Aliens: fact or fiction?

This is not a logical look into the UFO phenomenon using a scientific attitude. UFO's and alien encounters are a phenomena that science at this point can't get a grip on. However one cannot deny that it is a phenomena; the question is more about it's explanation that it's actual existence. There is no denying that people see inexplicable lights in the sky and have experience of being kidnapped by cosmic visitors. Many explanations for these various phenomena have been provided by scientist and public officials, but often they seem even more ridiculous than alien phenomena - for example, the explanation of UFO's by the Air Force as being clouds formed by swamp gas, or the unsatisfactory explanation of alien abductions as sleep paralysis. There is something going on, and it's something eerie.

My fascination with the UFO Phenomenon has lasted almost my entire life. At this point I'd say it's at a low, but there are faint traces of it in my thoughts that I feel a need to explain them. Space in general was a topic that I obsessed over as a child, so my particular need to learn about every facet of man's supposed encounter with extraterrestrial beings seems to be expected. Memories of this time period are very disjointed and sparse, but I have certain recollections that still affect me quite a bit.

For example at one point I had thought I was abducted by aliens - an idea that seems ridiculous today, but seemed very real to me as a child. I got out of bed to use the bathroom, saw an alien (of the 'grey' variety) and then woke up the next morning. It was strange, but so long ago I have trouble believing it even happened. Ever since then UFOs were an object of intense fascination. I read everything I could on the internet, which was when I first started to use it. Everything about UFOs, fascinated, yet terrified me.

I read more and more about about alien abductions, close encounters, ancient astronauts, and all kinds of kooky and whacked out phenomena that made my parents think I was a lunatic. I got yelled at by a teacher for talking about Roswell because I was apparently scaring my classmates, and was punished with any mention of 'spacemen' or 'alien invasions'. It was my thing - my obsession, my hobby. I wanted to be an expert on UFOs. This continued for a while. But fear kept me from delving too far.

I was just as terrified by 'the greys' and their craft as I was fascinated. That classic image of their faces - with the cold black slanted eyes and clammy skin - haunted me. Whenever I saw it a jolt of fear would rush down my spine. It made it so that when I watched documentaries on the topic or visited webpages I would have to look in a state of absolute fear.

Nightmares were also clouded with aliens. Sometimes I had to run from them because they lived in my closet, sometimes they were the anchors on news channels, sometimes their crafts parked in my backyard. It was the product of an imagination that wasn't taught restraint. There were occasions when I'd wake up and think the aliens were right by my bed, only to wake up again finding myself rolled in a paranoid fetal position. My subconscious mind was haunted by space aliens. To some extent they still are.

My next period of UFO fixation occurred in the earliest years of my teenage life. I had developed much better logic and reasoning skills and had learned about the scientific method. Questioning religion and god became ordinary things for me to do. And for some strange reason my UFO obsession was returning. I was still terrified, but now I had a grasp on it. The idea of sentient beings from other planets watching over our cities and farms and simple suburban communities didn't seem right. It freaked me out in a philosophical sense. When I was younger, I was more afraid of being the victim of an alien encounter. By now I was just bothered by the very idea that those kind of things even happened.

Essentially I didn't want to believe in aliens. I convinced myself that they were all hoaxes, natural phenomena, the products of minds gone astray. Doing as much research possible, wasting my summer reading books and webpages, I found ways to convince myself that the greys weren't real. It only lasted for so long. Around the same time I stopped believing in god and I started to believe in aliens. For some reason it seemed impossible not to think something beyond Earth was going on. It's hard to explain exactly. I wanted to think god was real, and I wanted to think that Earth was for humans and that no one smarter that us was coming down from the skies and messing around with us.

Now it seems like UFO's are a topic that I rarely devote time and research too. They cross my mind and I think "whoa, that's kinda strange". But I suppose it's because my years of obsessions taught me one thing - in the world of a fringe topic like UFOs, it's impossible to separate the lunatics from those legitimately interested in the truth. They both mingle and often they all come out the same. Sometimes they are the same. With a topic as bizarre and mysterious as UFOs, filled with stories and theories that sit firmly outside the mainstream media as forms of urban legends that have yet to be contested it's hard to tell what is real and what is not.

As of now I don't have a firm stance on UFOs. I don't think there's enough information to know exactly what the saucers over Mexico City were, or what certain police officers reported seeing that one New York City night, or what kind of psychological phenomenon is going on when people report alien abductions. I acknowledge the existence of this phenomena, but I also acknowledge that it's dealing with the unknowable, and one can only venture so far into the unknowable without losing it.