Nearly half of the American population believes in the existence of intelligent alien life-forms, and about 20 percent of Americans believe they’ve seen a UFO at some point in their lives. Of course, what constitutes a UFO sighting varies widely. Upon close inspection, most are determined to have origins that are quite terrestrial in nature.

Then there is the tiny percentage of people who’ve actually claimed to have seen aliens and made some sort of contact with them—a “Close Encounter of the Third Kind.”

After the Roswell UFO incident in 1947, the term UFO became a normal part of the American—and then the world’s—vocabulary. It also seemed as though sightings began to increase progressively in the following decades. UFO sightings turned into somewhat of a craze until they peaked in the 1990s—numerous documentaries were made such as the now-debunked Alien Autopsy. The UFO craze also influenced the fiction of the 1990s, which is when the popular television show The X Files began its long run and the Men in Black series first started.

In nearly all of these documentaries, television episodes, and movies, aliens are usually depicted as short with gray skin, long fingers, and large, bulbous heads featuring slits where the nose, eyes, and mouth are located on humans. But not all Close Encounters of the Third Kind have been with these “Grays.” Several reported encounters occurred with aliens who looked more like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime.

This class of aliens has been termed “Nordic Aliens.”

People who claim to have made contact with this special class of extraterrestrials describe them as six to seven feet tall, blonde-haired with fair complexions, and blue eyes. Most of the Nordic Aliens reported have been males, although occasionally they have been accompanied by females. Nearly every encounter with these aliens has been positive: They often communicate telepathically and express a desire to help humans overcome social and political problems.

Sightings of the Nordic Aliens began shortly after Roswell Incident, but decreased in the 1970s. Although there are still occasional claimed sightings of these beings, they lag far behind the Grays and are virtually unknown to many young people. True believers think that the Nordic Aliens have either given their message and have moved on, are living among us as Earthlings, or have left but are waiting to return when the planet reaches a point of critical mass.

Of course, not everyone is convinced Nordic Aliens exist.

Some experts claim that Nordic Aliens are just a projection of peoples’ hopes and fears and that the height of their sightings coincided, by no coincidence, with the Civil Rights Movement in America.

Still, those who claim to have made contact with the Nordic Aliens remain convinced they exist and that they will one day return to show humanity the way forward.