Early man had our intelligence and our imagination, but survival seemed to keep him busy and he had no schools, so most of his knowledge was accumulated observations he made up explanations for.

In the night sky, the sun, the moon and the stars became his clock, his calendar and a crude compass to guide him. He did not fear these things because they moved both predictably and slowly.

His night sky probably included little moving lights he couldn’t understand or use. No matter. They were just another mystery among many. We find occasional references in folklore, legends and myths.

Until the 20th century and the Wright brothers, the sky was out of reach. Two world wars and the world’s peaceful transportation needs put man permanently in the sky.

A strange invasion began which continues today. The little moving lights acquired shape. During World War II, Allied fighter pilots reported being tracked, but not engaged, by strange, saucer-shaped craft they nick-named “foo fighters.”

Soon there were many sightings. The official name, “flying saucers,” came from a businessman named Kenneth Arnold about a sighting near Mount Rainier in 1947.

We began to sense the invasion. The world was being invaded, all right, and in waves that continue today, but not by little green men, but by floods of information about something called “flying saucers,” an extremely controversial subject.

The first wave came from those who may have seen something. A second wave resulted from those who didn’t want to be left out and “saw” something too.

A third wave was storytellers. Stories grow. Soon added to factual reports were abductions, secret bases underground, secret worldwide societies, and massive cover-up by the government and the military.

The fourth wave were authors and film makers. The movie “ET” was my favorite. Extraterrestrial entities were very profitable, especially when fictionalized.

One writer who does not fit the pattern is Whitley Strieber, a writer of horror stories and speculative fiction about the end of the world. His ”Communion,” was a non-fiction account of his experiences on December 26, 1985, when Strieber reportedly was abducted from his cabin in upstate New York by non-human beings,“visitors,” he called them. When challenged whether his account was true, he submitted to a lie detector test. And passed. He was telling the truth.

We are left in stasis. Those who believe match those who don’t, in force if not in volume. Remember the old saying, “Don’t believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see”? We are hearing plenty, if questionable. The internet is both a hotbed of information and a source that, by nature, is not always dependable.

It’s hard to take a position. I think flying saucers do exist as something, but we know nothing for sure, Maybe it doesn’t matter. We need to be glad that whatever they are, they get our minds off other problems.

We can’t believe without evidence. What evidence can we accept? Can we really accept the notion that the U.S. Government can keep secrets this long? Why doesn’t the Smithsonian Institute have a display of saucers?

Even bigger questions remain, like what role our government has had. Who can we believe?

Should it matter, since saucers haven’t done anything destructive so far?

I do have a couple of experiences, unexplained lights in a sky with no reported aircraft, and a hovering craft that had a circle of windows where a chopper blade should have been. Aliens came, they saw, but they did not conquer. Weren’t we important enough? I feel left out and even a little disappointed.

What is coming next, brought to you by a world ranging from the curious, to the scientists, the thrill seekers, wannabes, would-be authors, and the general public,all with nothing better to do? You never know.

This is the stuff to sit around a campfire with a few friends and discuss. Try not to watch the night sky. Someone or something might be watching you back, and it is a long way home after the fire goes out.