The Cryptoterrestrials
By Eric Smyrneou , Author/Researcher
Unlocking the Truth, issue 13 - 10 minute read
By Erik Smyrnaios, Author/Researcher
First published in Unlocking the Truth magazine, Issue 13
Since the dawn of history — and perhaps even before — a strange shadow has hovered over the human species. An inexplicable phenomenon runs through every recorded era, producing identical patterns and structures, seemingly defying the changes that characterize the evolution of our consciousness as we laboriously climb the steps of our biological development.
This phenomenon concerns visits from “otherworldly” entities that behave as though endowed with a peculiar form of intelligence and interact with our species in ways not yet fully understood. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, when technology permeates and shapes every aspect of human life, this phenomenon has inevitably taken on a technological character and is associated with UFO sightings — Unidentified Flying Objects which, according to the majority of citizens in the Western world, are extraterrestrial spacecraft crewed by beings studying our planet in general and humanity in particular.
These vehicles began appearing in Earth’s skies a few years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and seemed to be constructed from a shining metallic material reminiscent of chrome — precisely how people of that era imagined the futuristic spacecraft of a coming space age. Shortly afterward, roughly during the 1950s and 1960s, UFOs allegedly began landing, and their crews — often described as attractive Nordic-looking men and women — introduced themselves to astonished contactees as “space brothers,” preparing humanity to join a utopian galactic community. At the same time, they warned us about nuclear weapons, environmental pollution, and various cosmic catastrophes threatening our survival.
Later, especially during the 1990s, the phenomenon acquired a far darker tone as the image of extraterrestrials shifted toward mysterious small “grey” beings said to abduct unsuspecting people, manipulate their memories, perform strange experiments on them, and use them within some bizarre interstellar hybridization program.
In our time, the phenomenon appears to have transformed again, retreating to the margins of perception and being characterized by a multitude of audiovisual recordings whose authenticity can no longer be reliably confirmed.
Nevertheless, after decades of sightings and encounters, many researchers have identified aspects of the phenomenon that are not easily explained by the theory of extraterrestrial origin. These strange visitors do not behave like envoys of an advanced civilization attempting to establish a functional bridge of communication with humanity. On the contrary, many people who report encounters describe behavior that seems strangely simplistic or even irrational. The crews of the so-called flying saucers appear to mislead those they contact. Initially, they claimed to come from the Moon, Mars, Venus, or even Jupiter — until advances in Earth-based astronomy made it clear that these environments are entirely hostile to humanoid life. Later, some claimed origins in the depths of the Earth, distant planetary systems, parallel dimensions, or even an ambiguous future.
In reality, these self-proclaimed extraterrestrials often resembled caricatures of humanity itself rather than beings possessing inconceivably advanced technology capable of traversing interstellar distances. French researcher Jacques F. Vallée, among the first to highlight these suspicious characteristics, even described them as “Messengers of Deception.” He also noted strong similarities between modern reports of extraterrestrial encounters and historical accounts of interactions with demons, angels, elves, and fairies found in the folklore of cultures worldwide. Features such as sensations of levitation, intense lights, time distortion, memory loss, strange bodily marks, or the development of psychic or healing abilities after encounters closely resemble phenomena reported in legends thousands of years old. Clearly, they may stem from the same underlying phenomenon.
An intriguing hypothesis about the true nature of this phenomenon was proposed by American researcher, blogger, and author Mac Tonnies, born August 20, 1975, who passed away prematurely on October 22, 2009. Tonnies worked in futurism, transhumanism, and paranormal studies. His proposal was the following:
The strange visitors — the supposed extraterrestrials — are lying to us. In reality, they represent mysterious intelligent species that have shared this world with us for as long as humanity has existed on Earth.They live among us unseen and unnoticed, evolving in parallel with humanity, appearing throughout history as supernatural beings or extraterrestrials in order to manipulate us and perhaps establish dominance over us. Tonnies coined the term cryptoterrestrials to describe them.
This theory may not be as outrageous as it first appears. Across the mythologies and folklore of virtually all cultures, one finds references to non-human intelligent beings endowed with “supernatural” abilities, living either among humans or in their own territories that humans are warned not to invade. Their relationships with humanity vary: some coexist peacefully, others maintain uneasy truces, some occasionally assist humans or receive human assistance, and others engage in open hostility if they feel threatened or offended by human expansion.
A characteristic example is the belief in a mysterious “little people” hiding from humans yet considered dangerous. Such beliefs appear not only in Celtic folklore but across much of the world. In Greece, beliefs in kallikantzaroi and elemental spirits still survive, along with stories of encounters with enigmatic fairies resembling the naiads and nereids of ancient Greek tradition.
Furthermore, in recent decades anthropologists have accepted that human evolution was not linear. Modern Homo sapiens is not simply the final step in a ladder of successive species. Instead, our ancestors coexisted with multiple humanoid species, some of which, such as the Neanderthals, interbred with humans, leaving genetic traces still present today. Other humanoid species disappeared after encountering modern humans. Interestingly, until the mid-19th century, strong beliefs persisted in several European countries that such hidden races still survived. Author Arthur Machen, for instance, drew inspiration for stories such as The Novel of the Black Seal from such traditions and was known to participate in occult circles exploring esoteric human history.
It is also worth noting that many European royal dynasties are surrounded by legends claiming descent from unions between humans and non-human beings. The royal families of Great Britain and Luxembourg, for example, are said to descend from the mysterious serpent-like fairy Melusine — a myth reminiscent of Cecrops, the legendary founder and first king of Athens, who was also described as serpentine. In ancient China, royal lineages were similarly believed to descend from dragons. Additionally, archaeological findings from the Middle East and Egypt occasionally reveal ancient individuals with elongated skulls not caused by artificial deformation but by genetic traits suggesting evolutionary branches close to, yet distinct from, modern humans.
Another remarkable case is Homo floresiensis, or the “Flores Man,” a species of very small humanoids believed to have survived until the arrival of Homo sapiens. Discovered in 2003 on the Indonesian island of Flores in the form of a 60,000-year-old semi-fossilized skeleton, remains of eight similarly small individuals were found along with miniature stone tools. Scientists nicknamed them “Hobbits,” after the fictional beings described by J. R. R. Tolkien, who are nearly identical in stature. Local inhabitants also believed in tiny creatures called Ebu Gogo until as recently as the late 19th century.
Another intriguing detail about Neanderthals concerns their brains, which were larger than those of modern humans and structured differently, likely resulting in a different perception of the world and abilities now diminished in our species. Recent discoveries also reveal that Neanderthals were far from primitive: they used musical instruments, communicated through some form of spoken language, cared for one another, buried their dead with flowers, and developed ritualistic cultures.
Let us now make a bold assumption: suppose some of those pre-human species survived the expansion of humanity. Suppose they managed to hide among us or retreat into remote corners of the planet, using abilities that might appear supernatural to us — camouflage, environmental blending, or manipulation of human perception. Suppose they established communication networks and cooperation among themselves and have since tried discreetly to coexist with, interbreed with, or even dominate humanity by influencing collective perception. To achieve this, they might cultivate myths protecting their existence — haunted places to be avoided or later, tales of space beings coming to save us or create hybrid human-extraterrestrial descendants destined to inherit the future.
Would they not appear to us as mysterious extraterrestrials?
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