The real story behind Close Encounters

Everyone remembers “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”  The movie was released in 1977, written and directed by Steven Spielberg, and starring Richard Dreyfuss.  What you may not know is that the US Air Force and NASA decided not to cooperate on the film.  In fact they were totally against the release of this movie.

NASA reportedly sent a 20-page letter to Spielberg, telling him that releasing the film was actually dangerous.  The question remains “What were they trying to hide?”  Although the movie was created by Spielberg, just the idea of a government cover up made a lot of people nervous.

Maybe it’s because they are really covering up encounters.

During the 1940s a person by the name of Donald Keyhoe investigated flying saucers for True Magazine. Keyhoe believed that flying saucers were from outer space, and were on a scouting mission. Keyhoe claimed that his information came from Air Force and Navy intelligence.

Project Sign, based at Air Technical Intelligence Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and its successors Project Grudge and Project Blue Book were officially tasked with investigating the flying saucers. Keyhoe started a civilian investigation group called NICAP and asserted that the US Government was lying about UFOs and doing everything they could to cover them up. Now on the surface you might think, ok so he found some kooks to agree with him, but where is the real evidence?

Consider this fact: Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was a Rear Admiral and an influential board member of NICAP, and Hillenkoetter was also the first director of the CIA. You got to ask the question” If this was all BS, then why would the director of the CIA be involved?

Probably the best example of a UFO government cover up was the 1947 Roswell incident. The United States Air Force actually issued a press release stating that a “flying disk” had been recovered near Roswell, New Mexico. This information was quickly withdrawn and replaced by claiming that a weather balloon was simply misidentified.

About a year later, in 1948 an Air Force pilot by the name of Thomas Mantell was killed in an air accident while in pursuit of an aerial artifact he described as “a metallic object…of tremendous size.”  The official government story claims that Mantell had been chasing the planet Venus, a conclusion which was met with extreme skepticism, and later changed to a Skyhook balloon.

Over the years there have been many UFO sightings, and each time the government is quick to discredit the story and in some cased even the person who reported the encounter. Even people who have no reason to lie about something like this are quickly discredited.
Many airline pilots have spotted UFOs over the years, but very few report it because of ridicule and the possibility of being fired.  According to the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, (NARCAP) there have been over 3,500 documented sightings of “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” by military, commercial, and civilian pilots.

Captain Jim Courant, a commercial pilot for over 31 years spoke to the National Press Club, and said “It is almost astounding how many people are in the know on this subject.”  Captian Courant also said “There are many more sightings that are just not reported.”  Since Captian Courant was so out spoken and willing to talk to the press, many commercial and military pilots have opened up to him, also claiming to have had encounters with UFOs.

Where did the term “Close Encounter” come from?

The meaning of a close encounter is an event in which a person witnesses an unidentified flying object. This terminology and the system of classification was started by J. Allen Hynek, a astronomer and UFO researcher. It was first suggested in his 1972 book “The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry.”
Allen came up with 7 kinds of encounters:

1. Visual sightings of an unidentified flying object.
2. A UFO event in which a physical effect is alleged.
3. UFO encounters in which a creature is present.
4. A UFO event in which a human is abducted by a UFO or its occupants.
5. A UFO event that involves direct communication between aliens and humans.
6. Death of a human or animal associated with a UFO sighting.
7. The creation of a human/alien hybrid, either by sexual reproduction or by artificial scientific methods.

Hynek’s scale became well-known after being referenced in a 1977 film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is named after the third level of the scale. Posters for the film recited the three levels of the scale, and Hynek himself makes a cameo appearance near the end of the film.

A question that has come up since 2010: With everyone having a video camera with them most of the time, why hasn’t there been more UFO sightings?

I think I can answer that questions. First of all, there are a ton of sightings, many of them have been documented on You-Tube and other social media sites. So why aren’t more people talking about this?  I think it’s a matter of trusting the videos.  Yes, it’s true, just about everyone has a video camera with them at all times with the use of smart phones, however with the increased technology of these devices, we are also have the ability to fake videos.  Anyone can do computer generated Images (CGI) now days.

This means that even though you might be viewing an actual image of a UFO you are more skeptical than ever before.  If you go back to those earlier films, back in the 1970s or 80s, it was much harder to fake videos.  Most people didn’t have the equipment or ability to fake a video, so the images were more believable.

It seems that we have come full circle. Going back before film, people claimed to see UFOs and their only proof was their word.  Now that we have the ability to fake encounters on video, we are going back to someone’s word of honor.

I look at it this way, there are a lot of people who have nothing to gain, and are in a position that commands respect, who are claiming to have encountered a UFO in their past.  People like airline pilots, very high-ranking military personnel, astronauts, even the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter claims to have seen a UFO.

At some point you have to admit, something is out there.

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