Do you believe in UFOs?
So, are there extraterrestrial beings in flying saucers hovering above our skies? In the last few months, chatter about UFOs, unidentified flying objects, has ramped up. YouTube is loaded with UFO clips, some from reputable sources such as the CBS “60 Minutes” program and the astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
As a science fiction aficionado, the idea of writing about UFOs occurred to me weeks ago. Then Maureen Dowd, New York Times columnist, scooped me earlier this month with her, “E. T., Phone Me!” piece.
Ms. Dowd then added to my already deflated ego by citing two of my many favorite renditions of visitors from faraway planets — the 1951 classic movie, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and the 1959 episode “To Serve Man,” from “The Twilight Zone” series. I had planned to include them both in this column.
In that “Twilight Zone” episode’s surprise ending we learn that “To Serve Man” was the aliens’ cookbook on fattening earthlings for later gobbling them up at their dining room table. Or wherever they ate!
As it turns out, the possible existence of UFOs has fascinated us since prehistoric times. The topic’s current form goes back about 100 years, give or take a decade. That’s when we took to the air and pilots started sighting unexplained anomalies in the skies. They were first called flying saucers, then later re- tagged as unidentified flying objects.
Since then, thousands of articles and books have been written about UFOs. Rarely is anything written without quotes from pilots about what they saw. There are many such quotes in articles online.
Then there are pilots who at first felt they would be considered “kooky” if they reported their strange sightings.
Nowadays the question is if these aerial mysteries might be new types of cruise missiles that foreign earthling powers have developed. The U. S. government doesn’t believe so. In fact, their new report states there is no credible evidence that UFOs are real.
Curiously, our government renamed UFOs as UAPs, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Which makes me wonder what new moniker will they come up with if a UFO ever lands on the front lawn of the White House?
Surprisingly, we don’t hear much about UFOs appearing in prehistoric time, 5,000 or so years ago. That is unless you watch The History Channel’s “Ancient Aliens” program Friday nights.
A colleague, for whom I have a great respect, never misses the “Ancient Aliens” program when he’s home. He as others believe that many enigmatic structures from ancient civilizations are the results of technology from other worlds.
Among the seven ancient sites that aliens are believed to have built are: the Egyptian Pyramids outside Cairo, Egypt; In England, Stonehenge, a huge circle of stones, some weighing as much as 50 tons; and pyramidal temples in Teotihuacan, ( City of the Gods) in Mexico.
My first personal brush with UFOs was in Spanish Harlem decades ago. On a few summer evenings on the stoop entrance to our tenement building, our older friend, Nelson, would spin stories about alien visitors. This was all “verifiable” because he had heard it on a radio program.
My brother Peter and I were entranced with Nelson. We, in our early teens, believed he knew more than we did. And to me, as an entrenched sci- fi comic book reader, his yarns seemed plausible.
Another earlier encounter with the subject of UFOs was the 1953 movie, “The War of the Worlds” movie, based on H. G. Wells’ novel. I have seen the 2005 remake a few times and recorded one short scene. The child actress Dakota Fanning looks up at a spaceship and realizes with an intense stare that her father has bravely destroyed it. Throughout the movie she had thought of him as a “loser.”
Now, how many of us have considered how we would react to a UFO landing in our midst? A clue may be in the Oct. 30, 1938, Mercury ( radio) Theater of the Air broadcast adaptation of H. G Wells’ story.
The broadcast was so dramatized that many listeners believed Martians were invading the U. S. Hysteria followed, though its extent has been disputed. Yet the frenzy was high enough for the media of the day to cover it nationwide.
So, let me repeat my opening question. Do you believe there are extraterrestrial beings today in flying saucers hovering above our skies? Is my colleague, or was Nelson from my longago UFO stoop talk, onto something?
And lastly, were the many recorded sightings of UFOs from the ground and from airplanes illusions of sorts? Or were they real?
I also wonder what Maureen Dowd really believes about UFOs. Of course, I forgive her for scooping me.