Every week, emailed reports of new UFO sightings around the world drop into the Mysterious West inbox. We seem to be going through the biggest UFO flap since the 1960s – and 2008 has been quite a year.

Could it be that our society is on the verge of acknowledging the existence of aliens? And why should this be happening now?

Is the perilous state of the planet creating an acute psychological reaction? Is the internet encouraging more reports – and more hoaxes? Is it the "2012 effect"? We're now only four years away from "doomsday", the midwinter solstice on December 21 that year, according to the prophecy of the Mayans.

Maybe the clamour from ufologists and conspiracy theorists, convinced "the truth is out there", for the Ministry of Defence to open up its files, as it is now doing, has something to do with it. Perhaps it's a combination of all these things.

In the spring and summer this year, there was a major spate of sightings across England and Wales, including a number over Bristol, the Bristol Channel and Weston-super-Mare. Dozens of mysterious objects were seen in the skies, in all shapes, colours and sizes.

UFOs hovered over a Bruce Springsteen concert in Philadelphia in October – a fan took a video of four objects in the sky and sent it to the local TV station.

But the most sensational incidents this year came between May and September in Turkey when night guard Yalcin Yalman videotaped a series of UFOs. The case was welcomed by the Sirius UFO Space Science Research Center in Turkey, which pronounced the tapes genuine and "the most important UFO images ever" – and perhaps, viewing the videos on the internet, the most incredible! Close-up shots reveal "entities" at the controls.

Only last month, MoD files revealed a US fighter pilot was ordered to shoot down a huge UFO over Norwich 50 years ago. But within seconds of firing at the alien craft – "the size of an aircraft carrier" on his radar – it took off at 10,000mph.

In April 1991, the captain of an Alitalia airliner, flying at an altitude of more than four miles from Milan to Heathrow, saw a missile-like object. found not to be a military weapon, and more similar sightings followed in the next six months.

Former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell has said aliens exist and have been observing Earth for "quite some time".

Mitchell, 77, one of only 12 humans to have walked on the Moon, also said that events such as the reported 1947 alien spacecraft crash at Roswell, New Mexico, did actually occur and were hushed up by the American and other governments.

Mitchell wants to "break open the alien visitation issue" and reveal the truth about cover-ups.

Former Space Shuttle ground test astronaut Clark McClelland, who came out in support of Mitchell, says he saw an 8-9ft extraterrestrial on his video monitors at launch control at the Kennedy Space Center. It was standing in the payload bay of the orbiting shuttle, "having a discussion" with two NASA astronauts, and its spacecraft was hovering nearby.

The Rev Jose Gabriel Funes, the director of the Vatican Observatory, pronounced that there was no conflict between a belief in extraterrestrial intelligent life and belief in God.

"How can we exclude that life has developed elsewhere?" he asked, implying even that some aliens might not have been subject to the separation from God described in Genesis. "There could be (other beings) who remained in full friendship with their creator."

It's often said that the sure sign there's intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is that it hasn't made contact with us.

But if there are some godlike aliens around, I say, bring them on. They may give God far more credit than we do. And we need all the help we can get at the moment.