I think it should be defined in what sense we're talking about, UFOs are a reality in that if someone flies a kite and its not identified then its a UFO, I think the term was originally military was it not? From the war or the beginning of the rocket age, phantoms, apparitions, all that may or may not be in the same order, all those concepts are different again from life on other planets or extraterrestrials.
I'm not sure about the idea of extraterrestrials or aliens, if they exist I actually would expect them to something like in the movies Alien and Aliens, ie bugs, its a strange sort of humility, I think a consequences of Copernicous and Darwin, that it should be supposed that other and superior life forms exist.
I dont entirely understand it but there is some of the more strange physics and consciousness research which suggests that somehow consciousness exists because of us today and there is a future and past because of us today and that we do project into the future and past and influence both more than they do us in the present. I dont understand it entirely because like I say if the present effects past and future was there not a time when the past and future were a present and must have been influencing other pasts and presents.
These theories while not dismissive of Darwinist theories of evolution instead of taking a "mere evolution" tact, that mankind as is is an explicable accident, mayhap, chance but suggest it is a wonderous anomalous development with spiritual consequences if not origins.