Case Credibility Rating System
★★★★★ Very Low
★★★★★ Low
★★★★★ Moderate
★★★★★ High
★★★★★ Exceptional
Primarily anecdotal, anonymous or unverifiable witnesses, story surfaced long afterward, little/no contemporary documentation, serious inconsistencies, or evidence of fabrication.
Identifiable witness or source, but evidence is weak. Limited corroboration, secondhand reporting, questionable documentation, or plausible conventional explanations significantly weaken the case.
Credible identifiable witnesses and reasonable documentation. Some independent corroboration may exist, but important uncertainties remain or conventional explanations cannot be confidently excluded.
Multiple credible or independent witnesses, strong contemporary documentation, and/or supporting photographic, radar, physical, military, police, or scientific evidence. Conventional explanations have been investigated but remain inadequate or disputed.
Exceptionally well-documented case involving multiple independent sources and several mutually supporting forms of evidence. Records have strong provenance, major details are independently corroborated, and extensive investigation has failed to produce a convincing conventional explanation.
Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind
A close encounter of the third kind is a UFO event in which an animated entity—such as a humanoid, robot, or alien pilot—is present alongside a UFO. Defined by astronomer J. Allen Hynek, this stage represents the actual sighting or contact with extraterrestrial beings, moving beyond mere sightings of craft.
UFO researcher Ted Bloecher proposed six sub-types for the close encounters of the third kind in Hynek's scale:
A. Aboard: An entity is observed only inside the UFO.
B. Both: An entity is observed inside and outside the UFO.
C. Close: An entity is observed near to a UFO, but not going in or out.
D. Direct: An entity is observed—no UFOs are seen by the observer, but UFO activity has been reported in the area at about the same time.
E. Excluded: An entity is observed, but no UFOs are seen and no UFO activity has been reported in the area at that time.
F. Frequence: No entity or UFOs are observed, but the subject experiences some sort of "intelligent communication".
This classification was created by astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a technical advisor on UFO studies, to categorize experiences by increasing closeness.