Jacques Vallée, UFOs, and the Case against Extraterrestrial Origins
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There is probably no more influential thinker in the study of UFOs than the French astronomer and computer scientist, Jacques Vallée. Beginning in the late 1960s, Vallée drew ufologists’ attention to the symbolic or “meta-logical” qualities of UFO reports, and argued that there was a continuity of experience from anomalous sightings and entity encounters in historical folklore and mythology. For pioneering the first alternatives to the extraterrestrial explanation for UFOs, Vallée has earned a reputation as the grandfather of the “new” ufology, and he’s forced ufologists and anomalists of all persuasions to revisit old assumptions about UFOs, and what it is they’re doing here.
Early Career
Vallée had an early exposure to the UFO phenomenon. In 1955, during a wave of sightings in France that had started the previous year, a 16-year-old Vallée and his mother saw a disc with a half-dome on top hovering half a kilometer away from their home in Pontoise. Vallée’s mother said that the UFO eventually just flew away leaving a few “puffs of white substance” behind, but Jacques had no memory of seeing it leave.(1) A few years later in 1958, while doing his undergraduate in mathematics, Vallée sent a letter to the prominent French ufologist, Aimé Michel, beginning a lifelong correspondence and partnership. Vallée then completed the equivalent of a Master of Science in Astrophysics in 1961.
While working on staff at the artificial satellite service of the Paris Observatory later that year, Vallée learned that his team had tracked the movement of a bright, unknown object orbiting the Earth in retrograde. However, when the team’s superior came in to see the evidence, he immediately had the Telex tape destroyed. Naturally, this experience convinced Vallée that astronomers and other scientists were not always so honest about the data they collected on UFOs.(2)
Soon after, in 1962, Vallée moved to Evanston, Illinois to begin a PhD in computer science at Northwestern University. There he met Dr. Josef Allen Hynek, scientific consultant to Project Blue Book, the UFO investigation group of the US Air Force. Together with an informal network of scientists and social scientists, Hynek and Vallée shared their UFO research and discussed possible explanations for the data. This group, which included American hypnotherapist Leo Sprinkle and French astrophysicist Claude Poher, called themselves the “Invisible College,” after a network of natural philosophers in the 17th century.(3)
Vallée published two books on UFOs in this period: Anatomy of a Phenomenon in 1965, and A Challenge to Science in 1966, both of which advocated the popular extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs, or the ETH. These books brought a level of scientific rigor to ufology at a time when it was dominated by the sensationalized, pulp style of Donald Keyhoe and Frank Edwards, and they earned the still-young Vallée a reputation as a leading authority on the UFO phenomenon.
In the fall of 1966, both Vallée and Hynek were invited to consult on the recently-established Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Both had wanted to join the study’s team, but were barred for their public advocacy of UFO research. They were thus powerless to stop project leaders Edward Condon and Robert Low from narrowing the study in such a way as to completely disregard the bulk of Blue Book’s cases. The final report - commonly referred to as the Condon Report - was published in 1968, and discouraged further research into UFOs, concluding that such research would be of no benefit to science or national defense.(4) After the report met with near-unanimous praise from leading scientists and media figures, Vallée returned to France in disgust, and temporarily retreated from the scientific community.
Beyond the ETH
After years of speaking with UFO witnesses, and many discussions with the “invisible college” of UFO scientists, Vallée began to feel that the extraterrestrial hypothesis – or the idea that UFOs were operated by extraterrestrial beings – was too simplistic to account for the great variety of UFO reports, and the incredible experiences of witnesses. In particular, Vallée was puzzled by the fact that many UFO sightings coincided with other paranormal phenomena, such as apparitional experiences and poltergeist activity. He was also puzzled by the fact that many cases involved highly implausible scenarios, with specific elements that could hardly be expected of intelligent, interstellar travelers with superior technologies.
For example, in an interview in 1975, Vallée remarked upon the large number of cases in which witnesses encountered UFOs in the middle of the road, apparently under repair by their “alien” crew, or with the crew nearby, engaged in something else. He pointed out that it made no sense for intelligent beings to land in the middle of a roadway when they could have easily landed out of sight, and wondered instead if these scenes were contrived only to present their witnesses with certain images.(5)
Inspired by Carl Jung’s seminal 1958 essay on UFOs as modern-day myth, Vallée wondered if UFO and entity encounters might be representations of things beyond their physical forms, and might communicate things on an abstract, symbolic level, rather than on a strictly literal one. He searched the historical record for stories of aerial wonders and supernatural beings, and found a number of common themes with modern UFO reports.
In his next book, 1969’s Passport to Magonia, Vallée presented a selection of historical sightings of aerial wonders and entity encounters and compared them to modern UFO reports, proposing that the UFO phenomenon began hundreds, if not thousands of years before Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting in 1947.(6) Magonia was one of the first UFO books to feature the reference in a treatise by the French Bishop, Agobard, to flying ships from a sky-realm called Magonia, from which Vallée got his title. It was also among the first to tell of the mystery airship sightings of 1896 and '7, and the medieval story of a flying ship dropping anchor over the British Isles, as told by Gervase of Tilbury. Ancient medieval and modern sightings differed only in the technologies described by the witnesses, although many sightings of lights in the sky are nearly identical across all eras.
Vallée found that not only did most stories involve similar flying craft, they also involved similar entities, or ufonauts. Vallée noted the similarities between medieval European stories of faeries, lutins, and kobolds, for example, and the short, “alien” beings seen by abductees and other 20th-century UFO witnesses. He also explored tales of similar entity encounters in European myth and Judeo-Christian demonology. All of these entities were known to occasionally abduct their witnesses, and leave them with symptoms of paralysis, fatigue, disorientation, and amnesia. Those who accepted these beings’ invitations were frequently taken to other worlds, or else reported “missing” periods of time that they could not consciously account for.(7)
To explain these otherworldly visitors, Vallée proposed the existence of a technologically-mediated, extradimensional intelligence that has operated throughout human history, masquerading as creatures of myth and legend in the witnesses’ cultures. This intelligence, he suggested, has repeatedly manifested itself in the form of a technologically or spiritually-advanced civilization, out of the reach of human technologies, and just outside the understanding of the witnesses. It has evolved its appearance to keep up with our changing worldview and ever-advancing technologies, but always represents what’s just ahead of us in our vision of the future, or what’s just above us in our conception of the hierarchy of beings.
For example, this intelligence appeared over Medieval Europe in flying sailing ships, while the continent’s brightest minds still wondered if there was another layer of thinner air above our own that was home to another civilization. In 1896, the same intelligence appeared over the Western United States in flying machines with flapping wings while inventors all across the country were trying to solve the problem of heavier-than-air flight. The intelligence then appeared in rounded, metallic saucers in the late 1940s when the world’s superpowers began experimenting with jet engines and disc-shaped craft, and just before humanity’s exploration of outer space renewed interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
To many ufologists today, Passport to Magonia is considered a breakthrough in our understanding of UFOs. But initially, at least, Vallée’s views made him an outcast in the UFO community, which had largely formed a consensus on the extraterrestrial hypothesis. In his own words, Vallée became a “heretic amongst heretics.” Still, he continued to build upon the same hypothesis for the rest of his career. Along with the like-minded anomalist, John Keel, Vallée created the first major rift in the UFO community: between those who believed that the visitors were aliens, and those who sought out alternative explanations.
A New Paradigm
Vallée’s next books came in 1975: The Invisible College, also published as UFOs: The Psychic Solution, and a lengthy interview he did with Hynek that was published as The Edge of Reality. Vallée proposed that the UFO phenomenon acted as a kind of “control system” to alter human belief systems and social structures over long periods of time.(8) By drawing from powerful archetypes in our evolving cultural repertoire, they create a myth about themselves – their origin, means of travel, and purpose for visiting – which in turn influences our mythology with each new encounter.
The specific content and logic of these encounters are self-contradicting and frequently absurd, but what Vallée called the “meta-logic,” or their deeper, symbolic meaning or purpose, was consistent in challenging people’s understanding of reality and permanently altering their psyches.(9) For example, Vallée explored the apparitions at Fatima in 1917 as a potential case of UFO contact, and drew attention to the many comments from witnesses of the so-called “Miracle of the Sun” who claimed that the event changed their perception of the world forever.(10)
In 1979’s Messengers of Deception, Vallée argued that the UFO phenomenon had physical, psychological, and social dimensions to it, and he expounded at length on the latter two.(11) He suggested that there was “a machinery of mass manipulation behind the UFO Phenomenon” that was attempting to create “a new form of belief” based around an expectation of contact with alien beings. Without being able to identify what “they” were, exactly, Vallée suggested that
There is probably no more influential thinker in the study of UFOs than the French astronomer and computer scientist, Jacques Vallée. Beginning in the late 1960s, Vallée drew ufologists’ attention to the symbolic or “meta-logical” qualities of UFO reports, and argued that there was a continuity of experience from anomalous sightings and entity encounters in historical folklore and mythology. For pioneering the first alternatives to the extraterrestrial explanation for UFOs, Vallée has earned a reputation as the grandfather of the “new” ufology, and he’s forced ufologists and anomalists of all persuasions to revisit old assumptions about UFOs, and what it is they’re doing here.
Early Career
Vallée had an early exposure to the UFO phenomenon. In 1955, during a wave of sightings in France that had started the previous year, a 16-year-old Vallée and his mother saw a disc with a half-dome on top hovering half a kilometer away from their home in Pontoise. Vallée’s mother said that the UFO eventually just flew away leaving a few “puffs of white substance” behind, but Jacques had no memory of seeing it leave.(1) A few years later in 1958, while doing his undergraduate in mathematics, Vallée sent a letter to the prominent French ufologist, Aimé Michel, beginning a lifelong correspondence and partnership. Vallée then completed the equivalent of a Master of Science in Astrophysics in 1961.
While working on staff at the artificial satellite service of the Paris Observatory later that year, Vallée learned that his team had tracked the movement of a bright, unknown object orbiting the Earth in retrograde. However, when the team’s superior came in to see the evidence, he immediately had the Telex tape destroyed. Naturally, this experience convinced Vallée that astronomers and other scientists were not always so honest about the data they collected on UFOs.(2)
Soon after, in 1962, Vallée moved to Evanston, Illinois to begin a PhD in computer science at Northwestern University. There he met Dr. Josef Allen Hynek, scientific consultant to Project Blue Book, the UFO investigation group of the US Air Force. Together with an informal network of scientists and social scientists, Hynek and Vallée shared their UFO research and discussed possible explanations for the data. This group, which included American hypnotherapist Leo Sprinkle and French astrophysicist Claude Poher, called themselves the “Invisible College,” after a network of natural philosophers in the 17th century.(3)
Vallée published two books on UFOs in this period: Anatomy of a Phenomenon in 1965, and A Challenge to Science in 1966, both of which advocated the popular extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs, or the ETH. These books brought a level of scientific rigor to ufology at a time when it was dominated by the sensationalized, pulp style of Donald Keyhoe and Frank Edwards, and they earned the still-young Vallée a reputation as a leading authority on the UFO phenomenon.
In the fall of 1966, both Vallée and Hynek were invited to consult on the recently-established Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Both had wanted to join the study’s team, but were barred for their public advocacy of UFO research. They were thus powerless to stop project leaders Edward Condon and Robert Low from narrowing the study in such a way as to completely disregard the bulk of Blue Book’s cases. The final report - commonly referred to as the Condon Report - was published in 1968, and discouraged further research into UFOs, concluding that such research would be of no benefit to science or national defense.(4) After the report met with near-unanimous praise from leading scientists and media figures, Vallée returned to France in disgust, and temporarily retreated from the scientific community.
Beyond the ETH
After years of speaking with UFO witnesses, and many discussions with the “invisible college” of UFO scientists, Vallée began to feel that the extraterrestrial hypothesis – or the idea that UFOs were operated by extraterrestrial beings – was too simplistic to account for the great variety of UFO reports, and the incredible experiences of witnesses. In particular, Vallée was puzzled by the fact that many UFO sightings coincided with other paranormal phenomena, such as apparitional experiences and poltergeist activity. He was also puzzled by the fact that many cases involved highly implausible scenarios, with specific elements that could hardly be expected of intelligent, interstellar travelers with superior technologies.
For example, in an interview in 1975, Vallée remarked upon the large number of cases in which witnesses encountered UFOs in the middle of the road, apparently under repair by their “alien” crew, or with the crew nearby, engaged in something else. He pointed out that it made no sense for intelligent beings to land in the middle of a roadway when they could have easily landed out of sight, and wondered instead if these scenes were contrived only to present their witnesses with certain images.(5)
Inspired by Carl Jung’s seminal 1958 essay on UFOs as modern-day myth, Vallée wondered if UFO and entity encounters might be representations of things beyond their physical forms, and might communicate things on an abstract, symbolic level, rather than on a strictly literal one. He searched the historical record for stories of aerial wonders and supernatural beings, and found a number of common themes with modern UFO reports.
In his next book, 1969’s Passport to Magonia, Vallée presented a selection of historical sightings of aerial wonders and entity encounters and compared them to modern UFO reports, proposing that the UFO phenomenon began hundreds, if not thousands of years before Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting in 1947.(6) Magonia was one of the first UFO books to feature the reference in a treatise by the French Bishop, Agobard, to flying ships from a sky-realm called Magonia, from which Vallée got his title. It was also among the first to tell of the mystery airship sightings of 1896 and '7, and the medieval story of a flying ship dropping anchor over the British Isles, as told by Gervase of Tilbury. Ancient medieval and modern sightings differed only in the technologies described by the witnesses, although many sightings of lights in the sky are nearly identical across all eras.
Vallée found that not only did most stories involve similar flying craft, they also involved similar entities, or ufonauts. Vallée noted the similarities between medieval European stories of faeries, lutins, and kobolds, for example, and the short, “alien” beings seen by abductees and other 20th-century UFO witnesses. He also explored tales of similar entity encounters in European myth and Judeo-Christian demonology. All of these entities were known to occasionally abduct their witnesses, and leave them with symptoms of paralysis, fatigue, disorientation, and amnesia. Those who accepted these beings’ invitations were frequently taken to other worlds, or else reported “missing” periods of time that they could not consciously account for.(7)
To explain these otherworldly visitors, Vallée proposed the existence of a technologically-mediated, extradimensional intelligence that has operated throughout human history, masquerading as creatures of myth and legend in the witnesses’ cultures. This intelligence, he suggested, has repeatedly manifested itself in the form of a technologically or spiritually-advanced civilization, out of the reach of human technologies, and just outside the understanding of the witnesses. It has evolved its appearance to keep up with our changing worldview and ever-advancing technologies, but always represents what’s just ahead of us in our vision of the future, or what’s just above us in our conception of the hierarchy of beings.
For example, this intelligence appeared over Medieval Europe in flying sailing ships, while the continent’s brightest minds still wondered if there was another layer of thinner air above our own that was home to another civilization. In 1896, the same intelligence appeared over the Western United States in flying machines with flapping wings while inventors all across the country were trying to solve the problem of heavier-than-air flight. The intelligence then appeared in rounded, metallic saucers in the late 1940s when the world’s superpowers began experimenting with jet engines and disc-shaped craft, and just before humanity’s exploration of outer space renewed interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
To many ufologists today, Passport to Magonia is considered a breakthrough in our understanding of UFOs. But initially, at least, Vallée’s views made him an outcast in the UFO community, which had largely formed a consensus on the extraterrestrial hypothesis. In his own words, Vallée became a “heretic amongst heretics.” Still, he continued to build upon the same hypothesis for the rest of his career. Along with the like-minded anomalist, John Keel, Vallée created the first major rift in the UFO community: between those who believed that the visitors were aliens, and those who sought out alternative explanations.
A New Paradigm
Vallée’s next books came in 1975: The Invisible College, also published as UFOs: The Psychic Solution, and a lengthy interview he did with Hynek that was published as The Edge of Reality. Vallée proposed that the UFO phenomenon acted as a kind of “control system” to alter human belief systems and social structures over long periods of time.(8) By drawing from powerful archetypes in our evolving cultural repertoire, they create a myth about themselves – their origin, means of travel, and purpose for visiting – which in turn influences our mythology with each new encounter.
The specific content and logic of these encounters are self-contradicting and frequently absurd, but what Vallée called the “meta-logic,” or their deeper, symbolic meaning or purpose, was consistent in challenging people’s understanding of reality and permanently altering their psyches.(9) For example, Vallée explored the apparitions at Fatima in 1917 as a potential case of UFO contact, and drew attention to the many comments from witnesses of the so-called “Miracle of the Sun” who claimed that the event changed their perception of the world forever.(10)
In 1979’s Messengers of Deception, Vallée argued that the UFO phenomenon had physical, psychological, and social dimensions to it, and he expounded at length on the latter two.(11) He suggested that there was “a machinery of mass manipulation behind the UFO Phenomenon” that was attempting to create “a new form of belief” based around an expectation of contact with alien beings. Without being able to identify what “they” were, exactly, Vallée suggested that
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their purpose may be to achieve social changes on this planet. Their methods are those of deception: systematic manipulation of witnesses and contactees’; covert use of various sects and cults; control of the channels through which the alleged “space messages” can make an impact on the public.(12)
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Vallée thus argued that in order to fully understand the UFO phenomenon, one had to understand the network of religious groups, contact cults, and government intelligence agencies that intersected it. He also observed that the UFO phenomenon perpetrates its own cover-up, by cloaking itself in absurdity so as to be rejected by mainstream culture. As he put it, “the phenomenon negates itself.”
Vallée also questioned whether a scientific investigation was sufficient to understand the UFO phenomenon. Science, he argued, had only ever studied the “natural and spontaneous” world of earth, water, plants, and animals. Never had scientists attempted to understand something that intentionally deceived its investigators, and led them into false beliefs. He suggested that ufologists might need to think more like detectives than forensic scientists, and attempt to understand the intelligence behind the perpetrators’ machinations.(13)
Between 1988 and 1991 Vallée published three books – Dimensions, Confrontations, and Revelations – that are together known as the Alien Contact trilogy for their focus on entity encounters. In Dimensions, Vallée provides one of the most comprehensive summations of his theories on UFOs and ufonauts.(14) In Confrontations, he documented several examples of UFOs causing physical harm and death. For example, he introduced the world to a wave of UFO encounters around Parnarama, Brazil, in the early 80s, in which flying box-like objects that the locals called “chupas” chased people through the wilderness, and shot fiery beams that left physical injuries. At least five deer hunters died after encounters with the chupas, including one man who went “insane with fear” after being shot by one.(15) In Revelations, Vallée exposed a number of popular UFO hoaxes, including the famous Roswell case, and criticized the public’s fixation on mythologies about Area 51 and alleged US government secrets.(16)
In Dimensions and in a 1990 article for the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vallée presented five arguments for rejecting the extraterrestrial hypothesis, which was still dominant at the time. First, he argued that there were far more landings and contacts than would be necessary for an interplanetary survey, or surveillance operation. By his and others’ estimates, there must have been three million UFO landings around the world in the last 20 years, an impossibly large number. Second, UFOs and ufonauts rarely flew away or walked off when they left. Often, they simply vanished, “blinked” out of existence, or slowly faded away. This suggests that the craft and occupants were more like “projections” than physical things.
Third, the bodies, actions, and abilities of the ufonauts do not suggest an extraterrestrial or evolutionary origin. Often, the “aliens” were identical to humans, spoke our language, and were perfectly capable of breathing our air and walking in our gravity. Fourth, Vallée noted that most of the ufonauts’ revelations, especially those concerning their origins, were nonsense, and almost entirely different from one another. Ufonauts claimed to be from just about everywhere in the universe, and frequently gave directions or offered maps that made no logical sense, such as the two-dimensional “star map” shown to Betty Hill. Finally, Vallée argued that the data collected from cases of so-called “alien abduction” was unreliable, and again involved highly unlikely scenarios. For example, abductees frequently describe highly invasive and painful medical procedures in order to achieve tasks that even doctors in the 1980s could have done with minimal discomfort.(17)
Since 1990
Vallée traveled to the Soviet Union in January 1990 with Martine Castello of the French newspaper, Le Figaro, to study manifestations of the UFO phenomenon there. He published UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union in 1992 to share some of the cases that he’d investigated, and to report on what he’d learned from scientists, government officials, and intelligence officers in Moscow.(18) In 1991, Vallée made his contribution to the crop circle debate in New Age magazine, arguing that some of the circles, at least, were made by military aerial devices that fired focused microwave beams at the ground. In the Spring of 2010, Vallée also published a series of articles on BoingBoing.net building on this hypothesis.(19)
Since the early 90s, Vallée’s output on the topic of UFOs and anomalous phenomena diminished considerably, though he remains active in the field. Vallée is also an active venture capitalist, as well as a prolific author on investing, technology, and science fiction.
In 2003, a historian of UFOs named Chris Aubeck created an online forum called the Magonia Exchange in order to share resources on UFO sightings before 1947. Through his work with the project he was introduced to Jacques Vallée, and together, they published a compendium of 500 descriptions of anomalous aerial sightings from antiquity to the dawn of the industrial revolution. The book allows for easy comparison of sightings across different cultures and historical eras, and demonstrates the “metalogical” continuity of these events over time.
Since then, Vallée has lent his voice to several of the recent moves towards government disclosure in the US. He wrote the forward to the first book in Tom DeLonge’s Sekret Machines: Gods series, in which DeLonge and his co-author explored world religions as historical UFO contact cults.(20) Vallée also appeared on the popular Joe Rogan Experience Podcast with filmmaker James Fox in December 2020, after the two collaborated on a documentary called The Phenomenon. Vallée talked about the recent disclosures from Luis Elizondo and the UAP Task Force. Although he pushed back against the narrative that UFOs are threats to national security, he lent credence to the idea that certain government labs in the US had obtained pieces of crashed UFOs – including one from a UFO over Washington D.C. in 1952 – and shown them to have some remarkable qualities. However, Vallée declined to go into specifics, supposedly to avoid compromising ongoing research. When Rogan asked him directly for his own explanation of the UFO phenomenon, Vallée said that there was “some form of consciousness out there that’s teaching us something.”(21)
In May of 2021, Jacques Vallée self-published a book with investigative reporter Paola Leopizzi Harris that breaks the story of an alleged UFO crash in 1945 that occurred 20 miles from the site of the first atomic bomb explosion in White Sands, New Mexico.(22) The still-living witnesses claim to have seen not only the crash of the object, but the entirety of the US government’s retrieval process.
Legacy
Not only did Vallée provide the first real alternative to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, he helped break ufology’s exclusive focus on the physical origin of UFOs, while drawing attention to their effects on people, society, and civilization. This shift in perspective has lead “new ufologists” like John Mack, Hilary Evans, and Micah Hanks, as well as other scholars and thinkers such as, Brad Steiger, Jason-Reza Jourjani, and Graham Hancock to recognize linkages between UFOs, consciousness, and other anomalous phenomena, and to explore theoretical frameworks for understanding all of them together.
Vallée has left his mark on popular culture, serving as the inspiration for Claude Lacombe in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But his legacy is built on the far-reaching impact that he’s had on ufology, and anomalistics more generally. Vallée has made a number of game-changing breakthroughs in our understanding of UFOs, and he inspired a generation of ufologists to ask a new set of questions about the phenomenon.
Vallée also questioned whether a scientific investigation was sufficient to understand the UFO phenomenon. Science, he argued, had only ever studied the “natural and spontaneous” world of earth, water, plants, and animals. Never had scientists attempted to understand something that intentionally deceived its investigators, and led them into false beliefs. He suggested that ufologists might need to think more like detectives than forensic scientists, and attempt to understand the intelligence behind the perpetrators’ machinations.(13)
Between 1988 and 1991 Vallée published three books – Dimensions, Confrontations, and Revelations – that are together known as the Alien Contact trilogy for their focus on entity encounters. In Dimensions, Vallée provides one of the most comprehensive summations of his theories on UFOs and ufonauts.(14) In Confrontations, he documented several examples of UFOs causing physical harm and death. For example, he introduced the world to a wave of UFO encounters around Parnarama, Brazil, in the early 80s, in which flying box-like objects that the locals called “chupas” chased people through the wilderness, and shot fiery beams that left physical injuries. At least five deer hunters died after encounters with the chupas, including one man who went “insane with fear” after being shot by one.(15) In Revelations, Vallée exposed a number of popular UFO hoaxes, including the famous Roswell case, and criticized the public’s fixation on mythologies about Area 51 and alleged US government secrets.(16)
In Dimensions and in a 1990 article for the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vallée presented five arguments for rejecting the extraterrestrial hypothesis, which was still dominant at the time. First, he argued that there were far more landings and contacts than would be necessary for an interplanetary survey, or surveillance operation. By his and others’ estimates, there must have been three million UFO landings around the world in the last 20 years, an impossibly large number. Second, UFOs and ufonauts rarely flew away or walked off when they left. Often, they simply vanished, “blinked” out of existence, or slowly faded away. This suggests that the craft and occupants were more like “projections” than physical things.
Third, the bodies, actions, and abilities of the ufonauts do not suggest an extraterrestrial or evolutionary origin. Often, the “aliens” were identical to humans, spoke our language, and were perfectly capable of breathing our air and walking in our gravity. Fourth, Vallée noted that most of the ufonauts’ revelations, especially those concerning their origins, were nonsense, and almost entirely different from one another. Ufonauts claimed to be from just about everywhere in the universe, and frequently gave directions or offered maps that made no logical sense, such as the two-dimensional “star map” shown to Betty Hill. Finally, Vallée argued that the data collected from cases of so-called “alien abduction” was unreliable, and again involved highly unlikely scenarios. For example, abductees frequently describe highly invasive and painful medical procedures in order to achieve tasks that even doctors in the 1980s could have done with minimal discomfort.(17)
Since 1990
Vallée traveled to the Soviet Union in January 1990 with Martine Castello of the French newspaper, Le Figaro, to study manifestations of the UFO phenomenon there. He published UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union in 1992 to share some of the cases that he’d investigated, and to report on what he’d learned from scientists, government officials, and intelligence officers in Moscow.(18) In 1991, Vallée made his contribution to the crop circle debate in New Age magazine, arguing that some of the circles, at least, were made by military aerial devices that fired focused microwave beams at the ground. In the Spring of 2010, Vallée also published a series of articles on BoingBoing.net building on this hypothesis.(19)
Since the early 90s, Vallée’s output on the topic of UFOs and anomalous phenomena diminished considerably, though he remains active in the field. Vallée is also an active venture capitalist, as well as a prolific author on investing, technology, and science fiction.
In 2003, a historian of UFOs named Chris Aubeck created an online forum called the Magonia Exchange in order to share resources on UFO sightings before 1947. Through his work with the project he was introduced to Jacques Vallée, and together, they published a compendium of 500 descriptions of anomalous aerial sightings from antiquity to the dawn of the industrial revolution. The book allows for easy comparison of sightings across different cultures and historical eras, and demonstrates the “metalogical” continuity of these events over time.
Since then, Vallée has lent his voice to several of the recent moves towards government disclosure in the US. He wrote the forward to the first book in Tom DeLonge’s Sekret Machines: Gods series, in which DeLonge and his co-author explored world religions as historical UFO contact cults.(20) Vallée also appeared on the popular Joe Rogan Experience Podcast with filmmaker James Fox in December 2020, after the two collaborated on a documentary called The Phenomenon. Vallée talked about the recent disclosures from Luis Elizondo and the UAP Task Force. Although he pushed back against the narrative that UFOs are threats to national security, he lent credence to the idea that certain government labs in the US had obtained pieces of crashed UFOs – including one from a UFO over Washington D.C. in 1952 – and shown them to have some remarkable qualities. However, Vallée declined to go into specifics, supposedly to avoid compromising ongoing research. When Rogan asked him directly for his own explanation of the UFO phenomenon, Vallée said that there was “some form of consciousness out there that’s teaching us something.”(21)
In May of 2021, Jacques Vallée self-published a book with investigative reporter Paola Leopizzi Harris that breaks the story of an alleged UFO crash in 1945 that occurred 20 miles from the site of the first atomic bomb explosion in White Sands, New Mexico.(22) The still-living witnesses claim to have seen not only the crash of the object, but the entirety of the US government’s retrieval process.
Legacy
Not only did Vallée provide the first real alternative to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, he helped break ufology’s exclusive focus on the physical origin of UFOs, while drawing attention to their effects on people, society, and civilization. This shift in perspective has lead “new ufologists” like John Mack, Hilary Evans, and Micah Hanks, as well as other scholars and thinkers such as, Brad Steiger, Jason-Reza Jourjani, and Graham Hancock to recognize linkages between UFOs, consciousness, and other anomalous phenomena, and to explore theoretical frameworks for understanding all of them together.
Vallée has left his mark on popular culture, serving as the inspiration for Claude Lacombe in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But his legacy is built on the far-reaching impact that he’s had on ufology, and anomalistics more generally. Vallée has made a number of game-changing breakthroughs in our understanding of UFOs, and he inspired a generation of ufologists to ask a new set of questions about the phenomenon.
Notes:
1) Jacques Vallée, Forbidden Science, Volume One: Journals 1957 - 1969 (San Francisco: Documatica Research, 2010), 25.
2) Vallée, Forbidden Science, Volume One, 53 - 54.
3) See the forward to Jacques Vallée, The Invisible College: What a Group of Scientists Has Discovered About UFO Influence on the Human Race (San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 2014 [originally published 1975]).
4) Edward U. Condon, Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1969), 1, 4.
5) J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée, The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1975), 52.
6) Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia: from Folklore to Flying Saucers (Brisbane: Daily Grail Publishing, 2014 [first published 1969]).
7) People have reported periods of time that they could not consciously account for for thousands of years, but the term “missing time” belongs to Budd Hopkins, Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions (New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1981).
8) Vallée, Invisible College, 2.
9) Vallée, Invisible College, 26 - 29.
10) Vallée, Invisible College, 141 - 153.
11) Jacques Vallée, Messengers of Deception: UFO Contact and Cults (Berkeley: And/ Or Press, 1979), 9.
12) Vallée, Messengers of Deception, 21.
13) Vallée, Messengers of Deception, 222.
14) Jacques Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact (Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1988).
15) Jacques Vallée, Confrontations: a Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact (Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1990), 118 - 199.
16) Jacques Vallée, Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception (Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1992).
17) Vallée, Dimensions, 230 - 241.
18) Jacques Vallée, UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union: a Cosmic Samizdat (Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1992).
19) Jacques Vallée, "In Search of Alien Glyphs (or are they microwave blasters?)." Boingboing, March 23, 2010, https://boingboing.net/2010/03/23/in-search-of-alien-g.html; "Crop Circles, Part Deux: Alien Glyphs, Human Myths, Blogging Bliss." Boingboing. April 8, 2010, https://boingboing.net/2010/04/08/crop-circles-part-de.html.
20) Forward in Tom Delonge and Peter Lavenda, Sekret Machines: Gods (Encinitas: To The Stars, 2017).
21) Joe Rogan Experience #1574 Jacques Vallée, 99:00, 1:02:15, 1:20:00.
22) Jacques Vallée, Paola Leopizzi Harris, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret (Independently published, 2021).
Sources:
Condon, Edward U. Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1969.
Delonge, Tom and Peter Lavenda. Sekret Machines: Gods. Encinitas: To The Stars, 2017.
Hopkins, Budd. Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions. New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1981.
Hynek , J. Allen and Jacques Vallée. The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1975.
Joe Rogan Experience. “#1574 Jacques Vallée.”
Vallée, Jacques and Paola Leopizzi Harris. Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret. Independently published, 2021.
Vallée, Jacques. "In Search of Alien Glyphs (or are they microwave blasters?)." Boingboing. March 23, 2010. https://boingboing.net/2010/03/23/in-search-of-alien-g.html.
Vallée, Jacques. "Crop Circles, Part Deux: Alien Glyphs, Human Myths, Blogging Bliss." Boingboing. April 8, 2010. https://boingboing.net/2010/04/08/crop-circles-part-de.html.
Vallée, Jacques. Confrontations: a Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact. Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1990.
Vallée, Jacques. Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact. Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1988.
Vallée, Jacques. Forbidden Science, Volume One: Journals 1957 - 1969. San Francisco: Documatica Research, 2010.
Vallée, Jacques. The Invisible College: What a Group of Scientists Has Discovered About UFO Influence on the Human Race. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 2014 [originally published 1975].
Vallée, Jacques. Messengers of Deception: UFO Contact and Cults. Berkeley: And/ Or Press, 1979.
Vallée, Jacques. Passport to Magonia: from Folklore to Flying Saucers. Brisbane: Daily Grail Publishing, 2014 [first published 1969].
Vallée, Jacques. Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception. Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1992.
Vallée, Jacques. UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union: a Cosmic Samizdat. Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1992.
This video uses sound effects downloaded from StockMusic.com.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Research by Jason Charbonneau. Illustrations by V. R. Laurence. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain and Josh Chamberland.
1) Jacques Vallée, Forbidden Science, Volume One: Journals 1957 - 1969 (San Francisco: Documatica Research, 2010), 25.
2) Vallée, Forbidden Science, Volume One, 53 - 54.
3) See the forward to Jacques Vallée, The Invisible College: What a Group of Scientists Has Discovered About UFO Influence on the Human Race (San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 2014 [originally published 1975]).
4) Edward U. Condon, Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1969), 1, 4.
5) J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée, The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1975), 52.
6) Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia: from Folklore to Flying Saucers (Brisbane: Daily Grail Publishing, 2014 [first published 1969]).
7) People have reported periods of time that they could not consciously account for for thousands of years, but the term “missing time” belongs to Budd Hopkins, Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions (New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1981).
8) Vallée, Invisible College, 2.
9) Vallée, Invisible College, 26 - 29.
10) Vallée, Invisible College, 141 - 153.
11) Jacques Vallée, Messengers of Deception: UFO Contact and Cults (Berkeley: And/ Or Press, 1979), 9.
12) Vallée, Messengers of Deception, 21.
13) Vallée, Messengers of Deception, 222.
14) Jacques Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact (Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1988).
15) Jacques Vallée, Confrontations: a Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact (Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1990), 118 - 199.
16) Jacques Vallée, Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception (Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1992).
17) Vallée, Dimensions, 230 - 241.
18) Jacques Vallée, UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union: a Cosmic Samizdat (Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1992).
19) Jacques Vallée, "In Search of Alien Glyphs (or are they microwave blasters?)." Boingboing, March 23, 2010, https://boingboing.net/2010/03/23/in-search-of-alien-g.html; "Crop Circles, Part Deux: Alien Glyphs, Human Myths, Blogging Bliss." Boingboing. April 8, 2010, https://boingboing.net/2010/04/08/crop-circles-part-de.html.
20) Forward in Tom Delonge and Peter Lavenda, Sekret Machines: Gods (Encinitas: To The Stars, 2017).
21) Joe Rogan Experience #1574 Jacques Vallée, 99:00, 1:02:15, 1:20:00.
22) Jacques Vallée, Paola Leopizzi Harris, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret (Independently published, 2021).
Sources:
Condon, Edward U. Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1969.
Delonge, Tom and Peter Lavenda. Sekret Machines: Gods. Encinitas: To The Stars, 2017.
Hopkins, Budd. Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions. New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1981.
Hynek , J. Allen and Jacques Vallée. The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1975.
Joe Rogan Experience. “#1574 Jacques Vallée.”
Vallée, Jacques and Paola Leopizzi Harris. Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret. Independently published, 2021.
Vallée, Jacques. "In Search of Alien Glyphs (or are they microwave blasters?)." Boingboing. March 23, 2010. https://boingboing.net/2010/03/23/in-search-of-alien-g.html.
Vallée, Jacques. "Crop Circles, Part Deux: Alien Glyphs, Human Myths, Blogging Bliss." Boingboing. April 8, 2010. https://boingboing.net/2010/04/08/crop-circles-part-de.html.
Vallée, Jacques. Confrontations: a Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact. Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1990.
Vallée, Jacques. Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact. Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1988.
Vallée, Jacques. Forbidden Science, Volume One: Journals 1957 - 1969. San Francisco: Documatica Research, 2010.
Vallée, Jacques. The Invisible College: What a Group of Scientists Has Discovered About UFO Influence on the Human Race. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 2014 [originally published 1975].
Vallée, Jacques. Messengers of Deception: UFO Contact and Cults. Berkeley: And/ Or Press, 1979.
Vallée, Jacques. Passport to Magonia: from Folklore to Flying Saucers. Brisbane: Daily Grail Publishing, 2014 [first published 1969].
Vallée, Jacques. Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception. Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1992.
Vallée, Jacques. UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union: a Cosmic Samizdat. Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1992.
This video uses sound effects downloaded from StockMusic.com.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Research by Jason Charbonneau. Illustrations by V. R. Laurence. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain and Josh Chamberland.
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