Gallery View February 4, 2013 8:00 am

9 famous people who claim to have seen aliens

jurvetson, Flickr

All types of people claim to have seen UFO’s – from poor people who claim that E.T. molested their chickens and goats to rich people who think suspiciously brown aliens are coming to destroy their way of life. So it should be no surprise that there are a handful of famous people who have reportedly had close encounters of the holy shit kind. Some have just seen crazy things in the sky while some have apparently been beamed up to the mother ship and given the mother of all probes. But whether they were felt up by Alf or not, these nine famous people all claim to have had some sort of contact with aliens.

Photo credit: jurvetson, Flickr

9 Mick Jagger

Mick Jagger 9 famous people who claim to have seen aliens

Samira Khan, Flickr

In 1968 Jagger and his girlfriend Marianne Faithful went camping and while they were out in the woods, they saw a cigar shaped ship floating in the sky. Now I’m not saying that I don’t believe them, but it was 1968, they were camping, they were rock stars and, well, I’m guessing they weren’t exactly stone sober, you know? Still, what’s important is that Mick Jagger thinks he saw aliens. The incident left such an impression that he apparently wired his house up with something called a UFO Detector. I don’t even know what in the hell something like that would look like, but it sounds impressive.

Photo credit: Samira Khan, Flickr

8 Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great 9 famous people who claim to have seen aliens

babasteve, Flickr

Not only did Alexander the Great reportedly see aliens, they helped him conquer the city of Tyre because, you know, that’s something that aliens would totally care about. The story goes that Alexander’s army was besieging the Persian City when a metallic disc showed up out of nowhere and blasted the city walls to rubble, allowing Alex and his boys to pour through and whip up on the townsfolk. Maybe we shouldn’t call him “the Great” anymore. I mean, it’s pretty easy to conquer half the world when you have the aliens from Independence Day helping you out. If only the Persians had Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith.

Photo credit: babasteve, Flickr

7 Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali 9 famous people who claim to have seen aliens

Ira Rosenberg, Wikimedia Commons

Muhammad Ali claims to have seen numerous UFO’s throughout the course of his life and has reportedly said that you can see them early mornings, darting around the heavens. To be fair, every time the champ closes his eyes he probably sees stars and weird things bouncing around. Getting smashed in the head thousands of times (millions?) will do that to you. Supposedly, to this day whenever Ali thinks of those close encounters he gets all shaken up. Ahem. Sorry.

Photo credit: Ira Rosenberg, Wikimedia Commons

6 Dan Aykroyd

Dan Akroyd 9 famous people who claim to have seen aliens

Wikimedia Commons

Dan Aykroyd seems like he’s into all sorts of weird shit – he basically seems like his character from Ghostbusters – and so it’s no surprise that he’s a big believer in aliens. But it goes beyond belief for Aykroyd who, back in the ‘80s, reportedly woke up in the middle of the night and told his wife “They are calling me. I want to go outside.” No big deal, right? Just a weird dude being weird. But where the story really gets wild is that the next day people all over the area reported having the exact same experience and those that actually did what they were told and didn’t roll back over and go to sleep like a bunch of lazy asses claim that they saw a large pink UFO hovering in the sky. Maybe they just wanted to give Aykroyd notes on Coneheads, or discuss a producer credit. Who knows?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

5 Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan 9 famous people who claim to have seen aliens

Wikimedia Commons

Back when he was Governor of California, the Gipper claims that he saw a UFO while flying on a private plane. Apparently, he and three other dudes saw a bright light which then accelerated before it took off at a 45 degree angle. The incident apparently affected him profoundly because years later, as President, he gave a speech in which he said that the day might come when the Soviets and Americans might have to team up to whip E.T.’s ass in case he and his boys got frisky. Then again, given what we know about Ronnie’s mental state, it’s possible that he just got confused after Nancy shined a flashlight at him.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

4 Jackie Gleason

Jackie Gleason 9 famous people who claim to have seen aliens

Wikimedia Commons

The famous comic who made wife-beating fashionable in the 1950’s with his TV antics was supposedly playing golf with Richard Nixon back when Tricky Dick was still the most powerful man in the world (which honestly is a scarier thought than any alien, even the one who harassed Sigourney Weaver) and the two got to talking about aliens. You know, as one does during a leisurely round of golf. This apparently then led Nixon to say what the hell and show Gleason a bunch of dead aliens that the government was storing because really, what’s the point of being President if you can’t show your friends cool shit every once in a while? Gleason claims that the incident shook him up and he coped by heavily drinking which, let’s be honest, is one of the most creative excuses I’ve ever heard for justifying one’s alcoholism.

Photo credit: CBS Television, Wikimedia Commons

3 Sammy Hagar

Sammy Hagar 9 famous people who claim to have seen aliens

Simon Davison, Wikimedia Commons

Sammy Hagar hasn’t just claimed to have seen UFO’s. Oh no. He is one of the few famous people to claim to have actually been abducted. Well, not really abducted, but close enough. He claims that one night he was lying in bed when suddenly he had a vision of two aliens sitting in their ship and apparently they were tapping into his mind with some weird alien form of Wi-Fi. This makes sense because it wasn’t Hagar’s first encounter, as he claims that as a little boy he once saw a “car without wheels” floating through the desert. What did young Hagar do when he saw this? Well, let’s let him tell it: “I threw rocks at it and shit, and I don’t know what happened after that.” Well, okay then. My theory then is that either the aliens were coming to get revenge for his petty vandalism of their ride back in the day or that they thought they were abducting David Lee Roth and then broke the connection when they realized with disappointment that it was only Sammy Hagar. Eddie Van Halen is reading this somewhere and nodding his head sadly.

Photo credit: Simon Davison, Wikimedia Commons

2 Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley 9 famous people who claim to have seen aliens

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Wikimedia Commons

Apparently, Elvis always had weird alien shit following him around, from the time he was born to the day he died. Indeed, on the day of his birth it was claimed that there were UFO’s hanging around the sky that day and during his funeral people claimed that a UFO showed up to watch the ceremony. Maybe the ship’s cable was out or something, who knows? But even while the King was alive, apparently the little dudes wouldn’t leave him alone, supposedly visiting with him as a child where I suppose they hung out and maybe jammed a little. There are of course those that claim that Elvis was abducted by aliens instead of dying on the toilet or maybe they came up through the toilet and just sucked his life force out of his butt? I don’t know, I’m just spitballing here. I mean, it’s not any more ridiculous than the seemingly endless Elvis + alien theories that are floating around out there, is it?

Photo credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Wikimedia Commons

1 William Shatner

William Shatner 9 famous people who claim to have seen aliens

LostinTexas, Flickr

Well, naturally. An unauthorized biography written about Shatner by a dude that knew him claims that Shatner had a close encounter while riding his motorcycle in the Mojave Desert. Apparently, Captain Kirk’s bike mysteriously stopped working and crashed. Shatner then followed a weird apparition to a gas station where he saw a metallic disc hovering overhead. Shortly thereafter, Shatner released his famous kitschy album called “The Transformed Man” which leads some to believe that he took a ride with Spock and the gang to places no man had gone before. Your move, Chris Pine.

Photo credit: LostinTexas, Flickr