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Revision as of 16:34, 18 December 2024
A UFO flap is a rash of reports of unidentified airborne objects. "Flap", originally a military term to describe a "period of panic or chaos", is used by ufologists to describe surges of sightings in one geographical area. Longer surges spanning multiple countries may be called "waves". Reported sightings of UFOs, public interest in them, and news coverage are highly variable in frequency. The terms "UFO", "flap", and "wave" allow for sightings of various unrelated phenomena in the night sky to be discussed as if they are parts of the same aerial event.
"Flap" has been used to describe spates of UFO reports such as:
- Mystery airship wave of 1896-1897 in the US
- Foo fighters of World War 2
- Ghost rockets of 1946 in Sweden and Finland
- 1947 flying disc craze in the US
- 1952 American UFO Flap
- Great 1954 Greek UFO flap
- Michigan "swamp gas" UFO reports in the US
- 1967 UFO flap in Britain
- 1977 Colares flap in Brazil
- 1984 Hudson Valley UFO sightings in the US
- Gulf Breeze UFO incident of 1987–88 in the US
- Belgian UFO wave of 1989–90
- Phoenix Lights of 1997
See also
- Psychosocial UFO hypothesis, which argues UFO reports are best explained by social contagion
- UFO conspiracy theories
References
- Ruppelt (1956) defines "flap" as "a condition or situation, or state of being of a group characterized by an advanced degree of confusion that has not yet reached panic proportions"
- Clarke, David (2015). How UFOs Conquered the World: the History of a Modern Myth. London: Aurum Press Ltd. ISBN 978-1-78131-472-2.
- ^ Eghigian, Greg (2024). After the flying saucers came: a global history of the UFO phenomenon. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 9, 83, 223. ISBN 9780190092054.
- The use of the term wave was originally based on the idea that the spikes in sightings could be connected to Earth's proximity to Mars or another planet. Attempts to predict flaps via astronomy did not support this idea. In 1967, Charles Hugh Smiley compared the 14 most ideal 10-day windows to travel between Mars and Earth and compared these periods to sightings reported to Project Blue Book; Smiley found no correlation. See: Kottmeyer, Martin (Winter 1995–96). "UFO Flaps: An Analysis". The Anomalist (3): 64–89.