# The Phenomenon: What is it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 20, 2025, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583 "2025-05-20T13:19:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/1 "2025-05-20T13:19:18Z")
If we take seriously Jacques Vallée’s proposition that the Phenomenon is not only real but may act as a kind of information system—adapting itself to culture and belief—then what kind of reality are we dealing with? Is it a physical presence, a psychic interface, or something more akin to a ‘meta-reality’ influencing human development across time? For reference; The Phenomenon is a term increasingly used to describe the totality of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) and their associated effects, without assuming their origin (extraterrestrial, interdimensional, psychological, or otherwise). It’s a broader and more agnostic term than “UFO.” When people like Jacques Vallée or John Keel use it, they’re referring to a persistent, intelligent force that: Interacts with humans across cultures and history Often appears symbolic or mythic, not strictly technological Alters perception, memory, and even reality itself Exhibits physical and non-physical characteristics simultaneously Vallée’s famous point is: the Phenomenon is not necessarily about “them,” it might be about “us.” He suspects it’s a control mechanism, nudging human consciousness in subtle, long-term ways. So when we say “The Phenomenon”, we’re talking about a possible meta-intelligence or conscious system—not just nuts-and-bolts craft in the sky. It includes: UFO sightings Apparitions and visions Poltergeist phenomena Telepathy and high-strangeness Patterns in religious or folkloric encounters It’s a container term for non-consensus reality experiences that might be deeply connected. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/2 "2025-05-20T13:23:08Z")
Sorry, can you clarify what the Phenomenon with a capital P is? ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/3 "2025-05-20T13:26:49Z")
Just re-edited OP ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/4 "2025-05-20T13:34:53Z")
Neurologists and psychologists agree that hallucinations are more common than most people realize. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/5 "2025-05-20T13:58:58Z")
What’s the difference between “the Phenomenon” and what used to be called “mass hysteria”? Everybody wants a unified theory about everything. The world just doesn’t work that way. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/6 "2025-05-20T14:01:32Z")
One thing that has always confused me about aliens is how similar they are to primates. The grays are hairless, bipedal hominids. The Nordics are like idealized versions of homo sapiens based on cultural and evolutionary perspectives. Alien species like the grays and nordics seem to be more similar to humans than chimpanzees, our closest living relative. The odds that a species would evolve independently in another solar system and evolve to be almost identical to us is extremely low. Granted you could easily assume a life form which was vastly technologically superior than us could create aliens designed to make sense to us from our perspective. The fact that the descriptions of the Nordic alien race are basically an idealized version of a homo sapien wouldn’t be something that happened by pure chance. Due to military advances, western europe conquered most of the world starting in the 15th century and brought their culture with them. As a result, globally (like it or not), blond whites are considered culturally superior even if its an unconscious belief. The odds that a race of aliens like the Nordics would just happen to also be white and blonde homo sapiens is very low. Why not be 3 foot fall ethopians instead of 7 foot tall nordics? As far as Vallée’s theory that UAPs are designed to control and direct culture, there was no mass media until a little over a century ago. So whatever influence they had would be extremely localized. Also I don’t understand how a handful of vague interactions with UAPs is going to affect consciousness on a global scale. Global consciousness is more shaped by philosophy, military conquest, trade, politics and religion than it ever has been by UAPs. Roger Leir was a podiatrist who claimed to remove alien implants from human beings. He wrote an article about it. He didn’t have a scientific paper which was peer reviewed. Having said that he said one of the implants had the following characteristics. > **[THE+SMOKING+GUN.pdf](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54247d50e4b016149c77301f/t/55ea4f69e4b02a8ac1ba7215/1441419113163/THE+SMOKING+GUN.pdf)** > > 2.18 MB Uranium-236, which is extremely rare on earth Isotopic ratios that do not match the ratios seen in our solar system carbon nanotubes potential radio waves no sign of rejection or immune response by the host body Again, it would’ve been nice had he actually peer reviewed this info. > The implants have undergone rigorous examinations by both biological and metallurgical scientists > associated with some of the > world’s most prestigious laboratories such as Los Alamos National > Labs, New Mexico Tech, University of Toronto, York University, > Southwest Laboratories, Seal Laboratories and numerous others > with the same validation. The discoveries have been both earth > shattering and prove beyond the > shadow of a doubt that these objects are non-terrestrial in origin > and have been placed in humans > all over the world by advanced > species for reasons we still do not > understand. My point is that, if this stuff were true it would point to at least some UAPs coming from other star systems. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/7 "2025-05-20T14:05:49Z")
I’ve experienced the Phenomenon myself, many times while I was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but also while under emotional stress. I speculate that most people perceive of this as a religious experience because we really don’t have a set concept of what else it could be. Call it the Universe, Nature, Karma, or God it all is just someone’s interpretation of what they are experiencing. I find it best to just accept the vision and not get to tied up in its personal meaning. More like, that was neat but is it trying to tell me something? Sometimes yes, sometimes no and many times maybe. But one thing that is sure to me is that it is happening and has a few times laid out things that were going to happen years later that in no way was coincidence. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/8 "2025-05-20T14:19:56Z")
It’s obvious that “PHENOMENON” phenomenon varies with the collective zeitgeist. In the old days, people experience, or had sex with (it’s always about sex, innit?) demons, ghosts, aliens, “wee folk”, whatever. It’s the same far-too-common delusion, filtered though the currently accepted belief system. Today, tech is the solution. Tomorrow - multiverse travelers. Now if one were to believe seriously that PHENOMENON was trying to shape or guide humans, akin to the 2001 monolith, I submit it’s doing a piss-poor job. Phenomenon, doo doo doo doot doo Phenomenon, doot do do doo ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/9 "2025-05-20T14:25:46Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > If we take seriously Jacques Vallée’s proposition … Since the world makes a lot more sense when you **don’t** take someone like this seriously, that would be my suggested approach. From the Wikipedia entry about Vallée: > Vallée began exploring the commonalities between UFOs, cults, religious movements, demons, angels, ghosts, cryptid sightings, and psychic phenomena. Oh, there’s a commonality there, but it’s not what Vallée thinks it is! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/10 "2025-05-20T15:17:52Z")
'Zactly. The central commonality is that 100% of what that author writes is pure BS. The OP should avoid reading BS. It does not lead to enlightenment. Instead it leads to enstupidification. As one can readily see by talking to any CT believer. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/11 "2025-05-20T15:50:07Z")
The Phenomenon is the result of the phenomenon that many humans want to have the confusingly chaotic world repackaged into a tidy and easily consumable form. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/12 "2025-05-20T15:55:27Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > 100% of what that author writes is pure BS It also has the advantage of being completely immune to reality testing of any kind, since it allegedly “alters perception, memory, and even reality itself.” eta: I guess that is just a subset of “pure BS” ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/13 "2025-05-20T15:58:04Z")
It is a _GRAND CONCEPT_ that is immune from examination or criticism, and if you do not subscribe to it you obviously just don’t understand it. Poor you. 🙄 ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/14 "2025-05-20T16:14:15Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > It’s a container term for non-consensus reality experiences that might be deeply connected. “The Phenomenon” is a ‘container term’ for superstition used to fill in the gaps of quantifiable knowledge and experience. > [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > Neurologists and psychologists agree that hallucinations are more common than most people realize. It isn’t even that hallucinations are common; we literally ‘hallucinate’ our everyday experience from a perceptual synthesis of data where the brain ‘fills in’ incomplete or missing information, including when we see an apparent artifact which is outside of our intuitive experience or for which we can’t place in a contextual or physical frame or reference, i.e. when you see something apparently flying at hypersonic speeds through your window only to realize it is a reflection. > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Roger Leir was a podiatrist who claimed to remove alien implants from human beings. Implants in…their feet? Stranger ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/15 "2025-05-20T16:16:01Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > Neurologists and psychologists agree that hallucinations are more common than most people realize. For those of us who have intentionaly used hallucinogenics, I would agree. I can recognise a hallucination, because I have hallucinated while high. And now I know, I can recognise a hallicination while sober. They are not very common, but yes, more common than (ahem) commenly thought. Fever dreams might qualify too. I think the easiest way to describe to the average person is mirages. Not the ones in cartoons that have people in the desert seeing oasies, but the ones you might see on a long stretch of road where a combination of hot air and refraction appears to show water on the surface of the road. That is not a hallucination, but it is not disimilar: our brains giving incorrect information. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/16 "2025-05-20T16:24:00Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Implants in…their feet? Thus the political term, “vote with your feet”. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/17 "2025-05-20T16:33:53Z")
Put forward for whatever it’s worth: an acquaintance shared with me their account of he and a friend encountering a UFO when they were boys in the early sixties. Lying? Always a possibility but I have no a priori reason to doubt him. According to him this wasn’t an unidentified light in the sky at night nor was it a distant poorly resolved speck in the sky in daytime: it was an object at ground level. And here’s the thing: what he described wasn’t just a “UFO” but literally a _flying saucer_; almost a **cartoon cliché** flying saucer– a disk with a row of lights spinning at the rim. He also related that after a few moments it vanished, simply disappearing from view without apparently moving. He and his friend agreed that they had seen the same thing, so a hallucination seems unlikely. This sounds almost like someone or something with capabilities beyond anything known was playing an elaborate practical joke on them. > [@scudsucker](#): > > I think the easiest way to describe to the average person is mirages. Not the ones in cartoons that have people in the desert seeing oasies, but the ones you might see on a long stretch of road where a combination of hot air and refraction appears to show water on the surface of the road. > > That is not a hallucination, but it is not disimilar: our brains giving incorrect information. That’s not really a good example because road shimmer is a real optical phenomenon that is measurable and recordable. It’s optics, not neurology. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/18 "2025-05-20T18:14:25Z")
[Jacques Vallée, UFOs, and the Case against Extraterrestrial Origins](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lmLE0X5FRFc&pp=ygUPdGhpbmsgYW5vbWFsb3Vz) I’d watch that to know its not just some ‘nutjob’ That can be written off. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/19 "2025-05-20T18:19:15Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > > > Roger Leir was a podiatrist who claimed to remove alien implants from human beings. > > Implants in…their feet? Sure. I had one once, when I stepped on a splinter. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/20 "2025-05-20T18:20:53Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > I’d watch that to know its not just some ‘nutjob’ That can be written off. (after 27 seconds) Nope, nutjob. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583.md?page=2)