Cases and themes
Photographs, films and videos, from the 1950s to the Navy infrared footage. 185 events, newest first.
Media12 Nov 2010
Universal released Skyline, directed by visual-effects specialists Greg and Colin Strause, in which partygoers wake to find alien ships over Los Angeles drawing people up with pulses of light. Trade critics panned the story but noted its effects.
Photo: donabelandewen (Flickr), CC BY 2.0
Sightings8 Nov 2010
A KCBS news helicopter filmed a billowing trail rising over the Pacific northwest of Catalina Island that many viewers took for a missile launch. The Pentagon first called it unexplained, then said it was most likely an airplane contrail distorted by camera angle and the setting sun.
Military4 Nov 2010
Images and video from a Chilean Air Force change-of-command ceremony at El Bosque base showed a small object near the aerobatic team. In 2012 retired general Ricardo Bermudez of the air force's CEFAA committee said experts ruled out birds, aircraft and meteors; skeptics suggested an insect.
Photo: Unknown photographer, Public domain
Sightings13 Oct 2010
Crowds and TV cameras watched shiny objects over Chelsea in Manhattan on October 13, 2010, prompting calls to police and the FAA. A Mount Vernon school said they were balloons that blew away from a teacher's engagement party about an hour before.
Media15 Jul 2010
Syfy launched Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files, in which a team led by former FBI agent Ben Hansen tried to recreate viral photos and videos, including UFO footage, to judge whether they were hoaxes or unexplained.
Sightings28 Feb 2010
An exceptionally bright fireball crossed eastern Slovakia at night with loud explosive sounds. Clouds blocked the science camera networks, but three security cameras in Hungary filmed it, letting researchers compute its path and orbit and recover meteorites west of Kosice.
Photo: Jon Taylor, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings9 Dec 2009
A large white spiral with a blue tail was seen and photographed over northern Norway on the morning of Dec. 9, 2009. Russia's Defense Ministry said the next day a Bulava missile test had failed in its third stage; analysts widely tied the spiral to it, though Russia did not confirm the link.
Photo: Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, CC BY 4.0
MediaNov 2009
Universal agreed to pay the Alaska Press Club after promotion for The Fourth Kind, a film about alleged abductions in Nome, used fabricated news stories attributed to real Alaska papers. The deal included removing the fake articles from the web.
Photo: Sir Mildred Pierce , from North Augusta, South Carolina , USA, CC BY 2.0
Sightings25 Sep 2009
Seven all-sky cameras of Western University's Southern Ontario Meteor Network recorded a fireball about 100 times brighter than the full Moon at 9:03 pm. Analysis pointed to the Niagara Peninsula, and a 46 g fragment was found on the hood of an SUV with a cracked windshield in Grimsby.
Media14 Aug 2009
TriStar released Neill Blomkamp's District 9 in the U.S., a film about stranded aliens confined to a Johannesburg camp. It received four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
Photo: Natasha Baucas at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdnatasha, CC BY 2.0
GovernmentMar 2009
The UK National Archives opened a third batch of Ministry of Defence UFO files, mostly late-1980s and early-1990s reports. Highlights included the Calvine photographs, Tornado crews' 1990 report later traced to Soviet rocket debris, and a 1992 advertising airship mistaken for a UFO.
Media12 Dec 2008
20th Century Fox released a remake of the 1951 alien-visitor film The Day the Earth Stood Still, with Keanu Reeves as the visitor Klaatu. Critics such as the Christian Science Monitor found it weaker than the original.
Photo: Y! Musica's photostream, CC BY 2.0
Sightings20 Nov 2008
A fireball seen by thousands from Edmonton to Saskatchewan was caught on widely shared video. A University of Calgary team traced it to a field near Lloydminster and recovered more than 100 meteorites, a record-setting Canadian fall.
Photo: Dale Nosko, CC0
MediaAug 2007
Online videos of saucers flying over Haiti spread widely in August 2007. Within about a week the Los Angeles Times identified their maker as a French computer animator, who said he made the clips as a test for a film project and did not expect them to go viral.
Sightings20 Jul 2007
Cameras of Australia's Desert Fireball Network photographed a fireball over the Nullarbor Plain, letting researchers compute its path and orbit. Searchers found the first stones near the predicted spot in October 2008; the rock proved an unusual basaltic meteorite.
Photo: Rmhowie, CC BY-SA 4.0
MediaApr 2007
Videos posted to YouTube in April 2007 claimed to show a secret 'Apollo 20' mission finding an alien craft and a body on the Moon. No Apollo 20 ever flew (the mission was canceled), and French artist Thierry Speth later said he made the videos as fiction.
MediaApr 2006
Ahead of a 2006 comedy film about them, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield said the 1995 'alien autopsy' footage was a re-creation they staged, which they called a restoration of film they claimed to have seen. Sculptor John Humphreys said he made the alien body.
MilitaryNov 2004
Navy F/A-18F crews from the USS Nimitz strike group, cued by the cruiser USS Princeton's radar, reported intercepting a smooth white object they could not identify. Another crew recorded the infrared video the Pentagon later released as FLIR1.
Photo: United States Navy, Public domain
Sightings21 Aug 2004
Residents of suburban Tinley Park, Illinois, reported three silent red lights hovering in a triangle for up to half an hour, with similar reports on later nights including Halloween 2004. A resident filmed them; suggested explanations include flares or balloons, and no official cause was given.
Photo: Zarka Khalid, CC BY-SA 4.0
Military5 Mar 2004
A Mexican Air Force surveillance plane on a drug patrol recorded up to 11 lights visible only in infrared over Campeche. The Defense Ministry gave the video to a UFO researcher, and it aired in May 2004; a later analysis argued the lights were distant oil-platform flares.
Photo: Zahpo75, Public domain
Media8 Aug 2003
Rakesh Roshan's Hindi film Koi... Mil Gaya opened in India. Hrithik Roshan plays a young man who befriends a small blue alien, nicknamed Jadu, left behind by a spacecraft. Variety reported it as a runaway hit; critics noted its debt to E.T.
Photo: Bollywood Hungama, CC BY 3.0
MediaNov 2002
Thai broadcaster iTV aired footage it said showed Lao soldiers firing tracer rounds across the Mekong during the yearly glowing-ball festival at Nong Khai. Thousands of residents protested the report, and Laos' ambassador objected; skeptics favor fireworks or tracers as the cause.
Photo: J A Forbes, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media25 Jan 2002
Screen Gems released a thriller starring Richard Gere loosely adapted from John Keel's 1975 book about strange sightings around Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It renewed public interest in the Mothman reports and the 1967 Silver Bridge collapse.
Photo: Jacket design by Peter Parnell, Public domain
WhistleblowersAug 2000
Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper's memoir Leap of Faith, written with Bruce Henderson, says that in 1957 at Edwards AFB camera crew filmed a saucer-shaped craft landing, and that the film was sent to the Pentagon on orders and never heard of again. No official record of it has been confirmed.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Sightings6 May 2000
A daytime fireball over the Czech Republic was recorded by videographers, seismographs, an infrasound station and satellites, and meteorites were recovered. Scientists called it one of the best documented falls ever, a benchmark for analyzing bright sky events.
Photo: Czech Wikipedia user Packa, CC BY-SA 3.0
