Why UFOs? Part 1: The childhood years

Photograph of a purported UFO over Minnesota in 1979. Found here.

This is the first of a series that discusses writing, rhetoric, history, modern myth...and UFOs.


"It's not 'What are these things?' It's 'Why are there these things?'"

I don't remember where I read that or who said it, but it perfectly encapsulates my thinking at the moment.

Eight years ago, I started this blog for several reasons. It would serve as a mental distraction. I could plumb subjects that serve as real-life inspirations for my favorite literary genre, science fiction. Most of all, I saw myself as a sort of Art Bell-wannabe...the blog could be a Coast-to-Coast AM in my own, minuscule corner of the Internet. My primary subject matter would be UFOs.

Obviously the blog has evolved quite a bit over the years. I've come to cover...well, just about anything I want (it is mine, after all). But lately I've been considering what was once my primary subject matter and asking myself, "why?"

Why did I ever get interested in this subject? Why did it stick with me for so long? I'm a college professor, a reasonably educated person, and I have at least a foundational understanding of science. Why then would I devote any mental bandwidth to this cultural phenomenon, risking possible ridicule or even worse, professional detriment in the process?

When couched that way, why would anyone pursue it? For any reason?

Yet many do. Take a spin around your cable or satellite guide, and you'll find Ancient Aliens, The X-Files, or something of the ilk. Why? Over a series of blog posts, I want to give deep consideration as to why. For this first installment, I decided I must start with a reflective, autobiographical piece...

I was seven.

Every two or three weeks, the first grade class of St. Augustine Elementary School in Rensselaer, Indiana would walk to the Jasper County Public Library so that we could check out books to read just for fun. The idea was of course to encourage a love of reading, for if you read read read, you will likely learn learn learn. I got the reading part down, anyway.

First grade came right after I saw Star Wars and that movie became my whole life. I was an obsessed little six year-old, ravenous for anything even remotely like that film. On one of those visits to the children's section of the library, I pulled a book from the shelf. It was a hardcover in "that library kind of way" (hoping you know what I mean). It had a green cover, and a series of circular spaceships. It's title? Unidentified Flying Objects. I have googled and googled, but have been unable to find this exact book.

I flipped through the pages of what I thought would be a science fiction story. Instead I found photographs. They were fuzzy, black and white, and I thought the special effects looked nowhere near as good as Star Wars. That is until I read the text and learned that they were photos of things witnessed by other people. I took the book to my first grade teacher.

"Is this real?" I asked her.

"No," she said with vehemence. "It's cruddy garbage and you'd best not waste your time with it."

So what did I do?

I found and read every book I could on the subject. Here is one of them:

My mind drank in all the narratives of the sightings. As humans are predisposed to do, I began to discern patterns in the narratives. The sightings would most often take place at night and in rural areas. They would begin as a cluster of lights in the black. They might hover, or they might dart about with incredible speed, or just generally exhibit flight characteristics beyond anything anyone had seen...but no so weird as to be incomprehensible. If the lights drew closer to the witness, a structured craft, often saucer or cigar-shaped, might come into view.

And then it would be gone.

All of that was exciting enough for my little first grade self, but I wasn't ready for the tidbit that would really send me over the edge. One UFO book, the title lost to my aging memory, ran a photograph with the following caption: "The witness of this UFO also claims to have met the occupants of the craft."

Oh. My. GOD.

Real extraterrestrials? Visiting Earth? All of the science fiction I had been gorging on might be coming true somewhere? Was it anywhere near my house by any chance?

While I was a ravenous reader on the subject, it would be disingenuous of me not to take into consideration the influence of television.

Turning my TV dial one day (yes, I'm that old), I found the show In Search Of with "that guy from Star Trek." Nimoy's gravitas-laden voice paired with weird music that was probably made by some guy on a Moog...it was just classic stuff. The show drew me into the paranormal as a whole, but the UFO episodes naturally stuck with me. Right around this same time, NBC also aired a series called Project UFO.

It was produced by Jack Webb of Dragnet fame. I think I have his opening voiceover committed to memory:

"Ezekiel saw the wheel. This is the wheel he said he saw. These are unidentified flying objects that people say they are seeing now. Are they proof that we are being visited by civilizations from other stars? Or just what are they? The United States Air Force began an investigation of this high strangeness in a search for the truth. What you are about to see is part of that 20-year search."

Each show was (as the producers claim, anyway) based on a real case investigated by USAF's Project: Blue Book. I've re-watched a few of the episodes on YouTube and they're diverting, but void of any real substance. At the time, however, it was yet another enticing aspect of the phenomenon. There's such a chance that this might be real, that the government is investigating. Little did I know...

There was of course Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but I wouldn't end up seeing that until almost out of grade school. Rensselaer only had one movie theater, you know, and if I was going to beg my parents to take me to see something, it was going to be another showing of Star Wars.

Naturally, there were adult figures in my life who pumped the brakes from time to time on my enthusiasm for UFOs. As they should have. My father asked me to consider each case and its evidence...or lack thereof. In a form of the Socratic method suited for a lad my age, he would ask me questions about UFO cases and eventually force me to realize that I had not fully considered all possibilities and that the boomerang-shaped mothership from Zeta Retculai might have actually been geese flying in formation with light reflecting off their light-colored bellies. Other adults weren't so kind. Like so many before me, I learned that to have this interest is to subject one's self to ridicule.

Regardless, I would persist. Why?

Meditating upon the question, I've come up with the following, preliminary reasons:

1. Story. We all form our understanding of the world through narrative, but I feel like it has always held an especially important role in my life. Books, comics, TV, movies, all of it consumed my free time as a child. So enraptured was I by story, that I extended these narratives through play with my action figures and other toys, or even through my first fledgling attempts at writing. A UFO sighting, I subconsciously determined, held a narrative pattern and the elements of a great story. As we say in nonfiction studies, "You can't make this stuff up." Well, you can, but I think even when my younger self doubted a UFO account, I still liked reading it. Why? It was simply a helluva story. Often great stories contain an element of...

2. Mystery. It was an intriguing puzzle. Was it or wasn't it real? I believed it was at the time, but it would be an intellectual challenge to find the evidence and "solve the case," so to speak. Other people liked "Whodunits." I liked "how do we prove it?" As with most things mysterious, there was also...

3. Fear. My little self often wondered, "If these things are real, what would I do if I ever saw one? More to the point, what would they do to me?" These visitors from strange, alien worlds were obviously far beyond human capabilities. If malevolent, what could any of us possibly do to stop them? This x factor brings an excitement that is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. Fear of the unknown...

4. But not too unknown. A UFO story was fantastic, but not so utterly bizarre as to be incomprehensible, disorienting, or weird in the traumatic way. I could understand the concept of a spacecraft and aliens. In other words, the narrative was relatable.

This marked the beginning of my lifelong but ever-changing journey with the UFO phenomenon. Many close readers may be looking at the above four points, asking, "Well, can't you give any examples to support yourself?" Yes.

Next post in the series...


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