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UFO Sightings in New York City Explode in 2020

December 26, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Ricky Hunter December 16, 2020 (thejewishvoice.com)

• 2020 has been quite possibly the strangest year on record. From the COVID pandemic, to the bizarre BLM riots in the streets, to the controversial US elections – the world has never seen anything quite like 2020. And to top it off, UFO sightings are way up.

• Sightings of UFOs in New York City this year have gone up by 31 per cent from 2019. This year, 46 UFOs were spotted over the city, compared to 35 such sightings in 2019. That’s a jump of 283% according to data from the National UFO Reporting Center.

• The New York Post reported that on July 21, 2020, a Staten Islander saw an “oval” aircraft which sounded like a helicopter. However, the witness claimed that it unleashed a surge of radiation in his body. “[H]onestly thought it was the government putting something into the air with everything going on during these times, and I thought I would wake up and find it all over the news or on Instagram,” said the witness.

• On June 8th, a Bronx resident reported 30 objects flying in perfect synchronicity across the night skies, resembling stars in movements. Observers tend to not identify themselves. National UFO Reporting Center director Peter Davenport has no doubt observers are seeing what they’re seeing. “I believe we are being visited routinely by these things we call UFOs,” Davenport told The Post, adding he has had “five sighting experiences.”

• Asked why outer-space types would want any part of our crazy world, Davenport said, “You are going to have to talk to the aliens. I do not know what these creatures are up to. What their objective might be in being here.”

2020 has been quite possibly the strangest year on record.

From the mysterious COVID pandemic and the tremendous toll on human life and economic destruction, to the draconian lockdowns, which are

paralyzing the mental health of Americans and the entire world, to the bizarre violent communist BLM riots in the streets, to the controversial US elections; the world has never seen anything quite like 2020, and to top it off, UFO sightings are up.

Sightings of UFOs or Unidentified Flying Objects in NYC this year have gone up by 31 per cent from 2019. This year, 46 such objects were spotted in the glitzy skies of the city, compared to 35 such sightings in 2019.

Compared to 2018’s number, the 2020 sightings have jumped by 283 per cent, according to data from the National UFO Reporting Center.
NY Post reported on the increased UFO sightings.

On July 21, 2020, a Staten Islander saw an “oval” aircraft which reportedly sounded like a helicopter. However, the witness claimed that it unleashed a surge of radiation in their body.

The Islander told the media: “honestly thought it was the government putting something into the air with everything going on during these times and I thought I would wake up and find it all over the news or on Instagram.”

On June 8, someone from the Bronx say 30 objects flying in perfect synchronicity across the night skies, resembling stars in movements.

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Cities Across the Carolinas Report UFO Sightings

September 8, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Joe Marusak August 27, 2020 (charlotteobserver.com)

• The San Francisco-based True People SearchNational compiled the rankings of US cities with the most UFO sighting reports sent to the National UFO Reporting Center in Davenport, Washington. Founded in 1974, NUFORC offers both an online form and a telphone hotline for people in the US and Canada to add their ‘objective UFO data’ to a public database.

• The True People website analyzed more than 80,000 reported UFO sightings, and then narrowed it down to 446 cities with 25 or more sightings over a 114 year period, through 2014. Seattle topped the list of major cities with 620 sightings, more than double second-place Phoenix. Charlotte, NC and Jacksonville, Florida were the only Eastern US cities making the top ten.

• Nationwide, “lights have been reported to move in weird patterns, flash, appear and disappear, display in a formation, and more. While some lights can be explained as an aircraft originating from Earth, a meteor, or satellites, some reports have remained shrouded in mystery,” says Mitchell Barrick, content director for True People Search Insights.

• Charlotte’s 153 sightings of mysterious lights, discs and orbs in the sky since 1910 ranked ninth among the 25 largest cities by population. ‘Unexplained light in the sky’ is the most commonly reported type of UFO in the US, “and this holds true for Charlotte,” said Barrick. Other commonly reported objects in the US include triangles, circles, fireballs, disks, sphere, snake-like UFOs (cigars and cylinders), chevrons, eggs and cones.

• Adjusting for comparative population density, however, Charlotte had 17 reported UFO sightings per 100,000 people, which ranks 37th in North America and only 6th in North Carolina. Three South Carolina cities were ranked in the top ten when comparing population density. Surfside Beach, SC came in at No. 3 with 671 sightings per 100,000 people; Myrtle Beach at No. 6 with 507 sightings; and North Myrtle Beach at No. 9 with 380 sightings. Wilmington ranked highest per capita in North Carolina. Its 58 sightings translated to 47 sightings per 100,000 people, good for 162nd place in North America, followed by Asheville with 43 sightings (168th place); Gastonia with 25 sightings (252nd place); Fayetteville with 43 sightings (351st place); and Greensboro with 56 sightings (364th place). After these came Cary with 28 sightings; Raleigh with 78 sightings; Durham with 33 sightings; and Winston-Salem with 27 sightings.

• According to Barrick, “[I]t’s our theory that a higher frequency of sightings correlates with a higher percentage of reports from people who believe they have genuinely seen something in the sky that they cannot explain: a UFO.”

• Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center, said NUFORC has received a spate of recent UFO reports from the Carolina coast. People have reported red, orange, yellow, amber and gold lights in the sky above the Atlantic Ocean – lights with no earthly explanation. For instance, on August 18, a retired senior law enforcement official in Conway, SC saw a tiny, white colored, strobing light fly overhead from NNE to SSW. The object is joined by a second similar object, and then two more, for a total of four objects. (see 1:52 minute video below) “Because of the strobing, and because of the direction the objects were traveling, the witness doubted whether they could have been ‘Starlink’ satellites.”

• Another phenomena associated with the Carolinas for over a century are mysterious apparitions known as the ‘Brown Mountain Lights’ which have been reported in the North Carolina highlands. In summer 2016, a scientific team from Appalachian State University captured on video a bright orb that “suddenly appeared and then vanished” high above a Brown Mountain ridge. “Then it came back, same spot,” The Charlotte Observer reported. “And then an encore.”

Charlotte has managed to beam itself up into the ranking of the top 10 largest North American cities for total UFO sightings in the past century, a new study shows.

And other cities in the Carolinas made related lists for sightings per capita, including Wilmington, Asheville and Myrtle Beach.

The Queen City’s 153 sightings of mysterious lights, discs and orbs in the sky since 1910 had Charlotte ranked ninth among the 25 largest cities by population and tops in North Carolina. That’s according to San Francisco-based True People Search, which compiled the rankings based on sightings people sent to the National UFO Reporting Center in Davenport, Wash.

Founded in 1974, the non-profit center maintains a public database of “objective UFO data,” according to its website. It offers an online form and telephone hotline to report sightings.

The people-finder website analyzed more than 80,000 reported UFO sightings in the U.S. and Canada. It then narrowed the list to 446 cities with 25 or more total sightings over 114 years, through 2014, Mitchell Barrick, content director for True People Search Insights told The Charlotte Observer in an email Wednesday.

Seattle topped the list of major cities with 620 sightings, more than double second-place Phoenix. Jacksonville, Fla., was the only other Eastern U.S. city in the top 10, falling just one sighting shy of Charlotte’s overall total.

1:52 minute timelapse video of objects streaking over the NC Outer Banks (‘Wes Snyder Photography’ YouTube)

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California, Florida Report Highest in Number of UFO Sightings

September 2, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Scott Harrell August 27, 2020 (baynews9.com)

• Every so often, a new UFO sighting or the release of documents reaches the mainstream news and reignites the public’s interest in unexplained aerial phenomena. In 2019, it was the US Navy’s acknowledgement that three leaked and ultimately declassified videos were in fact UFOs. No one, however, would go so far as to say they were spaceships from another planet. This renewed the curiosity of those American who are not too skeptical to consider at least the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial life.

• In June of 2020, the Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio included a provision in its annual authorization bill requiring various military and intelligence agencies to compile a detailed analysis on UFOs. The analysis would be declassified and available to the public, and must be completed within 180 days of the bill’s passage.

• Not everyone in the UFO-watching community is excited about the subject’s current pop-cultural hype, however. “Coverage is trendy. That’s one of the problems we have,” says Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center. “A lot of UFOlogists are very serious people indeed, doing serious work, and we only get covered if there’s a trend in [the culture].”

• Davenport, a former candidate for both Washington state legislature and U.S. House of Representatives who holds master’s degrees in biology and finance, has directed the NUFORC since 1994. Why did he choose to become the NUFORC Director? “Well, I saw one when I was a kid,” he says. The incident took place while he and his family were at a drive-in theater in St. Louis. “We were watching the movie, and a disturbance started brewing in the theater area,” Davenport says. “We didn’t know what it was. Then there were people walking in front of our car, looking up to the right, to the east of us. “There was an amazingly bright fire engine red object that looked something like an English rugby ball. It appeared to be almost motionless, then shot straight up, and then down behind [a building]. All of that happened in five or six seconds.” Hundreds, “if not thousands” of people witnessed the event. Since then, Davenport says he’s sighted other UFOs that he’s “reasonably certain were not made on this planet.”

• Since 1996, the NUFORC website has racked up more than 90,000 reported sightings, nearly all of them from North America. They include descriptions that run the gamut from “a series of bright spheres moved slowly, one-by-one, in a southerly direction, away from a stationary sphere” (Gloucester, Massachusetts, 7/8/18) to “White light circling a star” (Pearland, Texas, 8/14/20).

• California and Florida are the U.S. states that boast far and away the highest numbers of reported sightings, with 10,015 and 5,602, respectively. Both states are known for a lot of aerodynamic and space exploration research. “People report everything as UFOs, but I doubt that theory is correct,” Davenport says. “I can’t prove it, of course. The population, weather conditions, the fact that people are outdoors quite often [in those states]—there are many, many variables.”

FLORIDA — At least once or so a decade, a story about a new UFO sighting (or newly released documents about an old one) pops up on the

mainstream media’s radar. When that happens, it always seems to instantly reignite the popular culture’s interest in unexplained aerial phenomena.
Last year, the U.S. Navy acknowledged that the objects seen in three widely leaked and ultimately declassified videos were, in fact, unidentified flying objects, in the most general sense of the term. (I.e., nobody in the military is saying they were spaceships piloted by beings from another planet.) The story was picked up by most major news outlets, and once again captured the imagination of those Americans not too skeptical to consider at least the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial life.

That renewed curiosity has continued. In June of this year, the Senate Intelligence Committee—chaired by Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio—included a provision in its annual authorization bill requiring various military and intelligence agencies to compile a detailed analysis of all of the other data on unexplained aerial phenomena. The analysis would be declassified and available to the public and must be completed within 180 days of the bill’s passage.

While the ostensible reason for the provision is defense against a potential threat to the U.S., its mere existence serves as evidence of the public’s continued interest.

Not everyone in the UFO-watching community is excited about the subject’s current pop-cultural hype and the public’s cycling infatuation, however.
“Coverage is trendy. That’s one of the problems we have,” says Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center. “A lot of UFOlogists are very serious people indeed, doing serious work, and we only get covered if there’s a trend in [the culture].”

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Inside the World of UFOs, Extraterrestrial Life

June 16, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Josh Martinez June 5, 2020 (yourvalley.net)

• In 1974, Robert J. Gribble founded the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) to record UFO sightings via people’s submissions by phone or by mail. Gribble reached out to sheriff’s offices to provide them with an outlet for anyone wanting to report a UFO sighting. In fact, in its bylaws the Federal Aviation Administration is directed to refer such encounters to the NUFORC. Submissions published in NUFORC’s public database are anonymous, although witnesses may submit short statements detailing their experience.

• In 1994, Peter Davenport took over as NUFORC’s director. Davenport says the organization’s mission is to record – not investigate UFOs, and to curate its online submissions through a 24-hour UFO hotline. NUFORC may include a note with a submission as to a possible explanation, such as a planet of satellite. But for the most part, they leave their submissions ‘as is’ for the database. The NUFORC website holds a trove of reports from across the country. But Davenport believes the amount of UFO reports are grossly undercounted. By his estimate, he believes for every 10,000-20,000 people who see a UFO, only one will report it.

• On March 13, 1997, Arizonans watched a series of strange lights on two distinct occasions. The first was triangular formation that flew across the state, while the second was a series of stationary lights that hovered over Phoenix. The first event – a series of lights in a V-formation that traveled from Nevada, across Arizona to Sonora, Mexico, was “explained” as wind-driven flares from an A-10 Warthog military aircraft. The second incident has no explanation at all. “I’ll never be the same,” said Bill Greiner, a cement truck driver who saw the lights. “I may be just a dumb truck driver, but I’ve seen something that don’t belong here.”

• Seeing unexplained phenomenon in the sky tugs at the question: are we alone in the universe? Davenport believes that as people’s curiosity grows the more they understand the vastness of what is out there past Earth’s atmosphere. “Once a person develops a better grasp of its immensity, I feel it is a natural extrapolation for that person to ask what might be going on out there,” wrote Davenport. “And that leads a person to at least wonder whether we might have neighbors and even visitors to our planet.”

• Davenport notes that there was minimal media coverage of the Phoenix Lights event. This media trend has continued along with academia being too skeptical and the government not letting on what it knows. Still, an increase of the subject of UFOs in news reports and entertainment is drawing attention. People have become more comfortable with the UFO topic. But there is more work to be done, says Davenport. “[I]f we are going to progress beyond the amateur stage of investigation, we will have to improve the means by which we collect, and analyze data about the UFO phenomenon.”

• According to a 2018 survey at Chapman University, 41.4% of American respondents believe alien intelligent life has visited the earth in the ancient past, up from 27% in 2016. “People like to imagine there might be intelligent life out there, which is harmless,” says Dr. Chris Impey, the associate dean of the University of Arizona’s College of Science. “[B]ut the conspiracy theories that have the government covering up evidence of aliens is hard to defend. UFOs are not of interest to professional scientists because they know the hard evidence of alien visitation is lacking.”

• Dr Impey focuses his research is in looking for microbial life on the projected 10 billion habitable Earth-like worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy, noting that for 3 billion years, microbes were the planet’s only inhabitants. Targeting exoplanets to see if their atmospheres contain molecules like oxygen or methane will provide the “telltale signs of life”. As for intelligent extraterrestrial life, Dr. Impey points out that scientists have listened for artificial radio or optical signals from other planets over the past 60 years, and have failed to find anything.

• Long odds, however, haven’t stopped many from believing in past or future encounters with extraterrestrial life. Arizona State University Associate Professor Dr. Michael Varnum published a study in 2018 suggesting humans would have largely positive reactions extra-terrestrial life visiting the Earth. The study found those wanting to avoid disease were more likely to have a negative reaction, while less religious people tended to have more positive responses to an ET visitation. It concluded that people who are less sensitive to external threats are more open to things that challenge their belief systems.

• Although it’s been over 23 years since the mysterious lights above Phoenix, but time hasn’t slowed the reports to the NUFORC of continued sightings. On January 9th, a Phoenix pilot claimed to see a rectangular object with lights that changed colors hovering in the evening sky. “I’ll never forget this sighting. This had to be a UFO.”

Phoenix has a deep connection to the unexplained.

On March 13, 1997, many Arizonans from across the state allegedly saw a series of strange lights on two distinct occasions. The first was triangular formation that reportedly flew across the state while the second was a series of stationary lights hovering over Phoenix.

While the U.S. Air Force has explained the hovering stationary lights — flares from an A-10 Warthog aircraft as part of training at the Barry Goldwater Range, according to the Mutual UFO Network — the second one doesn’t have an explanation.

The first event was a series of lights in a V-formation that traveled across the state from as far north as Henderson, Nevada to as far south as the State of Sonora, Mexico.

One possible explanation is the wind direction from the night in question appears consistent with the reported movements of the lights, according to MUFON’s website. This could, the website claims, explain the event as merely wind-driven objects such as flares or balloons.

But to others, the event was not of this world.

“I’ll never be the same,” Bill Greiner, a cement truck driver who reportedly saw the lights, said via a statement on MUFON’s website. “Before this, if anybody had told me they saw a UFO, I would’ve said, ‘Yeah and I believe in the Tooth Fairy.’ Now I’ve got a whole new view and I may be just a dumb truck driver, but I’ve seen something that don’t belong here.”

In the years since, there have been reportedly other large-scale incidents in 2007 and 2008, but explanations have come with those events. Still, the fascination with UFOs, or unidentified flying objects, has permeated in the state.

In 2019, there were 229 reports of UFOs in Arizona, according to the National UFO Reporting Center. That is a stark jump from 91 in 2018, but is the first increase from year-to-year since 2014, which saw a peak of 304 for the past decade.

While some of these sightings have explanations, others do not, allowing for some imaginations to run wild.

By definition, a UFO doesn’t necessarily mean aliens, it can be as simple as a flying drone that people don’t know exactly its origins.

Bryan Martyn flew helicopters in both the Army and the Air Force for many years before transitioning to medical evacuation helicopters. He’s never had an experience where he didn’t know what object he was seeing in the sky, except for a recent sighting of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites.

This experience exemplifies to him the unidentified lights must be a technology people are not aware of, similar to the satellites.

“When I see objects in the sky that I can see, that kind of tells me they’re probably military because it’d be too easy,” Mr. Martyn said. “If we were being observed by something from outside, like an unidentified thing, they’d probably turn their lights off.”

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A Taos Close Encounter of the Hunters and Aliens Kind

September 20, 2019
ExoNews Editor

Listen to “E102 9-20-19 A Taos Close Encounter of the Hunters and Aliens Kind” on Spreaker.
Article by Staci Matlock September 9, 2019 (taosnews.com)

• Bow hunter Josh Brinkley (41) of Santa Fe, New Mexico (pictured above left with his friend Daniel Lucero) often hunted for elk at Cerro de la Olla, also called “Pot Mountain”, near Ute Mountain in the Taos Plateau Volcanic Field in northern New Mexico. Brinkley has hunted the area for fifteen years. Brinkley’s friend and co-worker Daniel Lucero (26) had never been up to Pot Mountain. So they both went to scout the area a couple of days before the September 1st start of elk bow-hunting season.

• On September 1st, 2019, the two men set up along the tree line on different sides of a field and waited. By 9:30 am Brinkley got restless and began walking through the woods looking for elk. He walked up the mountain to the crater-caldera at the top of the collapsed volcano and stood at the southwestern side of the crater’s edge. Brinkley then noticed two tall figures standing side by side about 35 yards away, staring at him. Brinkley walked around a bush, looked again, and they were gone.

• Brinkley described the figures: “The shape that would be like their heads, it looked like they had huge hoods on. It looked like two ribbons coming off either side to a point at the top and bottom (like a banana). The right side was black, left side was white and a little shiny. Torsos were kind of black, I couldn’t see many details. It definitely looked like clothes. In middle of the oval was just gray.”

• Brinkley went back to where Lucero was still waiting. Brinkley told Lucero that he’d seen a couple of hunters who probably scared off the elk. He didn’t mention the men’s strange appearance. Said Brinkley, “I was a little weirded out.” Once they reached their campsite, Brinkley finally told Lucero what he saw. “I told him what I saw was weird. They were too tall, their heads were too big to be hunters,” said Brinkley. “Anyone who knows me knows I don’t tell these weird stories.”

• On September 2nd, they again set out in the morning looking for elk. But they couldn’t figure out why there weren’t any in the area. At 2:30 in the afternoon, they drove their Jeep to the other side of the mountain but saw no signs of wildlife or anyone who might scare the animals away. Suddenly they saw what they thought was a movie production base camp. They are both employed as builders for movie sets. Brinkley described what they saw: “It’s this big tent structure, like a circus tent, 50-60 feet tall. Coming off the left of it was this long building, almost like what you would build for an archery lane for target practice. It was a third the height, but really long, maybe a couple hundred feet.”

• They were about a quarter mile away and couldn’t see the bottom of the structure. They watched it for about a minute as they drove. Driving around trees, they lost sight of the structure for five seconds, Brinkley said. “When we topped the hill, it was gone. Just gone.” Lucero said, “There was no dust, there was nothing.” The men drove around the area searching until dark, but found nothing.

• When they reached a place with a cell phone signal, they contacted Peter Davenport, the longtime executive director of the National UFO Reporting Center in Washington state. Davenport called the incident “profoundly unsettling.” Davenport said that of the thousands of calls he gets every year about alien sightings, they rarely describe seeing aliens on the ground. Brinkley and Lucero said they weren’t drinking and weren’t on drugs. After listening to some 350,000 phone calls over 25 years, Davenport thinks he can tell those that are credible. This was one of them.

• Brinkley said he didn’t believe in UFOs, but “I sure do now.” “People probably think we are insane.” Lucero said he doesn’t know about aliens. “I just know I’ve never seen anything that big just disappear.”

Bow hunters Josh Brinkley and Daniel Lucero, dressed in camouflage gear, looked a little uncomfortable sitting in chairs at a local newspaper.

The Santa Fe County residents had just come into Taos after several days in rugged terrain near Cerro de la Olla, also called Pot Mountain, northwest of town near Ute Mountain.

They had a strange tale to tell and they weren’t sure of their reception.

“We’re a couple of guys that don’t believe in much, but we believe now,” Brinkley said.
They went hunting for elk.

They encountered aliens or something else so strange they don’t know what to call it.

**Sketch made by Josh Brinkley of the strange beings**

Brinkley, 41, said he’s been going to the Pot Mountain area hunting for 15 years. He had never seen anything particularly odd.

He said he works construction and on movie sets. He’s a family guy who doesn’t want anyone to think he’s crazy.

He and Lucero have worked together for eight years.

They say they aren’t prone to seeing things and didn’t particularly believe in aliens.

Odd figures

Opening morning of bow hunting season was Sunday (Sept. 1). The two men had gone a couple of days early to scout the area for elk. Lucero, 26, had never been there.

They set up along the tree line on different sides of a field and waited. After three hours and no elk, Brinkley became restless. It was about 9:30 a.m.

“I take off walking, creeping around through the woods, looking for elk,” Brinkley said.

He reached the top of the mountain where there’s a caldera, a kind of wide bowl left behind by a collapsed volcano. He went to the edge on the southwest side. As he walked to the edge he noticed two figures on his side of the caldera. He thought at first they were hunters. But, they were “very tall shapes of these beings, standing side by side, staring right at me,” he said.

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UFO Sightings Frequently Reported Across Western Pennsylvania

August 11, 2019
ExoNews Editor

Listen to “E63 8-11-19 UFO Sightings Frequently Reported Across Western Pennsylvania” on Spreaker.
Article by Stephen Huba July 27, 2019 (triblive.com)

• Retired journalist Bob Gatty, 76, originally reported on the Kecksburg UFO incident for the Greensburg Tribune-Review, when on December 9th, 1965, people across six states and Canada reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky before crashing into a wooded area in Mt. Pleasant Township, Pennsylvania, a southeastern suburb of Pittsburgh. (Note: The Army and State Police cordoned off the area, and claimed that they found nothing there in the woods. But locals have come forward to say they saw a military truck removing an acorn-shaped object the size of a Volkswagen Beetle with hieroglyphics on it.)

• The Kecksburg UFO sighting has become part of local lore, but Gatty says, “It’s not going away. Whether you believe or don’t believe in this stuff, the fact remains there is a lot happening for some reason.” Reports of unexplained aerial phenomena are getting serious attention from Congress, the U.S. military and longtime UFO watchers. “Congress apparently is taking this stuff… seriously,” says Gatty.

• UFO researcher Stan Gordon, 69, has spent the past 54 years investigating the Kecksburg incident. Gordon says that there has been a recent “surge” in sightings of unexplained phenomena in Western Pennsylvania. Says Gordon, “We’ve had a surge of UFO and Bigfoot activity in the area in the last couple of weeks. Many of these sightings are very detailed reports… from credible people that you cannot easily dismiss.” Most end up in the growing repository of unexplained phenomena, with no conclusive explanation.

• Gordon continues to report UFO sightings in Pennsylvania on his website, StanGordon.info. Pennsylvania is ranked seventh in total UFO sightings in the U.S., with 3,937 UFOs reported since 1947. There have been 84 sightings so far in 2019, which already matches the total for 2018. The most recent was a sighting over Greensburg on July 5th of a red/orange round object moving across the sky at night, lasting about six minutes.

• On July 4th, an orange-red sphere was spotted at night in both Erie and Cecil, in Washington County. On June 28th, a shiny silver saucer was seen over Mt. Lebanon. After about 15 minutes, it disappeared. On June 23rd, an Elizabeth resident reported seeing five amber-colored, circular shapes move in all directions in the sky, and then form an arrowhead shape before disappearing after about 4 minutes.

• Peter Davenport, director for the National UFO Reporting Center, has been collecting UFO data for 25 years. In 2004, Davenport presented a paper to the Mutual UFO Network on the use of “passive radar” for detecting UFOs in the near-earth environment. This was acknowledged by the CIA and the FBI. Davenport says that the US government has known about the UFO phenomenon for a long time. Solving the mystery of UFOs will require “a government that still serves the people”.

• UFO sightings by Navy fighter pilots have reached the highest echelons of the US government, according to the ‘To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science’. Former Pentagon intelligence official Christopher Mellon, an adviser to the Academy, wrote in the Washington Post in 2018 that the existence of UFOs is no longer in question. What is lacking is a commitment from the Defense Department to investigate the growing body of evidence from the military. Said Mellon, “It is time to set aside taboos regarding ‘UFOs’ and instead listen to our pilots and radar operators.”

While the Kecksburg UFO sighting has become a quaint part of local lore, more recent reports of unexplained aerial phenomena are getting serious attention from Congress, the U.S. military and longtime UFO watchers.

**reproduction of Kecksburg “acorn” UFO**

“It’s not going away,” said retired journalist Bob Gatty. “Whether you believe or don’t believe in this stuff, the fact remains there is a lot happening for some reason.”

Gatty, who originally reported on the Kecksburg incident for the Tribune-Review in 1965, recently noted on his blog NotFakeNews.biz that the Navy has issued new guidelines to fighter pilots regarding UFO sightings, and members of Congress are seeking more frequent briefings on the subject.

“Congress apparently is taking this stuff — at least the Navy reports — seriously,” said Gatty, 76, a former Sykesville, Jefferson County, resident who lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Meanwhile, longtime local UFO researcher Stan Gordon said there has been a “surge” in sightings of unexplained phenomena in Western Pennsylvania — whether extraterrestrial or not.

“We keep getting reports of very strange things that people see around here,” said Gordon, 69, of Greensburg. “We’ve had a surge of UFO and Bigfoot activity in the area in the last couple of weeks. Many of these sightings are very detailed reports.”

While sightings usually spike in the spring and summer, when people are outside more, reports in 2018 and 2019 have been more consistently year-round, he said. Sightings are mostly of unexplained things in the sky or of earthbound cryptids — animals such as Bigfoot, whose existence is unsubstantiated.

Gordon has spent the past 54 years investigating the Kecksburg incident, when on Dec. 9, 1965, people across six states and Canada reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky before crashing into a wooded area in Mt. Pleasant Township.

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Washington Man Spent Last 25 Years Running National UFO Reporting Center

February 13, 2019
ExoNews Editor

by Dave Somers and Ian Smay January 31, 2019 (krem.com)

• Peter Davenport is the Director of the National UFO Reporting Center in Harrington, Washington, which tracks sighting of UFOs across the country and compiles data relating to reported UFO sightings. He has served in the position for the last 25 years. (see 5:20 minute KREM 2 News report on Peter Davenport below)

• Davenport relates that we started calling these phenomena unidentified flying objects, or “UFOs”, in 1947. “We are being visited routinely about these things,” Davenport said.

• “I developed an interest in UFO work when I was very young, probably six years of age I estimate it was,” he said. “I saw a UFO on the outskirts of the St. Louis airport, seen by hundreds, possibly thousands of other people. Even though that was 1954 … the image of that object remains imprinted on my brain clearly, indelibly.”

• Davenport thinks these happenings are very important to humanity, as he talked about when describing a UFO sighting in Phoenix, Ariz. in 1997: “It was immense and it was hovering motionless over the witnesses,” Davenport said. “If this is true, if there is even a shard of a possibility this is true, it is the biggest scientific question confronting mankind.”

• One such occurrence happened in Spokane on Dec. 30, 2018. The UFOs were described as orange circles that made no sound. Another recently reported UFO sighting happened in Chewelah, Wash on Dec. 14, 2018. This one was much shorter, only lasting one to three seconds and described as “a big, bluish green sphere” that lit up the sky and was the size of a football field.

• “What worries me even more than the presumed aliens themselves, is the fact that our government is not sharing that information with the American people,” says Davenport. “This is wrong in my opinion.” He added that the press has not pushed the government hard enough to release information relating to UFOs and that the media needs to cover UFO sightings more often.

A man in Harrington runs the National UFO Reporting Center, which tracks sighting of UFOs across the country.
Peter Davenport is the Director of the National UFO Reporting Center in Harrington, Wash. He has served in the position for the last 25 years.

The center records and compiles data relating to reported UFO sightings.

He said that we started calling these phenomena “UFOs,” or unidentified flying objects, in 1947.

“We are being visited routinely about these things, that since 1947, we’ve called UFOs,” Davenport said.

One such occurrence happened in Spokane on Dec. 30, 2018. The UFOs were described as orange circles that made no sound.

Davenport thinks these happenings are very important to humanity, as he talked about when describing a UFO sighting in Phoenix, Ariz. in 1997.

“It was immense and it was hovering motionless over the witnesses,” Davenport said. “If this is true, if there is even a shard of a possibility this is true, it is the biggest scientific question confronting mankind.”

5:20 minute video of KREM 2 News report on Peter Davenport,
Director of the National UFO Reporting Center in Harrington, Washington

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39 UFOs Were Spotted In New York City In 2017

January 13, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Noah Manskar December 31, 2017 (patch.com)

• Peter Davenport, the director of the Washington state-based National UFO Reporting Center (NURC), says, “I know that this is the greatest scientific question that has ever confronted man… whether we are alone or not.” “And I submit to you that we are visited on a frequent basis. This is the biggest story in the world.”

• UFO sightings are most frequent in California and Florida where 13,033 and 6,190 UFOs have been reported, respectively, since the database’s inception in the 1990’s.

• In 2017, residents of New York City reported 39 UFO sightings. This number is down compared to 2016, when the city reported 47 sightings to the NURC’s online database. New York City’s sightings accounted for about 23 percent of the 169 reported across the state of New York in 2017.

• New Yorkers reported seeing flashing lights or objects of varying shapes in the sky for as little as 30 seconds to as long as 30 minutes. Lots of the events came late at night or early in the morning, though some were reported during daylight hours.

NEW YORK, NY — The truth is out there – and it might have visited the Big Apple in 2017. New Yorkers reported 39 sightings of unidentified flying objects across the five boroughs during the year, according to the National UFO Reporting Center.

Most reports came out of Brooklyn, where 15 people spotted unusual lights or shapes floating through the skies. Ten sightings came from Queens, nine from Manhattan, three from Staten Island and two from the Bronx.

UFO sightings are down this year compared to 2016, when the city reported 47 sightings to the NURC’s online database. Manhattan saw 18 UFOs that year, Brooklyn saw 14, Queens saw 11, the Bronx saw six and Staten Island three.

New York City’s sightings accounted for about 23 percent of the 169 reported across the state this year, NURC’s database shows.

New Yorkers reported seeing flashing lights or objects of varying shapes in the sky for as little as 30 seconds to as long as 30 minutes. Lots of the events came late at night or early in the morning, though some were reported during daylight hours.

“All of the sudden, I see 2 triangles made up of lights floating by in the sky,” wrote one Astoria, Queens, resident who was looking out of a fifth-floor apartment window over the East River at 9:29 p.m. on Oct. 20. “There 1 second gone the next. One triangle was made of red lights and the other craft made of blue.”

New York City is far from alone in seeing UFOs. The NURC has reports from every U.S. state and other nations. Sightings are most frequent in California and Florida — sky-watchers there have reported 13,033 and 6,190 UFOs respectively since the database’s inception in the 1990s.

The U.S. government became interested enough in flying saucers that in 2007 it launched a Department of Defense program to study sightings of them, according to a bombshell report in The New York Times this month. Former government officials, including the program’s former director, say the effort is still active, though federal funding for it ran out in 2012.

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Tag: Peter Davenport