UFO, UAP, or just Alien Phenomena?

Image from: http://www.saturdaynightuforia.com/html/pastpics27.html

Kevin Randle. at his blog [kevinrandle.blogpot.com], in an aside, mentions the use of UAP, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, as a substitute, by some, for UFO, Unidentified Flying Object.

Bruce Duensing, before his untimely death, was an advocate of the UAP epithet, and a few other UFO proponents like the term. I do not.

I do like, however, the “phenomena” designation, as what we’ve all been discussing, over the years, are odd, bizarre phenomena which was once held together under the rubric "flying saucer(s).”

A few notable ufologists – Jerry Clark, for one – tried to disabuse UFO buffs of the “phenomena” mantra, pushing for “phenomenon” as the correct term for what people were seeing or encountering and reporting as a flying saucer episode.

But there are so many reported sightings or experiences with “alien” [meaning strange, not extraterrestrial] things – some flying, some on the ground or in waters – with not one singular attribute, except “alien, that phenomenon is egregiously errant as a grammatical noun.

I, and others, have pushed, in the past, for a kind of classification of what humans have witnessed over the years, and which are lumped together under the UFO sobriquet; a classification meme not unlike taxonomical groupings.

While UFO aficionados are, generally, fascinated by all things called UFOs, I’m not inclined to spend inordinate amount(s) of time on lights in the sky.

Robert Hastings UFOs scrutinizing nuclear sites are interesting, to me, as such anomalous visitations of those sites seem, to me (again) as possibly AI (artificial intelligent) craft, Von Neumann probes trying to connect or communicate with machines that seem akin. That is, machines [UFOs] probing Earth entities would likely see the technological underpinnings of a nuclear facility as a kind of AI relation.

More intriguing, to me, are the reported encounters between humans and bizarre creatures, sometimes debarking from UFOs. The witnessing is either a valid observation, turning reality on its head, or a kind of madness that hasn’t been defined by psychiatry.

Either way, the UFO phenomenon or alien phenomena, is diverse and multitudinous, which disallows UAP because the things are not always “aerial” but are phenomena. UFO is also derelict for the same reason: the things reported are not always flying, and the truly odd reports deal with beings and things not in the air but confronting humans, face-to-face often.

Moreover the “reports” indicate not a phenomenon but phenomena, which should be classified in psychological-like terminology, from witness perspectives, and imaginatively from observational details (as if the things seen were actual or real and not hallucinated by witnesses).

UFO and UAP don’t exactly work, but UFO has become the coin of the ufological and public realm, so resorting to UAP merely confuses the issue further.

I’ll stick with UFO for now, or Alien Phenomena, if only the word “alien” wasn’t besotted by association with extraterrestrial or other-worldly visitors.

RR