ABSTRACT
Stories about UFOs represent a collectively shared narrative, a popular myth, with no formal authority to direct or maintain it. Meaning ‘Unidentified Flying Object’ the acronym ‘UFO’ refers to strange things seen in the sky. Its earlier equivalent, the concept of ‘flying saucers’, was coined in the American news media in the summer of 1947. After a flight over the Cascade Mountains, Washington, on 24 June, private pilot Kenneth Arnold (d. 1984) reported that he had encountered nine strange, flying objects in the sky. Talking to a newspaper reporter about his experience, Arnold said that the objects travelled at a tremendous speed and that they moved ‘like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water’. He was referring to the movements of the objects but a headline editor misunderstood him, and the notion of ‘flying saucers’ was subsequently presented to the public. Arnold, however, described the objects as ‘crescent shaped’. During the days following the incident many newspapers carried the story, and apparently many other witnesses had encountered ‘flying saucers’. Nothing whatsoever was documented or proven. The ‘flying saucer’, and subsequently the UFO, consequently, was born from a specific, attention-demanding narrative that still expands and gives life to further mythological creativity.
