{"id":4684,"date":"2012-11-24T08:32:19","date_gmt":"2012-11-24T15:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4684"},"modified":"2012-11-24T08:32:19","modified_gmt":"2012-11-24T15:32:19","slug":"what-happened-to-ufology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4684","title":{"rendered":"What Happened to Ufology?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When people are still talking and writing books <\/a>about the Roswell Incident<\/a> more than sixty years after it happened, you have to wonder if the air has leaked out of ufology.
\nIn Britain, the Telegraph<\/em> reports,<\/a><\/p>\n

Dozens of groups interested in the flying saucers and other unidentified craft have already closed because of lack of interest and next week one of the country\u2019s foremost organisations involved in UFO research is holding a conference to discuss whether the subject has any future.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back in the late 1940s\u20131960s, I think that there was a sense of movement: first the sightings of unknown “spacecraft.” Then visual sightings plus effects, such as burnt spots on the ground. Then sightings of aliens themselves (following J. Allen Hynek’s classification scheme)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Surely the truth would be learned soon<\/em>, whether the aliens were benevolent or whether they were not and Earthlings had to overcome their political differences and fight for planetary survival.<\/p>\n

But no.<\/p>\n

Me, I am of the Jacques Vall\u00e9e school<\/a>: They<\/em> have always been here, living “inside the walls.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When people are still talking and writing books about the Roswell Incident more than sixty years after it happened, you have to wonder if the air has leaked out of ufology. In Britain, the Telegraph reports, Dozens of groups interested in the flying saucers and other unidentified craft have already closed because of lack of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-4684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1dy","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11073,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11073","url_meta":{"origin":4684,"position":0},"title":"“Witness of Another World” is a Powerful Documentary about “Visitor” Encounters","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 10, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Aside from an occasional excursion, I am not much into UFO studies. It was years after it came out that I read Jacques Vall\u00e9e's ((Born in France, Vall\u00e9e has spent most of his life in the US. His career includes astronomy, software engineering, venture capitalism \u2014 and UFO studies.)) Passport\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Argentina\"","block_context":{"text":"Argentina","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=argentina"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Witness-of-another-world-Movie-Poster-.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2769,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2769","url_meta":{"origin":4684,"position":1},"title":"Space is Big, Time is Deep, Aliens Aren’t Here","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Les Johnson's article \"The Aliens Are Not Among Us\" reflects the way that I have come to think about physical aliens arriving in physical spaceships from other planets: Not very likely. Let me be blunt: the chance of an alien species evolving, developing intelligence with the physical characteristics that allow\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"weirdness\"","block_context":{"text":"weirdness","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=weirdness"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1173,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1173","url_meta":{"origin":4684,"position":2},"title":"John Keel Has Died","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Author and Fortean John Keel died Friday in New York.Not long after his signature book, The Mothman Prophecies was published, I saw on the Colorado Springs downtown library's new-books shelf and passed it by--repeatedly--because the title sounded too weird.From the Cryptomundo obituary:After years of writing parts of the story in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0765341972","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1975,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1975","url_meta":{"origin":4684,"position":3},"title":"The CIA, UFOs, Fairies, etc.","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 14, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I am reading Mirage Men: An Adventure into Paranoia, Espionage, Pyschological Warfare, and UFOs, by Mark Pilkington. (There is a related documentary film.) Small disclaimer: I met Mark Pilkington a few years ago in England. We did not talk about UFOs nor about the fact that he was one of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6874,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6874","url_meta":{"origin":4684,"position":4},"title":"A New Investigation of Fairy Encounters","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This request for help with a compilation of contemporary Fairy encounters and lore comes from Simon Young of the re-launched Fairy Investigation Society. The FIS was founded in 1927, died in the early 1990s, and in late 2014 it came back to life. The survey (\u2018the fairy census\u2019) is split\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":603,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=603","url_meta":{"origin":4684,"position":5},"title":"Fairies, the Dead, and Book-Blogging","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Spring semester has started, and teaching does cut into blogging time. And my reading list (for myself) is huge: all the books that I ordered at AAR-SBL (and elsewhere) started arriving in December. I just finished At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4717,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions\/4717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}