Interdimensional UFO hypothesis
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 📖 Term
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| Type | Term |
|---|---|
| Also known as | interdimensional hypothesis, interlocking universes |
The interdimensional UFO hypothesis is the idea that UFOs and their occupants come not from other planets but from other "dimensions" or realities that exist alongside our own. Its best-known supporters include the occultist Meade Layne, the writer John Keel, astronomer J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée. They argued that UFOs are the modern form of a phenomenon that earlier ages described as fairies, spirits or other supernatural beings.[1]
Background
Ideas of hidden or unseen realms appear in many religious and mystical traditions. In Sufi thought, for example, an intermediate "world of similitude" lies between the physical and the purely spiritual and is home to unseen beings such as the jinn and angels.[1] In the late 19th century, Theosophists such as Helena Blavatsky described a series of spiritual "planes", and later writers spoke of an "etheric plane" above ordinary matter. Spiritualists also popularised the idea of a "fourth dimension".[1] Religious-studies scholar Jeffrey Kripal of Rice University has noted that this interdimensional reading, long familiar in Spiritualism, had a long life within ufology.[1]
Meade Layne and "ether ships"
On 4 July 1947, only days after Kenneth Arnold's sighting, the occultist Meade Layne claimed that the flying discs were "etheric". Layne said they could pass from an etheric state into solid matter and back again, which made them appear and disappear. Layne described their occupants as people living in their own world who came with good intentions.[1] The year before, Layne had consulted a medium who claimed to relay messages from a spaceship called Careeta.[1] Layne is regarded as the earliest proponent of the hypothesis.[1]
John Keel and the ultraterrestrials
Writer John Keel coined the word "ultraterrestrials" for non-human beings that he believed existed in forms of energy humans cannot detect. In UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse (1970) he argued that a non-human intelligence had staged events throughout history behind a changing series of disguises. He listed demons, fairies, vampires, the mystery airships of 1897, phantom aircraft and helicopters, ghosts, poltergeists and UFOs among these "covers".[1]
Hynek and Vallée
In their 1975 book The Edge of Reality, Hynek and Vallée discussed the possibility of "interlocking universes". Hynek suggested that our space-time might be a slice through a universe with many more dimensions, so that another world could be present in the same place without our noticing it.[1] Vallée's 1969 book Passport to Magonia compared UFO encounters with fairy lore and argued for a parallel world existing alongside our own.[1]
In a 1990 paper, "Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects", published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vallée summarised why he rejected the extraterrestrial explanation: - close encounters are reported far more often than any physical survey of Earth would need - the human-like bodies of the reported beings are unlikely to have evolved on another planet and are poorly suited to space travel - the behaviour reported in abduction cases does not fit the idea of scientific or genetic experiments by an advanced race - the phenomenon stretches back through recorded history, so it is not a modern event - UFOs appear to manipulate space and time, which points to stranger possibilities[1]
In popular culture
The idea has been used in films such as The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984), in which interdimensional aliens live inside solid rock, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), whose beings travel into "the space between spaces".[1]
Related ideas
The interdimensional hypothesis overlaps with other alternatives to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, including the ultraterrestrial, cryptoterrestrial, demonic and psychosocial hypotheses.[1]
References
- Interdimensional UFO hypothesis — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 31 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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