Archive / waves
Waves and flaps
Sightings come in clusters. These are the clusters the archive covers, each gathering the stories that belong to it. On the timeline they show as shaded bands.
1896 to 1897 · United States
The mystery airship wave
From November 1896 to the spring of 1897, newspapers across the western and central United States carried reports of a lit airship crossing the night sky, years before any airship flew there. Sacramento saw it first. By April it was over Texas, where one small town buried its pilot.
2 stories
1946 · Scandinavia
The ghost rockets
Through the summer of 1946, thousands of Swedes, Finns and Norwegians reported rocket-like objects crossing the sky, some falling into lakes. The Swedish military searched, found nothing it could identify, and the question of Soviet tests hung over the reports.
1 story
1947 · United States
The 1947 flying disc wave
Kenneth Arnold's nine objects over Mount Rainier on June 24, 1947 gave the world the flying saucer. Within two weeks hundreds of reports followed, a rancher near Roswell found a field of debris, and the modern story began.
3 stories
1952 · United States
The 1952 wave
The busiest year Project Blue Book ever had. Radar returns over Washington in July put jets in the air over the capital, and the summer brought the Flatwoods creature, the Tremonton film and George Adamski's desert contact.
4 stories
1957 · United States and Brazil
The November 1957 wave
Days after Sputnik 2, drivers around Levelland, Texas reported a glowing object that stalled their engines. Reports followed across the Southwest, and in Brazil a farmer told a story that became the first abduction case.
3 stories
1965 to 1966 · United States and beyond
The 1965 to 1966 wave
Exeter, Kecksburg and Valensole in 1965; the Michigan swamp gas sightings, Westall, the Portage County chase and the first Mothman reports in 1966. The wave that made Congress ask questions and gave the field the Condon Committee.
8 stories
1973 · United States
The October 1973 wave
The autumn of 1973 brought a flood of reports across the American South and Midwest, among them two shipyard workers taken from a Pascagoula riverbank and an Army helicopter crew over Ohio that could not explain what pulled them upward.
2 stories
1982 to 1986 · New York and Connecticut
The Hudson Valley wave
For more than three years, thousands of people in the Hudson Valley and western Connecticut watched a slow, silent, boomerang-shaped formation of lights. Explanations ranged from ultralight aircraft flying in formation to something nobody could name.
1 story
1989 to 1990 · Belgium
The Belgian wave
From November 1989 into the spring of 1990, Belgian police officers, pilots and thousands of citizens reported a large, silent, dark triangle with lights at its corners. The Belgian Air Force scrambled F-16s and briefed the press.
1 story
2017 to 2023 · United States
The disclosure era
The New York Times revealed a Pentagon programme in December 2017. Navy pilots went on the record, the Department of Defense released its videos, AARO was created, and in 2023 a former intelligence officer told Congress the government held craft it did not make.
2 stories