In last week’s episode I postulated that part of the reason why it’s so difficult to make sense of the actions of the intelligence behind the UFO Phenomenon is because, in reality, that broad range of activity is not the result of a single actor. The data ends up looking nonsensical and contradictory to us because in one case a so-called “alien” intelligence says or does one thing, and then in the next case it does the seeming opposite. But as I argued, this apparent contradiction only exists when we assume a single intelligence and agenda is involved.

From my point of view the reality is anything but. I think what we’re dealing with is a multidimensional multiverse absolutely teeming with life. And while trickster phenomena are undoubtedly in the mix, that alone – from my point of view – doesn’t explain the bizarre mishmash of actions we see evidenced in the data. Again, I think the wide range of activity and messages attributed to these Others comes down to them being different groups – often with different agendas as well as, different sources/origins.

I also made the point in last week’s episode that, while various researchers tend to focus on one subset of the data, while ignoring, dismissing or downplaying the rest, this is the wrong approach – especially if our goal is to gain a greater understanding as to the totality of what’s going on, and to, more importantly, gain further clarity on the very fabric of ultimate reality.

I think our approach should be to attempt to identify patterns within the totality of the data. And as we do that, I think we’ll find that one particular hypothesis might better fit one aspect of the data while perhaps a different hypothesis better fits a different segment. In other words, in no way should we consider these various hypotheses to be mutually exclusive. In fact, I think it’s only in combining them within some overarching meta-conception that we can hope to achieve some semblance of clarity as to the source and nature of these various mysterious Others.

In addition to the confusion that can arise when we have data that effectively is a jumble of activity based on many different kinds of non-human intelligence, one aspect of that data that seems particularly confounding is the regularly reported humanoid form of these so-called aliens. Now, on the one hand, one might want to disregard these reports as being an anthropocentric tendency based on people who didn’t see very clearly during a certain contact or abduction experience, or who are suffering from a failing memory. And that might work, for one or a few cases. But as I already stated, these humanoid forms are described again and again and again in the UFO Phenomenon literature, so much so that we surely can’t explain this all away as blatant, inherent bias in this broad assortment of witnesses.

Not very long ago on this podcast we discussed the Future Human Hypothesis, and how this helps to elegantly explain why these Others so often appear to not only be humanoids, but actually hominids; in other words, biological beings directly descended from human beings.

But are there other possibilities that deserve consideration as a plausible explanation for their uncanny resemblance to us? I believe there are. And we’ll explore both those possibilities, as well as how various proposed hypotheses might weave together to form a fabric robust enough to contain the plurality of alien Others that have been reported over time, in this, the 51st episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

Even before H.G. Wells wrote his classic War of the Worlds, depicting an alien invasion on behalf of a technologically superior civilization from Mars, human beings have looked to the skies — meaning, more specifically, outer space — as the obvious source for visitation from a group of “Others”. As we’ve grown in our understanding of just how discombobulatingly vast our Cosmos is, populated by countless galaxies, each containing untold numbers of star systems and planets, that assumption has seemed all the more secure. The “final frontier” was clearly “out there” — and so we turned our attention, as well as our most advanced telescopes and technology — to the stars, in hopes of confirming the existence of these “Others”.

Ever since the dawn of the Atomic Age, the apparent presence of advanced craft buzzing in and around our skies, combined with reported contact between people and various non-human entities, has led many to conclude that the epoch of contact with advanced non-human intelligence is already upon us. And, of course, following the common-sense thinking of the day, these Others have been assumed to be space travelers, who’ve transversed astounding astronomical distances to arrive on and around our planet.

In more recent decades this model, termed the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, has met with some competition from what is most often termed the “Interdimensional Hypothesis”. This competing notion postulates the visitation of beings who are coming, not necessarily from far-flung star systems, but from parallel dimensions or other universes. This hypothesis has been advanced by well respected ufologists such as Jacques Vallee, who argue that the data best fits with this model.

What sometimes flies under the radar in this debate as to the origin of these Others, is a much more close-to-home explanation. It’s an explanation that is so close-to-home, in fact, that some find it downright disturbing. I speak of a model advanced most famously by a researcher named Mac Tonnies, termed “The Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis”. This hypothesis posits that these Others are actually terrestrial creatures – flesh and blood beings, just like us, co-occupants of our world, who have operated, in stealth, right alongside us, since time immemorial.

This hypothesis goes further, arguing that many of the bizarre reported sightings and interactions with beings from distant human history – I speak of faeries, elves, and such – which are of course disregarded/explained away today as mythological constructs of pre-scientific societies by modern historians – are actually incidents of contact with these very same Cryptoterrestrials.

Is it possible that the Others we’ve heard so much about, or at least some of them, could actually be terrestrial in origin – perhaps a distant off-shoot of a common human ancestor? And have they, supposed masters of stealth and disinformation, been actively misdirecting us into believing that what we’re solely dealing with are extraterrestrial visitors, simply to throw us off their scent?

This is exactly what’s postulated in Mac Tonnies’ much respected book, THE CRYPTOTERRESTRIALS: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us. Tonnies’ counter-intuitive and disconcerting Cryptoterrestrial hypothesis is the topic of this, the 13th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.