Our understanding of the UFO phenomenon comes wrapped in, not just decades, but thousands of years of mythology, folklore, and cultural context. While these tropes can give us valuable frameworks for discussing the unknown, they also, inevitably, obscure the reality of the phenomenon as much as they reveal it. Drawing insights from thinkers like Vallée, Keel, Pasulka, Kripal, Strieber, and Madden, this lecture will explore the ways in which we can begin to deconstruct these many varied narratives so that we can ask better questions about the nature of the phenomenon itself.