On June 24th, 1947 while searching for the remains of a downed Marine C-46 transport, lost somewhere in the Mount Ranier area, a young Idahoan businessman named Kenneth Arnold spotted something that would change his life forever. Just north of his position flying at an altitude of 9,500 feet and an unprecedented airspeed of 1,700 mph he spotted nine circular aircraft flying in formation. According to his estimate the aircraft were approximately the size of a DC-4 airliner ( Jackson 4). This account was the first sighting to ever receive a great deal of media attention.
This sighting gave birth to the phrase “flying Saucer” coined by a reporter named Bill Begrette. Although not the first UFO sighting in history, Kenneth Arnolds account is considered to be the first documented UFO sighting. The following day Mr. Arnold discovered that in addition to his sighting there were several others in the Mount Ranier area that same day (Jackson 6). When most of think of UFO sightings we picture an unemployed, half- crazed, alcoholic hick living in a trailer park in the middle small town USA. Often times this description, although a little exaggerated, seems to fit airly well.
In the past when the average person spotted a UFO they were quickly discounted as a kook or con-artist in search of either attention or monetary reward. It wasn’t until more reputable figures in our society began to come forward that we that we started looking at this issue a little more seriously. An article written 1957, entitled ” Strange lights over Grenada” written by Aime’ Michel describes just such an account: At 10:35 p. m. on September the 4th, 1957 Cpt Ferreira ordered his wing to abandon a planned exercise and execute a 50 degree turn to port.
Ferreira was attempting to get a closer look at what he described as brilliant, pulsating light hanging low over the horizon. When the turn was completed he noticed that the object had turned too. It was still directly over his left. There was absolutely no doubt that the orange light was shadowing the F-84s. For another 10 minutes, it followed the jets without changing direction or appearance. The pilots watched as four small yellow discs broke away from the large red object and took up a formation on either side of it.
All at once the large luminous disc shot vertically upward while the maller discs shot straight towards the F-84s. In an instant the flat disc sped overhead in a hazy blur and vanished. When Cpt Ferriera was questioned by Portuguese Air Force Investigators he was quoted as saying: “Please don’t come out with the old explanation that we were being chased by the planet Venus, weather balloons, or freak atmospheric conditions. What we saw up there was real and intelligently controlled. And it scared the hell out of us. 32)
This is only one of literally hundreds of pilot accounts that have been documented and cross verified by other sources. To date the Portuguese Government has taken no official position as to what the luminous discs were. The United States has had more than it’s fair share of unexplained aerial objects. In February of 1960 the N. A. A. D. S. (North American Air Defense System) spotted a satellite of unknown origin orbiting the Earth. They knew that it wasn’t a Soviet satellite because it was orbiting perpendicular to trajectory produced by a Soviet launch.
It also had a mass estimated at 15 metric tons, no evidence of booster rockets and traveled at speed three times faster than any known satellite. The satellite orbited for two weeks and isappeared without a trace. Before its disappearance, the object which appeared to give off a red glow, was photographed over New York several times (Jackson 19). Lights in the sky aren’t the only evidence that suggests we may have cosmic company. In the book “A History of UFO Crashes”, the author Kevin D. Randal gives detailed accounts of numerous UFO crashes in history.
Perhaps the most famous of these crashes occurred on July 4th, 1947 in Roswell New Mexico. The crash at Roswell was witnessed from afar by over a hundred people. Until just recently, no one who was involved n the recovery operation was talking, but thanks to continued pressure from UFO enthusiast our government has begun to declassify much of its UFO related material. Perhaps more startling are than the government documents are the accounts given by local police and members of the recovery team.
According to one unnamed witness, a member of the Roswell recovery team: The crash site was littered with pieces of aircraft. Something about the size of a fighter plane had crashed, the metal was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. I picked up a piece the size of a car fender with one and, it couldn’t have more than a quarter of a pound and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t even get it to bend. (10) In my opinion the most fascinating piece of evidence to come out of the Roswell crash is the alien autopsy film.
Apparently there was more than bits and pieces of spaceship recovered at Roswell. There is an Air Force video account of an autopsy being performed on a life form that doesn’t share the common characteristics of organ development found in life forms on this planet. The film is silent and labeled “Autopsy, Roswell, July 1947” (Randal 17). As difficult as the Roswell evidence is to explain or discount it pales in comparison to the physical evidence left by our ancestors. An Illustration taken from a Nuremburg Broadsheet Tells how men and women “saw a very frightful spectacle”.
At sunrise April 14th, 1561 “globes, crosses and tubes began to fight one another”, the event continued for about an hour. Afterward they fell to ground in flames, minutes later a “black, spear like object appeared”. In a Basal Broadsheet dated August 7th, 1566 large black and white globes are seen over Dasel, Switzerland. Both events occurred in a ime period when there should have nothing more than birds and bees filling our skies. They each considered to be Divine warnings at the time (Gould 95-96).
Ancient physical evidence isn’t limited to newspaper illustration and sketches on cave wall. Perhaps the most astounding and unexplainable pieces of physical evidence are a pair of geodes. Both are believed to be approximately 1,800 years old and when carefully examined were identified as electrical cells. One of the cells which was discovered in Iraq was tested and produced 2 volts of electricity. The other, which was discovered by a pair of Arizona rock hounds, was damaged when the sedimentary encrustation was being removed and therefore couldn’t be tested (Montgomery 221).
Since the dawn of time man has told stories of heavenly and demonic beings coming to rule, teach, torment, seduce and provide salvation. Every culture has myths of ancient gods who strode through the heavens. The American Indians had the cachinas who taught them to farm and saved them from numerous cataclysms. Greece had Zeus who threw lightning bolts from his finger tips and Apollo crossed the sky in his golden chariot. The Christians have Ecclesiastes who encountered the “ant people” and rode through the skies with them from Babylon to Israel.
Across the entire globe we find drawings on cave walls that resemble men in space suits and objects that greatly resemble flying saucers. The sacred artwork of the Hopi Indian when is without a doubt a representation of the waves produced by modern day oscilloscopes (Montgomery 225-237). The Hopis are also native to the area where one of the electrical cells were found. It could be that these things are no more than mere coincidence, but I doubt it. Man in his arrogance is eluctant to believe that we may share Gods vast, glorious universe with other beings of intelligence.
We sometimes fail to realize that if the Earth were a day old, the race of man would only have been here for 13 minutes. If you couple that with the fact that there are Black Holes and White Dwarfs millions of years older than our sun, it increases the improbability that we are the only ones out here. In the preceding text I have produced a limited sampling of the volumes of evidence available. I will close this paper on a quote from Ecclesiastes I:9 “there is no new thing under the sun”, and that includes intelligent life.