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all about my love for extraterrestrials | home

when i was around 9 or 10 years old, i used to love going to the public library and reading nonfiction books about whatever interested me at the time. i don't remember how, but i stumbled upon a book about aliens, paranormal stuff, and cryptids. i was immediately fascinated and spent a few weeks checking out every book i could about those subjects. i don't remember much about what i read, but for some reason i do remember the illustrations from the pioneer plaque making a big impression on me that never left.


for most of my childhood, i was simultaneously terrified and fasinated in aliens. i remember staying at a friend's house for a slumber party when i was around 11. he lived in a very spacious house in the country and the house was surrounded by forest and a lake. all of us slept in the house's finished basement across a few different rooms. i've always had a hard time falling asleep in locations i'm not familiar with... hours after everyone had fallen asleep, i laid on a small couch under a few blankets and flipped through the channels on tv and came across the movie signs. i only watched a small portion of the movie but it set my mind on fire and i became panicked thinking about aliens.

i'm not sure what possessed me to do so, but i stood up on the couch and drew back the curtains on a large window behind me. i must have been trying to reassure myself that there wasn't anything outside but i found out that the window was wide open with no screen... it must have been a full moon because i could clearly see my friend's whole backyard bathed in moonlight. it was such a surreal feeling, like a dream.


personally, i don't believe in aliens or abductions (at least not as they exist in pop culture) but it doesn't keep me from being fascinated by why humans, including myself, have so many ideas about this topic. alien abduction is a huge irrational fear of mine. why do i research stories and media about them? i choose to appreciate this paradox rather than focus on being a page related to debunking aliens... bottom line, it's all for fun and creeps.


my favorites
media notable to my fascination with aliens, loosely organized in the order i experienced them. this page is by no means an exhaustive list of alien-related media but a showcase of media special to me.


"got your goat" dexter's laboratory season 2

yeah yeah, it's a cryptid... the significance of this episode is that i'm quite sure this is the first time i was ever exposed to the idea of something like aliens. since it came out in 1997, i believe i was 4 or 5 when i saw it and i was immediately fascinated by this depiction of el chupacabra.

i love how the show references scarier aspects of el chupacabra without being overly scary. you can watch the episode on youtube now which kind of blows my mind seeing that i thought about it so much as a kid and longed to watch it again.

extraTERRORestrial alien encounter

alien encounter was a show at walt disney world in orlando which heavily used binaural sound and "4D" effects to achieve a simulated encounter with a dangerous alien. if i recall, the only time i experienced it was in 1999.

i found this ride purely terrifying. i think the main reason it stands out in my mind so much is that my little brother also found it terrifying (obviously...) but unusually, my parents validated our fears. growing up, my family was big about brushing things off. it gave me such an uneasy feeling that instead of telling us to get over it, my parents both also seemed freaked out by the ride.

weekly world news covers

as a kid who loved freaky subjects growing up in the early 2000's, i lived to glimpse at the black and white covers of weekly world news. part of me knew that none of these stories could be true, but they fascinated me anyway out of that childlike mindset of "if it isn't real, then why is it published in a real magazine?"

stories about aliens were my favorites, but i was also fascinated by weekly world news's willingness to acknowledge gayness. it was a conservative time and i had an extremely sheltered childhood, this tabloid opened my eyes to things in strange way.

lilo & stitch: the series

the lilo & stitch series gave me an understanding of how to "play" with the idea of aliens. i inherited my parents' tastes and hated sentimentality in media while growing up, so while i liked the movie, i found the series much more fun because it wasn't as emotional.

i loved studying the character designs of stitch's cousins and trying to create and roleplay similar ones with my cousins. this show left a lasting impression on my imagination.

the fourth kind (2009)

i know this movie is objectively not very good, it was certainly effective at catching my ninth-grade attention. i saw it late on a friday night at a movie theatre with my best friend at the time. we left the theatre terrified and i thought about the movie for days. it's embarassing to admit now but i believed the bits about how it was based on a true story. this movie was also my first exposure to the idea that aliens contacted early humans. (which i frankly find racist now that i've matured...)

i was quite miserable in life at this time and i remember wishing i would get abducted.

horse girl (2020)

i absolutely love the way this movie depicts alien abduction as an esoteric experience instead of being something palpable. i'm also a huge fan of how horse girl uses alien abduction to explore themes of mental illness and grief. i think my love for this movie has to do with how its sensibilities match my own when it comes to these topics.

i appreciate alison brie's performance here, capturing the true horror and confusion one would experience with alien abduction.



nostalgic depictions of aliens in media
i would write more about these but their blurbs would all boil down to "i just think they're neat"


"the alien"
rugrats season 3
"visitors from outer space"
rugrats season 2

alien aisha and nosh-o-matic
neopets
zoomer and zorbit
lisa frank

kang and kodos
the simpsons
E.T. and green planet residents
E.T. adventure, etc.

invader zim
lloyd in space

star wars: episode I (sue me)
men in black II


askreddit threads
before i had a car or proper phone, i would pre-load threads like this and read them for hours before/after work while waiting for a ride (these have only been lightly screened)

toy box













be sure to leave a message on my neocities profile or guestbook if you have any alien stories... =)

music is mars and stars by dan-o