Was the Ufo Explosion in the 50s a Wave of Extraterrestrial Surveillance?

The best example of this is all the "ghost hunter" shows that were (are?) popular.

If you listen to static looking for something to hear, you're gonna find something.

If you see a heat pattern left by someone leaning on a locker and you want to see something, you're gonna see "a face and body!!!" instead of just the fact that the shoulder pressed more than the arm and left a larger circle.

I think that people are, for the most part, seeing real phenomena of various sorts. The problem is that people tend to jump from "I don't know what that is" directly to "it's aliens", ignoring the vast number of other, much more likely, possible explanations.

> We used to have issues with fairies, now it's humanoids visiting in crafts.

I wish I could find it, but many years ago I read a great paper on this. The thesis was that when people see things they can't explain, they will interpret what they see in the context of their society. Technologically-oriented societies produce explanations of a technological nature. Mystically-oriented societies will produce explanations of a mystical nature, and so on.

As I said in another comment, people tend to see what they expect to see rather than what is actually there.

The transition from burning bush to UFO to UAP...

I wonder of we modernized our relationship to phenomena in technology and shift from spectral beings to extraterrestrial beings as a built-in problem of explanations, based in some simplistic reliance of cause and effect.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X2...

There are probably 1000s of reports of from people across the globe that are seeing very similar things that remain unexplained. If the evidence went to a courtroom, I think certain UAP “cases” would pass have a positive “verdict” based on overwhelming circumstantial evidence. However, science has a higher bar (as it should) so when we ask our experts what’s happening they have to say “no evidence” or else lose their credibility.

For the records: I'm taking it very seriously and had this book in mind: Elizondo, L. (2024). Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's hunt for UFOs. William Morrow. The tone is very dark though.