An unidentified flying object (UFO), or unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP), is any perceived airborne, submerged or transmedium phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. Upon investigation, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained.
Cattle mutilation is the killing and mutilation of cattle under supposedly unusual, usually bloodless circumstances. This phenomenon has been observed among wild animals as well. Worldwide, sheep, horses, goats, pigs, rabbits, cats, dogs, bison, moose, deer and elk have been reported mutilated with similar bloodless excisions; often an ear, eyeball, jaw flesh, tongue, lymph nodes, genitals and rectum are removed.
The Roswell incident is a conspiracy theory which alleges that the 1947 United States Army Air Forces balloon debris recovered near Roswell, New Mexico, was actually a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. Operated from the nearby Alamogordo Army Air Field and part of the top secret Project Mogul, the balloon was intended to detect Soviet nuclear tests. After metallic and rubber debris were recovered by Roswell Army Air Field personnel, the United States Army announced their possession of a "flying disc". This announcement made international headlines, but was retracted within a day. To obscure the purpose and source of the debris, the army reported that it was a conventional weather balloon.
Ufology, sometimes written UFOlogy, is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary origins. While there are instances of government, private, and fringe science investigations of UFOs, ufology is generally regarded by skeptics and science educators as an example of pseudoscience.
The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) proposes that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being physical spacecraft occupied by extraterrestrial intelligence or non-human aliens, or non-occupied alien probes from other planets visiting Earth.
Ivan Terence Sanderson was a British biologist and writer born in Edinburgh, Scotland, who became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Sanderson wrote on nature and travel, and was a frequent guest on television talk shows and variety shows of the 1950s and '60s, displaying and discussing exotic animals.
The Cash–Landrum Incident was an unidentified flying object sighting in the United States in 1980, which witnesses claimed was responsible for causing health and property damage. Uncharacteristically for such UFO reports, this resulted in civil court proceedings, though the case ended in a dismissal.
Jon-Erik Beckjord was an American paranormal investigator, photographer, and cryptozoologist interested in UFOs, crop circles, the Loch Ness Monster, and Bigfoot. Throughout his life, he owned three separate, small-scale museums that featured displays, mostly photographs, of alleged UFO, Nessie, and Bigfoot sightings. He made guest appearances on national radio and television shows, but was criticized by skeptics and fellow cryptozoologists alike for not providing substantive evidence to back up his claims of the existence of paranormal beings.
Paul Frederic Bennewitz Jr. was an American businessman and UFO investigator. According to some sources, Bennewitz was the target of a government disinformation campaign that ultimately led to his psychiatric hospitalization.
Linda Moulton Howe is an American investigative journalist and Regional Emmy award-winning documentary film maker best known for her work as a ufologist and advocate of a variety of conspiracy theories, including her investigation of cattle mutilations and conclusion that they are performed by extraterrestrials. She is also noted for her speculations that the U.S. government is working with aliens.
The Phoenix Lights were a series of widely sighted unidentified flying objects observed in the skies over the southwestern U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada on March 13, 1997.
This is a list of sightings of alleged UFOs in Australia.
This is a list of notable alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the United Kingdom. Many more sightings have become known since the gradual release, between 2008 and 2013, of the Ministry of Defence's UFO sighting reports by the National Archives. In recent years, there have been many sightings of groups of slowly moving lights in the night sky, which can be easily explained as Chinese lanterns. Undertaken between 1997 and 2000, Project Condign concluded that all the investigated sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena in the UK could be attributed to misidentified but explicable objects, or poorly understood natural phenomena.
The Gulf Breeze UFO incident was a series of claimed UFO sightings in Gulf Breeze, Florida, United States, during late 1987 and early 1988. Beginning in November 1987, the Gulf Breeze Sentinel newspaper published a number of photos supplied to them by local contractor Ed Walters that were claimed to show a UFO. UFOlogists such as Bruce Maccabee believed the photographs were genuine; however, others strongly suspected them to be a hoax.
A flying saucer, or flying disc, is a purported disc-shaped UFO. The term was coined in 1947 by the news media for the objects pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed flew alongside his airplane above Washington State. Newspapers reported Arnold's story with speed estimates implausible for airplanes of the period. The story spurred a wave of hundreds of sightings across the United States, including the Roswell incident and Flight 105 UFO sighting. The concept quickly spread to other countries. Early reports speculated about secret military technology, but flying saucers became synonymous with aliens by 1950. The term has gradually been supplanted by the more general military terms unidentified flying object (UFO) and unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).
Barney and Betty Hill were an American couple who claimed they were abducted by extraterrestrials in a rural portion of the state of New Hampshire from September 19 to 20, 1961. The incident came to be called the "Hill Abduction" and the "Zeta Reticuli Incident" because two ufologists connected the star map shown to Betty Hill with the Zeta Reticuli system. Their story was adapted into the best-selling 1966 book The Interrupted Journey and the 1975 television film The UFO Incident.
The Pentagon UFO videos are selected visual recordings of Forward-looking infrared (FLIR) targeting cameras from United States Navy fighter jets based aboard the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2004, 2014 and 2015, with additional footage taken by other Navy personnel in 2019. The four grainy, monochromic videos, widely characterized as officially documenting UFOs, have received extensive coverage in the media since 2017. The Pentagon later addressed and officially released the first three videos of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) in 2020, and confirmed the provenance of the leaked 2019 videos in two statements made in 2021. Footage of UAPs was also released in 2023, sourced from MQ-9 military drones.
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is an office within the United States Office of the Secretary of Defense that investigates unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and other phenomena in the air, sea, and/or space and/or on land: sometimes referred to as "unidentified aerial phenomena" or "unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAP). Its first director was physicist Sean Kirkpatrick, and its current director is Jon T. Kosloski who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks.
On 16 September 1994, there was a UFO sighting outside Ruwa, Zimbabwe. Sixty-two pupils at the Ariel School aged between six and twelve said that they saw one or more silver craft descend from the sky and land on a field near their school. Some of the children claimed that one or more creatures dressed all in black then approached and telepathically communicated to them a message with an environmental theme, frightening them and causing them to cry.
