Top 20 UFO Sightings

One night in 1965, residents across states American states and in Ontario, Canada witnessed a blazing fireball fall from the sky and crash to the earth in Pennsylvania. The thunderous impact caused shockwaves and sonic booms to ripple across the landscape, and started grass fires. It didn’t take long for members of the press and government to write off the incident as a simple meteor. However due to the unusual ‘sonic booms’ and the fact that many people said they saw trails of blue smoke in the sky where the object crashed, there was still speculation that the huge fireball was something much less natural.

On March 5, 2004, the Mexican Air Force recorded footage of eleven UFOs at 11,500 feet above southern Campeche state. Surrounding a military jet, these lights were detected during a routine search for drug-traffickers. Jets pursued the UFOs, but eventually gave up and the objects disappeared. While some believe this was the work of flares, explanations also range from ball lightning to a meteorite deteriorating in Earth’s atmosphere. Whatever these objects were, infrared equipment operator Lt. Mario Adrian Vazquez is convinced that they were “completely real.” Pilot Maj. Magdaleno Castanon went so far as suggesting that the UFOs knew they were being pursued.

April 6, 1966 was just an ordinary school day in Melbourne, Australia until, at 11:00am, 200 kids and teachers reported witnessing a UFO descend into a nearby paddock. One student described it as being capable of both hovering in place and moving incredibly fast, and a teacher reported seeing multiple aircraft trying to engage the spaceship, though it was much too fast for them. Then, without warning, it disappeared. It remains the most-witnessed daylight UFO sighting in history, and spookily, the staff and children were instructed not to talk to the media about what they’d seen.

25-year-old WWII veteran George Gorman was soaring through the skies of North Dakota on October 1st, 1948 when he noticed a blinking light in the distance. Gorman immediately contacted a nearby airport to ask if anyone was in the sky with him. They radioed back that, other than a small Piper Cub plane he’d already noticed, the skies around him were empty. Gorman decided to get a closer look and an aerial dogfight ensued, but even with his jet shooting through the clouds at 400 mph, the supposed UFO was able to effortlessly avoid him at every turn. Just when Gorman thought he had the UFO caught, it fired vertically upwards and disappeared.

In August 1951, three Texas Technological College professors noticed somewhere between 20 and 30 lights shimmering in the sky. Five days later, Texas Tech freshman Carl Hart, Jr. gazed out his bedroom window to find a cluster of lights forming a V shape. Hart managed to take five photos of the lights, getting them published in various newspapers and Life magazine. This caught the attention of the Air Force, which launched an investigation. At first, they believed the Lubbock Lights were really plovers! The Air Force eventually announced that it wasn’t a bird or a spaceship, but an “easily explainable natural phenomenon” … without unveiling what the phenomenon actually was. Well, that’s not suspicious at all...

In 2016, a video surfaced on YouTube from NASA’s live feed of the International Space Station, seemingly showing an object making atmospheric entry. The feed was then suspiciously cut off, although NASA claims that this was due to technical difficulties and the object was likely debris or lights from Earth. However, a subsequent video from the same feed showed what appeared to be a similar object departing Earth, followed by a bright, golden beam of light. This wouldn’t be the last time that conspiracy theorists gravitated towards the ISS. In 2020, the feed captured another object moving over Earth. It was later reported that this was a retired communications component being jettisoned, although we’re definitely keeping a close watch on the ISS.

In 1957, an egg-shaped spacecraft was reported by many eye-witnesses in the small town of Levelland, Texas. It was first spotted by two farm hands who reported it to the local police. They described seeing a bright blue flash while driving that made their truck die. The craft then appeared and flew above them, and was described by a different witness who saw it later in the evening as a “brilliantly lit, egg-shaped object, about 200 feet long.” But the most extraordinary thing about this case is that so many people saw it and gave almost identical reports of a giant, glowing egg.

The Black Knight satellite remains one of the most famous conspiracy theories in UFO circles. It’s said that this mysterious satellite has been orbiting Earth for 13,000 years. In 1954, UFO investigator Donald Keyhoe claimed that the Air Force had discovered two artificial satellites - despite the fact that such technology didn’t exist at the time. It’d be another three years until we launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik. Regardless, various newspapers like the St. Louis Post Dispatch and San Francisco Examiner picked up the story. The Black Knight regained interest in 1998, when NASA released this photo from the STS-88 mission. While most would agree that it was space debris, others aren’t letting go of their Black Knight theory.

In late November 1989, Belgium started receiving numerous reports of a UFO. Various people described the UFO as a giant triangle with a flat surface and lights below, and the reports kept coming well into early 1990, reaching a crescendo in late March of that year. When a UFO was picked up on radar one night, two Air Force pilots investigated, coming up empty handed. While they didn’t see anything, 143 other individuals supposedly did. For over twenty years, ufological group SOBEPS claimed the photo was authentic; but the photographer eventually revealed that it was a hoax. Writer Marc Hallet attributed the Belgian UFO Wave to the media and SOBEPS spreading misinformation, causing a mass delusion.

In 1986, while flying over Alaska, an international flight from Paris to Tokyo had a close encounter of the third kind, with multiple UFOs reported. These UFOs were seen by all of the experienced flight crew, including the pilot, Captain Kenju Terauchi, an ex-fighter pilot with more than 10,000 flying hours under his belt; UFO witnesses don’t get much more credible than that. The UFOs were balls of bright light that flew all around the outside of the plane, and Terauchi described them as flying “as if there was no such thing as gravity.”

In 1961, Barney and Betty Hill were driving back home after a romantic getaway in Niagara Falls when their lives permanently changed. After spotting something in the sky they initially thought to be a plane, the Hills stepped out and found themselves abducted by aliens. Returned hours later, they reported the incident to the air force, who had no explanation, and eventually went on to have hypnotherapy to recall their experience through flashbacks and drawings. While Barney died in 1969, Betty lived until she was 85 and never stopped telling people about the aliens she met who took her away and showed her the stars. It’s been argued that their account later influenced the abduction story of Travis Walton in 1978.

This incident took place in February 1942, three months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Receiving word of another possible attack, air raid sirens went off around Los Angeles County and the area endured a blackout. Throughout the night, 1,400 shells were fired into the air. Five people died as a result and property damage was significant. Although it reportedly turned out to be a false alarm, the L.A. Times published a photo of the air raid with searchlights directed at what looked like a spaceship. While the photo was touched up, this didn’t stop ufologists from holding it up as evidence. The theory inspired the 2011 film “Battle: Los Angeles”.

Around the same time as the Roswell incident in mid 1947, there were also reports of unusual lights over Washington’s Mount Rainier. Private pilot Kenneth Arnold was flying nearby when he spotted bright lights weaving over the Cascade Range at speeds of at least 1,200 miles an hour. His description of the objects led to the press coming up with the term “flying saucers”. Several witnesses on the ground corroborated his story. His account made headlines, grabbing public attention and helping kick off a new era of UFO sightings.

Six months after Kenneth Arnold’s sighting, pilot Thomas F. Mantell encountered another unidentified object in the skies - this time over Fort Knox, Kentucky. However, THIS incident would prove fatal. On January 7, 1948, witnesses on the ground reported seeing a circular object at least 250 feet in diameter. Mantell, a Captain in the Kentucky Air National Guard, pursued it in his P-51 Mustang fighter, along with three other pilots. The others soon broke off, but Martell continued, climbing steeply. At 25,000 feet, he blacked out from lack of oxygen and his plane spiralled down into the ground, killing him. The incident received considerable press, lending a new gravity to UFO reports. It’s been argued that the object may have been a then top-secret Skyhook balloon.

This NASA mission had unforeseen consequences. In 1996, the Space Shuttle Columbia was tasked with deploying a Tethered Satellite System into orbit. However, as it was being reeled out, the tether snapped. Footage of the drifting satellite seemed to show objects buzzing around the broken tether. NASA claimed it was debris, but UFOlogists seized upon it as proof of curious visitors. It’s not the only Space Shuttle mission to have caught UFOlogists' eyes. In 1991, footage captured during the STS-48 mission seemed to show objects zooming by and bright lights flashing in Earth’s orbit. According to NASA, these were ice particles responding to the engine jets. But we gotta admit, the believer in us likes to wonder.

Also known as the Invasion of Washington, this incident was actually a series of sightings that lasted for over two weeks in July, 1952. Witnesses included air traffic controllers, commercial pilots, and Air Force personnel, who described strange blips on radar screens and orange lights hovering over the US capital. They even swarmed the White House. President Harry Truman demanded answers, and to calm the public, the Air Force provided a much-disputed explanation involving temperature-inversions. The government’s fear of widespread panic led to the formation of the Robertson Panel the following year, which suggested that more time be spent on debunking UFO reports than investigating them - one reason that many discredit “official” explanations even today.

The Phoenix Lights have inspired a documentary and multiple horror movies, but nobody can say for sure what happened on March 13, 1997. This incident can be broken into two phases. First, a v-shape formation was seen flying over Phoenix, although little footage exists of this event and the footage we have is low quality. There’s more documentation of the second event, which saw five circular lights floating in the night sky. Even with numerous photographs, videos, and eyewitness accounts, though, a giant question mark continues to hover over Phoenix. While the U.S. Air Force chalked the lights up to military flares, many have argued against these claims and even Arizona governor Fife Symington described what he saw as “otherworldly.”

In 1950, Evelyn Trent noticed an ominous object levitating around her family’s farm in McMinnville, Oregon. She alerted her husband Paul, who took a couple of photographs before the UFO departed west. In another account they gave, Evelyn and Paul both saw the UFO at the same time in their backyard. Either way, the farming couples’ pictures eventually made their way into Life magazine and other publications, igniting one of the most heated debates in UFO history. Physicist Bruce Maccabee believes that the UFO in the photos was “real” and “physical.” Non-believers like Philip J. Klass and Robert Sheaffer, meanwhile, say the photos were faked. The Condon Committee’s investigation fell somewhere in between. Whatever you think, few UFO sightings have inspired this much analysis.

Declassified in 2020, the Pentagon UFO Videos actually comprise three sightings by US Navy fighter jet pilots that are often bundled together. On November 14, 2004, THIS footage was captured during the USS Nimitz UFO incident near the San Diego coastline. Known as “FLIR1”, the video shows an unidentified object that eventually darts across the sky and out of sight. In 2015, pilots from the USS Theodore Roosevelt also encountered strange objects over the East coast, preserving their encounters in videos known as “Gimbal” and “Go Fast”. The videos made huge waves when they were leaked online in the late 2010s. While sceptics have proposed alternative explanations, it’s hard not to feel the enthusiasm and shock of the pilots as they watch in awe [SB from Go Fast].

Before we reveal our top pick, here are some honorable mentions.

Voronezh UFO Incident
Residents of This Russian City Reported Seeing an Alien Craft & Abduction in 1989

Tehran UFO Sightings
In 1976 Irianian Fighter Jets Attempted to Open Fire on Strange Lights in the Sky … Only for Their Weapons to Malfunction

Kaikoura Lights
These Strange Lights Were Seen Over New Zealand by Multiple Witnesses in 1978 & Recorded by a TV Crew

Today, Roswell, New Mexico is synonymous with UFOs and government cover-ups. In the summer of 1947, a foreman working at the Foster Ranch stumbled across mysterious debris. Initially, the government claimed it was a crashed weather balloon. That was good enough for many. But from 1978 onwards, UFO researchers started doing more digging. Speaking to witnesses, they concluded that the debris had been from a downed spaceship … and the alien bodies had been whisked away for study. In 1994, an official investigation revealed that the government DID in fact lie - and the debris was in fact from a nuclear test surveillance balloon from the top secret Project Mogul. Was this the real cover-up? Or a cover-up of a cover-up? Hmmmm!