There are no UFOs and there never were, so it’s good that there aren’t nearly as many reports these days of people seeing them. Is that because we’re more rational now? Perhaps, but we don’t seem very rational with our politics and conspiracy theories. Is it because cameras are everywhere and all-knowing? Maybe. Because we trust more now in technology and science than in religion? Could be. 

In his new Aeon essay, “Seeing Is Believing,” Stuart Walton tries to understand why there are no more aliens in the sky, no more ghosts in the machine. An excerpt:

“UFO sightings reached their spate roughly within a decade of the release of Steven Spielberg’s spellbinding filmClose Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). One good reason to believe there were never any UFOS is that nobody sees them any more. Once, the skies were refulgent with alien craft; now they are back to their primordial emptiness, returning only static to the radio telescopes, and offering the occasional meteor shower to the wondering eye.

It isn’t only flying saucers that have receded into history. They are being followed, more gradually to be sure, by a decline in sightings of ghosts, recordings of poltergeists, claims of psychokinesis and the rest, as is regularly attested by organisations such as the Society for Psychical Research in London and the UK-wide research group Para.Science. Many of those with a vested interest in the supernatural industry naturally resist this contention, but there is far less credulity among the public for tales of the extraordinary than there was even a generation ago. The standard explanation attributes this to growing skepticism. But, as is only fitting for the paranormal, it might be that there are more mysterious forces at work.”

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1973: “For weeks now there have been reports of sightings of UFOs in many parts of the country.”