The Codex
A catalogue of the reported entities, origin hypotheses and touchstone cases the discourse returns to — indexed by how often each recurs across independent sources, never by what is real, and never as a judgement of the intelligences described.
Reported Morphologies
The twelve morphology classes the corpus actually resolves — from the ubiquitous greys down to the rare shadow forms — indexed by the origin hypothesis most often attached to each. Report frequency and independent-source counts are resolved from the corpus: how often a description recurs and across how many separate sources, never a measure of what is real. Select an entry to read its profile.
Greys
“large almond-shaped, big bulging dark eyes”EYES
By a wide margin the most-reported morphology in the modern record. Accounts converge on a small being tied to examination scenarios, missing time, and recovered-memory testimony. A recurring strand of that testimony — 26 accounts outright, dozens more by implication — reads the workers not as ensouled beings at all but as made things: biological androids grown to a task, identical and expendable, tending the machinery of the encounter while taller figures direct it. That very consistency is read two ways: as independent witnesses describing the same thing, or as a single cultural template being retold. Both readings deserve airtime; the archive can only show how often the description recurs, not which reading is right.
The Observed Forms
The eleven craft geometries the corpus resolves — disc to cube — ranked by how often each is described and across how many independent sources. Same rule as the beings: resolved report counts, never a measure of what is real. Select a form to read its file.
The Disc
“Visible texture, a rim/lip, and a shadowed dark side”SURFACE
The single most-reported form in the corpus by a wide margin — a circular disc, usually domed, glimpsed hovering or crossing the sky and departing at speed. It is the archetype the whole field is measured against.
How the Field Explains It
The twelve competing explanations, ranked by how much of the discussion each one takes up — its share of all the theory-talk in the corpus. This is a reading of the discourse, not a probability that any of them is correct. Note what leads: the extraterrestrial frame, and — a close and often-overlooked second — the idea that some of this is a government or intelligence construct.
The craft are physical, crewed or autonomous, and come from elsewhere in the galaxy — the default frame most of the discourse argues from, for or against.
Some — or much — of the phenomenon is a deliberate government or intelligence construct: cover stories for secret programmes, disinformation, and managed perception. The second-most-discussed frame in the corpus.
The reports are misread but real physics — plasmas, atmospheric optics, rare weather, satellites and drones — not craft and not deception.
The phenomenon is entangled with the observer's mind rather than incidental to it; the strong version frames reality as informational and the phenomenon as an artefact of it.
Reports are the product of misperception, memory, suggestion and culture — a sociological phenomenon that spreads and mutates like any other story.
Encounters belong to the same category as religious visitation — angels, apparitions, the numinous — described in the vocabulary of each era. Motif-parallel only; never treated here as corroboration.
A secret, off-book human techno-civilisation, decades ahead of public science, is behind some portion of the record — advanced but entirely of Earth.
The source is a reality adjacent to ours rather than a distant planet — which would explain the sudden arrivals, departures and dreamlike logic the nuts-and-bolts model struggles with.
Non-human intelligence contacted early humanity and left its mark in myth, monument and scripture. Popular in the discourse, weakly evidenced, and prone to overreading ordinary archaeology.
The 'visitors' are us — descendants from our own future studying their past, which would account for their humanlike interest and their evasiveness.
A non-human intelligence has always shared the world with us, showing itself through each era's lens — fae, then airships, then saucers.
An intelligence indigenous to Earth — subterranean, marine, or simply hidden — fits some encounters better than visitors from space. Offered in the literature as a thought experiment, not a conclusion.
The Cases the Field Rests On
The canonical encounters every framework above is measured against — the cases referenced again and again because of their documentation, witnesses, or instrumentation.
The Roswell Incident
Recovered debris and a retracted "flying disc" press release — the origin point of the entire modern question.
OPEN CASE FILE →Travis Walton
A logging crew witnessed a co-worker struck by a beam and vanish for five days — among the most-witnessed abduction claims.
OPEN CASE FILE →Rendlesham Forest
USAF personnel documented lights and a landed craft over three nights, with a real-time on-site audio log.
OPEN CASE FILE →Ariel School
Around sixty schoolchildren independently described a craft and a being during morning break — interviewed on film days later.
OPEN CASE FILE →The Phoenix Lights
Thousands across the state observed a vast, silent V-formation of lights traverse the evening sky.
OPEN CASE FILE →Nimitz / Tic-Tac
Navy aviators engaged an object with instantaneous acceleration, captured on FLIR and corroborated by radar.
OPEN CASE FILE →