‘After the Flying Saucers Came’ asks why we think UFOs are aliens A historian writes on the social impact of the phenomenon. By on November 7, 2025 In recent years, there’s been an increased call for academic works chronicling the history of American belief in the paranormal, partly to account for the continued public fascination in such topics as ghosts , cryptids , and UFO s. This has resulted in some stellar books like Joseph Laycock and Eric Harrelson’s The Exorcist Effect (2023), along with less outstanding contributions like Jeffery Kripal’s Mutants and Mystics (2011). Greg Eghigian’s After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon (Oxford University Press, 2024) represents a middle path. This is a book that’s rich in data, but knowingly hampered by the limitations of its chosen methodology. As a historian, Eghigian’s been trained to only accept verifiable reports from credible sources, which is a tall order when writing about UFOs. Eghigian manages to circumvent that prerequisite by choosing not to assess the validity of the UFO phenomenon itself. While committed to taking the accounts of UFO eyewitnesses, contactees, and abductees seriously, Eghigian considers the explanations offered by both ufologists and skeptics as equally suspect. Instead, Eghigian’s stated objective is to learn why and how the claim that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft took hold as the most popular explanation for the phenomenon. This is a fine thesis, but unfortunately After the Flying Saucers Came’s search for answers is hindered by its need for credible sources. Eghigian correctly notes that the first person to make a sustained argument for UFOs as alien vehicles was Charles Fort. One would imagine this would lead him to dig into Fort’s biography, writings, and the cultural context in which he worked, but Eghigian dismisses Fort with only a few sentences. Why? Because Fort was a consonant bullsh*t artist who openly reveled in the blurring of fact and fiction. So, not a credible source. Other notable early figures in the history of ufology receive similarly short shrift from After the Flying Saucers Came. Fate magazine founder Ray Palmer, once called “the man who invented flying saucers;” Donald Keyhoe: director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP); Gray Barker, who cultivated the myth of the Men in Black ; and Swiss hotelier Erich von Däniken , author of the bestselling “ancient aliens” screed, Chariots of the Gods? — all are found lacking credibility by Eghigian. Eghigian does finally find his accredited experts in the form of physicist Edward Condon’s “ The UFO Project ,” based out of the University of Colorado at Boulder in the 1960s. But his summary dismissal of so many prominent figures in the history of ufology also means that readers are more than halfway through After the Flying Saucers Came’s 400 pages before the book really gets going. Considering Condon’s notoriously cynical attitude toward UFOs, one might start to suspect that Eghigian is really a debunker in the guise of an objective scholar. However, he shows absolutely no partiality to prominent UFO skeptics like Donald Menzel and Philip J. Klass, both of whom he characterizes as self-righteous killjoys. In fact, After the Flying Saucers Came argues the UFO believers and skeptics are mirror images of each other. Both groups tend to be dominated by white men who are highly educated, but don’t operate within the traditional confines of academia. Therefore, both groups are composed of amateurs rather than experts and, as a result, both are just as likely to proffer pseudoscientific explanations (e.g. swamp gas , ball lightning , earthquake lights for skeptics) for the phenomenon. When such explanations fail, then ridicule, ad hominem attacks, and bullying are not uncommon. Likewise, Eghigian says, both groups are equally prone to infighting, splintering, and making grandiose predictions (i.e., “ disclosure ” for believers, and the death of public interest in UFOs for skeptics). The major difference Eghigian sees between UFO believers and skeptics is their attitude toward authority, especially scientific authority. UFO believers tend to be distrusting of authority and critical of scientists. When confronted by either, they quickly fall back on conspiracy theories . Skeptics on the other hand, he says, have a view of science that frequently crosses over from deep admiration into an almost authoritarian reverence. The skeptic versus believer dynamic threatened the integrity of Condon’s UFO Project, as the researchers quickly found themselves dividing up and choosing sides. After the Flying Saucers Came is forced to admit that, in the end, Condon’s highly credentialed UFO Project had little impact on the public perception of UFOs. For one, few bothered to read the final 900+ page “Condon report,” and instead turned to more dubious sources like Air Force disinformation agent Richard Doty, unethical hypnotist David Jacobs , artist-turned-alien abduction therapist Budd Hopkins, Harvard psychiatrist-turned-New Age guru John Mack , and “itinerant American investigator of the uncanny” John Keel , the heir apparent of Charles Fort. Further, the Condon report doesn’t help Eghigian answer his central question about the prevalence of the extraterrestrial hypothesis as an explanation for UFOs, since the report’s conclusion was that most UFO sightings have mundane explanations. In his afterword, Eghigian asserts that After the Flying Saucers Came is only the second book on the UFO phenomenon to be written by a historian, and the reason for this is that UFOs, in the end, are not historical objects. In fact, he muses, it’s “unclear whether [UFOs] can even be called objects,” because they possess a “nebulous nature” in which they are simultaneously “a thing and a theory at the same time.” Our views about UFOs as extraterrestrial spacecraft have not been informed by empirical evidence and expert testimony, but through a kind of improvisational mythmaking which “encourages storytelling (by the witness) and story-making (by the [UFO] investigator).” Ultimately, After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon can offer no explanations, but stands as a rich assemblage of data, which future scholars in fields more apt to handle the mystery of UFOs – folklore, religious studies, psychology , literary theory, etc. — would be wise to mine. AIPT Science is co-presented by AIPT and the New York City Skeptics . In this article: UFOs Source: https://aiptcomics.com/2025/11/07/after-the-flying-saucers-came-ufos-uap/