annonUnidentified flying objects, or UFOs, as they’re fondly called, areone of the century’s most intriguing and controversial mysteries. Sinceancient times, UFOs of all types have been accounted for. More today thanever, hundreds of thinkers, theologians, and scientists have tried toanswer why there are or whether there aren’t UFOs. According to some, thespeculation that UFOs are alien spacecrafts from another world is anabsurd and foolish proposal.
Others vehemently disagree and assert thatextraterrestrial life is not only possible, but such life forms may besuperior, technologically advanced beings who visit our Earth regularly. Are these “flying saucers” a figment of our imagination? Or, are theya genuine reality we prefer to dismiss because we fear the scary truththat we are not the only master race? Are we hesitant because societydubs such “immature” psycho tantamount to subscribing to belief in ghosts?These are a few of the many pertinent UFO questions the mature individualmust address. One of the most popular theories that support and explains theexistence of alien beings is the ancient astronaut theory. This theorycontains three main schools of thought. The first states that aliens bredwith our primitive forebears thereby creating modern man. The second isquite similar.
Aliens performed genetic engineering on apes therebycreating the Homo Sapiens and man’s intelligence. The third, and leastaccepted, is that colonists from another galaxy came to Earth, mated withthe primitives and established a high level of culture, before beingdestroyed by some natural catastrophe. And upon this catastrophe anddestruction, we build and grow (Fitzgerald 1). Berossus, a Babylonianscholar, may have been the first astronaut historian. He said that “animals endowed with reason” bestowed the Sumerian culture before 3000BCE.
The Sumerians, along with their cultural inheritors, theBabylonians, never referred to such beings as gods. Rather they weredepicted as “disgusting abominations,” a description only deserved byuninvited alien visitors (2). One step further takes the astronaut theory and surmises that withit, we can understand the later religious cultures, such as the Hebrewswho are thought to have borrowed much of Sumerian practice. Suchreligions and secret societies, with their elaborate and complicatedrituals may actually be “preserving from a previous epoch fragments of anesoteric and little understood knowledge, just as the Egyptian, Hebrew,and Mayan priests guarded in their temples the inspired word of theirself-possessed creators (3).
” Alien originators may have set down certainrites which became confused over the years, resulting in the variousancient religions; aliens being the source of our notion of God. Thisalso may explain how miles long designs, only viewable from the air, werecreated in ancient times. The only rationalization for the possibility ofsuch designs is that the ancients had assistance from the sky, namelyextraterrestrial assistance. Many UFO theorists, astronomer Morris Jessupbeing the forerunner, go even further: not only were pre-Biblical andBiblical times full of Alien intervention, but he contends that the UFOphenomenon is the missing link between Biblical supernatural accounts ofmiracles and established, contradicting science. Jessup explains that”nothing is supernatural and nothing is outside nature (12).
” Hecontinues that the Bible is full of UFO accounts, depicted by variousdescriptions: angels, the revelation on Mt. Sinai, the burning bush, andElijah’s levitation to heaven. Jessup says the Bible is a physicalrecord, not a collection of divine revelation “although the miracles ofthis and all religions invite rational and physical explanation, if wegrant the ‘existence of spatial intelligence (13). ‘” Another thinker,Brinsley Trent, follows the theme of extraterrestrial interpretations ofthe Bible and claims that the Garden of Eden was, as many ancient textspoint out, not the underground, but in the Underworld – i.
e. outside theorbit of earth, meaning Mars. When the Great Flood occurred, Noah built agreat “boat,” a spaceship, and landed on Earth (Life 16). However,Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan warns that this ancient astronaut theory andthe “saucer myths” represent a compromise “between the need to believe ina traditional God and the contemporary pressures to accept thepronouncement of science (Fitzgerald 5);” therefore, according to Sagan,the proposition that aliens exist and the astronaut theory should betossed.
Many theorists assume the Bible is a totally separate entity anddon’t associate or contradict the UFO phenomenon with the well establishedtheological belief system in the supernatural. Wilhelm Reich, for one, anoted Austrian psychoanalyst, claimed to have witnessed various UFO craftsand believed that these aliens are hostile. Such aliens wish to rob Earthof orgone, a “cosmic life energy allegedly present in air, water, and allorganic matter (Life 52). “He proceeds to say that saucers run on this orgone energy, hence exhuminga bluish color due to “orgone exhaust.
” Moreover, orgone exhaust is”deadly orgone (Life),” causing sickness in people and creating parcheddesert where ever the crafts land. The Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung,totally differed. He theorized that all “people can tap into. . . (a )collective unconciousness-an area of the unconscious that.
. . containsinformation derived from the experiences of the human race as a wholerather than the individual. . . This storehouse contains universal symbolscalled archtypes.
. . that present themselves spontaneously in dreams orvisions. .
. evoking strong imaginative response. . . One such image was themandala, a disk shaped symbol that represents completion.
. . [hence UFOs arenot] real objects, but rather mandalas. . . visioned by people lookingfor.
. . equilibrium (53). “Jung’s approach is quite debatable. However, as shaky an argument itmay sound, it’s as viable as those who welcome the notion that aliens doexist. Other more common and more understood theories explain that aliensare well intentioned visitors who wish to observe their humancontemporaries for purely scientific purposes.
However, Britishastronomers Sir Martin Ryle and Sir Bernard Lovell both warn that we mustregard all other life in the universe as potentially a fatal threat tohumankind and, in effect, discourage the effort to communicate with suchbeings (Referring to the many attempts to communicate with aliens viapowerful satellite dishes. ) (Fitzgerald 7). With all the theories in mind, we come to the next issue. What arepeople, in reality, seeing?Kenneth Arnold was a normal businessman in Idaho.
As an upstandingand reputable citizen and an expert on flying, Arnold was believed when hesaid that he witnessed a ship zoom back and forth at an approximated 1,350miles per hour. This incident provoked a considerable amount of nationaldebate and gave birth to what historians termed the “modern flying saucerera. ” There were sightings before the Arnold case. However, followingit, there was a myriad of reports and calls. Although many were hoaxes,not all were.
And most of those who have claimed to have witnessed UFOsswear that in no way could they be anything but an alien spaceship. Simply due to the fact, as in the Arnold case, that these crafts maneuverin such humanly impossible speeds and in gravity defying manners. At one moment the UFO is spotted hovering over a house and one secondlater can be seen 25 miles away. People also have described the crafts ashuge cigar shaped buzzing objects or the more popular silent, metallictype saucers.
These reports include interference with television signalsand the halting of car ignitions. Such claims, as Bob Bletchman, in aninterview explained, are the best evidence due to their testimonialconsistency. When you have hundreds of people on an individual basis,from all backgrounds, depict the same scenario, time and time again, thereis little room to doubt their truthfulness. People even assert thatthey’ve seen the pilots: described anywhere between two inch bees to Nazis(Fitzgerald 3) to little green men with six fingers. An eerie complement of UFO sightings are these strange and exactcircular patches of parched, bent, but not cracked vegetation. Suchmysterious circles are believed to be the place of the saucers’ landing.
Even more interesting, the circles can’t bear any vegetable growth formany years afterwards (Life 125). Many allege that not only have they been visited, but kidnapped too. One of my main research sources, a curious, but perhaps crafty DavidJacobs, Ph. D.
, took 60 men and women who claimed abduction and put themunder hypnosis in an effort to document and establish whether all thismumbo jumbo is true. Although generally most abductees remember nothing but the fact that theywere abducted, hypnosis proved to uncover many layers of lost memories. Through these hypnotic sessions, Dr. Jacobs claimed to have found manyreasons the aliens “gave” for such abductions: scientific research,crossbreeding and general observance of the human condition.
He also”discovered” many underlying messages from the aliens: They mean no harm. They care and respect humans and do only that which is necessary. Hisbook sounded very convincing, but perhaps too convincing. Through carefulreading, I began to realize that this Dr. Jacobs is full of bologna. Session after session, Dr.
Jacobs fabricates his “patients'” conversationswith the aliens. However, the conversations sound too repetitive inpersonality and too sensational in respect to the aliens’ response. In aneffort to sound very natural, Dr. Jacobs picks up an almost artificialgrammatically incorrect tone of voice.
For example: “Mm-hmm, but fast,not slow. . . like whizzed by (Secret 69),” and “I just sink to the bottomand start to breathe (189),” and “inside out, yeah (211). ” These are justa few quotes of the literally hundreds of repetitive speech patterns inhis book.
I get the feeling this “Dr. ” Jacobs is trying to make abelievable, sensational story by feeding the reader what we’d like tohear: Kind aliens, cross breeding, scientific experimentation, etc. (Although I found fault with one of my primary sources, it by no meanstypifies the value of other such publications. Each book must be valuedon its own.
)Using super high-tech computer photograph analyzers, scientists wereable to determine the validity of the widely known Trent photos. InOregon, 1950, a Mrs. Trent was feeding rabbits in her backyard when shesaw a huge metallic disk, silently gliding through the air. She calledher husband to fetch a camera and managed to get two shots.
These twoshots were scrutinized by the U. S. Air Force and a variety of otherinvestigators. The 1969’s skeptical Condon Report stated: “The simplest,most direct interpretation of the photographs confirmsprecisely what the witnesses said they saw (Life 138). ” Later on, aWilliam Spaulding of the Ground Saucer Watch Inc. , put these Trent photosunder intense computer scrutiny and came out with the same conclusion: Itwas no hoax (Life).
In World War Two, Allied and Axis air pilots witnessed these eerieluminous balls that would either chase planes or zip in and out of theplanes’ courses. Such oddities were to be eventually called “foofighters. ” World War Two was a time of secrecy and great inventions. Instinctively, the allies thought they were some kind of high tech Germaninnovation. Naturally, too, the Germans thought vice versa. Therefore,nothing of an extraterrestrial nature was ever reported (Life 26), atleast officially.
There are countless reports where U. S. air force personnelwitnessed a flying saucer and reported it; only to be told that it wasprobably a jet or weather balloon. Despite the fact that Project BlueBook (a government UFO investigation) yielded a 1,465 page scientificreport containing charts, photographs and analyses, worth about a halfmillion dollars in research, the government stated in a 1969 news releasethat due to lack of any “significant” conclusions, UFO research would beterminated. Most fans of the research only read the introduction andconclusion sections of the report.
Unfortunately those sections werewritten by an enthusiast of the U. S. Air Force: and hence embraced theirpolicy of denial and falsehood (Life 118). Consequently, the government’sdecision to halt research was accepted with little protest or suspicion. Yet, the question whether the government is holding back vital UFOinformation is still very strong.
Many contend that the U. S. governmentis doing so in an effort to ensure national safety and prevent potentialmass hysteria by publicizing the existence of alien beings. In 1947, in New Mexico, one of the most famous and potent pieces ofevidence literally befell the United States. “Barney” Barnett, and somelocal archeological students found shriveled and broken up pieces of shinymetal and scattered dead bodies all over. A few days later, the army hadquarantined the area, shipped everything away, and told the witnesses thatit was their “patriotic duty” to keep the incident a secret.
Nonetheless,Barnett and the students went public about it (Life 74). To this day,hundreds of reports and books detail this famous “Roswell incident” andclaim that the government, again, is hiding undeniable proof of alienlife. The Viking mission to Mars in 1976 is another prime example of thegovernment’s policy of non cooperation and denial. The Voyager had takentwo pictures of a rock form of a human face on Mars’ surface.
Before a1992 Observer voyage to Mars, many requested NASA to take high resolutionphotos of this “Face” to determine whether it is really a threedimensional rock formation. NASA responded in the negative, although thegovernment gave NASA an extra $90 million for the exact purpose of seekingout Martian life forms. NASA gave a stupid explanation, claiming that the1992 Observer was only photographing meter long objects, which the “‘Face’could be a candidate target. However, there are no plans to tailor themission to assure that the ‘Face’ is imaged (Boyce).
“In a letter, Bob Bletchman cynically responded: “How can NASA not tiltthe camera to possibly answer the most profound question ever asked, ‘Arewe alone?’ (Bletchman)”Nevertheless, many scientists maintain that the many UFO sightingsmay simply be meteorites, some type of atmospheric phenomena, or hightech, saucer-like airplanes used by the military. One factor that greatlycontributes to UFO skepticism is created by the thousands of UFO hoaxesmade each year. A prime and famous example of such hoaxes occurred in NewMexico, 1963. Paul Villa claimed that UFO aliens had become so friendlywith him that they agreed to pose their ship for a camera shot.
Using thesame high-tech computers as was used for the Trent photos, scientistsrevealed a tiny wire that was used to suspend the “UFO” in the air (Life140). Although it’s very easy to scoff at the thought of Martians andflying saucers due to the subject’s emotional sensationalistic attributesand attractabilty to the fantasizer, one can not simply dismiss thepossibility. There is too much evidence and too many good and honestpeople out there who can give testimony. Too often, we hear of the manygovernment cover-ups and attempts to keep things concealed. Although thegovernment tries hard, they can’t keep it a secret forever. Little bylittle, as more incidents occur and as more is leaked out, the world willknow that we are not alone.
It should be noted that this report by no means begins to evenscratch the surface of the UFO mystery. Not only are thousands of bookswritten on each issue, but each individual case is worthy of whole bookson its own. It therefore follows that this paper was a simple over of anoverview of the massive topics and subtopics that follow. Works CitedBletchman, Bob.
National Board, International Mutual UFO Network. Bletchman, Bob. National Board, International Mutual UFO Network. Letters. Connecticut: 1988Boyce, Jacobs.
Discipline Scientist, Planetary Geoscience, Solar SystemExploration Division, NASA. Letter. Washington, D. C. : 1988Editors of Time-Life Books, eds.
The UFO Phenomenon. Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1987Fitzgerald, Randall. The Complete Book of Extraterrestrial Encounters. NewYork: Collier Books, 1979Jacobs, David M. Secret life.
New York: Simon ; Schuster. 1992Works ConsultedFact or Fiction: The Roswell Autopsy. TV Program. N.
p. : n. p. , 1997.
