Thanks also to Vicki and Zach, who told me they helped her around the house with chores and other duties as assigned.
Throughout this book, you’ll find measurements in metric units. If you find this at all confusing, it may help to reference this handy chart:
1 centimetre = 0.3937 inches
1 metre = 3.281 feet
1 kilometre = 0.6214 miles
OR
1 inch is roughly 2.5 centimetres
1 metre is roughly 3 feet (a little more)
1 kilometre is just over half a mile
For temperatures, weights, and complicated conversions, you can find several free conversion sites online.
This is a big book about UFOs.
I’ve been writing about the UFO phenomenon for almost 35 years, having investigated hundreds of UFO sightings, interviewed thousands of witnesses, and conducted research since the mid-1970s. I’ve heard it all: from pilots’ eyewitness accounts of encounters with craft that seemed to defy physics, to the befuddlement of professionals who insist that aliens visited them in their bedrooms.
I have travelled across Canada on investigative expeditions, and driven through the Midwestern United States to interview witnesses in many counties. I have sat throughout the night in some popular UFO haunts, but never saw anything that defied explanation, much to the chagrin of my guides and companions.
As an astronomer, I spent many hours with my eye frozen to a telescope eyepiece at brutal temperatures — my record is -42 degrees Celsius at 3:30 a.m. — watching the Moon’s terminator plunge a small crater’s rim into darkness. I have shown eager kids and their parents Saturn’s rings through a small scope at public star parties, and I have presented papers at astronomical conferences.
I’m fascinated with space and astronomy. I was taught by brilliant minds such as cosmologist Dr. Martin Clutton-Brock and “pure astronomer” Dr. Richard Bochonko, for whom spherical astronomy and orbital dynamics came naturally. But not me.
I’ve always had a sense of wonder about the universe. Growing up, my most common question was, “Why?” Now I know the most appropriate answer is not, “Because,” but, “Why not?”
At a young age I wondered if there was other life out there, somewhere. It was a sensible enough question. After all, we’re here, so why shouldn’t there be other beings on other planets, wondering the same thing?
After more than 35 years of investigation and research — and wondering — I still don’t know. Why has the UFO phenomenon been so persistent? Why do people still report seeing unidentified objects in the sky, despite the best efforts of scientists to assure them there is nothing of concern? Why do we persist in wondering?
I’ve written several books, published dozens of research papers and reports, and over the past decade posted many blog entries and tweeted about the UFO phenomenon.
This Big Book of UFOs contains some of the most interesting stories and cases from my files, some of which have appeared in my other books, but many which were researched and are described here for the first time. I don’t think any nonbelievers will be convinced, nor do I expect ardent UFO fans will doubt some of the more popular UFO tales.
The idea behind this book is to inform and entertain, and make you wonder.
As I still do.
Ten percent of all North Americans have seen UFOs.
This is not a number picked frivolously out of thin air (pardon the pun), but a statistic based on polls and surveys in the United States and Canada, done by various independent polling organizations and groups.
When asked the question, “Have you ever seen a UFO?” one in every 10 people will say, “Yes.”
DID YOU KNOW?
Only one
out of every 10 UFO sightings
is actually reported.
This number is significant. In 2009, according to Statistics Canada, there were 33.8 million people in Canada and 303.8 million people in the United States. Ten percent of these are 3.3 million people for Canada and 30.3 million for the U.S. — definitely a lot of UFO witnesses. The percentage is the same in other developed countries such as Mexico and Britain.
The significance of this data is that according to 2009 data published by Statistics Canada, only slightly fewer people have asthma (2.3 million) as have seen UFOs, although more have high blood pressure (4.6 million). By way of comparison, seven million children are afflicted with asthma in the United States, and 46 million people in America have been diagnosed with arthritis (about one in five adults). Depression affects 17 million Americans.
The importance of these comparative statistics is that there is great concern about the large number of people with high blood pressure, arthritis, depression, and other diseases, and this has resulted in national programs to educate the public about prevention and treatment of these conditions. However, more than three million Canadians and 30 million Americans believe they have seen UFOs, and yet this does not seem to be of concern to educators, politicians, or the scientific community.
If, as some suggest, people who see UFOs are imagining them or simply seeing things, should this not be cause for some worry, since one in 10 people cannot trust their own eyes? Or if, as others believe, people are seeing spaceships from other planets, would an armada of three million vessels not cause some anxiety for military strategists?
Of course, these statistics need some expansion and interpretation. The term UFO is very ambiguous, being simply an abbreviation of the phrase unidentified flying object. In popular culture, it has come to mean “alien spacecraft,” but that is not necessarily what has been observed or reported.
Ufology Research, an independent and unfunded group that has been studying UFO reports in Canada for more than 30 years, has published the Canadian UFO Survey, compiling case data and an annual analysis of UFO sightings reported officially in Canada. In 2008, a record 1,004 UFO cases were examined. In 2009, the total was only 801 cases.
In general, since the yearly analyses began in the 1980s, the number of UFO sightings reported in Canada steadily increased overall, until the drop in 2009. This is in direct contradiction to news stories and skeptical UFO TV shows which have stated throughout the past 25 years that the number of UFO reports was decreasing.