If ever there was a time not to be late for a meeting, this was it. The directions I’d been given were, appropriately, vague. At least it was a clear night I figured as I paced the length of Hudson River Park — perfect conditions for a sighting. The ‘predicted time of contact’ was 9pm EST; it’s 9:20 when I first catch a glimpse of the Disclosure Network New York (DNNY) — a group of Ufologists dedicated to the study of extra terrestrial life — making their way back along the pier. The eight figures, comprised of six middle-aged men and two women, appear forlorn. I curse my tardiness. How often does one receive the privilege of time-specific predicted phenomena? The opportunity for an encounter so close, yet now, so far.

Barely done with introductions, Julio Barriere, dressed in an appropriate windbreaker/military cap combo, grabs my arm and begins pointing. “Ok, that one,” he motions toward what I would have previously labelled a star. “And that one and that one,” he continues pointing. “You see how they’re brighter? Those are UFO’s.” His authoritative tone is convincing. Perhaps, in this demonstration, Julio is constructing a cosmic metaphor for our inability to comprehend the vastness of space and the potential for life that it contains? Or so I think, until he continues, “Just watch, when I leave here, they’re going to follow me.”

Any semblance of my attempt at an earnest engagement with Julio disintegrates when he further explains that Obama is a Lizard and Steve Jobs was assassinated (impressive, considering he died of cancer). Julio’s conspiratorial ramblings dash my hopes of keeping an open mind and within five minutes of meeting, he’s confirmed the “everything-is-connected-we-are-not-alone” stereotype of his ufologist brethren.

In fairness to the brethren, they’re not as convinced. “Well, we can’t be sure those are UFOs,” explains a pencil-thin goateed Nick Curto, co-founder and director of DNNY. “Although, just because we can’t see them, doesn’t mean they’re not there,” he diplomatically, albeit paradoxically, reassures Julio, who’s too busy staring upward to actually care.

Ufology, a term first appearing in a 1959 Times Literary Supplement, was defined as, “[t]he articles, reports, and bureaucratic studies…written about this perplexing visitant.” Since then, the neologism has come to broadly describe the collective efforts of those pursuing the study of these “perplexing visitant[s]”. Born in Massachusetts, Curto has lived in New York City for 48 years. His interest in Ufology, like many in the community, stemmed from a childhood fascination with “looking up at the sky and wondering what was out there”.

Years later this interest would draw Curto — whose gentle demeanour belies his hulking presence — to the work of ufologist and founder of the Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (CSETI), Dr. Steven Greer. Motivated by the good doctor’s message, Curto joined a volunteer PR fundraising committee in 2003, to bring Dr. Greer to New York to give a lecture. The response was encouraging. Not only did they raise the funds necessary, the lecture drew a crowd big enough to fill an auditorium. This prompted Curto and some of the other volunteers to create DNNY.

“DNNY was formed as a way of staying together and researching,” Curto explains. “We have two meetings on the first and third Sunday of every month. Usually there’ll be a lecture and then we open up to people sharing their experiences.”

Numbers are dwindling as Julio departs, his UFO’s stubbornly remaining in place. Tonight’s gathering is not an adequate reflection on DNNY’s usual attendance of “around 30 to 40”, Curto assures. It probably has something to do with the fact that today’s event is irregularly taking place on a Saturday. “The group is also usually a lot more mixed,” Curto adds, commenting on tonight’s mostly middle-aged white male cohort.

“We get people from all different walks of life and age groups. Most find us through word-of-mouth, but also of course, through the Internet,” adding this last bit with particular emphasis. “Websites like Meet-Up have been incredibly helpful with broadening our interest base. We also use the Internet for most of our research and comparing notes. I don’t know where we’d be without it.”

Discovering the Internet 15 years ago, 63-year old Steve Greechie found a similar purpose in this new vast resource. It was the unfettered access to information that did it. No longer bound by the strictures of a library, Greechie’s late in life conversion to ufology was swift.

“It’s not like anything else. It’s sui generis,” says an impassioned Greechie, seated in a leather armchair beside his papered desk. “I love research and this was research I could do as an avocation. I’m also interested in Astronomy, so it seemed a natural intersection. Once I started and realized there was some plausible stuff involved, it became more interesting.”

We’d first entered into this subject through polite post-dinner conversation some days before. We had been co-habitants of a communal house for several months, but this was the first I was hearing of Greechie’s “avocation”. It came as a surprise, considering Greechie’s steely gaze and elevated diction, which did much to shatter my prior ufologist character profile characterized by Julio’s wild-eyed ramblings.

“There’s a lot of hope for ‘escape’ and hope of ‘god’. You have to be pretty demanding of evidence so you’re not biased toward belief,” he explains.

Avoiding this bias toward belief, Greechie’s research protocol entails following up on what he considers the “most plausible occurrences”. Seated at a large desk in his tidy, yet well lived-in room, Greechie has lost hours of his life in a Google-wormhole: “I was pretty aggressive about looking up as many occurrences as I could and ‘screening’ them to assess their potential as evidence.” Screening, in this case, takes the form of Greechie’s take on “peer-review”, certainly he notes, “a less stringent process than those required of academic journals.”

Although, in recent years he’s brought his UFO research bingeing under control, it’s still a subject that greatly excites Greechie, whose typically hunched posture straightens in talking about it. “The world view and emotions associated with this stuff makes this topic so attractive. You’d have to be a scientist not to have your emotions invested in it — the implications are just so big.”

A number of our fellow residents are would-be scientists, then, judging by the speed at which our initial conversation cleared the dinner table. It’s a detail that barely registered for Greechie, whose enthused speech is only matched by his conviction. Still, even Greechie has limits as to what he’s willing to accept, as part of the Ufology mythos:

“On the one hand, there’re a number of incidents that can’t reasonably be denied, take the Cometa Report. This was a document, commissioned by French national authorities, which provides some pretty conclusive stuff. On the other side, I’ve realized that nearly all abduction stories are near impossible, certainly to prove — I’m just not interested in them.”

Growing up in Massachusetts, Curto and his family would regularly go on Sunday drives. Vividly, he recalls the animated chatter that would fill the car — he and his kid sister, happily occupying the backseat — as the family wound its way through the New England countryside. On one such drive at age eight, Curto believes his family may have been victims of UFO abduction. He’s only come to this conclusion relatively recently, through traumatic memories that began to surface.

“I remember, all of a sudden, a huge wave of energy came in through the front of the car and moved toward my sister and I at the back. Then came a second wall, it was so hurtful,” he gravely recounts. “The next thing I remember we were not talking at all, it was dark, and we’d lost a whole afternoon.”

What ensues is the familiar vaguely constructed narrative of pieced together fragments that Curto claims as his “slowly returning memories”. “Not being able to move [his] body”, and beings with “big black, intense eyes, like mirrors” are two definite details he recalls.

The question of legitimacy aside, it’s the intensity with which Curto’s abduction story is conveyed that makes it noteworthy. Assuming the story is false, what could drive this middle-aged man to construct such a narrative? More broadly, what drives the entire passion that immerses people like Curto and Greechie into the world of ufology?

“I think there’s a bit of a dead-end in our culture today in terms of materialism and capitalism — I think that has a lot to do with it,” postulates 26-year old Conor Shanahan, his eyes masked behind 80’s style sport shades. “When people do drugs or find spiritualism, it’s a desire to find something to get involved with, that’s beyond what’s fed to them.”

Shanahan, a psychology masters student at Columbia, is a new generation of ufologist. His interest also stems from a childhood fascination, although one born less of Roswell and more of “that whole 90s UFO aesthetic”. As a college graduate, Shanahan’s extra terrestrial proclivities were reignited courtesy of YouTube. “[It] was a UFO sighting in LA, shot from different angles and footage — I was like, ‘whoa this is actually a thing’,” he intones.

Lost to the ufology Internet abyss, ponytailed Shanahan recalls a time when “[he] couldn’t stop talking about it”. Ostracizing himself from friends and his parents, who, “thought [he] was going nuts,” Shanahan experienced first-hand the stigma attached to alien belief. He learnt to temper his proselytizing and instead, to integrate his two -ologies, taking a particular interest in alien abduction.

“There’s a Harvard psychologist called John Mack who did a lot of research into UFO cases, conducting therapy with people who’d reported abductions. He found by and large, regardless of their credibility, people’s abduction experiences led to some form of personal growth,” says Shanahan, leaving this observation to float for a second, before adding, “There have also been cases where the effect’s been really negative. So who knows what’s really going on?”

Shanahan doesn’t rule out the possibility of memory repression, particularly when it comes to anal probing, which, he admits, “obviously has a lot of uncomfortable connotations and similarities with sexual abuse.”

This is by no means a new area of inquiry. Writing back in 1958, psychologist Karl Jung, sought answers to similar questions in his book, ‘Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky’.

“In the threatening situation of the world today, when people are beginning to see that everything is at stake, the projection-creating fantasy soars beyond the realm of earthly organizations and powers into the heavens, into interstellar space, where the rulers of human fate, the gods, once had their abode in the planets…Even people who would never have thought that a religious problem could be a serious matter that concerned them personally are beginning to ask themselves fundamental questions. Under these circumstances it would not be surprising if those sections of the community who ask themselves nothing were visited by ‘visions’, by a widespread myth seriously believed in by some and rejected as absurd by others.”

In 2014, all too familiar with the world’s “threatening situation”, how does Jung’s vision of “projection-creating fantasy” account for ufology’s continued appeal? Is it still simply people seeking alternatives to conventional religion for an answer to that age-old existential chestnut: Why are we here?

“I don’t think you can separate them,” says Curto, in answer to how his spiritual beliefs intersect with ufology. “I was raised Roman Catholic, but I’ve embraced the Urantia Book. Urantia means ‘our planet earth’ and it was published in 1955. It’s a spiritual book, although there’s physics in it, world history, even the full life of Jesus in the fourth part. It also talks about other worlds and our relationship to each other, the universe and to God. It’s a spiritual book that plays directly into my interests in UFOs.”

More precisely, it’s in Part II: “The Local Universe”, of the Urantia Book — supposedly authored by celestial beings channelling their epochal religious revelations through an anonymous human conduit — that the details of these “other worlds” are explored. Through Part II thousands like Curto have come to learn the true nature of our local universe, known as ‘Nebadon’, and of the narratives of the many inhabitants of other local universes.

Today we’ve traded pier for park. Curto, in black collared shirt and red tie, sits before Cleopatra’s Needle in Central Park. It was here, late last August, that a momentous DNNY meeting took place. Gathered around the granite obelisk that would act as a natural antenna of their energies, the group listened — courtesy of Julio’s boom box — to Dr. Greer’s “one-hour meditation tape”. Ending the guided meditation at 10pm, they all hung around, anxiously awaiting a sign their efforts had paid off.

“Suddenly, we hear one of our group scream ‘oh my god — look over there’,” shouts Curto himself in the retelling. According to Curto, three stars, of the moving variety, appeared at that moment. The occurrence was a welcome affirmation of DNNY’s efforts to make contact. A desire, Curto emphasises, rooted in “only good intentions.”

“We’re a peaceful, loving people”, notes Curto. “Our only agenda is to know them [UFOs], and for them to know us as our brothers and sisters. If you believe in God, He created everything, including our brothers and sisters in other galaxies — covered at length in the Urantia book. This is why we use this approach of meditation — sending thoughts of love, good feelings and understanding.”

Presently, DNNY has no atheists, although it remains non-denominational with members from the Christian, Jewish and Urantia communities. What form your faith takes matters little to this group, whose “primary objective is to seek the truth.”

Here though, lies the classic contradiction of an objective truth meeting a subjective faith, a line Curto does his best to convince me that he and his group are able to navigate.

“We welcome sceptics. Our model is connecting the dots to seek the truth and that’s a courageous thing to do when you find it. Because, the truth may not be what you want it to be, which is the challenge. It’s something we talk about a lot.”

Growing up in a catholic home, 43-year old Michael Trollan was given his first illustrated bible at aged eight. Trollan — a clean-shaven, collar-shirted, freelance web developer — remembers being encouraged to ask questions, of which he had many. Today, he finds answers to his questions coming less from a book and more from the bar gatherings and conference room meetings of the ‘Skeptic Society’.

“I discovered the Skeptic Society after I became an active atheist. There’s a huge tie-in for those who begin to delve deeper into religion, finding the evidence given doesn’t support a lot of the positions. These are people who value evidence and the scientific method,” explains Trollan, in his perma-neutral tone.

Trollan’s introduction to the society came through SkeptiCamp. The camp is an annual three-day event where philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, activists and audience members all have the opportunity to sign up and speak — “a self-organized conference”. Apart from camp, the group meets for drinks every month, where discussions range from “claims against climate change” to “why GMOs aren’t as bad as everyone says they are.”

As the society’s name suggests, nothing is certain. “There are these questions that no one has answers to. That uncertainty is fascinating,” muses Trollan. “It’s what leads to us trying to come up with ideas and understandings for things we can’t understand like ‘why are we here?’, ‘where did we come from?’ and ‘what the hell is the universe? These questions are what draw people toward UFO theories.”

This is not to say that Trollan completely rules out the possibility that ‘we’re not alone’. From a probability perspective, he says, it’s highly likely UFO’s do exist.

“It would be arrogant of us to think we are the only life,” he admits. “But of course the question becomes, well, what form does that life take? And this is where our very narrow ideas of a UFO as a humanoid type figure come in. This is a very human thing to do.”

Shanahan is familiar with the scepticism offered by the likes of Trollan, which he describes as “great and necessary”. It’s when it comes to their view on ufology though, that he loses interest.

“I don’t need to be convinced, I’m already convinced,” states Shanahan, dramatically removing his shades to give them a quick wipe. “The scientific method doesn’t always apply to certain things. People generally have a limited ontology where they don’t like having their cages rattled by the thought that there could be something smarter than us, something more powerful than us — it makes people feel vulnerable.”

In essence, Shanahan is referring to that grey area of uncertainty. Where Trollan’s scepticism remains within the realm of scientific evidence, Shanahan finds himself less bound by hard facts, more willing to accept what some might call a faith.

As self-proclaimed ufologists, a common thread exists amongst Curto, Greechie and Shanahan: they all agree we have made contact with intelligent alien life. Within this belief however, there exists a spectrum — from Curto’s new age spiritualism and alleged abduction to Shanahan and Greechie’s somewhat more removed agnosticism and then further still, the less committal empirical position of Trollan and the sceptics.

“We have an ingrained thing we do as humans called looking for agency,” says Trollan. “So from an evolutionary perspective: if you heard a rustling in the bushes, you’d want to attribute that to something. The people who’d say, ‘ah it’s just the wind’, when it was say, a lion, died. Whereas the people who said, ‘oh that’s probably a lion’, even when it was just wind, well, they survived either way. So we evolved to look for the mind behind things that are happening. I think that’s why we’ve come to attribute humanoid figures to the aliens, because it’s life as we can picture it.”

And so, for the likes of Greechie, Curto and Shanahan, more than an eccentricity, their belief stems from a biological imperative. “It’s like, just different perspectives on what is, and what isn’t,” Shanahan notes in a manner befitting of ‘The Dude’. “Who’s really to say.”