Ufologist Dr. David M. Jacobs has worked with  hundreds of people around the world who say they’ve been abducted by aliens — and in case after case, the details are uncannily similar.

Like Fox Mulder on The X-Files, I want to believe. 

The universe is infinite — though physicists now believe that it somehow has an edge and is still expanding. These concepts hurt my brain and offer no clarity. But if homo sapiens developed due to a series of just-right conditions, surely we can’t be the only planet that developed life in a nearly limitless universe. Heck, perhaps there’s not even just one universe and we should actually call it the multiverse. 

See, there I go again, hurting my brain. 

Imagine how excited I got when Alex, one of my best buds at work, told me his father, a retired history professor from Temple University, is also a preeminent researcher of UFOs and alien abduction! 

I’m an open-minded guy, always willing to alter my worldview if you present a convincing enough argument. It was time to look at the evidence. 

Alex invited me over to interview his father, Dr. David M. Jacobs, on his back porch over beers amidst the lingering COVID-19 pandemic. 

After a fascinating couple of hours in conversation with two extremely intelligent men, I came away convinced there’s something to this phenomenon, as crazy as it seems at first. –Wally

What’s the evidence for alien abductions? 

It’s massive. It’s mind boggling. And I have to say this a thousand times now: It’s global. It is not an American phenomenon. The first and most important thing is that people around the world, in China and all through Europe and India and Latin America, all say the same things, thinking nobody else has ever said them before. The second thing that’s very obvious is that abduction reports follow hereditary lines: So if you’re an abductee, your children will be and at least one of your parents will have been an abductee as well.

How did you get started researching UFOs and alien abductions?

I’ve been looking at this subject since about 1966 when I went to a UFO conference at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

The big event was a relatively close-up film of a UFO spinning in the air. It was astonishing! If you squinted your eyes hard enough, you could avoid seeing the string the model was hanging on. 

But for some reason or another, I stuck with it and began to read books about the subject. 

I went off to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison for a doctorate in history. There, I joined a UFO organization called the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Tucson, Arizona. When there were UFO reports, I would investigate them as part of this group. I eventually wrote my dissertation on the subject of unidentified flying objects in the United States.

I had to convince my advisor that this was a subject that wasn’t crazy, that the Air Force had been involved with it for decades already by that time. 

My dissertation was soon published by Indiana University Press in 1975 as The UFO Controversy in America.

Eventually I went on to teach at Temple University in Philadelphia, where I taught the only accredited university course on alien abductions for about 30 years. It was hugely popular — and extremely frightening for many students.

I’ve had students break down, start weeping, say they gotta get out of there. Many students had prior experiences with alien abductions but didn’t realize it until they started talking about the subject in the classroom. 

When did abductions start taking place?

Our best guess is that the phenomenon began around 1896, when people across Europe and North America began to see strange craft in the sky — called the “Mystery Airship” wave at the time. One person mentioned in a newspaper article that he spotted an airship from a train and that it flew faster than he was moving. But at the time, no airships could fly that fast and controlled. The Wright Brothers didn’t launch their flyer until 1903. So these sightings were a big deal at the time.

Why are you so sure that was the beginning?

I don’t care how many people say, “Well, back in Ancient Egypt…” If it started in the 18th century, say, stories would be written about these odd things in the sky. But that didn’t happen until the 1890s. Skeptics like to say these reports are simply hoaxes, or UFO mania at the time—but, of course, these are the kinds of narrow arguments they’ve made about almost all facets of the abduction phenomenon.

Alex: In addition to the global sightings of mystery airships, stats might prove it also. Back in 1992, polling was done through my dad and the Roper Center at Cornell University to look at the potential prevalence of UFO abductees in the United States. Based on those numbers, if you work back, knowing what we do about how the phenomenon spreads, the origin date would be somewhere in the late 19th century. Because if abductions started at the time of the Ancient Egyptians, everyone would be an abductee by now.

What made you switch from studying UFO sightings to alien abductions? 

At first I wasn’t interested in the craziness of the abduction phenomenon. I couldn’t go there. 

I had a friend, Tracy Tormé, son of the famous singer, Mel Tormé. 

I met him in Central Park one afternoon, and Tracy said, “Let’s go see my friend, Budd Hopkins, a UFO and abduction researcher.” I told him I had better things to do, like stare into space or eat my dinner.

But he pushed me into a cab, and we rode downtown to Chelsea. When we were finally with Budd in his living room, he stood up and said, “Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.” He ran and brought back my first book for me to autograph. That’s when I knew he was a good person [laughs]. 

I began to come up to New York City to visit Budd and meet some of the abductees that he was working with. The evidence he had was just too strange and too disturbing for me to just totally dismiss. He let me sit in on the interview sessions he’d conduct with abductees. I sat in on dozens over four years. Then, in 1986, I started to conduct these hypnotic regression sessions myself.

When did you start doing your own sessions with abductees?

After 35 years, I’ve probably worked with over 200 abductees and conducted over 2,000 individual interviews — always free of charge and always confidential. 

One of the things that became clear after seeing Budd work with his abductees, is that someone’s initial memories can be really untrustworthy. That’s why Budd developed a technique called hypnotic regression with a psychologist.

To be clear, hypnosis is about 95% B.S. and another 5% B.S. It’s nothing but talking to somebody and saying, “I want you to relax.” People are always conscious and alert the whole time — it’s just some simple mindfulness exercises to get people focused.

You have to get the person relaxed and focused because they are about to remember something that they’ve never remembered. You have to be careful about how you question people, and how you find people too. 

Before anything else, when someone would come to me, I’d have people fill out a screener form and then, if I knew they were honest, I had them call me so I could assess things. I would usually tell them, “Don’t do it. You’ll ruin your life.”

What many people don’t understand is that the realization that you’re an abductee can be so incredibly traumatic and life-changing it can drive someone over the edge — especially if you’re young. That’s why I was extremely careful with who I interviewed. You had to be at least 21 years old and settled in life. 

Another thing I made sure to do was warn each abductee that your husband or wife may not like this at all. Even though you may want to investigate your experiences with aliens, your spouse or family might be completely terrified — so much so that things could result in divorce or terrible family tensions.

Some of them didn’t call me back. Some did. 

Given how unbelievable this phenomenon is, I preferred to work with well-educated people. Doctors, psychologists, psychotherapists — all of whom were telling me this stuff, saying the same things. 

What are the sessions with alien abductees like? 

People know that indescribable things have happened to them. Here’s a common scenario: A guy goes to bed late at night, then wakes up. He’s standing in his backyard. “What the hell? What am I doing here?” The doors to his house are locked — the keys are in the lock on the inside. He finds a baseball bat and has to break open a window just to get back in, wondering, “How could this possibly happen?” Then he says to himself, mysteriously, “Well, I just won’t think about this anymore.” This is typical. 

These kinds of stories were what first got me interested in the abduction phenomenon. 

What’s a typical alien abduction like?

Adults are taken at night or in the daytime when nobody is around. If it’s at night, a person wakes up while their husband or wife is sleeping next to them. 

In our session, they’ll say to me, “There’s a light in the room.” 

I say, “You mean it’s a regular light? Where is it?”

They’d say, “The light is coming through the window.”

“OK. So what happens next?”

“Well, there’s some people around me.”

I say, “People around your bed, you mean?”

“Yes. One is next to me, and two are at the foot of my bed.” 

I say, “OK. And what are they doing?”

“Well, they’re looking at me.”

“What happens next?”

“I’m getting out of bed.”

“Wait a minute. Why are you getting out of bed?”

“I don’t know. I have to. They’re telling me to get out of bed.”

“What happens next?”

“They’re walking me to the light in the window. I’m out the window.”

I say, “Whoa, wait a minute. You opened the window first?”

“Yes, yes, yes, no, I don’t know.”

“One of the beings opened the window?”

“No, no, no, not at all.”

“Does the window open by itself in some way?”

“No,” they say. “I’m going right through the glass window.”

It would be easier for people to say, “Of course I opened the window.” But how many people ever said that? The answer is zero.

Alex: The point my dad’s making is that in hypnosis, some of the skeptics like to claim that he’s asking questions to try to script the narrative, when actually he spends most of his time trying to ask purposefully misleading ones.

David: Exactly. 

I say, “What happens next?

“I’m flying. I’m going up there.”

“Where are these beings?”

“One’s in front of me. We’re all going up.”

“Straight up?”

“No, no, it’s an angle, about 45 degrees.”

I say, “What do you see?” and one guy tells me, “I can see all the leaves and stuff in the gutters.”

Abductees have spotted missing toys or roof damage while being abducted and, of course, the next day or so after the event, they’ll go to their roof and, sure enough, it’s exactly as they saw it. 

Do abductees get taken more than once?

This is not a phenomenon that happens to people by chance. It starts in early childhood and goes on over and over again all the way until…we don’t really know, but maybe until an abductee turns about 80. 

All they know is they wake up in the morning and they’re tired. Sometimes people are abducted overnight and the whole next day because nobody else is home. I’ve had people who were gone for three, seven, eight days. But nobody’s around looking for them. So here’s the question: How do the aliens know that this person can be unaccounted for for a week? I don’t know the answer to that. 

It’s the same thing if a person decides that they’re going to go deer hunting. They’re out in the woods, and then they’re abducted. But how do the aliens know what they’re doing? We are dealing here with extremely advanced not only technologies but physiologies as well.

What are the spaceships and aliens like?

The abductees are taken on board a circular ship. They describe gray aliens, slender, big heads and eyes, four fingers. There are two kinds of grays, actually. One type is smaller, about 3 feet tall, and they do the menial tasks. The taller gray aliens seem to be their bosses, and perform more of the medical procedures. 

What is the probability of the gray aliens being from another planet? It’s low — because we know they grow them on board. I would never come up with anything like that. But a whole bunch of people have described incubators where grays are being grown. It’s so crazy, off the wall, who could imagine something like that, even if he had a great imagination?! But this is common, whether it’s someone born and raised in rural India or Brazil. It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same.

So the small gray aliens will lead the abductee down a curved hallway and into a room. Abductees always say the hallway is curved.

And then I say, “What happens next?”

They say, “I’m getting on a table.” 

I say, “The table has four legs?” Not a single person has ever said yes. The way the tables are described is they come right out of the floor. That’s a good example of one of the incredibly consistent details. Everything has this metallic sort of rounded surface. 

While they’re laying there, their clothes have already been taken off. Then they have a series of procedures done to them.

What are these procedures like?

Eggs are taken from women and sperm is taken from men. There’s an instrument that takes sperm away. It was not a sexual thing. We have very detailed drawings of this device from across decades around the world. It looks kind of like a flashlight connected to a hose that hooks up to the genitals.

This is all typical stuff. I’ve heard this a hundred times.

Are the aliens conducting other procedures on humans?

The reproductive procedures are really the first part. The point of them is for something much bigger: The aliens are creating other beings with this human DNA. And, obviously, they’re doing that for a reason.

What are the stakes?

There’s never been anything like this in human history. And if it’s not happening, it’s one of the most important brain malfunctions ever found.

If you want to learn more, read David M. Jacobs’ books: 

• Secret Life: Firsthand, Documented Accounts of UFO Abductions

• The Threat: Revealing the Secret Alien Agenda

• Walking Among Us: The Alien Plan to Control Humanity

AND READ PART TWO of our interview with Dr. Jacobs:

Alien-Human Hybrids: A Plot to Conquer Earth?