Encounter Therapy

The Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Ill., normally gets 50 letters a day about sightings of "glowing lights" and such in the sky, but since mid-December the average has been nearly 800. At the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., calls from UFO sighters increased from fewer than half a dozen to as many as 18 a day during the past month. The obvious cause: fallout from the sci-fi smash Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

In the Northeast many of the reports have been triggered by glowing appearances of Jupiter, the largest and brightest planet in the region's night sky. Another spur to UFO sightings may have been the news that the Administration tried, unsuccessfully, to get NASA to open a UFO investigation. Had Jimmy Carter fallen under the Close Encounters spell? Not at all. The White House, weary of having to deal with its own heavy load of UFO mail, was just trying to pass the buck.

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