David J. Hogan - UFO FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About Roswell, Aliens, Whirling Discs, and Flying Saucers

Copyright 2016 by David J. Hogan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2016 by Backbeat Books
An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation
7777 West Bluemound Road
Milwaukee, WI 53213

Trade Book Division Editorial Offices
33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042

The FAQ series was conceived by Robert Rodriguez and developed with Stuart Shea.

All images are from the authors collection unless otherwise noted.

Every reasonable effort has been made to contact copyright holders and secure permission. Omissions can be remedied in future editions.

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Snow Creative

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hogan, David J., 1953 author.

Title: UFO FAQ : all thats left to know about Roswell, aliens, whirling discs, and flying saucers / David J. Hogan.

Description: Milwaukee, WI : Backbeat, an imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016016213 | ISBN 9781480393851 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Unidentified flying objectsMiscellanea.

Classification: LCC TL793 .H566 2016 | DDC 001.942dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016016213

www.backbeatbooks.com

For Mark A. Miller,
who knows the secrets of the stars

Contents

Margaret and Ronald V. Borst/Hollywood Movie Posters

Len Brown, formerly of Topps, for insights into Mars Attacks!

Rachel Hogan, for visuals related to McMinnville, Oregons annual UFO Festival

Roger Marsh, MUFONs director of communications, for insights into that wide-ranging organization

Marie and Joe Martin, Neatly Chiseled Features, for permission to reprint Mr. Boffo

Ted Okuda, for information about the geographic dispersion of U.S. sightings, 19902015, and early saucer references in Hollywood movies

Mark Turner, for special abduction information

Professor Wilhelm Steigg, for sharing his keen grasp of science

Chase Winstead, for opening his illustration archive

John Cerullo and Marybeth Keating at Backbeat Books, for patience above and beyond

Special thanks to Gordon Lore, for his participants insights into NICAP. His generosity and knowledge have been invaluable.

I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the northan immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance, their form was human....

The Book of Ezekiel , 1:4-5 (NIV), c. 593 BC562 BC

I think that nothing can be more important than interplanetary communication. It will certainly come someday, and the certitude that there are other human beings in the universe, working, suffering, struggling, like ourselves, will produce a magic effect on mankind and will form the foundation of a universal brotherhood that will last as long as humanity itself.

scientist Nikola Tesla, 1931

What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?

Winston Churchill, 1952

UFOs are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head.

former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer, 2005

Introduction:
Marvels and Speculation

The Aliens Are Out There, but Are They Here?

Living Among the Stars

On a humid July night not long ago, at a house in the Smokies above Gatlinburg, Tennessee, I sat on an elevated deck and watched the stars. For a while, I perceived nothing but the familiar splash of stationary points of light against a cradle of black. But soon, Venus and Jupiterappearing almost twinned above the horizonpresented themselves.

And then things up there began to move. My eye was caught by a tiny, winking light: an airliner, aloft five or six miles in the night sky, moving across my field of vision from left to right. People in the air. Remarkable.

A meteorite cut a quick diagonal across the star-splashed blackness, a needle-thin splash of brilliance with a hint of a tail. How far had it come?

Another airliner showed itself, but this point of light followed a parabolic course rather than the straight path of a plane. Not an airliner, I finally supposed, but a satellite, another technical marvel.

The dense woods that surrounded the house vibrated with the chatter of katydids, a choppy, harsh-pretty sound that said life as surely as it said summer night . A brief, hot breeze rustled the tree branches. From somewhere on the forest floor, a frog spoke. After a moment, another answered. The katydids continued to gossip, their sounds a raucous chorus of call and response. Far off, a dog barked. As I listened and felt , my unique identity seemed to melt away; I became a point of consciousness in a universe far too vast for easy comprehension. I was alive. Like the trees and insects, and the numberless animals and people on Earth, I was life.

I returned my gaze to the stars. The universe was there, not cold, but hot with possibility.

I knew that intelligent eyes other than mine watched the sky, and that not all of them were with me on Earth. I knew that although the distances between stars are vast, and I may never know those other eyes firsthand, the eyes are there.

UFOs and Us

Over the many centuries of human history, and particularly since the late 1940s, countless people around the globe have witnessed Unidentified Flying Objects that could not be explained in conventional terms. Not that the authorities havent tried. Official explanations of recent decades have invoked conventional aircraft, cloud formations, stars, planets (Venus is frequently cited), ball lightning, and St. Elmos Fire (glowing, ionized air). Many UFOs have been explained away as satellites, weather balloons, reflected light (particularly off windows, camera lenses, and eyeglasses), smog, and a perennial favorite, swamp gas (spontaneous combustion of methane). Because government and other official agencies can be obdurate about holding to their findings, a great deal of UFO discussion has roused emotion and become simplistic, holding that 1) UFOs are hoaxes or illusions, or 2) UFOs are real. Reasoning of this sort hardly encourages anyone to consider the many subtle aspects of arguments for and against UFOs.

Fabricated reports of UFOs exist, too, and although many of them scream hoax , a great many find people willing to accept them. For many, UFOs suggest adventure and wonder, the thrill of being witness to visits from a heretofore unimagined civilization. For the conspiracy-minded (see chapter eleven), unidentified flying objects connote underhanded American or world government activities based on extraterrestrial technologytechnology that humans have reverse-engineered or that, alternatively, has been shared, to no good purpose, by the aliens that created it.

On the other hand, people with a more sanguine view of UFOs and the crafts operators look to the phenomenon as an antidote to the horrors unfolding daily here on Earth. Perhaps, just perhaps, the alien visitors are made of nobler stuff. Perhaps they are willing to show us the road to peaceful fulfillment of our potential as human animals.