I’ve always been intrigued by UFOs. I loved Close Encounters of the Third Kind when I saw it at the age of 13. I wrote my own spin on the subject after seeing the movie, cleverly calling my story “The UFO Experience.” I watched every episode of NBC’s ill-fated Project UFO series in the late 70s, which was based on Project Blue Book and came about after the success of Close Encounters. I read books about the subject and continue to do so to this day.
The fascination has several sources. One is simply the tantalizing mystery of the unknown. Another is that UFOs–or at least some of them–carry the possibility of confirming the existence of extraterrestrial life. With our pop culture inundated with science fiction and its depiction of aliens in all forms, the idea of not being alone in the universe may not seem as immediately striking as it once was, but getting actual proof would still result in a profound change in how we view our world and everything beyond it.
Mostly I think it would freak a lot of people out.
In recent years it seems the number of UFO sightings has exploded. Smartphones have made it far more likely now that people will capture footage of sightings, even if that footage typically remains grainy, blurry, shaky or otherwise iffy. Maybe in another ten years Apple will have a super-amazing camera in the iPhone 15 that will capture shots of UFOs with such clarity you’ll be able to clearly see the little green men waving from the windows.
Along with the increase in the number of sightings has come a parallel increase in UFO TV shows. Where Project UFO stood out due to its subject matter, you can now watch Hangar 1: The UFO Files, Close Encounters, UFOs Declassified, Ancient Aliens and a bunch more than have come and gone or feature UFO incidents as part of their regular subject matter (The Unexplained Files, etc.) The approach of these shows ranges from relatively serious and sober (Hangar 1) to completely bonkers (Ancient Aliens, or as I refer to it, that show where you hear the phrase “ancient astronaut theorists say yes” roughly a billion times per episode).
All of this activity and interest has been greatly entertaining for me, even if much of it happens outside of mainstream media (though the TV shows do appear on channels like Discovery Science, of all places). The one thing that puzzles me is how some still deny the existence of UFOs.
I think it goes back to the freaked out thing.
A UFO is literally an unidentified flying object. If a runaway weather balloon is seen in the night sky but is never positively identified as such, it is by definition a UFO. Even if only a handful of sighting remain truly unknown, that’s more than enough to definitively state that UFOs are a real phenomenon. There are objects in the sky that we cannot always identify. So why deny the possibility?
It’s commonly (and logically) thought that any extraterrestrials that have made it to our planet would be technologically advanced and that frightens a lot of people. They think of Martian death rays, planetary conquest, enslavement, basically all the horrible things we humans have always done, just on a grander scale and with more sophisticated tools. And done by evil aliens instead of us.
I think if aliens were here and they wanted to turn us all into soylent green, they’d have probably done it already. But that’s part of what makes all of this so interesting for me–the possibilities are endless.
I couldn’t say what is behind most UFO sightings, whether they’re ETs from across the galaxy or from a parallel dimension, or even humans come back from the future for whatever reason. Or maybe they’re all runaway weather balloons. I keep an open mind on the subject. The universe is a strange place and we know very little about it. Heck, it’s been less than 50 years since we started wearing digital watches*. We’re still taking baby steps when it comes to technology and getting out to check our cosmic neighborhood. We have only ever had a single spacecraft leave our solar system–Voyager–and that was never the probe’s purpose, it just happened to keep on truckin’ after it completed its mission.
Having written all this, I’m not hoping for some weird abduction experience or implants or anything. I’m mostly content for the world to remain predictable and stable. I don’t think either is true anymore, if it ever was, so I’d like to think I’m prepared for whatever comes. I’ve got a smartphone with a decent camera, anyway.
* remember when digital watches were cool? Smart watches are the new digital watches. I’ve owned both because that’s what a good nerd does.
