A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

extraterrestrial communicant supplies the meaning of the encounter. Given the lack of
communication in encounters of lesser proximity, one must look elsewhere for the construction
of meaning. In the literature it is often the attempts to explain away or debunk such encounters
that constitute the central locus of meaning. Thus, along with examining the range of lesser
encounters, the following section will also examine the methods by which such encounters are
“explained away.” In doing so we will follow Hynek’s tripartite structure of “close encounters.”
Furthermore, in following Hynek’s heuristic, we will establish a dynamic in which as the
proximity between percipient and object increased, the potential explanations both for and
against the encounter became increasingly bizarre and/or complex. Thus the struggle to render
the spiritual in material terms became increasingly difficult as the object to be explained moved
closer to the percipient. The clarity apparently offered by the appearance of objects in the sky
was illusory. The closer they came the more the hoped-for rapprochement between science and
spirit seemed to recede.
At the outermost range of proximity lay sightings in which unexplained lights in the sky
were witnessed at a distance of greater than 500 feet. Once the object in question moved inside
the range of five hundred feet, sightings were classified as “close encounters.” Encounters of the
first kind were sightings where objects or brilliant lights appear less than 500 feet away but have
no effect on the percipients' environment. Close encounters of the second kind were cases in
which “physical effect on either animate or inanimate matter is manifested.” Encounters of the
third kind were those “in which the presence of animated creatures is reported.” In CE1 cases,
the object was furthest in proximity from the percipient—lights in the sky, maneuvering in ways
that both suggested intelligent control and militated against identification as terrestrial craft.
Such cases allowed for the broadest set of quotidian explanations—atmospheric and/or
132