From UFOs to drones, the US fascination with – and fear of – ‘anomalous detections’
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A first-of-its-kind public archive of UFO records opens in New Mexico as New Jersey is gripped by drone panic. A widespread panic about drones or other unknown low-flying objects has gripped New Jersey in recent days, but many other parts of the US remain cheerfully gripped by another very American mystery in the skies that has had a modern resurgence of interest: UFOs.
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At the newly opened National UFO Historical Records Center – an array of beige buildings on the grounds of the Martin Luther King Jr elementary school in Rio Rancho, New Mexico – records detailing unexplained aerial objects and public fears around them fill literally dozens of filing cabinets.
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For director David Marler, this first-of-its-kind public archive of historical UFO records is the culmination of a lifelong interest in and investigation of UFOs – or, as the military now prefers to designate, UAPs: unidentified anomalous phenomena.
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It arrives at an opportune moment: in recent years, congressional and Senate hearings have thrust the subject – which rises and falls in public attention, often at times of national or political insecurity – back into the spotlight. Marler’s collection of UFO books, journals, magazines, newspapers, microfilm, audio recordings and case files from the last 75 years is impressive, and includes files from the earliest US air force studies – Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book – as well as from the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (once based in Alamogordo, three-and-a-half hours away) and the UFO Research Committee of Akron, Ohio.
