The real X-Files: Anthropologist studies groups that claim to contact UFOs

It sounds like something out of a science-fiction movie, but it's very real to an emerging global movement dedicated to contacting UFOs through altered states of consciousness and technology.

Dr. Shayne Dahl, an assistant professor of anthropology in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary, is studying these UFO-contact movements as a new religious movement he qualifies as a form of “techno-shamanism.”

“There’s a global community of people who go out into a wilderness location and use technology, like laser pointers, to send visual signals to the sky,” says Dahl. “They’ll then do a group meditation called ‘coherent thought sequencing,’ where they envision their body ascending from Earth into deep space and, from that point, sending a telepathic signal to extraterrestrials, which is an invitation to follow them back to their location on Earth.”

Dahl says participants claim that, when they open their eyes, they often see UFOs in the sky above them. This practice is called Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind (CE-5), based on the scale created by astronomer J. Allen Hynek in the early 1970s that also inspired Steven Spielberg’s iconic film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

It is the first foray into the UFO contact movement for Dahl, who studies the anthropology of religion, and he was surprised by just how global it has become in the past 30 years. 

“I thought it was just a few groups here and there,” says Dahl. “I’m in rural Japan right now, and, when I got here, I found out there’s a guy at the edge of town that claims to contact UFOs.”

According to Dahl, CE-5 intersects closely with the UFO disclosure movement, which aims to get governments to disclose to the public what they know about extraterrestrials and has gained popular attention in recent years due to U.S. government whistleblowers and media like the film Disclosure Day, also directed by Spielberg. 

Another branch of this contact movement comes from government whistleblowers, who Dahl says claim the military is using people with “psionic” abilities to lure UFOs to Earth to commandeer and reverse engineer their technology.

The CE-5 community views their role as being peaceful ambassadors to bring about intergalactic peace. For an anthropologist studying religion like Dahl, there are signs of CE-5 functioning as an emerging religious movement, whether the UFOs are real or not. 

In particular, Dahl sees the CE-5 practice as a new, technologically mediated form of “shamanism.” Key features of shamanism in scholarly literature include a common conception of skyward entities and the use of altered states of consciousness to communicate with these entities. 

“I’m describing CE-5 as ‘techno-shamanism’ because it has the ritual structure of shamanism and there is also the use of technology in the ritual and an alleged telekinetic interaction with extraterrestrial technology,” says Dahl. 

The groups who perform CE-5 are easily accessible and Dahl says in his interactions with them they have been kind and welcoming. He hopes to do more research with these groups as they perform their protocols in the wilderness. 

Dahl is also keeping an open mind to the question: What if this is real?

Dahl argues that the rituals performed during CE-5 signal a cosmological transition away from a secular, empty-space universe toward a universe teeming with life. Without incontrovertible evidence, Dahl can’t say whether this cosmology they are transitioning towards through CE-5 is real or fantasy, only that it is radically different from secular presumptions about the universe.

“I’m completely agnostic on whether it’s real or not,” says Dahl. “I have to be to maintain a balance between critical thinking and being open-minded to explore the questions.”

Whether or not the UFOs are real, the narratives around them are, and Dahl says this is what anthropologists can study. 

“There are all these narratives emerging about UFOs, and telepathy, and government cover-ups,” says Dahl. “The evidence of those narratives existing is irrefutable, so we should go in and investigate why these narratives are emerging and what they mean for society.”