The Bestiary
14 reported entity types across the close-encounter literature — phenomenology and the skeptical reading, side by side.
Giant Humanoids
Humanoids 2.5-4 m tall, often headless-looking or with tiny heads set into massive shoulders, sometimes three-eyed (Voronezh), moving slowly and accompanied by small robots. Distinct from Nordics by sheer scale and menace-neutral affect.
Greys
Small (0.9-1.4 m), grey- or putty-skinned humanoids with oversized hairless heads, enormous black almond-shaped eyes wrapping toward the temples, vestigial nose and mouth, thin limbs and torso. Usually reported in groups, moving with clinical detachment; communication almost always described as telepathic.
Hairy Humanoids
Ape-like or fur-covered bipeds, 1.5-3 m tall, reported near landed objects or glowing lights — the point where ufology and cryptozoology overlap. Often described with glowing red eyes and a sulfurous smell.
Hybrids
Beings reported as crosses between Greys and humans: near-human faces with oversized dark eyes, thin hair, frail bodies. Appear almost exclusively inside abduction narratives — presented to abductees as 'their' children in nursery scenes aboard craft.
Light Beings / Energy Forms
Entities reported as made of or wrapped in light: glowing silhouettes, self-luminous orbs that behave with apparent intention, columns of light containing figures. Common in religiously framed accounts and in the Colares attacks, where beams themselves seemed agent-like.
Mantids
Very tall (2-2.5 m) insect-like figures with triangular heads, huge lateral compound-looking eyes, elongated segmented limbs held in a folded 'praying' posture. In abduction accounts they appear as calm supervisors directing Grey 'workers', communicating telepathically.
Men in Black
Not occupants but visitors-after-the-fact: pale men in outdated black suits and hats, arriving in immaculate vintage black Cadillacs, speaking in stilted formal English, knowing unpublished details of a sighting, and warning witnesses to stay silent. Frequently described with subtle wrongness — no eyebrows, waxy skin, mechanical diction.
Nordics
Human-looking beings of striking beauty: tall (1.8-2.2 m), long blond hair, blue or pale eyes, luminous or tanned skin, often in one-piece suits. Reported as serene, benevolent, and talkative — frequently delivering warnings about nuclear weapons or ecological collapse.
Reptilians
Tall (2-2.7 m) bipedal reptiles: scaled green-brown skin, vertical-slit pupils in yellow or gold eyes, muscular builds, sometimes tails or ridged skulls. Reported demeanor ranges from indifferent to menacing; almost never described as communicative.
Robots & Androids
Entities that move mechanically or appear artificial: metallic surfaces, stiff or gliding motion, absent facial features. The archetype is the Pascagoula being — 1.5 m, grey wrinkled 'elephant skin', carrot-like protrusions for nose and ears, lobster-claw hands, legs fused into a column, floating rather than walking.
Small Humanoids / Goblins
Diminutive beings (0.5-1.2 m) that are neither Greys nor children: oversized heads and ears, glowing or reflective eyes, spindly limbs, sometimes claws. The Hopkinsville type 'floated' and seemed weightless, shrugging off point-blank gunfire; 1954 French wave dwarfs wore diving suits or armor.
Suited Dwarfs (1954 French type)
Short beings (0.9-1.2 m) sealed in one-piece 'diving suits' or translucent helmets, often with visible dark faces or large eyes behind visors; associated with landed domed craft, paralysis beams, and hasty departures when approached.
Tall Whites
Very tall (up to 2.5 m in accounts), chalk-white skin, thin builds, large blue eyes, near-translucent white hair; described as physically fragile but technologically dominant, and as having a working arrangement with the U.S. military in Nevada.
The Flatwoods Monster
A singular apparition: 3 m tall, a spade- or ace-of-spades-shaped cowl around a red-glowing face, a dark metallic green 'dress' or casing, small claw-like hands, gliding motion, hissing sound and a nauseating metallic mist. Seen once, by seven witnesses, for seconds.