Nick Redfern dismissed, in a recent post, newer UFO sightings because they lacked the vibrancy of older UFO/flying saucer sightings. And he was right to do so.Current UFO sightings are mundane and uninteresting, except maybe for those who get excited by an odd light in the sky.
But even with older, classic and/or overworked sightings in UFO lore, what do we have or find by reviewing those Redfernian-desired UFO sightings (or reports)?
In the iconic Kenneth Arnold June 1947 flying saucer sighting we have a pilot seeing nine things flying in a kind of formation; things that could be pelicans (yes), or U.S. Naval Horton-designed prototype jet-aircraft, or, perhaps, extraterrestrial aircraft, and maybe a meteorological phenomenon of a unique sort.
The sighting has been reviewed to the point that it has become ufologically banal.
Then there is Roswell, where an Army press release has created an ongoing event that has become mythical and grist for ongoing research and investigation, even though the incident has been winnowed to the point where little seems left to fact or the imagination.
However, some Roswell devotees (the badgered, ill-named, pummeled Roswell Dream Team) think there is still material to be mined from the alleged July 1947 episode.
But what is there about this event that invites scrutiny, further scrutiny and that of the past?
The Army press release said a flying disk had been recovered by the military. Some balloon debris was proffered by the Army as the found flying disk. The matter was closed as far as the public thought, shortly after the July media brouhaha.
But an intrusion of UFO ET enthusiast Stanton Friedman in 1978 re-invigorated the July 1947 incident and from then until now, Roswell still captures the lion’s share of interest by UFO mavens.
Why?
There is little left to chew on when it comes to Roswellian detritus. And new research is bogged down by the lack of substantive new material or information, despite protestations by that sniggering Roswell Dream Team.
Spanish UFO researcher, Jose Antonio Caravaca, has provided a slew of odd UFO events which he maintains are the product of interference by an “external agent” (still not clarified exactly by Senor Caravaca).
The encounters he has listed intrigue and are vibrant, in a way that might enthuse Nick Redfern, but what do we have, really?
Each event gives off the vibrations of hallucinatory episodes, the details providing information that a psychiatrist or neurological theorist would find intriguing and worthy of etiological scrutiny.
The problem, however, with the hallucination scenario derives from the material remnants in Caravacian events; that is, there are often indentations in the soil around the event and environmental disturbances take place which are found after the sighting.
Alien Abductions are palpably mental aberrations, and have been with mankind for millennia; e.g., the incubus/succubus episodes or the “dream-like” abductions rampant in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament).
But there seems to be meat on the abduction stories of Travis Walton or the Hills.
However, abduction tales are on the wane, virtually gone from the UFO arsenal.
That UFO sightings occur daily and rather large numbers, it seems, they no longer excite or bring out the rash of activity that the older flying saucer accounts and UFO sightings brought forth.
So, Nick Redfern’s view that current UFO sightings don’t hold a candle to the older, classic UFO or flying saucer tales is valid on seemingly objective.
Is it time to relegate the phenomenon to the dustbin of curiosity and let it rest there for now (and ever)?
That would be the sane thing to do, but the UFO community is not composed of sane or rational types, but for a few….and even those few still get a twinge of giddiness when a UFO sighting, old or new, pops up on a blog or in the media.
If Oreo cookies are more addictive than cocaine, what can we say about UFOs? That they are the meth of many? Perhaps, a psychiatric cleansing or rehab stint is needed.
RR
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