Are we the aliens on planet Earth?
At least one brilliant and knowledgeable scientist thinks so.
There was a good reason why a famous 1982 Spielberg movie was named “E.T. the Extraterrestrial.” For decades, “E.T.” was the initialism that American culture associated with Extraterrestrial Aliens, creatures from outer space.
But now it isn’t in fashion. In fact, the notion of “aliens” has seemingly been replaced by NHI, “non-human intelligence,” at least in official government channels. Gone is the obsession with aliens from outer space. In fact, gone is the obsession with aliens, period.
Why might that be? Well, at least one brilliant anthropologist (Dr. Michael P. Masters), makes the argument that so-called aliens might be time travelers.
However, there is a corollary to the old (over a hundred years old) question about aliens that has arisen once again.
Who are the original intelligent occupants of planet Earth? Are we the aliens?
My long-held response to such ludicrous questions used to be, “Poppycock!”
Until a few days ago. Now, I’m not so sure.
Garry Nolan
My understanding of the universe and our place in it was recently shattered when a highly credentialed and respected scientist from Stanford said something incredible during a Podcast interview. Jordan B. Peterson, a Canadian psychologist, author, and Podcaster (The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast), interviewed Dr. Garry Nolan for Episode 563 (July 17, 2025) of his podcast. The tagline for that episode was startling: “Something Non-Human Has Been Here a Long Time.”
Dr. Garry Nolan – screen capture from the 2025 interview with Jordan Peterson.
Garry Nolan is a Professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University. Actually, that is an understatement. He is a British-American immunologist, academic, inventor, and business executive. He holds the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor Endowed Chair in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Nolan has founded biotechnology companies and is the senior science advisor for the Skywatcher program which lures UFOs (UAPs) to land and be captured.
Dangerous stuff there, in my humble opinion.
During the closing minutes of the 90-minute interview, Peterson asked Nolan for his conclusion about the presence of NHI on Earth. Nolan’s response was a shocker.
“I conclude that there’s definitely something here. But I think the more interesting conclusion is if they are, if something is here, it’s likely been here longer than humans have even been civilized. So, it really opens the question, and actually it’s something that I think Charles Fort actually said, …Earth is probably somebody else’s property.”
Let that sink in for a moment.
Charles Fort
The person Nolan mentioned, Charles Fort, was even more draconian than Nolan. In the first chapter of his first book, Book of the Dammed, published in 1919, he claimed that some unknown intelligence may own the Earth and its inhabitants. He wrote, “I think we’re property.” Twelve years later, one of Fort’s speculative writings in his third book, Lo!, is the most chilling of all. He wrote in no uncertain terms, “The Earth is a farm. We are someone else’s property.”
As can be heard in Part 1 of the Audiobook version of his book, Fort explains that the “damned” are those natural observations, data, that “science has excluded.”
Charles Fort. an early 20th century American writer and researcher
Ninety-four years later, most of us view Fort’s imaginative musing with a bit of subdued laughter and a healthy serving of skepticism. However, when a scientist of international caliber and fame such as Stanford’s Gary Nolan, repeats Fort’s idea, deadpan, in all considered seriousness, then, we have the makings of a nightmare.
That may be the reason that the cognoscenti in government and world leadership are so determined to resist full disclosure at all cost. It might scare the crap out of us.
Most of us with a good reason to believe that aliens and their craft have visited Earth, are perplexed by the resistance of the government to disclose visitation from other worlds. Surely, we can accept that fact, despite often-heard protestation that we are “not ready” to know the whole truth.
On the other hand, maybe they are correct. Perhaps, we are not ready for what Gary Nolan and Charles Fort had to say.
What if those two savants, Fort and Nolan, are correct?
What if Nolan’s recent words are a carefully measured leak? Who or what are the true Masters of our planet? Care to guess?
Based on a genetic probability argument, Nolan dismissed the likelihood that they were humanoid. If not human in appearance, then what are they?
Reptilians
Well, there is plenty of legendary lore about super intelligent reptilians hiding deep underground. Is there more to it than lore?
Frankly, I’ve yet to see the slightest hint of evidence for highly advanced, ancient reptilians hiding beneath our feet. If they are hiding, they’re darned good at it!
Without evidence, reptilian overlords are nothing more than a fantasy.
Shadow People
But what if the entities of which Fort and Nolan speak are not physical at all? Some, like Heidi Hollis, refer to vaporous Shadow People. (Hollis’s claim to fame is her 2014 book, The Secret War: A True Story About Real Alien War and Shadow People.) Those supposed entities are negative spirits in the extreme, even demonic, perhaps.
And the worrisome part is that Hollis (and others) claim that such ephemeral phantoms can induce vulnerable humans to do harmful things, harmful to themselves and others.
Well, once again, without verifiable evidence of Shadow People, the reality of these nightmarish entities can be neither proved nor disproved.
But still, since Gary Nolan put his top-notch reputation on the line, I’m hesitant to dismiss his general conclusion out of hand. Something may in fact own us. Unfortunately, Nolan claims not to know WHO owns us.
Methinks people like him know something the rest of us don’t.
Booth Tarkington
Within the Introduction to Charles Fort’s Lo!, I found a delectable passage written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Booth Tarkington. His words came not from Lo!, per se, but from Tarkington’s introduction to Fort’s New Lands, from 1923. It specifically addressed Fort’s earliest writing.
“(After dipping here and there in The Book of the Damned—) I turned back to the beginning and read this vigorous and astonishing book straight through, and then re-read it for the pleasure it gave me in the way of its writing and in the substance of what it told. … Here indeed was a ‘brush dipped in earthquake and eclipse’… He [Mr. Fort] deals in nightmare, not on the planetary, but on the constellation scale, and the imagination of one who staggers along after him is frequently left gasping and flaccid.”
Apparently, I am not the first person to view Fort’s reasoning, and Nolan’s echo of it, as a nightmare.
Henry Fuseli’s ‘The Nightmare’ from 1781. Google Arts and Culture
