John Carlson: Look! Up in the Sky! It’s…Uh-Oh!

A UFO, or alien spaceship, hovers ominously someplace over Muncie. Photo by Nancy Carlson.A UFO, or alien spaceship, hovers ominously someplace over Muncie. Photo by Nancy Carlson.

By John Carlson—

For years I have believed Earth is visited by alien spaceships.

The first time I saw one I was a freshman at Taylor U, parked way out in the country along a lonely stretch of railroad track with my pals Jack and Grapes and a couple other guys. Suddenly I noticed a bright white disk in the sky, slowly cruising back and forth, coming closer and closer. At first, having pointed it out to my buddies, this phenomenon seemed merely intriguing.

But the nearer this UFO approached, the more menacing it became, especially since we’d been sitting out there for hours drinking beer. Were we going to be beamed aboard and transported to Mars, we halfheartedly joked? Or maybe Jupiter? Saturn? Another galaxy?

By the time it was almost upon us, we were about to dash into a nearby cornfield for cover. But right then up on the track, a dinky little railroad trolley with some kind of swinging spotlight mounted on it slowly rolled past. Our criss-crossing “spaceship” had been created by its swinging spotlight casting its circular illumination against a low-hanging cloud deck.

Relieved, we toasted our narrow escape with some more Budweisers. Since that day, how many UFOs have I seen?

OK, none.

Still, it’s a limitless universe. To me it’s hard to imagine that in all those endless light years of space, we’re the sole occupants. In an effort to back up my contention, I can tell you I have spent the last fifty years pondering the works of respected scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan, laying the intellectual groundwork for what started out as a sneaking suspicion.

That is a big lie, however.

My research has mostly been confined to watching shows like “Twilight Zone.”

Nancy and I have been seeing a lot of it on Netflix lately, rewatching episodes from our distant pasts. But while there is no shortage of alien beings on the series, they are mostly your hokey looking “take me to your leader” types. You know what I mean, a smattering of blinking Christmas lights and a mouth like a mail slot, rolling around on vacuum cleaner wheels with metal arms outstretched. Far scarier was the spaceman in “The Thing,” who looked like Mr. Clean. But unlike Mr. Clean, who simply wanted to wipe the spaghetti stains from your kitchen’s backsplash, this dude was so pissed off about crashing his spaceship into the North Pole he wanted to kill you.

Far nicer were the spacemen captured in latter-day classics like “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

The latter being largely based in Muncie, as you’ll recall, it particularly hit home. The pre-filming excitement around City Hall was palpable, as Muncie officials who had previously never acted anything but confused anticipated winning bit parts to give the movie an authentic local feel. In the end, though, Hollywood settled for buying some city police patches. Still, for a year or two after the movie came out, whenever I drove on Cornbread Road, I watched for the headlights of vehicles in my rearview mirror to inexplicably fly over my car and zoom off into space.

The aliens in that movie seemed like nice enough guys, though, assuming you didn’t mind them hauling your tush around the universe for thirty or forty years before returning you to Earth.

As for “E.T.” who wouldn’t want a cool little dude like that around, constantly reminding you to “Phone home!” and lighting your barbecue’s charcoal with his glowing pointer finger?

But a bit later came those space creeps from “Independence Day.” Extremely short-tempered and what could only be described as butt-ugly, their sole redeeming quality was that if given the opportunity, even an actor like Will Smith could kick their tails.

Anyway, in Hollywood’s view, alien spacemen run the gamut from sweethearts to truly nasty individuals, but the spacemen themselves probably couldn’t care less how humans portray them.

The point is, they may really be out there.

Just in case you haven’t been paying attention lately, there’s been something of a sea change in attitudes toward UFOs. As my own earlier experience illustrates, the vast majority of UFOs prove to be explainable. You know, swamp gas and the like. But an increasing number of intelligent people are beginning to admit some sightings are NOT so rationally explainable. Respected shows like “CBS Sunday Morning” and magazines including The New Yorker have recently given credence to these individuals and their beliefs.

Airline and military pilots – folks not usually numbered among our country’s surplus of freaks, geeks and wackos – are a frequent source of these reports, and even stunning video clips. As at least one observer of a UFO’s spectacular flight performance noted, we’d better hope the object pictured was a visiting spaceship. If it wasn’t, somebody else on our planet makes way more impressive flying machines than we do.

So until proven otherwise, I’m casting my lot with the believers, if for no other reason than it’s fun to think there is mysterious stuff out there we humans know nothing about.

Would I like to be abducted by space aliens myself?

That would depend on if they could also abduct me some Budweisers.

 

 


John’s weekly columns are sponsored by Beasley & Gilkison, Muncie’s trusted attorneys for over 120 years.

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A former longtime feature writer and columnist for The Star Press in Muncie, Indiana, John Carlson is a storyteller with an unflagging appreciation for the wonderful people of East Central Indiana and the tales of their lives, be they funny, poignant, inspirational or all three.  John’s columns appear on MuncieJournal.com every Friday.