The Field Guide To UFOs: A Classification Of Various Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Based On Eyewitness Accounts

by Dennis Stacy, Harry Trumbore, Patrick Huyghe

Overview

The classic UFO-shaped like a flying saucer with a dome on top—in reality represents but a small fraction of the mystery aerial objects people have reported seeing over the past half century or so. Eyewitnesses around the world actually describe a bewildering array of forms in flight.

Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive look at the physical structure of UFOs, a book devoted to identifying and categorizing the dozens of different shapes the UFO phenomenon exhibits globally. From double-ringed to triange-shaped UFOs, from saucers to cigar-shaped craft-and more-this book documents each variant, describes often extraordinary encounters, and even takes the extra step of offering the skeptic's explanation for some of the sightnings.

What can the shape of a UFO tell us? In some cases, the shape of the object or phenomenon provides a strong clue to its origin. But in all cases, the classification system developed in this book shows quite clearly that there is no single solution to the UFO mystery—there are most likely many answers. And some surprises too.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780380802654
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/26/2000
Edition description:	1ST
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.43(d)

About the Author

Dennis Stacy was the editor of the monthly Mufon UFO Journal from 1985 to 1997. He received the 1995 Donald E. Keyhoe Journalism Award for a six-part series on UFOs that appeared in Omni. He is also the author of The Marfa Lights: A Viewer's Guide, and, most recently, he coedited UFOs 1947-1997: Fifty Years of Flying Saucers with Hilary Evans.

Patrick Huyghe is a journalist and editor of the The Anomalist, a journal that explores the mysteries of science, nature, and history. His articles have appeared in many publications, including the New York Times . He lives in Putnam Valley, New York.

Read an Excerpt

An Embarrassment of Riches

The late J. Allen Hynek, Air Force astronomy consultant for Project Blue Book and founder of the Center for UFO Studies that now bears his name, once referred to the sheer number of UFO reports as an "embarrassment of riches." The numbers would certainly seem to bear him out. One Gallup public opinion poll revealed that nine percent of the adult American populationequivalent to about 11 million people at the time-had seen what they thought was a UFO. Extrapolated worldwide and over time, the number of UFO witnesses from the last half century alone easily extends to the tens, if not hundreds, of millionsonly a minuscule fraction of which are ever reported to the military, law enforcement officials, or civilian UFO research organizations. The most commonly reported reason for failing to make a report public is fear of ridicule from one's family, friends, neighbors, colleagues.

This inherent embarrassment of numbers includes an embarrassment of forms as well. While the general public perceives flying saucers and Unidentified Flying Objects as one and the same, the reports paint a dramatically different picture. Indeed, the classic "flying saucer"—imagine a spinning, discus-shaped object with a smaller, rounded dome or canopy in the center-is on a par with such Hollywood stereotypes as the prostitute with a heart of gold and the stolid, solitary gunslinger. In reality, socalled "daylight discs," as they are referred to by ufologists (those who study UFOs as a hobby or avocation), constitute but a small percentage of all UFOs reported. The overwhelming majority of UFO reports belong to what Hynek called "nocturnal lights,"those amorphous blobs of variously colored lights seen singly or in formation against the dark background of the night.

Obviously, if we had had, say, 37 million reports of the same object since Kenneth Arnold's landmark 1947 sighting, we would all be more or less agreed that an invasion of advanced and presumably extraterrestrial-technology was now well under way. But the fact of the matter is that UFOs are routinely reported in a vastly bewildering variety of shapes, forms, and behavior. It's one thing to contemplate that we're being visited on a regular, if not daily basis, by extraterrestrial visitors. But it's quite another to posit the position that planet Earth represents little more than a convenient truck stop on some intergalactic highway, a brief stopover between one edge of the Milky Way and the other for every passing vehicle of alien manufacture and its occupants.

In short, both the number and variety of shapes involved would seem to automatically argue that what is popularly regarded as the UFO phenomenon is actually several discrete phenomena. The one may be many, in other words, and almost certainly is. Both military and civilian studies of UFOs, for example, reveal that the overwhelming majority are merely misperceived mundane objects or atmospheric or astronomical phenomena, what are referred to in the vernacular as IFOs, Identified Flying Objects. All too often, a brilliantly scintillating and stationary Venus (or other celestial object) is still reported as a distant or nearby UFO.

Weather balloons commonly give rise to UFO reports, too, as do aircraft landing lights, mirages, advertising planes and blimps, and hoaxes of varying sorts. (An increasingly popular hoax is the small balloon with road flares attached.) Natural phenomena may be involved as UFO instigators as well, a category that could include such little understood but nonetheless recognized candidates as earthquake lights and ball lighting.

On the other hand, many UFO reports seem to be just thatreliable eyewitness accounts of a previously and as yet unidentified object or phenomenon. The cases we have collected here will, hopefully, demonstrate that point.

The First Flying Saucer

On June 24, 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold of Boise, Idaho, was flying his private plane, a Callair, in the vicinity of Mount Rainier when he spotted nine distant, silvery objects traveling at a high rate of speed, sunlight glinting off their shiny surfaces. After landing in nearby Yakima, Washington, Arnold reported what he had seen. When interviewed by Associated Press reporter Bin Bequette, he compared their motion as they flew to that of "a saucer skipping over water." Bequette's article went out over the AP wire, some anonymous headline writer coined the phrase "flying saucer," and the rest, as they say, is history. A history of what is another matter entirely.

Almost overnight, flying saucers passed into the public imagination, where they have flourished ever since. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, every child and adult from the Cascades to the Caucauses knows what a flying saucer is supposed to look like. The image of a spinning, supersleek, perfectly circular spaceship from another planet is indelibly etched in our collective minds. But there is a problem with this picture. Although what Arnold saw that historical day remains unexplained-and his name remains forever synonymous with the first flying saucer-what he actually reported bore no resemblance to a classic flying disc whatsoever. The details, in other words, had been lost in the headlines.

Arnold's own sketch, which was attached to a report made three weeks after the event and addressed to the "Commanding General, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio," does resemble a disc when seen in side view. On the other hand, the pictured object could just as easily be described as cigar-shaped. (Indeed, had he seen the objects only from an edge-on angle, he might well have described them as such.) But Arnold also included a top view of his flying "saucer" that in no way resembles a perfect circle. The best way to describe it is as heel- shaped, with the rounded end indicating the direction of travel. The back end of this now reversed shoe heel isn't an abrupt perpendicular or indented conCave, but rather a gentle, convex line connecting the two outer sides of the "heel." Arnold estimated the objects' size as less am that of a DC-4 which he could also see nearby.

Others also saw strange objects in the skies over Washington an that fateful day. A prospector named Fred Johnson observed six silent discs about twelve miles from Mount Rainier. He described them as "round, but with tails." Then several hours after the Arnold sighting dozens watched light blue and purple bans of light performing aerobatic maneuvers over Seattle. Flying saucers? Not exactly.

The First Flying Saucer

As a species, Homo sapiens is indeed a marvel of millions of years of evolutionary engineering, what with our enormous, convoluted brains, color binocular vision, and other sophisticated modes of perception. But Aldous Huxley was only half right when he referred to these as the "doors of perception." He might just as well have labeled the human sensory system "shutters of perception," for we consciously perceive and partake of but a small slice of everything that is. We smell only a limited range of all odors, hear but a small segment of all sound frequencies, and see only through a limited window the entire vibrating spectrum of light.

While the truth is out there, it may not always be truthfully perceived. The hard-wired limitations alone, limitations built into our biological sensors, guarantee that. The best we can ever hope for is but a fleeting glimpse or internalized impression of reality. Put another way, humans are imperfect observers by definition; at the same time, human observations constitute the largest single body of "evidence" in favor of the UFO phenomenon. The problem is further complicated by what might be called software issues of perception, the tendency to see what we expect or are psychologically predisposed to see.

Examples of hard-wired errors of perception are literally legion. Because our eyes dart constantly (and unconsciously) about when focusing, for example, a distant pinpoint of light such as a planet or star may appear to jump back and forth in space, when in reality it remains perfectly stationary. Our eyes play other perceptual tricks as well. A bright object viewed against a dark sky inevitably looms larger than it really is. Conversely, a dark object seen in broad daylight against a bright backdrop will appear smaller than it really is.

Table of Contents

	Introduction
	An Embarrassment of Riches	1
	The First Flying Saucer	2
	The Problem of Human Observation	5
	The Arnold Phenomenon	9
	The UFO Report	11
	Classify and Reclassify	13
	UFO Geometry 101	17
	On with the Show	18
	Lightform	21
	Spherical	27
	Discoid	37
	Elliptical	67
	Cylindrical	83
	Rectangular	103
	Triangular	107
	Shape-Shifter	123
	Afterword
	Sizing Up Shapes	133
	UFO Fashions	134
	Physical Evidence	138
	Inside Scoop	141
	Extraordinary Maneuvers	146
	Modes of Propulsion	149
	Waves and Flaps	151
	Hot Spots	155
	In Theory	163
	The Answer(s)	165
	Acknowledgments	171
	Bibliography	173
	Resources	177
	Case Index	179

Editorial Reviews

"Meaty...As either a gift or a personal acquisition, THE FIELD GUIDE TO UFOS delivers good value for its price."-- "Fate Magazine"Something of interest to everybody with an interest in the UFO issue...admirably concise...a pretty good starting point."--"The Explorer

From the Publisher