Experiencer

The word “experiencer” is incredibly vague. We all experience life, right? So what is an experiencer? Experiencers are people who notice the deep weirdness in their lives. They have seen, heard, or felt things science might call impossible. Because they themselves have experienced it, they know it is possible, and once they find other experiencers, they realize it is not rare at all.

The term overlaps with the world of UAPs, unidentified anomalous phenomena, and UFOs, but it is not limited to “alien abduction.” It can include encounters with alien, ghostly, interdimensional, or plasma-like beings, but it also describes anyone who has lived through their own constellation of uncanny, hard-to-explain events, what is often called high strangeness. I like to use the word “the phenomenon” because it captures the many facets of this mystery.

high strangeness

High strangeness is a catch-all for the odd things that do not fit neatly into science or everyday life. It can appear as strange coincidences, prophetic dreams, missing time, sleep paralysis, downloads, hauntings, heightened intuition, or encounters with intelligences we do not yet understand. For many experiencers, it begins in childhood. What is the strangest thing you have ever seen or experienced? Have you ever told anyone about it?

The term “high strangeness” was coined by Dr. J. Allen Hynek in his 1972 book The UFO Experience. He developed assessment criteria and the “close encounter of the x kind” classification. High strangeness literally means a high number of strange events happening alongside a UFO sighting.

Fun fact: Hynek grew up across the street from my father in a Czech enclave near Chicago. He began his career as a skeptic and was recruited as Chief Scientific Advisor to Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s top-secret UFO investigation program. The more he researched, the more he had to accept that very strange things occurred to very respectable people, and he began to wonder if these events were not extraterrestrials visiting us but interdimensional beings.

free experiencer study

FREE, the Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Experiences, co-founded by astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, has documented experiencers on a global scale. Their study is multi-language, multi-generational, and both quantitative and qualitative. FREE shows that many experiencers report encounters that feel meaningful, transformative, or even healing. These experiences may involve non-human intelligences, consciousness expansion, or downloads of information. Some experiencers never meet beings but still live a life threaded with uncanny events.

The study makes it clear that these are not isolated cases. They are people whose reality is threaded with high strangeness, whose lives challenge our ordinary assumptions about what is possible.

Experiencers may also witness UAPs in the form of orbs, triangles, tic-tacs, saucers, plasma-like craft, or shapes that seem to slip through walls or cross dimensions. Not all UAPs involve beings, and not all beings arrive in “ships.” Not everyone who sees a UAP considers themselves an experiencer. What does this say about reality itself?

Most experiencers meet what is now called non-human intelligence. These encounters may be physical, psychic, or both, and often feel profoundly real.

Depending on the lens of the individual, these moments may be categorized as religious, spiritual, or demonic. Other experiencers never meet beings but still live a lifetime threaded with extraordinary events.

Many experiencers are drawn toward spiritual practices such as grounding, centering, and learning to be present from an early age. Most experiencers are multi-generational.

finding others

Finding the word “experiencer” and discovering others like yourself transforms everything. It is more than relief, it is a soul-deep healing. People who have carried strange, unspoken events for years finally realize they are not alone and they’re not crazy. Finally meeting others who hold similar secrets, who have lived with the same uncanny threads running through their lives but had no language for them is profound to say the least.

To admit these things has happened takes immense bravery, and to meet other brave souls and discover parallel experiences is nothing short of magical.

In that moment, the weird becomes normal, and what the world calls normal suddenly feels incomplete.

Experiencers are set apart by lives threaded with uncanny, transformative events. These moments are deeply personal, sometimes unsettling, and always reveal that reality is far bigger, stranger, and more alive than most people ever realize.

They are reminders that the universe is full of mysteries waiting to be noticed, that unseen layers of reality pulse just beyond our ordinary perception, and that there is a magic in the shared courage of those who witness it.

This is me coming out, sharing my story so you know I’m just a human trying to make sense of some strange experiences.

the supernatural is super natural

I believe what Jeffrey Kripal says: the supernatural is super natural. Much of what we dismiss as impossible, otherworldly, or “beyond this world” is actually part of a deeper reality we do not yet fully understand.

Our most important stories, across cultures and throughout history, are threaded with such experiences. Religions are based of visions, dreams, messages, encounters with beings, and transformative moments. From the oracles of Delphi to the Hebrew prophets, from Christian mystics to modern-day experiencers, humans have been receiving, witnessing, and documenting the unseen in countless ways forever. And they still do.

These moments are not curiosities, they are central to how people have experienced life and made sense of themselves, the world, and the cosmos.