Now that I’m finishing one CUPIC project and starting another, I’ve been reflecting on what got me interested in this subject matter, UFOs.

I remember first hearing about the UFO subject when I was five or six through news reports on television. I was waiting for my mother to turn to Electric Company or something. The subject didn’t faze me, at the time. At that age, I thought that we were in contact with aliens and visited other planets regularly. It was the early 70s and space program was kicked into high gear.

It wasn’t until I was in the third grade, I started to understand our place in the universe. I saw more UFO sighting reports, which seemed to be growing immensely.

I personally had a few sightings of my own, but I’ll save that for another blog entry.

When I was in the fourth grade, I read my first UFO book, “Investigating UFO’s,” by Larry Kettlekamp. It scared the heck out of me, because one of the first stories that I read in the book was the Betty and Barney Hill case.

On a lonely afternoon, I remember walking home early from school, the neighborhood was unusually quiet and strong winds howled and creepily blew between the houses, fences and trees. I thought that I was going to be abducted, so I ran home. I was too young to be probed, so I rushed through the back door, and after hurriedly bolting it shut, I caught a glance of my mom’ staring at me with a WTF look on her face.

With all of the TV shows with Alien themes, and UFO documentaries appearing on TV, and the rise in UFO sightings reported in the local press, it was a subject that scared me.

Fast forward to 1978, a television show hit primetime on NBC, “Project UFO,” a Jack Webb production. He’s the guy responsible for three of my favorite primetime television shows of all time, Dragnet, Adam 12 and Emergency. This show involved two Air Force officers travelling the country under Project Bluebook, investigating UFOs in 70s. Watching this show sparked something  inside me. I started reading more about the subject. Not scared of the subject anymore, I started writing my own fictional stories, based on real cases. And CUPIC was born.

Now that someone was kind enough to post the show on YouTube and I’m revisiting every episode, some I hadn’t seen in 40 years.

To be continued….

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