On the morning of the Coast Guard photograph the day was exceptionally clear, the sun extremely bright, and the sky a deep blue unusual on the Massachusetts coast. Under these circumstances, objects reflecting the sun look larger and brighter than normal. Because the picture was taken with a dirty lens through a window, the images were further distorted. Since the UFOs did not produce highlights on the tops of the cars in the foreground, as luminous objects overhead would have done, they were probably not in the sky at all. Elaborate Air Force experiments with photo-flood lamps showed that the images were reflections in the window glass from an interior light source behind the camera (see Plate IVa). Weird and frightening apparitions do occur; Air Force files bulge with reports suggesting that unfamiliar objects are moving around us day and night, by land, sea, and air. Imagination endows them with life or turns them into mysterious, saucer-shaped craft manned by creatures from Mars, Venus, or even from some planet of a star beyond our solar system. The UFO photographed over France on October 2, 1954 (a weekend when every French village was reporting saucers by the dozen), shows no details and might be almost anything: a bird, a balloon, a cloud of gossamer, the sun, a plane, or merely the result of a lens defect (see Plate IVb). How many of the UFOs listed in the saucer publications originate from birds, insects, and animals we cannot know, but the number must be large. Most of us have only a sketchy acquaintance with the non-human forms of life that share the earth with us. Seeing an unfamiliar creature suddenly, or a familiar creature under unusual circumstances, we often imagine it to be whatever we most fear--vengeful spirits of the departed, fire-breathing dragons, devils, parachutes, or flying saucers. _The Lubbock Lights_ The luminous objects sighted in Texas during the last week of August, 1951, would probably have been explained and forgotten in a week’s time, except for the publication of alleged photographs of the unknowns. This complication converted a simple incident into a conglomerate of puzzles which, though actually unrelated, were lumped together to form a classic Unknown. The most detailed published account of this case[VI-7, p. 133 ff.] contains a number of statements that differ in detail from those in the official files. When discrepancies exist, the facts as given in this chapter are those in the original Air Force reports[VI-8].