reply to post by karl 12
Thank you.
I'll concede that there is indeed a wealth of evidence and correlations indicating a real physical phenomenon.
The psychological-social aspect of this, however, does lend some fascination as there are a large number of cases that conform to this paradigm
usually within the rough 95% of reported cases that are a result of misidentification, or ignorance where police chase, or people have 'encounters'
with the moon, Venus, a lighthouse, lenticular cloud formations, bolides, or other phenomenon that due to meteorological conditions or lying outside
the experience of the witness precipitated the sighting.
When it comes to group sightings, there's the phenomenon of sympathetic collusion where those involved talk among each other, each telling their
side, but embroidering their side to fit and support their neighbor's, family's, friend's account, and round robin until everyone has heard each
other's story with renewed, collaborative, understanding of what they now all know they saw with corroborating details.
Social alignments self enforce such participants to bolster each other, not out of intentional deception, but out of trust and respect because if Bob
says that's what he saw and I saw the same thing, then that's what i saw too, and Bob aint no liar and neither am I.
It's a complex phenomenon where no one answer is going to be the answer. As stated, there's evidence for real physical happenings with radar hits
recorded, strange EM phenomenon, and other supporting evidence.
There's also the psych-social factor.
Some cases may be one, or the other, and also in some; both, where an event did occur with 'something' but, human perceptions warped by social
influences present might embroider or validate some details where there are none.