Yup. If you seriously investigate enough available literature you will soon reach the conclusion that we already have been visited numerous times by intelligent extraterrestrial beings not too different from ourselves.

If you just get to know enough people who are willing to talk about it, you will meet a fair number who've had some sort of encounter or sighting...I would bet one in 20 or 30 adults has, at some time.

If your own idea of reality can't accept such a notion, you will avoid such literature and scoff at such individuals, which is why most of them are reticent on the subject.

Everyone gravitates toward what they are inclined to already believe in. Reality is very democratic that way, isn't it?

We all like to remain comfortable in our preconceptions.

Once there were people on little islands here and there who thought that our world ended at the visible horizon and that there were no other poeple out there anywhere. They have since found otherwise.

Our present situation is analagous to that, and the universe is the ocean in which this island, Earth, is floating. Most of our visitors probably have more important things to do than play "chicken" with the missile defense systems of a very paranoid little planet that still hasn't found a solution to its own internal conflicts, so they are probably just taking a brief look at us (for educational purposes?)and then moving on to more agreeable places on their intinerary. Why would they hang around here too long, when there's a whole universe out there in which to trade, communicate, and explore? We are not the center of it.

- LH