Interview with UFO Experiencer and Researcher Larry Cates
Larry Cates is just your average systems analyst and engineer living in Georgia. Except, maybe not.
Larry saw a UFO about 500 feet away from him in 1998, bought a lottery ticket on the same day and won all but 1 of the numbers, and he habitually says things like this: “I’m pretty introspective. I think of concepts as real physical events. I’ve spent my introspective time studying concepts in those states. This tells me a lot about what’s going on with concepts. I developed a whole algebra of concepts based on these introspections. When we put a concept into words, I think of this as measuring the concept. As if a concept is a quantum state, and we collapse it when we put it into words.”
On June 17, 2024 I interviewed him about his experiences, and these are the nuggets from that interview.
JULIA: What do you want to tell the folks in the UAP/UFO research field?
LARRY: I want them to know that an unknown intelligence is trying to establish common knowledge with us. They’re trying to develop this common knowledge, because that’s how they can talk to us. It’s been at least 80 years since they’ve been flying around our skies and we have been slow at understanding what they’re trying to tell us. And they’re doing it worldwide, so they’re telling everyone at the same time.
JULIA: How are they doing this, in your view?
LARRY: They’re trying to establish common knowledge through UAP maneuvers. One of the most straightforward events was the Nimitz event where they told us they knew the CAP point. Somehow, this gets very little attention.
JULIA: I agree! This drives me nuts, because it’s clearly saying “Whoever we are to you, we want you to know we are either telepathic, we can hack into your systems, or we know the future, or all three.”
LARRY: They hit on an ambiguous point — they are ambiguous about whether or not they are aggressive. I think they’re trying to teach us something rather than being a threat.
JULIA: If I were trying to establish a new relationship with an aggressive species that only understands aggression when it comes to unknown quantities, I imagine I would first appear to be a threat so humans would take me seriously.
LARRY: They balance themselves on the fine edge of ambiguity and we should look at the fact that they’re being ambiguous. We should not be ambiguous in our response.
We should respond on the side of — let’s assume they’re not a threat and see where that gets us.
JULIA: How did you come to these beliefs?
LARRY: My wife and I saw a UFO back in 1998 — in the fall. It was hanging in the sky at exit 14 above a parking lot in Cumming, Georgia. It was within 500 feet of our car. It was hanging in the sky, then it drifted off. Very silent. I just heard background traffic, nothing from the UFO. My wife and I differ on what we saw — that’s interesting in itself. I saw an orangish reflection on the bottom — she saw a greenish hue. To me, on the bottom, it looked like a reflection of something, but there was something wrong with the reflection. I couldn’t put my finger on it. We drove and stopped while watching this thing go behind the trees. Pulled into a Marathon station and got out of the car to get a better view. Got up and ran out and looked at it — it didn’t do anything fancy, but it drifted off. It was efficiently quiet. Could not have been a balloon. It was disk-like, and to me it looked like on the underside it was bizarre.
I went into the Marathon station afterwards to buy a lottery ticket — we were going to buy one anyway. I picked the numbers just based on what came into my head. I got 5 out of the 6 numbers, I was off 1 digit on the final number. So we won some money, but there was a sense that has eaten me up — why didn’t I get them all! Why was I short one?
Since then I think that this feels just like them — the unknown intelligences. Getting all the numbers would distract me from what they wanted me to do, which was to discern this common language.
Remember in Close Encounters — the Richard Dreyfus character tried to do all sorts of crazy things trying to figure out what was going on with him? The mashed potatoes and the sculpture of Devil’s Tower? I went through the same process trying to figure out what was going on with me and what they wanted me to say.
I tried to write a book but my friends said it didn’t make any sense. It was about them communicating with us. I’ve been working for that ever since then. 15–20 years, still not done. Not sure it’s any good.
JULIA: Did you feel they were communicating with you during the experience?
LARRY: I did not feel any communication from them during the UFO experience.
But there have been times on and off over the years, from time to time. Our closet has a shelf on the right that’s moveable. I went to open the door one day — couldn’t get the door open. It only has one entrance to it. It’s a walk-in closet. Couldn’t get the door open. I pushed it open and pushed the shelf out of the way. How did it get over there? I tried all sorts of experiments to see how it could have gotten over there — not sure why.
Other events I’ve already forgotten — I’m 81 years old. It’s been interesting for me at any rate.
JULIA: Before you saw the UFO — what kind of thinker were you?
LARRY: I mostly thought about math problems. I was so analytical and have remained analytical. I keep things close to the vest, focused on nuts and bolts. I would not normally think about these things. Here I am doing it, you know. So the difference was I began investigating UAPs after that event. First with MUFON and then I helped found SCU. Relatively satisfied with the direction it’s going. This last set of meetings in Huntsville was really good.
JULIA: Did your experience change how you think about reality?
LARRY: The psychic aspects are more in the forefront for me. Whatever it was, I tried to get to what they were trying to tell me. They are so smart — how they approach things and get to things. They reveal information and hold back information well. They are letting us know what they know about us.
They seem to know the significance of Washington DC — they created a mock war in 1952 — set up the tech that showed us we’d have to lose if we tried to fight them. Over and over and over again they make idiots out of us.
Another example in 1952, in California ground radar sent up a chaser — a flight to chase a UFO. They got close to it but when it was within gunnery range, it pulled away. It did that several times. What are they saying? “We understand your technology. We know the gunnery range.”
JULIA: It’s interesting you felt the reflection on the base of the UFO was off, because metaphorically, it feels like you experience that they are a reflection of us.
LARRY: They are letting us know their technology allows them to know and see us. They are establishing common knowledge about many many things. I think that’s where research needs to go. The speed and structure of the UFOs is the least important aspect. Though I’ve spent a lot of time studying it, first at MUFON and then co-founding and working with SCU. But it’s not as important as understanding the common knowledge they are trying to build with us. Science itself comes down to common agreement among people. That’s it.
How do we know we agree? There’s this mystery of agreement. What is agreement exactly? That’s part of the algebra of concepts I’ve studied.
I think Roger Penrose is right — there’s a quantum aspect to consciousness. Our conversation is entangling to some degree and we don’t appreciate the degree of entanglement.
JULIA: The degree of entanglement is far beyond what you can do with a photon and a crystal?
LARRY: It’s much more widespread than our bodies, and it gets into how our “machinery” feels.
JULIA: Almost like consciousness is an extension of entanglement.
LARRY: Maybe. With God, I’ve prayed several times to get closer. He keeps rubbing my nose in reality. Pushing me back here.
JULIA: So reality is an agreement?
LARRY: Yes, reality is agreement. That’s where our heads ought to be better aligned — with this agreement.
JULIA: What can help us better align with that?
LARRY: Be able to perceive the truth and draw a distinction between misinformation and truth. We have a particular inability to do that. It’s interesting that it’s getting worse — the misinformation. Leads back to the CAP point event. There’s a psychic aspect to that. There’s a technology there that they’re trying to point out to us.
JULIA: They’re either saying “we can predict the future” or “we’re telepathic” or both.
LARRY: Both. Even insects have consciousness to some degree. They all have qualia. We don’t appreciate that. So they’re trying to alert us to that we need to pay attention to the psychic aspects of things. If you look at the events going on in the world today, some of the absolute insanity — all it would take is the more impulsive and weak-minded among us to be easily influenced psychically, and it’s being nudged in a ridiculous direction. I think it’s to show us that we need to pay attention.
JULIA: Maybe another message of the CAP point event is — “stop thinking you can have secrets.”
LARRY: Yes, it isolates us to think that way.
JULIA: The inside of you is fully available.
LARRY: Yes, it is.
JULIA: Did you have any UFO experiences as a child?
LARRY: Yes, now that I think of it, sometime in the 1950s. I remember us boys doing stuff in the yard. Wrestling. I saw up in the sky some twirling lights. Red, green, blue — individual lights twirling around. Not an airplane. I looked for a helicopter; there wasn’t one. And helicopters don’t have lights on their rotors. It was twilight, but I could discern them enough to see that they were twirling. I don’t recall if my friends saw it or acknowledged it.
JULIA: Did you have missing time?
LARRY: I didn’t have any missing time — I haven’t been abducted. This was also in Cumming Georgia. Come to think of it, my door neighbor who has since moved saw a bright star at the house across the street and wanted to tell me about it. She said it was highly unusual. It was a bright light; not anything that seemed natural.
It seems they’ve kept tabs on me all my life, come to think of it.
I am grateful to Larry Cates for sharing his experience. It’s through sharing our experiences that we learn more about reality. — Julia
You can find out more about the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies here: https://explorescu.org/.
