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okay this is an incredible honor and I

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one of these people get choked up real

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easy so I'll just leave it at that but I

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it's one of the great honors of my life

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and thank you very much now the subject

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of my lecture comes out of questions

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that I've puzzled over for a long time

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for example why is the follow geez

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extraterrestrial hypothesis so difficult

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to get a focus on when it at one time

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just looked logical in inevitable and

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what is the relationship of UFO reports

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to other extraordinary claims that

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figure in massive human testimony over

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many centuries our UFO is related to

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these phenomena or aren't they and what

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can testimony about other fantastic

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encounters tell us about UFO testimony

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the answers I find not surprisingly our

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bottomless lee complex and hardly suited

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to a talk it's supposed to last about

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half an hour but perhaps I can give you

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some idea of what I've concluded from a

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lifetime of research and reflection and

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perhaps I can communicate some sense of

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why I now find it more useful to define

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myself as an anomalous as opposed to a

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ufologist what I'm going to take a look

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at is two sets of extraordinary claims

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which predate the UFO phenomenon of the

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past decades these aren't the only sets

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I could have chosen but these happen to

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be two I've examined especially closely

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over the years it's my conclusion that

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they shed some light on the vexing

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questions that you follow just an

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anomalous deal with writing about

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Scottish fairy traditions in an academic

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work published seven years ago to

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British folklorists pleaded with no

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small hint of exerts exasperation it

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should be possible to believe one's

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informants without believing their

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explanations

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now another student of Scottish fairy

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traditions was the Reverend Robert Kirk

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who lived between 1644 and 1692 in his

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classic work the secret Commonwealth

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Kirk recorded the living lore of his

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parishioners and and other local people

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who were certain that they lived

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alongside a complex otherworldly order

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which in many ways parodied the society

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of human beings fairies Mary play music

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dance wage war farm own livestock ride

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horses and have a political order ruled

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by a queen the supernatural landscape

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over lies the natural one thus visible

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hills caves bodies of water and other

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natural features conceal the usually

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invisible race which dwells inside in

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what our time we would call another

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dimension or a parallel world one who

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passes voluntarily or involuntarily into

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the fairy realm has crossed the boundary

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that divides this world from the

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Otherworld we're not talking about

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Tinker Bell here for one thing fairies

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in traditional lore such as the ones

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that though the traditions that Kirk was

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familiar with don't have wings they

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don't have gossamer wings they have no

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wings at all they're generally said to

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be short in stature although some

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varieties were thought to be of human

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height you didn't want to encounter them

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they tended to be bad-tempered

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capricious easily offended and they

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often cause trouble for people who cross

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their paths and they didn't like to hear

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themselves talked about so you had to be

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very careful about what you were saying

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because they were invisible they could

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be listening to your conversation they

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didn't like to be called fairies so that

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people invented euphemisms like good

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neighbors Fair Folk the gentry the good

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people though well educated in a time

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when disbelief in fairy traditions was

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was widespread among elites Kirk himself

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held it there really was a literal real

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fairy land and in his analysis it was a

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place that existed somewhere between the

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earthly realm and the angelic realm it

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had elements of both and he he came to

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this conclusion not out of you know

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nebulous rumors and folklore and so on

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but out of the direct testimony of

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people that he judged credible who

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claimed to have had personal experience

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of it it's not clear whether Kirk

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himself had an experience of the

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supernatural but he was convinced that

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it was a real genuine supernatural order

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now Kirk remarked that fairies are

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usually encountered at twilight now he

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meant that literally but it's also a

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perfect metaphor of the threshold or

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liminal space in which the other world

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passes from imagination into experience

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into in other words a kind of twilight

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zone of ambiguous epistemology one in

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which our rational scientific outlook

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tries always to impose itself on the

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landscape of the irrational and the

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otherworldly testimony to fairy

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encounters is not hard to find all you

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have to do is read one of the many books

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of written by academics collecting fairy

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and other supernatural traditions and

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you get the impression that the

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informants are our sincere enough and

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even the academic folklore aren't

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inclined to accuse them of lying mostly

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they just write it down when they get

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around to writing about it for their

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academic colleagues the contents of

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popular belief and the content of

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popular of personal experience are

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undifferentiated the implication is that

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nothing remains to be explained except

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the foundations in some superstition

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haunted past of a fantastic

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scientifically baseless oral tradition

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if fairies don't exist they can't be

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experienced thus claims to the contrary

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need not be addressed but once upon a

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time they actually were addressed

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academics accepted the knee

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need to actually explain the sightings

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what the people in the British Isles saw

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according to a theory popular in the

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19th century were real people I mean

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they really existed but they were racist

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small people that picks the original

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inhabitants of the islands who it was

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speculated had been driven into hiding

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and Hills caves and mountains now this

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was an extraordinary claim in itself

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which died for want of evidence and also

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from it's just radical disjuncture from

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what witnesses were actually reporting a

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recent book by an academic writer

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proposes that ferry sightings may have

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been generated by encounters with

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individuals suffering congenital

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deformities at the opposite extreme

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among scholarly investigators was Walter

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Evans whence author of the famous the

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fairy faith in Celtic countries

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published in 1911 evan evans whence

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thought that fairies and other

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supernatural entities were quite real

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living in a parallel universe which

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occasionally overlaps with our own he

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wrote quoting we can postulate

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scientifically on the showing of the

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data of psychical research the existence

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of such invisible intelligences as gods

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genies demons all kinds of true fairies

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and disembodied men unquote the problem

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with such a literal interpretation is

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that aside from you know apparently

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sincere testimonial claims there's no

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evidence of any any compelling kind has

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ever been demonstrated for the presence

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of a fairy realm beyond that there's

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another major objection which which Kirk

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noted but without probably really

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appreciating its significance if Kirk

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observed that fairies dress and speak

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quoting like the people and country

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under which they live unquote now fairy

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traditions are ubiquitous in traditional

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societies and this in itself is a deep

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mystery but each fairy society is suited

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to its human neighborhood considered in

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their entirety fairy traditions are too

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wildly complex various and fantastic too

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add up to a coherent paranormal

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geography there is no objective fairy

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world just a range of subjective ones

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but risen sustained vexing ly and deeply

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counter-intuitively by individuals who

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claimed direct vivid experiences of it

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now as many of you know the modern UFO

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phenomenon begins in the summer of

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nineteen forty-seven now contrary to an

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academic mythology that you see in a lot

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of sociological writing about the

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history of UFO controversy in the summer

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of nineteen forty seven nobody was

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looking for salvation from outer space

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when people started seeing what appeared

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to be the new and novel flying saucers

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people thought they were secret weapons

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some side product of atomic testing or

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are just delusions and in the first

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gallup poll ever taking on the subject

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in august 1947 ET visitors don't even

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register the consensus of opinion that

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UFO sightings might be related to