This is a fascinating account of the UFO phenomenon from the 1960's and 70's. Composed of witness testimonies and interviews, the authors use an unbiased and scientific approach to the phenomenon. It's one of the books on unidentified phenomenon that I appreciate because the authors take the subject seriously. They use the scientific method to evaluate the data they have collected over the decades and analyze it from a pragmatic point of view. The people they interview are sincere, intelligent individuals who have seen things they could neither identify or understand. Even so, there was some things that took me a while to wrap my head around.
What I really like is how their thoughtful research and pragmatic approach quickly debunks frauds such as Adamski and Karl Menkis, as well as debunking Project Blue Book. The military's treatment of the subject, especially incidents that have occurred on military bases renders the subject suspect to say the least. And having had worked for the military at one point in my life, I can confirm that they are indeed hiding something.
I kept going back to this book because I felt the need to clarify a few things in my mind, such as the statistical fallacies presented in Project Blue Book, (p. 159) and the weird encounter with “aliens” in a field by hunters. (p.106) I have trouble wrapping my mind around this odd encounter. Briefly, four hunters encounter a cylinder like object in a field. One of the hunters shoots at a being that is standing in front of the cylinder, and the “alien” yells at him in English. It appears that there was an alien presence, but not.
The incident scared the local cop who witnessed the UFOso badly that he didn't file a report even though one of the hunters shot one of the aliens. Later, the man interviewed by Vallee stated that a group of men in dark business suits came to his work place, and escorted him home to retrieve his hunting boots. Then they just left him there. He had to call a cab to get back to work. His boss confirmed it happened, but the entire thing was just...weird...I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one.
I'm glad to see the topic is being taken seriously; so seriously that the military has released videos of encounters of UFO's by military aircraft. Even though the Pentagon has retreated back to the safety of plausible deniability, the proverbial genie is out of the bottle. At some point, they will have to admit the phenomenon is real. I am grateful that astronomers such as Hynek and Vallee have paved the way for serious study of this fascinating topic.
~review by Patricia Snodgrass
Authors: J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallee
Red Wheel/Weiser, 2023
p. $19.95, pp.246
