PHOTO: FDecomite
WHEN I was 15, my mum and I saw something strange in the night sky.
Driving along Port Rd, we both clearly saw a white pulsing light hovering over Wellington Harbour.
As the car slammed to a stop against the kerb, however, our perspective on the light changed.
Just like that, what had surely been the interstellar chariot of pan-dimensional alien explorers resolved into the Air NZ 9 o’clock from Rotorua making its descent into Wellington Airport.
Bummer.
In my defence, this was at the height of X-Files mania to which I was particularly and happily susceptible, but still, it was an eye opener.
One minute the truth was out there in front of our eyes, the next we were just a couple of rubes on the side of the road gawping at the pretty lights.
Maybe it’s the same perspective change the UK’s Royal Air Force experienced before deciding to shut down its 50-year-old, toll-free UFO hotline this week?
It’s the end of an era for British UFO spotters, who took the hot line’s very existence as proof that something was “going on”.
As recently as January, the Telegraph, a normally sedate UK newspaper, reported the RAF were under orders to shoot down UFO’s when they came across them.
Nice one, Biggles. Way to roll out the intergalactic welcome mat.
The Telegraph got its story directly from Nick Pope, the UK’s top UFO expert and former civil servant. Nick worked on the Ministry of Defence’s UFO desk for three years.
The X-Files ran for longer, but Nick had three years paid for by the British tax payer, manning the big red Alien Attack phone.
PHOTO: Santa Rosa Old Skool
Because, yes, the Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom had a whole UFO desk, to go with the phone line and e-mail account.
But that was in the old days when everyone, including the British Government it seems, wanted to believe.
As any well-versed UFO nut knows, the Brits have had a singular relationship with unexplained aerial phenomena.
From crop circles – variously described as the product of alien landing patterns, messages from other dimensions and a couple of drunk blokes on a lark after a night at the pub – to alien abductions, there’s a group in the UK catering to your particular area of interest.
I once spent a day with a group of UFO investigators at an airfield in Duxford in Lincolnshire, pouring over blurry photographs of fuzzy lights in the sky, learning to tell the difference between “cigar-shaped mother ships” and “flashing ball scouts”.
Like I said, happily susceptible.
But this year UFOinfo.com prefaced their list of 582 UFO sightings in the UK with a warning about products from a company called UFO Balloons (guess what they sell) messing with their figures.
PHOTO: Christiangeos
It is probably important to also note the majority of the sightings seem tohave happened in the wee small hours of January 1, when I think we can all agree the good people of the UK are perhaps not at their most clear-headed.
Back home, UFOinfo.com has only 10 sightings in New Zealand this year so far. That’s six down on last year’s figures.
Clearly, we’re not watching the skies enough.
“Flashing Ball Scouts” over Wellington aside, seems like the idea that aliens are coming, are here or are even on their way doesn’t have the pop culture cache it had back when Fox “Spooky” Mulder was on your freaky sky watching side too.
If you see something unexplained in the night sky, contact UFOCUS and fill out one of their sighting report forms. Just make sure it’s not the Air NZ 9 o’clock from Rotorua.