General Nathan F. Twining, released a memorandum to the US Army Air Forces commanding general that acknowledged the physical reality of the phenomenon, while suspecting that UFOs were the technological development of other nations rather than that of extraterrestrials.3 However, by the end of the year, some analysts of the Air Technical Intelligence Center, or ATIC, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, were of the persuasion that UFOs were of extraterrestrial provenance.4
Nearly one year later on July 24, 1948, an Eastern Air Lines DC-3 just avoided a collision with a porthole-laden, cylindricalshaped UFO with a fiery exhaust over Montgomery, Alabama.5 In September or October of 1948, the Project Sign staff compiled
2. Jerome Clark, “Arnold Sighting,” in The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning, 3rd ed. (Omnigraphics, 2018). Kindle.
3. Clark, “Project Sign,” in UFO Encyclopedia; John B. Alexander, UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities (Thomas Dunne Books, 2011), Kindle, ch. 3: The Condon Report Revisited.
4. Richard Dolan, UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Cover-Up 1941–1973, rev. ed. (Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., 2022), introduction, “The Problem of UFOs.”
5. Clark, “Chiles-Whitted Sighting,” in UFO Encyclopedia.
a document called the “Estimate of the Situation” that espoused the belief that UFOs are extraterrestrial.6 This “Estimate” was rejected by Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg because he determined that it lacked proof. However, the document did manage to arouse great controversy and debate within the halls of the Pentagon. Months later, the “Estimate” was declassified but most copies were burned. As one might imagine, the fact that no copy of the “Estimate” seems to have survived sparked controversy, with debunkers claiming that the document never existed. This is likely incorrect. The document’s existence was later confirmed by Pentagon Air Force Major Dewey J. Fournet Jr. and by Edward J. Ruppelt, head of Project Grudge and Project Blue Book.7
The matter was dramatically escalated in July of 1952, when at least ten UAPs, exhibiting maneuvers and speeds well beyond the capabilities of modern aircraft, haunted the skies over the US Capitol and the surrounding Washington, DC, area. These were seen by many witnesses and were tracked on radar. Moreover, the spectacle hastily seized the attention of the US Air Force, as F-94s were sent in pursuit multiple times on July 26. To this day, this
6. Project Sign was the first (known) US Air Force investigation of UFOs and was in operation from 1947–49. It was followed by Project Grudge from 1949–52, which was succeeded by Project Blue Book from 1952–69.
7. Edward J. Ruppelt. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: The Original 1956 Edition (Cosimo Classics, 2011), 45; Clark, “Estimate of the Situation,” in UFO Encyclopedia; Keith Thompson, The UFO Paradox: The Celestial and Symbolic World of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (Bear & Company, 2024), Kindle, ch. 3: A Modern Saga Takes Shape; Richard Dolan, UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Cover-Up 1941–1973, rev. ed. (Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., 2002), Kindle, ch. 3: Managing the Problem: 1948 to 1951, “The Estimate of the Situation.”
incursion over US airspace has yet to find a satisfactory, prosaic explanation.8
The incursion over the US Capitol captured CIA interest, prompting in 1952 the formation of the Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, colloquially known as the Robertson Panel, as it was chaired by Cal Tech physicist H. P. Robertson. The Robertson Panel concluded that UFOs did not constitute a threat to national security. Moreover, the panel recommended a debunking posture over reported concerns that UFO reports may lead to misidentifications of real enemy weapons or aircraft, cause emergency channels to be clogged with false or irrelevant information, and leave the American people vulnerable to psychological warfare by adversarial nations.9 There was the ever-present threat of the Cold War with the USSR to consider, after all. Astronomer and consultant for Project Blue Book, J. Allen Hynek, was involved with the Robertson Panel. Hynek claimed that the panel discussed bringing in an “educational cartoon producer” (even Walt Disney) to create content to help debunk this phenomenon.10
Critics of the Robertson Panel have pointed out that the conclusions were preordained. In separate interviews, director of the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI), H. Marshall Chadwell, and his deputy, Ralph L. Clark, told researcher Brad Sparks that they had initially concluded that UFOs are extraterrestrial.
8. Clark, “Washington National Radar/Visual Case,” in UFO Encyclopedia.
9. Greg Eghigian, After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon (Oxford, 2024), 71–74.
10. J. Allen Hynek, The Hynek UFO Report: The Authoritative Account of the Project Blue Book Cover-Up (MUFON, 2020), Kindle, ch. 1: Blue Book Is Not a Book.
That is, until the panel overturned that conclusion.11 The scientific panel only met for a few days. Furthermore, the Air Force, who resented the CIA intrusion into the matter, only supplied the panel with cases that were either known hoaxes or already had been identified. The one hundred best-unknown cases had been held back by the Air Force. Moreover, two of the five preeminent scientists on the panel, Samuel Goudsmit and Thornton Page, were not shy about expressing their distaste for the concept of UFOs.12 Interestingly, in time Page would become much more sanguine about the subject, even penning material that initially demonstrated more of an openness to the UFO topic.13 Still later, in 1981, Page admitted that 2 to 3 percent of UFO reports have proven trustworthy and remain unexplainable.14 Furthermore, Page deemed the debunking efforts of critics Donald Menzel, Philip Klass, and Edward Condon to be “regrettable” and “pseudoscientific.”15 He went so far as to say that the Condon Report, which we will touch on presently, “seemed to be unscientific and inconsistent.”16
The US Air Force scrutinized many such cases in the Project Blue Book years. In 1969, this study culminated in the release
11. Brad Sparks, “Robertson Panel,” in The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning, 3rd ed., Jerome Clark, ed. (Omnigraphics, 2018), Kindle.
12. Sparks, “Robertson Panel,” in UFO Encyclopedia.
13. Thornton Page, “Education and the UFO Phenomenon,” in UFO’s—A Scientific Debate, by Carl Sagan and Thornton Page, eds. (Cornell University Press: 1972), 3–10.
14. Thornton Page, foreword to UFOs and the Limits of Science, eds. Ronald D. Story and J. Richard Greenwell (William Morrow, 1981), 7.
15. Page, foreword to UFOs and the Limits of Science, 8.
16. Page, foreword to UFOs and the Limits of Science, 8–9.
of the Condon Report by the University of Colorado, where it was concluded that UAPs do not constitute a threat to national security. Condon also stated that UAPs should not be subjected to scientific study and that teachers should not credit students’ work on the subject.17
I found the science behind the Condon Report to be thorough and impressive in many ways. One may disagree with the report’s conclusions here and there, but the investigations were often beyond reproach. It was Condon’s section at the beginning, “Conclusions and Recommendations,” that did not seem to capture the spirit of the case investigations. While most of the reports had prosaic explanations, some did not, and the Condon Report admitted as much. One does not have to delve too far into the case studies to discover this. Take, for example, the second case in the final report of an unidentified object that was spotted visually and on radar in Greenwich, England, in 1956.18 The report concluded that “although conventional or natural explanations certainly cannot be ruled out, the probability of such seems low in this case and the probability that at least one genuine UFO was involved appears to be fairly high.” 19
Other times, non-explanations that bordered on the absurd were employed. On June 28, 1954, the pilot, crew, and some passengers flying on a British Overseas Airways Company (BOAC) plane from New York to London spotted a “pear-shaped” UAP
17. Edward U. Condon, “Conclusions and Recommendations,” in Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (Bantam Books, 1968), 1–6.
18. Condon, “Case 2,” in Scientific Study, 248–56.
19. Condon, “Case 2,” in Scientific Study, 256; see also Alexander, Myths, ch. 3: The Condon Report Revisited, “Report Analysis,” for more examples.
with six miniature crafts surrounding it near Labrador, Canada. Incidentally, the pilot, Captain James Howard, was a former pilot with the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the UK and already had 7,500 hours of flight experience under his belt.
The main UAP craft transformed into what appeared to be a very large airplane while the other objects scurried around it, sometimes apparently haphazardly and at other times aligned to make shapes. Below on the ground, radars had also picked up the UAPs’ signals, and the authorities were concerned enough to send an F-86 Sabre jet after them. As the F-86 closed in, the small crafts merged with the largest craft and the UAP accelerated away within a matter of seconds.20
Numerous witnesses, some of which were trained observers, saw a UAP that had also been captured on radar. Surely this was deemed a UFO, right? “Not so fast,” one imagines the refrain as the official explanation was given. In the final analysis, the Condon Report explained the sighting to have been “some almost certainly natural phenomenon, which is so rare that it apparently has never been reported before or since.” 21
Condon’s conclusions were widely criticized, including by former Blue Book member David Saunders, who cowrote a booklength treatise that was pro-UFO.22 J. Allen Hynek, the aforementioned astronomer and consultant for Project Blue Book, and one-time UFO debunker, eventually changed his mind as the evidence for the objective reality behind UFOs eventually became
20. Robert Hastings, UFOs & Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites. 2nd ed. (pub. by author, 2017), Kindle, ch. 1: Phenomenon, “Separating the Signal from the Noise.”
21. Condon, Scientific Study, 139.
22. David R. Saunders and R. Roger Harkins, UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong (Signet Books, 1968).
overwhelming. Hynek noted that 23 percent of the best 237 reports that he had scrutinized from Project Grudge remained “unknowns” after considerable scrutiny.23 This is likely an inflated number, as about three-quarters of these reports (18 of the 23 percent) were labeled “Insufficient Information,” bringing the true unknowns, those that are based on solid, reliable information in which prosaic explanations were ruled out, to 5 percent.24 This 5 percent of unknowns held up well throughout the Project Blue Book years. Of the 12,618 reported sightings, 701 were ultimately deemed “ ‘unidentified’ ” after scrutiny, just over 5 percent.25 This 5 percent should not be merely brushed to the side. Writing in 1956, former Project Blue Book head Edward Ruppelt, after detailing a couple of typical “unknown cases,” stated that, from the standpoint of mathematics, “the probability that the speculative answers [to unknown cases] are correct rapidly approaches zero.”26
However, the damage was done. The Condon Report effectively closed the book on Blue Book and provided justification for the Air Force’s giving up the study of UFOs, at least publicly. Meanwhile, civilian organizations like the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) continued to pursue the phenomenon, but such pursuits were stigmatized.
23. Hynek, UFO Report, ch. 1: Blue Book Is Not a Book.
24. Hynek, UFO Report, ch. 11: The Air Force Numbers Game, “The Air Force Admits There Are Unidentified Flying Objects.”
25. John Greenewald Jr., Inside the Black Vault: The Government’s UFO Secrets Revealed (Rowman & Littlefield: 2019), Kindle, ch. 3: The Project Blue Book Dilemma.
26. Ruppelt, Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, 12. The entire discussion on pp. 10–13 is helpful.
Most curious was Edward Condon’s claim that UAPs did not pose a threat to national security. Yet in March of 1967, a mere two years prior to the release of the Condon Report, UAP incursions at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana resulted in flights of nuclear missiles being temporarily taken offline.27 Even recently, this incursion has been explained in the media to have resulted from the testing of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).28 In addition to the implausibility that the military would perform such an unpredictable and potentially dangerous test at a facility housing a nuclear armament, this explanation fails to satisfy for many reasons.29 Similar UAP incursions at nuclear sites are legion, going all the way back to at least December 1948 according to a January 31, 1949, FBI memo. Mysterious flying saucers, disks, and fireballs were reported at or near Los Alamos, New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb.30
Moreover, the United States does not hold the monopoly on deploying fighter jets in pursuit of UAPs. In Peru in 1980, a fighter pilot fired upon an unidentified balloon-shaped object. As
27. Robert Salas and James Klotz, Faded Giant (BookSurge, 2005).
28. Joel Schectman and Aruna Viswanatha, “Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America’s UFO Mythology,” The Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2025, https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/ufo-us-disinformation -45376f7e.
29. Ross Coulthart, “What the Wall Street Journal Isn’t Telling You About UFOs | Reality Check,” NewsNation, YouTube, 1:02:48, June 13, 2025, https://youtu.be/FVpWXxneti4; see also Robert Salas, “OPINION | A Rebuttal from Robert Salas of Ojai to Wall Street Journal’s June 6 Article: ‘America’s UFO Mythology,’ ” Ojai Valley News, Ventura County Sun, updated June 10, 2025, https://www.ojaivalleynews.com/news/opinion-a -rebuttal-from-robert-salas-of-ojai-to-wall-street-journal-s-june-6/article _81c5493f-3c22-407f-ac1a-46b3009d1dea.html.
30. Hastings, introduction to UFOs & Nukes.
counterintuitive as it would seem when reflecting upon balloon physics, the object frequently managed to dodge the flurries of bullets, changing elevation at just the right moment as if telepathically reading the Peruvian pilot’s mind. At other times, the fired bullets would seem to hit the UAP, but the impact was somehow absorbed with no evidence of resultant damage to the mysterious craft.31 Four years prior to this, an Iranian fighter pilot in Tehran unsuccessfully pursued a UAP. As with the sighting in Peru, the Tehran UFO was witnessed by many, registered on radar, and, Project Blue Book notwithstanding, attracted the interest of the US government.32
One of the more impressive sightings of the twenty-first century was the so-called “Tic Tac UAP” incident that occurred in 2004, the story having broken in The New York Times. These white oval objects that resembled Tic Tac candy exhibited impossible performance characteristics in regard to acceleration and the handling of immense g-forces that would practically melt any known flying object and its occupants—dramatically outperformed US F/A-18 Hornets, probably the most impressive fighter jet in the world at that time.33
31. Oscar Santa María Huertas, “Close Combat with a UFO,” in UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record, by Leslie Kean (Three Rivers Press, 2017), Kindle, 86–90.
32. Parviz Jafari, “Dogfight over Tehran,” in UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record, by Leslie Kean (Three Rivers Press, 2017), Kindle, 86–90.
33. Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean, “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program,” The New York Times, December 16, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us /politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html.
Dealing with the Stigma
As we will demonstrate over the course of this volume, the reality of UAPs is supported by an immense data set. Nevertheless, the UFO stigma persists, having endured for the past three quarters of a century and into the present day. Perhaps, though, the tide is now starting to turn? Presently, we are arguably living in the most exciting time of the UAP era. Unlike throughout much of its history, the matter is receiving serious, bipartisan Congressional consideration.34
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is most to thank for stepping out onto this precarious limb. In 2007, Reid met with Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and Democratic Senator Dan Inouye of Hawaii of the Appropriations Committee. As a result, the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) was developed, along with an allocation of $22 million to the project. Billionaire entrepreneur Bob Bigelow secured the contract. In a currently ongoing series of books produced by rocket scientist James Lacatski, Las Vegas journalist George Knapp, and biochemist Colm Kelleher, the fruits of Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) are gradually being disclosed to the public.35
34. For the most recent Congressional hearing at the time of writing, see “LIVE: Hearing on Transparency Relating to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” September 9, 2025, by FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth, YouTube, 2 hr., 47 min., 20 sec., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gai68vZVUFc.
35. At the time of this writing, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon: An Insiders’ Account of the Secret Government UFO Program; Inside the US Government Covert UFO Program: Initial Revelations; Inside the US Government Covert UFO Program: New Insights; and Inside the US Government Covert UFO Program: Future Visions have been published.
December 16, 2017, was a watershed date in UFO history, when The New York Times published the aforementioned article, “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program.” The late Senator Reid claimed that the story resulted in a “tremendous amount of good, including prompting the U.S. Navy to create a formal system for pilots to report UAP sightings, shattering years of stigma and denial.” 36
The Pentagon’s UAP Task Force was established by the Senate Intelligence Committee in June of 2020 after garnering support from Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. An important milestone in the task force’s work came in the next year, in June 2021, when they announced that the US government believes UAPs are real. One element of this announcement was the 144 UAP reports that came from service members between 2004 and 2021. Incredibly, only 1 of the 144 reports was confidently debunked, which meant that the other 143 were UAPs.37
Echoing my own thoughts on the subject, the late Senator Reid further reflected:
The UAP Task Force report proves what I have been saying all along: this is a matter of science, national security, and technological advancement. From whatever hypothesis you begin with—UAPs being technological leaps from foreign adversaries, natural occurrences distorting visual perception, visitations from
36. Harry Reid, foreword to Skinwalkers at the Pentagon: An Insiders’ Account of the Secret Government UFO Program, by James T. Lacatski et al., 2nd ed. (RTMA, 2021), xv–xvii.
37. Reid, foreword to Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, xvii–xviii.
other dimensions, or technology from otherworldly sources—the key point is we need to engage the best minds in science to explore the data we know exists.38
In December 2022, Public Law 117–263 was approved by Congress. This provided legal protection for active or prior government contractors or employees that hold, or held, security clearances to bring forth information related to UAPs, including in such exotic areas of inquiry as material retrievals and the reverse engineering of UAP technology.39 Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin has reportedly stated that, since that time, “ ‘all sorts of (UFO whistleblowers) are coming out of the woodwork.’ ” 40 The aforementioned Senator Rubio, then ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, “confirmed that Senate committees had heard hours of sworn testimony from multiple whistleblowers who spoke about multiple legacy UFO programs.” And, per Rubio, most whistleblowers come from high government positions and hold high security clearances.41
In July 2023, the then Senate Majority Leader, Charles Schumer, made a surprise amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which vowed government transparency, including the
38. Reid, foreword to Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, xviii.
39. James T. Lacatski et al., Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program: Initial Revelations (RTMA, 2023), xiv–xv.
40. Marik von Rennenkampff, “ ‘True’ or ‘Crazy’? UFO Whistleblowers Coming ‘Out of the Woodwork,’ ” The Hill, July 7, 2023, https://thehill.com /opinion/technology/4083904-true-or-crazy-ufo-whistleblowers-come -out-of-the-woodwork-congress-cant-ignore-them/, quoted in Lacatski et al., Initial Revelations, xv.
41. Lacatski et al., Initial Revelations, xv–xvi.
declassification of information related to UAPs and creating opportunities for future research.42 Time will tell if this leads anywhere, or if we are truly on the brink of meaningful disclosure. Nevertheless, these are surely interesting times. What potential implications would disclosure have? It could be that the answer would affect every living soul on the planet. Some speculate that this is why the matter has remained a secret up to now.
So Why on Earth Does a Nephrologist Study UAPs?
My grandfather and three of his coworkers once spotted a UFO in the mountains of Lincoln County, West Virginia. I do not recall from the story whether they were on the way to work or if they were returning. In any case, the dark of night blanketed the drive. Negotiating a winding mountain road at high elevation, the four men spotted a bright orange sphere below them in a ravine. They parked the car on the side of the road and got out to observe. The strange object hovered above the ground well below them in the ravine—motionless, soundless. It was a fiery sentinel that guarded the dark countryside below a desolate highway. Eventually, they got back into the car and drove farther down the hill, aiming to get to a point in the road where they could get a closer look at the UFO. They lost sight of the object while en route, the view obscured by thick vegetation. When they arrived at their intended spot only minutes later, the object was gone. This mysterious encounter was just one of thousands that were experienced in that general area in the late 1960s. The Mothman visitations to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, which we will explore
42. Lacatski et al., Initial Revelations, xvii–xviii.
in chapter 1, seemed to serve as the epicenter of the phenomena for this place and time. These unidentified objects were so commonplace that my mother told me that she, her brother (my uncle), and my grandparents would go for a drive on some evenings with the hope of spotting a flying saucer. I understand that these UFO hunting trips were uniformly unsuccessful.
As for yours truly, I may have missed my one opportunity for a UFO sighting just recently. On the night of March 25, 2025, my sister-in-law Mary saw a UFO floating just above the tree line of our backyard hillside. She described it as a large, cylindrical object surrounded by an aura of bluish-white light. Moving slowly and emitting no sound, the object aimlessly flew across the length of the backyard over the hillside and kept going until it was out of sight. As Mary described it to us, she was certain of its extraordinary nature: “I’ve seen plenty of airplanes, satellites, fireworks, and meteors. This was nothing like that.”
Mary has a degree in forestry and has always had a fascination with naturally occurring, astronomical phenomena. In short, this was an unidentified flying object sighted by a trained observer who considered and ruled out reasonable, prosaic explanations. Mary was shaken enough by the experience that she remained on the back porch for another twenty minutes, halfway expecting otherworldly visitors to emerge from the woods. None did. If their purpose was to pay me a visit, the timing was off. Mary was doing us the favor of staying with and caring for our cats and dogs while my wife and I escaped to New York City to catch a Knicks game.
While I have never witnessed a UFO, I have always had a fascination with the subject. In fifth grade I was told to write a miniature research paper on a topic of my choice. While classmates
chose mundane topics from history and science, my first lame attempt at a “research project” was on UFOs. I like to think that this present endeavor is a significant upgrade from that one-page treatise that has been lost to time.
In short, the paranormal has always captivated me. For reasons that are no longer entirely clear to me, in 2022, while amidst research for my book on apparitions (Seeing the Messiah), I veered into the more harrowing world of UAPs. I was immediately hooked. Soon the idea for this book was born. As research progressed, I came to realize that the implications of the answer to the question “What are UFOs?” are staggering.
Are we alone in the universe? As important as the answer to this question may be, I think the answer may prove to be trivial when considering other potential implications of the UAP controversy. When understanding the full breadth of the issues involved, other crucial questions emerge:
1. What are the technological implications of UAPs, and can a study of the phenomenon revolutionize our understanding and capabilities in such industries as communication, medicine, transportation, and space exploration?
2. Can the UFO phenomenon lead to breakthroughs in clean energy utilization?
3. How does the UFO phenomenon modify our understanding of science, especially physics?
4. What religious ramifications does the UFO phenomenon involve?
5. What do UAPs tell us about the nature of reality?
We will ponder these questions as we move forward.
The UFO phenomenon involves more than just spacecraft with or without extraterrestrial occupants. As will be demonstrated in due course, the situation is much more complicated. Among other things, there are spiritual and social components, some of which are very unsettling.
In chapter 1, we will introduce the subject with a case study from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, circa 1966–68, that encapsulates much of the breadth of the UFO phenomenon. This includes a notorious visitor from the realm of cryptozoology (i.e., the Mothman), countless UFO sightings, disturbing psychic aftereffects among witnesses, and visitations by sinister Men in Black (MIB). Chapter 2 will summarize the evidence supporting the reality of the wider UFO phenomenon. In chapter 3, we will consider the Men in Black that often visit and intimidate UFO witnesses in the aftermath of a sighting.
We will take an in-depth look at alien abductions in the next section. Chapter 4 will begin with a discussion of obtaining lost memories through hypnosis—the possibilities and the pitfalls. Chapter 5 examines two famous alien abduction cases: the Casey County, Kentucky, case, where three devout Christian women fell victim to a hellish abduction experience, and the case that popularized the alien abduction narrative: that of Betty and Barney Hill. We will examine the narrative and physical evidential value of the alien abduction phenomenon in chapters 6 and 7. In chapter 8, we will consider possible medical, psychological, and neurophysiological explanations for the abduction phenomenon. Chapter 9 will be concerned with potential paranormal explanations. In chapter 10, the data will be sifted in order to render a verdict on how to best interpret alien abduction claims.
How best to interpret the broader UFO phenomenon will be the concern of the next section. In chapter 11, we will briefly detail the close encounter of Maurice Masse in Valensole, France. This case study will set the table for the chapters that follow. In chapters 12 and 13, the extraterrestrial hypothesis and extradimensional hypothesis will be examined, respectively. Chapter 14 will serve as an excursus into the realm of objective apparitions produced by the living. This chapter will form a relevant backdrop for chapter 15, where we will consider the spiritual or occult hypothesis of UFOs. In chapter 16, we will examine comparisons between UFO occupants and the supernatural residents of other cultures, especially that of djinn and faeries. We will briefly consider military or breakaway society explanations for UAPs in chapter 17.
Before concluding, the matter of crashed flying saucers will be taken up in chapter 18. In chapter 19, I will briefly espouse some of the enormous implications this data holds regarding technology, religion, and the nature of reality. Finally, in chapter 20, I will give my opinion for how the UFO phenomenon is best interpreted after having sifted through all of the data we consider in this volume.
Chapter One
When the Mothman Came to Point Pleasant, West Virginia
Just half an hour before midnight on November 15, 1966, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette experienced the infamous Mothman of Point Pleasant. The two couples had been driving through an abandoned World War II munitions complex (locally known as the “TNT area”). The place was deserted. The lights were out in the few houses that dotted the area, which was otherwise full of igloos that served as storage buildings. As they neared a generator plant, two bright red circles were seen breaking through the blanket of darkness. These circles, roughly two inches in diameter and six inches apart, were described by Linda Scarberry as “ ‘two big eyes like automobile reflectors.’ ” Roger Scarberry described the eyes as mesmerizing: “ ‘For a minute we could only stare at it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.’ ” When the eyes moved away from a nearby building, the four
witnesses could see that they were attached to a creature that was “ ‘shaped like a man, but bigger,’ ” according to Roger. It was gray, about six to seven feet in height, and stood on two human-shaped legs. Large wings appeared to be attached to the creature’s back.43
Eventually, the creature turned and made its way over to a door of the generator plant. Roger snapped out of the stupor, undoubtedly born from the shock at what he was witnessing, and stomped on the accelerator, rushing the 1957 Chevy through the gates of the plant and out to the road. Speeding relentlessly in the direction of Route 62, they had a repeat encounter with the cryptid. Positioned on a hillside by the road as the four young adults sped by, the creature’s wings spread wide, and it ascended into the night sky. The creature followed the terrorized foursome, somehow keeping pace despite Roger accelerating the Chevy to 100 mph. Mary Mallette claimed it made an ominous sound like the squeaking of a very large mouse.44
In an interview, Linda said that upon first seeing the creature it was trying to free one of its wings that was tangled in a wire. She described it as being “ ‘really scared’ ” and confirmed that even though they were all yelling that they needed to leave they were initially unable to do so, describing the experience as feeling like they were hypnotized. She said as they rushed at breakneck speed to get back to town, the Mothman kept “ ‘following’ ” them.
43. John A. Keel, Mothman Prophecies (Tor, 1975), Kindle, ch. 6: Mothman!, section 1.
44. Keel, Mothman Prophecies, ch. 6: Mothman!, section 1.
When the Mothman Came to Point Pleasant, West Virginia 21
As they raced down Route 62, they would see it sitting in different places, eerily somehow always ahead of them.45
They drove to the county courthouse as fast as possible to report what they’d seen. Deputy Millard Halstead, who’d been on duty that night and took their story down, later told John Keel that he had known the four of them since they’d been born and knew they weren’t troublemakers: “They were really scared that night. I took them seriously.” 46
So, the four of them led Deputy Halstead back to the plant, but by the time they arrived, the Mothman was nowhere to be found. However, once in the area, Halstead turned on his police radio only to hear a distortion that was loud enough to obscure the police dispatcher’s voice. The cacophonous sound greeting the deputy sounded like a record being played at high speed. Halstead was disturbed at this and was reluctant to search the building that night.
Early the following day, Sheriff George Johnson held a press conference, and the two couples answered reporters’ questions. Then, Mary Hyre, a reporter working in Point Pleasant for the Athens, Ohio, Messenger (and an investigator of and witness to other high strangeness in the area herself), released the information to the AP wire. The news spread rapidly. Fatefully, sometime during the ensuing reporting frenzy, an unknown copy editor likened the creature to an already-familiar character, but with a twist. Rather than “Batman,” this new creature was Mothman.47
45. Donnie Sergent Jr. and Jeff Wamsley, Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend, expanded ed. (The Sergent Company, 2016), Kindle, “The Linda Scarberry Interview.”
46. Keel, Mothman Prophecies, ch. 6: Mothman!, section 1.
47. Keel, Mothman Prophecies, ch. 6: Mothman!, section 1.
Author and paranormal investigator John Keel later went to the TNT area with the original couples and other community members and witnesses to check out the location of the initial Mothman sighting. Only two of their party were willing to accompany him into the main building of the power plant: Connie Carpenter (Mary Hyre’s niece, who was also a witness to the Mothman in a different incident) and Connie’s fiancé, Keith. The two of them and Keel entered the building and found it to be empty. However, as they exited, Connie peered over her shoulder to find the Mothman’s fiery red eyes staring back at her. This sent her into a state of panic, and she started crying. Keith and Keel immediately helped her out of the building.48
Keel then ran back into the building only to find it empty again. Mary Hyre, along with the others clustered outside, saw a large figure in the back of the plant while Keel was inside the building. More curiously a “ ‘metallic and hollow’ ” noise erupted, seemingly from inside, and was heard by those outside. It was “ ‘like a piece of metal had fallen all the way down from the top or something.’ ” Keel, who was the only person inside where the noise originated, was also the only one who heard nothing.49
Meanwhile, Connie Carpenter remained in a tearful state, pleading for the group to leave the area. Then, Mary Mallette suddenly started bleeding from one of her ears. Mary Hyre captured the feelings of the group when she stated, “ ‘It doesn’t feel right here’ ” and described the air as “ ‘oppressive’ ” and “ ‘heavy.’ ” Keel agreed; plus, their group was quickly unraveling in the pitch darkness.50
48. Keel, Mothman Prophecies, ch. 7: The Night of the Bleeding Ear, section 3.
49. Keel, Mothman Prophecies, ch. 7: The Night of the Bleeding Ear, section 3.
50. Keel, Mothman Prophecies, ch. 7: The Night of the Bleeding Ear, section 3.
When the Mothman Came to Point Pleasant, West Virginia 23
The contingent left the TNT area at that point, but Keel does narrate one other mystifying experience. Later that night, he went back to investigate and encountered a spot along one of the area’s roads where he suddenly found himself “engulfed in fear.” This feeling seemed to be concentrated in one particular spot, as Keel discovered by going back and forth, in and out of this spot.51
Reports of Mothman sightings were coming in from the Kanawha, Lincoln, Logan, Mason, and Nicholas counties of West Virginia. Hopefuls from hundreds of miles away were coming to try and see the creature. Ironically, the people who did not see it were the lucky ones. The witnesses who got their wish “never wanted to see it again,” as it “evoked unspeakable terrors.” 52
The Mothman was seen collectively on numerous occasions by credible witnesses as well as skeptics.
On the night of November 20, five teens driving near Campbell’s Creek saw it near a rock quarry. Once their headlights caught it, the creature immediately retreated into the nearby trees.53
In another instance, a man in Point Pleasant went out to his front yard to check on his barking dog. There, he was literally stopped in his tracks staring into the Mothman’s red eyes. Minutes passed unnoticed while he was hypnotized and unable to move. Then, finally, the creature took to the sky, leaving him unsteady and hardly able to walk.54
During one early-morning sighting in late November 1966, the Mothman was again spotted along Route 62. The witness this
51. Keel, Mothman Prophecies, ch. 7: The Night of the Bleeding Ear, section 3.
52. Keel, Mothman Prophecies, ch. 6: Mothman!, section 4.
53. Keel, Mothman Prophecies, ch. 6: Mothman!, section 4.
54. Keel, Mothman Prophecies, ch. 6: Mothman!, section 4.
time (a young man named Thomas Ury) was driving his convertible and, like other witnesses before him, first noticed the creature off to one side of the road. As soon as he saw it, the creature readied its wings (estimated by Ury to be around ten feet wide) and gave chase. It easily circled overhead as Ury urged his car faster and faster, up to 75 mph. The most he could do was report it to the sheriff. When telling the story to Mary Hyre, Ury described his terror and that he’d needed to skip work that day.55
Amazingly, the “basic points” of the creature’s description stayed consistent across more than one hundred reports between 1966 and 1967.56 The existence of such a creature was impossible enough, but it also seemed to defy physical laws. Upon taking off and while flying, the creature’s wings never flapped. This, along with the irrational state of terror it commonly produced in its witnesses, suggests the Mothman is best categorized as a paranormal entity—not “real” in the sense that we usually mean when invoking the term.
What to make of the Mothman? Can a normal explanation account for the sightings? The multiple, collective sightings effectively rule out hallucination. Nickell argues for misattribution, that the sightings were of large owls or birds. One such alternative that Nickell raises is a barn owl, which can be as large as two to three feet in height. Moreover, the red glow of the eyes was an optical effect produced by light sources (such as flashlights or car headlights) reflecting the owl’s eyes.57 However, the percipients
55. Keel, Mothman Prophecies, ch. 6: Mothman!, section 7.
56. Keel, Mothman Prophecies, ch. 6: Mothman!, section 7.
57. Joe Nickell, “Mothman Revisited: Investigating on Site,” Skeptical Inquirer 12, no. 4 (2002): https://skepticalinquirer.org/newsletter/mothman -revisitedinvestigating-on-site/.
When the Mothman Came to Point Pleasant, West Virginia 25 of the Mothman invariably described it as looking like a very tall man, six to seven feet, with a wingspan of about ten feet. Even if we allow for some reasonable degree of memory distortion, Nickell’s explanation seems to me a stretch—literally, in this case.
That the Mothman was really a sandhill crane or a large owl was considered as a potential alternative explanation from the time of the initial sightings. Donnie Sergent asked Linda Scarberry about this possibility, but she pointed out that a large white owl had been killed recently. Despite reporters wanting to attribute the Mothman to the owl, the sizes between them were not comparable, and it was clear that the owl was a regular bird. She insisted, “ ‘What we saw was no bird, much less an owl or a crane.…I could see the muscles in the arms and legs of the Mothman. They were human-like. Not even close to a bird of any kind.” 58
As for the glowing eyes, Nickell may have been correct on this count. Loren Coleman argues that the glowing eyes did result from light reflection and provides evidence of this with a quote from Linda Scarberry saying as much as well as from a quote from the November 16, 1966, issue of the Point Pleasant Register newspaper.59 However, if the percipients are correct that the Mothman gave chase at speeds of 75–100 mph, this far exceeds the velocity capabilities of barn owls or sandhill cranes. Barn
58. Sergent and Wamsley, Mothman, “The Linda Scarberry Interview.”
59. Loren Coleman, Mothman: Evil Incarnate: The Unauthorized Companion to The Mothman Prophecies (Cosimo Books, 2017), Kindle, ch. 7: The Documentaries: Truth, Tragedy, and Trust, “SciFi Investigates Mothman.”
owls tend to fly between 10 and 20 mph.60 Sandhill cranes top out at a velocity of about 25–35 mph.61 Additionally, as is common in UFO reports, the motion of the creature seemed to violate the laws of physics. While this characteristic would be consistent with explaining Mothman sightings as hallucinations—which is unlikely on other grounds—it makes misattribution or illusion an unlikely explanation. Finally, while seeing an unusually large bird or owl may reasonably invoke initial feelings of surprise, even fear, it seems unlikely to properly account for the sheer terror experienced by many percipients. Hoaxing is untenable for similar reasons. I think a paranormal explanation is required.
The Mothman sightings in Point Pleasant were just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. From 1966 to 1967, this town, with a then population of about 6,000, served as a hotbed of paranormal activity. I grew up in Cross Lanes, West Virginia, roughly forty miles from Point Pleasant. Occasionally, family and friends would talk about the infamous “Mothman” that haunted the town during the two years leading up to December 1967 when the tragic collapse of the Silver Bridge occurred, resulting in the deaths of more than forty people. What I did not know until recently is that the Mothman was not the only paranormal entity terrorizing the townsfolk at the time.
60. “28 Frequently Asked Questions About Barn Owls,” Avian Report, accessed December 11, 2022, https://avianreport.com/questions-about -barn-owls/.
61. “Sandhill Crane Facts,” Iain Nicolson Audubon Center at Rowe Sanctuary, accessed January 13, 2025, https://rowe.audubon.org/crane-facts.
“The implications of this book and its ‘best guess’ (which is my own, too) are immense; cosmic, really.”
—Jeffrey J. Kripal, author
of How to Think Impossibly
Discover the Scientific, Spiritual, and Social Implications of UFOs and Unexplained Phenomena
Are extraterrestrial visitors from our universe or parallel realities? Do they come from the same spiritual realm as our dearly departed? How are they connected to cryptids and paranormal activity?
Sharing numerous evidential case studies, Jonathan Kendall explores the seemingly irreconcilable physical and spiritual aspects of UFOs/ UAPs. The evidence he presents has implications that could lead to revolutionary breakthroughs in the areas of communications, energy use, medicine, interstellar travel, religion, and more.
This eye-opening book investigates the connection between UFOs and kindred phenomena like monsters, Men in Black, and poltergeists. It also explores the harrowing world of UFO abductions and why the aftereffects are similar to near-death experiences and encounters with mystical realms.
These case studies shatter conventional views of reality and prove that far more is at stake than answering the question, “Are we alone in the universe?”
Jonathan Kendall is a board-certified medical doctor in internal medicine and nephrology. As a physician, he is uniquely positioned to evaluate potential medical and psychological explanations for paranormal encounters. He is well-versed in ufology literature, psychical research, quantum mechanics, and theoretical physics. The worlds of paranormal activity, metaphysics, religious studies, and science have always fascinated him.
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