contactee
A contactee is a person who claims to have come into conscious, voluntary contact with extraterrestrial beings, as opposed to abduction victims (abductees). The term originates in the UFO culture of the 1950s.
The term contactee refers to people who, by their own account, voluntarily and consciously made contact with alleged extraterrestrial entities: they talked with them, received messages from them, or even traveled with them to other planets. This distinguishes them from so-called abductees, who say they came into contact with alien beings against their will, often under traumatic circumstances.
Origin and historical background
The concept became widely known in the 1950s, when several Americans, the best known among them George Adamski, claimed to have met humanlike extraterrestrials who had come from Venus or other planets. These stories typically contained peaceful, spiritual or warning messages for humanity, and were often linked to the then-popular "space brothers" idea.
Characteristics
Contactees' accounts include encounters, telepathic communication and, in some cases, longer-term, recurring contact with a particular entity or group. Many contactees wrote books, gave lectures and gained followers.
Skeptical view
According to skeptical researchers, contactees' stories typically cannot be backed up by physical evidence, and in many cases they draw on the social and cultural context of the time (the Cold War, the beginning of the Space Age) and on religious and spiritual movements. The phenomenon is often explained as a mixture of false memory, deception or pop-culture influences.