This is a list of alleged UFO sightings in the United States.
Date | City | State | Main article | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
1639 | Brookline | Massachusetts | Sighting by James Everell, who witnessed a light in the sky darting back and forth before finally fading away. [1] | |
September 1865 | Cadotte Pass | Montana | Sighting by trapper James Lumley of a craft and a subsequent crash, with descriptions of sulfur smells and descriptions of hieroglyphics. [2] | |
1896-1897 | Multiple | Multiple | Mystery airships | Alleged sightings of airship-like vehicles across the United States. |
April 17, 1897 | Aurora | Texas | Aurora, Texas, UFO incident | Local residents alleged that an airship crashed here, with the dead alien pilot being subsequently buried in the local cemetery. |
February 24, 1942 | Los Angeles | California | Battle of Los Angeles | The "Battle of Los Angeles," also known as "The Great Los Angeles Air Raid," is the name given by contemporary sources to an alleged enemy attack, and subsequent anti-aircraft artillery barrage which took place from late February 24 to early February 25, 1942, over Los Angeles, California. [3] [4] Initially, the target of the aerial barrage was thought to be an attacking force from Japan, but Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, speaking at a press conference shortly afterward, called the incident a "false alarm." When documenting the incident in 1983, the US Office of Air Force History attributed the event to a case of "war nerves," likely triggered by a lost weather balloon, and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries. [5] |
August 1945 | Jornada del Muerto | New Mexico | Trinity UFO Case | About a month after the first atomic bomb was detonated in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Nexico, two local boys reported that they saw an "avocado-shaped" object fall from the sky. They alleged that it was a crashed vehicle containing three insect-like alien creatures. |
June 21, 1947 | Maury Island | Washington | Maury Island incident | The Maury Island incident happened on June 21, 1947. It was reported before the sighting of the original flying saucers by Kenneth Arnold. It is also one of the earliest reported instances of an alleged encounter with so-called "men in black suits." [6] |
June 24, 1947 | Mount Rainier | Washington | Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting | On June 24, 1947, Arnold said he saw nine unusual objects flying in a chain near Mount Rainier, Washington while he was searching for a missing military aircraft in his CallAir A-2. He described the objects as almost blindingly bright when they reflected the sun's rays; their flight as "erratic" ("like the tail of a Chinese kite") and flying at "tremendous speed." Arnold's story was widely carried by the Associated Press and other news outlets. [6] |
July 1947 | Roswell | New Mexico | Roswell UFO incident | The Roswell UFO Incident involved the recovery of materials near Roswell, New Mexico, in early July 1947 which have since become the subject of intense speculation and research. There are widely divergent views on what actually happened. The United States military maintains that what was recovered was a top-secret research balloon that had crashed, whereas many ufologists believe the wreckage was of a crashed alien craft. The incident has evolved into a recognized and referenced pop culture phenomenon. [7] |
January 7, 1948 | Maysville | Kentucky | Mantell UFO Incident | The Mantell Incident involved the crash and death of 25-year-old Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, Captain Thomas F. Mantell, on January 7, 1948, while in pursuit of a UFO. Historian David Michael Jacobs argued that the Mantell case marked a shift in both public and governmental perceptions of UFOs. [8] |
July 24, 1948 | Montgomery | Alabama | Chiles-Whitted UFO Encounter | The Chiles-Whitted UFO Encounter is alleged to have occurred on July 24, 1948, when two American commercial pilots reported that their Douglas DC-3 had nearly collided with a strange torpedo shaped object. The incident was investigated by the US Air Force's Project Sign. |
October 1, 1948 | Fargo | North Dakota | Gorman Dogfight | The Gorman Dogfight is alleged to have occurred on October 1, 1948, when a US Air Force pilot sighted and pursued a UFO for 27 minutes over Fargo, North Dakota. [9] |
May 11, 1950 | McMinnville | Oregon | McMinnville UFO photographs | The McMinnville UFO photographs were taken on a farm near McMinnville, Oregon on May 11, 1950, by Paul and Evelyn Trent. [10] |
August 15, 1950 | Great Falls | Montana | Mariana UFO incident | The Mariana UFO incident occurred during the summer of 1950 in Great Falls, Montana. The event garnered national media attention, as the concept of UFOs and alien invasion was extremely popular amongst Americans at the time. |
August 25, 1951 | Lubbock | Texas | Lubbock Lights | The Lubbock Lights were a v-shaped formation of lights seen over the town of Lubbock, Texas in August 1951. |
May 24, 1952 | Burbank | California | Orfeo Angelucci | Beginning in the summer of 1952, according to Angelucci in his book The Secret of the Saucers (1955), he began to encounter flying saucers and their friendly human-appearing pilots during his drives home from an aircraft plant. |
July 13, 1952 | Washington, D.C. | Washington, D.C. | 1952 Washington D.C. UFO incident | The 1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident was a series of unidentified flying object reports from July 13 to 29, 1952, over Washington, D.C. A July headline from the New York Times read: “flying objects near Washington spotted by both pilots and radar: Air Force reveals reports of something, perhaps ‘saucers,’ traveling slowly but jumping up and down.” [11] |
September 12, 1952 | Flatwoods | West Virginia | Flatwoods monster | Six local boys and a local woman of Flatwoods, West Virginia reported sighting a UFO landing and later discovered a bizarre-looking creature near the site on September 12, 1952. |
November 23, 1953 | Sault Ste. Marie | Michigan | Felix Moncla | Felix Moncla, Jr. was a United States Air Force pilot who disappeared with 2nd Lt. Robert Wilson while pursuing an unidentified flying object over Lake Superior in 1953. The US Air Force reported that Moncla had crashed and that the "unknown" object was a misidentified Canadian Air Force airplane, but the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) disputed this claim, reporting that none of their craft were near the area in question. [12] |
November 2, 1957 | Levelland | Texas | Levelland UFO case | The Levelland UFO case occurred on November 2–3, 1957, in the small town of Levelland, Texas. Levelland, which in 1957 had a population of about 10,000, is located west of Lubbock on the flat prairie of the Texas panhandle. |
September 19, 1961 | Lancaster | New Hampshire | Betty and Barney Hill abduction | Betty and Barney Hill claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrials on September 19–20, 1961. Their story, commonly called the Hill Abduction and occasionally the Zeta Reticuli Incident, was the first widely publicized UFO abduction report. |
April 24, 1964 | Socorro | New Mexico | Lonnie Zamora incident | Lonnie Zamora was a New Mexico police officer who reported a UFO close encounter on Friday, April 24, 1964, near Socorro, New Mexico. |
September 3, 1965 | Exeter | New Hampshire | Exeter incident | The Exeter incident of Exeter, New Hampshire occurred on September 3, 1965. A UFO the size of a barn was seen as close as 500 feet away by a teenager and two police officers. |
December 9, 1965 | Kecksburg | Pennsylvania | Kecksburg UFO incident | The Kecksburg UFO incident of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, occurred on December 9, 1965. A large, brilliant fireball was seen by thousands in at least six states and Ontario, Canada. It streaked over the Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario area, dropped reported metal debris over Michigan and northern Ohio, and caused sonic booms in western Pennsylvania. It was generally assumed and reported by the press to be a meteor. |
1969 | Leary | Georgia | Jimmy Carter UFO incident | Jimmy Carter claimed that he had seen a UFO in 1969. In 1973, while Governor of Georgia, he filed a report with the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. |
October 11, 1973 | Pascagoula | Mississippi | Pascagoula Abduction | The abduction of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, also known as the Pascagoula Abduction is, after the Hill Abduction, among the best-known cases of reports of alien abduction. |
January 12, 1975 | North Bergen | New Jersey | Stonehenge incident | Occurred in the North Hudson Park near the Stonehenge apartment building in North Bergen, New Jersey as was reported in the Village Voice and other local media. [13] [14] [15] |
November 5, 1975 | Snowflake | Arizona | Travis Walton | Travis Walton claims to have been abducted by a UFO on November 5, 1975, while working on a logging crew in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona. Walton could not be found, but reappeared after five days of intensive searches. |
August 27, 1979 | Stephen | Minnesota | Val Johnson incident | At 1:40 a.m. in August 1979, in Marshall County, Minnesota, Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson was on duty and driving close to the North Dakota border when his patrol car was struck by a blinding ball of light. Johnson was knocked unconscious, and his patrol car was damaged. |
December 29, 1980 | Dayton | Texas | Cash-Landrum incident | The Cash-Landrum Incident was a reported UFO sighting in 1980, after which witnesses claimed damage to their health. It is one of very few UFO cases to result in civil court proceedings. It might be classified as a Close Encounter of the Second Kind, due to its reported physical effects on the witnesses and their automobile. |
November 11, 1987 | Gulf Breeze | Florida | Gulf Breeze UFO incident | The Gulf Breeze UFO incident occurred on November 11, 1987, in Gulf Breeze, Florida. |
March 8, 1994 | Multiple | Michigan | 1994 Lake Michigan UFO event | Over 100 witnesses reported five or six objects, cylindrically shaped or circles with blue, red, white and green lights across West Michigan. |
March 13, 1997 | Phoenix | Arizona | Phoenix Lights | The Phoenix Lights, sometimes referred to as "The Lights Over Phoenix", is the popular name given to a series of optical phenomena that took place in the sky over the US states of Arizona and Nevada on March 13, 1997. Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people between 19:30 and 22:30 MST, in a space of about 300 miles, from the Nevada line, through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson. UFO proponents claimed they were part of aircraft unknown to man, while the USAF identified them as flares dropped by A-10 Warthog aircraft which were on training exercises. In 2007, former Arizona governor Fife Symington came forward and admitted that he had seen "a massive, delta-shaped craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak" in 1997. [16] |
January 5, 2000 | Highland | Illinois | Black Triangle (UFO) | The "St. Clair Triangle", "UFO Over Illinois", "Southern Illinois UFO", or "Highland, Illinois UFO" sighting occurred on January 5, 2000, over the towns of Highland, Dupo, Lebanon, Summerfield, Millstadt, and O'Fallon, Illinois, beginning shortly after 4:00 am. Five on-duty Illinois police officers in separate locales, along with various other witnesses, sighted and reported a massive, silent, triangular aircraft operating at an unusual range of near-hover to incredible high speed at treetop altitudes. The incident was examined in an ABC Special "Seeing is Believing" by Peter Jennings. |
August 21, 2004 | Chicago | Illinois | A triangular formation of reddish lights were seen at low to intermediate altitude by hundreds of witnesses, on three separate occasions in late 2004 and early 2005, producing multiple videos, photos, and mainstream local news coverage over two suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. The object(s) maneuvered slowly within a busy airspace near O'Hare International Airport. The incident was reported by local media. [17] | |
November 7, 2006 | Chicago | Illinois | Chicago O'Hare UFO sighting 2006 | At approximately 4:30 p.m on November 7, 2006, federal authorities at Chicago O'Hare International Airport received a report that a group of twelve airport employees were witnessing a metallic, saucer-shaped craft hovering over gate C-17. |
January 5, 2009 | Morristown | New Jersey | Morristown UFO | On January 5, 2009, five unidentified red objects were seen over Morristown, New Jersey. On April 1, 2009, Joe Rudy and Chris Russo admitted it was a hoax and came forward with video evidence proving they were the perpetrators, saying they wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to fool the so-called UFO "experts." [18] [19] [20] |
February 19, 2018 | Desert | Arizona | According to the Federal Aviation Administration, three commercial pilots saw an unidentified object fly over them in open airspace above Arizona. [21] [22] Investigators reported that the pilots mostly likely saw a "high-altitude research balloon". [23] | |
21 February 2021 | Clayton | New Mexico | A pilot, at an altitude of 37,000 feet (11,278 m) reported seeing a long cylindrical object that almost looked like a "cruise missile type of thing" moving really fast right over the top of them according to published audio. American Airlines confirmed that the radio transmission came from flight 2292. FAA a few days later stated: "A pilot reported seeing an object over New Mexico shortly after noon local time on Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. FAA air traffic controllers did not see any object in the area on their radarscopes". [24] | |
10 February 2023 | Deadhorse | Alaska | 2023 Alaska high-altitude object | A high-altitude object entered U.S. airspace on February 9 and was shot down over the Beaufort Sea by the U.S. Air Force. The Department of Defense said it was the size of a small car and flying northeast at approximately 40,000 feet (12,192 m), posing a risk to civilian flight. [25] [26] [27] [28] |
12 February 2023 | Lake Huron | Michigan | 2023 Lake Huron high-altitude object | An octagonal object with strings hanging from it was detected over northern Montana, Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at 20,000 feet (6,096 m). Airspace was temporarily closed in the Lake Huron area, where the object was shot down by the US Air Force and National Guard, falling into Canadian waters. [29] [30] [31] [32] |
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 UAPs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained.
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 Maury Island incident refers to claims made by Fred Crisman and Harold Dahl of falling debris and threats by men in black following sightings of unidentified flying objects in the sky over Maury Island, Washington, United States. The pair claimed that the events had occurred on June 21, 1947. The incident is widely regarded as a hoax, even by believers of flying saucers and UFOs.
Black triangles are UFOs reported as having a triangular shape and dark color, typically observed at night, described as large, silent, hovering, moving slowly, and displaying pulsating, colored lights which they can turn off.
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.
The Lonnie Zamora incident was an alleged UFO sighting that occurred on April 24, 1964 near Socorro, New Mexico when Socorro police officer Lonnie Zamora claimed he saw two people beside a shiny object that later rose into the air accompanied by a roaring blue and orange flame. Zamora's claims were subject to attention from news media, UFO investigators and UFO organizations, and the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book listed the case as "unknown". Conventional explanations of Zamora's claims include a lunar lander test by White Sands Missile Range and a hoax by New Mexico Tech students.
The Mariana UFO incident occurred in August 1950 in Great Falls, Montana. The film footage of the sighting, filmed by local baseball coach Nick Mariana, is believed to be among the first ever taken of what came to be called an unidentified flying object. The U.S. Air Force, after a short investigation, concluded that what had actually been sighted were the reflections of two F-94 jet fighters, a claim that would later be retracted.
Identifying unidentified flying objects (UFOs) is a difficult task due to the normally poor quality of the evidence provided by those who report sighting the unknown object. Observations and subsequent reporting are often made by those untrained in astronomy, atmospheric phenomena, aeronautics, physics, and perception. Nevertheless, most officially investigated UFO sightings, such as from the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book, have been identified as being due to honest misidentifications of natural phenomena, aircraft, or other prosaic explanations. In early U.S. Air Force attempts to explain UFO sightings, unexplained sightings routinely numbered over one in five reports. However, in early 1953, right after the CIA's Robertson Panel, percentages of unexplained sightings dropped precipitously, usually being only a few percent in any given year. When Project Blue Book closed down in 1970, only 6% of all cases were classified as being truly unidentified.
The Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter occurred at approximately 2:45 AM on July 24, 1948, in the skies near Montgomery, Alabama, United States. Two commercial pilots, Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted, claimed to have observed a "glowing object" pass by their plane before it appeared to pull up into a cloud and travel out of sight.
Below is a partial list of alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects or UFOs in Canada.
Jimmy Carter, United States president from 1977 until 1981, reported seeing an unidentified flying object while at Leary, Georgia, in 1969. While serving as governor of Georgia, Carter was asked by the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City to file a report of the sighting, and he filed a statement on September 18, mailed September 20. Since its writing, the report has been discussed several times by both ufologists and by members of the mainstream media.
A flying saucer is a purported disc-shaped UFO. In science fiction, reported UFO sightings, and UFO conspiracy theories, they are typically piloted by nonhuman beings. The term "flying saucer" or "flying disc" can be used generically for a mysterious flying object. The term was coined in 1947 but has gradually been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying object, (UFO). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability.
The 2009 Morristown UFO hoax was a series of aerial events involving mysterious floating red lights in the sky, that first occurred near Morristown, New Jersey, on Monday, January 5, 2009, between 8:15 pm and 9:00 pm. The red lights were later observed on four other nights: January 26, January 29, February 7, and February 17, 2009. The events were later revealed to be a hoax, perpetrated by Joe Rudy and Chris Russo. Rudy and Russo have described the hoax as a social experiment, with the ambition of exposing "ufology" as a pseudoscience and raising consciousness around unreliability of eyewitness claims.
Japan Air Lines Cargo Flight 1628 was a Japanese Boeing 747-200F cargo aircraft flying from Paris to Narita International Airport that was involved in an unidentified flying object (UFO) sighting on November 17, 1986. During the flight, Captain Kenji Terauchi reported seeing three objects he described as "two small ships and the mothership". The FAA in Anchorage only saw Flight 1628 on their radar. Two other nearby planes only saw Flight 1628 and no other objects. An FAA investigation of the incident characterized Terauchi as a "UFO repeater". Astronomers and investigators have determined that Terauchi probably mistook the planets Jupiter and Mars as UFOs. Contradictions among the accounts of the crew from the three aircraft as well as contradictions between the transcripts and later interviews with Terauchi have cast doubt that anything unusual happened.
The Pentagon UFO videos are selected visual recordings of FLIR targeting from United States Navy fighter jets based aboard 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 acting director is Tim Phillips who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks.
On February 10, 2023, the United States Air Force shot down a high-altitude object that had entered U.S. airspace over Alaska a day before. The object was shot down onto the Beaufort Sea. The Department of Defense said it was the size of a small car and flying northeast at approximately 40,000 feet (12,000 m), posing a risk to civilian flight. On February 16, 2023, US President Joe Biden stated that the downed object was probably a civilian-owned balloon and "most likely tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions".
On February 11, 2023, an octagonal unidentified flying object was detected over northern Montana. It disappeared until it was spotted the next day in Wisconsin, flying at 20,000 feet over the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The object was tracked by NORAD.
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