"Theoretically insightful and descriptively rich, UFO Reports is deeply thoughtful and thought provoking. Jenkins demonstrates how UFO advocates and sceptics alike exist within a shared universe of meaning that is utterly rationalist and yet profoundly occult. As such, chasing UFOs becomes a rival scientific vocation animated by the human imagination.--Joe Webster, professor of the anthropology of religion, University of Cambridge. UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) were originally the subject of military intelligence interest but quickly became transferred to the civilian sphere in the late 1940s. All the later possibilities discovered by investigations were hinted at in the military materials but expanded in new contexts. This book traces the earliest discussions of UFO reports from the civilian perspective through two case studies. The first concerns the detailed claim by a journalist that flying saucers are real, met by denial at each point by an expert with scientific credentials; the second gives the history of the first contactee, showing the development of the idea of the flying saucer in various regards, reporting close sightings and even repeated meetings with interplanetary visitors. Taken together, this trio of possibilities--claiming the literal truth, or identifying error, or imagining new forms of life--created the frame for later engagements with the problem"--