Finally! There’s a UFO Investigator Starter Kit. And YOU Can Contribute!
The UFO Investigator Starter Kit is an excellent resource about The Phenomenon — and you can help build it!
When I was a kid in the 1980s, the closest thing we had to Google was, of course, the library. Or, if we go back to 1946, a Magic 8-ball.
For the uninitiated, the Magic 8-ball was invented in 1946 by Albert C. Carter as a “spirit writing” device for his mother who claimed to be a clairvoyant. It was a sealed ball filled with blue-colored alcohol and an icosahedron inside with answers on it. You’d think of or say a question, shake the ball, and a random side of the icosahedron would appear in a circular window. Some people came to believe this was a way to get answers to questions that had no clear resolution.
The library was better suited for those who didn’t trust Magic 8-balls. My mom was a library director. Part of her job was to be a curator of information for every patron who came in looking for research help. I remember watching in amazement as she helped them, often only from memory, by pulling books off the shelf that related to their questions.
In those days, if you were lucky, the book you found contained exactly the information you needed. You’d either hand-copy or photocopy what you needed for your research, write down the bibliography, and then go on your merry way.
The Internet has nearly completely replaced the “dusty old library” as the medium of choice for obtaining information about every topic. Today, we are fortunate to have nearly all the information we could ever want right on our mobile devices. Type a query into Google and you get an instant list of sometimes millions of answers. Depending on the topic, at times the answers align and at times they don’t. Some are outright fake and belong in either or both of two categories of disinformation or misinformation. In all cases, users are wise to compare sources and determine which answers and sources are the most reliable.
Despite the information glut that characterizes this time in humanity’s development, one topic we maddeningly don’t have clear answers on is the topic of “Unidentified Flying Objects” or “UFOs”. There are other topics like this, of course, but this one is particularly annoying. That’s because it focuses primarily on the big question of “Are we alone in the universe?” and a thousand other related but also important questions. However, due to the topic being wrapped in at least 75 years of secrecy, deception, diversion, and confusion on the part of government officials, it frustrates even the most seasoned, dedicated, and ardent researchers who just finally want to get to the bottom of it.
People new to this topic are predictably also frustrated in that the instant gratification they’re accustomed to through search engines fails so spectacularly to be fulfilled by a cursory keyword search. And, when you go down the rabbit hole and realize that Google isn’t the only search engine — consider using DuckDuckGo, for instance — you find that the more mainstream search engines seem to have engaged in a deliberate campaign of skepticism, if not an outright cover-up, by skewing the results toward the more prosaic but unsatisfying explanations. They also tend to present results that lead novices to articles that only expose evidence that paint claims and claimants in their worst light while ignoring any supporting evidence to the contrary.
So, I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest on my mother’s late behalf that you still might want to also involve the library and its resources. (Just don’t try asking and then shaking a librarian to get answers. Unlike the Magic 8-ball, they get kind of cranky when you do that.)
Why go to the library? Because digital media and information can be corrupted by personal or political agendas in milliseconds. But books and the photographs in them of alleged otherworldly craft are impossible to universally alter after they are printed and distributed worldwide. Sometimes you can get more truth from an old 1967 book on UFOs than you can from a government website. Or, a guy with a Twitter account whose daily posts consist of debunked videos or photos of questionable provenance.
I now hope to attempt to follow in my mom’s footsteps by curating as much reliable, relevant, and useful information on the growing and increasingly credible field of UFO studies.
At the request of some skeptics on Twitter, as well as a few newcomers to the topic of UFOs or UAP, and as a reference resource for myself after having been immersed in this topic since my childhood, I created the “UFO Investigator Starter Kit”.
As the name implies, this is not a comprehensive, exhaustive encyclopedia of everything there is to know about “The Phenomenon”. None of the links on the UFO Investigator Starter Kit are meant to be the final answer to any question on the topic. It is simply a starting point for people who need a refresher or a primer as they seek their answers.
It is also handy for when you happen to share with a friend or acquaintance what you know and you then want to send them to credible follow-up resources to show that this stuff is very, very real. The sources are mostly mainstream and governmental, to begin with, to provide anyone with a skeptical mind a reason to keep reading. And there are also links for those who are more convinced of the UFO reality and want more than the government has provided.
Lastly, if you have a source or topic that is appropriate for a person just starting to discover these topics, there are instructions at the top of the kit for how to contribute.
Conclusion
With difficult topics like UFOs and the broader “Phenomenon”, we quite literally don't have to be left to our own devices (computers and smartphones) to try to figure it all out on our own. We can look to libraries and use the UFO Investigator Starter Kit to build our knowledge of past and current events and discoveries. Someday we will amass enough information to put these nagging questions to rest forever. What information will you contribute?
