The conversation of extraterrestrial life has long had its spotlight in science fiction movies and music. But in recent months, it’s been bumped toward the front of political discussion.
This summer, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was asked at a Republican presidential debate what he would do about sightings of unidentified flying objects.
“I get the UFO question?” Christie replied to laughter. “Come on, man.”
UFOs are now actually called UAPs, "unidentified anomalous phenomena" according to NASA, or "unidentified aerial phenomena" according to some dictionaries.
A summer congressional hearing saw testimony from former U.S. intelligence officer David Grusch, who claimed the government is in possession of UAPs. Former Navy pilot Ryan Graves and Navy commander David Fravor also testified, both alleging they witnessed UAPs in action on multiple occasions.
Although the debate over alien life may seem to have reached new heights this year, western Massachusetts has had a connection to the matter for quite some time.
The night of Sept. 1, 1969, was just like any other summer evening — until it wasn’t, according to Tom Warner of Great Barrington.
Now 64 years old, Warner claims he was abducted by a large, hovering oval object when he was 10. Warner said he was coloring and listening to music at his next-door neighbor’s house when a voice spoke to him out of nowhere
“‘You have to go home,'” he said the voice told him.
Warner followed the voice’s order, he said, and ran outside.
Something felt off.
“The September crickets, the katydids, all the sounds just vanished,” he said. “And that’s what made me clue, what’s wrong?”
Warner felt as though he was sprinting to his house at full speed. But, he claims, he was actually running in place, stuck inside a beam shooting out from the sky.
“Something told me, ‘Look over your shoulder’ [and] boom, it's right there,” he said. “Right about this exact spot.”
About 40 feet long and 20 feet tall, Warner said, the object was just parked in mid-air.
“And all of a sudden, my hands jerked back, and I was on a UFO,” Warner said.
Warned claims he was gone for seven minutes, surrounded by children who were also terrified in the mysterious craft. He said he remembers that a Yoda-like figure put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
This story became known as the "Berkshire UFO sighting," and Warner shared his story in an episode of a Netflix series, “Unsolved Mysteries,” along with multiple other witnesses from that night. They all shared similar descriptions of the object: bright beams, saucer-shaped, eerily quiet but faster than anything they’ve ever seen.
Warner still lives in his childhood home, now with his own family. And he can’t himself quite make sense of the alleged abduction more than 50 years ago, but has since accepted it.
“We have a perception of our earth. We have a perception of what humanity is. I just happen to see things that most people haven't seen,” he said “I came forward to help people. And I'm not surprised that some of the stuff is going on now,” he said, referring to the recent interest in UAPs.
There are recorded accounts of the 1969 sighting in local historical societies like Great Barrington’s and the Pittsfield library. But Andrea Madden, Berkshire Historical Society site supervisor, said while the event is in their records, recent museum-goers aren’t asking about the alleged sighting.
Instead, there’s a greater interest in the rich history of writers who have passed through western Massachusetts from the 1700s to 1900s.
“We’re located in Arrowhead, which is where Herman Melville wrote 'Moby Dick,' so we’re gonna have a lot of things about writers in the area,” Madden said.
“Now that you're asking, I wish that more people asked, too,” she said. "I mean, I have seen the episode of 'Unsolved Mysteries' a bunch of times.”
But Harvard professor and astrophysicist Avi Loeb said we need to be careful of human accounts like Warner’s, and even those who testified in the congressional hearing.
“So all these stories could be intriguing and motivating to do the scientific work, but they are no substitute to that. And we shouldn't believe them until we have scientific evidence,” he said.
Loeb has been researching the possibility of interstellar objects in space as the head of the Galileo Project – a group combining astronomers, physicists and mathematicians in the search for what lies above our skies. He has reason to believe there could be scientific evidence of alien civilizations.
This June, Loeb led a two-week, privately funded expedition off the coast of Papua New Guinea where they recovered remnants from a 2014 fireball that landed in the Pacific Ocean.
He said it could be a meteor, "or a spacecraft that was launched by another civilization and collided with a planet billions of years later."
Loeb insists the fragments are consistent with either theory. But he compares it to if an isolated family living in a house surrounded by woods one day finds a tennis ball in their backyard — it could be a sign this family, or planet Earth, isn’t alone.
But Loeb has been criticized by some colleagues who say his research defies the scientific method and peer review process – and may even have some measurement errors.
Regardless, Loeb said interstellar objects are rightfully getting increased attention in the public and political sphere.
“The public cares a lot about the subject. The government cares about it. Otherwise why would they waste time in Congress talking about extraterrestrials?” he said. “I think it’s our duty as citizens for scientists to figure it out, to try and collect the data as much as [we] can."
Great Barrington’s Warner still reckons with what he said happened to him all those years ago. He welcomes the attention on the issue. But he worries that, with climate change, humanity might not be around long enough to actually solve the mystery.
“The congressional hearings, it's one giant step,” he said. “But it's just one step in a marathon. And this marathon is a long haul.”
