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by themodelplumber 1090 days ago
I did a bit of first-hand UFO account investigation for a while. Lots of people wanted to share their experiences as a narrative that they could control. Unfortunately when I started with a set of questions I had been working on to help me gather info, many of those same people would refuse to discuss further or wouldn't complete the questions.

Eventually I had to conclude that, among other things, a lot of folks are unconsciously concerned about the magic of the experience being taken away. (But maybe they don't realize it unless someone brings up that specific question, and until then they are pretty fiercely protective about what they saw.)

And one time I myself was out for a walk in the middle of the day, and saw what appeared to be a totally legit UFO in the distance. Well that's pretty wild, I thought. A real shape-shifter! A nearby contractor shouted, "am I the only one seeing this sh*t" and I was like "nope" and got out my 25x zoom camera to gather direct evidence!

Result: At high zoom it was obviously wedding-style white balloons in a bundle, resembling a morphing UFO.

I told the other guy what it was, and BOOM the magic in the air was gone. He looked SO disappointed, and I had to admit I felt that way too. By the time I got home I had half convinced myself never to do that again!

While I still leave room for there to be UAPs from wherever, IMO there are just tons and tons of different experiences with so many different phenomena. And most discussions are unfortunately going to hover around this real-vs-made-up dichotomy that's also just super unhelpful.

1 comments

>>But maybe they don't realize it unless someone brings up that specific question

Valid take you've got, I think.

What were some of these questions?

There were a bunch, including objective descriptions, day of the week, time of day, and also subjective things like how had life changed recently. Plus things like how long had you been living in the area / driving the vehicle you saw it from if applicable.