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UFO believers – buffs – think UFOs are any number of things, many opting for the extraterrestrial explanation.

(I’m agnostic about UFOs, as most of you know, eschewing the ETH for reasons amply noted here, but not anathema.)

UFO beliefs, even the ETH, are proffered across the UFO milieu, now (and has been in the past), in muted tones and terms pretty much.

But UFO skeptics attack (and have attacked) UFO beliefs with a fervor that bespeaks a latent, repressed, or unconscious fear; that is, UFO skeptics are afraid of UFOs, what they are and what they mean.

The desire to suppress various UFO explanations, especially the extraterrestrial explanation, as improbable as it seems (as I see it), is pathological.

It could be tagged “ufophobia.”

Psychiatry has softened the epithet “fear” with the term “anxiety.” But in ufology it’s more than that; it’s outright fear of a UFO reality, no matter what that UFO reality is.

There are a plethora of anxieties that I could trot out to make a few points, but I’d rather subsume them under the outright term “fear” which makes clear that UFO skeptics are a little nuts when it comes to UFOs, hoping to explain them in less anxiety (less fearful) ways: hoaxes, the planet Venus, misidentified meteorology, or an innocuous, unknown phenomenon, plus a few other less anxiety-spurring explanations.

Skeptical explanations are often rancid, or defensive, even when bolstered by the appearance of rationality or a scintilla of obtuse evidence.

I love skeptical views. They are often (mostly) clownish and silly, providing comic relief in the serious but usually calm communal UFO outtakes from the UFO community as a whole.

So, I ask, what are UFO skeptics afraid of? Huh?

RR