Here's the thing-

Seeing it is one thing, but after that moment you see something, you rely on recall to remember it...right? After the initial sighting, it's all memory. So bear with me-

We know human brains have a funny trick where they can completely dissociate during traumatic events- sometimes people literally never remember what happened to them; other times their brain gradually alters memories until they remember an assault by a loved one as a dog attack, etc...

Would it be that hard to believe that a human coming into contact with a phenomenon so foreign to reality and beyond imagination (like an alien abduction or being from another dimension or reality) that (to borrow from the myth) they may see "the ships" but when their brain tries to recall/comprehend/communicate what it is that it is seeing, the memory is decoded into something within the bounds of perception?