UFO Haunted World

In the sixth grade I saw a UFO. It was shaped kind of like a blimp and flying what looked to be millions of feet in the air. It was broad daylight, but it stood out black against the bright blue sky above my elementary school, cruising by at a ridiculous speed. My friends looked at me with confusion or maybe even concern for my sanity, but they couldn't see the ship as it zipped across my arc of vision, no doubt carrying a handful of hapless abductees or perhaps refugees from some interstellar war. This was the last I heard of the great visitation of 1993, which suggests either a massive intergovernmental cover-up, a superpowerful technology able to erase the memories of hundreds of millions of earthling rubes, a benign flyby cut short by something like Jean Luc Picard's precious prime directive, or a simple case of an eleven year old with an active imagination and no intimate knowledge of the geometry of our great nation's various airplane fuselages.

I don't believe in UFOs. Into high school I was intrigued by the idea of visitors from other planets, lost civilizations and the Loch Ness Monster. I think it was more out of a desire for it to be true than for any kind of reasoned belief that it was possible. Ufological beliefs and their cryptozoological counterparts possess an enormous counter-culture cache; one that I burned for a piece of from about the time I realized I was defining my persona with every move I made. Even today, the internet breathes with this mythology—from Cory Doctorow's constant linking to cryptomundo to the train-wreck fascination with Raalians that pours out of message boards and news destinations with uncomfortable regularity.

It's an compelling fiction with a full-time cult of conspiracy-minded advocates looking in every shadow for picked over evidence. And the most believable of their tenets is the concept of a military/industrial cover up so powerful it supersedes the need-to-know of even the president. If our government were to recover an extraterrestrial spacecraft and its crew, I have no doubt that they would shy away from full disclosure. Their treatment of everyday issues is proof enough that they don't respect the blind propagation of information through unregulated mouths. The climate we live in requires a certain degree of secrecy to be bestowed on our elected leaders, and that regulatory regime is like dark moist soil for the fungus of paranormal whistle blowers.

They say that more Americans believe in angels today than did thirty years ago. We're inundated with vampire fiction and magical realism. Fantasy is on the rise, and it wasn't so long ago unwed mothers were claiming themselves the victims of a lusty incubus. Information is everywhere, but the deepness of the unknown is still too great for our soundings. Human minds reach out for explanations when the truth is out of reach. I recall that Carl Sagan calls science the “candle in the darkness,” a way to find our bearings; it's important that we have all the details before we decide what story to tell. UFOs and angels other “plausibly fantastic” stories are tempting catchalls for everyday unknowns. They fill so many gaps when proper truth can't be gained or isn't sought after.

I came across this map today and was fascinated by the disparity between US regions and the propensity of a given citizen to report a UFO sighting. The name says it all. Unidentified. Flying. Object. How many of these do you see every day? Do you know if that's a 747 a good distance away, or maybe a solo flight a little closer? Our eyes are affected painfully by distance when there are no objects for reference, as in the sky. Is it a comet or a satellite? Clearly these aren't issues everyone has, but our knowledge gap is generally galling when it comes to bodies in direct violation of the law of gravity. It's easy to make the leap to space aliens when you've been on a steady diet of X-Files or A Fire in the Sky. The same goes for those whose literary palette considers the bible a staple.

Mr. Hynek's map illustrates something poignant and scary. Out here in the Pagan west, UFO sightings are an over-common occurrence. As you move east, they seem to diminish. In the bible belt and south of it, they dwindle away into almost a non-occurrence. Am I the only one who looks at something like that and hears a little preacher preaching? It starts to imply issues a like a kind of locative paranormal insanity... I'm starting to feel a pique in my interest. A curiosity about the generalized explanations people use for the random or the inexplicable. I know I tread on people's toes when I demonize religion or astrology. I can't concern myself with that. I believe in science. I agree that it's the candle in the darkness. Knowledge is sacred, and anything without peer review and scientific method lacks the necessary power of persuasion.

It's strange to look back at your earlier shortcomings—especially those that are only shortcomings from the perspective of your current self. In a way it gives me hope that people can change. In another way it softens the blow. I know I'm not separate from people who see angels wherever they go. We're all in the dark. We all want answers.