Watch the skies.
Sky
watching is something that I've always done. Fascinated with what
lies beyond our own, meagre existence, I've spent hours with my eyes
turned heavenwards in the hopes that the questions that roll through
my mind will one day be answered.
And
spread across the velvety night, things have appeared. Stars,
satellites, aircraft, and a few objects that were never identified.
The red star that faded to away. The clouds that had been punctured
by something other than mere weather. The flicker of light that was
neither plane nor satellite. The metallic orb that lazily drifted
across the heavens only to disappear in the blink of an eye. The pair
of lights that spent three nights dancing above my house.
My
fascination with the skies started young. I found myself immersed in
the world of the extraterrestrial from the time that I was able to
wield a library card. Books that would be classed as out of my
reading range were sneaked in to the house and hidden under pillows
and behind toys. There was that burning desire to know whether we
were alone in the universe and what, if anything, was visiting us.
The
stories that were told in those early books were full of fascination,
wonder and, to some degree, a little bit of terror. They spoke of
incidents that had happened many years before my birth and had
photographs of crafts that were supposedly from other worlds.
As
I hit my teenage years, I lapped up episodes of the X-Files and
signed up to SETI. In more recent years, I've come in to contact with
people who, like myself, are also searching for answers but keeping a
healthy sense of skepticism in their lives (it's good to ask
questions but don't fall too far down the rabbit hole). One of
them treated me to a care package from Roswell and it's no accident
that I named my publishing company Roswell Publishing.
A
few years ago, I wanted to go back to a prominent time in UFO lore.
During World War II, mysterious balls of light were seen flying
alongside fighter aircraft. This didn't just happen once; it happened
numerous times and, for me, is one of our biggest UFO incidents. The
balls of light appeared to be under intelligent control and were
believed to be either St Elmo's fire or one of the German army's many
wonder weapons. Yet there is very little information on the subject
and what literature there is has been buried because the term that
was given to these balls of light was lifted from a book and used.
Foo
fighters.
 |
| I wonder how many articles begin with a variation of that paragraph?! http://fourthkind.com/foo-fighters-of-world-war-ii/ |
Tweaked
search terms yielded some results. But, sooner or later, you'd hit a
brick wall and find yourself reading about the band. It was
frustrating and eventually I found myself going down a different
road, one that I never imagined that I'd take.
My
bookshelves are now lined with books on UFOlogy and my iPad has apps
to help me identify aircraft and satellites. Every night I still go
outside and take a look at the sky above me.
I
did write a book in the end. It just happens to be about Foo
Fighters, the band and not foo fighters, the aerial phenomenon. It'll
be out later this year.
Maybe,
just maybe, this is where the path that I started walking when I was
six years old was supposed to take me...
