A digital illustration of a UFO Photo: iStock / Public domain
When it comes to UFO sightings, both true-blue believers and die-hard debunkers believe the truth is out there, science historian Greg Eghigian says.
In his new book After the Flying Saucers Came, he takes a "journalistic" dive into how the UFO phenomenon developed over the 20th century.
Writing the book was a way to relive his own childhood obsession with UFOs, Eghigian tells Saturday Morning.
"I could not get enough of flying saucers and Bigfoot and ESP - just about anything supernatural and paranormal. I read every book I could get my hands on about UFOs and alien encounters."
Greg Eghigian: The history of UFOs
Photo: Oxford University Press USA
Eghigian is now a professor of history and bioethics at Pennsylvania State University and an expert on the history of the abnormal and the paranormal in the modern world.
His research on UFOs and alien contact has been supported by the likes of NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
The very first reports of "strange airships" - usually believed to be piloted by human beings - date back to the 1820s, Eghigian says.
In New Zealand, a series of strange airborne object sightings in 1909 got people speculating around the country.
"Water being scarce on that planet, the Martians are necessarily looking out for a new world to inhabit, and, New Zealand being a conspicuous object on our globe, they will probably attack us first" someone called W. H. T. wrote that year in a letter to the Greymouth Evening Star.
The concept of a UFO as a 'flying saucer' didn't emerge until 1947, Eghigian says, when a pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing "pan-shaped objects flying in the sky" over Washington's Mt Ranier.
Asked by a reporter how the objects moved, Arnold said: "Well, they moved like a saucer might if you skipped it across water."
"He never uses the term 'flying saucer' but a very smart, enterprising journalist knew a headline when they saw one."
The Kaikōura lights is a name given by the New Zealand media to a series of sightings above the Kaikōura mountain ranges in 1978. Photo: Supplied
In the 1950s, speculation grew that the US military believed that flying saucers were extraterrestrial in origin but was keeping this secret for fear of triggering mass panic, Eghigian says.
The "conspiracy theory element" of UFO sightings and the idea that UFOs were extraterrestrial were then "bundled" into one package.
"From that point forward, to say that you saw a flying saucer or UFO becomes almost synonymous with being someone who believes that these things are extraterrestrial in origin."
The fact that the authorities took these reports seriously, with the US Air Force investigating sightings up until the late 1960s, is the "centrepiece" of the UFO story, he says.
"[The US Air Force] were really, really taken aback hearing from civilian pilots and military pilots - veterans who had really seen a lot over the years - about things that really took their breath away.
"These were credible people with piloting experience, right - people who are used to seeing things fly - recognising that something looked a bit odd or awkward or strange or anomalous in some way."
In the mid-90s, the CIA admitted it had used UFO sightings as cover for its own airborne operations.
"They sometimes lied about secret aircraft technologies that they were developing and experimenting with at the time and actually leaned into the UFO story at times because they didn't want to reveal that information.
"We do know that pilots oftentimes did see [experimental aircraft] that they weren't supposed to see or at the very least wouldn't have been able to recognise."
Steven Spielberg's 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind sparked many people to report UFO sightings. Photo: Columbia Pictures
While the media of course played an enormous role in the history of UFO sightings, whether films like Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind provoked fresh sightings is less clear, Eghigian says.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind seems to have given people "permission" to reflect on and report their own potential close encounters in the past.
"This is what you hear from UFO organisations in the wake of films like those - people coming out of the woodwork talking about these past experiences they had."
What unites the life-long ufologists Eghigian interviewed for his book is a fascination with technology, and also the comfort of shared belief.
"They always say how wonderful it is to be together with other like-minded people who are fascinated with this stuff and out of that social space where you sometimes you face ridicule. People make fun of you, people ask questions about sanity.
"They say how refreshing it is to see and be with other people who inhabit this mystery and really work through it.
"Distinctions aren't drawn between people who have PhDs and people who've not even finished high school, all of those things get erased, and everybody starts on an equal footing. That's one of the really, truly remarkable things about community-building in the UFO world."