Mysterious aerial lights—seemingly under intelligent control—are spotted above New Jersey and adjacent Delaware, sometimes over sensitive military installations. Some express fear that it may be a foreign adversary carrying out reconnaissance missions. The current drone scare? No, the northeastern United States over 100 years ago.
Back then, the sightings of mysterious aerial objects coincided with World War I and “the German Scare.” Most of the sightings turned out to be misidentifications of known astronomical bodies, such as Venus. Others were fire balloons, which consisted of paper balloons with candles attached near the mouth and were made buoyant by the generation of heat. Some recently reported drone sightings have turned out to be small airplanes. Theories as to their origin range from the Chinese to the Iranians. Some observations from social psychology may be able to shed light on the current scare.
In some instances, the objects are said to be the size of a small car. These reports should be viewed with skepticism because any device that large and heavy would likely be a fixed-wing aircraft and would need to take off from a runway. You just can’t launch them from your backyard. How can someone mistake a small drone for a car-sized object? That’s easy: psychologists know that human perception is notoriously unreliable and subject to error. There is also a tendency for observers to project their beliefs and fears onto ambiguous stimuli. The current geopolitical climate and tensions between the U.S. and several countries, and even the distrust of Americans with their own government, have only contributed to the current sense of distrust and vulnerability.
Part of the reason for the flurry of recent sightings can be put down to the coverage of this story by the news media and social media. Awareness of the mysterious lights prompts people to scrutinize the skies, particularly at night, and they begin searching for aerial lights. In recent years, drones have been flying about, but ordinarily, we don’t pay much attention. But now, with so many people scanning the heavens, more people are likely to report seeing mysterious objects in the sky.
The drone scare reflects two recent moral panics in America—the fear of new technologies coupled with the longstanding fear of foreigners and the so-called “enemy at the gate.” Just as the lights over New Jersey and Delaware were once attributed to German spies or advanced warfare technologies, today’s sightings are likely shaped by fears of foreign interference, espionage, or technological threats. Whether these objects have been sent by a foreign actor or an illusion fueled by modern fears, the current panic appears to be rooted in the same anxieties that marked a similar scare over a century ago.
In early 1915, with war anxieties at a peak, the Canadian Government declared a state of emergency and posted sentries around the Parliament after a series of UFO sightings near the border with New York State amid fears that German sympathizers in America were going to conduct a bombing raid on Canada.
Historically, UFO scares have had a tendency to spread. It would not be surprising to see reports pick up around the country and globally as people scrutinize the skies and begin to notice objects that have always been there.
One refreshing aspect of the drone scare is that, for once, we seem to have a UFO scare that doesn’t involve space aliens!