Cases and themes
Photographs, films and videos, from the 1950s to the Navy infrared footage. 242 events, newest first.
Sightings3 Aug 1965
Orange County highway traffic investigator Rex Heflin took three Polaroid photos of what he said was a metallic disk crossing Myford Road near Santa Ana, then a fourth of a smoke ring. The Air Force-funded Condon study (case 52) found the evidence inconclusive and internally inconsistent.
Close encounters23 Apr 1965
George Adamski, the best-known 1950s contactee, died of a heart attack in Maryland at 74. His claims of meeting Venusians and his saucer photographs had been dismissed by investigators, including Blue Book consultant J. Allen Hynek, who called the photos crude fakes.
Photo: Unknown (likely a Buffalo Evening News or press photo), Public domain
Sightings1965
From Christmas 1964 residents of Warminster reported loud unexplained sounds, dubbed 'the Thing', then lights and objects by mid-1965. Local journalist Arthur Shuttlewood championed the reports, and a 1965 Daily Mirror photo drew thousands of skywatchers. Sightings faded by the early 1970s.
Photo: Chris Heaton, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media1965
Toho released Invasion of Astro-Monster, the Godzilla film in which astronauts exploring the mysterious Planet X encounter the monster known as Monster Zero, setting off a battle between kaiju and humankind.
Military22 Sep 1964
Former Air Force Lt. Robert Jacobs claimed from 1982 that telescope film of a September 22, 1964 Vandenberg Atlas launch, shot from Big Sur, showed a craft circling the warhead and hitting it with a beam. Project engineer Kingston George said it showed decoys and debris, not a UFO.
Photo: SDASM Archives, Public domain
Media1964
Terence Fisher's low-budget British film 'The Earth Dies Screaming', from Lippert, shows a few survivors in an English village after alien-controlled robots wipe out most of the population and reanimate the dead.
Media1964
Tinto Brass directed Il disco volante, an Italian comedy in which a Carabinieri sergeant investigates reports of a saucer landing in a Veneto village. Alberto Sordi plays four roles, and the film uses the scare to satirize provincial society.
Photo: Gorupdebesanez, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media30 Mar 1960
Paramount's Visit to a Small Planet, adapted from Gore Vidal's play, opened in Los Angeles. Jerry Lewis plays Kreton, an alien student who flies a spaceship to Earth and lands at a suburban home. It was Lewis's last film under his contract with producer Hal Wallis.
Photo: Paramount Pictures, Public domain
Media1960
MGM released Wolf Rilla's British film Village of the Damned, adapted from John Wyndham's novel The Midwich Cuckoos. A whole English village falls unconscious, and the women later bear telepathic children; the BFI describes it as tapping fears of alien invasion and mind control.
Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Public domain
MediaJul 1959
Ed Wood's low-budget film, in which saucer-flying aliens raise the dead to stop Earth's nuclear weapons, was released by Distributors Corporation of America. Long mocked, it became a cult emblem of 1950s flying-saucer cinema.
Photo: Distributors Corporation of America, Public domain
Sightings7 Apr 1959
Cameras of the Ondrejov Observatory photographed a bright fireball whose meteorites fell near Pribram. It was the first meteorite fall traced back to its orbit in the solar system from photographs, a model for instrument-based study of fireballs.
Photo: Czech Wikipedia user Packa, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media10 Sep 1958
The Blob, a low-budget film in which a jelly-like alien mass arrives inside a meteorite and terrorizes a small town, opened in Los Angeles ahead of its October 1958 general release by Paramount. Steve McQueen played the teenage lead.
Photo: Paramount Pictures, Public domain
MediaJun 1958
Paramount released Jack Arnold's film in which an alien presence on a California beach takes control of children at a missile project and uses them to sabotage a launch. The AFI Catalog lists a June 1958 release.
Military16 Jan 1958
Civilian photographer Almiro Barauna photographed an object over Trindade Island from the Brazilian Navy ship Almirante Saldanha, and Rio papers ran the photos in February 1958. A U.S. Naval Attache report and later Air Force correspondence judged the photos a hoax.
Photo: Project Blue Book, Public domain
MediaDec 1957
Howco International released this low-budget science fiction film, in which a criminal alien brain from the planet Arous takes over a scientist's body and threatens Earth. The AFI Catalog lists a December 1957 release with a Los Angeles opening on Christmas Day.
Photo: Howco International, Public domain
MilitarySep 1957
An Army draftsman at Fort Belvoir photographed a black ring in the sky that turned into a white cloud, reportedly seen by about 15 people. The Air Force-funded Condon study identified it as a by-product of an atom bomb simulation demonstration on the base.
MediaJul 1957
Columbia released William Asher's 'The 27th Day', in which an alien gives five people from different nations capsules able to wipe out humanity, testing whether they keep the peace for 27 days. The film mirrored Cold War nuclear fears.
Photo: trailer screenshot (Columbia Pictures), Public domain
Media1957
American International Pictures released Edward L. Cahn's teen comedy-horror film about small, bulbous-headed aliens who land in a flying saucer. Designed by Paul Blaisdell, its creatures fed the popular image of big-headed saucer occupants.
Photo: American International Pictures, Public domain
MediaJul 1956
Columbia released Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, a science fiction film with saucer effects by Ray Harryhausen. Its credits say it was suggested by Donald Keyhoe's book Flying Saucers from Outer Space.
Photo: american film trailer screenshot (Columbia Pictures), Public domain
Media30 Mar 1956
MGM released Forbidden Planet, a big-budget science fiction film loosely based on The Tempest in which a future human crew travels by space cruiser to a distant world. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2013.
Photo: Loew's International (MGM), Public domain
Media10 Jun 1955
Universal-International's Technicolor science-fiction film, in which an alien recruits Earth scientists for his war-torn planet Metaluna, had its world premiere in New York. It was one of the bigger-budget entries in the 1950s alien-film cycle.
Photo: Universal-International, Public domain
Military14 Oct 1954
Flt. Lt. James Salandin of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force said that after taking off from North Weald in a Meteor jet he saw two round objects streak between two other Meteors near Southend, then a third head straight at him before veering past. He later said he regretted not firing his camera gun.
Photo: Robert Lamb, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media25 Mar 1954
At the 26th Academy Awards, held at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, Paramount's 1953 Martian-invasion film The War of the Worlds won the award for Special Effects.
Photo: Illustrator unknown; Paramount Pictures, Public domain
Sightings15 Feb 1954
Thirteen-year-old Stephen Darbishire took two blurry photos of a disc near the Old Man of Coniston that were reproduced widely. He later said at various times that the picture was genuine and that it was a hoax, and it is generally treated as a fake.
Photo: Strider52, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media23 Jan 1954
RKO released Killers from Space, a W. Lee Wilder film in which a scientist whose plane crashes near an atomic test wakes in an underground lair of bug-eyed aliens who have operated on him. It is an early screen version of a medical-examination abduction story.
Photo: film screenshot (RKO Radio Pictures), Public domain
