The Nightshirt Sightings, Portents, Forebodings, Suspicions

Vallee on Salon

Basel_UFO_woodcutThe always fascinating Jacques Vallee has just published (with Chris Aubeck) a catalogue of 500 historical accounts of unexplainable aerial phenomena, going back as far as ancient Egypt. Salon interviewed him this week about the book. Like so much of the new research coming about about the UFO phenomenon in our own times, Vallee’s work completely discredits the mainstream science notion that UFOs are only seen by (as Stephen Hawking ignorantly put it) “cranks and weirdos.”

“A delusion is usually single-witness and there are many multiple-witness cases in the book. You also have authority figures, astronomers and well-known people making claims. You have Michelangelo seeing a triangle with three lights of different colors in the sky and making a painting of it. It’s staggering when you hear modern scientists saying only idiots and crazy people report UFOs.”

[update 12/8: There’s a terrific new audio interview with Vallee on his career and recent work here]

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I am a science writer and armchair Fortean based in Washington, DC. Write to me at eric.wargo [at] gmail.com.

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