UFO fever hit Vista, California, just north of San Diego, awhile back. Perhaps most interesting, though, the rash of sightings was highlighted by a UFO apparently seen and caught on videotape. Embedded on silicon is the image of a glowing yellow ball, dimming and brightening as it slowly and quietly crossed the sky. After about six minutes the UFO stopped and dropped a series of five or six glowing balls. Then suddenly the balls blinked out and disappeared. While many other witness came forth with similar descriptions of this object on this and other nights, it was the videotape that everyone--media and UFOlogists alike--all turned to for "proof."

For the field of UFOlogy, often caught short in the arena of proof, the home video explosion promised great things: With the ability to reliably and permanently capture the entire sequence of a mysterious event for later analysis, UFOlogists were confidently proclaiming that video cameras would provide the long sought for evidence of the reality of UFOs.

Part of that dream has become reality: As the price of camcorders has dropped, a potentially critical data-gathering instrument has made its way into the hands of more and more front-line UFO observers--the general public. And as the number of video cameras in everyday use has increased, so have the number of UFO home videos. Jeffrey Sainio, who began analyzing photos and videos for the Mutual UFO Network a few years ago, notes that videos now account for about 80 percent of the submissions.

With the tens of millions of camcorders now in use in the United States, it seems reasonable to expect that, if there were strange craft in our skies, we ought to have some good home videos of them by now. Do we? Well, if we did, you wouldn't have to read this column for an answer. There would be no need for a Project Open Book. With the evidence of UFO overflights and landings and alien abductions captured on videotape, the world would certainly have experienced that much touted major paradigm shift by now. And talk about a New World Order. The news of alien visitation would fill every newspaper, magazine, and television broadcast.