ORLANDO, Fla. _ He appeared as if a hologram at first _ then solid _ suddenly there and clear as you or I, at the edge of the forest behind Trish Bishop's home in Kissimmee.
It was a Thursday in March 2013, the glow of the afternoon tucking in for the day behind the trees. He stood tall, at least 6-foot-3, perhaps 220 pounds and certainly muscular, wearing a formfitting tan colored uniform, boots and gloves. He lingered by the crape myrtle tree in the middle of the backyard.
When he turned around, it was his face, she remembers, that stopped her.
Bulging eyes jutting so far out of the sockets that Bishop wondered whether he could close them. Skin white as chalk. And a jaw so large, it dispelled any notions the government worker had of the visitor being human.
"If you compare a human jawbone to his, we would be a Chihuahua to a pit bull," Bishop said.
Paralyzed with fear, she watched as what she believed to be an alien appeared to climb invisible steps, stopping often to snatch glances at her from where she sat on her back porch, fumbling with her phone to appear as though she couldn't see him.
Her finger was pressed on the number "9" to dial for help.
When he was about 10 feet off the ground, he turned his back to her and pulled himself up _ "into a UFO?" she thought _ and was gone.
Bishop sat stunned. "I've got a freaking alien in my backyard," she thought.
It would be four years before she told anyone her story, before she'd discover the Mutual Unidentified Flying Objects Network, a nationwide organization 50 years old, and file her report under case number 84886 with the local Florida chapter.
But she worried: Who would believe her?
These days, more people than you'd think.
Across restaurants and meeting rooms in the United States, MUFON groups still gather every month to discuss cases like Bishop's with the enthusiasm that once gripped the nation during the Cold War, when UFO sightings still made a splash on the front page.
The Space Coast group, made up of some former NASA employees and engineers, has 118 members, the largest in the state. Across the U.S. they number 3,500, with additional offices in 42 countries.
For many years, they were alone entertaining UFO theories. No more.
In the past two years, scientists, politicians and professionals have increasingly been willing to touch the taboo subject and perhaps lend a little credence to those who still believe.
In December 2017, The New York Times uncovered that the U.S. had gone so far as to fund a secret, $22 million, five-year project to study UFO claims.
Since then, respected researchers, from the chairman of Harvard University's astronomy department to at least one scientist at NASA, have come out with theories, albeit controversial ones, that suggest closer study of the role extraterrestrials may play in certain phenomena.
What's changed, said Robert Powell, an executive board member on the nonprofit Scientific Coalition for Ufology, is our understanding of the universe. As scientists have discovered more Earth-like exoplanets and begun to delve into the options for interstellar travel _ one idea includes using a laser-propelled, microchip-shaped probe _ the conversation has been shifting.
"We still think of ourselves, as a species, as the center of everything," Powell said. "Once you ... at least start to discuss interstellar travel, you have to admit that, if there is intelligent life out there, then they have to be able to travel interstellar, too."
