Last updated: June 27, 2026
Affiliate disclosure: This review contains Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.
| Author | D.W. Pasulka |
| Publisher | St. Martin’s Essentials |
| Published | 2023 |
| Rating | ★★★★☆ |
The most academically credentialed attempt yet to understand what happens to people — and why — when they encounter nonhuman intelligence.
What it covers
Diana Walsh Pasulka is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and one of the few credentialed academics to have embedded herself inside the UAP research community. Her first book, American Cosmic (2019), introduced readers to a world of anonymous scientists and Silicon Valley technologists who privately believe they are interacting with the UAP phenomenon. Encounters goes further — and gets stranger.
Where American Cosmic examined the phenomenon through the lens of sociology and new religious movements, Encounters turns its focus entirely to the people themselves: scientists, military personnel, and ordinary individuals who report direct, sustained contact with nonhuman intelligences. Pasulka profiles a cast of unusual, highly gifted individuals — many working at the cutting edge of AI, space medicine, and consciousness research — who trace their breakthroughs directly to what they describe as downloads, visions, or encounters with entities that are not human.
The book’s intellectual framework is Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Pasulka uses it to ask a serious question: what if the people being dismissed as delusional are actually perceiving something real that the rest of us, still chained to the wall, cannot see? She is not asserting that her subjects are right. She is insisting that they deserve to be taken seriously — and that the pattern of high-strangeness surrounding these encounters is itself data.
Why it matters
Pasulka’s core argument is uncomfortable for both believers and skeptics. She proposes that NHI encounters are not random. The people who have them — at least the ones she profiles — tend to be unusually creative, intellectually gifted, and positioned at the frontier of human knowledge. Many report that their encounters preceded breakthroughs in their professional work: patents, scientific discoveries, artistic achievements. The phenomenon, she suggests, may be interacting selectively with human consciousness in ways that shape the direction of civilization.
This is a bold thesis, and Pasulka marshals it carefully. She does not claim to prove it. She documents it — interview by interview, case by case — and lets the pattern speak. The result is the most serious academic engagement with the experiencer phenomenon currently in print. At a moment when congressional testimony is openly referencing nonhuman intelligence and UAP retrieval programs, a rigorous examination of what it actually means to encounter NHI is long overdue. Encounters fills that gap.
The audiobook is narrated by Pasulka herself, and her delivery matters — she conveys the weight and strangeness of these testimonies in a way that a voice actor probably couldn’t.
Caveats
Readers who come to this book expecting hard evidence will be disappointed. Encounters is not a disclosure document or an investigation into government programs. It is a phenomenological study — an attempt to understand the experience of contact, not to prove that contact is happening. Some sections can feel meandering, and Pasulka’s willingness to entertain the full range of high-strangeness — including elements that will test even sympathetic readers — means the book occasionally strains its own credibility.
Readers unfamiliar with Pasulka’s work should start with American Cosmic first. Encounters assumes a degree of familiarity with the landscape she mapped in that book, and the payoff is greater with that context in place.
Who it’s for
Readers who finished American Cosmic and wanted more depth on the experiencers themselves. Researchers and serious UAP readers interested in the consciousness and contact dimension of the phenomenon — particularly as NHI becomes the framing language of the congressional disclosure process. Anyone who suspects that the strangest parts of the UAP phenomenon are not peripheral noise but the actual signal.
Where to get it
Enjoyed this review?
New reviews, reading lists, and UAP book recommendations — no spam. Drop your email on the contact page and ask to be added.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences about?
Encounters (2023) continues Diana Pasulka’s investigation into UAP belief and experience, focusing on individuals who claim ongoing contact with non-human intelligences — including scientists, military insiders, and experiencers. Pasulka examines these accounts through both religious studies and anthropological frameworks.
How does Encounters differ from American Cosmic?
Where American Cosmic examined UAP belief among scientists and insiders from a religious studies perspective, Encounters focuses more directly on contact experiencers and the psychological and spiritual dimensions of their claims. It continues Pasulka’s argument that these experiences are creating new forms of belief and meaning.
Who does Pasulka interview in Encounters?
Pasulka interviews scientists, military insiders, and contact experiencers — some under pseudonyms — whose accounts she presents alongside analysis of how similar experiences have been interpreted across different cultures and religious traditions.
Is Encounters relevant to mainstream UAP disclosure research?
Encounters occupies a different space than evidence-focused UAP books — it is more concerned with how humans experience and process contact claims than with physical evidence of craft. It is particularly valuable for understanding the experiencer community that sits alongside the more institutional disclosure movement.
