Experiencers are people who report direct contact with unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), non-human intelligences (NHI), or other anomalous events such as prophetic dreams, ghost sightings, telepathic communication, or time distortions. These encounters often profoundly affect individuals and resist easy explanation. Once dismissed as delusion or relegated to science fiction, these accounts are now being seriously considered by scientists, psychologists, and scholars.

Dr. John Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize winner, studied hundreds of individuals who claimed to have had contact with alien beings. Instead of dismissing their experiences, Mack suggested that such encounters often held spiritual, ecological, or transformational meaning. His work proposed that our understanding of reality might need to evolve to incorporate the psychological, symbolic, and transpersonal dimensions of human experience.

Whitley Strieber, author of Communion, is another well-known experiencer. His memoir describes a lifetime of strange encounters with beings he refers to as “the visitors,” entities that defy simple classification as aliens or spirits. Strieber’s work has been pivotal in reshaping the conversation, moving away from fear-based narratives to deeper inquiries into consciousness, communication, and reality.

Strieber has also received an extraordinary volume of correspondence from people sharing similar experiences. Over the years, he received thousands of letters from other experiencers, each detailing their own encounters.

These letters and all of Macks transcripts have been archived as part of the Archives of the Impossible at Rice University, a collection dedicated to preserving and studying the accounts of those who have had direct contact with anomalous phenomena. The archive aims to treat these experiences as legitimate subjects of scholarly inquiry, providing a valuable resource for future research and understanding. They are currently digitalizing the entire collection, and using AI to do metadata analysis. This is an awesome feat and a true gift to future scholars of the anomalous.

An interesting aspect of experiencers is that these encounters are often multi-generational. Families report having these experiences across generations, suggesting that these phenomena may follow familial or genetic lines.

In many cases, trauma appears to be a common link, as those who have undergone difficult life events—whether personal, societal, or even collective—seem to be more likely to experience these phenomena. It’s unclear whether the trauma opens up their perception to these experiences or if the encounters themselves lead to a type of psychological or spiritual trauma. What’s clear is that trauma often acts as a trigger, expanding the awareness of those who have been affected.

Experiencer accounts are diverse, ranging from terrifying to enlightening. What unites them is their challenge to our current models of science, psychology, and belief. They are deeply human stories of awe, disruption, and meaning-making, inviting us to reconsider what we know about reality and our place within it.

As an experiencer myself, I know how hard it can be to put these moments into words. They don’t fit neatly into our categories. But the more I’ve opened up, the more I’ve met others who carry similar stories. Different details, same patterns. The same sense that something real and mysterious is touching our lives.

Finding each other is powerful. It reminds us we’re not alone. It helps us remember what we’ve seen, what we’ve felt, what we somehow know.