Saucerology

Came across this word today on CSICOP’s website … LOVE IT!

For the record, I don’t believe in UFOs and alien abduction and blah blah blah.  But I am madly in love with the whole sociological, “American mythology” thing, that combination of horror and camp that’s become part of our cultural makeup.  Ever since I was a kid I ate it all up.  Books, In Search of, all those 50s sci-fi flicks.  And especially so since that weird silent object I saw floating over me one night a long, long time ago.

But “Saucerology” – that’s one cool word.  Can I be a saucerologist?  Part-time, amateur?  Even if I’m not convinced big-headed midgets with black almond eyes from Zeta Reticuli are voyaging on a regular basis hundreds of light years to fertilize our women?  Where does one go to get accredited in Saucerology?  How long is the study to become a saucerologist?  I want to be one. 

Hopper: Saucerologist.

From a cultural-historical perspective, of course.  Flying Saucer stories, I find, are the best kind of campfire stories.

The scariest ones, ones that kept me up at night when I was a kid?

- The Hopkinsville, Kentucky alien “attack” on a farmhouse

- The Flatwoods Monster

- The Travis Walton abduction

- The Betty Andreason abduction

Plus, a whole lot of others just plain creepy and eerie (the “Lubbock Lights”, the Mothman, cattle mutilation, the Allegheny abduction, Roswell conspiracy theories, etc, etc, etc).  My problem – and, perhaps, every amateur saucerologist’s – is that while my two little girls are getting too old to appreciate the creepy and eerie elements of these stories, I still want them to get a good night’s sleep.  You know, not waking the entire house up shrieking at the top of their lungs.

Anyway,

SAUCEROLOGY!