Empire unusual suggested

170 PASSPORT TO MAGONIA
tribnted to the emotional reaction of the public associated with the
UFO phenomenon. After 1966, a similar statement would be meaningless.
Conversation with policemen in practically any small town in
the United States will disclose reports of unidentified objects, including,
of course, landings, about the reality of which we shall never know
the truth. In the present catalogue, a few cases selected from the files
of the last three years have been given in order to encourage the continuation
of this effort, but we have not published details of sightings
still under investigation, and we have made no attempt at a systematic
data-gathering effort. The reader should therefore be warned that the
apparent leveling-off of the number of entries has no relationship whatsoever
to actual reality.
PRESENTATION OF THE OBSERVATIONS
The following list has been prepared under several severe constraints:
all pertinent information (to the extent that it can be defined in the
present state of our ignorance) must be present, and yet one should
be able to use it for quick reference. It must not become boring to the
reader who simply wants to gain a general view of the diversity of reports.
The journalist, the physicist, and the social scientist should find
data relevant to their various studies in this common source. And it
should also provide a useful link to the general literature of the field
whenever possible. This meant certain rules had to be made and strictly
followed for the presentation of the reports.
1. It was decided to regard as essential data: the date, local time,
exact place of sighting; number and names of witnesses; the altitude
and size of the object, and its distance from observers; appearance and
behavior of object; the number and reported behavior of the creatures
associated with it.
2. Other data were summarized to a varying degree. When the case
had enjoyed nationwide or worldwide publicity and was presently available
in books and journals, we felt it was enough to give adequate
references and a summary. When we had been able to obtain new information,
or to find a more solid interpretation of previously doubtful
details, this was included.
3. As a majority of the observations come from outside the United
States or Britain, all measures of distance have been expressed in
the metric system. Weights, when given, were converted to kilograms
or tons.
4. We have tried to remove subjective interpretation of the phe-
APPENDIX 171
nomena while preserving indications of the emotions of the witness
during the observation. Naturally we cannot claim we were always
successful in increasing the objectivity of the report. But at least the
reader should be aware of the fact that we have tried to select words
from a limited vocabulary in order to provide for all entries a measure
of consistency, without reducing the sightings to arbitrarily chosen patterns,
types, or categories.
5. Every sighting has a source listed, generally selected as "the most
readily available publication which gives more detailed references on
the case." The only exceptions are (Quincy) for reasons explained
above and (Personal), the latter being applied only when we have used
documents that I am not authorized to quote in detail, or whose exact
reference I myself do not know.
6. All reports which met our earlier definitions for Typef sightings
were candidates for inclusion here. We have rejected: (1) all cases for
which a conventional explanation has been found to our satisfaction;
(2) all those for which the month or year or place of observation was
missing, except for some early cases; (3) all reports accompanied by
photographs offered as material evidence and that have been proven
to be fakes. It can be argued that in the latter case, it does not necessarily
follow that no valid sighting has been made, or that the incident
is not relevant to the UFO rumor in general. Such faked evidence, however,
throws considerable doubt on the character and truthfulness of
the witness and would carry the discussion into an altogether different
province. Furthermore, such reports have received a wide coverage in
the press and will be found without difficulty by those who wish to
extend the present list. A sample of rejected cases may be published
separately at a later date, along with the reason for rejection so that
notable omissions can be justified.
A WARNING
We shall not apologize for the inclusion of reports that may with
reason be regarded as unbelievable or ludicrous. We are not claiming
that any of the reports in the list relates to a real physical event. We
are compiling not a table of controlled laboratory experiments but only
a general guide for a study of the abundant literature of this intriguing
subject. It would be an unfair procedure and a grave misunderstanding
of our purpose to assume that all cases in the list stand at the same level
of reliability, or to claim that the presence of this or that particular case
either supports or weakens by itself the credibility of any other. We