Have you ever wondered why humans are primarily drawn to the stars and other heavenly bodies? Since immemorial, humanity has been fascinated by space and the belief that intelligent life exists beyond our solar system. Numerous telescopes and satellites have been deployed to study the cosmos for other habitable planets where humans can survive and for signs of life.
Our fascination to discover extraterrestrial life led us to send a spaceship in the 20th century into space to go as far as possible. The spacecraft contains information about the earth’s location and greetings in dozens of world languages for the aliens.
1. First Sightings 🛸
Kenneth Arnold supposedly witnessed the first well-known UFO sighting in 1947 while flying a tiny plane near Mount Rainier in Washington. Arnold claimed to have seen a group of nine fast-moving objects, which looked like crescent-shaped objects speeding at several thousand kilometers per hour. W.W. Brazel spotted a strange 200-yard-long debris adjacent to an army airstrip in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.
Despite the newspaper photo, the US military issued a statement indicating that it was only a weather balloon. The government looked to cover up individuals who supported the earlier Roswell reports. These dummy drops were part of an Air Force experiment to test new tactics for pilots to survive falls.
2. Area 51 🚫
Area 51 is located in Nevada, a highly classified facility whose existence was unknown until 2018. The desert base, which is completely off-limits to civilians, has long been the focus of a conspiracy among UFO and alien enthusiasts.
They believe that somewhere in Area 51’s vast desert expanse, a heavily guarded underground lab exists where the government keeps and studies captured extraterrestrial aircraft and possibly aliens. In the 1950s and 1960s, several UFO sightings were reported at Area 51 in Nevada, which the CIA, US Air Force, and Lockheed Martin used to test experimental aircraft. According to released documents, Area 51 was the location of the Cold War Operation Oxcart.
The project was charged with building an invisibility-enhancing spy plane capable of gathering intelligence from behind the Iron Curtain. These mysterious planes contributed to the prevalent notion that Area 51 was a testing area for extraterrestrial life and spacecraft.
One example of the public release of government information is the 12,618 UFO reports in Project Blue Book, which are currently available in the US National Archives. Other information, such as a US Navy recording known as the USS Nimitz incident, occasionally comes out. The US Navy has validated these recordings, and the Pentagon publicly confirmed them in 2020.
3. President Truman 🇺🇸
In 1954, President Harry Truman, who had recently returned from the Korean War, was interrogated by A. Van Sant, a reporter, about recent reports of what appeared to be unidentified arial phenomena. When suspicious blips emerged on the radar screens of air traffic controllers at Washington’s National Airport in July 1952, President Truman was still in office
A commercial pilot in the air at the time claimed to have seen a slew of dazzling lights flashing across the sky. A week later, the same occurrence occurred again, leading two military planes to be dispatched to investigate the UAPs, an event that made national headlines.
According to a US Air Force official, a temperature inversion during the hot summer in Washington may have led radar signals to portray ground objects as being in the sky. Van Sant felt a casual inquiry was met with a stern and out-of-proportion response that implied President Truman knew more than he was telling.
The purported encounter with space wreckage and extraterrestrial beings, debunked in the 1990s, continues to attract tourists to Roswell for its annual UFO Festival. On May 17, 2022, the US House subcommittee held its first open hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years, with two Pentagon representatives testifying in front of the panel’s members. They declared that inexplicable aerial events were a matter of national security that demanded an open examination. NASA announced three weeks later that it will launch its probe into UAPs.
4. Travis Walton abducted by Aliens for 5 Days 🛸
Travis Walton, an American forestry worker, was taken by aliens on November 5, 1975, while working in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests near Snowflake, Arizona. Walton had been missing for five days and six hours and claims he reappeared on the side of a road in Heber, Arizona.
This was after three days of search efforts, including scent dogs and helicopter patrols. While going in a truck with six of his employees, they supposedly noticed a saucer-shaped object hovering over the ground about 110 feet away, generating a high-pitched buzz.
Walton alleges that as soon as he stepped out of the truck and approached the object, a light beam from the spaceship knocked him out. Fear drove the other six males from their vehicle. Walton claimed he awoke in a hospital-like chamber surrounded by three small, hairless aliens.
He claimed that he fought them until a human wearing a helmet led Walton into another room, where he passed unconsciously as three more beings covered his face with a clear plastic mask. However, some reporters never accepted the narrative of his abduction because Travis’s family was well-known for their obsession with UFOs, and it could’ve been a cleverly fabricated story.
Despite receiving widespread media attention and remaining one of the most well-known extraterrestrial abduction stories, scientific experts believe the Walton case was a fraud.
Walton has stated that he has no recollection of the flying saucer taking off over him five days later while walking down a highway. Moreover, Travis’s story has shaped the plot of numerous sci-fi films over the years.
5. Robert Lazar 🚀 🎥
Robert Scott Lazar is an American conspiracy theorist and self-declared physicist who claims to have worked on a project to reverse-engineer extraterrestrial technology in the 1980s. The project involved nine alien spacecraft, at least one resembling a flying saucer, which had crashed or been captured and was now in the hands of the US government.
The purpose of the study was to provide American scientists with the propulsion data they needed to open a path to the stars. This operation supposedly took place at a top-secret facility called S-4 at a separate station several kilometers south of the US Air Force base known as Area 51. Lazar claims that he had access to briefing documents from the American administration.
Moreover, he inspected an alien spaceship which alluded that aliens have been actively participating in human matters during the previous 10,000 years. His proclamations increased awareness of Area 51 to the public and stoked rumors about its covert operations.
Although numerous ufologists and skeptics have examined and rejected Bob Lazar’s claims, he still possesses a solid following. Lazar’s education and career history may contain exaggerated or falsified details, and he has no proof of alien technology or life.
Criminal conduct has also impacted people’s perceptions of Lazar; he was sentenced twice for selling illegal chemicals in 2006 and again in 1990 for his role in a prostitution ring. According to journalist Ken Layne, many reliable individuals have evaluated Lazar’s claim and come to the sensible conclusion that it is untrue.
However, several conspiracy theorists believe that Bob Lazar’s story is true but with some exaggerations. The military and other government agencies, such as the CIA, have used their influence over the general public to sway their perception against Lazar. With some drawing links that lead up to the Whitehouse.
Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers released 2018, a must watch documentary available on Netflix.
George Knapp 📺
George Knapp, an investigative journalist, is well known for interviewing a wide range of conspiracy theorists, particularly those who believe in UFOs.
Knapp interviewed Bob Lazar, who allegedly worked on extraterrestrial UFOs at Area 51, a highly classified facility. George claims that because he discovered evidence supporting some of Lazar’s claims, his stories about Lazar were taken more seriously than usual UFO fare. Dr. Travis Taylor is well-known to television viewers as a bold UFO and supernatural researcher.
George Knapp introduced Taylor to the masses when he interviewed him for the first time, where it was revealed that Taylor was living a double life and secretly functioning as the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force’s head scientist.
Knapp uncovered that one of the task force’s primary objectives was to create a report for Congress that summarized the available evidence. Beginning with the Tic Tac event in 2004, the group has prepared a top-secret dossier on the most remarkable military contacts.
The task team narrowed down a vast database to 144 of the top instances. Taylor and the task team spent three years investigating the 144 instances, which included dozens of weird objects that buzzed numerous Navy ships in 2019.
According to Knapp’s data, some things were flying spheres that pursued the vessels, while others appeared in the form of green pyramids. Dr. Travis revealed that a US Navy official explained that all of these were drones, a statement which stunned the task force members.
Knapp has built a reputation around conspiracy theories and the controversy they bring and still managed to cultivate a sense of legitimacy based on what he investigates. However, he has fallen prey to unreliable people such as Bill Cooper, who greatly dented his work’s credibility to various viewers.
Phoenix Lights 🌵
March 13, 1997
A flurry of mysterious flying objects known as The Phoenix Lights was sighted above the Mexican states of Arizona, Nevada, and Sonora.
Thousands of witnesses reported seeing lights between 7 and 11 p.m. in a 300-mile radius stretching from the Nevada border to Phoenix to the outskirts of Tucson. The episodes began in 1997 and resurfaced in 2007 and 2008.
The occurrence featured two separate affairs: a triangle arrangement of lights seen traveling over the state and a series of fixed lights seen near the Phoenix region. Witnesses claim to have observed a big square-shaped UFO with five spherical lights or maybe light-emitting engines.
Years later, Fife Symington, Arizona’s governor at the time, claimed to have witnessed the event and identified the object as alien. However, no institution is yet to come out and try to explain the strange phenomenon.
Do you Believe? 🛸
The existence of alien life is both an exciting and frightening possibility. Regardless of what most scientists explain as to why aliens do not exist, there is no evidence beyond reasonable doubt that has been tabled to prove the same.
With the peculiar signs and occurrences, the world over in terms of UFOs and conspiracy theories, one can be forgiven for believing extraterrestrial life truly does exist. In case of an out-of-this-world encounter, governments would be the first institutions to interact with alien life.
Moreover, until they are done exploiting alien technology, conspiracy theories and restricted areas operated by men in suits will continue to exist.
Therefore, all we can do as human beings is hope that we’re not the only ones in the universe and that those who are have the answers to our fundamental purpose in the cosmos.
