I feel like a lot of the people commenting on this thread would really benefit from reading The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan (who was himself once a UFO be

I feel like a lot of the people commenting on this thread would really benefit from reading The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan (who was himself once a UFO believer). He has a really good section on UFO sightings, which he compares to stories about abduction by demons from Medieval times. His main explanation for the increase in UFO stories in the second half of the 20th century is the decline in other forms of abduction myths, like the demon one. People report seeing what they're expecting to see based on the stories they've been exposed to. The massive increase in aircraft obviously helped too.