I walk with our dog Ouiser through an old goat pasture pockmarked with gopher mounds. She walks gingerly, stiff-legged, like crossing a minefield. She pauses and cocks her head, this way, then that. Hearing what I cannot. Smelling what I cannot. Then she stiffens, cocks her head again, pounces and comes up empty-handed.
The dog’s perception of her environment is markedly different from mine. We occupy the same space but look and behave, think and respond differently. If not for a centuries-old familiarity, we would view each other as alien.
On a September day in 1994, 62 children on recess at a private Zimbabwe school saw one or more silver discs land in a nearby field. Investigating, they encountered human-like figures clothed in black with large, dark eyes, slits for mouths, and waxy skin. When interviewed individually, the kids’ descriptions and experiences were consistent. They said they communicated with the beings with thoughts rather than words, and the telepathic message was clear: cut pollution and stop harming the planet.
As with all alleged extraterrestrial encounters, there were skeptics. But years following the event the students are sticking to their story with a conviction that what they experienced was an encounter with an alien life form.
It’s curious that petroglyphs left by the ancients some 8000 years ago include drawings eerily similar to modern day alien descriptions, and may include images of what appear to be beings in spacesuits. Ancient civilizations of Chinese, Mayans, Aztecs and Incas spoke of visitors coming from the heavens with knowledge for mankind. The historic record holds no shortage of eyewitness claims suggesting we’re not alone in the universe.
There are hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy and over two trillion galaxies in the known universe. That reality allows a high probability that life has evolved elsewhere. Scientists today generally agree that simple life forms likely exist beyond earth, but are less united that there are advanced civilizations.
In the past few years a number of military pilots have come forward with video documentation of UFO’s (better known today as UAP— Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon) caught on radar. The objects defy known laws of physics, move at extreme speeds, stop and turn abruptly, enter the ocean without a splash and move underwater with no apparent resistance.
The videos made the news despite the crafts being poorly defined in blurred images, like so many snapshots of Sasquatch. In a 2025 documentary, The Age of Disclosure, quantum physicist Hal Puthoff described how blurring could be caused by a “warp bubble,” where spacetime is captured and wrapped in some kind of energy shield. Mind-twisting stuff.
In theory, it could actually explain how a UAP doesn’t move through air or water like a manmade vehicle. The craft would be in its own unearthly environment, insulated from air and water and gravitational forces. The theory could explain many baffling mysteries that have accompanied reported UAPs for decades.
The Age of Disclosure focuses on an 80-year government coverup of UAP sightings and the retrieval of crashed alien crafts with their occupants. According to the documentary, the information has been carefully guarded— even presidents are kept in the dark and informed on a need-to-know basis.
There have been an especially high number of sightings around nuclear installations, be they power plants, missile silos, or submarines. Maybe the higher frequency is related to the increased surveillance around such things. Or maybe not. There are documented reports of spacecraft hovering over missile silos and rendering them inoperable, leading to speculation that alien life may intervene if broadscale nuclear war becomes imminent.
It’s a nice thought— that we might be spared self destruction by some advanced life form, that we might be shown a way to some new and unlimited clean energy, that our earthly paradise might be savedm. But considering world history, the nation first to grasp this advanced technology would likely use it to subdue long held adversaries rather than embrace a new intergalactic era for the benefit of all.
There is talk that extraterrestrial life could be living among us. Think of the movie Cocoon— aliens clothed in human skin, monitoring our activities, moving towards some undisclosed objective.
It has me thinking Ouiser is from a different star system. She’s worked her way into my everyday, trained me to walk behind her and pick up her poop, deceived me into believing she is poor at catching gophers when she can neutralize all she wants with lasers shot from her eyeballs. At night, she curls next to my sleeping form and beams the day’s synopsis to a disc shrouded in an energy bubble somewhere in the darkness of space. Before all is lost, she’ll intercede. I’m sure of it.
