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people could see them clearly and have a frame of reference with which they could explain the many strange lights and searchlights in the sky. As with the earlier flaps, the true nature of the phenomenon was carefully hidden from us. During World War II, and immediately thereafter, the world’s skies were cluttered with all kinds of man-made aircraft ranging from helicop- ters to blimps. While thousands of UFOs were noticed and reported, many thousands of others probably were not. Cigar-shaped objects were as- sumed to be sub-chasing blimps. Strange “‘eccentrics” were regarded as secret weapons being tested. The cessation of hostilities gave the UFO source a new headache. When, for some reason, it became necessary to revisit Scandinavia in 1946, near-hysteria developed. The objects were thought to be Russian rockets. The world was jittery, and the Cold War was just taking shape. If the ghost-rocket transmogrifications were used in other parts of the world, it was possible that they might even have precipitated a new war. A new frame of reference was therefore necessary. We were now technologically advanced to a point where some of us, at least, were ready to consider and accept the possible existence of ‘‘a superior intelligence with an advanced technology.’’ We were a setup for the modern myth of extraterrestrial visitants. Beginning in 1947, the great ‘‘flying saucer’’ frame of reference was carefully built up by a long series of spectacular incidents and contacts. The whole structure of these events carefully follows the psychological patterns inherent in the earlier flaps. We were seeing no more—and no fewer—anomalous aerial objects in 1947 than had been seen in 1847. We were simply seeing them in a new way. A new game was being played with us. Small groups of believers quickly sprang up, even though no one bothered to collect and study the hundreds of UFO reports from June-July 1947 to search objectively for the hidden patterns. These believers immediately accepted the extraterrestrial hypothesis, and they spent the next twenty years advocating the idea. Their research followed a singular line: They labored to prove the reliability of witnesses. This meant that if a police officer or pilot observed an unusual object from a great distance, his report was given precedence over the report of a housewife who saw one land in her own backyard. Some of these cults became obsessed with the search for physical evidence. But their criteria for evidence was very strict. Such evidence had to be nonterrestrial. But this was a vicious circle. If a piece of metal fell from a UFO and proved to be ordinary aluminum, The Physical Non-Evidence / 151