The sighting database
162 cases from 35 countries, backed by 491 sources. Filter by what was seen, when, where and how it was recorded.
Showing all 162 cases
Jacob's Ladder (Genesis 28)
Fleeing his brother Esau, Jacob leaves Beersheba for Haran and stops for the night at a place called Luz, using a stone for a pillow. In a dream he sees a ladder, or…
The Tulli Papyrus
In 1953 Tiffany Thayer's Fortean magazine Doubt published what it called a translation of an Egyptian papyrus found among the papers of Alberto Tulli, a former director…
Pillar of Cloud and Fire (Exodus 13-14)
After the Israelites leave Egypt, the Book of Exodus says God led them with a moving column: a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, so that they could…
Elijah Taken Up in a Chariot of Fire (2 Kings 2)
In the Second Book of Kings, the prophet Elijah knows in advance that he is about to be 'taken up'. He and his disciple Elisha walk from Gilgal to Bethel to Jericho and…
Ezekiel's Wheels (Ezekiel 1)
The Book of Ezekiel opens with the most famous 'flying machine' passage in the Bible. A priest deported to Babylonia, Ezekiel says he was standing among the exiles by the…
Zechariah's Flying Roll (Zechariah 5)
Zechariah was one of the prophets active after the return from Babylonian exile, under the Persian king Darius I. His book records eight visions seen in a single night…
Pushpaka Vimana in the Ramayana
The Pushpaka ('flowery') vimana is the most famous flying vehicle in Sanskrit literature. In Valmiki's Ramayana it was built by the divine architect Vishvakarma for…
Livy's Phantom Ships in the Sky
In the anxious winter after Hannibal crossed the Alps and beat the Romans at the Trebia, the historian Livy lists a run of portents reported in and around Rome. The first…
Pliny's Burning Shield, 100 BC
In Book II of his Natural History, written around AD 77, Pliny the Elder includes a short chapter on 'burning shields' (clipei ardentes) among the wonders of the sky. His…
Julius Obsequens' Book of Prodigies: Shields, Armies and a Golden Globe
Julius Obsequens, a Roman writer of the late 4th or early 5th century AD, compiled a year-by-year catalogue of the portents reported to the Roman state between 249 and 12…
Star of Bethlehem (Matthew 2)
Only the Gospel of Matthew tells this story. Magi, astrologer-priests from the east, arrive in Jerusalem during the reign of Herod the Great, asking where the newborn…
Ships in the Air over Clonmacnoise, c. 749
Several sets of Irish annals (Ulster, Tigernach, Clonmacnoise and the Four Masters) record, in one terse line, that ships with their crews were seen in the air. The…
Flaming Shields over Sigiburg, 776
The Royal Frankish Annals, the semi-official chronicle of Charlemagne's court, describe a sky event at the hilltop fortress of Sigiburg in 776, during the Saxon wars…
Fiery Dragons over Northumbria, 793
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's entry for 793 begins with dread. That year terrifying omens came over the land of the Northumbrians: great sheets of light rushing through the…
Agobard of Lyon and the Sky Ships of Magonia
Around 815, Agobard, archbishop of Lyon, wrote a treatise On Hail and Thunder attacking the weather-magic beliefs of his flock. Many people, he complained, believed in a…
Gervase of Tilbury's Sky Anchor
Gervase of Tilbury, an English lawyer and courtier, compiled the Otia Imperialia ('Recreation for an Emperor') for Emperor Otto IV, finishing around 1211. Among its…
Byland Abbey 'Silver Disc', 1290
One of the most widely repeated 'medieval UFO' reports. In 1953 a letter to The Times of London claimed that a Latin manuscript recently found at Ampleforth Abbey…
Nuremberg Sky Battle, 1561
In April 1561 Hans Glaser, a Nuremberg 'letter-painter' and printer, published an illustrated broadsheet describing a terrifying spectacle around sunrise on 14 April…
Basel Black Spheres, 1566
In summer 1566 the people of Basel saw three unsettling sky events, described in an illustrated broadsheet the same year. On the evening of 27 July the sun lost its…
Gangwon Province Objects, Joseon Korea, 1609
The Annals of the Joseon Dynasty preserve an official dispatch from Yi Hyeong-uk, governor of Gangwon Province, entered in the Gwanghaegun Diary in the 9th lunar month of…
Winthrop's Light over the Muddy River, Massachusetts Bay, 1639
Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony kept a running journal of colony affairs, and among the entries for 1639 he set down a short, strange report. James…
Utsuro-bune, the Hollow Ship of Hitachi, 1803
In 1803, according to several Edo-period manuscripts, fishermen on the Hitachi coast of eastern Japan towed ashore a strange round vessel. The best-known version, in the…
John Martin's 'Large Saucer', North Texas, 1878
On a Tuesday morning in January 1878 a Texas farmer named John Martin was out hunting when a dark object high in the southern sky caught his eye. Its odd shape and speed…
Great Airship Wave: Sacramento and California, November 1896
On the evening of 17 November 1896 a bright light drifted slowly over the eastern side of Sacramento, California, at what witnesses judged to be about a thousand feet. It…
Great Airship Wave: The Midwest, April 1897
After California went quiet, a second and much larger airship wave began in Nebraska in February 1897 and rolled east through the spring. Lights and occasionally dark…
Aurora, Texas Airship Crash, 1897
On 19 April 1897, at the height of the airship wave, the Dallas Morning News printed a short dispatch from Aurora, a fading town in Wise County, signed by local cotton…
Alexander Hamilton's Cattle-Rustling Airship, Le Roy, Kansas, 1897
In late April 1897 the Yates Center Farmer's Advocate published a sworn statement from Alexander Hamilton, a farmer and former Kansas legislator. He said that on the…
USS Supply 'Remarkable Meteors', North Pacific, 1904
Early on 28 February 1904 the US Navy stores ship Supply was steaming from Guam toward San Francisco when the officer of the deck, Acting Boatswain Frank Garvey, saw…
New England Phantom Airship Wave, 1909-1910
In December 1909, Worcester businessman Wallace Tillinghast claimed he had built a heavier-than-air machine and had secretly flown it from Worcester to New York and back…
Great Meteor Procession, 1913
At about nine o'clock on the evening of 9 February 1913, people across Canada watched something no one had a word for. A long procession of perhaps 40 to 60 bright…
Miracle of the Sun, Fátima, 1917
Through 1917, three shepherd children near the Portuguese village of Fátima, Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, said a radiant lady was…
Roerich Expedition's Shining Oval, Kukunor, 1927
The Russian painter and mystic Nicholas Roerich spent 1925-1928 leading his family's Central Asian expedition from India across Xinjiang, Siberia and Mongolia toward…
Scandinavian Ghost Fliers, 1933-1934
From Christmas Eve 1933, when an aircraft with a brilliant searchlight was reported coming in from the Gulf of Bothnia over Kalix in northern Sweden, the far north of…
Battle of Los Angeles, 1942
Less than three months after Pearl Harbor and a day after a Japanese submarine shelled an oil field near Santa Barbara, Southern California was on a hair trigger. In the…
Foo Fighters, 1944-1945
In the last winter of the Second World War, American night-fighter crews flying over the Rhine began reporting glowing balls of light that joined them in the dark. On 27…
Ghost Rockets over Sweden, 1946
In the summer of 1946, a year after Germany's V-weapons fell silent, Swedes began reporting 'ghost rockets': fast rocket- or cigar-shaped objects, sometimes winged…
Roswell, New Mexico
In June 1947 ranch foreman Mac Brazel found a field near Corona strewn with foil, rubber, tape and light sticks. After hearing about the new 'flying disc' craze, he…
Maury Island, Puget Sound
Harold Dahl said that on 21 June 1947, three days before Kenneth Arnold's famous sighting, he was working a boat off Maury Island in Puget Sound when six huge…
Kenneth Arnold, Mount Rainier
Flying his small CallAir plane from Chehalis toward Yakima, Idaho businessman Kenneth Arnold broke off a search for a missing Marine transport when a sharp flash caught…
The Twining Memo: 'Something Real'
Three months into the 1947 wave of flying disc reports, Army Air Forces intelligence asked Air Materiel Command at Wright Field for its considered view. The reply, signed…
Project Sign and the 'Estimate of the Situation'
Acting on the Twining memo, the Air Force ordered Air Materiel Command on 30 December 1947 to set up a project to collect, evaluate and share all information on sightings…
Thomas Mantell Crash, Kentucky
On the afternoon of 7 January 1948 the Kentucky State Police called Godman Army Airfield at Fort Knox about a large, round object drifting over towns to the east and…
Chiles–Whitted Encounter, Alabama
In the small hours of 24 July 1948 an Eastern Air Lines DC-3 bound from Houston to Atlanta was cruising near Montgomery when Capt. Clarence Chiles saw a dull red glow…
Gorman Dogfight, Fargo
George Gorman, a 25-year-old World War II fighter veteran flying with the North Dakota Air National Guard, stayed aloft over Fargo after his flight landed, to log some…
Farmington 'Saucer Armada', New Mexico
On the morning of 17 March 1950 traffic slowed on Farmington's Main Street as crowds stood pointing at the sky. For about an hour, the Farmington Daily Times reported…
McMinnville (Trent) Photographs, Oregon
Evelyn Trent was feeding rabbits behind the family farmhouse outside Sheridan, Oregon, when she saw a silvery, metallic-looking disc gliding slowly toward the farm. She…
Great Falls (Mariana) Film, Montana
Checking the wind before an afternoon game at Great Falls' empty Legion Stadium, baseball manager Nick Mariana saw a flash and then two bright, silvery objects moving…
Project Magnet (Canada)
Wilbert Brockhouse Smith was a senior radio engineer at Canada's Department of Transport, a specialist in radio propagation and geomagnetism. At a 1950 broadcasting…
Lubbock Lights, Texas
On the evening of 25 August 1951 three Texas Technological College professors relaxing in a backyard in Lubbock saw a loose arc of twenty or thirty soft, bluish-green…
Vaimanika Shastra
The Vaimanika Shastra ('science of aeronautics') is often presented as an ancient Sanskrit manual for building vimanas. Its own history says otherwise. In 1952 G. R…
Tremonton Film, Utah
Driving north from Tremonton, Utah, on 2 July 1952 with his family, Navy Warrant Officer Delbert Newhouse, a veteran aerial photographer with more than a thousand hours…
Washington, D.C. Radar–Visual Flap
Just before midnight on Saturday 19 July 1952, controller Edward Nugent at Washington National Airport picked up seven unknown blips south-southwest of the city, moving…
Flatwoods Monster, West Virginia
At dusk on 12 September 1952, boys playing in Flatwoods, West Virginia, saw a bright object streak across the sky and seem to come down on a hilltop farm. With local…
The Robertson Panel
After the Washington radar sightings of July 1952 alarmed the Truman White House, the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence asked a panel of eminent scientists to judge…
Kinross Incident: F-89 Lost Over Lake Superior
On the evening of 23 November 1953 radar at Calumet Air Force Station on Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula picked up an unidentified target over Lake Superior, about 30 miles…
Florence Stadium "Angel Hair"
Early in the second half of a reserve match between Fiorentina and local rivals Pistoiese, the 10,000 people inside Florence's concrete stadium stopped watching football…
Kelly–Hopkinsville Encounter, Kentucky
Around 7 pm on a hot Sunday, visitor Billy Ray Taylor came in from the well at the Sutton family's rural farmhouse near Kelly, Kentucky, saying he had seen a shining…
Lakenheath–Bentwaters Radar-Visual Case, England
From about 9:30 pm on 13 August 1956, USAF radar operators at RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk tracked targets crossing their scopes at thousands of miles an hour, including a…
Ubatuba Magnesium Fragments
In mid-September 1957 the Rio de Janeiro society columnist Ibrahim Sued opened an envelope holding a letter and three small chips of grey metal. The writer, whose…
RAF West Freugh Radar Tracking
West Freugh ran a bombing trials range over Luce Bay, ringed by mobile radar units manned by civilian Ministry of Supply operators. On the morning of 4 April 1957, with…
RB-47 Radar and ELINT Encounter
In the early hours of 17 July 1957 an RB-47H electronic reconnaissance jet, carrying six officers and gear for detecting enemy radar transmissions, was heading home from…
Levelland, Texas
Late on 2 November 1957, a month after Sputnik, farm workers Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz phoned the Levelland, Texas, police: driving west of town they had seen a blue…
Trindade Island Photographs, Brazil
In January 1958 the Brazilian Navy training ship Almirante Saldanha was at remote Trindade Island, some 1,100 km off Brazil, supporting International Geophysical Year…
Father Gill, Boianai, Papua
Rev. William Gill, an Australian Anglican priest running the mission at Boianai in what was then the Territory of Papua, had written to a colleague on 26 June 1959 that…
Betty and Barney Hill
Driving home to Portsmouth from a holiday in Niagara Falls and Montreal, Betty and Barney Hill noticed a bright point of light that seemed to shadow their car down U.S…
Socorro, New Mexico (Lonnie Zamora)
Late on a Friday afternoon, Socorro police sergeant Lonnie Zamora broke off chasing a speeding car when he heard a roar and saw a funnel of blue-orange flame descend…
Valensole (Maurice Masse)
At dawn on 1 July 1965, lavender farmer Maurice Masse was starting work on the Valensole plateau in Provence when a sharp whistling drew his attention to what he first…
Deception Island, Antarctica
In the dark of the Antarctic winter of 1965, men at the military research stations crowded onto Deception Island reported a lens-shaped light that refused to behave like…
Exeter, New Hampshire
In the small hours of 3 September 1965, 18-year-old Norman Muscarello was walking home along Route 150 in Kensington when, he said, a silent object with a row of…
Kecksburg, Pennsylvania
Just before dusk on 9 December 1965, a brilliant fireball streaked across the sky from Michigan and Ontario toward Pennsylvania, dropping reports of hot debris, grass…
Wanaque Reservoir, New Jersey
On the evening of 11 January 1966 the police radio in Wanaque, a Ramapo Mountains town around the Newark water supply reservoir, was flooded with about 30 calls from…
Tully Saucer Nest, Queensland
On a clear, hot morning, banana grower George Pedley was driving a tractor past Horseshoe Lagoon on Albert Pennisi's cane farm near Tully, in far north Queensland, when…
The Ummo Affair, Spain
On 6 February 1966 a Madrid man named José Luis Jordán Peña reported seeing a huge circular craft on three legs, its underside marked with a strange emblem: three…
Michigan "Swamp Gas" Sightings (Dexter and Hillsdale)
In mid-March 1966 southern Michigan was alive with reports of lights in the sky, some seen by sheriff's deputies. On the night of 20 March, farmer Frank Mannor near…
Westall School, Melbourne
During morning break on Wednesday 6 April 1966, students on the oval at Westall High School in Melbourne's southeastern suburbs began shouting and pointing at a silvery…
Portage County Police Chase, Ohio
Before dawn on 17 April 1966, Portage County deputy Dale Spaur and auxiliary officer Wilbur 'Barney' Neff stopped to check an abandoned car on Route 224 near Ravenna…
Malmstrom AFB / Echo Flight Missile Shutdown
At 8:45 on the morning of 16 March 1967, all ten Minuteman I nuclear missiles of Echo Flight, controlled from a capsule beneath the Montana prairie near Malmstrom Air…
Falcon Lake (Stefan Michalak)
Stefan Michalak, a Winnipeg industrial mechanic prospecting for quartz and silver in the Precambrian rock near Falcon Lake, said a clatter of geese made him look up to…
Cussac, Cantal
On a sunny morning on the Cussac plateau in the Auvergne, 13-year-old François and his 9-year-old sister Anne-Marie were minding the family's cows when the boy saw…
Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia
Late on 4 October 1967, after a night of odd lights reported by an Air Canada crew over Quebec, a fishing captain off Sambro and callers in Halifax, 17-year-old Laurie…
The Condon Report
After the 1966 Michigan sightings and Gerald Ford's call for a hearing, the U.S. Air Force paid the University of Colorado to run an independent scientific study of UFOs…
Project Blue Book Closes
On 17 December 1969, Secretary of the Air Force Robert Seamans announced the end of Project Blue Book, the Air Force's public UFO investigation office at Wright-Patterson…
Pascagoula River Abduction Claim
Late on 11 October 1973, two men from Pascagoula walked into the Jackson County sheriff's office with a story they had nearly decided to keep to themselves. Charles…
Coyne Helicopter Encounter, Mansfield, Ohio
An Army Reserve UH-1H 'Huey' was flying home from Columbus to Cleveland at 2,500 feet when the crew chief spotted a red light on the eastern horizon. Within seconds it…
Langenburg Rings, Saskatchewan
Edwin Fuhr, 36, was swathing his rapeseed (canola) field north of Langenburg on a Sunday morning when he noticed something sitting just above the grass near a slough: a…
Kōfu Encounter, Japan
Two seven-year-old cousins were roller-skating near their housing estate in Kōfu at dusk when two glowing orange objects appeared overhead. Frightened when the lights…
Travis Walton Disappearance
At dusk on 5 November 1975 a seven-man thinning crew was driving out of the Turkey Springs contract area when, they said, they rounded a bend and saw a glowing…
Tehran F-4 Intercept
Shortly after midnight on 19 September 1976, residents of Tehran's Shemiran district phoned Mehrabad tower about a brilliant object in the sky. The controller saw it too…
Colares and Operação Prato
In 1977 people in the fishing communities around Colares, at the mouth of the Amazon, began telling of lights that came down at night and attacked them. Fishermen spoke…
France Founds GEPAN (now GEIPAN)
In 1977 France did something no other major power had done: it placed the study of UFOs inside its national space agency. The Groupe d'Étude des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux…
Broad Haven School, Wales
At lunchtime on a wet Friday, a group of boys playing football at Broad Haven Primary School spotted something in the fields behind the playground: a long, shiny silver…
Petrozavodsk Phenomenon
Around 4 a.m. on 20 September 1977, early-shift dockworkers, police officers and an ambulance crew in Petrozavodsk watched a brilliant 'star' rise from the north-east and…
Frederick Valentich Disappearance
On the evening of 21 October 1978, 20-year-old Frederick Valentich took off from Moorabbin in a Cessna 182 bound for King Island across Bass Strait. Just after 7 p.m. he…
Kaikoura Lights
On 21 December 1978 the crew of a Safe Air Argosy freighter flying from Blenheim to Christchurch saw strange lights around their aircraft, and Wellington air traffic…
Robert Taylor, Dechmont Woods
Robert Taylor, a forester for the Livingston Development Corporation, parked his pickup near the M8 on the morning of 9 November 1979 and walked up a forest track on…
Manises Incident, Spain
Flight JK-297, a TAE Super Caravelle carrying 109 holidaymakers from Salzburg to the Canary Islands, had refuelled in Palma and was over the sea near Ibiza at about 11…
PC Alan Godfrey, Todmorden
Before dawn in late November 1980, West Yorkshire police constable Alan Godfrey was driving round Todmorden looking for a herd of cattle reported loose on a housing…
Rendlesham Forest and the Halt Memo
Around 3 a.m. on 26 December 1980, US Air Force security police at the east gate of RAF Woodbridge saw lights apparently coming down into Rendlesham Forest and went to…
Cash-Landrum Incident
Driving home through pine woods near Huffman after dinner on 29 December 1980, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Vickie's seven-year-old grandson Colby saw a light over the…
Trans-en-Provence Landing Trace
Late on the afternoon of 8 January 1981, Renato Nicolaï was building a small concrete shelter for a water pump behind his house outside Trans-en-Provence when a faint…
Western China Spiral, 24 July 1981
On a clear, moonless summer night in 1981, people across China's western provinces looked up at something nobody had a name for. At around 10:40 p.m. a bright, star-like…
The Amaranth Case, Nancy
Just after midday on 21 October 1982, a young biologist came home early to his house in a suburb of Nancy and lingered in his tiny walled garden, which he tended…
Hudson Valley Boomerang Sightings
From New Year's Eve 1982 and through the next two years, people across the commuter towns north of New York City reported a vast, quiet shape gliding low over highways…
Hessdalen Lights
Hessdalen is a remote 12-kilometre valley south-east of Trondheim with only a couple of hundred residents. Odd lights have been reported there since at least the 1930s…
Dalnegorsk 'Height 611'
At about five to eight on the evening of 29 January 1986, people in the mining town of Dalnegorsk in Russia's far east saw a reddish glowing ball, about half the apparent…
Official Night of the UFOs, Brazil
At dusk on 19 May 1986, the lone controller in the tower at São José dos Campos airport saw three bright lights over the field that kept changing colour, red to yellow to…
Japan Air Lines Flight 1628
A Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 freighter carrying French wine from Reykjavík to Anchorage was cruising at 35,000 feet over remote Alaska in the early evening of 17 November…
Gulf Breeze Photographs
In November 1987 the weekly Gulf Breeze Sentinel printed Polaroid photographs of a glowing, many-windowed craft with a bright ring on its underside hovering over a quiet…
Ilkley Moor Photograph
Early on a foggy December morning, a retired police officer who later went by the name Philip Spencer set out across Ilkley Moor to visit his father-in-law, carrying a…
Knowles Family, Nullarbor
Driving east across the empty Nullarbor in the small hours of 20 January 1988, the Knowles family saw a light on the road ahead. They thought at first it was a truck, but…
Voronezh Park Landing
On 9 October 1989 the Soviet news agency TASS told the world that a flying saucer had landed in a park in Voronezh, a city of some 800,000 south-east of Moscow, and that…
Belgian UFO Wave and the F-16 Night
On the evening of 29 November 1989, people around Eupen in eastern Belgium, police officers among them, reported a large, flat, triangular craft with lights beneath it…
Petit-Rechain Photograph
At the height of the Belgian wave in April 1990, an anonymous photographer produced a slide showing a black triangular craft against a dark sky, with a bright light at…
Calvine Photograph, Scotland
On a summer evening in August 1990, two young men who had been working at hotels in Pitlochry were walking on the hills above the hamlet of Calvine when, by their…
Mexico City Eclipse Sightings
On 11 July 1991 the longest total solar eclipse of the twentieth century swept across Mexico, and at about 1:24 pm the Moon's shadow reached Mexico City. Millions of…
Bonnybridge, Scotland
Bonnybridge is an unremarkable former foundry village between Falkirk and Glasgow, yet from 1992 it became one of the most talked-about UFO spots on the planet. The flap…
RAF Cosford Incident
In the early hours of 31 March 1993, people across western Britain saw bright lights speeding across the night sky. Most of the reports, clustered between about 1:10 and…
Ariel School, Ruwa
During the mid-morning break on 16 September 1994, pupils at Ariel School, a private primary school near Ruwa about 22 km south-east of Harare, said one or more silvery…
Varginha, Brazil
On the afternoon of 20 January 1996, after a heavy storm, three young women in the Jardim Andere neighbourhood of Varginha, Minas Gerais, said they saw a strange being…
Yukon Mass Sighting
On a clear, cold night in December 1996, people along a roughly 120-mile stretch of the Klondike Highway in Yukon reported a huge row of lights moving across the sky…
Chile Founds CEFAA
Chile's official UFO committee was born out of a radar case. In the early hours of 31 March 1997, controllers in the tower at Chacalluta airport in Arica, near the…
Phoenix Lights
On the evening of 13 March 1997, people across a 300-mile corridor from the Nevada line through Phoenix to Tucson reported strange lights. Two separate things were seen…
The COMETA Report
In July 1999 a 90-page study titled 'UFOs and Defence: What Should We Prepare For?' landed in France, sent beforehand to President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister…
Chulucanas Lights, Peru
Chulucanas, a town in Peru's northern Piura region known for its pottery, has a long reputation for strange lights. On 13 October 2001, according to the account given by…
Mexican Air Force FLIR Video
On 5 March 2004 a Mexican Air Force crew on a routine anti-drug-smuggling patrol over southern Campeche recorded a cluster of bright points, eleven in all, on their…
USS Nimitz "Tic Tac" Encounter
In November 2004 the USS Nimitz carrier strike group was training off southern California when, according to Navy aviators, radar operators on the cruiser USS Princeton…
Brazilian Air Force Opens Its UFO Files
On 20 May 2005 the Brazilian Air Force did something unprecedented: it invited a committee of civilian UFO researchers into its air defence facilities in Brasília and…
O'Hare Airport Sighting
During the late-afternoon rush on 7 November 2006, a United Airlines ramp worker pushing back Flight 446 to Charlotte spotted a dark, metallic-looking disc hovering low…
Alderney Pilots (Aurigny)
On the afternoon of 23 April 2007, Aurigny Air Services captain Ray Bowyer, a pilot with 18 years' experience, was flying a Trislander from Southampton to Alderney at…
Stephenville, Texas
Just after sunset on 8 January 2008, dozens of people around Stephenville, a dairy town about 100 miles south-west of Dallas, saw a display of bright white lights above…
UK MoD UFO Desk Closure
For roughly six decades the British Ministry of Defence kept a desk to receive UFO reports, latterly staffed by civil servants in the Directorate of Air Staff and then…
Norway Spiral
Before dawn on 9 December 2009, people across northern Norway saw something astonishing: a blue beam of light seemed to rise from behind the mountains, stop in mid-air…
Xiaoshan Airport, Hangzhou
Around 9 pm on 7 July 2010, a flight crew descending toward Hangzhou's Xiaoshan International Airport in eastern China reported a strange glowing object in the sky…
El Bosque Air Base Video, Chile
During the change-of-command ceremony for the Chilean Air Force commander at El Bosque Air Base in Santiago in November 2010, crowds filmed the acrobatic team and fighter…
New Zealand Defence Force UFO Files Release
Just before Christmas 2010, the New Zealand Defence Force released roughly 2,000 pages of previously classified UFO material under the Official Information Act. The…
Jerusalem Dome of the Rock Video
In late January 2011 a video appeared online that seemed to show a bright light descending over Jerusalem at about 1 am, hovering just above the golden Dome of the Rock…
Peru Reopens Its Air Force UFO Office
In October 2013 the Peruvian Air Force revived its official UFO office, now called the Department for the Investigation of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena (DIFAA), under its…
Aguadilla Thermal Video, Puerto Rico
Late on 25 April 2013, a US Customs and Border Protection aircraft over north-western Puerto Rico recorded about three minutes of infrared video of a small warm object…
USS Theodore Roosevelt Encounters (Gimbal and GoFast)
From 2014 into 2015, Navy fighter crews flying from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt off the US East Coast reported repeatedly picking up unknown objects on…
Chilean Navy Helicopter Video
On 11 November 2014, a Chilean Navy Airbus Cougar AS532 helicopter was on a daytime coastal patrol west of Santiago when its camera technician spotted an object flying…
The New York Times reveals the Pentagon's secret UFO program
On Saturday 16 December 2017, The New York Times and Politico published simultaneous reports that the Pentagon had quietly funded a program to study unidentified flying…
US Navy calls the three leaked videos 'unidentified'
In September 2019 the US Navy went on the record about the three cockpit videos that had circulated since 2017. Spokesman Joseph Gradisher told reporters, first via The…
Pentagon formally releases FLIR1, Gimbal and GoFast
On 27 April 2020 the Department of Defense officially published the three Navy infrared videos that had leaked years earlier. The clips, filed as FLIR, GIMBAL and GOFAST…
Pentagon establishes the UAP Task Force
On 14 August 2020 the Pentagon announced that Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist had, ten days earlier, approved an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. The…
ODNI Preliminary Assessment on UAP
On 25 June 2021 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a nine-page unclassified report to Congress, prepared with the Navy-led UAP Task Force. It…
First public congressional UFO hearing in over 50 years
On 17 May 2022 the House Intelligence Committee's Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation, chaired by Representative André Carson…
From AOIMSG to AARO: the Pentagon's permanent UAP office
Five months after the 2021 intelligence assessment, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks created the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization…
ODNI 2022 Annual Report on UAP
On 12 January 2023 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, working with the new All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, published an unclassified version of…
The Chinese surveillance balloon over North America
In late January 2023 a white high-altitude balloon carrying a large solar-paneled payload drifted from Alaska across western Canada and into the continental United…
Three objects shot down over Alaska, Yukon and Lake Huron
In the week after the Chinese balloon was shot down, NORAD tuned its radars to catch slower, smaller targets, and three more objects appeared. On 10 February an F-22…
David Grusch testifies to House Oversight
On 26 July 2023 a House Oversight subcommittee held a hearing titled 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government…
'Non-human' bodies shown to Mexico's Congress
On 12 September 2023 Mexico's Chamber of Deputies held a hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena, weeks after the Grusch hearing in Washington. Witnesses, sworn to tell…
NASA's UAP independent study report
On 14 September 2023 NASA published the final report of the independent team it had convened in 2022 to advise how the agency could study unidentified anomalous phenomena…
The Schumer–Rounds UAP Disclosure Act and what survived
In July 2023 Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds, joined by Marco Rubio, Kirsten Gillibrand, Todd Young and Martin Heinrich, introduced the…
New Jersey drone sightings
From mid-November 2024, residents across New Jersey began reporting large numbers of drone-like lights moving at night, including near Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons…
AARO Historical Record Report, Volume I
On 8 March 2024 the Pentagon published AARO's 'Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, Volume I,' required…
'UAP: Exposing the Truth' House hearing
On 13 November 2024 two House Oversight subcommittees, led by Representatives Nancy Mace and Glenn Grothman, held a joint hearing titled 'Unidentified Anomalous…
AARO FY2024 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP
On 14 November 2024, the day after the Exposing the Truth hearing, the Defense Department and ODNI released AARO's consolidated annual report for fiscal 2024. Between May…
AARO FY2025 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP
AARO's report for fiscal 2025, issued by what is now styled the Department of War, covers 2 June 2024 to 30 May 2025 but was not published until July 2026, months after…
Task Force on Declassification UAP hearing
On 9 September 2025 the House Oversight Committee's Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired by Representative Anna Paulina Luna, held its first UAP…
Trump directs agencies to release UFO and alien files
On the evening of 19 February 2026 President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that, citing tremendous public interest, he would direct the Secretary of War and…
PURSUE: the Pentagon's first UAP file releases
On 8 May 2026 the Department of War launched WAR.GOV/UFO and published the first tranche of files under the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP…
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More sightings listed on Wikidata
These are recorded as UFO sightings on Wikidata but don't have a full case file here yet. Each links to the open record.
| Sighting | Date | Country | Records |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bonilla observation | 1883-08-12 | Mexico | Wikidata, Wikipedia |
| 1994 Michigan UFO event | 1994-03-08 | Wikidata, Wikipedia | |
| Labor Day 1969 UFO Incident | 1969-09-01 | Wikidata, Wikipedia | |
| Arequipa UFO incident | 1980-04-11 | Peru | Wikidata, Wikipedia |
| Val Johnson incident | 1979-08-27 | United States | Wikidata, Wikipedia |
| Imjärvi UFO incident (Finland) | 1970-01-07 | Finland | Wikidata |
| Saapunki ball of light (Finland) | 1971-01-03 | Finland | Wikidata |
| UFO over Vranov (Czechoslovakia) | 1987-07-12 | Czechoslovakia | Wikidata |
| Jimmy Carter UFO incident | 1969-01-01 | United States | Wikidata, Wikipedia |
| UFOs of Pudasjärvi | 1967-11-13 | Finland | Wikidata, Wikipedia |
| Finnish Air Force UFO sighting | 1969-04-12 | Finland | Wikidata, Wikipedia |
| Zanfretta UFO Incident | 1978-12-06 | Italy | Wikidata, Wikipedia |
| Flight 105 UFO sighting | 1947-07-04 | United States | Wikidata, Wikipedia |
Wikidata entries are CC0.