UFO Sightings

Hollywood, television and folklore would have been less colourful had it been minus the colourful and mysterious world of UFO sightings. Imagine a world with no X Files? Even though fans would shudder at that depressing thought, the fact remains that there is no empirical proof for phenomena that has been loosely placed in the category of the paranormal.

Flying saucers, extraterrestrials, alien abductions. Fantasy or reality? Either way, it’s a realm that many take seriously, leading to a semi-scientific area of research called Ufology. Also, since UFO sightings usually refer to flying objects, some prefer to all them Unidentified Aerial Phenomena rather “flying objects”.

It’s a fascinating area, nevertheless. Research into UFOs gathered steam after World War I, when a flurry of sightings was reported. Since then, experts believe that many so-called sightings arise from an inability to clearly decipher phenomena that are related to astronomical events such as meteors and planetary events, military planes, other aircraft and hot air balloons.

But there are phenomena that don’t seem to be related to any of these at all, leading some to believe that there are indeed such things as unidentified flying objects. The first widespread reportage on UFOs came in 1994 when Allied pilots in the war reported sighting what they called “foo fighters” or erratically flying “enemy weapons”.

Then there were the “ghost rockets” or 1946, when people reported nearly 2,000 sightings of UFOs that looked like meteors with extreme manoeuvrability. These were not consistent with any known astronomical event at the time and some hypothesize that they were test missiles being fired by the Russians. These ghost rockets, sighted mainly in the Scandinavian skies, remained unexplained today.

The next big UFO sighting was made by pilot and businessman Kenneth Arnold, who claimed he saw nine crescent-shaped objects which flew in a chain, sometimes skimming the surface of water. It is this description that led to the coining of the term “flying saucer” in 1947.

It was these UFO sightings that spawned a rash of theories that included alien landings from Mars and even the Biblical assumption that flying saucers were the vehicles of fallen angels.

The most widely publicized and investigated UFO incident is the Roswell incident of 1947, when the residents of this New Mexico town reported having seen a disc-like object flying through the sky.

Nothing new by way of UFO sightings, right? But it was the strange behaviour of the US Army that fuelled the obsession over the incident and added mystery to it. Soon after the UFO was believed to have crashed and metallic debris recovered from a hill in Roswell, the Army issued a statement, claiming it was indeed a UFO that had landed. Then, almost immediately, they issued another statement, claiming it was all a mistake and that the disc they claimed to have recovered was actually a weather balloon.

But the biggest mystery of all is the reported discovery of four alien bodies that made the Roswell incident so fantastic. So, did the US government make up the alien theory to cover up a secret military experiment that went awry? Or did they make up the weather balloon to cover up a true alien landing so that the public wouldn’t panic?

Either way, the interest in UFOs hasn’t died. If anything, it’s only multiplied.