Are we alone?

Researching UFO sightings seems an unlikely assignment for a Christian college professor to give his students. But WORLD con­tributor Les Sillars knows the value of surprise when telling a good story. Last year, Sillars and his ­journalism class at Patrick Henry College took a deep dive into the world of alien enthusiasts in an attempt to answer a question man has asked for centuries: Are we alone? His story in this issue (see “Stranger than fiction”) reveals what his class discovered. Here’s the story behind the story.

How did you decide you wanted to cover the topic of UFOs? A few years ago the Pentagon confirmed that some UFOs videos floating around the internet really were from Navy jets. I recall sitting at my desk, staring at these videos, and thinking, “Are those really …? No. Well … am I in a movie?” Then my daughter-in-law, Hannah, told me about a supposed UFO crash site from 1897 in this tiny Texas town near where she grew up. And I thought, “People were talking about alien life in 1897? Who knew?” I realized then there was room for a story about how Christians have looked at the idea of extraterrestrial life over the centuries.

What was the most surprising thing you learned while working on this story? Some secular researchers, serious people, have concluded that a tiny percentage of those hard-to-explain UFO sightings are “interdimensional entities.” I thought at first it was science-­fiction speculation, but I was floored to hear that a lot of Christian physicists believe in other dimensions, and how closely the idea parallels the traditional Christian understanding of the “spiritual realm.”

What’s your favorite space-­related sci-fi story? I keep rereading C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. But I love the short story collections of Ray Bradbury, especially The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. They and the first Star Wars movie shaped my imagination in a lot of ways.

This story came out of a project you’re working on with your students. Tell us a little bit about it. Doubletake is a new podcast series from WORLD Radio that creatively tells stories about interesting people encountering big ideas, and from a Biblical perspective. Every episode is a completely different story, and we hope listeners will look forward to being surprised each week. It’s been a great experience for me and for my students.

—To listen, search for Doubletake on your favorite podcast platform.