"I had a hole in the back of my head that under black light glowed with a triangle around it." -Lisa
Additionally, 10% of the U.S. population say they have seen an alien space craft with their own eyes. And while the number of people who claim to have been taken by aliens is much lower, they do exist, and more come forward every year.
Who are these all these people? Where do they come from? What are their stories?
Over the past few years, photographer Steven Hirsch has attempted to find out just that. His series, titled "Little Sticky Legs" (named after one of his subjects descriptions of an alien), is a series of portraits of purported alien abductees, along with anecdotes and drawings from the subjects.
Hirsch initially started photographing his subjects after covering a convention of self-proclaimed abductees in Connecticut. "The experience was mind-boggling and stuck with me for decades," he told Business Insider.
He traveled the Southwest, where many people claiming to be alien abductees live, to continue the project. Hirsch says southwestern landscapes affect the way people think. "It's trippy out there. In New York, you have no sense of the universe, but in the Southwest you can't avoid the sky; you get a sense of scale of and intimacy with the universe," he says.
Hirsch continues the project today, going out to the Southwest every year. You can see more portraits, as well as drawings and anecdotes on his site.