Unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings aren’t uncommon across America — the recent congressional hearing on the fascinating objects has proven their prevalence and brought them back into the spotlight. One state in particular, however, seems to be seeing a lot more UFOs than other states.
With the earliest reported sighting in 1928 and the most recent this past September, California has over 16,000 reported UFO sightings, according to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). UFOs are also commonly referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), their technical name.
Most of the reports detail a string of lights in the sky or several balls of light, many of which were reportedly orange. A large chunk of the sightings were reported by individuals who were out camping or on Navy ships docked in nearby harbors — places with clear views of the sky. That’s why many initially thought the lights they saw were shooting stars.
But many also reported seeing UFOs in broad daylight as they walked to work, drove their kids to school or simply went about their days. Several sightings fall between the hours of 10am and noon. A lot were also reported on airplane radars and from pilots looking out as they flew across the sky.
One particularly intriguing entry from 1953 detailed the experience a camp worker had with the kids she had been supervising at a summer camp near a lake. As the group chatted, a strange flying object came and landed near them to observe them.
The woman who reported it wrote: “It was silver, and looked like two saucers glued together with windows where they joined. It was so close, we could see figures at the windows that surrounded the middle seam. This was 1953, and none of us had ever seen anything move like this craft did.”
Hellbound and Down 