Graham Hancock

The author who believes that alien abductions are a recasting of ancient interactions with interdimensional intelligence

Name	Graham Hancock
Age	75
Born	August 2, 1950
Famous for	Linking alien abductions to ancient shamanic folklore or visions

Sometimes, contrary to our own objective interests, every society that we know about since the appearance of modern humans on the planet has maintained a steadfast belief in the existence of supernatural realms and beings.

Witnesses claiming to have encountered something “extraterrestrial” have existed before humanity had the tools to document human statements, perhaps even before the term “extraterrestrial” was coined, and have persisted through eons to the present day.

While some may argue that this is solely a case of humanity forging stories for a chance of gaining notoriety, Graham Hancock believes otherwise.

An author, journalist, and the public’s “favorite” pseudoarchaeologist, Hancock has carved out a name for himself as someone who uncovers humanity’s forgotten past. Yet somehow, throughout his shared beliefs about civilization, he has interwoven interesting statements about the UFO phenomenon, catching the attention of the UFO community.

His Early Life and Career

Hancock had a relatively mobile life, an arrangement he and his family had gone through due to the demands of his father’s career. Throughout his early years, he had moved from Edinburgh to South India and Northern Ireland before finally settling in the North of England.

Growing up, he always felt left out.

From the moment we came back from India, that’s when I started realizing that I was an outsider. Whatever the center of things is, I wasn’t in it. I was out on the edges looking in. I felt alienated, that I didn’t belong.²

This feeling of isolation persisted when he moved to a boarding school in England, as he struggled to adapt to the rigidity of its academic system. From a young age, Hancock was a dreamer, and being forced to learn a particular doctrine (or so he saw it) worked against him.

He was regarded as stupid by his earlier teachers and only started to thrive when he moved to university, an environment that embraced free thinkers like himself.

By 1973, Graham Hancock had graduated from Durham University, which immediately catapulted him into journalism. He was writing for several leading British newspapers:

• The Times
• The Sunday Times
• The Independent
• The Guardian

Hancock had easily sprung to the spotlight in his journalism career. However, the author believed his breakthrough only occurred when he married his first wife.

A Somali woman, Hancock’s wife, suggested they move back to Somalia after getting married, which they did with assistance. When they returned to England in 1976, Hancock relaunched his journalism career, now with the expertise he had gained in East Africa. He became The Economist’s East African correspondent, covering current affairs.

This opened the door to investigating historical mysteries and archaeology.

His Early Works and Investigative Interests

Throughout his career, Graham Hancock has published several books, which showcase his general journalistic capacity:

• Journey Through Pakistan (1981)
• Under Ethiopian Skies (1983)
• Ethiopia: The Challenge of Hunger (1984)
• AIDS: The Deadly Epidemic (1986)
• Lords of Poverty (1989)
• African Ark (1990)

However, it was only by 1992 that Hancock earned his bestseller status with his breakthrough publications:

• The Sign and The Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant (1992)
• Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth’s Lost Civilization (1995)

Across these works, Graham Hancock’s interest focused on the physical and religious aspects of history that were shrouded in mystery. He filled in historical gaps by combining archaeology, mythology, and alternative history to argue that a forgotten civilization must have existed.

His Belief in Consciousness and the Realms of Reality

Most of Hancock’s methodology included studying ancient myths. While doing so, he began noticing recurring depictions of hybrid beings across generations and cultures, from ancient shamanic visions to medieval faerie encounters to UFO sightings today.

The striking similarities couldn’t be easily explained by coincidence, and the next best explanation would be visions or hallucinations. However, why were these people from different parts of the world and at various periods of history reporting the same visions?

To thoroughly understand and investigate his hypothesis, Hancock believed he wouldn’t be able to do so with humanity’s limitations. So, he turned from physical exploration to inner exploration, one influenced by shamanism and hallucinogens.

If we look at the world through a very narrow, limited perspective, then all we’re going to see are narrow, limited things. The role of psychedelics is to provide another lens that allows us to see a wider reality.

This methodology made him one of the most contested figures in the media.

Addressing history through a lens that could be mistaken as advocating for drugs wasn’t a good way to build a reputation. However, Graham Hancock firmly believed that hallucinogens weren’t a bad thing. If anything, they only expanded reality and what the brain experiences.

If we look at the mainstream model of what hallucinations are, we find scientists explaining them as merely the brain in a disturbed state releasing items from memory and from culture, reconstructing them in novel ways to create the bizarre, non-real imagery that we call hallucinations.

For the author, people experience a different level of reality under the influence of such drugs. The pattern of similarities across ancient visions and today’s alien abduction stories, to him, wasn’t simply symbolic, but a reflection of authentic, shared experiences.

A variety of means exist by which our brains pick up other realities which aren’t normally present in our daily perceptions, but are, in fact, there. So, we can reach other dimensions that way, not through some sort of mechanistic fantasy of 21st-century technology, but simply through returning to our consciousness.

His Entry to Ufology

His fascination with psychedelics and belief in a visionary world led him to discussions about the extraterrestrial.

Now, Graham Hancock isn’t a ufologist, per se, as much as he isn’t an archaeologist. However, the several fascinating views he made about the phenomena are enough to make him an intriguing figure within the community.

In fact, the author claimed to have had his own encounter.

In his pursuit of this visionary world, Hancock would get himself under the influence of ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic drug in the Amazon.

His experience came during one of his “trips.”

I was sitting on a bench outside the shaman’s hut, feeling pretty ill because that’s what ayahuasca does. I was having these wild visions, and then I saw not one but several flying saucers above me. I saw this characteristic alien face, sort of heart-shaped, large dark eyes, materialize, and I got the very strong message that they were going to take me.

Upon hearing this message, he claimed he cowered. When taking ayahuasca, the visions usually appear with the taker’s eyes closed and are stopped by opening them. In that moment, he opened his eyes and shouted, “No!”

His Beliefs About UFOs

Graham Hancock’s beliefs about UFOs are nuanced. While he acknowledges the possibility that they are real, he often ties them to human consciousness and historical experience.

UFOs Aren’t Machines

For Hancock, flying saucers aren’t as uncomplicated as they seem.

Stories may associate UFOs with high-tech vehicles transporting aliens from one planet to another, but the author believes it’s a manifestation of a completely different experience.

During one of his visits to Amazon, he once watched a Peruvian shaman paint UFOs as he drew his visions. Hancock asked him if the flying saucers were meant to transport extraterrestrial beings to Earth. To which the shaman agreed that they were vehicles, but not for transportation, instead for people to enter and leave the spirit world.

According to Hancock, the idea that aliens came in spaceships from other planets is fundamentally a materialistic proposition. He believes it addresses the phenomenon through a more technological lens rather than a consciousness-based view.

However, Hancock still emphasizes that this theory doesn’t discount the physical elements of the UFO phenomenon. He acknowledges that UFOs reflecting on radar are real, but this doesn’t define what they truly are.

UFOs Represents Contact With Interdimensional Beings

Graham Hancock believes that alien exists, but what he thinks they are differs from what has been established. To him, aliens aren’t extraterrestrial but interdimensional. They don’t come from other planets, but rather other planes of reality accessed through psychedelics.

I’m quite confident that the key to such experiences is to be found in altered states of consciousness. But I also want to re-emphasize that when I speak of these experiences, I absolutely don’t mean that they aren’t real.

I think there’s a very good chance that many so-called supernatural encounters, including what we call “alien abduction,” are 100% real, but are difficult to demonstrate precisely because they’re only accessible to us in altered states of consciousness.

Psychedelics as a Way to Encounter Aliens

In support of this theory, Hancock has repeatedly mentioned research involving DMT, a plant-derived psychedelic, which made him believe that alien-abduction experiences can be successfully reproduced in laboratories.

One was a government-funded clinical research in 1990–1995, conducted by Dr. Rick Strassman. This involved 60 volunteers who convincingly reported that they had encounters with angels, aliens, and spirits when under the influence of DMT.

We might say that those lab subjects were simply spitting out from their minds what they’d picked up about so-called alien abductions from the press. Except that experiments were done before any publicity surrounding alien abductions had ever got out into the media, and in those experiments, the subjects reported these encounters with small beings, who abducted them and did nasty things to them.

The author also mentions Christopher Timmermann’s research, where volunteers were kept in a DMT state for an hour. This was the first time that psychedelics had been tried with human volunteers, not for their therapeutic benefits but to understand the visions they would have.

The results were astonishing. The volunteers shared consistent stories of encountering the same “alien-like” entities within the same setting.

If this were any other research, it would be considered authentic, but because society is still prejudiced against such experiences, they continue to deny its credibility.

UFOs as Part of a Continuum of Nonhuman Interaction

In 1969, Jacques Vallée published Passport to Magonia, comparing UFO experiences with medieval faerie folklore.

This caught Hancock’s attention, and, in support of the ufologist’s ideology, he continued the investigation, this time expanding the comparison to include the shamanic spirits.

What we’re dealing with is one phenomenon, which has been with the human race since we first became human, and which we have interpreted in slightly different ways at different periods of history.

Alien abduction experiences today may be nothing less than a recasting—in terms appropriate to our high-tech age—of the same encounter that once was described as meeting faeries or spirits.

His Belief in the Ancient Astronaut Theory

While Graham Hancock is generally supportive of the extraterrestrial phenomenon, he has disagreed with Erich von Däniken’s Ancient Astronaut Theory. His reason is that he doesn’t want to depend on aliens to explain the mysteries of history.

I have no problem with the notion that the universe is full of life, or with the notion that we are being visited now, or have been visited in the past by “astronauts” from other planets.

I am quite clear, however, having spent more than quarter of a century walking the walk across many of the intriguing ancient archaeological sites on Earth, and digging into ancient texts and traditions from all around the world, that no ancient archaeological site and no ancient text or tradition that I have yet come across provides persuasive evidence for the “ancient astronaut” hypothesis.

Graham Hancock’s Legacy in Ufology

While he hasn’t extensively talked about the UFO phenomenon, Graham Hancock has still left a significant mark on the UFO community. His legacy is that of a bridge-builder, as someone who saw the connection between ancient mythology and altered states of consciousness.

Still influential to this day, Hancock continues to popularize the idea that UFOs are a recurring phenomenon. Through his argument—initially proposed by Jacques Vallée—researchers are encouraged to view the phenomenon not only as a technological mystery but also as a consciousness experience. His work has been referenced across UFO Connect, a leading UFO research website, and in various UFO documents that explore the intersection of science, spirituality, and the unknown.

I’m not saying altered states of consciousness explain everything about the alien phenomenon. I’m not saying there are no physical aspects to the alien phenomenon, because there are. I’m simply saying that if we neglect altered states of consciousness and focus solely on the physical, we will never solve the alien mystery.

I would hope that what I’ve done has encouraged the asking of questions, to persuade my readers never to accept anything at face value.

FAQ

What does Graham Hancock believe about UFOs?

Graham Hancock believes UFOs aren’t extraterrestrial beings but manifestations of interdimensional intelligences that humans have already encountered.

How does Graham Hancock connect UFOs to ancient history?

He links UFO encounters to ancient myths and shamanic experiences or traditions, suggesting that they represent the same visionary encounters.

Did Graham Hancock personally experience UFOs?

Hancock claimed he had a personal encounter with UFOs, where he saw several flying saucers and aliens, when he was under the influence of ayahuasca in the Amazon.