Talk of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conjures up visions of a paranormal-obsessed Special Agent Fox Mulder deconstructing the government cover-up of alien life on the 1993-2002 FOX television series, The X-Files. Others remember first contact with alien beings through lavish lighting and melodious musical patterns in the 1977 film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Still others recall the 1982 film, E.T., that lovable, displaced little green alien who suffers from an acute bout of homesickness. “The truth is out there,” claimed The X-Files. But is it really? And just what constitutes UFO evidence?
Suppose an obscure wandering mystic in East Asia claimed he saw a UFO fly overhead and hover above the village where he was temporarily staying. Several years later, a follower of this mystic claimed he too saw an unidentified craft on several occasions making strange and sudden right turns in the sky and vanishing and reappearing at will. Would the world suddenly believe in the UFO phenomenon on the basis of these two accounts alone? Of course not. Only two witnesses have come forward, both in the same exact location and who know each other, but no other part of the world has witnessed anything like it.
But what if multiple credible witnesses; doctors, politicians, lawyers, military personnel, police officers, scientists, professors, astronauts, volunteer firefighters; all claim to have experienced an otherworldly UFO sighting? What if these individuals were not bound to one location, but were scattered throughout the entire globe? And what if these sightings didn’t happen in one day, but rather throughout a span of decades? That would indicate a statistical pattern and an obvious indication that something is in fact going on.
Amazingly, this is precisely the pattern we see today. According to UFO Evidence.org, one of the largest scientific repositories of UFO information in the world, over 6,450 reports have been filed since October 2003 alone (today, that number has likely increased). UFO Evidence.org cites that approximately five to seven percent of people (roughly fifteen to twenty million Americans) have seen a UFO, and ten to fifteen percent of people are acquainted with someone who has seen a UFO. Furthermore, an estimated several hundred thousand UFO sightings have been documented over the past 50 years, and the total number of UFO sightings worldwide is estimated in the millions. Of the several thousand sightings that occur each year, most go unreported.
This clearly shows that the UFO phenomenon is not an elaborate deception; it is very real to those who have seen the foreign spacecraft and who have experienced otherworldly phenomena associated with it. Multiple credible witnesses from many nations, occupations, and backgrounds have come forward to put their lives and reputations on the line. And it is precisely the experiences of these witnesses that constitutes evidence that UFOs are real.
But the question still remains: who are they, where are they from, and what are they here for? I’ll have to leave that question for the reader to ponder.
