American Cosmic
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mantis looking into his window at night. He actual y kept a
praying mantis as a pet for a time.
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These events faded in Scott’s memory as he grew older,
until 1987, when they were revived by a series of disturbing
experiences. Just after getting married and moving into a new
apartment complex, Scott experienced a series of episodes of
sleep paralysis. One night he sensed the presence of a being
close by his bed. It was menacing, and as he tried to wake up,
he found that he was completely paralyzed. The same thing
happened to him again a few nights later. This time he told
his wife.
“I think our house is haunted.”
She tried to reassure him that he had just had some bad
dreams. Scott wasn’t buying it, however, as the feeling was
too real to him. The disturbance to his normal y mellow at-
titude lingered for days. During a visit to a bookstore, as he
browsed the aisles, a book seemed to pop out at him. The
title of the book was Out There: The Government’s Secret
Quest for Extraterrestrials, by Howard Blum. There was one
blurb on the book’s cover, written by Whitley Strieber. It
said: “Absolutely essential reading.”
“I read that book and others,” Scott said. “And it felt like,
for the first time, I understood my past. The book is written
by a serious journalist who reports that the topic is being
studied by the government. It put all of the past events in
context. I’m not saying that those things real y happened, but
I’m not saying they didn’t either. Reading the book gave me
the impetus to begin my work, that is, to record the objects
I saw in the sky, and that is when I started this research.
“In the beginning, I made a lot of mistakes. I just believed
what I saw in the photos other people took. I didn’t think
they would hoax the pictures. But I was gullible and naive.
I was already a graphic designer, so it was real y easy for me
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to spot a faked photograph. Unfortunately, I began to see that
almost all the photos were Photoshopped or hoaxed.
“Also, a lot of people I began to meet told me that I needed
to be hypnotized to uncover what happened to me as a child.
I did a little research on being hypnotized and regressed,
and I realized that you can create false memories. I said ‘no
thanks’ to that. I decided that it was better to not know than
to know something that wasn’t true or never happened.”
Scott’s desire to identify anomalous photographs and
evidence motivated him to keep his online group free from
hoaxers, and even free from parts of the ufology community
that were not exactly hoaxers but could nevertheless do harm
by harassing people who want to know the truth.
“ V I S I TO R S
F R O M S O M E W H E R E E L S E ”
As In the Field became better known, it started to attract
refugees from the internet—
people who were actively
pursuing UFOs by capturing videos of orbs, discs, and other
aerial phenomena that couldn’t be identified as planes,
drones, blimps, or other natural objects and events. One
such refugee was a woman from Pennsylvania named Alison
Kruse. I call her a refugee, and that is not an exaggeration.
She sought refuge from harassment: she had been called a liar
and a hoaxer, and her computer was targeted with viruses. In
the Field was, for Alison and others, a refuge from the dark
side of the virtual world of ufology, where the harassment
and denigration of its own members are rife.
Alison’s introduction to the phenomenon occurred in
2008, when her daughter told her that she had seen a strange,
I N T H E F I E L D | 93
glowing red plane hovering around their house in the early
hours of the morning. Alison asked her to draw a picture of
the “plane” and saw that it was saucer shaped. Her daughter
had never been a fan of Star Wars or Star Trek or any of the
other television, movie, or internet media about space or
extraterrestrials, and Alison was excited by her sighting, con-
sidering it possibly a once- in- a- lifetime event. It wasn’t. A few
months later, as the sky was getting dark, Alison looked up
and saw what she thought were the planets Venus and Mars.
Planets, unlike stars, do not twinkle. She continued to watch
them and realized that they were twinkling brightly, and she
wondered, Why would these planets be twinkling brightly
like this, like stars? Then they moved and one just faded out.
This struck her as something impossible. Perhaps, like her
daughter, she had seen a once- in- a- lifetime phenomenon?
“Then, one after another, it kept happening,” she said.
“Soon after that I heard the kids banging on the windows and
screaming bloody murder. While they were outside sledding
in the snow they had seen a cigar- shaped object hovering in
the sky. Then we kept seeing more objects, during the daytime
and at night. Final y I realized that these once- in- a- lifetime
events kept happening. Soon after that I met the researcher
Bruce Cornett, and he said that the sightings would increase.
Wel , they did.”
Witnesses and researchers often report the strange feeling
that once you become aware that there is a phenomenon, it
becomes aware of you. They report that the first sighting
is just that— a first— and then others follow. The uncanny
feeling that the objects are aware, or watching those who
are watching them, is common. The starlike objects began
to appear more frequently to Alison and others near her.
She decided to upgrade her camera and video equipment so
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she could document the phenomenon more accurately. She
spent thousands of dol ars on better equipment, including
night- vision cameras. She also started to share her videos
with the public on YouTube and other social media, as she
thought that others would be interested in her findings. She
wasn’t prepared for the vitriol and harassment, and she didn’t
understand it at al .
“I thought that people would be interested in seeing
these strange objects. Other people, in other parts of the
world, were posting about similar types of objects too, but
they didn’t get harassed. I am not sure why I did.”
Alison proceeded in a systematic fashion. The objects
would fly around her house and over the forests near her
home. She would video- record them and then call the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) to find out if there were air-
craft flying during the times she had recorded. Researchers
of UFOs can and often do obtain these records.3 When she
learned that there were not, she was excited. She invested
even more money in better equipment and waited to see the
objects. In November 2010, she filmed a starlike object over
the forest and then called the FAA, as usual. They
confirmed
that there were no aircraft in the sky when she recorded her
object. She got a copy of the data disc that the FAA had put
together of the event. It was titled “Murrysville UFO.”
Because Alison was recording so many of the objects,
she was able to determine their patterns and behaviors. Early
on, she said, she noticed that they would mimic conventional
airplane lights.
“I thought to myself, They are copying our lighting
arrangements so they can imitate us and not be recognized.”
She also noticed that they seemed to be aware of her too.
On her YouTube channel, she posted an open invitation to
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others to come and watch the objects and video them. She
said that when people took her up on her offer, they noticed
that the objects seemed to disappear when Alison grabbed
her video camera.
“It was funny. They seemed to be shy or something.”
Alison thought it was strange that people from all over
the world were posting videos of aerial objects that behaved
in ways that were similar to the ones she was observing.
“To me, this counters the theory that these objects are se-
cret military planes or craft or black operations. That theory
might be true if they were being seen just here in the US,
but they are coming in from everywhere— Australia, Europe,
Pakistan, everywhere.”
After many years of observing her “punks,” as she cal s
the objects, she speculates about what they are and why they
are here. Like Scott, and Tyler, and James, she admits that she
ultimately doesn’t know.
“It seems as though the starlike objects are actual y
their vehicles, the things that they travel within. These
sometimes open up, kind of like a zipper, and let other,
smaller objects come out of them. Neither me nor anyone
who has observed them with me has seen a being emerge,
nor has a being or anything from them ever communicated
with me. Maybe there are no beings associated with them,
and they are purely remote- controlled. Maybe they are like
our Mars rovers: they are sent here to gather information
for beings who live somewhere else. I don’t know. Maybe
they are from our future and are our future selves, and that
is why they can’t communicate with us, because they would
change our present and their own history if they actual y
did make contact. Maybe that is why they don’t communi-
cate with us.”
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For Alison, one thing is clear. Her life took a dramatic
turn when she discovered that her house and the forest near
her house lay under a very busy sky. She felt a duty to doc-
ument the objects that flew in and around her neighbor-
hood. The once- in- a- lifetime opportunity that had one day
presented itself became an almost daily occurrence, and it
also became her passion.
“I had to document and record this. This is history. We
are being visited by visitors from somewhere else.”
U F O S A R E P H O TO G E N I C
Scott reached into his bag, pulled out a folder, and placed it
on the table between us.
“These are my best captures,” he said.
There were two photographs of an aerial object, partly
hidden within clouds. He had blown up the capture by
several degrees, each displayed in a separate box for me
to view. I studied the images. I saw a metallic- looking,
somewhat round object that looked like a classic UFO
(Figure 3.1).
I recalled Carl Jung’s remark that flying saucers are not
“photogenic.” Jung was responding to an encounter much
like mine with Scott; he was confronted with the testimony
of a worthy and honest man and it made him wonder about
the topic. He went on to write his book about flying saucers.
For him, they were not just a rumor or just a myth, but a
living myth. He also called it a universal mass rumor, which,
he said, was “reserved for our enlightened, rationalist age.”
Jung wrote:
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Figure 3.1. Scott Browne’s picture of unidentified aerial phenomenon.
Considering the notorious camera- mindedness of Americans,
it is surprising how few “authentic” photos of UFOs seem to
exist, especial y as many of them are said to have been observed
for several hours at relatively close quarters. I myself happen
to know someone who saw a UFO with hundreds of other
people in Guatemala. He had his camera with him, but in the
excitement he completely forgot to take a photo, although it
was daytime and the UFO remained visible for an hour. I have
no reason to doubt the honesty of his report. He has merely
strengthened my impression that UFOs are somehow not
photogenic.4
Almost seventy years have passed since Jung wrote this.
He was correct about the American propensity to document
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and record events with their cameras (today, their cell
phones). Since the 1950s, UFOs have become photogenic, a
fact to which the work of Scott and the members of his group
attest. Jung did, however, offer a valuable methodological
approach that addresses photographic evidence of UFOs, its
dissemination, and its link to the formation of mass belief.
He was writing in the 1950s and the internet had not yet been
invented, but this new form of information dissemination
became the key that would unlock and help us understand
Jung’s prescient speculations.
Jung was apparently ill at ease, if also excited, about
the prospect of studying the UFO. “Every man who prides
himself on his sound common sense will feel distinctly
affronted” by reports of UFOs, he wrote. This, however,
would be a mistake. “Psychologists who are conscious of
their responsibilities should not be dissuaded from critical y
examining a mass phenomenon like UFOs.” He proceeded
to carve out a method for studying the phenomenon. That
method was predicated on first denying that there was a
real UFO. “The apparent impossibility of the UFO report
suggests to common sense that the most likely explanation
lies in a psychic disturbance.”5 The site for the proper study
of the UFO was thus within the human psyche.
At this point Jung introduced his concept of “amplificatory
interpretation.” By this he meant a process that an individual
or a group engages in when confronted by an unknown ob-
ject, in this case an aerial object. This also applies to objects
in dreams or visions. According to Jung, the meaning of the
object “has to be completed,” because at first it is confusing—
like the confusion Alison felt on that night in 2008 when she
thought she was looking at the planet Venus. After it blinked
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and faded out, she said to herself, “What the hell was that?”
She was confused.
Jung wrote that the UFO was app
arently impossible. He
didn’t say it was impossible. His point was not necessarily
to dismiss its objective reality, but to move the study of it
into the realm of the psyche, his field of expertise. It was a
methodological strategy. Jung missed an opportunity to
note that it is the potential physical reality of the UFO that
causes it to be a living myth and a universal mass rumor.
It is both a myth and a potential future reality. He nods in
this direction, noting that contemporary physics has re-
vealed so many scientific truths that appear miraculous that
“UFOs can easily be regarded and believed in as a physicists’
miracle.”6 Its realism is what gives it its bite. It is also what
makes it religious. Religions work because practitioners be-
lieve in their truth or truths, even without overt evidence to
support them. Religious truth, practitioners point out, exists
independent of belief or disbelief. This is just what billion-
aire Robert Bigelow said when asked if he was afraid that
people might think he was crazy because he admitted that he
believed in extraterrestrials: “I don’t care. It’s not gonna make
a difference. It’s not gonna change the reality of what I know.”
Jung’s choice of the word “apparently” is echoed by con-
temporary media about UFOs. The soundbites for The X-
Files convey a similar attitude toward the potential reality of
the UFO. The meme “I want to believe” does not express be-
lief, but the desire to believe. Belief is postponed. “The truth
is out there” performs the very same function. The truth is
somewhere, but not here, not now. It will be here someday.
That the truth is postponed does not make it false; it makes it
future- real. Thus, the first takeaway from Jung’s speculations
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(of which he was guilty!) was the proposition, if only as a
figure of speech, that the phenomenon was potential y real.
The other takeaway has to do with the notion of
amplificatory interpretation, or the creation of the meaning
of the UFO after the initial confusion of seeing one (as well
as before seeing one). The people I have interviewed have
resisted it in every way they could, but it is impossible to re-
sist entirely. Seventy years after Jung’s analysis— well before
Scott, Alison, James, Tyler, or I was born— everyone has