Comparing "ETs Visit Our World From a Nearby Mothership" to "Our World Can Interact With a Spirit World"

If you have got your astronomical education from watching science fiction movies, you probably think that travel between stars is a pretty fast experience. You just jump into your interstellar spaceship like Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, turn on the warp drive, and whoosh, you jump through hyperspace arriving at a distant planet. Even more recent movies (like the movie Interstellar) depict the same type of rapid interstellar travel.

But this is fiction, not science fact. There is no known evidence for anything like hyperspace that can be used to enable rapid interstellar travel. Nor is there solid evidence that you can instantaneously transport anything by using a space warp. Scientists have not been able to transport even a grain of sand from one place to another using a space warp.

It seems, regrettably, that interstellar travel will be a very slow affair. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, the speed of light is the fastest speed that can ever be reached. If you could somehow build a spaceship capable of traveling at the speed of light, it would take you about five years to get to the nearest star. But there are engineering reasons for thinking that a spaceship will never be able to accelerate to more than a small fraction of the speed of light. This means that it would take many years to get from one star to another. Interstellar travel might require multi-generation starships, in which many of the travelers are born and die on the starship before it reaches its destination. 

Recruiting poster for a multi-generation interstellar mission

So therefore it would seem that interstellar expeditions should only very rarely arrive at Earth after travel from some other solar system. But imagine you wish to believe that Earth is being frequently visited by spaceships, as many UFO enthusiasts like to believe. It would seem unbelievable for you to maintain that each new major sighting of a UFO is a separate interstellar expedition. That would seem to require believing in very many interstellar expeditions arriving at Earth. And based on the difficulty of interstellar travel, such expeditions should only arrive rarely if at all. 

But there is a way in which a UFO theorist can get around such a difficulty: by the hypothesis of an extraterrestrial mothership. The idea is that somewhere in outer space (unseen by humans) is a gigantic extraterrestrial spaceship, and that such a ship sends out smaller craft to explore our planet, craft sometimes called "daughter vehicles." The idea is that the smaller craft leave the gigantic mothership, travel to Earth, and then later return to the huge mothership. The visual below depicts the mothership idea. The large ship far away from Earth is the extraterrestrial mothership, a ship capable of traveling between different solar systems. The much smaller ship leaving the mothership is a ship designed to explore planet Earth. After exploring Earth for a while, the smaller ship will return to the much larger mothership, to restock its fuel and supplies. 

Under such an idea, you can believe in many UFO sightings without believing in the arrival of many different interstellar expeditions arriving in our solar system. It might be that all of the UFOs are landing craft coming from a single giant mothership. The mothership is typically imagined to be a vehicle fit purely for traveling through space, not something designed to ever enter the atmosphere of a planet. Similarly, in the original run of the television series Star Trek, the interstellar spaceship Enterprise would never land on a planet. 

But how could this huge mothership ever fail to be detected by earthly telescopes? Theorists have various ideas to explain its non-detection, such as the idea that the mothership is many millions of miles away, or the idea that the ship is in orbit around the Moon, always hiding behind the Moon. 

It is possible to make an interesting comparison between this concept of an extraterrestrial mothership and the small exploratory craft coming from it and the concept of a Spirit World from which comes visitors to planet Earth. The two concepts may at first sound extremely different, but it is surprising how much they have in common. 

First, let me explain the concept of a Spirit World from which comes visitors to planet Earth (with the travel also occurring from Earth to the Spirit World).  The concept is associated with ideas of life after death. The idea is that humans are essentially souls or spirits, and that when a physical body dies, a soul or spirit migrates to some Spirit World in which life after death can occur.  The concept allows for possible interaction or communication between beings in such a Spirit World and humans living on Earth. The Spirit World is believed to be invisible to telescopic observations, but accessible from our planet, with a possibility of spirits moving between the Spirit World and planet Earth, or vice versa. The existence of such a Spirit World was asserted by very many people in the nineteenth century, who claimed to receive communication from such a realm.  Since about 1975 there has been renewed interest in such a possibility, spurred by an abundance of near-death experiences in which many people report making brief trips to some mysterious realm resembling such a Spirit World. 

Now let's look at some of the similarities between the two ideas:

	Extraterrestrial Mother Ship Theory	Spirit World Idea
Source of enigmatic visitations to Earth	An extraterrestrial mother ship, a giant interstellar spaceship holding many smaller “daughter vehicles”	A Spirit World populated in part by spirits of the dead
Reason this source is not seen by telescopes	Various speculations, such as it hiding behind the moon, or being very far away in the solar system	Various speculations, such as the idea that the Spirit World is made of some different type of matter or energy that human devices cannot detect
How someone on Earth would experience such visitations	Maybe by seeing an inexplicable UFO or UAP in the sky, or perhaps by having a “Close Encounter of the Third Kind” or an “alien abduction”	Maybe an apparition sighting, a deathbed vision of a deceased relative, a vivid  dream of the deceased, or a mysterious “after death communication” or ADC in which an unseen presence mysteriously interacts with a living human
Can humans see the source of the  visitations?	No – basically no one ever reports seeing or visiting the extraterrestrial mother ship	Perhaps so, because during near-death experiences many report trips to some otherworldly realm that may be such a Spirit World

The square at the bottom right of the table above would seem to give us a reason for thinking that the Spirit World hypothesis is on firmer empirical ground than the Extraterrestrial Mothership hypothesis. It is true that people report seeing strange inexplicable things in the sky, and that people even report more dramatic experiences such as so-called "alien abductions" or "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." But it seems that pretty much no one ever reports seeing or visiting the claimed extraterrestrial mothership existing outside of Earth and its atmosphere. However, people seem to rather often report visiting a Spirt World. Such accounts often occur during near-death experiences. 

For example,  the original AWARE study was one of the leading scientific studies of near-death experiences. It ended up with a group of 101 persons who had experienced a close encounter with death, generally because of a cardiac arrest. Of this pool of 101 persons,  13% answered “Yes” to the question, “Did you feel separated from your body?” 13% answered “Yes” to the question, “Were your senses more vivid than usual?” 8% answered “Yes” to the question, “Did you seem to encounter a mystical being or presence, or hear an unidentifiable voice?” 7% answered “Yes” to the question, “Did you seem to enter some other, unearthly world?” 3% answered “Yes” to the question, “Did you see deceased or religious spirits?” That's 7 out of 101 reporting what sounds like a visit to a Spirit World. 

 The AWARE study  quoted one respondent who gives an account very much like what has been published in previous books on near-death experiences:

"I have comeback from the other side of life. ..God sent (me) back, it was not (my) time — (I) had many things to do. ..(I traveled) through a tunnel toward a very strong light, which didn’t dazzle or hurt (my) eyes. ..there were other people in the tunnel whom (I) did not recognize. When (I) emerged (I) described a very beautiful crystal city. .. there was a river that ran through the middle of the city (with) the most crystal clear waters. There were many people, without faces, who were washing in the waters. ..the people were very beautiful. .. there was the most beautiful singing. ..(and I was) moved to tears. (My) next recollection was looking up at a doctor doing chest compressions."

The account is like many given in near-death experiences. In many such accounts it as if the person having the near-death experience makes a trip to a Spirit World. Often the person will report seeing deceased relatives at such a location. For example, the 1897 account below involves trances in a young girl (Tillie Faith), apparently trances occurring in a state near death. We have some interesting evidence cited suggesting that more than mere imagination is involved:

You can read the account on its original news page using the link below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92064073/1897-05-27/ed-1/seq-6/

We may therefore wonder whether the hypothesis of visitations to and from a Spirit World is much better established than the hypothesis of visitations to and from an extraterrestrial mothership. It also seems that the number of people who report seeing apparitions is many times greater than the number of people who report seeing something looking like an extraterrestrial. 

Some relevant studies are below:

In Arcangel's study of 827 people, 596 (72%)  responded that they had had an "afterlife encounter." We read, "69% of respondents listed some form of visual encounter (Question 4), 19% were Visual only, 13% were a combination of Visual/Auditory, 8% Visual/Sense of Presence and 8% Visual/Auditory/Sense of Presence."

Erlendur Haraldsson surveyed 902 people in Iceland in 1974, finding that 31% reported seeing an apparition or having an encounter with a dead person.  He did another survey in Iceland  in 2007 with a similar sample size, finding that 42% reported seeing an apparition or having an encounter with a dead person, with 21% reporting a "visual experience of a dead person,"  along with 21% reporting an out-of-body experience. 

According to the paper "Psychic Experiences in the Multinational Human Values Study: Who Reports Them?" here: "Three items on personal psychic experiences (telepathy, clairvoyance, contact with the dead) were included in a survey of human values that was conducted on large representative samples in 13 countries in Europe and in the U.S. (N = 18,607). In Europe, the percentage of persons reporting telepathy was 34%; clairvoyance was reported by 21%; and 25% reported contact with the dead. Percentages for the U.S. were considerably higher: 54%, 25% and 30% respectively.".  

A 1973 survey of 434 persons in Los Angeles, USA ("Phenomenological Reality and Post-Death  Contact" by Richard Kalish and David Reynolds) found that 44% reported encounters with the deceased, and that 25% of those 44% (in other words, 11% of the 434) said that a dead person "actually visited or was seen at a seance."

As reported in the 1894 edition of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (Volume X, Part XXVI), an 1890's "Census of Hallucinations" conducted by the Society for Psychical Research asked, "Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice ; which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?"  As reported in Table 1 here (page 39), the number answering "Yes" was about 10%.  Because the question did not specifically refer to the dead, ghosts or apparitions, the wording of the question may have greatly reduced the number of "yes" answers from people experiencing what seemed to be an apparition of the dead or a sense of the presence of the dead. 

In the March-April 1948 edition of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, page 187, there appeared the result of a survey asking the same question asked in 1894: "Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice ; which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?"  According to page 191, 217 out of 1519 answered "Yes." This was a 14% "yes" rate higher than the rate of about 10% reported in 1894. 

A 1980 telephone survey of 368 participants found that 29% reported "post-death communication." 

The British Medical Journal published in 1971 a study by Rees that involved almost 300 subjects, one entitled "The Hallucinations of Widowhood."  Rees reported that 39% in his survey reported a sense of presence from a deceased person and 14% reported seeing the deceased, along with 13% hearing the deceased.

A 2015 Pew Research poll found that 18% of Americans said they've seen or been in the presence of a ghost, and that 29% said that they've felt in touch with someone who died. 

A survey of 1510 Germans found (page 12) that 15.8 reported experience with an apparition, and more than 36% reported experience with ESP. 

A Groupon survey of 2000 people found that more than 60% claim to have seen a ghost.

A 1976 survey of 1467 people in the US asked people if they had ever "felt as though you were really in touch with someone who had died?" 27% answered "Yes."  

On page 123 of the 1954 Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research (Volume 48), which you can read here, we read of a poll done of 42 students who were asked: "Have you ever actually seen your physical body from a viewpoint completely outside that body, like standing beside the bed and looking at yourself lying in the bed, or like floating in the air near your body?” 33% answered "Yes." 

 A  study found that "Of the 30 interviewable survivors of cardiac arrest, 7 (23 percent) described experiences classified as NDEs by scoring 7 or more points on the NDE Scale." Of these reporting a near-death experience in this study (11), 90% reported out-of-body experiences. 

 A Dutch study found 18% of cardiac arrest survivors reporting a near-death experience, but with only a minority of these reporting an out-of-body experience. 

A survey of family members of deceased Japanese found that 21% reported deathbed visions. A study of 103 subjects in India reports this: "Thirty of these dying persons displayed behavior consistent with deathbed visions-interacting or speaking with deceased relatives, mostly their dead parents." A study of 102 families in the Republic of Moldava found that "37 cases demonstrated classic features of deathbed visions--reports of seeing dead relatives or friends communicating to the dying person." 

A survey about near-death experiences in Australia said that nearly 9% of Australians reported them.  

A study on after-death communication (ADC) states, "Results indicated that, regarding prevalence, 30-35% of people report at least one ADC sometime in their lives and, regarding incidence, 70-80% of bereaved people report one or more ADC experiences within months of a loved one's physical death."

A paper  "Out-of-Body Experiences" by Carlos S. Alvarado tells us that according to 5 surveys of the general population, 10% of the population report out-of-body experiences. A larger number of surveys of students show they report out-of-body experiences at a rate of about 25%. 

On the page here, we read this about an October, 2025 poll: " A new YouGov poll asked Americans about their paranormal experiences. Most Americans say they’ve had at least one paranormal experience, and many believe that they personally have a paranormal ability." The poll was a survey of 1136 American adults. Among the more interesting findings were these:  16% of the Americans polled reported "seeing a spirit or ghost." Of these, the majority said they had seen such a thing more than once. 

A year 2023 Pew Research survey of 5079 adults in the USA found that "46% of Americans report that they’ve been visited by a dead family member in a dream, while 31% report having been visited by dead relatives in some other form," with 53% reporting either or both of these experiences. 34% said that in the past 12 months they have "felt the presence of a family member who is dead." This wasn't just churchgoers. The survey found that "Roughly half (48%) of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated – atheists, agnostics, and those who report their religion is “nothing in particular” – say they have ever been visited by a dead relative in a dream or other form."

We read the following on a page of the Psi Encyclopedia: "In 2017, Una MacConville carried out a study with Irish health care professionals. The carers reported that 45% of their patients spoke of visions of deceased relatives, often joyful experiences that bring a sense of peace and comfort."

These numbers are much higher than any percentage of people reporting seeing what seemed to be an extraterrestrial. So it can reasonably be argued that the idea of visitations from and to a Spirit World is much better empirically supported than the idea of visitations to and from some extraterrestrial mothership.