UFOs Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Sheryl Gottschall ©

The modern day UFO phenomenon sprung to the public’s attention in 1947 after Kevin Arnold described a group of crescent-shaped objects flying through the air near Mt Rainier in th4 United States. He described these objects as moving through the air like “stones skipping on water”. Soon after a journalist coined the term “Flying Saucer” and the modern UFO era was born. For many years thereafter “Flying Saucers” was the name given to these strange objects but during the 1970’s many of the organizations studying this phenomenon changed their names to include the term UFO. Arnold's was by no means the first or even best sighting at the time, but it was the one which finally broke through the information media's “reluctance barrier”. Witnesses began to publicly declare their sightings and experiences and the media began to report such accounts. As the years passed millions of people all around the world reported seeing UFOs and to this day these reports still continue.

The famous “Roswell incident” also occurred in 1947 when a UFO reportedly crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. The United States government stated that a UFO had crashed in the area later claiming that a mistake had been made and the object found was actually a weather balloon. There were also unofficial reports of alien bodies being retrieved from the crashed spacecraft with one alien surviving for a period of time. This was to become the most famous and controversial incident in the UFO field today.

Although UFOs are readily recognized by their characteristic traits of hovering silently in the air, being able to change direction abruptly often performing 90 degree turns at incredible speeds and performing a “falling leaf” motion when descending slowly, it is their “otherworldly” traits that seem to fascinate most people. These objects have been reported to disappear right before witnesses eyes, be ten times bigger on the inside than they are on the outside, change shape, and have been seen to split into two objects in less than a second (this has been captured on the same frame of film).

While UFOs themselves perform remarkable feats, it is their occupants that intrigues researchers. Many different types of alien beings are reported, the most familiar to the public being the image of the “greys”. They are typically described as having inverted pear-shaped heads, large black wrap-around eyes, a small slit for a mouth and communicate telepathically with humans as well as each other. There are a veritable plethora of theories as to why they are here but they are often reported as being involved with alien abduction experiences. This is where people report being taken on board a spaceship, usually unwillingly, where they have what is described as medical examinations performed on them. This can sometimes be followed by a tour of the craft, an educational session where an alien language is shown and taught to them and an introduction to a being who will become familiar to them (possibly designated to them) in future experiences.

While these reports seem bizarre to some, they are not as uncommon as one might think. Like the initial stages of the UFO phenomenon, the number of reports have swelled as social awareness has increased. Several books on the subject have been published and some have appeared on the New York Times best seller list. Thoughtful reviews and articles on the subject have appeared in magazines and UFO research journals while TV documentaries and radio programs dealing seriously with the subject have aided in raising public awareness. As a result numbers of abductees have been emboldened to seek investigators to help clarify their experiences. Studies have now been done that show that on average 2% of the population is experiencing these events. That means that here in Australia one out of every fifty people has had a close encounter. This may seem unbelievable but as a researcher I know that it is not unusual for people to live with this secret all their lives never telling anyone, except the likes of me, for fear of ridicule. Experiencing a close encounter often proves to be a life changing event for those who share this occurrence. Some can become emotionally distressed, confused and socially isolated while others seem to flourish in spite of it.

Not all close encounters are traumatic in nature, in fact, back in the 1950’s and 1960’s era, abduction experiences, although reported, were not that common. Instead, reports of friendly contact with blonde blue-eyed attractive types referred to as the “nordics” were the norm. They were commonly ascribed to as being our “spacebrothers” and were usually reported as living much longer than Earthlings. “Contactees” were given messages about caring for the environment, cosmic awareness, explanations of the evolution of life in the universe, and the importance of nurturing the brotherhood of man, to name a few. It was not unusual for contactees to become more spiritually aware, if they weren’t already on that path, and some went further by establishing spiritual groups.

Although the past response to the UFO phenomenon by humanity has been rather slow, it is our future interaction with ETs that is of greater significance. If there were ever to be an open contact with beings from other worlds en masse, one can only wonder how humanity might respond. Will it be the beginning of a silent or very noisy revolution? Will it serve as a window into the swirling confusion of difficult questions that would possibly challenge everything we think we know about the universe, ourselves and our origins? Will it be the galactic coming out party of our planet that many of us hope it will be? Or will humanity freefall into the future not quite knowing where it will land? One can only wait and wonder.

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