Tucker Carlson thinks they are biblical entities. Others say they are people from the future who come back to study us.
Now a new film presents an even stranger theory about UFOs.
The Cosmic Joker explores the idea that these entities could be “tricksters” who deliberately shape themselves into what people want to see or into shapes that are familiar to people, director Mark Christopher Lee told DailyMail.com.
The film focuses on two infamous alien encounters: the Robert Taylor incident and the abduction of fishermen Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker in Pascagoula.
The kidnapping of fishermen Charles Hickson (left) and Calvin Parker (right) in Pascagoula took place in 1973
Mr. Hickson and Mr. Parker reported that aliens were experimenting with crab-like claws
It begs the question: Did the aliens who made contact with the men purposely shapeshift? They transformed themselves into forms that resembled something from their personal lives.
The film also suggests that aliens may not come from space after all – and that this could be the reason for alleged cover-ups surrounding UFO evidence.
Mr Taylor was a forest worker in Scotland and said that in 1979 he saw a UFO that looked like a sea mine.
The Cosmic Joker suggests that the entity deliberately took on this form, to resemble something Mr. Taylor knew from his time in the military.
In 1973, Messrs. Hickson and Parker in Pascagoula, Mississippi, reported that aliens were conducting experiments with crab-like claws.
Has the alien intelligence evolved into a form familiar to the two fishermen from the Deep South?
Lee told DailyMail.com: ‘What got me interested in this film were the interviews about the Pascagoula Encounter in the US in 1973. Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson were allegedly kidnapped while fishing in the Pascagoula River.
“They claimed that they were taken aboard an alien spacecraft and examined and physically handled by two aliens who had crab-like claws. I just thought – why would the aliens have crab-like claws?”
The two men reported to the sheriff that they had been abducted by gray aliens while they were fishing. The aliens had “crab-like” hands and “robot-like” mouths.
The men each had a stab wound in their arm.
Hickson told The Washington Post: “I was just getting some more bait when I heard a rustling sound. I looked up and saw a blue flashing light. Calvin turned around too.
“We saw a 30-foot long object with a small dome on top of it.”
The two witnesses from Pascagoula suffered physical injuries from the encounter
The police officers who questioned the men secretly left a tape recorder in the room with the witnesses after the police left.
Although they hoped the men would drop their act and admit they had faked the encounter, they only filmed them saying they were terrified by the experience.
Lee told this website: ‘Police planted a hidden tape recorder, which recorded them talking about how the experience terrified them. Which begs the question: If the experience was real, what were these beings?
“Did they actually adapt to what a bunch of fishermen from the Deep South would expect to see? Why did they see the same thing?”
In the film, Lee also speaks with UFO author Malcolm Robinson, who describes the strange encounter World War II veteran Taylor had with a UFO in Scotland’s Dechmont Woods.
Lee told DailyMail.com: ‘Mr Taylor was attacked by an alien or intelligence that looked like a sea mine with sharp sticking out branches on the sides.
‘I thought again, did the intelligence community, whatever it is, take this from something that looks familiar to Robert Taylor, given that he served in the military?’
Police investigated the sighting of Mr Taylor after two sharp-tipped bullets struck him, leaving him unconscious for 20 minutes and tearing his clothing.
Director Mark Christopher Lee spoke to DailyMail.com
The locals believed the war hero and churchgoer. The police found strange tracks on the ground, which could not be explained by the machines nearby.
According to Lee, others have suggested that Taylor’s encounter may have been caused by an epileptic seizure.
The idea of aliens as shape-shifting “imposters” was first proposed in a book by the late author John Keel, whose work inspired Richard Gere’s film The Prophecies of the MothmanLee told this website.
He said: ‘Keep was the first to really study UFO and alien encounters in great detail. His research showed that there was always a mischievous element of trickery in these sightings.’
Keel’s book suggests that aliens may not come from other planets, or even from outer space at all. They could be “ultra-terrestrial beings” that manipulate people’s beliefs.
Lee added: ‘If this theory is true, it is likely to be much more disturbing than us being visited by other beings from other planets.
‘Are we as humans the plaything of a much higher intelligence that lives next to us?
‘Some modern ufologists, such as Blink 182 musician Tom DeLonge, believe that this intelligence has always been there and that the US government knows this and is using the alien hypothesis as a smokescreen to distract the public from the wild truth.’
The Cosmic Joker is now available on Tubi TV.
