Ezekiel said, Heaven opened and I saw visions.
I looked and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north, an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal.
New International Version @1984
This passage from the book of Ezekiel has served to spark the curiosity and the imagination of men for centuries. What was it that Ezekiel saw? Was it a message within the vision to be interpreted in diverse ways or was it what we might refer to today as a UFO?
Prehistoric drawings on the walls of caves depict what might be the likeness of astronauts and flying discs in the sky. Some ancient paintings also include mysterious orbs or objects hovering in the sky over otherwise serene landscapes.
The search is centuries old, but the reports of sightings began in earnest in the decade of the 1940’s when a pilot, Kenneth Arnold, reported seeing several objects in the skies over Mt. Rainier, Washington which he described as like a saucer. That was in June of 1947. Shortly thereafter, we were introduced to The Roswell incident, which is a familiar story to everyone.
However, there was an earlier event much like the one at Roswell which has not received as much publicity. The story unfolds in the Spring of 1941 when an unidentified object crashed near Cape Girardeau, Mo. A minister called to the scene witnessed a disc-like object that had contained three human like creatures, but were definitely not human. He was asked to perform the last rites over these bodies, and then sworn to silence as a part of national security. This incident, questionable I realize, can be found in the article, Famous UFO Cases from the 1940’s according to ufocasebook.com
During that time, and into the early 1950’s there were hundreds of reported sightings not only in the US but from all points of the globe. When several UFOs were reported over Washington D.C. the flight to fantasy, or the quest for truth, (depending on your point of view) was in full gear.
Authors of books, magazines, and scripts for Hollywood movies using a UFO theme began flooding the market. One of the earliest, and most impressive in my opinion was The Thing from Another World directed by Howard Hawks in 1951. It serves to remind us that we may not be alone! A group of scientists and Air Force personnel observe the radar image of an aircraft which crashes not far from their base. When they locate the crash site they discover the craft is round, and firmly embedded in the ice. Using thermal heat to remove it, they succeed in destroying the craft, but not the occupant. After they remove it from the area, still in a large ice block, they take it back to their base where it later thaws, and wreaks havoc on all. Only after determining that it is a form of vegetation are they able to stop it.
What do you do with a vegetable? one wonders. You cook it, was the reply and over the complaints of the scientists, they do just that.
Another film of that era was The Day the Earth Stood Still, depicting another alien being, who was here not to harm us, but hopefully save us from ourselves as well as to save other civilizations, other planets from our inability to live in peace. Since the world was launching satellites at that time, and space probing was in our near future, we would have to live in harmony with each other or be obliterated.
The War of the Worlds, had some of the best special effects of that era. The aliens were here to destroy mankind using their ships to completely cover the earth in an orderly fashion, only to fall prey to one of our airborne bacteria. The remake of this movie, like the remake of The Thing. contains very graphic scenes that appeal to today’s audiences, but seem to loose something of the original story the second time around.
In 1977 when Voyager 11 was launched it contained a gold phonographic disc with a message of peace, and an invitation to any and all life forms from other planets to come and visit planet earth. However, when one such alien decides to take us up on that invitation, he is greeted by the U.S. government’s act of firing on his craft resulting in a crash landing in Wisconsin. This is the plot of the movie Starman, a 1984 production directed by John Carpenter and one of the most beautiful stories ever created about the possibility of a love affair between an alien and an earthling. This top-notch movie has the appeal of a drama, the excitement of the unknown, and the sadness of what might actually happen when man places too much importance on his own ego over and above the peaceful co-existence of beings like, but unlike, man himself. There is a good lesson to be learned in this movie plot.
We have organizations like SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence who are seriously studying the possibility that there are other life forms from other solar systems. They listen for electro-magnetic signals from space that might indicate that others are trying to communicate with us.
We have reported cases of abductions of humans by aliens as portrayed in the film, The UFO incident, where a couple, Barney and Betty Hill are taken aboard a spacecraft against their will on a lonely road in New Hampshire. They are aware of a loss of time, but not the reason until they are questioned under hypnosis. Movies like A Fire in the Sky also follow the same theme.
Crop circles are the subject of the movie, Signs starring Mel Gibson. These intricate, precise patterns are appearing overnight in fields all over the world. Some people claim they are a hoax, and the folly of a couple of men using a rope and a piece of plywood. I don’t believe there is a man, or a team of men alive today who could create some of these beautiful patterns in a few short hours. This is one of the phenomenon along with cattle mutilations associated with possible UFOs that needs to be investigated much further.
Today we have a television production about UFO hunters who travel all around the world interviewing witnesses to sightings, studying photos and videos, and probing earlier incidents that have not been explained to the satisfaction of many people. They are able to explain some of the data they have collected with the help of scientific evidence, but there are still many unanswered questions.
Thousands of Americans believe the government is covering up something of great importance to our well-being because they do not think we can handle the truth. Others believe the truth is being covered because these sighting of UFOs are a direct result of our own military experiments with new air ships, possibly spy crafts. Others think a UFO really did crash at Roswell, and our scientists working at Area 51 have spent decades in reverse technology to learn the secrets that came with that doomed craft.
There are thousands of books, magazine articles, movies, televisions programs, and research papers on the subject of UFOs; but I suppose the only way we will ever know the truth is if one of them lands in our front yard and the occupants ring our doorbell and introduce themselves. Even then, I suspect we would still have the skeptics.
