At What Age Did You Become Interested in UFOs?

[erik5387]

Originally Posted by hopeful skeptic

I admire those researchers - Stanton Friedman comes to mind - who admit to never having seen a UFO. I think some folks play up that angle as though it's some kind of prequisite for interest in ufology.

I don't know how I'd react if I saw one. I suppose it would depend on the circumstances of the sighting.

I honestly don't know what I would do if I saw one either, my first reaction I think would probably be to run. To this day my brother talks of how scared seeing a UFO made him (and this is a kid that just got back from two consecutive years in Iraq). Makes me think I wouldnt ever want to see one up close.

[Rick Deckard]

Originally Posted by erik5387

I honestly don't know what I would do if I saw one either, my first reaction I think would probably be to run. To this day my brother talks of how scared seeing a UFO made him (and this is a kid that just got back from two consecutive years in Iraq). Makes me think I wouldn't ever want to see one up close.

My brother saw a group of UFOs last year flying over Leeds City centre - he was with a work colleague who also saw them. He described them to me as a group of "black sea-mines" orbiting each other in formation as they streaked across the sky.

After the sighting they went back to work and never mentioned it again. I find that a strange reaction.

[Scully]

Good question.

When I had my close encounter.
NOTHING prepared me for that.
It was with several neighbours back in 1975 out in a rural area of North America. It was accompanied by electromagnetic phenomena that affected nearby animals, compasses, and battery operated devices. It shook us all up.
I started reading as many books on ufos as I could get my hands on because that night had turned my life upside down.
It was frightening and fascinating at the same time.
I wanted more.

I think that was the beginning of the indoctrination. It's like a drug. You want more but you never get anywhere. At the very least I was relieved others had had such experiences. At the very most, it was way too much to integrate and raised more questions than it answered. I began to have nightmares. One that I remember vividly were ufos flying low in an urban area, blasting away at condominiums. And I remember fleeing. I never did figure out if they were alien or military.

I was afraid to go near windows in the dark, thinking an alien might be peeking in on me. I finally realized that reading about them, and being fearful was a negative experience. I have never read any of Bud Hopkins or Whitley Striebers books because I thought that would contaminate my experiences (and there were more than one).

But I have read [i]volumes[i] on them, and have finally come back to the same place where I started. LOL Except for the fact [i]I have finally integrated the "experience"[i]. The experience was a shock to my nervous system, and with subsequent events, I have become quite psychic, and have learned to access those time travel lines.

THAT is where the answer lies.

[AJ38]

I've been interested since before I can remember, dont know why,as I dont think I've ever seen a UFO. I dont think kids are too interested anymore as there are so many other things to keep them occupied,ie drinking Lambrini on the street corner, lol.

[idontunderstand]

I think my mother first got me interested. Her father was an engineer at a major British aircraft manufacturing place. He was a very intelligent and sensitive man, and had always expressed an interest in them.

I think she must of told me about him when I was a small child, and i thought it was cool so to speak. Also my mothers nan was a medium, so I think an alternative view was there from an early age.

Cheers!

[Tony2007]

I think I was four. I remember sitting out in the backyard of my friend's house at the time and watching the sky at night. We had just watched "The Last Starfighter" and probably were suffering from over-active imaginations, but we kept pointing to moving lights in the sky and going, "Look! There's one!"

After that I had a mild interest. I loved sci-fi and everything, and I figured that we weren't all alone in the universe.

I didn't really get into UFOs seriously until last year when I met someone who, afterwards, made me think that he wasn't from the "neighborhood" if you know what I mean. I read some books, and got clued into the theory of ETs living on Earth amongst the populus. Once I read that, something just clicked, and I started getting the impression that I should search for them.

[givinguptheghost]

I'm nineteen now, but I grew up playing videogames and watching animated and animatronic movies and playing with the internet as it began to explode in popularity and complexity, and I just grew up knowing that aliens obviously existed somewhere. At first I was indoctrinated in Christianity by my parents, but never really got into it, because there was no reasoning behind so much of it, and I'm always a skeptic, and I always demand proof. I never really thought earth was being visited, although I did believe they existed somewhere, and now its obvious that many and perhaps most scientifically oriented individuals also believe that its incredibly unlikely that we are alone in such an enormous universe. Nothing 'woo-woo' about that.

Its not very much of a stretch to believe that they are coming here. Or just passing by. You don't need to get spiritualism and religion involved to understand the presence [although a lot of people try to connect them anyway, which needless to say, tends only to detract from the credability, even if they were right, which I have no idea about], its all very much within science, although science is a living thing and would have to adapt and grow to use our mathematics to explain the alien technology, which is just something inevitable. All of that is very much possible, dare I say its not even paranormal like spirits and ghosts, and prophecies. Sure, its outside of the typical human experience, thus not normal, but its not exactly supernatural.

I saw the nasa tether/ufo footage by accident, someone on a game forum posted a link to them in the off topic section, and I clicked the google video link. Well, I had seen lots of TV broadcasted shows on paranormal stuff on the science channel, the history channel, the travel channel, and the national geographic channel, but had never seen many of the most compelling footage and testimony, which I found mostly on google video and you tube. It was then, at age 18, when I actually started to believe that they might actually be coming here. I have never seen anything paranormal, not a thing, and all I want to do is know the truth about this stuff, even if its not what I want to hear.

I think a lot of people my age aren't as compelled to DO anything about this subject, but are much more apt to accept the possibilities without ridicule, and to look into it through the internet. If we had another roswell, I have little doubt that we could get much more opened up to the public, just because of the UFO buildup from the many years since the first roswell, and the wonderful abilities of the internet [given that it hasn't been compromised by governmental laws]. Its no more rediculous than any religion, and I think as we become more educated as teens about technology and the use of it, and our past, theres no reason for us to think this is any less real than Jesus, in fact it probably has more evidence.

[IsaacKoi]

Originally Posted by Rick Deckard

Why is it that teenagers no longer seem to get involved in looking for UFOs, as we did when we were young? Your ideas are welcomed, and we'd like to also hear from those under 21, if they're listening.

Allan Hendry quotes the following amusing letter to the Center for UFO Studies:

"Dear Sirs: I'm twelve years old and have been investigating UFOs for three years..."

Quoted by Allan Hendry in his "The UFO Handbook" (1979) at page 270 (in Chapter 21) of the Sphere softback edition.

Kind Regards,

Isaac

[Moshi Dayan]

I think I was born interested in anything which would fly.
Things exceeding our best achievements in flight, plus being under the control of beings we knew nothing about fascinated me from my first exposure to the idea of such things.
We lived in an area where Fighter Jets often went supersonic chasing "bogies".
I learned to look ahead of the Jets, and saw some pretty anomolous objects.
The jets couldn't close on them at all, and what ever was flying those things seemed to enjoy flying literal circles around our fastest fighters.
When bored in class (always...I loved tests, but I finished way ahead of the other kids...plenty of time to get bored)
Other kids drew hotrods, or things which seemed to spring from the delightfully twisted mind of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth.
I drew aircraft.
I sweated the details.
I was attempting photo-realism in monochrome.
At our school we got a little newspaper every week, it was called the "Weekly Reader".
It had lot's of interesting things in it...but not much about aircraft.
Then it ran a story about Project Bluebook. I was hooked.
You could order books from a list in the Weekly Reader.
The first book I ever Bought was Project Bluebook.
Not only was the book a major disappointment to a kid hoping for an alien invasion...it was a pack of lies.
Later I bought Project Grudge, still later The Condon Report.
I lost all confidence in "experts".
Then I learned about agendas, and data filtering, so I could read things "backwards" first to find the authors prejudice or slant, then I'd inhale the stated premise, spit out the lies, and sculpt my own opinion.
I think I was 8 or 9 when I learned about disinfo.
I was 4 or 5 when I became aware of arial lights, beer can shaped objects, sardine can shaped objects, and greasy looking luminous orange globes.
My first purchased book taught me that one cannot trust reports written by "experts" at the direction of the government.
I began to question authority...which got me sent off to military school.
The Major tried to force me to not concern myself with things "we just can't prove exist".
He refused to listen about the things I'd seen, he stifled my critique of government sponsored "studies".
My interest was deeply ingrained.
Outdoors in dark sky conditions with one of my early telescopes I looked to the heavens.
And felt homesick.
Not for my Fathers house; for my home in the infinity I saw in the star spangled skies.
I suspect many of us here have felt that pange of longing when looking into the night sky.
I like that.

[pixelsmith]

Brad Steiger (Happy 71st Birthday!) was the one who got me interested in UFO's at about 6 years of age.