Lately speculation on alien phenomena is at an all time high. Fuelled by the US Department of Defence’s release of three UFO videos taken by US Navy Pilots and the recent #RaidArea51 meme, mainstream conversations about existence of extra terrestrial life is at an all time high – even the NSA (National Security Agency) has a site dedicated to questions they are asking on “UFO and Other Related Paranormal Topics“

But, is it apart of the Paranormal? UFO enthusiast and comedian Dave Foley mentioned in Episode 6 of Alt.Pop.Repeat made a comment that at one point that even germs were considered paranormal.

The word paranormal is a non-scientific designation that classifies, pretty much anything that lives outside of what we know to be true. This includes ghosts, telepathy, psychic powers, reincarnation, synchronicities, the power of crystals – maybe even The Secret… and technically even Aliens… but not UFOs.

But, here’s where it gets a little murky. UFOs exist, but it may not indicate extra terrestrial life, however, scientific evidence does support there is life on other other planets. So, depending on where you sit with your belief on extra terrestrial life, it may not be paranormal.

The term “UFO” (or “UFOB”) was coined in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all any unexplained reports. Their consideration was in terms of national defence, therefore, the initial definition for UFO was “any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object”

In short, UFOs are normal, and they do not live outside what we know to be true. In fact, there is a U.S. governmental agency that investigated military accounts of UFOs for at least 5 years, as reported by the New York Times. Two years later, an attempt to destigmatize the reporting of unidentified contact in the military, the Navy announced it was “updating and formalizing the process” by which pilots come forward with UFO sightings.

Then there are the 3 declassified videos released by the Pentagon that were released, “…in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sue Gough said on Monday, April 27, 2020. “The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified.’”

Although, since UFOs are real phenomena they don’t necessarily mean “alien”. In order to confirm that we would need to have some degree of controlled study of the physical evidence. But, even without that UFOs are not paranormal, which brings us back to aliens. Are aliens paranormal?

Again, it depends on where you sit on the concept of extraterrestrial life. Extraterrestrials almost certainly exist somewhere in the universe – this is not a paranormal belief – most astronomers believe that. Since 2018 NASA began exploring the universe for signs of Technosignatures in an official effort to identify whether other forms of advanced life in space.

The late Carl Sagan speculated about and searched for extraterrestrial intelligence by way of his (now defunct) SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) program. And a number of private research bodies continued those studies – generally been limited to communication signals. However, NASA’s search for the broader Technosignatures includes radio or laser emissions, signs of massive structures or an atmosphere full of pollutants – any of which could imply intelligence. 

As NASA’s 2015 Astrobiology Strategy states: “Complex life may evolve into cognitive systems that can employ technology in ways that may be observable. Nobody knows the probability, but we know that it is not zero.” As we consider the environments of other planets, “technosignatures” could be included in the possible interpretations of data we get from other worlds. 

And that data, seems to suggest that there’s at least 36 possible planets in our own Milky Way Galaxy that could potentially harbour intelligent life.

Beyond that, let’s not forget… Mars has methane… a sign that the planet may have harboured life at one point – even if it may have been a millennia ago.

So if we ask the question now, are Aliens paranormal? Well, if you consider “Aliens” to mean “Extraterrestrial Life” then no, they are not.

What does make this paranormal is the belief of connecting UFOs to extraterrestrial life. Of which many ufologists are eager to connect the claims between the UFOs in our sky to the people who are saying they have worked on and have seen UFOs up close. That, the missing piece that could transform that whole story from paranormal to scientific fact is what we need to be looking at. And, perhaps, this information isn’t in the galaxies beyond Earth but can be found in the overwhelming body of accounts from former governmental officials, scientists as well as the thousands found in declassified documents. This evidence would validate and legitimize many people who have been treated unfairly for simply sharing their story.

And this is one piece of what we talk about in episode 6 of Alt.Pop.Repeat with Jeremy Corbell and Dave Foley. We examine the disinformation machine and the impact of that on people who have come forward. We make an interesting sync as the topic of UFOs continues to take hold of our popular consciousness. Truth is, maybe we should all just take a step back and instead of discrediting the accounts people share, we listen – because like Dave and Jeremy share in the show: at one point electricity and even germs were considered paranormal.