Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times

581 Pages·2010·10.29 MB·English

by  Jacques Vallee

W O N D E RS
S KY
IN THE
U N E X P L A I N ED A E R I AL O B J E C TS
F R OM A N T I Q U I TY TO M O D E RN T I M ES
and Their Impact on Human Culture,
History, and Beliefs
JACQUES VALLEE
and C H R IS AUBECK
JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN 4
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA •
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2009 by Chris Aubeck and Documatica Research, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any
printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage
5
piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors' rights. Purchase only
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vallee, Jacques.
Wonders in the sky: unexplained aerial objects from antiquity to modern times and their
impact on human culture, history, and beliefs / Jacques Vallee and Chris Aubeck.—
1st Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 9781101454367
1. Unidentified flying objects—Sightings and encounters—History.
2. Unidentified flying objects—Psychological aspects.
3. Unidentified flying objects—Religious aspects. I. Title.
TL789.3.V354 2010 201024720
001.942—dc22
While the authors have made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and
Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the authors assume
any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the
publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for
author or third-party websites or their content.
In memoriam:
Janine Vallee
I will show wonders in the sky above, and signs on the earth beneath; blood, and
fire, and billows of smoke.
—Acts 2:19
There shall be Signs in the Sun, and in the Moon, and in the Stars.
—Luke 21:25
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of
all true art and science.
—Albert Einstein, "What I Believe," Forum, October 1930
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Foreword by Professor David Hufford
Introduction
PART I: A Chronology of Wonders
A: Chronology to 1000 AD
B: Chronology: 1000 to 1500 AD
C: Sixteenth-Century Chronology
D: Seventeenth-Century Chronology
E: Eighteenth-Century Chronology
F: Nineteenth-Century Chronology
PART II: Myths, Legends, and Chariots of the Gods
PART III: Sources and Methods
Classical sources
Screening
Rules for inclusion
Hoaxes
Explanations
The special problem of crashed saucers
The special problem of "dragons"
Entities
Biblical accounts
Aerial phenomena in classical art
For further research...
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Bibliography

WONDERS IN THE SKY
UNEXPLAINED AERIAL OBJECTS FROM ANTIQUITY TO MODERN
TIMES
and Their Impact on Human Culture, History, and Beliefs
FOREWORD
10
by David J. Hufford, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Humanities and Psychiatry
Penn State College of Medicine
Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Author, The Terror That Comes in the Night
In 1969 I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, pursuing a Ph.D. in the
field of Folklore. My primary interest was in what was called "folk belief." This term was,
and still is, generally reserved for beliefs that are at odds in some way with the official
modern worldview. I was taught that such beliefs were both non-empirical and non-
rational, that they were cultural fictions that reflected local concerns and functioned to
support community values and psychological needs. The experiences on which they
claimed to be based were, to use the term popularized by Thomas Kuhn's landmark work,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), "anomalies."
From seeing a ghost to the alleged cures of folk medicine, the events described in
folklore seemed to contradict the paradigm of science, the gold standard of modern
rationality. For this reason they were, as Charles Fort had said, "damned" (1919),
forbidden entry to the corpus of valid knowledge. However, I was pursuing the heretical