Cases and themes
Photographs, films and videos, from the 1950s to the Navy infrared footage. 185 events, newest first.
Media28 Dec 1998
Fox, which aired 'Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction?' in 1995, broadcast 'World's Greatest Hoaxes: Secrets Finally Revealed,' hosted by Lance Henriksen. The special presented the autopsy footage as staged and was made by the same executive producer, Robert Kiviat.
Media19 Jun 1998
20th Century Fox released the first X-Files feature film, which carried the TV series' story of a government cover-up of alien activity to a theatrical audience between the show's fifth and sixth seasons. It grossed about $189 million worldwide.
Photo: Fox Broadcasting Company, Public domain
Government5 Apr 1998
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor photographed the Cydonia feature known as the 'Face on Mars' at ten times the resolution of the 1976 Viking image. The camera's operator, Malin Space Science Systems, describes the feature as one hill among the region's buttes and mesas that happened to resemble a face.
Sightings1998
Project Hessdalen set up an automated station, a container with cameras and sensors known as the Blue Box, to record the unexplained lights reported in the Hessdalen valley since the early 1980s. The project says the station has recorded since 1998 and streams camera footage around the clock.
Photo: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media27 Jul 1997
Showtime premiered Stargate SG-1, a series sequel to the 1994 film starring Richard Dean Anderson as an officer leading teams through an alien gateway. It ran ten seasons, moving to the Sci-Fi Channel for the last five.
Photo: Falashad, CC BY 2.0
Media11 Jul 1997
Warner Bros. released Contact, Robert Zemeckis's adaptation of Carl Sagan's novel, starring Jodie Foster as a radio astronomer who detects a signal from the star Vega. It framed alien contact through radio searches rather than saucers.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Media24 Mar 1997
At the 69th Academy Awards, Independence Day won the Oscar for visual effects, credited to Volker Engel, Douglas Smith, Clay Pinney and Joseph Viskocil. It was the film's only win from two nominations.
Sightings13 Mar 1997
Many people across Arizona reported and videotaped bright lights in the night sky. In July 1997 the Maryland Air National Guard said its A-10 jets had dropped flares over a range southwest of Phoenix, though that does not account for every report. Former Gov. Fife Symington said in 2007 he saw it.
Media2 Jul 1996
20th Century Fox released Independence Day, an alien-invasion blockbuster. It set records as the fastest film to $100 million and grossed over $300 million in the U.S. and about $817 million worldwide.
Photo: 20th Century Studios, Public domain
MediaFeb 1996
After the TSS-1R tethered satellite broke loose from shuttle Columbia on STS-75, shuttle camera footage showed the tether amid many small drifting lights. UFO promoters later called it a swarm of craft; NASA and skeptics said the lights were debris and ice lit by sunlight.
Photo: NASA Johnson Space Center, Public domain
Media28 Aug 1995
Fox broadcast a special built around Ray Santilli's black-and-white film said to show a 1947 alien autopsy, hosted by Jonathan Frakes. In 2006 Santilli admitted the film was a staged recreation, while still claiming it was based on genuine footage he had seen; no such footage has been produced.
Media28 Oct 1994
MGM released Roland Emmerich's Stargate, starring Kurt Russell and James Spader, which builds on the ancient-astronaut idea that an alien posed as an Egyptian god. It launched a long-running TV and film franchise.
Photo: Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters16 Sep 1994
About 60 children at the Ariel School outside Harare said they saw a craft land near the playground and figures beside it. A BBC crew filmed interviews days later, and Harvard psychiatrist John Mack interviewed pupils. Skeptics cite mass suggestion after a rocket re-entry fireball days earlier.
MediaJul 1994
Showtime aired Roswell, a TV film directed by Jeremy Kagan with Kyle MacLachlan as an Air Force intelligence officer revisiting the 1947 events and Martin Sheen in support. It dramatized claims that a flying saucer was recovered and the story covered up.
Photo: Roswell Daily Record, Public domain
MediaMar 1993
Director Robert Lieberman's film Fire in the Sky, starring D.B. Sweeney as Travis Walton, opened in March 1993. It dramatized Walton's claim that he vanished for five days in 1975 after a UFO encounter in Arizona, and the suspicion that fell on his co-workers.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings9 Oct 1992
A bright, fragmenting fireball crossed several eastern U.S. states and was caught on at least 16 independent videos before a meteorite struck a parked car in Peekskill, New York. Scientists used the videos to reconstruct its orbit, a well-documented natural object in the sky.
Photo: Wknight94, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings11 Jul 1991
During the total solar eclipse over Mexico City, a number of residents reported seeing a strange hovering craft, in what has been called one of the largest mass UFO sightings; reports also came from other Mexican cities. A skeptic suggested viewers without eye protection were seeing spots.
Photo: Claudio Lelli 2, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings20 May 1991
Soviet TV's Vremya newscast on 21 May 1991 showed a glowing object filmed near the Mir station the previous evening. Cosmonaut Musa Manarov, who was filming a docking, said he saw it come off the spacecraft; the report said its nature was unclear.
Photo: UR3IRS at Russian Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings4 Aug 1990
Two men photographed a large diamond-shaped object with a jet nearby near Calvine in the Scottish Highlands. The Daily Record passed the pictures to the Ministry of Defence, which kept them. A surviving print held by a retired RAF press officer was made public by researcher David Clarke in 2022.
Photo: Ian S, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings1990
A photo said to show a lighted triangle over Petit-Rechain became the best-known image of the Belgian wave and was analyzed by the Royal Military Academy and others. Its author later admitted it was a hoax.
Photo: J.S. Henrardi, Public domain
Media1989
Philippe Mora's film Communion, adapted by Whitley Strieber from his bestselling 1987 account of alleged abduction experiences, starred Christopher Walken as Strieber. The Deseret News called it a disappointment despite solid lead acting; it put Strieber's visitors on cinema screens.
Photo: John Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media1989
Dean Alioto made UFO Abduction, a low-budget found-footage film of a family menaced by aliens. Copies circulated without credits and were shown at a UFO convention, and some viewers treated it as genuine; Alioto later remade it for UPN in 1998.
Military10 Nov 1988
The Pentagon officially confirmed a squadron of F-117A stealth aircraft based in Nevada and released a single blurry photo. The angular jets had flown for years only at night from the Tonopah Test Range, an example of the secret aircraft often raised as explanations for some sightings.
Photo: USAF Technical Sgt. Marvin Lynchard, Public domain
Close encounters1987
Horror novelist Whitley Strieber published Communion, a first-person account of beings that he said probed him at his cabin in upstate New York. The book became a bestseller and a 1989 film, and made Strieber a widely known and widely doubted figure.
Photo: RobertoTenore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Whistleblowers1986
Ralph Noyes, a retired senior Ministry of Defence official, wrote to the MoD in 1986 that in 1970 he had been shown RAF Venom gun-camera film of UFOs at a secret screening in MoD Main Building. The letter is among MoD UFO files released by The National Archives.
