This is a list of allegedUFO sightings in the United States.
| Date | City | State | Main article | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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.[1] | |
| 1896–1897 | Multiple | Multiple | Mystery airships | Alleged sightings ofairship-like vehicles across the United States. |
| April 17, 1897 | Aurora | Texas | Aurora, Texas, UFO incident | Local residents alleged that anairship 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, overLos Angeles,California.[2][3] Initially, the target of the aerial barrage was thought to be an attacking force fromJapan, butSecretary of the NavyFrank 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 lostweather balloon, and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries.[4] |
| August 1945 | Jornada del Muerto | New Mexico | Trinity UFO Case | About a month afterthe first atomic bomb was detonated in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Mexico, 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 | TheMaury Island incident happened on June 21, 1947. It was reported before the sighting of the original flying saucers byKenneth Arnold. It is also one of the earliest reported instances of an alleged encounter with so-called "men in black suits."[5] |
| 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 nearMount Rainier, Washington while he was searching for a missing military aircraft in hisCallAir 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 theAssociated Press and other news outlets.[5] |
| July 1947 | Roswell | New Mexico | Roswell UFO incident | The Roswell UFO Incident involved the recovery of materials nearRoswell, 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-secretresearch 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.[6] |
| January 7, 1948 | Maysville | Kentucky | Mantell UFO Incident | The Mantell Incident involved the crash and death of 25-year-oldKentucky 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.[7] |
| 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 theirDouglas DC-3 had nearly collided with a strange torpedo shaped object. The incident was investigated by the US Air Force'sProject 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 overFargo, North Dakota.[8] |
| May 11, 1950 | McMinnville | Oregon | McMinnville UFO photographs | The McMinnville UFO photographs were taken on a farm nearMcMinnville, Oregon on May 11, 1950, by Paul and Evelyn Trent.[9] |
| May 29, 1950 | Mount Vernon | Maryland | Captain Willis Sperry and other crewmembers on an airborneAmerican AirlinesDC-6 reported a "a brilliant, diffused, bluish light offluorescent type".[10] | |
| August 15, 1950 | Great Falls | Montana | Mariana UFO incident | The Mariana UFO incident occurred during the summer of 1950 inGreat 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 ofLubbock, Texas in August 1951. |
| May 24, 1952 | Burbank | California | Orfeo Angelucci | Beginning in the summer of 1952, according to Angelucci in his bookThe 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 theNew 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 ofFlatwoods, 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 theRoyal 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 ofLevelland, Texas. Levelland, which in 1957 had a population of about 10,000, is located west ofLubbock 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 aNew Mexico police officer who reported a UFO close encounter on Friday, April 24, 1964, nearSocorro, New Mexico. |
| September 3, 1965 | Exeter | New Hampshire | Exeter incident | The Exeter incident ofExeter, 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 ofKecksburg, Pennsylvania, occurred on December 9, 1965. A large, brilliant fireball was seen by thousands in at least six states andOntario, Canada. It streaked over theDetroit,Michigan andWindsor, Ontario area, dropped reported metal debris over Michigan and northernOhio, and caused sonic booms in western Pennsylvania. It was generally assumed and reported by the press to be ameteor. |
| 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 theNorth Hudson Park near theStonehenge apartment building inNorth Bergen, New Jersey as was reported in theVillage 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. |
| December 17, 1977 | Council Bluffs | Iowa | Council Bluffs, Iowa fireball | Local residents reported seeing a reddish fireball approximately 500 to 600 feet in the air falling straight down and disappearing behind trees, followed by a flash of bluish-white light suggesting an impact. The fire department was called to extinguish a grass fire where it recovered molten metal. Samples of the metal were analyzed and determined to be a simple high-carbon steel of a type common in manufacturing.[16] |
| August 27, 1979 | Stephen | Minnesota | Val Johnson incident | At 1:40 a.m. in August 1979, inMarshall 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, inGulf 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 acrossWest 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 ofArizona andNevada 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, throughPhoenix, to the edge ofTucson. 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 governorFife Symington came forward and admitted that he had seen "a massive, delta-shaped craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak" in 1997.[17] |
| 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 anABC Special "Seeing is Believing" byPeter 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 nearO'Hare International Airport. The incident was reported by local media.[18] | |
| November 7, 2006 | Chicago | Illinois | Chicago O'Hare UFO sighting 2006 | At approximately 4:30 p.m. on November 7, 2006, federal authorities atChicago 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 overMorristown, 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."[19][20][21] |
| 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.[22][23] Investigators reported that the pilots mostly likely saw a "high-altitude research balloon".[24] | |
| 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".[25] | |
| 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 theBeaufort Sea by the U.S. Air Force. TheDepartment 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.[26][27][28][29] |
| 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 theUpper Peninsula of Michigan at 20,000 feet (6,096 m). Airspace was temporarily closed in theLake Huron area, where the object was shot down by the US Air Force and National Guard, falling into Canadian waters.[30][31][32][33] |
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