Page Content (OCR)
APPENDIX TABLE witnesses. The abduction claims are especially interesting to the proponents of the psychosociological theory: it is difficult to find a culture on earth that does not have an ancient tradition of little people that fly through the sky and abduct humans. It is standard for them to take their victims into spherical settings that are evenly illuminated and to subject them to various ordeals such as operations on internal organs and "astral 252 In previous works I have pointed out that aerial phenomena very similar to our UFOs had been reported in the ninth century in the form of vessels in the sky, as airships in the days of Jules Verne, as ghost rockets in 1946, and as spacecraft in more recent times, as if they mimicked human expectations. Everything works as if the UFO phe- nomenon remained consistently one step ahead of human technology. In the last ten years, as molecular biology has become more glamorous than electronics or even aerospace in our modern civilization, it should not be surprising to find the "aliens" performing simulacra of genetic engineering interventions. The supporters or the ETH may have fallen into the trap of a first-level reading of the phenomenon's message. Summary of basic hypotheses Advanced Technology Hypothesis Natural Phenomena Hypothesis Extraterrestrial Hypothesis Psychosociological Hypothesis Such historical considerations, combined with extensive research on mythology and folklore (9) have led European researchers like Bertrand Meheust and Hillary Evans to regard the entire UFO phenomenon as a projection of the consciousness of the witnesses. They point out that science-fiction and legends, too, stay one step ahead of human scientific realizations. This psychosociological hypothesis has aroused considera- ble opposition among U.S. ufologists and is now creating a deep chasm between European and American ufology, with the former advocating a second-degree, symbolic reading of the discourse presented by the