A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

perpetrators of willful deception in the case of CEII’s. When evidence included the
manifestation of “a physical effect on either animate or inanimate matter,” the argument that
witnesses had in fact only seen some heavenly body or trick of the light became increasingly
untenable. In the case of physical effects on animate objects, examples ranged from flash burns
on areas of witnesses’ skin exposed during a sighting to hair loss and temporary paralysis. The
skeptical explanation for such manifestations was to suggest that they were psychosomatic, or to
use a less neutral term, hysterical. While such an explanation shifted attention away from the
purported presence of a UFO, it left the causal nexus in the rather amorphous mind-body
continuum, where it kept company with such medical oddities as stigmata and hysterical
pregnancy. In the case of mechanical failure, such as the classic stalled automobile, the potential
“rational” explanations were both obvious and numerous. In the instances of physical evidence
manifested as a change in soil composition or plant biology, the case was less clear. There were
few cases in which such evidence was held up to close scrutiny, due in part to the fact that the
UFO was generally an anathema in the official scientific world. In those that had been
extensively examined, the results were far from conclusive. The 1981 Trans-En-Provence CE2,
which left clear markings of two concentric circles in the spot where a craft allegedly landed,
underwent significant analysis by the Group d’Etude des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-
Identifiés (GEPAN). GEPAN ultimately reported a loss of chlorophyll in surrounding flora and
other effects consistent with the presence of some unknown electromagnetic field, all of which
pointed, in the words of GEPAN’s official report, to the
Occurrence of an important event that brought with it deformations of the terrain caused
by mass, mechanics, a heating effect and perhaps certain transformations and deposits of
trace minerals….We cannot give a precise and unique interpretation to this remarkable
134