For thousands of years, mankind has been looking at the sky. It is awe inspiring, mysterious, beautiful and full of the unexplained. UFOs are technically, Unidentified Flying Objects, and there have been a lot of things in the history of the world that fit that category. So, of course, they are very real.
Early man had no idea what a comet or a meteor was, and that was pretty much the beginning of the true UFO. Stories evolved around these mysterious events, legends were told and the future was foretold by their appearance.
Then, there were those events that were not so easily explained. These too, have been around for hundreds of years, or actually, since recorded history. They have been recorded in ancient texts, histories, and religious works in cultures around the globe. They are the basis of legends, myths and possibly, even some religions. The problem with these encounters is that they were based on the knowledge of the heavens that was available at the time.
Since the beginning of the age of aviation, and especially during the post WW II era and the Cold War years, many unexplained activities in the sky were attributed to experimental aircraft. In many instances, this was found to be the case. For security reasons, aircraft that was only just being tested, highly technical, and futuristic were kept under close scrutiny by the government, who often denied their very existence long after they were in use.
Weather balloons, spy balloons and equipment, and even experimental radar and weaponry were launched that the public was unaware of. Some of these did, indeed, look other worldly.
Admittedly, science fiction writers, movies, and TV series have added to the reports of UFOs, and many of the earliest reports were attributed to just that. The rash of sightings in the 50’s, were explained away by Project Blue Book, the official government investigative team, as swamp gas, weather anomalies, hoaxes, and imagination.
Some sightings since then, have been less easily explained. When groups of perfectly normal, intelligent, and credible witnesses claim that they have witnessed craft, sometimes the size of football fields, hovering over their communities, there is no ready solution. And, for those that have seen things that defy explanation, they truly believe that the government is holding back on what they know.
Like any other rare event that happens to only a few, you either believe in it or you don’t, and there is no way for the rest of us to judge, unless, of course, someday, it happens to us.
