UFOs from the Nook and Cranny File(s)

I have a number of UFO books that I scan for posting material here, as you know.

What surprises me, even at this late stage of my UFO interest, is how many different and unique flying saucer and UFO tales have been recorded, from the past and into the modern era, 1945 onward.

How can this be, if UFOs don’t exist, or are hallucinatory, or Earth-made, or are an unnatural phenomenon?

(I rule out the ET explanation, as you know. It’s absurd, even though I accept the possibility that some UFO sightings might be of AI machines probing the Universe and occasionally [sic] showing up here.)

And what about all those alleged and recorded encounters with creatures, beings, or humanoids, that I find fascinating. Can they all be the product of psychopathology, all of them?

Comparing the episodes of little people, fairies, angels, and the like, UFOs with accompanying entities come out ahead, in the literature, by a super abundant number.

How to deal with such a remarkable, unbelievable extension of reality?

Are all witnesses to such phenomena demented, or neurologically deficient?

The odds for that, even in a world smacking of a pathological subset, are too large to accommodate the insane or madness hypothesis.

Likewise, hoaxing can be ruled out, along with errant observation: people see and report things rather accurately.

Here’s a fascinating “story” related by Micah Hanks in UFOs & Aliens: Is There Anybody Out There? A group of essays by ufologists, edited by Michael Pye and Kirsten Dalley [New Page Books/Career Press, Pomptom Plains, NJ, 2011, Page 107 ff.]:

While co-hosting a radio show, Speaking of Strange with Joshua P. Warren, a caller named Steven provided details of an incident that he (Steven) experienced in 1988 while on military duty at Johnston Atoll in the north Pacific.

The island housed a variety of aging, biological chemicals.

Coming back from a 24-hour shift, Steven and his company, “one of the officers noticed what looked like a small, dark, metallic ball hovering the sky above.

“Whatever it was, nobody could identify it.” [Page 110]

The island radar station could not get a “paint” (radar image) of the "metallic ball."

The base commander was hosting a two-star retired general and both “were looking at it also” (as was heard on the base radio).

“ … the mystery object … stopped directly over the middle of the island and seemed to begin a slow descent, the metallic ball [appearing] to grow larger … the thing – whatever it was – kept getting closer and filled more and more of the sky.

“The object got bigger, and bigger, and bigger,” Steven said.

“ …this object dwarfed even the largest known aircraft used by the Air Force at the time …the object’s circumference could easily have been the length of the island, though [Steven] still couldn’t tell for certain whether it was round or flat, because it seemed to be absorbing light.” [Page 111]

“As the [daylight] got brighter, this thing got blacker and bigger.” [Page 112]

Personnel on the island were watching the “silent behemoth” and “As the black void loomed above … the water and the air … became charged with electricity …

“Then … the moment the sun cracked the horizon, this thing vanished. And I [Steven] don’t mean it flew away; I don’t mean it went left or right. This thing just wasn’t there anymore!

“The shadow that had been over the island was no longer there … It just went – it disappeared. [Page 112]

Steven provided his assessment to Hanks and his radio partner”

“… I think all technology – no matter how advanced  -- that is built by any being, entity, or anything with some degree of intelligence, has its limitations and the potential for failure. And I think that whatever this thing was – whatever ‘they’ were --I think we witnessed a malfunction. I think something went wrong with this thing’s technology … I think we actually witnessed a [technological] malfunction …They are out there, and they are huge. Some of these things are enormous.” [ibid, Page 113, italics in book]

How do we explain or understand the above account?

Was Steven lying? I don’t believe Hanks thinks so. The tale doesn’t read as fictive.

But was the “thing” an unusual meteorological or atmospheric phenomenon? Perhaps.

The conclusion of Steven is imposed upon the event, that event not definitive in any way that allows an ET determination.

And yet the incident is strange and odd in ways that incur further examination. Did Micah Hanks or anyone else follow up to see if there were other “witnesses” to the sighting?

Did anyone check meteorological records to see if there were atmospherics that might account for the “thing” and its ephemeral disappearance?

Are there other similar sightings in UFO lore? I’m looking, and will use Aubeck’s and Vallee’s Wonders in the Sky and his Return to Magonia (with Shough), covered here below.

My subsidiary point here is that there are rafts of UFO tales with enough credibility to invite further explanation or exegesis.

The perusal of such tales should offer imaginative grist for those inclined to keep pursuing UFOs.

After all, what else if there for us, who are existentially comfortable, to do?

RR