From the Boston "Herald", 8/1/02 page 57
Come Back- New England deserves a spot on alien visitors' itinerary
Phoning E.T.: Don't you like us anymore?
Back in the 1960s, space aliens visited New England on a regular basis. At least, it seemed that way, judging from the numerous sightings of strange lights in the sky, close encounters and the first - and most famous - alien abduction case.
But, alas, these days our fickle, silver-skinned, narrow-eyed, notoriously camera-shy visitors appear to be hovering elsewhere. Perhaps they can't take the congestion, the unpredictable weather, the proliferation of video recorders or the annual Red Sox heartbreak.
Tomorrow's opening of the movie ``Signs'' - in which strange designs pressed into a Pennsylvania field convince Mel Gibson of an impending alien invasion - is another reminder that we're no longer popular with the not-ready-for-prime-directive players. Crop circles, the focus of ``Signs,'' have never, with one possible exception, been found in New England even though they are quite popular in England, just a warp-drive jump away.
Nor has New England experienced the bizarre cattle mutilations reported in the West and Midwest and just this year in Argentina. Maybe aliens prefer barbecues to clam bakes.
We haven't had sightings of black helicopters, and the only men in black are in the movie theater. Again.
Of course, we do have John Mack, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and Harvard University psychiatrist who concluded in his highly publicized 1994 book ``Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens'' that alien abductions were real. But since that 1995 unpleasantness with a Harvard oversight committee and a second book, ``Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters,'' Mack has retreated to academia.
It didn't used to be this way.
In September 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving through New Hampshire's White Mountains when they saw bright lights in the sky and subsequently discovered they had ``lost time.'' Under hypnosis, they recalled being taken aboard a spacecraft, examined and released. Their ``medical examination'' and their descriptions of hairless, gray-skinned aliens preceded (and many insist influenced) hundreds of similar tales.
Another classic UFO sighting happened near New Hampshire's Pease Air Force Base in 1965, when a large number of people, including two police officers, saw glowing objects in the sky. Writer John Fuller described the events in his bestseller ``Incident at Exeter,'' which was a textbook example of the skeptic turned believer. Fuller had gone to investigate the New Hampshire reports on a lark, but briefly glimpsed one of the strange lights himself.
Fuller went on to write the 1966 book ``The Interrupted Journey,'' about the Hills. The couple's case also has inspired a TV movie.
One of the more famous UFO photos was taken on July 16, 1952, in New England, when a seaman on duty at the Salem Coast Guard Station saw four lights in the sky. He took a single photo of them through the window of his office. Some have attributed the lights to window reflections. See for yourself under ``Historical Sightings'' at the Web site of the Massachusetts chapter of the Mutual UFO Network (members.aol.com/MassMUFON).
But Boston's connection with the beyond goes even further back. One of the first, if not the first, recorded sighting of a UFO in North America occurred in Massachusetts in the 17th century, according to MUFON.
In 1638 or 1639, three men in a boat on a river in Boston saw a bright light in the sky that ``flamed up'' as it hovered. The men said the light moved as ``swift as an arrow'' and one dutifully reported the sighting to Gov. John Winthrop, who noted that others also had seen the light.
As for crop circles, the only documented example reportedly occurred around Aug. 20, 1993, in Amherst. According to an e-mail from Christopher Pittman, historian of the Massachusetts MUFON chapter, a 10-foot-high isosceles triangle of flattened vegetation was found in a bed of ferns among some trees. ``The ferns, which were a foot and a half high, had all been flattened in the same direction,'' Pittman wrote. ``Like many crop circles, this formation was investigated and no explanation was determined.'' So aliens aren't entirely ignoring New England, nor we them. Local sightings continue: Check out the latest by location or date at www.geocities.com/Area51/Nova/8874/ufoartls.html. Spencer Collier, a Cambridge computer technician, has organized the New England Studies of Unidentified Flying Objects Investigative Group at www.nesufoig.com.
Is New England off the alien radar because we don't have large, flat wheat and corn fields conducive to circle-making? Well, we do have miles and miles of beaches. If we can't have crop circles, we could have sand circles. For inspiration, aliens should check circles.orcon.net.nz/indexc.html for examples of elaborate sand circles created by an enterprising earthling.
And we've got BEER! Boston-based Harpoon puts out the tasty ``UFO Hefeweizen,'' which goes well with lobster and clam strips. Betcha Planet Zergon doesn't have that.
So, listen up all you little green (or silver or blue) men (or women or whatever): Put on your bathing suits, get out your coolers and come back to New England. We'll leave the lights off for you.