Which states have the most UFO sightings?
Almost three-quarters of all UFO sighting reports in the United States occur between 4 p.m. and midnight. Keep reading to see which states have had the most UFO sightings. (Getty Images)  UFO sightings date back to biblical times. In the Bibles Book of Ezekiel, a mysterious ship is described as appearing from the sky in Chaldea (modern-day Kuwait). Strange sightings were recorded around Rome in 218 B.C. A wave of mysterious apparitions showed up in fourth-century China when a moon boat was documented floating over the country once every 12 years. A smattering of other, unfamiliar objects in the sky were noted in Germany in 1561, Hull, England, in 1801, and multiple times during World War II when Allied pilots used the term foo fighters to describe the odd circles of light pilots noticed flanking their planes during combat. The term UFO, short for unidentified flying object, was coined in 1953 by the United States Air Force as a bucket term for unexplained sightings like these. Stateside sightings were hardly restricted to military flyover zones, however. The first recorded UFO sighting dates to 1639 when, long before the era of planes and satellites, John Winthrop wrote in his diary about a large, strange light in the sky that shot back and forth. By the time he and the other men on his boat got their wits about them, their vessel was a mile from where it had been when they first spotted the light. The first documented image of a UFO was captured in 1870 on the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. More sightings were reported at Mount Rainier in Washington in 1947, and of course several in Roswell, New Mexico. Since then, countless numbers of unusual shapes in the skyand their supposed inhabitantshave been exhaustively reported without sufficient explanations beyond the possible existence of extraterrestrial life. A surge in eyewitness accounts begot even more sightings along with attempts to protect against invasions and abductions. More than 40,000 Americans bought into alien protection insurance, which offers customers monetary relief should a loved one get carted away by little green men. One Roper Poll in 1991 suggests that around 4 million Americans believe theyve been abducted by aliens. Since its founding in 1974, the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has documented around 90,000 UFO sightings, with almost 95% of those sightings supposedly easily explained away as military tests, weather balloons, or other terrestrial activity. Using data from NUFORCs 24/7 hotline, which has been around since 1974, Stacker compiled a ranking of the states with the most reported UFO sightings. NUFORCs dataset includes reports dating back to 1400. For each state, weve also included details of famous UFO sightings in that state. Of note is that almost three-quarters of all UFO sighting reports in the United States occur between 4 p.m. and midnight, and tend to peak between 9 and 10 p.m. Food for thought next time youre out scoping for alien life. Keep reading to see which states have had the most UFO sightings. You may also like: Most popular baby names in America  Canva  #51. District Of Columbia   UFO sightings: 87  Throughout the month of July 1952, a series of sightings known as the Big Flap put Washington D.C. residents into a panic. It began July 19: Repeated radar blips and sightings of lights moving at irregular speeds and trajectories (unusual enough to rule out shooting stars or aircraft) inspired the U.S. Air Force to send fighter jets into the sky to intercept what was assumed to be enemy aircraft and possibly a Soviet-led invasion. The radar signals disappeared each time jet fighters approached and reappeared when they moved away. The signals returned the following week, two more F-94 jets gave chase, and the blips vanished again. One jet pilot claimed to see a light in the distance, but couldnt close in on it. The government ruled it a temperature inversion to explain the mystery away. Canva  #50. North Dakota   UFO sightings: 192  Veteran World War II B-25 fighter pilot George F. Gorman had a 27-minute sky encounter with a white ball of light over Fargo, North Dakota, on Oct. 1, 1948. Known as the Gorman Dogfight, Gorman saw what he described as a flying disk with clear edges and many bright lights that he pursued for the better part of half an hour. Gorman attempted to make contact with the craft, which dodged Gormans advances at speeds in excess of 600 miles per hour. His story was verified by two air traffic controllers and another pilot flying in Fargo that night. Canva  #49. Wyoming   UFO sightings: 266  Two triangular UFOs with three blue lights were spotted over Cheyennes countryside on March 4, 2019, just a few weeks after almost a dozen multicolored lights were recorded traveling north over Riverton at various altitudes. Local residents tendencies to look skyward is perhaps best illustrated in Green River: When a comet crashed into Jupiter in 1994, Wyomings Green River city council turned its local airstrip into a refuge for potentially fleeing Jovians. The Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport has to date only shown evidence of terrestrial life. Canva  #48. South Dakota   UFO sightings: 272  During the evenings of Aug. 5 and 6, 1953, nearly four dozen civilians in the Bismarck area and multiple Military Air Defense system personnel at the Ellsworth Air Force Base reported a red, glowing light making sweeping movements across the sky. The light was further detected on radar by the Air Defense System. Similar sightings were reported earlier in western North and South Dakotas. The extensive documentation by the Air Force makes the Ellsworth Case among the most significant UFO sightings in American history. Canva  #47. Delaware   UFO sightings: 294  Delaware may rank low on how many UFO sightings it gets, but where it falls short on documentation it makes up for with imagination. The state is home to two prefab, UFO-shaped structures created in the 60s by a Finnish architect who thought the design could provide a solution to the housing shortage on Earth. Many UFO sightings in Delaware center on odd light formations and shapes in the sky and, in February 2019, a possible spacecraft with multicolored lights being pushed out of the airspace by five (presumably terrestrial) planes. You may also like: Iconic products released the year you were born  Canva  #46. Rhode Island   UFO sightings: 448  Two of the most iconic flying saucer photos of the 60s were snapped in 1967 in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The first, on June 10, was taken by Harold A. Trudel, who pulled his car over in East Woonsocket in order to wait for a UFO sighting (several of which he claimed to have already experienced in the area). The seven images he captured over the course of five minutes have long been disputed. The other photo was captured on June 18 and bears striking similarities to the craft another man, George Adamski, claimed to have captured on film in 1952 (which one German scientist said was nothing more than a faked photo using a surgical lamp). Canva  #45. Alaska   UFO sightings: 448  Eighteen-year-old Adonus Baugh on March 19, 2019, videotaped a still-unidentified glowing object apparently falling from the Anchorage, Alaska, sky. Another Anchorage resident captured photos of the same mysterious object, which a spokeswoman from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson said did not resemble any aircraft from the base. Canva  #44. Vermont   UFO sightings: 459  Among Vermonts most famous UFO stories is the Buff Ledge Abduction, in which, on Aug. 7, 1968, four UFOs appeared over Lake Champlain and allegedly abducted two camp counselors in Vermont. The lights from that encounter were reported by multiple witnesses. Canva  #43. Nebraska   UFO sightings: 468  One of Nebraskas most well-known UFO stories was turned into a comic book in 2019, aptly titled An Alien Encounter. The book illustrates a 1967 eyewitness account from Nebraska State Patrolman Herbert Schirmer, who saw what he assumed to be a tractor-trailer but which turned out to be a UFO. Under hypnosis, Schirmer recalled being abducted and shown how the spacecraft worked. Canva  #42. Hawaii   UFO sightings: 495  Two Harvard astronomers in 2017 released a draft paper about Oumuamua (Hawaiian for scout or messenger), a cigar-shaped UFO spotted with the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii in October of that year. The paper suggests the spinning craftroughly a quarter-mile long and with no detectable tailmay have been a sign of alien life from well outside our solar system. You may also like: Major conspiracy theories of the last century and the stories behind them  Canva  #41. Mississippi   UFO sightings: 537  Two fishermen on the Pascagoula River in 1975 claimed to have been abducted by aliens. While Charles Hickson and Calvin Parkers story was met with cynicism at the time, three more witnesses came forward in 2019 to substantiate the claims. Parker, who died in 2011, at the time assumed the blue light on the water meant cops had shown up to kick the men off the property. Then, he said, he noticed the lights were coming from above. According to the story, three aliens without legs injected the men with a sedative, abducted them, and performed physical examinations aboard the spacecraft before releasing the men back along the river. Canva  #40. West Virginia   UFO sightings: 621  The Green Bank Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, is a premier location for scientists who make it their work to study extraterrestrial life (OK, and star-mapping, supernovas, and other, more generalized scientific research) by documenting energy waves from hundreds of lightyears away into computers via giant radio telescope. With many signals so faint theyre easily drowned out by any ambient noise, these scientists abide by the National Radio Quiet Zone, a code of science that bars normal everyday tech devices so they can conduct their work without interference. Canva  #39. Montana   UFO sightings: 717  Minor-league baseball team manager Nick Mariana in 1950 captured two silver crafts spinning in mid-air over Great Falls, Montana, on his 16-mm camera. A governmental panel was gathered in 1953 to review Marianas footage, other U.S. Air Force UFO data, and a second short film of a sighting in Utah. The panel concluded in its report that Marianas images were the result of sunlight reflecting off off Air Force interceptorsand that the Utah footage showed light glinting off seagulls in flight. Canva  #38. Louisiana   UFO sightings: 763  For visitors to Louisiana who have a hankering for supernatural encounters, the Abita Mystery House in Abita Springs is a must-stopparticularly for its UFO crash site. Shreveports proximity to the Barksdale Air Force Base translates to plenty of UFO sightings, as military exercises and tests are commonly misconstrued by the civilian population. Canva  #37. Arkansas   UFO sightings: 788  Arkansas history with UFOs goes back at least to April 20, 1897. Railroad conductor James Hooton claimed to be hunting in Homan when he came upon an otherworldly airship and chatted with its bespectacled pilot and crew. Hooton described the craft as cylindrical, with wheels and a horizontal blade above it that moved by compressed air. You may also like: Least obedient dog breeds  Canva  #36. Kansas   UFO sightings: 795  The Boeing B-47 Stratojet was a highly advanced, long-range, six-engined bomber introduced in 1951 to fly at extremely high altitudes and subsonic speeds in order to completely evade enemy aircraftwhich is why it was so odd when, in 1957, an Air Force RB-47 was followed for 700 miles by an unidentified craft over Kansas and on through Missouri and Texas. Six years later, the radar of another RB-47 captured a radar blip followed by a bright blue light that was corroborated by the pilot and crew. Canva  #35. Maine   UFO sightings: 826  One of Maines most famous alien encounters is the Allagash Abduction of 1976. Four men on a camping trip in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway on Aug. 20, 1976, claimed they were abducted by aliens. Years after the incident, all four men were put under hypnosis and interviewed about the abduction. All four stories matched identically. Canva  #34. Iowa   UFO sightings: 833  One of the most famous accounts of alien life in Iowa never actually happened. In the opening of Robert A. Heinleins 1951 novel The Puppet Masters, government agents investigate an alien ship outside Grinnell, Iowa. Canva  #33. New Hampshire   UFO sightings: 863  Betty and Barney Hills 1961 alien abduction along Route 3 in Lancaster, New Hampshire, remains one of the most highly publicized stories of alien contact in the world. Under hypnosis, the couple independently recalled being kidnapped, medically examined, and released by bald-headed aliens with oblong eyes in a cigar-shaped, floating craft. Today, believers can visit a 50th-anniversary plaque commemorating the abduction along the roadside near Lincoln. Canva  #32. Alabama   UFO sightings: 962  A woman in 1989 reported an unusual light in the sky in Fyffe, Alabama; her report was followed up later by area police who claimed to see a large UFO flying in total silence overhead. The resulting excitement led more than 4,000 people to descend on the tiny town. No sightings were reported by the crowds, perhaps because of overcast skies and a light rain. You may also like: Most popular baby names for baby boomers  Canva  #31. Oklahoma   UFO sightings: 994  A video of UFOs overhead at the Oklahoma State Fair in 2017 caused quite a stir, but turned out to be skydivers and not alien life. If you want to be sure of an encounter, stop in and see some alien yard art along Route 66 in Stroud. Canva  #30. Idaho   UFO sightings: 1,001  Many of Idahos most-documented accounts of UFO encounters in Idaho come from the states police officers and southeast residents. These include claims of alien crafts following on-duty officers, unusual sightings, and a particular stretch of Idaho State Highway 30-E so notorious for UFO sightings its been coined Idahos UFO Highway. Should you stop there, or anywhere else in the state for that matter, your odds of seeing a UFO are roughly estimated at 1 in 133,600. Canva  #29. Utah   UFO sightings: 1,070  There are multiple first-person accounts of alien abductions throughout Utah in the 80s and 90s. Then there are the supposed 1967 images taken by the military of alien reproduction vehicles (ARVs), reverse-engineered flying saucers. Cases like thesealong with the much-whispered-about New Area 51continue to be turned over by groups like The Utah UFO Hunters, a group of people based in Salt Lake City devoted to discovering evidence of alien life, UFO activities, and paranormal occurrences. If youre in the state and looking to see some evidence of alien life yourself, make a pit stop for some flying saucer folk art in Clawson, Utah, that includes a UFO landing site and UFO crash site. Canva  #28. Nevada   UFO sightings: 1,095  Today, your odds of seeing a UFO in Nevada are 1 in 69,600. But with the Cold War and McCarthyism at their height (and a smaller population to boot), odds of spying unexplained crafts in the 1950sparticularly in the proximity of the Nevada Test and Training Range and Area 51were significantly higher. Canva  #27. New Mexico   UFO sightings: 1,143  Being home to Roswell and virtually thousands of statewide tales of alien contact and UFO sightings, New Mexicos history is inextricably tied to our fascination with possible alien life. In 1947, numerous eyewitnesses in Roswell claimed to have seen (or helped to cover up) a UFO crash site. Today, tourists can get their alien fixes at the International UFO Museum and Research Center, where you can learn about the most famous (and many obscure) claims of extraterrestrial activity and alien abduction in the U.S. and world. You may also like: Snacks and other food items banned in the US  Canva  #26. Kentucky   UFO sightings: 1,160  Each year, the Kelly Little Green Men Days Festival commemorates the Aug. 21, 1955, alien invasion of the farm of Elmer Sutton. That ambush allegedly involved a small group of alien creatures descending from their spacecraft outside of Suttons farmhouse to the horror of him and his family, which included five adults and seven children. Canva  #25. Maryland   UFO sightings: 1,300  Marylands most famous UFO sighting is likely that of Alvin Cohen and Phillip Small, who around midnight on Oct. 26, 1958, were driving past the Loch Raven Reservoir in Towson, Maryland. The men said they saw a giant, iridescent object floating over a bridge. The car, including the electrical system, died as the men pulled forward. The oval-shaped craft continued to float briefly before letting out a flash of light, a burst of heat, and a noise before shooting further up into the sky and vanishing. The state keeps stories like this alive with the annual Gambrills, Maryland, event, Mysteries of Space and Sky, which focuses on a science-based approach to investigating extraterrestrial activity. Canva  #24. Minnesota   UFO sightings: 1,482  Deputy sheriff Val Johnson awoke 40 minutes after his squad car had been swallowed in a ball of light sometime around midnight on Aug. 27, 1979. His wristwatch and cars clock, both meticulously set, had stopped for a full 14 minutes and he was 1,000 feet from where the incident occurred. One hundred feet of skid marks scarred the highway, and cracks throughout the vehicles windshield, according to an expert from Ford Motor Co., appeared to have been caused by simultaneous inward and outward forces. Johnson also suffered welders burns and had scorched retinas upon medical inspection. A metal expert brought in to examine the car found bent antennas he could only explain as having been deformed by powerful bursts of air. The car can still be viewed at the Settlers Square Historical Museum in Warren. Canva  #23. Connecticut   UFO sightings: 1,496  A series of 2012 reports in Connecticut described a still-unsolved incident of a mysterious falling object that allegedly vanished into Bantam Lake, and the internet all but exploded when almost 13,000 UFO documentswhich included dozens of eyewitness accounts based in Connecticut stretching back to the 1940swere released on The Black Vault website. These and other unexplained activities are covered each month at the Connecticut chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, an organization of alien enthusiasts striving to verify or debunk stories of strange sightings and otherworldly encounters. Canva  #22. Tennessee   UFO sightings: 1,556  Five separate witnesses from the Tennessee towns of Knoxville, Cleveland, Kingston, Coalfield, and Murfreesboro made a report on March 29, 2019, to the National UFO Reporting Center. Reports claimed a fireball and various lights passed over the sky over the course of about 10 seconds. In 2018, Tennessee was ranked among the top six states for UFO sightings in UFO Cases of Interest: 2018 Edition.  You may also like: Most popular grocery stores in America  Canva  #21. Wisconsin   UFO sightings: 1,666  The 2,400-person town of Belleville, Wisconsin, holds an annual UFO Day to memorialize multiple January 1987 sightings (including documented reports by the local police force) of strange lights in the sky just outside town. Three hours from that site in Poland, Wisconsin, one Bob Tohak in 1994 constructed a self-described U.F.O. Landing Port atop a 14-yard fuel tank standing vertically on the property of Tohak & Son Welding. Canva  #20. South Carolina   UFO sightings: 1,759  Bowman, South Carolina, hasnt been home to any credible UFO sightingsunless you count the homemade UFO constructed of garbage by Jody Pendarvis, which he lovingly calls the UFO Welcome Center. Prominently featured on Roadside America, Pendarvis claims to have come up with the concept for the structure in the 90s, and opened the spaceships doors to the public by Memorial Day of 1999. Canva  #19. Indiana   UFO sightings: 1,839  On Oct. 9, 1973, first-responder switchboards were overwhelmed by nearly 700 calls to report UFO sightings. These included blinking lights near the ground, a UFO spotted on a telescope by astronomy students, and even radar operators at a Fort Wayne airfield having irregular activity show up on a screen. The most commonly reported traits of UFO sightings in the Hoosier State today are multicolored and white lights, orange fireballs or balls of light, disks spotted during daylight hours, and triangular shapes documented after dark, according to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) of Indiana. Canva  #18. Missouri   UFO sightings: 1,870  The Rev. William Huffman in April of 1941 was called by the local sheriff to the site of a plane crash between Cape Girardeau and Chaffee, Missouri, to deliver last rites. When he arrived, Huffman discovered it was not a terrestrial plane crash at all, but rather a damaged flying saucer that had caused a fire in a neighbors field. He also found two alien bodies, one of which was already dead and the other dying. Members of the local Army corps arrived, barricaded the area, and confiscated all film from snap-happy photographers on the scene. This well-publicized event came just six years before the famed incident involving a supposed alien crash in Roswell, New Mexico. Canva  #17. Massachusetts   UFO sightings: 1,884  Betty Andreasson was at home with her family in South Ashburnham, Massachusetts, in January 1967 when she claimed gray aliens with oval-shaped heads and enormous eyes slipped her into a trance and abducted her. Aboard the craft, Andreasson said she was examined and then an alien disclosed to her the meaning of life and immediately erased her memoryall of which she recalled while under hypnosis. Her experiences were documented in Raymond Fowlers book The Andreasson Affair. Two years later, on Sept. 1, 1969, 9-year-old Thom Reed claimed to have been abducted by aliens from the car he was driving in with his brother, mother, and grandmother over the Old Covered Bridge in Sheffield, Massachusetts. The Great Barrington Historical Society in 2015 officially recognized the account as a historic event. You may also like: What the world was like when your grandparents were born  Canva  #16. Virginia   UFO sightings: 1,913  Two UFO sightings were reported to the National UFO Reporting Center in Virginia on April 4, 2019. At 6:48 a.m., an eyewitness claimed to have seen a light blue circular craft darting across the sky in Virginia Beach headed east. Seven minutes later, an eyewitness at the Norfolk Naval Station 23 miles northwest claimed to see what resembled a shooting star with a green glow that never faded and a short tail. The object moved without noise quickly across the sky and disappeared in 10 seconds. There were 2,348 UFO sightings reported throughout the state between 2001 and 2015, roughly 27.9 sightings per 100,000 people. Canva  #15. Georgia   UFO sightings: 1,952  While serving as governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter in 1973 filed a report with Oklahomas UFO Bureau about a mysterious object he claimed to have seen in 1969. During that decade, Georgias version of Area 51a nuclear aircraft and radiation testing facility just north of Atlantawas an area rich in tales and conspiracy theories about abductions, UFOs, and animal mutilation. Canva  #14. New Jersey   UFO sightings: 1,972  Home to the Jersey Devil and dozens of other urban-myth celebrities, the Garden State is hardly one to shy away from stories of extraterrestrial encounters. On July 14, 200150 years after lights in V formations were widely recorded in 1951 in Lubbock, TexasUFOs in a giant flying V were detected traveling along the New Jersey Turnpike for roughly 15 minutes in plain sight of hundreds of motorists and other onlookers between Staten Island, New York, and Carteret, New Jersey. Witnesses included a Carteret police lieutenant, who described the sight as a collection of orange and yellow lights over the Arthur Kill Waterway. Canva  #13. Colorado   UFO sightings: 2,187  A watchtower in Hooper, Colorado, has been the site of multiple claims of UFO sightings in the same area where two cattle were mysteriously mutilated in 2009. The attacks, reported by rancher Manuel Sanchez outside of San Luis, included precise removal of organs, no evidence of a struggle, and no pooling of blood. He found another calf in a similar state several weeks later, which led to Sanchez selling off the rest of his cattle before he lost any more. News reports noted the striking similarities between Sanchezs accounts and a similar string of mutilations in 1967 on the King ranch several miles away outside Alamosa. Canva  #12. Oregon   UFO sightings: 2,316  McMinnville, Oregon, is home to the annual UFO Fest, a three-day affair inspired by the iconic 1950 photos of flying saucers shot by Evelyn and Paul Trent over their farm outside town. The pictures made it into Life magazine and caused a national stir the town still celebrates today. You may also like: How COVID-19 has impacted everyday life in America  Canva  #11. Michigan   UFO sightings: 2,475  U.S. Air Force Pilot and First Lt. Felix Eugene Moncla Jr. in 1953 was conducting an air defense intercept over Lake Superior near the Soo Locks in Michigan when heand his planedisappeared. In what is today known as the Kinross Incident (Moncla was on temporary assignment at Kinross Air Force Base), Air Defense Command radar found a UFO traveling 500 miles per hour in the airspace. Moncla took off in an F-89C all-weather jet interceptor after the craft, but as his radar blip connected with the UFOs, communication went dark in what was assumed to be a crash. Moncla and his plane have never been located; the U.S. Air Force claimed Moncla crashed into a Royal Canadian Air Force (FCAF) vessel. The pilot of that supposed craft claimed to have not seen nor been aware of an intercepting plane; and the RCAF in multiple instances denied any incidents in the air on that day. Canva  #10. North Carolina   UFO sightings: 2,629  On. Jan. 25, 2019, Bret Jones was outside taking pictures of birds in Greensboro, North Carolina when he saw a bright flash in the sky near a plane flying overhead. Wondering if the mysterious shape was a balloon, he began recording the object until it disappeared after about 10 seconds. The odds of seeing a UFO in the state are just 1 in 205,900, although you wouldnt know it from the stories that stretch back to at least 1940 and have touched off a number of conspiracy theories about government cover-ups and experiments. Canva  #9. Illinois   UFO sightings: 2,758  Just after 4 p.m. on Nov. 7, 2006, 12 United Airlines employees and multiple witnesses inside Chicagos OHare International Airport saw a dark gray aircraft floating around above gate C17 as Flight 446 prepped for departure. After roughly five minutes, the UFO darted into the sky, broke through clouds with enough pronouncement to reveal blue sky, and disappeared. No radar picked it up, leading the FAA to deem the sighting a weather phenomenon.  Canva  #8. Ohio   UFO sightings: 3,012  The Center for UFO Studies was founded by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a professor of astronomy at Ohio State University who went on to become chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University. Hynek served during the 1950s and 1960s as the astronomical consultant to the United States Air Forces Project Blue Book, a project tasked with investigating and explaining UFO phenomena. Hynek sought to determine wherever possible an astronomical explanation for UFOs. Canva  #7. Arizona   UFO sightings: 3,188  Some of the most notable UFO sightings in Arizona include a 1953 incident when three Prescott residents saw eight UFOs at Del Rio Springs Creek; and another on Nov. 5, 1975, when 22-year-old Arizona logger Travis Walton got zapped by a beam of light from a UFO in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests new Snowflake, Arizona, that threw him 20 feet in front of six of his terrified crew members. The men thought Walton was dead and ran for help. Meanwhile, Walton claimed to have woken up in a room filled with aliens who kept him prisoner for five days while authorities conducted a search party for the missing man. Waltons experiencewhich he has defended to this daywas made into the 1993 movie Fire in the Sky.  You may also like: States with the most multi-generational households  Canva  #6. Pennsylvania   UFO sightings: 3,517  Pennsylvanias own version of the Roswell incident came about in 1965 when a fireball witnessed by thousands of onlookers across six states that caused sonic booms around Pittsburgh crashed into Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, only to be recoveredor covered upby the U.S. military. A legal battle followed, leading to Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta pushing for the release of the Kecksburg documents. Canva  #5. New York   UFO sightings: 3,830  When an electrical surge and explosion at a Con Ed substation in Queens lit up the sky in December of 2018, many were sure the blue haze was a sign of alien life. Less debunked than that, however, is New Yorks Hudson Valley UFO, a Dec. 31, 1982 sighting by hundreds of onlookers of a V-shaped collection of multicolored lights connected by a triangular fuselage moving deliberately and without a sound across the night sky. Canva  #4. Texas   UFO sightings: 3,848  Several of Texas most famous recordings of UFO activity had multiple witnesses, garnering more credibility than other, one-off documentation and raising additional, unanswered questions. Such was the case in January 2008, when dozens of residents in the tiny town of Stephenville, Texas reported white lights floating over Highway 67 in a single arc that then moved silently into vertical, parallel lines. Although the Air Force claimed F-16s had been flying in that proximity at the time, eyewitnesses disputed those claims, saying the lights were far too advanced for such a simple explanation. Canva  #3. Washington   UFO sightings: 4,351  Home to the first filmed evidence of a UFO, Washington is no stranger to close encounters of the third kind. On June 21, 1947, Harold A. Dahl reported to authorities that his son had been injured and his dog killed by flying debris from four to six circular objects in what became known as the Maury Island Incident. A witness was also apparently threatened by characters wearing all black, which became the inspiration for the popular Men in Black movies decades later. Canva  #2. Florida   UFO sightings: 5,826  Floridians count many believers among them; and hundreds of folks have come forward with tales of holograms, abductions, odd spacecraft, lights in the sky, and everything in between over the years. Many UFO sightings have been debunked, including two 2018 incidents of a butterfly mistaken for alien craft over a Floridian swamp; and Tallahassee parachuters who got confused with UFOs. Canva  #1. California   UFO sightings: 10,333  Its no surprise that the state with the most UFO sightings is also home to the annual Contact in the Desert, the worlds largest UFO conference. The event generally features speakers, panel discussions, lots of opportunities for stargazing, and a steady stream of believers ready to share their experiencesmany of which have been captured on camera. You may also like: Major cities with the most accessible public parks  This story first appeared on Stacker.com.