FILE 001 / EXTRATERRESTRIAL
Real sightings, real reports, and what officials said about them. Some were solved. Some still aren’t.
REPORT A SIGHTING
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NEAR MOUNT RAINIER, WASHINGTON
Private pilot Kenneth Arnold reported nine bright objects flying in formation at very high speed. Newspapers turned his description into the phrase “flying saucer,” and a wave of sightings followed.
It was never settled. Suggested explanations over the years include mirages, reflections, and birds.
ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO
The Roswell Army Air Field announced it had recovered a “flying disc.” The next day the military said the debris came from a weather balloon. Decades later, stories of alien bodies made it the most famous UFO case in the world.
A 1994 Air Force report said the debris came from Project Mogul, a classified balloon program for detecting Soviet nuclear tests. A 1997 report said “alien body” accounts likely mixed up later crash-test dummy drops and other events.
RURAL NEW HAMPSHIRE
Driving home at night, the couple reported a strange light following their car and a stretch of time they couldn’t account for. Under hypnosis later, they described being taken aboard a craft. It became the first widely publicized alien abduction story.
Critics point out that memories recovered under hypnosis are unreliable and can be shaped by suggestion and dreams.
SUFFOLK, ENGLAND
U.S. Air Force personnel at RAF Woodbridge reported strange lights in the forest over several nights. Deputy base commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt wrote an official memo about it to the British Ministry of Defence. It’s often called “Britain’s Roswell.”
Skeptics argue the lights were a nearby lighthouse, bright stars, and a meteor, seen by tired and primed witnesses.
ARIZONA
Thousands of people reported a huge V-shaped formation of lights moving over Arizona, followed later that night by a row of glowing lights hanging over Phoenix.
The military said the later lights were flares dropped during a training exercise. Many witnesses say that doesn’t explain the earlier V-shaped formation.
OFF THE COAST OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Navy pilots from the USS Nimitz group, including Cmdr. David Fravor, described a white, wingless object shaped like a Tic Tac that moved in ways they couldn’t match. An infrared video, later called “FLIR,” captured part of the encounter.
The Pentagon officially released the FLIR video, along with two others nicknamed “Gimbal” and “GoFast,” in April 2020 and labeled what they show as unidentified.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
At a House hearing, former intelligence official David Grusch testified under oath that the U.S. has secret programs holding “non-human” craft. Navy pilots also described their own encounters.
The Pentagon denied his claims. In 2024 its UFO office, AARO, released a historical review that found no evidence the government has recovered alien technology.
U.S. AIR FORCE
The Air Force’s official UFO investigation collected 12,618 sighting reports over 17 years.
Most were explained as aircraft, stars, balloons, or weather. 701 stayed “unidentified.” The project concluded UFOs posed no threat to national security and closed in 1969.
How to read these files: “Unidentified” means investigators couldn’t say what something was. It doesn’t mean it was proven to be alien. That gap is exactly what keeps people looking up.