Ships were lost during these dark voyages, and said to have had their crews eaten by aliens? These were probably a good number of the stories about alien contact during the Cold War: tales that might be passed down through generations of fishermen, sailors, and other seafarers. Of course, you might just go to the internet to find out what's being taught in schools nowadays. It won't help you, though, if you want to investigate ancient encounters, because it seems that they're not popular in schools any more. If you need help in finding a ghost story, you might be able to find that on websites dedicated to ghost stories. If the story has an older provenance, you can sometimes trace it back to a book, such as the 1847 volume, The Phantom Ship of Point Pinos, by Thomas A. Lyne. See the list of online sources at the end of the book. It's obvious that you'll need to be careful if you want to investigate this type of story. If you're going to check out what's being taught in school, you probably will be able to do so in privacy. If you visit a ghost story website, however, you can expect to be exposed to the opinions of other people, including people who have a lot of interest in exposing your paranormal experiences. If you do find yourself on the web investigating a famous UFO sighting from the Roswell region, be sure to keep an open mind. It's easy to get swept up in a story that's as famous as Roswell UFO is, and become convinced that UFOs from outer space really are visiting us. But we can't be 100 percent sure that UFOs from outer space exist. The evidence does suggest, however, that there's intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. And if such beings exist, it's probably a good idea to be sure that they're not looking to harm us. ### **What about UFOs?** Have you ever seen a UFO? If you saw a UFO from a window, then you saw something that isn't a UFO. A UFO isn't what it looks like; it's something that people can't explain. If you saw a UFO from a window, you saw a reflection. The UFO probably wasn't out there; it was in your own imagination. Although UFOs probably don't exist, there are plenty of real, if unexplained, UFO sightings. UFOs have been seen with the naked eye by countless people. UFOs are a common topic in movies, television shows, and books. There are websites dedicated to stories of UFOs. A few famous TV shows (e.g., _The X-Files_ ) and movies (e.g., _Independence Day_ ) have used stories of UFOs as a plot point in their stories. Of course, people have been seeing UFOs since the beginning of the last century. When you think about it, what was the first thing people saw on another planet that led them to think of aliens? It was probably lights. In 1947, Kenneth Arnold saw something that he saw as some kind of UFO, and described it as flying saucers. Arnold wrote a letter to _The Washington Post_ about his UFO sighting, and claimed that the newspaper later made it a story. I remember that. I probably was a little young at the time, but I do remember the story. Arnold's letters to the _Washington Post_ started a UFO craze in the 1950s. Sometimes stories about UFOs that sound very interesting turn out to be fraudulent hoaxes. Of course, that's not to say that every story about a UFO that is alleged to have occurred is fraudulent. Sometimes UFOs do exist. What's intriguing about UFOs is that they have been seen in various places on Earth, but UFOs have also been seen at various places in the sky. UFOs have been seen over oceans and across deserts. UFOs have been seen in areas where there are no towns or cities. In fact, people have reported seeing UFOs from areas that seem to be off-limits to visitors. The UFOs have even been reported from airplanes and in the sky during air shows. The UFO phenomenon stretches back thousands of years. Ancient civilizations wrote about UFOs as well as accounts of strange events. In modern times, the subject of aliens and UFOs has become quite a subject of interest. You might think that aliens from outer space are the most important UFO phenomena, but they're not. The one thing UFOs really lack is anything to do with alien abduction. You don't see people claiming to be abducted by aliens. Instead, you see people claiming that they've encountered UFOs. In recent decades, it's become popular to speculate about alien abduction. You see reports of people claiming to be abducted in UFO magazine articles, UFO news websites, and on TV. But it's not a subject that interests me. I think people who claim to be abducted by aliens are probably just making it up, and I don't see anything particularly unique or paranormal about this. A reasonable conclusion is that abducted people are just mistaken, perhaps even lying about being abducted. ### **Why do UFOs attract such an array of opinion, and from such diverse sources?** Why does the field of UFOs, where people talk about all kinds of things, attract so many believers? Sometimes UFOs are a topic of interest only to a few groups of people, and then in short order, UFOs become a major, worldwide discussion. One moment, UFOs are of interest to a few scientists, a small handful of people who like to talk about UFOs, a few people who write about UFOs, and a few people who write about UFOs who write books about UFOs and aliens. The next thing you know, everybody's talking about it. When alien abduction was first brought into the UFO discussion, it was sort of accepted that there were people who claimed to have been abducted, but that there was no proof of this, and that there wasn't enough proof to make claims about alien abductions any more sensible than unsubstantiated claims of UFO sightings. That's how it was regarded for decades. Now, people can go online and find websites devoted to abduction claims, and sites where people who have allegedly been abducted write about their experiences, and claim to be abducted aliens or abducted UFO observers. When alien abduction became a popular subject, it's not surprising that aliens became a popular topic. Once that happened, there was a lot more on the topic of aliens. If there really are aliens, of course, we don't know it, and we can't know it. But people want to talk about alien abduction, and so UFOs have become associated with alien abduction stories. If aliens come, there will probably be an abduction story connected with it. The aliens may appear anywhere on Earth, so it's possible that there will be a story from around the world, wherever it happened. Stories from a UFO-obsessed area may be more likely to get reported, but there will be stories from other areas. People will read about UFOs. That will be the news of the day. People will see reports of UFOs on television. People will see stories about UFOs in newspaper stories, not to mention stories about UFOs in magazines. Reporters will send reporters to the scene, to see if there are UFOs, and whether they appear to be controlled by intelligent beings. Reporters will have to find someone to talk to who will be willing to speculate about the aliens that have been spotted. They may have to talk to someone who has a particular interest in the subject. There will be a story on a UFO and alien abduction website. Then there will be a link to a blog. One of the people who posts to the blog will ask if it's possible that an alien is trying to communicate with them. Or someone will wonder about the UFO, or alien abduction story that was just reported in the news. They may wonder if the UFO was a spaceship, or they may just think it was a balloon. Someone will send a link to a YouTube video of what appears to be a UFO. When something like that happens, other people will talk about the UFO, or whatever it is, on message boards, at forums, or in chat rooms. Then somebody will start saying that alien abductions are really real, and that they really happened to people. They won't do the slightest bit of research, but claim that abductions of this particular type have been reported in scientific journals. What becomes clear when you look at UFO stories and alien abduction stories is that UFOs aren't much to look at; they're nothing but balloons. UFOs are just stories about space aliens, but people want to think that it's something a lot more interesting than just that. It's nothing that makes any sense. But alien abduction stories are another matter. Alien abductions, at least as the word is being used today, aren't stories about aliens from outer space. Aliens from outer space are fiction. Alien abductions are fact. People have experienced alien abductions. Alien abductions have been reported since the 1940s. The truth is that there is a substantial number of people who have actually been abducted, by a large number of aliens. It was reported that there were only 500 million people on Earth when alien abductions were first reported in the 1940s. The number