Why I started investigating UFOs
I'll give you a hint: it has to do with the media
I was sitting on the train, on my way home from work, and I remember the rush I felt when I saw the news story. I remember the excitement: the Department of Defense, aka the Pentagon, had officially released videos of unidentified flying objects. It was the beginning of spring, so, if I remember well, darkness had already fallen upon Denmark by the time I was heading home and it was still relatively cold outside the train windows. We were flying through the night and I was in awe: according to the article, the Pentagon had admitted that they do not know what we’re seeing in the videos and thus the objects remain truly unidentified — real UFOs. This article was published by DR, the largest national news media outlet in Denmark, so a piece about UFOs was definitely unexpected — this also gave a certain credibility to the story from the get-go.
When the wonder hits you
“What?! Can this be real?” I thought to myself. “This is the Department of Defense of the United States — the largest military superpower in the world. Are they really seeing things that they can’t explain?” Credibility was building and the conclusion made my mental jaws drop: UFOs are real. I looked out into the night, city lights rushing by, and I thought: if truly unidentified objects exist… then this must mean… that perhaps… aliens exist as well.
Anyone who has ever seriously considered the idea that alien spaceships might be visiting Earth knows that the rush of excitement, that dose of wonder is pretty powerful. It’s truly an amazing possibility. But my train arrived, I went home and I haven’t thought much about UFOs for months afterwards.
Enter the professor and the pilot
Several months later, I read another article, this time about a Danish podcast that was going to investigate the UFO phenomenon. One of the hosts of the podcast is an astrophysicist and a professor at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. The podcast’s publisher is DR. Some heavy hitters here.
In the second episode of the podcast, the two hosts sit down with a retired fighter pilot to examine the videos released by the Pentagon — since these are recordings of cockpit instrumentation displays from US Navy fighter jets. The retired fighter pilot concludes that he has never seen anything like these videos, and that he has no explanations to offer. When I heard that podcast, my mind was blown once more — it was then that I realised, I need to investigate UFOs myself. This topic is way too exciting for me to stay out of it.
The influence of prestige
Let’s stop for a second here and take note of how the media and its prestige played a significant role in making me believe that something amazing might truly be behind the phenomenon. Had I read about these things in a UFO magazine, my reaction would have probably been different. But this was one of Denmark’s largest media outlets taking UFOs seriously.
And it’s not just the media: the prestige of academics, pilots, military officials and politicians lends a lot of credibility to the topic. If the astrophysics professor takes it seriously, and if the pilot can’t tell what the objects are, there must be something to it. If the Pentagon can’t identify the objects either, something truly strange has to be going on here… right?
A search for the truth
In any case, I got the UFO fever and I decided I wanted to make videos about my investigation into the topic. I had a camera, I had a drone and I had a plan. This plan is what I lay down in the first episode I recorded. I found a little hill at the outskirts of a Danish city and I walked around with my camera, recording the different segments with different backgrounds. You can watch this introductory video at the end of the article.
My main goal is simple: figure out the truth behind the UFO mystery. What’s behind these videos, the many UFO sightings and the tales of alien abduction? Are aliens truly visiting us? The usual questions that drive so many UFO enthusiasts. However, I was also determined to do it in a rigorously journalistic manner, meaning that I was really looking for the truth — whether that confirms the extraterrestrial hypothesis or not. I was not going to lie or ignore facts if I found out that something wasn’t what I hoped it to be — that is, aliens or time travellers or interdimensional beings.
I started my investigation as a video series, but after a few episodes I decided I wanted to move it into the realm of the written word. Into this blog. Thus, I will publish all the videos embedded in blog posts like this, after which I’ll continue my investigation in purely written form. Thanks for reading this first instalment and I hope you’ll tag along for the entire ride — it’s gonna be an interesting one.
The Pentagon UFO videos:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos
The Danish podcast investigating UFOs:
