Non-Human Intelligence & Ultraterrestrials explained

From Vallée’s “interdimensional” hypothesis to congressional hearings and the 2026 PURSUE file releases: the idea that non-human intelligences have always been with us, and what governments and scientists actually found.

The idea in brief

“Non-human intelligence” (NHI) is the term now used in US legislation and congressional hearings for intelligent beings that are not human. It deliberately leaves open where such beings might come from. The ancient-astronaut theory assumes visitors from other planets who came and went. The ultraterrestrial or interdimensional hypothesis goes further. It proposes that the intelligences behind UFOs, and behind older accounts of fairies, angels, djinn and other visitors, have always been here: in another dimension, hidden on Earth, or behind a layer of reality we don’t normally perceive.

For ancient-mysteries fans, this matters because it reframes the past. If a non-human intelligence has always shared the planet with us, then myths of sky gods, the Watchers of the Book of Enoch, the Nephilim and the teachers who appear in many founding legends may be distorted records of real contact. Some proponents also link NHI to the Nazca “tridactyl” bodies, and to the idea that ancient knowledge was handed down rather than invented.

Supporters usually make four claims:

Continuity. Modern UFO and abduction reports share motifs with much older folklore, such as missing time, abduction to another realm and strange little beings, so the phenomenon is old, not a product of the space age.
Official data. Military sensors and trained pilots have recorded objects that perform in ways no known aircraft can.
Secrecy. Governments know more than they say, and some officials have testified to recovered craft and “non-human biologics”.
Ancient testimony. Religious and mythological texts describe non-human beings who interacted with, taught or interbred with humans.

History of the idea

19th-century roots. Spiritualists and Theosophists, including H. P. Blavatsky, wrote about other “planes” and a “fourth dimension” inhabited by unseen beings. Islamic tradition has long described the jinn as intelligent beings of an unseen world, and Sufi thought describes an intermediate realm between the physical and the purely spiritual.
Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia (1969). The astronomer and computer scientist argued that modern UFO reports share structure with medieval and folkloric tales of fairies and other little people. In The Invisible College (1975) he suggested the phenomenon might act as a kind of “control system” that shapes human beliefs over long periods, rather than as a fleet of spacecraft.
John Keel, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse (1970). Keel used the word “ultraterrestrials” for non-human entities able to take whatever form they wish. He argued that such an intelligence had staged events over long periods to reinforce mistaken beliefs. His later book The Mothman Prophecies (1975) made him famous.
Whitley Strieber, Communion (1987). Strieber’s account of his own experiences brought the abduction era into the mainstream.
Graham Hancock, Supernatural (2005). Hancock applied David Lewis-Williams’ neuropsychological model of cave art to visionary experiences. He argued that encounters with apparently non-human “teachers” in altered states helped shape the emergence of modern human culture.
Diana Walsh Pasulka, American Cosmic (2019). A religious-studies professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington argued that UFO belief is becoming a new form of religion, and documented scientists and technologists who take the phenomenon seriously.
2017. The New York Times revealed the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP, 2007–2012) and published Navy infrared videos of unidentified objects.
2021–2022. A US intelligence report in June 2021 could not identify 143 of 144 objects reported between 2004 and 2021. In July 2022 the Pentagon set up the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
2023. In a US House hearing on 26 July, former intelligence officer David Grusch testified that he had been told of a multi-decade UAP crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering programme to which he was denied access (discovery entry). In September, Mexico’s Congress held a hearing in which Jaime Maussan presented two of the Nazca bodies (entry). In December, a cut-down version of the UAP Disclosure Act became law as part of the 2024 defence budget; it set up a collection of UAP records at the US National Archives.
2024. AARO’s historical report found no empirical evidence of alien technology (entry). On 13 November, a second House hearing, “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth”, heard former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo, retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, journalist Michael Shellenberger and former NASA official Michael Gold.
2026. On 19 February, President Trump said he was directing the Pentagon and other agencies to identify and release government files on “alien and extraterrestrial life”, UAP and UFOs. The resulting PURSUE programme (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters) released its first tranche of records on 8 May 2026 and its sixth on 18 September 2026.

Key evidence cited by proponents

Military UAP reports. Navy pilots and sensor operators described objects with no visible means of propulsion, recorded on infrared (FLIR) video. The 2004 “Tic Tac” encounter off California is the best-known case.
Whistleblower testimony. Grusch and others describe secret crash-retrieval programmes and say material has been kept from Congress.
Unresolved government cases. The PURSUE releases are, by definition, cases the government could not explain, and the Department of War invites outside analysis of them.
Cross-cultural folklore. Encounters with otherworldly beings, missing time and visits to other realms appear in many cultures, from Irish fairy lore to the jinn.
Ancient texts. The Book of Enoch’s Watchers, the Nephilim of Genesis 6, the flying vimanas of Sanskrit epics, and the Anunnaki as read by Zecharia Sitchin.
The tridactyl bodies from Peru, which Maussan and his collaborators say represent a non-human species (see the Nazca mummies explainer).

Who champions it

Jaime Maussan, Mexican journalist, has brought the NHI debate to two hearings of Mexico’s Congress through the Nazca bodies.
Giorgio A. Tsoukalos and Erich von Däniken have argued for ancient contact with non-human beings, mostly in the extraterrestrial form of the theory.
Graham Hancock explores the experiential side: non-human “teachers” met in visionary states (Supernatural, 2005).
Outside our Voices list, Jacques Vallée and the late John Keel are the classic authors of the interdimensional view, and Diana Walsh Pasulka studies the phenomenon as a religious-studies scholar.

The mainstream view, in fair depth

AARO (Pentagon), March 2024. Volume 1 of AARO’s report on the historical record found no empirical evidence that any US government investigation, research or programme had confirmed extraterrestrial technology, or that a hidden reverse-engineering programme existed. It attributed many sightings to classified aircraft programmes, balloons, drones and misidentification.
AARO reporting to Congress, 2024. According to AP, an unclassified 2024 report covered 485 new military reports in one year and resolved 118 of them as prosaic objects such as balloons, birds and drones. It stated that AARO had found “no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology”.
NASA UAP study (September 2023). NASA’s independent study team found no evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin, but stressed that the available data are poor, and recommended better, calibrated data collection and less stigma around reporting.
Testimony is not evidence. Scientists and sceptics such as Michael Shermer point out that sworn statements about classified material cannot be tested until the material itself is presented. After the 2023 hearing, AARO’s then-director Sean Kirkpatrick said Grusch had not brought his claims to AARO.
Folklore and psychology. Folklorists note that cultural expectations shape encounter stories, which explains many parallels without real visitors. Sleep paralysis, for example, produces “visitor” experiences in many cultures.
Ancient texts. Biblical scholars read the Watchers and Nephilim as part of Second Temple Jewish theology about the origin of evil, and Sanskrit scholars read vimanas as mythological or poetic vehicles of the gods. Sitchin’s translations of Sumerian texts are rejected by Assyriologists.
The Nazca bodies. Peruvian forensic experts described figures seized in 2023 as dolls assembled from animal and human bones with modern glue, while Peru’s Ministry of Culture registered two bodies held in Ica as pre-Hispanic heritage. See the Nazca mummies explainer for the details on both sides.

Current state of research

Government records. The PURSUE programme keeps releasing unresolved cases, and the National Archives collects UAP records under the 2023 law. So far none of the released material shows non-human technology, but many cases remain unexplained because the data are poor.
Open scientific instruments. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb founded the Galileo Project in July 2021 to search for physical evidence of extraterrestrial technology with purpose-built, openly analysed sensors, instead of relying on military data.
Congress. Members of the House Oversight Committee continue to push for disclosure and whistleblower protection. Further hearings are likely as PURSUE releases continue.
Academia. Religious-studies and folklore scholars are increasingly studying the experiences themselves, regardless of what causes them.

Open questions

What explains the small residue of well-documented, still-unexplained cases?
Is the “phenomenon” one thing or many (classified aircraft, sensor artefacts, natural effects, and perhaps something genuinely unknown)?
Will any claimed crash-retrieval material or “biologics” ever be published for independent laboratory analysis?
Why do encounter stories across cultures and centuries share so many features?
Could ancient myths of non-human teachers preserve memories of real events, or are they better explained by human psychology and religion?

Sources

Interdimensional UFO hypothesis (Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdimensional_hypothesis
Jacques Vallée (Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Vall%C3%A9e
John Keel (Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keel
Diana Walsh Pasulka (Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Walsh_Pasulka
David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims (Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Grusch_UFO_whistleblower_claims
All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-domain_Anomaly_Resolution_Office
AARO, official site. https://www.aaro.mil/
NASA, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study. https://science.nasa.gov/uap/
US House Oversight Committee, “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth” (13 Nov 2024). https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/unidentified-anomalous-phenomena-exposing-the-truth/
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, UAP provisions (Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2024
AP News, “Trump says he doesn’t know if aliens are real but directs government to release files on UFOs” (20 Feb 2026). https://apnews.com/article/trump-extraterrestrials-government-records-aliens-bafe648c8e8dfc7de1a1e90db8a1dfd0
US Department of War, PURSUE (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters). https://www.war.gov/ufo/pursue-initiative/
Avi Loeb and the Galileo Project (Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi_Loeb
Graham Hancock, Supernatural (Wikipedia, Graham Hancock article). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock
Nephilim (Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim
Book of Enoch (Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch

Non-Human Intelligence & Ultraterrestrials