HOW THE PUBLIC FEEDS UFO MYSTERIES

The public often does things that feed the mysteriousness of UFO cases.

The public buys newspapers and books about UFO mysteries.

The public is interested in UFOs:

• While a new UFO case is still a mystery, people go outside to see if they can see a UFO. This increases the number of UFO sightings.
• While a new UFO case is still a mystery, people who ordinarily do not buy newspapers will buy newspapers to find out what is going on.
• As soon as the primary sighting is identified as something ordinary, the UFO sightings die off, because people quit looking for them.
• As soon as the UFO sightings die off, people stop buying more newspapers. Sales drop to where they were before the sightings occurred.
• People often miss the tiny story inside the paper that tells how the UFO was identified as something ordinary. So they think the UFO is still a mystery.
• People buy books that reveal new mysterious cases of UFOs. But most people do not buy books that claim to explain what UFOs are. They want the mystery.

Some people release prank UFOs to fool other people and keep a sighting wave alive.

Various kinds of tricks are used:

• Occasionally, a prank UFO is the cause of the initial sighting.
• While a new UFO case is still a mystery, pranksters release their fake UFOs so more people who go outside to look for UFOs have something to see.
• Prank UFOs are usually the cause of secondary sightings.
• The sightings die down after the pranksters tire of their pranks, or when they run out of funds or materials to fly more of their pranks.
• These pranks include fire balloons (sky lanterns), gas balloons with flares attached, kites with lights on them, unusually lighted radio-controlled model aircraft, drones, LASERs aimed at clouds, and other simple pranks.
• More elaborate pranks have included cars with colored spotlights, hoops with electric lights held up at the tops of hills, and ultralight aircraft.
• Still others make hoax photos of UFOs to sell to the newspaper.

A few people give (or try to sell) false UFO stories to the press.

There are many possible reasons why people fake UFO sightings.

• Money might be the reason. The fact that news sources often pay for stories can generate hoax stories.
• The fact that tabloid papers offered large prizes (up to $1,000,000) for the best UFO evidence explains a number of UFO hoax cases.
• Some fake the stories for psychological reasons.
• Some use UFOs to test public credulity. Teenagers tend to do this.
• Criminals have used fake UFOs to cover up criminal activity or divert the law.
• Some were done as post-hypnotic suggestions from party hypnoses.
• A few cases were generated as the result of making or losing a bet.

People think "UFO" whenever something unusual happens.

Whenever some unusual event happens, some people think UFOs might be responsible:

• During the 1965 Northeast Blackout, many people immediately thought that UFOs might have had something to do with it. The same thing happened in the 1977 and 2003 northeast blackouts.
• In almost any power blackout, someone thinks of UFOs.
• People conjectured that UFOs and beings were responsible for the 1967 fall of the Silver Bridge carrying US-35 across the Ohio between Point Pleasant WV and Gallipolis OH.
• In several different cases, people said that UFOs destroyed individual wind turbines in different wind farm power plants.
• The 6/1/2009 Air France Flight 447 disappearance was suggested to be UFO related before it was found in the ocean.
• In 2014, UFO buffs suggested that a UFO abducted the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared on 3/8/2014.
• Many people believe that millions of people have been abducted by UFOs.

They combine unrelated material into the UFO story.

Examples:

• After a UFO has been reported in the media, people tend to combine into the UFO story any reports of unrelated events (e.g. power failures, radio or TV interference, cars not running, etc).
• After a power failure occurs, people tend to combine into this information any UFO reports they hear about.
• People also tend to include anything any crackpot says about UFOs.

They don't know their science.

Examples:

• Many people do not understand wind direction. They think the wind direction is the direction the air is moving. Misled by this, many people and sources have concluded that UFOs could not be balloons because they would be headed into the wind.

  The correct definition of wind direction is the direction the wind is coming from. This is the direction that is important to sailors and farmers.

• Most people do not know or understand astronomy. They do not understand the basic behaviors the sun, the moon, stars, planets, comets, and meteors.
• They do not know about weather phenomena, weather distortions of sunlight and moonlight, and the various kinds of objects that can normally be found in the sky.
• Many people believe that UFOs need fantastic amounts of energy to operate.

They don't check all of the sources to find out what they saw.

Examples:

• They call one airport and then decide that the UFO could not have been a plane. But they fail to understand that:
  1. Military air bases don't have any information on commercial and private flights.
  2. Commercial airports don't have any information on military and private flights.
  3. Private airports know about only those flights that actually use that airport.
  4. Many private flights are not known to any airports in the area.
  5. Before 9/11/2001, many flights were known to only the pilots who were flying them.
• They assume that government knows everything, so they don't check private and commercial sources.

The witness reports everything as the absolute truth.

Examples of "facts" that the witness can't possibly know:

• The witness cannot know the true size, distance, speed, or altitude of an unknown object seen against the sky more than 30 feet away through visual observation alone. Without other clues to at least one of these values, the human visual system is unable to accurately provide these values. The values obtained are erroneous, distorted by guesses about the identity of the object.
• The witness offers effects he experienced that he attributes to the UFO. Such effects include effects commonly experienced whenever a human comes across anything strange: heightened awareness, slowing of time, tingling, enhanced hearing, and other effects on the body.
• Witnesses offer sounds and smells as though the object produced them. But strange sounds and smells could have many other sources.
• They report the reactions of animals to the presence of the UFO. But many witnesses report that animals reacted to the presence of a UFO, even when the UFO is later identified as Venus. If the UFO didn't cause the reaction of the animal, what did? Possibilities include the animal reacting to the agitation of the witness, or to unrelated scents or sounds.
• A UFO witness who had a Geiger counter reported that it showed a dangerous level of radiation when a UFO hovered half a mile away. But if the report was real, then people in the houses closer to the UFO should have had radiation sickness. Why were there no such cases of sickness?

People will believe anything someone else tells them.

Examples:

• They assume that government knows everything, so they don't check private and commercial sources.
• They believe the tabloid stories about invaders from outer space.
• Many believe the fiction they see in Hollywood movies can happen in fact.
• The first thing many people think of when something strange happens is a UFO.
• They believe all of the malarkey in those UFO magazines.
• Many people would rather believe that a UFO came from outer space than believe that teenagers launched a prank fire balloon.
• People will pay for more information on an unsolved mystery, but won't pay for a book exposing UFO cases as having prosaic explanations.

People wanting to see mysteries cause UFO literature sales.