Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences

Pasulka (American Cosmic), a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, delves into the oft-misunderstood field of ufology and nonhuman intelligence in an intermittently revealing yet haphazard study. Among the book’s salient features are its focus on the “spiritual” overtones of the UFO phenomenon (“witnesses” frequently consider their encounters “spectral messages”) and Pasulka’s capacious understanding of “nonhuman intelligences”: along with “aerial vehicles that do not appear to be from Earth,” little grey aliens, animals, angels, and demons also fit the bill, as does artificial intelligence, which may represent communication from “humans from the future who many people interpret as aliens.” Pasulka weaves these “intelligences” into a variegated tapestry in which the fascinating (AI-driven efforts to reconstruct animals’ language) intermingles with the absurd (Nobelist Kary Mullins’s nighttime encounter with a light-radiating raccoon), making for an uneven though often intriguing take on the supernatural. Skeptics will be entertained and perhaps instructed by—if not converted to—Pasulka’s unconventional worldview. (Nov.)