As a cultural phenomenon, contactees achieved their greatest notoriety during the 1950s, but individuals continue to make similar claims in the present day.
Some contactees have shared their messages with small groups of believers and followers, and many have written books, published magazine and newspaper articles, issued newsletters or spoken at UFO conventions.
Among the earliest was the 1956 study, When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, which analyzed the phenomenon.
1758 saw the publication of Concerning Earths in the Solar System, in which Swedenborg detailed his alleged journeys to the inhabited planets.
[7] In support of their claims, early 1950s contactees often produced photographs of the alleged flying saucers or their occupants.
A number of photos of a "Venusian scout ship" by George Adamski and identified by him as a typical extraterrestrial flying saucer were noted to suspiciously bear a remarkable resemblance to a type of once commonly available chicken egg incubator, complete with three light bulbs which Adamski said were "landing gear".
[8] For over two decades, contactee George Van Tassel hosted the annual "Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention" in the Mojave Desert.
[9] Even in ufology— the study itself limited to sporadic or little mainstream scientific or academic interest—contactees were generally dismissed as charlatans or regarded as the lunatic fringe by serious ufologists.
"[12] Carl Sagan has expressed skepticism about contactees and alien contact in general, remarking that aliens seem very happy to answer vague questions but when confronted with specific, technical questions they are silent: Occasionally, by the way, I get a letter from someone who is in "contact" with an extraterrestrial who invites me to "ask anything".