"Survivors" - stories of those who were abducted by aliens

They are called "survivors" — a word that describes nothing — because their experiences are unimaginable: encounters with non-human beings who are sometimes associated with UFOs, and sometimes not.

Carey Mallis, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993, wrote about a night in Mendocino County, California, in 1985, when he met a glowing talking raccoon who greeted him with the words "Good evening, Doctor", after which Mallis woke up only the next day at home without any memories of the past time.

Ordinary people recognize this experience. Celebrities too. Rapper Kendrick Lamar told the Howard Stern Show in 2017 that at the age of 6 he saw a UFO flying by and was asked if he thought he was abducted by aliens.

"I probably knew," he said. "That's probably why I'm doing music now. Who knows? They probably gave me energy." He previously told Jojo Wright's radio show, "I've probably seen ghosts before. I've seen UFOs too. I will never forget it, and it was my meeting, and to this day I know that there is something else."

Rapper Lupe Fiasco told a Los Angeles radio station in 2012 about an "extraterrestrial experience" at the age of 11 when he saw a black disc in his window and felt paralyzed, "surrounded by all this electricity."

Other stars who have reported UFO sightings include Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards and Tom Delong.

Jay Christopher King, a 42-year-old artist from Jersey City, who is one of the organizers of an online support group that includes about 200 "survivors", recalls his childhood fear at the sight of a short grayish creature crouching in front of the family washing machine in the basement, rummaging through dirty laundry. More recently, he said, he encountered thin, mantis-like creatures that communicate telepathically in ornate English and Latin.

Karin Austin, a 52-year-old interior designer, construction project manager and small business owner in Colorado, said that one night at the age of 20 she was taken out of her bed and found herself in a crowd of other people in pajamas in a forest clearing near an abandoned roller coaster. There, she says, a tall, thin alien entity presented her with a strange little boy as her hybrid son.

Unbelievable, she agrees. But she is convinced that it happened in some unknown dimension of reality, especially after she found a sketch of the same scene she remembers in another person's book. She had lost hope that she would be taken seriously.

"People just think we're... nuts."

People's encounters with aliens, gods, angels, fairies, ghosts, spiritual animals and other creatures have been the main elements of folklore, religion and myths since time immemorial.