In popular culture and UFO conspiracy theories, men in black (MIB) are government agents dressed in black suits, who question, interrogate, harass, threaten, allegedly memory-wipe or sometimes even assassinate unidentified flying object (UFO) witnesses to keep them silent about what they have seen. The term is also frequently used to describe mysterious men working for unknown organizations, as well as various branches of government allegedly tasked with protecting secrets or performing other strange activities.
Frederick Valentich was an Australian pilot who disappeared while on a 125-nautical-mile (232 km) training flight in a Cessna 182L light aircraft, registered VH-DSJ, over Bass Strait. On the evening of Saturday 21 October 1978, twenty-year-old Valentich informed Melbourne air traffic control that he was being accompanied by an aircraft about 1,000 feet (300 m) above him and that his engine had begun running roughly, before finally reporting: "It's not an aircraft."
Clayton South is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 20 km south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Kingston local government area. Clayton South recorded a population of 13,381 at the 2021 census.
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 are able to turn off.
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.
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 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.
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 Levelland UFO case occurred on November 2–3, 1957, on the highways around 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 South Plains. The case is considered by ufologists to be one of the most impressive in UFO history, mainly because of the large number of witnesses involved over a relatively short period of time. However, both the US Air Force and UFO sceptics have described the incident as being caused by either ball lightning or a severe electrical storm.
This is a list of alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects or UFOs in Mexico.
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.
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 descriptive term for a type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947 but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects. 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.
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 mother ship". 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 between the three person crew as well as contradictions between the transcripts and later interviews with Terauchi have cast doubt that anything unusual happened.
The most widely reported UFO incident in New Zealand, and the only one investigated, involved the Kaikoura lights encountered by aircraft, filmed and tracked by radar in December 1978. The New Zealand Defence Force does not take an official interest in UFO reports, but in December 2010 it released files on hundreds of purported UFO reports. New Zealand's then-Minister of Defence, Wayne Mapp said at the time people could "make what they will" of the reports, and said "a quick scan of the files indicates that virtually everything has a natural explanation".
The Phenomenon is a 2020 documentary film written and produced by ufologist James Fox.
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.
The Flight 105 UFO sighting occurred on July 4, 1947, when three crew members aboard a United Airlines flight reported seeing multiple unidentified objects in the skies over the Pacific Northwest. A week prior, private pilot Kenneth Arnold had reported seeing similar objects nearby – a sighting that was followed by nearly 800 "copycat" reports during the summer of 1947. Four days after the Flight 105 sighting, Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that they had recovered a "flying disc"; that statement was quickly retracted after the crashed object was identified as a conventional weather balloon. The following month, on July 29, an air crew flying the same route also reported unidentified objects.
The 1947 flying disc craze was a rash of unidentified flying object reports in the United States that were publicized during the summer of 1947. The craze began on June 24, when media nationwide reported civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold's story of witnessing disc-shaped objects which headline writers dubbed "Flying Saucers". Such reports quickly spread throughout the United States; historians would later chronicle at least 800 "copycat" reports in subsequent weeks, while other sources estimate the reports may have numbered in the thousands.
