Sludge Report #9: Grusch says more loco stuff; a new book by VJ Ballester Olmos
As though his prior exertions in this milieu weren't enough, David Grusch now claims to have seen a video showing a crescent-shaped craft from which the bodies of human-like aliens, which he described as looking like "Greek gods", were pulled. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYPXINFcvmI). "It was just very beautiful," he recalled of one of the beings. This is highly reminiscent of the descriptions by 20th century Contactees of their "Nordic" alien visitors. He also alluded to other things he learned during his UAPTF investigations, such as reptilian beings piloting the "Tic Tac" craft, these beings being at odds with the "Greek gods," and that the Earth is frequented by a wide variety of different craft, some of which crashed after hostile engagements with each other. "You would think, it’s like, would they get along? They’re so advanced. But we have records of them fucking around with each other." This offers a handy and possibly novel explanation for why so many ultra-advanced extraterrestrial vehicles have supposedly been recovered by the government. He also mentioned the existence of scaly-skinned, gorilla-looking aliens in excess of seven feet tall, and, of course, the obligatory diminutive-statured gray aliens.
This all brings to mind a number of elements, and further demonstrates the congealing of a shared, emerging mythology around ET visitors suited to our particular historical moment. First we have the panoply of alien species, already made popular by Linda Moulton Howe and more recently "corroborated" by Eric Davis. Secondly, we have the infusion of elements of UFO/alien lore from the 1980s, such as the allusion to gun battles between US military personnel and these beings. Grusch mentioned that the military recovered a live reptilian but then shot it dead. This is nothing more than a replay of the Dulce base firefight tale popularized by Phil Schneider. Third, the gray aliens serve as a bedrock of the overall mythology. The existence of grays is simply taken by many believers as a given—virtually an axiom—as is the reverse engineering angle. This all has elements of a grand space opera, in which Earth is seen as the backdrop for the designs and machinations of superior intelligences. One wonders whether something in the minds and spirits of the "whistleblowers" has broken in the troublesome material realm which we inhabit. With the existential crises faced by humanity, it is no surprise that a collective mythology would arise (or, more properly, continue to evolve) around extraterrestrials (not all of them necessarily benevolent, and some possibly fulfilling the role of demons in traditional religion), with figures like Grusch and Davis acting as shamans of a sort to provide the link between Earth and heaven.
The inclusion of a multiplicity of aliens in the evolving 21st century iterations of the UFO mythos may reflect a positive, perhaps outright progressive, impulse with a commitment to diversity of a sort. If UFO and ET witnesses are to be believed, then their varied accounts speak of an equally varied range of alien beings. Accepting their accounts becomes a reflection of accepting the testimony and, perhaps more crucially, the witnesses themselves. In these politically volatile and hateful times, the UFO once again, as it did during the Cold War (if we are to take Carl Jung's musings to contain a grain of truth), becomes a symbol of unity and harmony. "All are welcome" might well be the catchphrase for the Davis/Grusch alien pantheon.
As Grusch notes, the aliens are mortal. In other words, they are not gods per se, and the word "pantheon" is thus stripped of some of its meaning. The aliens assume a hybrid social role: gods-of-a-sort (or beings fulfilling the traditional role of gods, albeit somewhat truncated), and as a motif for social harmony and peace, for if the aliens are indeed mortal, they are, arguably, simply more evolved/perfect/better versions of us. The Contactee stories were aspirational in the sense of being grounded in a yearning for a better society and a more viable social system, but if we have a variety of aliens, stories of ET become even more aspirational because they speak of a diversity of advanced and separately evolved species that somehow all survived their technological "filters" and are at least capable of interstellar travel. The US Government's role, too, stands in juxtaposition to the ETs. The government assumes the role of the cold, rational capitalist or technocrat interested only in exploiting the technology of the recovered craft. The aliens stand in for the numinous, the mysterious and the (quasi) magical. They bring enchantment back into the world, something that secular society, which is now experiencing renewed anxieties about capitalism, has often times been largely bereft of.
There is perhaps a darker side to this, though: the Nordics are still almost always Nordics, and one can't escape the possible racialist implications of this. If the "Greek gods"/Nordics are the stand ins for Homo sapiens among the pantheon, and are thus seen as in some way the future representatives of humanity, does this evince a Eurocentric idealization, with Nordics/Whites/Caucasians seen as the most perfect human specimens from which to keep evolving our way to the stars and which provide the only worthy genetic stock for human perfectibility? Davis and Grusch have almost certainly simply acquired the Nordic motif through cultural osmosis (albeit within the arena of the national security state), but it is still striking that virtually all treatments of the Nordics see them as an ethnically homogeneous society (though there are competing accounts, not surprisingly by Black Contactees and the Nuwabian Nation, of Black versions of the space brothers). No, I don't see it as "racist" that the Nordics are a thing in the UFO space, but we can still fairly ask why they're a thing and whether some part of their continued popularity (though they took a back seat for a long time with the ascent of the Grays circa the mid 1980s) might reflect an unconscious bias or social imprint.
In other, far less "sludgy" news, longtime UFO researcher Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos (see his excellent and regularly updated blog, UFO Fotocat, here) has published a new book in Spanish. Here is a description and promotion of it which I've been authorized to share:
Author: Vicente Juan Ballester Olmos
ISBN: 978-84-09-86457-7
732 pages
UAP: UFOs in the 21st Century (in Spanish) is far more than an up-to-date examination of the UFO phenomenon in the new millennium. With his trademark rigor and intellectual clarity, Vicente Juan Ballester Olmos offers a compelling reassessment of the history of ufology from the unique perspective of someone who has played a direct role in major field investigations, high-level military declassification projects, and collaborated with some of the field's most influential figures, including J. Allen Hynek, Aimé Michel, and Jacques Vallée.
The book takes readers on a reverse chronological journey, beginning with the widely publicized U.S. military UAP videos, the findings of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), NASA's recent investigations, and U.S. congressional hearings. It then traces the subject back through decades of UFO research, revealing how the debate remains caught in a recurring cycle of media sensationalism, fueled by promises of groundbreaking revelations that ultimately fail to deliver.
Ballester Olmos argues that while the extraterrestrial hypothesis continues to exert a powerful cultural appeal, meaningful progress depends on abandoning wishful thinking and applying to ufology the same standards of critical inquiry and falsifiability that underpin every scientific discipline. This, he contends, is the central challenge in the study of unidentified aerial phenomena and anomalous observations in general.
Published by Reediciones Anómalas in 2026, UAP: UFOs in the 21st Century includes a foreword by astronaut and former Spanish Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities Pedro Duque.
Publisher purchase link: https://www.reedicionesanomalas.com/product/uap-los-ovnis-del-siglo-xxi
Also: Amazon and Internet (Search: UAP:Los ovnis del siglo XXI)
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