An interview with Howard Miller about hunting and hound dogs, collected as part of Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia collection, documents an individual's experience with a potential UFO sighting. You can find documentation of these kinds of experiences in folk life collections. Ideas of aliens and flying saucers are a part of the mythology of America. UFOs as Contemporary FolkloreĪside from depictions of UFOs in media, UFOs are also part of American folk culture. The shift in perspective puts the humans in the position of the monsters. Ultimately, in this story, the humans are the ones who accost and capture the alien woman. The fear that there might be alien enemies in our midst resonates with fears of Soviets and communists from the McCarthy era. In a twist, the anxious husband reveals that he and his wife are the Martians. The husband returns home and finding it empty runs towards the telephone in a panic. The wife however decides to slip out to the store and is attacked and dragged off.
As he waves goodbye he reminds his wife to stay inside. The action shifts to a husband and wife as he prepares to leave their home despite a television announcer's warning to remain indoors. Radio announcers warn those nearby to stay indoors. In the comic, a search party gathers around a landed alien craft, but it can find no sign of alien beings.
The 1962 comic There are Martians Among Us, from Amazing Fantasy #15, illustrates the way fear of extraterrestrials could reflect Cold War anxieties. If UFOs were visiting our world, where were these extraterrestrials? Could they be hidden among us? Comic books and television illustrates how the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors reflected anxieties of that era. Fear of the possibilities for destruction in the Cold War-era proved fertile ground for terrestrial anxieties to manifest visions of flying saucers and visitors from other worlds who might be hidden among us in plain sight. Connected to ongoing ideas about life on the Moon, the canals on Mars, and ideas about Martian Civilizations, flying saucers have come to represent the hopes and fears of the modern world.Īre these alleged visitors from other worlds peaceful and benevolent or would they attack and destroy humanity? The destructive power of the Atomic bomb called into question the progressive potential of technology. the Flying Saucers from 1956 illustrate these fears. Sightings of strange objects in the sky became the raw materials for Hollywood to present visions of potential threats. In the 1940s and 50s reports of "flying saucers" became an American cultural phenomena.
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