Grey alien

The precise origin of the Grey as the stereotypical extraterrestrial being is difficult to pinpoint. In the 1893 article "Man of the Year Million", science fiction author H. G. Wells envisioned the possibility of humanity transformed into a race of grey-skinned beings who were perhaps one meter tall, with big heads and large, oval-shaped pitch-black eyes.[3] In his 1901 book The First Men in the Moon, Wells described Selenites (natives of the Moon) as having grey skin, big heads, and large black eyes. He also briefly describes aliens resembling Greys brought down to Earth as food for the Martians, who were the antagonist characters in his 1898 novel The War of the Worlds.

In 1933, the Swedish novelist Gustav Sandgren, using the pen name Gabriel Linde, published a science fiction novel called Den okända faran ("The Unknown Danger"), in which he describes a race of extraterrestrials: "...the creatures did not resemble any race of humans. They were short, shorter than the average Japanese, and their heads were big and bald, with strong, square foreheads, and very small noses and mouths, and weak chins. What was most extraordinary about them were the eyes—large, dark, gleaming, with a sharp gaze. They wore clothes made of soft grey fabric, and their limbs seemed to be similar to those of humans." The novel, aimed at young readers, included illustrations of the imagined aliens.

In 1965, newspaper reports of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction made the archetype famous. The alleged abductees, Betty and Barney Hill, claimed that in 1961, alien beings had abducted them and taken them to a flying saucer. Under hypnosis, Betty Hill produced a "star map" which she claimed located the home planet of her abductees in the Zeta Reticuli star system (allegedly the third planet of one of the stars of the Zeta Reticuli binary system). Betty thereafter began to refer to them as Zeta Reticulans. The term "Greys" did not come into usage until many years later.

The Greys appear as the (benevolent) aliens in the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That same year, a species of Grey alien–type beings, called the Bith, were depicted as the Cantina Band in the film Star Wars. A duo of a different species of grey alien-type beings, called the Duros, also appeared in the Cantina scene.

A Grey as popularized from the cover of Communion, by Whitley Strieber. The portrait was painted by Ted Seth Jacobs to Strieber's description and approval.

During the early 1980s, Greys were linked to the alleged crash-landing of a flying saucer in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. A number of publications contained statements from individuals who claimed to have seen the U.S. military handling a number of unusually proportioned, bald, child-sized beings. These individuals claimed, during and after the incident, that the beings had oversized heads and slanted eyes—but scant other distinguishable facial features.[4]

In 1987, novelist Whitley Strieber published the book Communion, which, unlike his previous works, was categorized as non-fiction, and in which he describes a number of close encounters he alleges to have experienced with Greys and other extraterrestrial beings. The book became a New York Times bestseller, and New Line Cinema released a 1989 film adaption that starred Christopher Walken as Strieber.

In 1988, Christophe Dechavanne interviewed the French science-fiction writer and ufologist Jimmy Guieu during a weekly French TV Live Show which, at the time, was entitled "Ciel, mon mardi !". It was broadcast by TF1, one of the three national TV channels in France. Besides mentioning Majestic 12, Jimmy Guieu described the existence of what he called "the little greys" which, later on, became better known in French under the name: les Petits-Gris.[5]

In the early 1990s, the same ufologist Jimmy Guieu wrote two docu-dramas, using as a plot the Grey aliens / Majestic-12 conspiracy theory as described by John Lear and Milton William Cooper: the series "E.B.E." (for "Extraterrestrial Biological Entity"): E.B.E.: Alerte rouge (first part) (1990) and E.B.E.: L'entité noire d'Andamooka (second part) (1991).

During the 1990s, popular culture began to increasingly link Greys to a number of military-industrial complex and New World Order conspiracy theories.[6] A well-known example of this occurring as a form of entertainment was the FOX television series The X-Files, which first aired in 1993. It combined the quest to find proof of the existence of Grey-like extraterrestrials with a number of UFO conspiracy theory subplots, in order to form its primary story arc. Other notable examples include the X-COM video game franchise (where they are called "Sectoids"), Dark Skies, first broadcast in 1996, which expanded upon the MJ-12 conspiracy, and Stargate SG-1, which in the 1998 episode "Thor's Chariot" introduced the Asgard, a race of benevolent Greys who visited ancient Earth masquerading as characters from Norse Mythology. Greys, referred to as "visitors", appear in two episodes of South Park, and Roger Smith, a regular character on the animated comedy series American Dad! since its debut in 2005, is a Grey-like alien. On Babylon 5, the Greys were referred to as the Vree, and depicted as being allies and trade partners of 23rd-century Earth.

In 1995, filmmaker Ray Santilli claimed to have obtained 22 reels of 16 mm film that depicted the autopsy of a "real" Grey supposedly recovered from the site of the 1947 incident in Roswell, New Mexico.[7][8] However, in 2006 Santilli announced that the film was not original, but was instead a "reconstruction" created after the original film was found to have degraded. He maintained that a real Grey had been found and autopsied on camera in 1947, and that the footage released to the public contained a percentage of that original footage.

During the 2000s, William J. Birnes published numerous accounts of encounters with Greys in UFO Magazine.

The 2011 film Paul tells the story of a Grey who attributes the Greys' frequent presence in science-fiction pop-culture to the US government deliberately inserting the stereotypical Grey alien image into mainstream media so that if humanity came into contact with Paul's species, there would be no immediate shock as to their appearance.

Greys are often involved in alien abduction claims. Among reports of alien encounters, Greys make up approximately 50 percent in Australia, 73 percent in the United States, 48 percent in Continental Europe, and around 12 percent in the United Kingdom.[1]^:68 These reports include two distinct groups of Greys that differ in height.[1]^:74[2]

Abduction claims are often described as extremely traumatic, similar to an abduction by humans or even a sexual assault in the level of trauma and distress. (Research has shown that emotional impact of perceived abduction can be as great as or even greater than that of combat, sexual abuse, and other traumatic events.)[9]

The eyes are often a focus of abduction claims. Claims often describe a Grey staring into the eyes of an abductee when conducting mental procedures.[2] This staring is claimed to induce hallucinogenic states or directly provoke different emotions.[10]

Neurologist Steven Novella proposes that Grey aliens are a byproduct of the human imagination, with the Greys' most distinctive features representing everything that modern humans traditionally link with intelligence. "The aliens, however, do not just appear as humans, they appear like humans with those traits we psychologically associate with intelligence."[11]

In 2005, Frederick V. Malmstrom, writing in Skeptic magazine, vol. 11 issue 4, presents his idea that Greys are actually residual memories of early childhood development. Malmstrom reconstructs the face of a Grey through transformation of a mother's face based on our best understanding of early childhood sensation and perception. Malmstrom's study offers another alternative to the existence of Greys, the intense instinctive response many people experience when presented an image of a Grey, and the act of regression hypnosis and recovered-memory therapy in "recovering" memories of alien abduction experiences, along with their common themes. [12] It has also be proposed that the "Greys" are actually distorted memories of traumatic experiences, faded with time, especially according to studies by Malmstrom and similar researchers. "It's easier to imagine being abducted by alien creatures than to face the traumatic memories of being bullied by peers or assaulted by an aggressive man."

According to biologist Jack Cohen, the typical image of a Grey, assuming that it would have evolved from a world with different environmental and ecological conditions from Earth, is too physiologically similar to a human to be credible as a representation of an alien.

Some ufologists explain such implausible coincidences as evidence that extraterrestrial beings may have had influence on the evolution of life on Earth in the distant past (the theory of ancient astronauts), specifically that extraterrestrials were involved in the evolution of primates, including humans.

Some conspiracy theorists believe that Greys represent part of a government-led disinformation or plausible deniability campaign, or that they are a product of government mind control experiments.[13][14]