Top 10 Famous UFO Witnesses

Top 10 Famous UFO Witnesses

Claim to have seen the things that these people did, and the world starts paying attention. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the Top 10 Famous UFO Witnesses.

For this list, we’ll be looking at people who famously claimed to have witnessed UFOs or had interactions with extraterrestrials. We’ll also be considering celebrities who, despite being already famous, nonetheless generated conversation with similar claims.

#10: David Bowie

Before his passing in 2016, this musical icon left many marks on popular music and culture. He challenged both musical conventions and gender norms, and his willingness to speak his mind extended to extraterrestrials as well. Bowie often incorporated alien imagery into his lyrics and visual identity; he even played an alien in the 1976 film “The Man Who Fell to Earth”. Well, as it turns out, Bowie had firsthand experience with extraterrestrials dating back to his childhood; he even self-published a UFO-centric newsletter in his teens after reportedly seeing many alien ships in the sky. In fact, he told author Timothy Green Beckley that they were so frequent he and his friends “could time them”.

#9: George Adamski

There are few figures more divisive from the early days of ufology than George Adamski. After establishing himself in the California occult scene in the 1930s, Adamski hit the big time after claiming to have seen a cigar-shaped ship in the sky in 1946. By 1949, he was being paid to lecture on UFOs as an expert, making many bold assertions, including the fact that all of the planets in our solar system were inhabited. In 1952, Adamski claimed to have met with a humanoid alien from Venus by the name of Orthon. His UFO photos are widely considered to be fake and some people go so far as to blame him for discrediting the study of UFOs.

#8: Ronald Leo Sprinkle

This American psychologist and UFO researcher credits a 1949 encounter with a UFO as the starting point of his fascination with extraterrestrials. Being a believer can often be a lonely experience, but he witnessed another UFO in 1956, this time in the company of his wife. A doctor of psychology, Sprinkle conducted research through interviews, observation, and hypnosis of people claiming to have been abducted or contacted by UFOs. For his part, Sprinkle put himself in the latter category. Over the course of his career, Sprinkle’s most notable contributions included founding the annual Rocky Mountain UFO Conference and his role as a psychological consultant in the 1969 Condon Report into UFOs, funded by the U.S. Air Force.

#7: The Reed Brothers

Some people share a passion for UFOs with their spouse, others with their brother! As discussed in the documentary series “Unsolved Mysteries”, on September 1st, 1969, Berkshire County, Massachusetts was host to multiple eyewitness reports of a UFO. In the case of Thom and Matt Reed (as well as a few other local residents), the aliens did more than fly over — they took the earthlings for a ride. The Reed Brothers claim to have had an additional four such encounters, the last being in 2009. Thomas Reed, who’s become something of a figurehead for the 1969 event, has gone on record criticizing the way that various programs have sensationalized his story, and personally doesn’t like the word “abduction” to describe his encounters.

#6: Whitley Strieber

In 1985, this American horror author was spending Boxing Day at his cabin in upstate New York with his wife and son. What was likely envisioned as a relaxing holiday retreat, however, turned into a nightmare when Strieber experienced what most people would agree sounds like an alien abduction. He awoke utterly paralyzed and at the mercy of strange, inhuman beings who performed experiments on him. Strieber, for his part, avoids labelling them aliens and instead calls them “the visitors”, given that they could have had alternate origins. Though skeptics have dismissed his experience as hypnagogia (hallucinations occurring in the state between wakefulness and sleep), the author claims that his book about the experience, “Communion”, is strictly non-fiction.

#5: Travis Walton

One of the most widely publicized abduction stories in UFO history, the disappearance and reappearance of Travis Walton still generates debate decades later. On November 5th 1975, Walton, a forestry worker, was on-site with his team in Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. Driving with his team, which included six other men, Walton spotted a UFO which, upon exiting the vehicle to investigate, shot a “beam of light” at him that knocked him out. His co-workers apparently fled the scene, while Walton woke up aboard the craft, where he attempted to fight off the extraterrestrials before being rendered unconscious again. Five days after his disappearance, which had triggered a missing person investigation, Walton reappeared with an unbelievable story to tell. Many dismissed it as a hoax.

#4: Billy Meier

When people turn their alleged UFO encounters into a career, they’re inviting a lot of scrutiny and skepticism. But that hasn’t stopped this Swiss “contactee” from founding his own religion. In English, it roughly translates to the “Free Community of Interests for the Border and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies”. Catchy! Meier claims that his earliest alien encounter occurred when he was five years old. His extraterrestrial contact was a humanoid named Sfath, from a race called the Plejaren. Later, after Sfath’s death, Meier allegedly communicated with various other extraterrestrial beings, both male and female, including Sfath’s granddaughter. Meier has produced various images and films to support his stories, most of which have been labelled as fake by both scientists and the ufology community.

#3: Bob Lazar

In 1989, Robert Scott Lazar appeared on KLAS news to drop some alleged bombshells about UFOs. Going by the name of Dennis and with his face obscured, Lazar told reporter George Knapp that he was employed at Area 51 in the “S-4 facility”. His job, he explained to Knapp, was to reverse engineer one of the nine UFOs hidden in the secret mountain hangar. This naturally generated nationwide attention and Lazar soon revealed himself to the public and became a UFO icon. The Air Force denies ever having hired him, however, and there’s no record of him attending MIT or Caltech - where he claims to have completed masters degrees.

#2: Barney & Betty Hill

As far as average citizens-turned-UFO-celebrities go, it doesn’t get any more high profile than this. In 1961, the Hill’s story became the first widely publicized account of an alien abduction in American history. Sceptics have argued that it influenced countless similar stories reported in the years since. The couple were driving home through rural New Hampshire when what they believed to be a shooting star revealed itself to be a spacecraft. After what sounds like an altogether hair-raising encounter with the mysterious ship, the Hills came to their senses again 35 miles from where they’d started. An investigation followed, involving the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena and numerous interviews and psychologists. Debate continues to this day.

#1: Elvis Presley

The King is gone, but where to? Elvis Presley died at the age of 42 at his home in Memphis, Tennessee. But the music icon’s long standing fascination with UFOs and extraterrestrials has given birth to various conspiracy theories suggesting that he permanently left Earth with aliens. Others go so far as to say that he was just going home. According to Michael Luckman’s book “Alien Rock”, Presley claimed to have been visited by aliens when he was just 8 and given a vision of the future. He also reportedly saw many UFOs as an adult. His connection to extraterrestrial visitors goes all the way back to his birth, when his father saw a strange blue light hovering overhead outside. Perhaps they were dropping him off!