As the holy book says, “We see things not as they are, but as we are.”
In the scientific age, it’s intergalactic dream machines, hot rods cooked up by gearheads from across the inky vacuum. In the religious age, it was angels and demons. People have always had visions, but the language changed. Ezekiel’s fiery wheel, witnessed on the road to Babylon, was possibly a flying saucer. You can go back to 228 B.C., when the Roman historian Livy recognized portents of doom in the “phantom ships” he saw “gleaming in the sky.” Or when Pliny the Elder, an ancient scribe, recorded something that sounds like a Steven Spielberg UFO: a spark that “fell from a star and grew as it descended until it appeared to be the size of the Moon.” Such visions, which usually came in times of stress, were taken as a sign from God. In other words, before you can grapple with UFOs, you have to ask yourself: what the hell did that war do to America?ĭreamers have seen things in the heavens since time out of mind. The timing makes it impossible to consider such phenomena without also considering the cataclysm that, more than any set of founding documents, gave birth to our colossal, unknowable, world-striding modern nation. Miami, Florida Norfolk, Virginia-the list goes on and on-in the late forties and early fifties. Often described as saucers, these noiseless, shimmery machines were seen above highways and wheat fields and supermarkets in Forth Worth, Texas Great Falls, Montana Monmouth County, New Jersey Salem, Massachusetts Carson Sink, Nevada Washington, D.C. What had been a trickle of encounters dating back to the pioneering days of aviation became a torrent. It’s not clear if the number of UFO sightings actually spiked in the years that followed or if it was just our imagination, but something changed. Visions of global power, infinite markets, ideological struggle, and exotic flying machines. This month, he explores the sudden rise in UFO sightings after World War II.Īmerica had its head broken open during World War II, and out came the visions.
In his monthly column, Conspiracy, Rich Cohen gets to the bottom of it all.
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