Karin Austin
PersonAdvocateKarin Austin
PersonAdvocateKarin Austin is managing director of the John Mack Institute and Rice University's Center for the Impossible, and a former participant in John Mack's abduction research.
Karin Austin is managing director of the John Mack Institute and Rice University's Center for the Impossible, and a former participant in John Mack's abduction research.
Karin Austin is an archive administrator and experiencer advocate. She is managing director of the John Mack Institute and of the Center for the Impossible at Rice University, the program also known as the Archives of the Impossible. Her path into the field began as a research participant. She shared her own reported encounters with the Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack for his study of alien abduction, and she later worked as his personal assistant in the final years of his life.
After Mack passed away in 2004, Austin helped his family settle his estate and preserve his papers. She spent several years working with Rice's Woodson Research Center and the religion scholar Jeffrey Kripal on the Mack donation. According to the institute, she facilitated the transfer of the archives to Harvard University and to the Rice center in 2022. The Mack collection runs to some 150 boxes, or 450 linear feet of records. In April 2024 Austin became project manager of the Archives of the Impossible. She has helped digitize the Mack material and now leads a team analyzing metadata across the archive's collections.
Austin has also spoken publicly about her own experiences. In a September 2026 interview with That UFO Podcast, she described encounters that she says began in childhood and returned with greater intensity in her twenties. She recounted missing time, apparent hybrid beings, out-of-body experiences and a physical encounter with an insect-like entity she calls "the bug." In October, a NewsNation segment featured her account of losing her memory as a child walking in a forest and later finding a needle mark.
As a public educator, Austin argues that experiencer testimony belongs in institutional efforts to understand non-human intelligence. In July 2026 she co-organized "Breaking the Taboo," an online symposium on reviving academic research into UAP, abduction and experiencer reports, where she spoke on moving from experiencer to researcher. The event was co-sponsored by the John Mack Institute and the Center for the Impossible.
That October, on the Psicoactivo Podcast, she warned that stigma has kept experiencers out of the disclosure debate. She also discussed the newly formed UAP Science Advisory Council. Her work links Mack's original case files with the scholars now studying them, as both a firsthand witness to his research and the manager of the archive that preserves it.
We did a little special thing in recording the AMA in podcast form. We took answers from this post on r/HighStrangeness and will be replying to each person that asked these questions in the original post as well! 00:00 Welcome & Intros 06:21 Q1 — Evidence of the unexplained, stories from the show 15:43 Q2 — The Extratempestrial theory 23:38 Q3 — Altered states of consciousness, shared environments 36:01 Q4 — Finishing John Mack’s book 38:56 Q5 — Fear of the paranormal, documenting experiences...
We did a little special thing in recording the AMA in podcast form. We took answers from this post on r/HighStrangeness and will be replying to each person that asked these questions in the original post as well! 00:00 Welcome & Intros 06:21 Q1 — Evidence of the unexplained, stories from the show 15:43 Q2 — The Extratempestrial theory 23:38 Q3 — Altered states of consciousness, shared environments 36:01 Q4 — Finishing John Mack’s book 38:56 Q5 — Fear of the paranormal, documenting experiences...
Probed ingest of: Religious Scholar: “UFO Disclosure Is THE APOCALYPSE!”
Karin Austin warns about Experiencer Stigma within the UFO Disclosure discussion - Psicoactivo #1186
HOT TAKE! Now that @uncertainvector is part of the UAP Science Advisory Council, we can count military experiencers among the list of people involved. But I st [Quoted] NEWS: XPRIZE Chairman @PeterDiamandis is actively exploring the creation of a new XPRIZE for providing evidence of alien visitation. Harvard astronomer @ProfAviLoeb tells me that the criteria under discussion would require a winner to demonstrate the existence of technology created by a non-human intelligence. Loeb said he's i...
Something climbed onto her bed. Then it told her: “Now you can open your eyes.” In this 21-minute highlight, Karin Austin recounts the extraordinary encounters that convinced her we are not alone, including the being she calls “the bug.” Watch now 👇 https://t.co/4d3rNBU9sn https://t.co/5ffnnxHQJi
I’ve heard a few people in UFO research talk about a decline in the classic abduction experiences, and it got me wondering. Have experiencers here noticed this too? Almost as tho the greys stepped back, or whatever they were doing moved into a different phase. Karin Austin, who worked closely with John Mack, recently said on a podcast that most of those abductions stopped. But apparently this discussion goes back much further. Back in 2002, John Velez, who ran the Abduction Information Center...
[Retweeted] “I know we’re not alone.” Karin Austin’s full interview is OUT NOW. Her extraordinary encounter account, working with John Mack, and a frank debate about experiencers and disclosure. Watch here 👇 https://t.co/ulMsUvNyaL
“I know we’re not alone.” Karin Austin’s full interview is OUT NOW. Her extraordinary encounter account, working with John Mack, and a frank debate about experiencers and disclosure. Watch here 👇 https://t.co/ulMsUvNyaL
