MYSTERY WIRE — Do you know how many of your neighbors have reported seeing a UFO? It’s more than you might think. A massive data project taken on by a New York City based author and researcher broke the numbers down, state by state, county by county, and city by city.
But the rankings only scratch the surface since it only includes the cases that are actually reported.
By now, you’ve likely seen the now familiar UFO videos released by the Pentagon. Mystery Wire has been reporting on these videos since the first release by the government over two years ago. According to the Department of Defense, the objects caught on camera are officially categorized as unidentified.
For every UFO sighting that gets reported, there are close to 300 other sightings that are never reported at all.
Cheryl Costa, a military veteran who worked in the aerospace industry, pulled all the numbers together over an 18 year period and has ranked the states, cities, and counties that see the most UFOs.
Costa found out, from data collected from both MUFON and NUFORC, Phoenix and Las Vegas top the list. Portland is number five, Los Angeles is sixth, and San Diego is number eight. Sacramento, San Francisco, and San Jose make it into the top 25. The Salt Lake City are had 485 reports and they ranked 56 in USA.
Costa found population density is an obvious factor, but doesn’t account for all the sightings. Leisure time also factored into the numbers.
And now, with millions at home due to the coronavirus quarantine, we might expect the numbers to be going up, but they aren’t according to Costa, “while people have got the leisure time, they’re not in situations where they’re going up the Bible study then going up to the supermarket at night.” Costa told Mystery Wire recently, “They’re not taking a smoke break at the factory. There are a lot of reports like this. And while most of the sightings are reported by dog walkers and smokers even then most people will just take the dog out and come right back in. And what have we all been doing? Sitting around watching streaming television and eating too much.”
Latest UFO sightings – Top 25 cities
- Phoenix 929
- Las Vegas 639
- Seattle 616
- Chicago 562
- Portland 528
- Los Angeles 525
- Tucson 480
- San Diego 477
- Houston 466
- Denver 429
- Austin 426
- New York City (Manhattan) 418
- Orlando 390
- Springfield 380
- Albuquerque 376
- Miami 375
- Philadelphia 338
- San Antonio 334
- Columbus 327
- Jacksonville 326
- Sacramento 316
- San Francisco 310
- San Jose 308
- Myrtle Beach 305
- Dallas & Kansas City 294
Costa has written two books based on her data. Costa’s latest book is a compilation of her newspaper columns. Her first book, UFO Sightings Desk Reference: United States of America 2001-2015, was published in 2017. Her second book, The UFO Beat: The New York Skies Column July 2013 to June 2019, came out just a few weeks ago. In them she doesn’t try to explain what the UFOs might be, but does describe shape, size, color and other characteristics.
Mystery Wire also looked at the reporting data the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) provides. MUFON put out the following for April of this year, April saw a total of 1026 UFO sightings reported to the Mutual UFO Network, MUFON from around the world.
Telecommunications company SatelliteInternet.com compiled data from the National UFO Reporting Center to find out which U.S. state reports the most sightings based on population. The results:
- Washington
- Montana
- Vermont
- Alaska
- Maine
According to a recent MentalFloss article, Washington has the highest number of sightings (according to population) by far—an estimated 5894 through June 2019, which amounts to 78.22 sightings per 100,000 people. Montana had 823; Vermont had 482. Oregon, which came in at number 6, had 2844 sightings, but a larger population put the average at 67.86 sightings per 100,000. If aliens are indeed operating the sighted crafts, they appear to be fond of sprawling landscapes with wide-open spaces, like Montana and Vermont.
