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Five Good Reasons To Believe In UFOs
Friday, June 22, 2012 16:24
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As most credible UFOlogists readily admit, proving that extraterrestrial spacecraft have visited our planet is a maddeningly difficult chore.
“The hassle over the word “proof” boils down to one question: What constitutes proof?” Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed the U.S Air Force’s secret investigation of UFOs in the early 1950s, once wrote. “Does a UFO have to land at the River Entrance to the Pentagon, near the Joint Chiefs of Staff offices? Or is it proof when a ground radar station detects a UFO, sends a jet to intercept it, the jet pilot sees it, and locks on with his radar, only to have the UFO streak away at a phenomenal speed? Is it proof when a jet pilot fires at a UFO and sticks to his story even under the threat of court-martial? Does this constitute proof?”
More recently, Investigative journalist Leslie Keen, author of the 2011 book “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record,” has noted that in roughly 90 to 95 percent of UFO sightings, observers turn out actually to have seen weather balloons, ball lightning, flares, aircraft, and other mundane phenomena. But another five to 10 percent of sightings are not so easily explainable, but that’s not the same as demonstrating that they are extraterrestrial in origin. Nevertheless, she argues, the hypothesis that UFOs are visitors from other worlds “is a rational one, and must be taken into account, given the data that we have.”
Here is some of the most compelling evidence for that hypothesis:
• The long, documented history of sightings. UFOs were around, in fact, long before humans themselves took to the air. The first account of a UFO sighting in America was back in 1639, when Massachusetts colony governor John Winthrop noted in his journal that one James Everell, “a sober, discreet man,” and two other witnesses watched a luminous object fly up and down the Muddy River near Charlestown for two to three hours. There are documented sightings of sightings of what were then called “airships” during the 1800s as well, such as the July 1884 sighting of a Saturn-shaped UFO (a ball surrounded by a ring) in Norwood, NY, and a fast-moving object that briefly hovered over the startled townspeople of Everest, KS in 1897.
• Numerous modern sightings by credible, well-trained professional observers. In Ruppelt’s 1955 book , “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,” he documented numerous instances of military service members, military and civilian pilots, scientists and other credible professionals who had observed UFOs. In one instance, Ruppelt describes the experience of a pilot of an Air Force F-86 fighter jet, who was scrambled to track a UFO and got to within 1,000 yards of a saucer-shaped object that abruptly flew away from him in a burst of speed after he fired upon it. He also mentions a 1948 UFO encounter in which two airline pilots got to within 700 feet of a UFO and saw two rows of windows with bright lights.
Excellent list! If I had this when I was getting starting into ufology, I’d start researching these reasons/stories. They’re a great starting point.
That’s the thing with ufology though, you HAVE to be willing to research!