Why do people believe in aliens and UFOs?

While for some, it gives hope that there are better, saner worlds out there, for others, chasing UFOs is full-time work

“Who decides what is really related or unrelated? Who defines whether the relations between objects—or between events, or spectacles of dominance across various contexts—are random and arbitrary?” Susan Lepselter argues in her book The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity, and UFOs in the American Uncanny (2016) that humankind’s fascination with UFOs cannot be easily dismissed on the basis of cold, hard facts. After all, it’s only when we grapple with the unknown that the mundaneness of life seems bearable. 

For Saptarshi Chakrabarti, a 31-year-old copywriter based in Gurugram, his fascination with the world of UFOs began on a chance encounter when he was seven years old and living in Dehradun. “I saw something very strange in the sky once with my family,” he tells The Established. “While I'm sure it was something rational because Dehradun had a military and force base, my dad took that opportunity to introduce me to the concept of aliens and the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.”

Over the next 25 years or so, Chakrabarti read almost every major book on the subject, books by Jaques Vallee, Allen J. Hynek, Erich Von Daniken and Leslie Kean, and saw several films on the topic. “But most of all, I dedicated a part of my life to scouring through tons of footage to find some that seem truly unexplainable. Sadly, there are only a handful of them.”

Chakrabarti’s own theory is that extraterrestrial life is really not that extraterrestrial, and that the sightings could be from civilisations that pretty much exist on our planet but in realms of reality not perceivable to us. They could be from our oceans, referred to as Tic Tacs popularly—strange and inexplicable objects that flow in and out of our mysterious seas. 

“These days I'm very much obsessed with Reddit subs on UFOs and waiting for that one day when the US Congress will be forced to provide disclosure to the public,” he says. “The day that happens, all hell is gonna break loose. The public won't be happy that there's something bigger than their god.”

What do these theories, these hopes of different worlds add to his life? He says that it's “the biggest question” that he wants an answer to. “It aligns with my beliefs that humanity is nothing special. We are not as powerful as we think. Money, religion, class, value systems, fame—nothing matters if there's a higher power out there. The moment you believe there are higher forms of life out there, the more you will feel how insignificant society and its rules are.”

Finding the aliens

One of the earliest memories Hitesh Yadav–a 24-year-old UFO investigator based in New Delhi–has, is that of his mother encountering a tall, rather dominating alien outside her house. It seemed to be levitating in the air, its eyes bigger than any eyes she had seen before, and with a blue-and-brown tint to the skin. The figure seemed to be moving from behind their house towards the front, landing finally outside the kitchen window. “And then it disappeared, just like that,” says Yadav. “It came out of nowhere and disappeared into nothingness. For the next one week, my mother had a bad bout of fever and chills.”

Yadav has been working in the field of UFOs for the past ten years and has to his credit, numerous publications around the same. He says that getting a fever and chills for a week is a common reaction to anyone who has had a sighting. Apart from finding aliens, he also actively traces Bigfoot—the mythical, ape-like creature popularly known as Yeti in the Himalayan states of India. For Yadav, diving into the world of UFOs is not a random pastime. He has a team of more than 350 people working under him in a wide network—tracing UFO sightings, going to the remotest villages of Rajasthan, interviewing villagers and consoling panic-stricken goat herders who can’t articulate the magnitude of what they saw. 

“Why won’t you want to know about life outside the earth? This is not for people who have a closed mind. The subject of UFOs is for people who are open-minded. Even NASA and the Pentagon have acknowledged their existence,” says Yadav. In May this year, top Pentagon officials told a House panel of the United States government that there are now close to 400 reports from military personnel of possible encounters with UFOs—a significant increase from the 144 tracked last year. Already, the Pentagon has commissioned a dedicated team of researchers to undertake a massive study to understand the existence of UFOs. However, sceptics are worried about the authenticity of the study as it is led by reality TV star Travis Taylor, who has been named as “chief scientist” and is an unapologetic believer in the supernatural. 

Hoping against hope

Mukund Deshpande, a 29-year-old web developer, says that after a particularly distressing day at work, it’s the alien porn videos on popular porn websites that make him believe in a higher purpose. To him, it’s almost the same as fantasising about voluptuous mermaids and heavenly angels. “If people believe that they will have angels serving them if they go to heaven after death, what’s so absurd about fapping to aliens? There is absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t let the absurd comfort us. Also, some of these videos are pretty creative, they make me believe in human ingenuity.”

Deshpande cites the example of one video where a rather bulbous, ripped alien is having sex with an “earthling” inside his spaceship in outer space. The entire video is on mute because its title is something to the effect of—“in space, you cannot hear the moans.” Another video that he says made him laugh his brains out was titled “Alien pegging Earth's biggest cuck.” 

“This doesn’t mean that when I come across news of a UFO sighting my mind goes in the gutter,” he clarifies. “For me, my fascination for alien porn is based on the eternal human need for something exotic and elusive.”

Seeking a form of escape 

For others, the fascination is based on the idea of escape–that the present, the human world, is so far beyond repair that there have to be saner, calmer worlds out there. Smish–a graphic designer based in Mumbai who runs the popular Instagram page @smishdesigns–says that it is terribly restricting to them to think there is only one world. “It’s not like we humans are doing the best we can when it comes to human rights and climate change despite there being so much potential in the human species,” they say. “So believing in other worlds makes me feel special and at one with the universe and the supernatural. I wonder if they have a social hierarchy like us, too, if they’re more intelligent.”

Smish says that they don’t want to believe that they are just a speck in the universe. To believe that there might be other multiverses and a part of collective consciousness is comforting. “I know that’s wishful thinking in part to form an imaginary connection with life that is beyond my perception of reality, but that’s how I feel special. Even in my own hometown, I have personally sighted something that was so distinct, it didn’t look like a plane or a drone. How can I not believe it?”

They add that the most recent UFO sightings were in Kyiv, Ukraine, and that they had come across reports that hinted at aliens stopping a “third world war”. These claims were only recently published in a new research paper by the Main Astronomical Observatory of Ukraine’s National Academy of Science.

However, in the case of Abhishek Mankotia, a 29-year-old graphic designer based in Bengaluru, his relationship with UFOs and extraterrestrial life was rooted in fear rather than curiosity. “I remember watching the movie Independence Day as a child and being scared that aliens would come and abduct me,” he says. It didn’t help that Mankotia grew up in the small town of Shimla in the 1990s. “One day, there was a loud thud outside my house which was probably a jet plane and I was sure that I was going to get abducted and my life would change forever.”

Soon, he got over it. The fears morphed into superstitions. He became interested in theories that expounded how our gods and goddesses were beings from an advanced civilisation who fought wars. After a point, alien life was only a means to feel less alone, that there was more to this world than just petty fights and jealousies. 

“Isolation and feeling alone wasn’t a bad feeling to me, even in my teens,” says Angad, a 25-year-old filmmaker from Dandeli in Karnataka, who echoes a similar sentiment. “I always felt better and had a sense of belonging when I got to spend my time alone. Usually, at nights–the nights that belong to the stars and poets–I stare directly into space and wonder about those beings, hoping to find one someday.” 

Also Read: These are India’s top 6 gaming streamers

Also Read: Why do Indian men have sex so late?

Also Read: Should we trace the origins of our kinks?