In light of recent personal events, I have decided to go on a 'fact-finding' search - consulting old books and Internet resources and I want to share this with you. To the best of my knowledge, I am not directly plagiarizing anyone's writings, and I definitely credit theorists whenever possible. Here is some of what I came up with.

UFO "flaps" are repeated incidences of UFO activity in localized areas. But, if an entire country was simultaneously witnessing the events, this would be considered a UFO "wave".

The first productive study of what is sometimes referred to as a "UFO flap" was done by a European gentleman, Mr. Aime Michel, and was published back in 1958. It was a compilation of his observations and interviews of witnesses of the great French UFO wave of late 1954. He discovered that UFOs seemed to be frequenting certain distinct flight routes.

During the late 1970's, Britain's Bernard Delair and American Dr David Saunders, both separately employed statistics to demonstrate that there is an apparent cycle in reports of UFOs. Delair drew numerical correlations between UFO events and solar flares / sunspots. Both men concluded that the major bulk of known 'flaps' and 'waves' would increase and then decline, approximately every 10 years.

In the 1990's, other researchers were making a good case for a geological link, showing trends of UFO reports increasing during periods of heightened tectonic strain. They suggested that geomagnetic fluctuations could magnify the 'vortex' effect of some areas of the earth's surface. Dr. David Saunders came to the conclusion that the number of UFO sighting reports increases every time a certain area of the Earth faces a certain direction of the sky.

The theory is that this could have the effect of acting as a window to other dimensions of existence. Some believe this is the cause and effect behind the 'Bermuda Triangle' mysteries. I guess aliens could be using the earth as a base of operations and not being detected because they exist on other dimensional planes. Researcher Jacques Vallee found statistical evidence of a 13 month cycle of UFO 'flaps' that has apparently coincided with Mars oppositions.

In the early 1950s, the assumption was that UFO sightings were actually triggered by media. When a case was reported, it triggered others. Hence there was a sudden increase in UFO sighting reports in the area. It is a vicious cycle. If there had been no UFO appearances or manifestations, there would have been no UFO reports to begin with.

UFO skeptic James E. Oberg states that UFOs are nothing more than misidentifications of "perfectly mundane" events. It is his belief that there will always be reports that can not be explained after the fact due to unreliability of witnesses. He feels that the lack of complete information is the true culprit.