“Solid Data for Aliens among Us”: A Review of The Unknown Other and the Existential Proposition of Alien Contact by Lester Velez

  (2021). ISBN: 9798534419412

There’s been increasing mainstream coverage of supposed UAP “disclosure” in the past 5 years, beginning with the New York Times “leak” about the Pentagon’s AATIP program, followed by former government insiders joining To the Stars Academy and promising significant revelations that never came—insiders who have since gone back to the Beltway. The DoD release of US Navy footage of UAPs also happened at this time. Chairman Marco Rubio of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence then requested a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. When that much-anticipated report’s unclassified version arrived in June 2021, it was nine pages of denials and calls for increased defense funding. This past April, 1,500 pages of declassified material requested through FOIA by The Sun were released. Aside from some data on physical evidence and possible abductions, there was nothing really new, and no one’s talked much about them.

For those who have devoted their lives to the field of Ufology, these “revelations” are minor data points, because the leaders in the field have been gathering massive amounts of firsthand data for 80+ years. These large datasets are important—they are the means to identifying parallels and patterns through careful analysis and the application of a transdisciplinary approach employing hard science, psychology, spiritual studies, intuition, storytelling analysis, and history.

This is the approach of The Unknown Other and the Existential Proposition of Alien Contact. Its author, Lester Velez, is chairman and cofounder of the Organization for Paranormal Understanding and Support (OPUS), a 501(c) 3 founded in 1994. OPUS’s board, mostly PhDs and MDs, have impressive credentials in the fields I mentioned earlier. OPUS is part of a joint project with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) through a 12-member Abduction Experiencer Research Committee. Its 12 members, listed in the book, are also impressively credentialed.

OPUS offers in-person and online support groups, gathering stories from experiencers. Support groups help these experiencers compare notes, feel understood, and, most importantly, believed. There are also profound connections, such as one example from the book. An attendee sees another and says, “I’ve seen you before… on a spaceship.”

Before I continue, here’s my own disclosure. In 2009, on the border of West Virginia and Ohio, my wife and I had two and a half hours of missing time on a rural road after witnessing an interdimensional being. In late 2020, we underwent hypnosis to recover the missing time and learned that we had been abducted (I agree with Velez that this word has negative connotations, as opposed to contactee, which is more positive). We have spoken about our experiences numerous times since and, disliking the term abductee, we refer to ourselves as experiencers (a neutral term also in line with this book).

Months earlier, I had suddenly, borderline compulsively, started studying contactee/abductee cases for episodes of our podcast. I looked at the 12 or so most well-known cases and was also very interested in the work of Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Mack and Barbara Lamb.

Velez’s own background involves his UFO research during the Hudson Valley, New York, sightings that occurred between 1983 and 1986, and his later joining MUFON.

The core of the science is by way of the 2010 OMEGA 3 Study, which considered 71 individuals who reported one or more abduction experiences (keep in mind that Dr. Mack estimated that as many as 1 in 50 people have these experiences). The researchers considered explanations such as religious hallucinations and overactive imaginations; identified a pattern of reliance on dissociation; and found a change in mindset, with many experiencers embracing a more spiritual worldview and lifestyle. I’ve interviewed numerous researchers and authors with advanced degrees in a variety of fields who see this final trend as well. People also express a deep interest in science, history, and politics that they never had prior to the contact (cf. my compulsion to study these phenomena months before learning I was an experiencer). The Omega 3 researchers found two factors—temporal lobe signs and complex partial epilepsy signs—that predict easier access to anomalous experiences. This echoes experiments by neurologists on UFOs, ghosts, nightmares, and hallucinations in relation to elevated electromagnetic levels, such as lightning storms. Hereditary aspects play a role, which may signal gene evolution/manipulation. O negative blood figures in as well—more than half of experiencers are Rh negative. Appendix A provides a detailed report of the study, presented in American Psychological Association style.  

Studies like these and academic papers with names like “Physiological and Psychological Effects Attributed to Contact with Non-Human Intelligences” have helped build credibility for experiencers, although I still maintain that detailed case studies such as OPUS collects are the key piece of making our way to the truth.

In reading the dozens of case studies collected by OPUS over the years (which range from half a page to more than twenty), you will find that they are all compelling. They are not pedestrian or tame… they push the furthest boundaries of credulity, which is why they are so valuable. More importantly, they provide abundant data for looking at parallels and patterns.

Here’s a sample: Alien types (short, drone-worker greys; tall greys; praying mantis; reptoids/reptilians; Nordics; all white aliens with distinctive eyes [seven illustrations provided]), oft-mentioned locales like Mt. Shasta, lost/missing/compressed time, unexplained marks or wounds on the body (including doctors convinced the person had surgery; nine color photographs of commonly reported marks provided), missing fetuses, alien alphabets (nine photographic examples), constellations/star systems (Sirius, Orion, Zeta Reticuli, Pleiades, Draco, Ganymede), military abductions (milabs), moving through walls (some using light to alter their composition), hybridization/visiting offspring on ships, experiences since childhood, engines/equipment failing (in response to elevated electromagnetic levels; see the table created by an engineer and physicist with compelling sensory data). There are even encounters with the enigmatic Pentagon visitor Valiant Thor. I find the overlaps with locations and typology with the David Paulides 411 abductions and disappearances to be of importance (e.g., a 2-year-old walking 6 to 8 miles after disappearing).

There’s also a detailed chapter on implants and the work of Roger Leir. I have been interested in this work for many years, and have spoken with author and documentarian LA Marzulli about his work with Dr. Leir. There are four photos of implants provided.

When you consider the trauma of egg/sperm extraction/implantation, the heartbreak experiencers report at losing a pregnancy or learning there’s no longer a fetus in their womb, or visits to spaceships where they spend time with their hybrid children (I interviewed a man 3 weeks ago who endured this), dismissing these experiences as fantasy is cruel.

Also consider an experiencer who suffered the tearing of the distal bicep tendons completely off their arms. That in no way sounds like a dream or hallucination to me. Does it to you?  

Appendix B is the full text of the June 21, 2021 unclassified version of the report requested by Senator Rubio. This document denies any conclusive evidence and promulgates the threat and increased defense budget rhetoric that’s marked the supposed Disclosure movement from Washington and its operatives embedded in the UFO community from the start. Reading this document on the heels of the hundreds of pages of first-person reports in this book illuminates just how far we have to go before the military-industrial-intelligence complex is ready to tell the public the truth about extraterrestrial contact. 

With a foreword by the much-respected Linda Moulton Howe, The Unknown Other and the Existential Proposition of Alien Contact is a must-read for ufologists, experiencers, and those close to them, and, perhaps most importantly, for those healthy skeptics who are searching for hard evidence as they consider these in many ways dark and disturbing phenomena.