My UFO
As part of a previous discussion about UFOs, commenter “huxley” wrote:
I must say, if one sees a UFO and takes it seriously, it’s a crisis. One asks, or at least I did, what is reality, how do we know what we know, and how much should we trust our authorities.
I never got over seeing that UFO.
Sagan’s response is I must have been hallucinating or lying. By Occam’s Razor that’s an understandable response, if one is merely listening to someone else’s account. I can’t dispute Sagan in terms of logic.
But I saw it and other people saw it with me. Occam’s Razor doesn’t help me, unless I want to live in a world where I can’t trust anything I see because I might be hallucinating.
I believe UFOs have an explanation. I don’t know how weird that explanation might be, though I doubt it’s alien beings flying super-alloy saucers out to say hello or study us.
I saw a UFO too, in 1984. I was with another person (my husband) who saw the same thing, and we later read about the sighting in the paper because it had been seen by so many people. For a while my husband retained an otherworldly explanation (I think he’s since revised it), but from the start I thought there was a much less weird explanation, one that we just didn’t know yet.
Two different personalities, same event. But I must say, it was a very strange sight nevertheless. Definitely gets your attention.
Here’s an article from the NY Times about what I saw:
Throughout northern Westchester County, Dutchess and Putnam Counties and western Connecticut this summer, thousands of residents have reported strange objects in the sky – each usually in a V-shape or a circle, about the size of a football field, absolutely noiseless and outlined in brilliant lights of white, red or green.
Later we had explanations such as this one:
Today we’re going to travel up the Hudson River Valley in New York, and back in time to the summers of 1983 and 1984. On many occasions, on clear summer nights, something terrifying and unexpected appeared in the sky. It was a gigantic craft, black as the sky, rimmed with bright lights in white, red, or green. It would drift over towns with a steady hum, witnessed by many. Police phone lines lit up every time it appeared, and the newspapers were choked with reports. It’s called the Hudson Valley UFO, and it’s one of the mainstays of evidence for those who believe we are not alone…
A year before, in the summer of 1983, Tony Capaldi was a local air traffic controller, and here’s what he told Unsolved Mysteries:
“There’s anywhere from upwards of seven to ten aircraft that fly around in formation, and this is visible from our tower… The first time I observed the formation flying, it looked a little peculiar. From our vantage point in the tower they just appeared to be just one big light because they are flying in tight formation. To estimate the size, maybe two football fields wide.”
And just to be clear, there’s no evidence that these pilots ever intended a UFO hoax. As Discover magazine put it in a 1984 article:
“The area abounds with amateur pilots who fly private planes out of a number of airports, including the strip at Stormville. Several years ago, it seems, a few of the Stormville pilots begin practicing formation flying, first in daylight, then, as their skills improved, at night. Before long, other pilots joined them, and what began as loose groupings of planes became tight formations of aircraft with as little as 6 inches between wingtips.”
If you’re inclined to believe that we have been visited by aliens and that the government knows and is covering it up, that probably won’t even make a dent in your conviction. I tend to believe the opposite, so it satisfies me.
My wife is certain that she saw an UFO some years ago. She also believes in ghosts and can sense them. My mother believed in ghosts and used to tell us ghost stories when I was a child.
I think Fr. Guido Sarducci had the last word on UFOs years ago on Saturday Night Live. No offense to UFO enthusiasts or believers (Transcribed from memory so pardon any errors):
neo: What did you and your husband see? Some of the reports in that news article described maneuvers beyond the capabilities of standard planes.
My UFO was an orange ball with diffuse edges about the size of a full moon in the sky. I had no sense of how near or far it might be. It drifted lazily and randomly in the southeastern sky, then it gave off a bright white and green flash, then drifted away in a southerly direction over Highway A1A. The next day the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported a UFO chasing a car on A1A further south from me.
I have since searched for that story on their website without satisfaction. I think my best bet would be to look through their microfiche if I’m ever in town again.
I can’t figure my UFO for a plane or helicopter or anything else.
There are UFOs of course: insofar as they are defined merely as flying or apparently flying objects, which cannot or will not be positively identified by the viewer or the supposedly relevant authorities.
Some of these “objects” and events, as Los Angeles Times investigative reporter Annie Jacobsen’s level-headed book “Area 51” shows, have subsequently been identified and explained. Most impressively I think were the admissions that the Oxcart (I think the SR71 was originally called) tests were observed by civilians who simply could not process the speed at which these jets traversed the viewer’s night sky, and height at which they flew where the sun still shone off their fuselages. They simply looked like glowing objects flying at 3 or more times the speed of any aircraft with which the populace, even the informed parts of it, were familiar.
Now as for those who claim to have seen Klaatu disembark from a silver flying saucer in their town square, I have no comment.
I believe in UFOs, as unidentified objects in the sky, but remain very cynical about their being extraterrestrial in nature. I know I have seen odd things, that have resolved themselves at a different distance, bearing, or height. But they sure looked odd, until I realized what they were.
Dr. Edward Condon’s research project reviewed a large mass of claims which accumulated between 1947 and 1966. They concluded that there were a few inexplicable cases. The one most puzzling occurred in McMinnville, Oregon in 1953.
The government and the MSM have forfeited any claim they had to my believing them and, moreover, over the last few years, we have been given a crash course in just how many lies they have peddled, and how many coverups they have engaged in.
It seems to me that the issue of the existence of UFOs and any threat/opportunity they might present to us is a prime candidate for such a coverup, for being deliberately obscured by a deliberate, many decade’s long government disinformation campaign—a blizzard of false leads, leaked “secret documents,” and testimony, on their face outlandish and/or patently false claims by this or that person or organization, and enough actual, partial truth thrown in to make disentangling things, and sifting the true from the false, almost impossible; the whole idea of the likely reality of UFOs, and the people who believe in that reality discredited.
The Moon misidentified, “Swamp gas,” “Ball lightning,” and mass hysteria, indeed.
We may not have, as the old KGB did, a Department in their First Directorate solely dedicated to the production of “Dizinformatsia,” but, nonetheless, I believe that, when they want to, our government and its allies do a great job of creating, dispensing, and spreading it.
They concluded that there were a few inexplicable cases. –Art Deco
Most UFO sightings can be resolved to sightings of planes, Venus, streetlights or some such. But there remains a stubborn residue which can’t be discarded without impugning the motives or sanity of the observer.
Here’s a bit from the wiki entry on Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto and the Kuiper Belt:
Tombaugh was probably the most eminent astronomer to have reported seeing unidentified flying objects. On August 20, 1949, Tombaugh saw several unidentified objects near Las Cruces, New Mexico. He described them as six to eight rectangular lights, stating: “I doubt that the phenomenon was any terrestrial reflection, because… nothing of the kind has ever appeared before or since… I was so unprepared for such a strange sight that I was really petrified with astonishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Tombaugh#Interest_in_UFOs
If you’re inclined to believe that we have been visited by aliens and that the government knows and is covering it up…
neo: I don’t claim aliens are visiting and the government knows and is covering it up. However, it has been established the government was actively working to discredit UFO observers and the UFO community.
The government has done many discreditable things to protect its authority, which is how I understand this.
Citizens report weird things in the sky which might be dangerous. Authorities look into it and realize they don’t have a good explanation to reassure the populace. So they attack the messengers. I don’t like it, but I get it.
Huxley- For one of the most convincing UFO sightings take a look at the Rundlesham Forrest Incident that occurred in England, just outside of RAF Woodbridge, a base that our USAF was using, over a two day period in late December, 1980.
I saw a ufo many years ago. I was setting up for an astro lab on the rooftop. It was just at sunset. I looked up and saw 3 orange, oval discs, flying in a triangular formation and soundlessly.
I was shocked, and immediately said to myself, “Did I really just see that?” As I tried to get my heart rate down three more came by, but this time one of the discs emitted a definite honk of a Canadian goose.
They were flying toward the west and the setting sun reflected off their white bellies, the wings and body were totally invisible in the light conditions. They were flying high enough I could not hear their wings beating.
If that second flight of geese had not come by, I would be a ufo believer, but it shows that many ufos are easily explained, even if that explanation is not immediately obvious.
If you’ve ever spent much time in a desert or at angels 30 in a cockpit you’ve seen a lot of strange things. The still air stratifies and reflections can be seen for hundreds of miles.
It seems to me that the issue of the existence of UFOs and any threat/opportunity they might present to us is a prime candidate for such a coverup,
Snow on Pine, the objects exist. The question at hand is can you make a cogent demonstration that any particular report of an object has aught but a prosaic explanation. And you very seldom can. There are objects you cannot explain because the data is sketchy, but it’s bound to be much of the time. It beggars belief that Air Force Intelligence or Naval Intelligence has some trove of spooky and inexplicable events they’ve been successfully sitting on for 70 years. Ditto all the other notable intelligence services in the world.
I saw my UFO in the mid-1960s in suburban Maryland. I was outside with a gang of friends playing hide and seek among the cedars in a field. There was a kind of big soft golden globe hanging in the sky off to one side, where the far-off street was. We all half-noticed it, but it was something like a street light or somebody’s big outdoor light, so nobody paid much attention (and didn’t think until later that there were no street lights on that section of road, and no houses in that spot to have an outdoor light}. Then after a long time, half an hour or more, the globe that had been motionless all that time abruptly rose straight up into the night sky, so fast that it caught everybody’s attention, and then shot in a big arc across the sky and over our heads and vanished over the opposite horizon. We all saw it, stopped short, exclaimed and called out to one another, and so did the mother of the family I was visiting. She called the police, and they told her that they were getting calls from all over. And that’s all I ever knew.
Citizens report weird things in the sky which might be dangerous.
Really? Whose ever been endangered by a verifiable object of this sort? (I’m assuming you’re not going to be referring to the Hills or Hickson / Parker or Whitley Strieber).
Perhaps Master Deco is unfamiliar with the modal auxiliary verb: might.
The modal verb “might” is most often used to express an unlikely or uncertain possibility.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Modal-Auxiliary-Verbs-Might.htm
An important job of the US government and the Air Force is to protect American air space or at least try to. When unknown objects can zip around the country’s skies with impunity, it doesn’t make the government look good.
Initially there was concern UFOs might be advanced tech from a hostile power.
One excuse for a government coverup–if coverup there is–is the assumption, the common wisdom, that the “authorities” believe that most of us “couldn’t handle the truth” of discovering that UFOs and Aliens are real.
This because that knowledge would strike a huge psychic blow at the whole human race, would knock the props out from under and undermine our idea of our “superiority,” our place in the World and in the Universe, leading to all sorts of chaos, violence, panic, and despair.
What would happen if we discovered that all of our vaunted accomplishments had been accomplished by some Aliens tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago, and that they have since progressed to the point that we cannot likely even comprehend the Universe as they have succeeded in comprehending it, or their science?
To quote Science Fiction writer Arthur Clarke’s Third Law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
And it likely would be to us.
According to this view, humans would then take the role of comparative savages, many of us supposedly disheartened, and likely sitting back, apathetically watching as far more advanced, able, and aware entities appear, and by their very existence undermine all that we think we are and have accomplished; our self confidence, even our will to live.
I happen to think that would not be the reaction of a majority of people, especially of people here in the U.S.
But, I could be wrong.
I happen to think that the reaction of many of us would be to beg, borrow, or steal their technology, to find some way to study and learn what they have discovered and know about the Universe and all that is in it.
Snow… the Red Chinese show us that stealing the tech is exactly what would happen — so far as humanly possible.
We’d probably outsource that task to Beijing.
The reason UFOs leaped into the public consciousness: V-2 (A-4) launches after WWII at White Sands. This is walking distance from Roswell, New Mexico.
On top of that, the USAF began a VERY top secret attempt to use ultra-high altitude helium balloons to photograph the USSR. It was a bust. However, the mylar balloons would absolutely appear to be flying saucers from 100,000 feet below.
Naturally, the USAF lied through their teeth about every sighting.
&&&&&
I did see what many might regard as a UFO — except that it was obviously a secrect USAF recon machine able to reach fantastic speeds far beyond the SR-71. It’s energy output was close to that of a Saturn V booster. It’s blast away speed was breath-taking. It’s blast was so intense that most everyone in the Greater Bay Area could see it heading west over the Pacific.
Going west is the wrong direction for going into orbit, BTW. West was used to be unpredictable — and the shot was designed to spook the North Koreans. They were the Hot Issue at the moment. Each launch must cost a fortune.
In normal operation, this beast is brought to full power only over the ocean.
It also demonstrated that the USAF has mastered hypersonic flight. What the USAF wants to do is to lower the cost of such speed. It’s too exotic for anything other than strategic recon.
The Russian hypersonic beast is their counter-weapon designed expressly to shoot our craft out of the sky. It does not add to their strategic deterrent.
Naturally ALL of the players are talking around the issue. We refuse to admit we have such a machine. Russia and Red China refuse to admit it freaks them out. It’s uncovered simply no end of their strategic gambits.
They are also concerned that it could be used to assassinate an ultra hard target with no notice. ( Think OBL. )
Currently, it’s still totally untouchable. Yes, it’s the result of Reagan’s administration. It was a piece of the puzzle that destroyed the USSR. The prospect of stopping it caused heads to explode all around Moscow.
However, it has been established the government was actively working to discredit UFO observers and the UFO community.
There exists a world outside of the USA. “The Government” is not in control of most of the world. Unless you are one of those who also believes that the world is controlled by some secret cabal, the secret would be out by now.
Moreover, amateurs have incredibly powerful telescopes now. There are numerous non-governmental radars. “The Government” don’t have the monopoly that they used to have. (The demise of the UFO has come as we all have really good phones in our pockets. The old blurry photo of the past would be laughed at now, when we can take super clear photos and videos at the drop of a hat. if there were alien spacecraft, we should have lots of very clear images.)
Incidentally, I saw a UFO once. It was headlights of cars turning a corner on a distant hill in the fog.
One issue is that people who see something unusual translate changes in size as speed. An object that gets smaller is considered to be travelling away by the mind, because the mind automatically defaults to things not changing there actual size, so a change in perceived size must mean a change in position. But there’s a raft of illusions that show that our minds play terrible tricks and we see movement where there is none. What I thought was lights moving at great speed, was the beams growing from weak to strong and back to weak as the cars went round the corner.
I very much prefer UFOs to any of the other mental constructs on offer recently. In fact, UFOs might be just what the world needs right now.
“it has been established the government was actively working to discredit UFO observers and the UFO community.”
As blert’s comment suggests, it is likely that many UFO sightings are military aircraft, possibly experimental and/or classified. We may not like it but it is predictable the government will try to deflect these events.
We could put this thing to rest very quickly (at least for the beautiful people).
All that need be done is for DJT to declare (i.e., tweet) that UFOs MOST DEFINITELY EXIST.
(On the other hand, there must be a lot of folks who sorely wish that Canada Geese were in fact UFOs and that they would just honk—and cr**—the heck back to Alpha Centauri, or wherever it is they’re from….)
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I was working in the Public Affairs office at Mather AFB in 1981 when there were reports of UFOs – lights in the evening sky, drifting slowly, and without any noise; the sightings were all over the local newspaper … and then about a week later, the leader of a Scout troop explained that his troop and been launching fire balloons that very evening. Mystery solved!
(I used this as a plot point in one of the Luna City books, to set off a mad scramble of UFOlogists coming to Luna City.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FCFNO1E/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2)
The closest thing to UFO I have seen was a big orange or yellow fireball crossing night sky over Zeravshan River canyon near Pamir mountain province, viewed from a small Tajik village at 4 km elevation. It was accompanied with a thunder-like noise, and several seconds after it came out of view behind a mountain ridge, a huge boom of faraway explosion. It was hardly an UFO, since I immediately identified it as bolide impact in almost uninhabited area.
When unknown objects can zip around the country’s skies with impunity, it doesn’t make the government look good.
The objects are ‘unknown’ to members of the general public who’ve seen some aspect of them. They’re not unknown to the people responsible for putting the object in the air (or making it visible from the ground). Mrs. So-and-So in Duluth calls the nearest air base and tells them that last night she saw somethingorother while driving home from her evening shift. She doesn’t give them enough precise information for them to rule in or rule out any sort of aerial phenomenon. Notes on the call are typed up and filed and then everyone forgets about it. There’s no cover-up there, just public employees who have other things to do with their time.
Years ago (in the 80’s) a UFO show had a story of a mass sighting around the Phoenix area, Witness drawings of a semi-triangular craft oddly silent and moving in odd ways, ATC saying they had nothing on radar etc, etc.
Anyone, today, looking at those witness renditions will instantly say “The Stealth Bomber!” At that time, the work-up of the craft was about done and it was entering service, but as far as the Gov’t was concerned, It Did Not Exist, so they certainly were not going to say, “Y’all just saw an aeroplane” no matter how many folks asked what was up.
Apparently the same happened with the Stealth Fighter. Even in daylight both planes are hard to see unless very close. People in ATC Towers say even on approach, and transponders on, telling you where to look for them, you can’t see them much until they are very close, and have odd looks before being clearly what they are.
UFO reports from 1800s make for fascinating reading. At that time the technology was limited to airships so lot of the reports were about how people had seen them they could even hear the conversation within the ship.
Mrs. Whatsit, thanks for the link! I am always ready to read a good book for Younger Readers. And now I also have a new weblog to check out. Life is sweet. :>)
huxley,
I say without a particle of doubt that “The Free Dictionary” is full of prunes. There are several instances of “might” in this very discussion, and I may have missed the only one that uses the word in the sense of “possible but unlikely.”
Consider the case of my friend Ermintrude. She doesn’t go out much, but she and I are both great fans of Miss Cleo (you remember her, the TV clairvoyant or whatever she claimed to be). As it happened, Miss Cleo was on a speaking tour and was going to be speaking in our home town (Caligula, Arizada) soon. I was talking with Ermintrude on the phone on the day when I learned about the upcoming presentation, and Ermintrude said, “Wow, that’s great! I just might go see her!”
Well, I knew what that meant. I ordered two tickets for us as soon as I hung up.
:>))
–Oh, and I might take my usual Sunday nap later on this afternoon.
The occurrence of unusual and difficult to explain events is programmed into the timeline of our universe. Their attention-grabbing noteworthiness might be part of the purpose.
The larger the field of variables, the more likely unusual events will eventually happen. Understanding them is incremental over generations. Within each lifetime, however brilliant, the mind is overmatched by vast reality. Humility is indicated.
Julie near Chicago, I feel exactly the same way about new things to read, but I don’t get the credit for the link — that was Sgt. Mom.
I saw ball lightning when I was a teenager. Sat up in bed during a storm and looked out the window straight at it. This was back in the latter half of the 20th century, so I couldn’t Google it. Days (weeks?) later I ran across the phrase ball lightning. If I was of the mind that UFOs are all around us, I never would have looked for an explanation other than that.
Sgt. Mom,
I see I blew it again. Head working on content, never mind addressee: Yet another example of the many errors possible in writing, even when one perfectly well knows better.
This should have been addressed to you:
Sgt. Mom, thanks for the link! I am always ready to read a good book for Younger Readers. And now I also have a new weblog to check out. Life is sweet. :>)
. . .
Mrs Whatsit,
Thanks very much for calling my attention to the error. It’s good having somebody rescue me from myself. :>( :>))
I say without a particle of doubt that “The Free Dictionary” is full of prunes. There are several instances of “might” in this very discussion, and I may have missed the only one that uses the word in the sense of “possible but unlikely.”
Julie near Chicago: That was my P.G. Wodehouse “Jeeves” imitation for handling annoying people, as Art Deco seems intent on picking a fight with me without mentioning my name after I suggested we disengage.
I stand by my point that UFOs were a big deal phenomenon which concerned citizens, the government and the Air Force alike, as they might have been a threat.
The modern flying saucer UFO sightings are usually dated to begin in 1947 when the pilot Kenneth Arnold reported a string of UFOs flying close together. This was only a couple years after the Japanese were surprised by American nuclear weapons and the Cold War was heating up with the Soviets.
Responsible people in the government and the military had little choice but to take UFOs seriously as they truly might have been a threat. When they couldn’t discount UFOs entirely due to reports which couldn’t be laid off the usual suspects, they had a problem which in part they met by discrediting observers.
Today few care anymore. Whatever UFOs are, they don’t seem to pose a serious threat and they continue to resist a full explanation.
Huxley- For one of the most convincing UFO sightings take a look at the Rundlesham Forrest Incident that occurred in England, just outside of RAF Woodbridge, a base that our USAF was using, over a two day period in late December, 1980.
Snow on Pine: Jacques Vallee allowed this incident might be legit but he was skeptical:
To me the most plausible theory is that the US military has developed a device or a collection of devices that look like flying saucers, that they are primarily in tended for psychological warfare, and that they being actively tested on military personnel.
–Jacques Vallee, “Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception,” p. 171
Sergey said:
Bravissimo. This was a vivid gem of a short tale. Quite. Thanks.
I saw weird lights in Connecticut in the 70’s. They were moving as no aircraft we have ever seen before. I was with a group from my neighborhood, and we watched the lights for over an hour. (We are south of Westover Airforce Base in Mass) One of the parents called the police, the Airforce base, and Bradley International airport. Nobody knew what we were seeing. We weren’t on drugs either. Ever since that day, I believe!
The National UFO Reporting Center provides a website and a hotline for reporting UFO sightings. I check NUFORC now and then to be reminded that UFOs haven’t gone away.
National UFO Reporting Center
http://www.nuforc.org
I’m sure many of these sightings have normal explanations, but many are harder to explain — like my orange ball which drifted around in the sky for around twenty minutes.
For the latest sample of these reports:
Monthly Report Index For 01/2019
http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/ndxe201901.html
Thanks, NUFORC folks.
huxley, I apologize for missing your point. Thanks for the explanation. :>)
.
Seems yesterday was my day and this was my discussion for messing up.:>(