You Could Feel The Sky

Twentieth Century Fox (suck it, Murdoch)

The past few weeks I've been starting work whilst it's still dark and stood at my window waiting for my lift. The first day I was staring out toward the hills in the distance and a light appeared on the limb and grew brighter and brighter moving right until quickly fading. Whilst I wandered what I had seen, the same phenomenon repeated itself and then I realised I was watching the headlights of cars on the road along the hillside. Similarly, the first time I saw an Iridium satellite in the sky I wanted to believe it was something supernatural, but by actually being educated in my observation I knew it was only a communications dish catching the sun over the horizon. As someone who would like to see evidence of extraterrestrial life or of the paranormal, is it not odd that I've never seen an aerial phenomenon that I was unable to identify? I've got Mulder's I Want To Believe poster on my wall for more than just X-Files fandom. Most UFO reports really are of Venus refracted through swamp gas, because most people can't identify the brightest planet in the sky.

That said, I did once see something whilst out on delivery that I didn't have time to investigate and instead had to make an educated guess. On a large plantpot at a door I noticed what resembled so-called 'Star Jelly' - like purplish frogspawn about the size of an spread adult hand. That was actually my first guess - that it was regurgitated frogspawn from a Seagull or other bird as the riverside was less than 50m away. The second option was that it was a fungus or other organism blooming in the damp conditions from recent rainfall. Had all the rational explanations been expended, then yes it would leave something supernatural, but they hadn't. So much of the purported unexplained is in fact ignorance when not outright fantasy. If you don't think ignorance is dangerous, look at the belief in the virgin-cure for AIDS.

The night is often the setting for mystery and horror because our primary sense of vision is nigh useless in the dark. Darkness itself can invoke apprehension, which is why children's night-lights exist. I used to have problems falling asleep until quite recently when I started to investigate dreaming. I had extremely fragmentary memories of hearing explosive noises or screaming in the middle of the night as well as other random noises when trying to fall asleep. For some time I resorted to listening to music to try to block out anything I might hear while drifting off. When I started researching sleep I came across auditory hallucinations and 'exploding head syndrome' that instantly swept away the anxiety. Educated in the origin of the sounds, I can happily sleep and in fact learn to use those sounds to realise when I'm dreaming.

Just as UFO sightings largely result from failure to recognise natural objects, UFO abductions cases likely result from sleep paralysis and night terrors rather than aliens. That the explanation for those used to be demons and witches tells you old folklore dies hard.

It's been said that fear of the unknown is an irrational response to the excesses of the imagination.
- Mulder (Irresistible, X-Files S2)

They're fictional creatures, Mulder. Folktales born out of some collective fear of the unknown.
- Scully, (Quagmire, X-Files S3)

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