This sounds very much like the stories that Paul Devereaux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Devereux#UFOs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Devereux#UFOs) c

This sounds very much like the stories that Paul Devereaux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Devereux#UFOs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Devereux#UFOs) collected and analysed in his books. I like his work because he takes the scientific approach: the evidence is that we see lights in the sky. Start from there, assume nothing, and see where the evidence takes you. He's a breath of fresh air compared to the wacko UFO stuff you normally read. One of may favourite nuggets from him is to look at the whole UFO thing as a cultural phenomenon. Don't doubt people, but listen - properly - to what they are saying, and look for patterns. He did this and looked at the standard taxonomy for UFO sightings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_encounter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_encounter), but focused on the exceptions. He found lots of stories that didn't fit the standard model e.g. a woman who had seen a humanoid figure just floating in the air for around an hour near sunset before disappearing. No good explanation for that in terms of aliens, so he looks further afield into various elements of human psychology and geophysics. In the end, he seems to settle on the idea of a long term geo-physical phenomenon, which may be linked to the earthquake lights thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light). He posits that this might interact with human consciousness via the very strong magnetic fields that you would expect if such a phenomenon were to occur (perhaps with other mechanisms too). This would explain the varying effects from weak (lights in the sky) to strong (weird hallucination-like experiences), depending on how close you are to whatever is going on. Sounds like a good way to tie all the stories together, especially given that as he points out, UFO stories are quite recent, but other cultural stories with almost identical characteristics e.g. faeries, angels, etc are pretty much universal, so may be the same phenomenon interpreted differently. OTOH, evidence is hard to come by and this is definitely fringe theorising. Interesting reading though, and very thought-provoking.