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 4th Kind
A close encounter of the fourth kind (CE4) refers to a UFO event where a human is abducted or has direct, initiated contact with the occupants of a spacecraft. While not in J. Allen Hynek's original 1972 scale, it was added to represent the most intense, often terrifying, level of reported extraterrestrial interaction, frequently involving involuntary transport into a craft for examination.
Key Aspects of Fourth Kind Encounters (CE4):
-
Definition: Unlike the third kind, which involves seeing occupants, the fourth kind involves interaction or abduction.
-
Psychological/Physical Impact: These cases often involve traumatized victims, missing time, and sometimes, physical evidence or injuries.
-
Alternative View: Researcher Jacques Vallée argued that the fourth kind should include cases involving altered realities, where the experience feels dreamlike or absurd, rather than just physical abduction.
An expansion to the classification created by astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a technical advisor on UFO studies, to categorize experiences by increasing closeness.
Antônio Vilas-Boas - October 15, 1957 - Minas Geraes, Brazil
Betty and Barny Hill - September 19, 1961 - Lincoln, New Hampshire
Robert Matthews - October 1, 1966 - Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Betty Andreasson - January 25, 1967 - South Ashburnham, Massachusetts
Herb Schirmer - December 3, 1967 - Ashland, Nebraska
Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker - October 11, 1973 - Pascagoula, Mississippi
Kristina Florence - 1974 - Mojave Desert, California
Carl Higdon - October 25, 1974 - The Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming
Travis Walton - November 5, 1975 - Turkey Springs, Arizona
Mona Stafford, Louise Smith, and Elaine Thomas - January 6, 1976 - Stanford, Kentucky
The Allagash Four - August 20, 1976 - Big Eagle Lake, Maine
Kathie Davis - Summer 1983 - North Indianapolis, Indianapolis
Whitley Steiber - December 26, 1985 - Accord, New York
Linda Napolitano - November 30, 1989 - New York City, New York
Amy Rylance - October 4, 2001 - Queensland, Australia