'Somewhere in the Skies' Focuses on Experiential Aspect of UFO Phenomenon

In a field focused on philosophical arguments and government disclosure, Ryan Sprague is something of an outlier—he puts people before ideas and his agenda seems to be based more on understanding the experience of witnessing a UFO than achieving celebrity through endlessly debating their study.

In the second edition of his book Somewhere in the Skies: A Human Approach to the UFO Phenomenon, Sprague doesn’t ignore the popular UFO issues of the day, catching readers up on the latest news regarding To the Stars…Academy of Arts & Science (TTSA) and the Pentagon’s secretive Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) before diving into his own work on UFOs. He provides context to the reader, making sure they understand the current cultural zeitgeist on the topic before gently nudging them in a different direction.

According to Sprague, “While the mainstream media and To the Stars Academy focused on a narrative of threat when it came to UFOs, I wanted to remind people of the hundreds of individuals from across the globe who continue to witness UFOs themselves. And once again, I aimed to put the microscope on them and examine how these events affected their lives both then and now.”

To that end he’s interviewed dozens of people, from witnesses to scientists, whose lives have been inexorably changed through their experiences either witnessing or studying the UFO phenomenon.

Sprague writes of these lives—including his own—in an engaging tone that is equal parts journalism and barroom conversation, something that makes the work entertaining and easily digestible. That, along with chapters divided up into shorter stories, makes this book very easy to set down and come back to at one’s leisure.

In this updated and expanded edition, Sprague adds even more firsthand accounts to his already impressive collection—including many follow-ups with people interviewed for the book’s first iteration—taking care to focus not just on what each individual saw, but what they felt, and even more importantly, how it changed them.

The theme of UFO sightings as a transformative experience runs deep in this work, with witnesses most often reporting their sightings as life-changing events. And at its heart this is where the book really shines—in that liminal space between experience and belief, fact and feeling.

Somewhere in the Skies: A Human Approach to the UFO Phenomenon is available from Beyond the Fray Publishing and Amazon.

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