John A. Keel WHY UFOS

pilot observed an unusual object from a great distance, hisreport was given precedence over the report of an ordinaryhousewife who saw one land in her own backyard. Some ofthese cults became obsessed with the search for physicalevidence. But their criteria for evidence was very strict.Such evidence had to be nonterrestrial. But this was avicious circle. If a piece of metal fell from a UFO andproved to be ordinary aluminum, it was discarded. If itproved to be made of a puzzling, unidentifiable alloy, it stillproved nothing unless the source could also be proven.A new game emerged: the artifact or hardware game.This game is well known in the Irish fairy lore. Thephenomenon has always obliged us by planting falseevidence all over the landscape.The UFO cultists trapped themselves into a hopelesssituation almost from the outset. If the UFOs actually werethe product of a superior extraterrestrial civilization, thenfinal proof could only come about in one of two ways:1. A flying saucer would have to make an error andcrash or be captured. Then we would have absolute proofthat it existed and was from a superior technology. Since1947, there have been many rumors of such crashes.Author Frank Scully was told by a contactee type that sucha crash had occurred in the Southwest in 1948, and that theAir Force had recovered the object, together with somebodies of tiny humanoids. He published this bit of hearsay,and it has become a major ufological myth. The Air Forcestill receives letters from people asking if it is true that thesebodies are pickled in a bottle somewhere in the AFarchives.2. The ufonauts must, themselves, come forward withthe final evidence by landing in a public place, in front ofmany witnesses, and by entering into direct communicationwith the heads of state. There have been manyreported landings, but, as with the landings of 1897, all ofthese have taken place in secluded spots with a minimum ofwitnesses. The apparent purpose of most of these landingsseems to have been to advance belief in the frame ofreference, not to provide absolute proof that the frame ofreference is authentic.After twenty years of this game, it does not seem toolikely that such proof will ever be forthcoming. So we mustcontent ourselves with an examination of the actualphysical evidence which has been produced at UFO sites allover the world. On the surface, many of these cases seem