Dont Be Afraid

A while back I blogged about UFO hero J. Allen Hynek ("J. Allen Hynek," 11/29/2011), and alluded to the possibility of a book project. It turns out no writer has ever done a decent job documenting the late Dr. Hynek's career as a UFO researcher, and it seemed there might be an opportunity for me to pursue this project.Since that posting, I have had the pleasure of talking with one of Dr. Hynek's sons, and he has given me his blessing to put together a book proposal. Pretty damned decent of him, if you ask me. I'm now working with a literary agent to develop the project, and so I'm studying up on Dr. Hynek's work. My starting point is the good doctor's seminal book "Night Seige: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings," co-written with Philip J. Imbrogno and Bob Pratt.I'm about 1/3 of the way into the book, and the events it describes are quite amazing... For a period of over three years in the mid-1980's, hundreds of residents living in the Hudson River valley north of New York City saw a huge V-shaped or triangular flying craft hovering over highways and reservoirs, moving slowly through the sky as if it wanted to be seen...The dozens of eye-witness accounts documented in the book are so consistent the repetitiveness of it all starts to become boring. But that's precisely what makes the events so amazing. Everyone describes the same object behaving the same way... Policemen, pilots, engineers, teachers and housewives all saw the same damn thing, and all swear it was not an airplane or a group of ultralight aircraft flying in formation (that was "the authorities'" favorite explanation). It was quite possibly the greatest mass UFO sighting in history, but it got almost no play in the media, and remains largely unknown. Something's seriously wrong there.As I said, I'm not far into the book, so I'm sure I'll have a lot to report by the time I'm done. For now, though, there is one supremely creepy aspect of the book that has really grabbed me...In sighting after sighting, the witness reports that he or she wished the object would come closer... and then regretted it."I thought to myself, 'I wish it would come closer so I could get a better look at it,'" one witness reported, "and as soon as that thought went through my mind, the object began to descend and head straight for my car."The witness reported to the authors that as the object approached his car he became "thoroughly frightened and started to honk his car's horn to scare it away. When that didn't work he screamed at it to leave, and that's when he felt a communication from the object telling him not to be afraid.I'm sure that worked.