Extraordinary: The Seeding Quicktake: Glimpsing Ufology’s Eccentric Side
Anyone looking to solve the UFO mystery ends up with more questions than they started with. Or, as ufology historian Richard Dolan puts it, the more we learn about the world we’re in, the greater the mysteries.
Dolan is one of the many thoughtful UFO experts featured in director Jon Sumple’s documentary, Extraordinary: The Seeding. The Seeding is the second entry in a three-part series exploring a possible alien presence on earth.
This installment focuses on alien abductions and the motivations behind these otherworldly encounters. Sumple gathers an assortment of experts in the UFO field and interviewees claiming to have interacted with extra-terrestrial visitors.
People have reported seeing UFOs since the dawn of recorded history, but alien abductions are a new wrinkle to the phenomenon. Soon after the modern UFO era began in the ‘40s, people started reporting interactions with the crafts’ pilots. Folks who claimed to meet with UFO occupants during that era are known as contactees.
Contactees generally report positive experiences with aliens who look and behave quite human. Contactees referred to extra-terrestrials as cosmic space brothers who journey to earth with dire warnings about protecting the planet.
The alien/contactee experience took a dark turn in the ‘60s and ‘70s with the introduction of alien abductions. People started reporting aliens taking them onboard crafts against their will, experimenting on them, and returning them to earth. These abductions were often a source of trauma for the experiencers. Abductees tend to keep their stories to themselves out of fear of ridicule.
The Seeding treats these experiences as legit and focuses on the motivations behind these alleged encounters. The movie features one-on-one interviews with people who claim they’ve been abducted by aliens throughout their lives. These abductees share eerily similar accounts that suggest an alien/human crossbreeding program.
The stories in this documentary sound like the plot of some trashy sci-fi movie. The interviewees report being whisked away in the night and having their genetic material extracted by callous alien beings. Women claim they’ve been impregnated with genetically modified eggs meant to gestate human/alien hybrid babies that are removed early on in the pregnancy.
One woman reports becoming pregnant even though she is a lesbian who didn’t have sex with men. Another interviewee claims doctors found scarring inside her reproductive systems that suggests a prior medical procedure. The subjects in the film all report having their fetuses disappear from their womb overnight. The Seeding uses these common stories as proof of an alien hybrid program.
There’s no short supply of outrageous stories in The Seeding. If any one of them were true, it would shift humanity’s concept of reality. The problem, however, is the doc fails to back up the subjects’ claims and rarely offers alternative points of view.
In the case of the allegedly impregnated women, where are the ultrasounds proving they were pregnant? Where are the medical reports ruling out fetal resorption? Why doesn’t the film present documents establishing verified common side effects among impregnated abductees? One alleged abductee claims to have 24 alien children, but nothing to show for it but her vivid recollections.
The Seeding doesn’t bother including perspectives that don’t support the alien abduction theory. The film would be well-served by featuring doctors with informed opinions on possible abduction explanations such as sleep paralysis, repressed trauma, and psychosis. The truth is, the UFO topic does attract mentally unstable people and charlatans and scam artists looking to take advantage of believers. The doc only hurts its credibility by refusing to examine the holes in alien abduction theories.
The movie does sparingly feature interviewees who aren’t all-in believers. Astronomer Marc D’Antonio and ufology journalist Alejandro Rojas both bring their reserved point of view to the conversation. They’re the type of folks who won’t make definitive statements about the phenomenon until evidence backs it up. I’ve read Rojas’ work and listened to him speak on the subject, so it’s clear the film is using crafty editing to dance around his true thoughts on most abductees’ claims.
The Seeding makes a strong case why we need to treat abductees with empathy. Sure, it’s easy to laugh off experiencers as crackpots with unproven claims. But there’s no denying that many experiencers believe they’re having real encounters which cause them actual pain and trauma.
People would never shame someone with schizophrenia for saying they hear Darth Vader speaking to them through their toaster, even though we know it’s untrue. The Seeding makes a strong case why experiencers deserve the same courtesy, even if you disagree with the root of their trauma.
It’s time to move past the conversation about whether UFOs exist. The U.S. government admits it can’t explain the intelligently controlled objects it’s tracking in the sky. Military aircraft have captured these objects on multiple sensors as they break the laws of physics. The UFO presence somehow remains open for debate since skeptics claim the world’s most advanced tracking systems are misidentifying balloons. As long as that’s the case, how does the subject move towards its next logical point: who’s piloting these objects?
While the mainstream media is finally dipping its toes into the UFO phenomenon’s murky waters, Extraordinary: The Seeding does a cannonball into the deep end. The material is so far past the mainstream discourse, it won’t resonate with most people. It’s one thing to think aliens are here watching us from a distance; it’s another to claim reptilian beings are here impregnating women.
Though one-sided in its approach, The Seeding isn’t as far out there as most UFO documentaries covering this topic. Sumple does a solid job of laying out one of the more challenging aspects of UFO lore.
The Seeding won’t transform skeptics into believers, but it will provide more context to a subject most folks laugh off. You don’t have to believe in alien abduction to believe in an experiencer’s trauma. At the very least, The Seeding will make skeptics consider the butt of their jokes the next time they crack wise about anal probes.
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