Great responses! Is it wrong that I love stirring the pot?

I have experienced and seen a few things I couldn't explain, so I don't judge.

Their experiences may be valid to them, but unless it can be reproduced & verified it is just that, their personal experience which can only be taken as seriously as any other claim. Which is to say, not very seriously. Our brains play games, in so many ways. There may, with some people, be a real underlying physiological or mental issue, but we all 'see' the world through a lens darkly. I'm a skeptic & mostly drug free, save for HBP meds & a few others that don't seem to affect my 'senses', there is still a limit to the 'reality' I experience.
Bottom line, I take most if not all of these claims with a large grain of salt & straight out dismiss most of them unless something verifiable can be shown.

I claim to be their God and tell them I planted the encounter in their brains. Then I tell them where my church is and say, don't forget to bring money.

I pity them, if quietly.. Disengaged from reality and in apparent need of more than it can provide, they make things up. Attention seeking, delusional, or lost, they’re a short step from organized religion or a smaller cult. Sad ~

I don’t think any of it is legit. They may have seen something that they cannot explain so just like religion they attach a mythical label to it.

With a grain of salt...as long as they do not babble on endlessly about it (any more than I want to hear your surgery, or whatever, details ad nauseum)

My mother was convinced that an alien craft visited us when we lived in Melborne Florida in the late 60s. Still believes it for that matter.

My father was a police officer at the time and when I asked him years later about it he did say that they were deluged with calls for UFOs that night.

We lived a few miles from Patrick so I'm gonna go ahead and say they were testing stealth aircraft and my mother who was in her early 20s at the time was also into witchcraft and just liked the woo.

I listen as though I'm hearing a fable.

No, they are either delusional, hoaxers or mistaken. There must be a logical answer for everything, the fact that we don’t always immediately know what it is does not mean that it must be supernatural. Logical thinkers need evidence not wild theories.

A mind is like a parachute.

I tend to wonder if they are making it up or if they really believe they saw it. Whether or not what they saw is what they think they saw is usually less important to me. I just really value openness, sincerity & honesty in people I associate with.

With interest. In the case of aliens and Bigfoot, which might possibly be real, I want to know more so that I can decide if they're probably lying/mistaken or if their sighting needs to be properly refuted. In the case of the supernatural, I want to know why they think they saw what they claim.