Are sightings of mysterious objects in the skies over America and other parts of the world on the rise?

That’s what many people are saying, according to one of the leading websites covering military-related news and interests.

“There has been a spike in UFO sightings across the nation,” read a recent article at Military.com, which asked, “are there just more people looking up in the sky or is it something else?

According to figures cited in the brief article, there were close to 7,200 UFO sightings logged in 2020, up more than 1,000 from the previous year. The article did not provide details on the source for these figures, although it appears they draw from data collected by the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), according to figures cited by other outlets.

Founded in 1999, Military.com has been owned by employment powerhouse Monster Worldwide since 2004, and in addition to news related to the military, it also provides information on veteran employment, education, and other related services through its many blogs and newsletters.

Asking whether the release of a widely anticipated report to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence earlier this year might have played a role in the apparent surge in UFO reports, the article points to such recent military activity as part of what has brought UFOs “back into the mainstream media.”

But are there really more UFO sightings taking place, or is all of the interest in the topic causing more people to look up?

Several factors might help to account for recent surges in UFO sightings, especially during 2020. As the coronavirus began to spread throughout world populations after its emergence near Wuhan, China in late 2019, quarantines and shelter-in-place orders in many countries grounded people around the world, who instead of heading out and enjoying their normal nightly routines were likely stuck at home. Not surprisingly, early figures from around mid-2020 noted that sightings of UFOs appeared to coincide with more people staying at home during the pandemic.

A group of Starlink satellites photographed passing over California

(Credit: Unsplash)

Also in the months leading up to the pandemic, SpaceX began its ambitious effort to place its Starlink satellite arrays into orbit, which also managed to produce a few UFO reports as observers watched the peculiar-looking “trains” of satellites moving through the air in sequence. But can the effects of more people stuck at home, and more objects placed in orbit, account for all sightings of UFOs logged in recent months?

According to recent NUFORC data, several recent sightings do appear to describe unusual objects in our airspace, for which things like satellites do not offer any kind of likely explanation.

In an incident that occurred in July over Hawaii, an 11-year-old boy reported seeing a triangular aircraft fly over his home at around 6 PM local time, which appeared to resemble now-classic descriptions of large, triangular aircraft of unknown provenance that have been logged by NUFORC and other organizations that follow UFO reports for decades. Two months later, a pilot flying as a passenger on a commercial aircraft reported seeing three objects that he could not identify, in a striking observation of unidentified aircraft that he called aerodynamically “impossible.”

There are, in other words, what appear to be “good” UFO reports being logged by organizations like NUFORC, whose operations have been tirelessly maintained by researcher Peter Davenport now for several decades. However, despite the many quality reports that NUFORC receives, its phone hotline also receives occasional hoax calls as well.

“We have made this appeal regarding ‘prank’ calls before,” wrote Davenport in a post on April 1, 2021, “but we feel compelled to make it again.

“Our Hotline is being deluged with overtly hoaxed calls, usually dozens per day, and those calls are impairing our ability to offer what we believe is a very important service to the world.

“If you have been encouraged by some childish website, or by a misdirected social-media site, to place a foolish prank call to our Hotline, we would request that you refrain from placing such a call.”

Even despite the number of prank calls that NUFORC receives, it has held its position as a leading resource for information on UFO observations now for decades, and provides valuable metrics about what people are seeing, and how often they are seen.

While questions about the recent “spike” in sightings remains up for debate, one thing does seem clear: UFO sightings are still frequently reported, despite the numerous challenges that researchers and organizations like NUFORC obviously face.  Even with the recent surge in public UFO interest, the steady stream of sightings of unusual objects in our airspace logged by NUFORC over the years suggests that their presence has endured, regardless of how much media attention UFOs may or may not receive at any given time.

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Within the last few years, new archaeological discoveries have continued to push back the timescales on when humans are believed to have initially arrived in the Americas.

Most recently, ichnofossils in the form of ancient footprints found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico suggest a human presence there as early as 23,000 years ago, in an area where it was once thought humans wouldn’t begin to arrive for another 10,000 years.

The history of American anthropology boasts a long record of disputes over when the earliest arrivals of humans began. Early in the 20^th century, many leading anthropologists would have looked no further than 3000-4000 years ago for the arrival of the first Americans, a view that would quickly change with the discoveries at sites like Folsom and Clovis in New Mexico, which established the reality of a human presence in American by the end of the last Ice Age.

Although the “Clovis First” model predominated American archaeology for decades after the discoveries in New Mexico early in the 20^th century, by the beginning of the 1970s it began to become clear that there was a potential for an even earlier human presence in the Americas. Sites like Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Washington County, Pennsylvania, and Monte Verde in Chile seemed to offer indisputable evidence of human activities well in advance of Clovis. It begged the question: just how far back do the earliest human arrivals in the New World go?

Additional discoveries of “pre-Clovis” sites throughout parts of North and South America leading up to the 21^st century continued to increase awareness among archaeologists of earlier human arrivals than once would have been deemed acceptable. However, a few purported archaeological site discoveries were suggestive of something even more controversial, with implications far beyond just when and where the first humans arrived.

Excavations began at the Topper Site in Allendale County, South Carolina, in the early 1980s under the direction of Albert Goodyear, who would continue excavations there for the next several decades. An undeniable Clovis presence at the site was established, accompanied by what appeared to be earlier evidence of human tool use at the site (which, at the time of their discovery, would have been viewed as far more controversial than they are in light of recent pre-Clovis discoveries in America).

However, in 2004 the already compelling Topper site garnered additional attention for Goodyear’s announcement that the remains of carbonized plants, recovered from the site’s lowest excavated levels, appeared to have been radiocarbon dated to around 50,000 years ago. Intriguingly, Goodyear also said that evidence in the form of simple tools, along with chert (a sedimentary rock consisting almost entirely of silica) showing evidence of being struck for use in making such implements, was also found at this depth.

While many archaeologists disputed the discoveries, they raised a number of thought-provoking possibilities. While homo sapiens are believed to have begun leaving Africa between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago, the idea that they might have been in eastern North America 55,000 years ago would have been unprecedented. Nonetheless, Topper was not the only such site where evidence for an anomalously early human presence had been claimed. Even prior to excavations at Topper, the Calico Early Man Site in San Bernardino County, California, had seen publicity for the controversial claims about tools that were recovered there.

Famed archaeologist Louis Leakey, who participated in early excavations at the site, had been among those convinced that the tools found there might date back more than 100,000 years, although more recent estimates place the Calico artifacts much closer to around 20,000 years ago, consistent with discoveries like those at White Sands. Even Leaky’s wife Mary would later write that her former husband’s zeal for the antiquity of Calico had been “catastrophic to his professional career and was largely responsible for the parting of our ways.” Still others have argued that many of the purported “artifacts” from Calico are more likely the result of natural processes, as opposed to being produced by human hands.

Louis and Mary Leakey in 1962

(Smithsonian Institution/Flickr Commons).

Had the purported tools at Calico indeed been proven to extend back 100,000 years or more, they not only would have challenged our notion of when humans first arrived in the Americas, but also when they first left Africa. After all, it would seem inconceivable that around the same time humans were believed to have made their exit from Africa, evidence of tool usage would also appear in North America. Thus, only one of two possibilities would have seemed feasible: either early humans would have had to leave Africa earlier, or perhaps another variety of archaic hominin had made its way to the Americas first.

Of course, the questionable nature of Calico’s purported artifacts left little need for such considerations. However, it would not remain the only location in southern California where archaeological sites boasting extreme ages would turn up. In 2017, the Cerutti Mastodon site located nearby in San Diego County made headlines after researchers said they had recovered mastodon bones there, which appeared to bear evidence of human butchering in the form of markings on the bones dated to 130,700 years ago.

Much like Calico before it, the Cerutti Mastodon site was roundly dismissed by the majority of archaeologists on account of several factors, the main one involving the fact that no human remains, and only questionable artifact remains were recovered there. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that rather than some kind of early hominin, a megafaunal variety of capuchin monkey that existed in some parts of the Americas during the Pleistocene could have been responsible for the marks found on the mastodon bones in question! Still others suggest that the marks in question could have been produced by recent construction activities, rather than impacts with stone more than 130,000 years ago.

Obviously, many questions remain about these purported archaeological sites. To date, no evidence that has been presented offers undisputed proof of an anomalously early human presence in southern California, or anywhere elsewhere in the Americas. While most archaeologists are now warming up to the notion of arrivals 20,000 to 25,000 years ago, some estimates place arrivals as far back as around 40,000 years ago. These dates may not present evidence that causes us to question accepted notions about the earliest human migrations out of Africa—let alone whether homo sapiens were the first ones to arrive in the Americas. However, they do mark a notable shift in the attitudes of anthropologists, who in decades past had been far more resistant to accepting new evidence.

If time has shown us anything, it is that every few decades, new discoveries tend to emerge that cause us to have to rethink what we thought we knew. Our study of the ancient Americas is dynamic and ever-changing, and as new insights continue to emerge over time, perhaps at least one thing does remain predictable: when it comes to the ancient world, learn to expect the unexpected.

UFO studies from over the years have given rise to many subgenres of related phenomena. Among these, one of the strangest and most unsettling involves the so-called “Men in Black.”

Stories of odd visits from official-looking individuals that occur following a UFO sighting have become a significant part of the narratives of UFO witnesses over the years. The stories usually involve an observation or other experience involving a UFO, after which the witness is visited by someone who attempts to encourage silence about what they observed. These visitors, often (but not always) clad in dark suits, sometimes behave strangely, or even humorously. More often though, the visits have an ominous or threatening tone, leaving the witness afraid and intimidated.

In light of this description, it’s no wonder that such stories have taken on an almost mythical quality. This is not to say that the experiences don’t have some basis in reality, but rather, it acknowledges the long traditions involving the color black and its association with darkness and evil. This, as well as the idea of mysterious strangers and their appearances often being associated with a sense of foreboding or danger.

Religious scholar David Halperin, who has analyzed the UFO phenomenon in the context of religious visionary experiences, has noted historical examples where people in centuries past who observed what appeared to be anomalous aerial phenomena also described meeting people clad in black thereafter. Nick Redfern has also noted the folkloric aspect of these stories in his many books on Men in Black (a topic I specifically addressed in an essay he included in one of these volumes).

Acknowledging this folkloric aspect of the Men in Black experience is not to say that there haven’t been legitimate instances in recent decades where people have met mysterious strangers, who appeared to have had knowledge of unusual aerial phenomena they witnessed. However, even some of the best-known cases involving purported “Men in Black” bear the hallmarks of mythology at times, and seemingly blur the lines between fact and folklore.

One of the earliest instances that involved an individual who claimed to have been warned not to talk about a UFO sighting had been Harold Dahl, one of the participants in the long-disputed Maury Island UFO incident. Dahl may have also been one of the earliest to have described this individual as clad in a dark-colored suit. The following decade, early ufologist Albert Bender wrote about the visit he received from three individuals, similarly dressed in dark suits, who allegedly threatened him about his UFO interest. In Bender’s view, these men were government agents working to aid in covering up the reality of UFOs, an idea that has long accompanied claims of Men in Black meetings over the years.

Numerous other witnesses throughout time have claimed to have met these strange visitors, although many of the individuals suspected of being “Men in Black” weren’t even wearing dark suits; some wore military uniforms or even regular civilian clothes. In several instances involving possible Men in Black recounted by author John Keel, the individuals were described as dressing no differently from the average person, although their behavior was often very strange.

In one of the more famous cases recounted by Keel, an individual he had given the nickname “Tiny” actually appears to have been a ufologist whose name was known to other researchers. After a description of this individual appeared in his book The Mothman Prophecies, Keel received a letter from Charles Bowen, then editor of British Flying Saucer Review, who explained that a man who perfectly matched Keel’s description of “Tiny” had traveled to visit him in the United Kingdom. This individual, whose actual name Bowen knew, stayed for a short time with the Bowen family, which “regarded him rather as they might do a cobra, and expressed a feeling of repugnance” toward him. “Tiny”, in other words, was probably no Man in Black at all, but merely one of the many oddballs who became attracted to the UFO subject as public interest in it reached a crescendo during the late 1960s.

Author and researcher John Keel.

Despite mundane explanations like these for some of the encounters with Men in Black from over the years, their mythic status has no doubt been helped along by writers like Keel, who in likelihood had been genuinely perplexed by such stories himself. Ironically, Keel was well aware of how cases of mistaken identity and other mundane happenings had likely resulted in purported encounters with Men in Black. As he describes near the beginning of The Mothman Prophecies, a goateed Keel, clad in black and going door-to-door in need of a telephone to call a tow truck one evening, might also have led to a few reports of a mysterious “Man in Black” in West Virginia in the 1960s.

So who or what are the mysterious Men in Black? It seems unlikely that every story from over the years that involves UFO witnesses having encounters with strange, sometimes threatening individuals are entirely folklore. Nonetheless, certain aspects of the Men in Black stories bear the obvious hallmarks of myth, and one that has no doubt helped to build the curious mystique that surrounds these strange visitors and their unusual relationship to the UFO mystery.

Even with all of the attention UFOs are getting these days, really good UFO sighting reports remain hard to come by.

“Do these declines reveal that UFO interest is becoming a blip on the human cultural radar?” asked Philip Jaekl, writing for The Guardian in 2018.

While sighting reports on par with some of the high-profile incidents logged in years past appear to be less common today, that doesn’t mean that there are no longer any good UFO observations. In fact, one of the more interesting sightings in recent days appears to have taken place just within the last few months during a daytime commercial flight over the East Coast.

In a report logged by the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) on September 6, 2021, a passenger on board a Jet Blue flight from Boston, Massachusetts, to Jacksonville, Florida observed a trio of unusual objects, apparently flying in formation, as his flight was approaching Jacksonville Airport. For a period of several seconds, the witness said he observed three “cylindrical objects flying past our Jet Blue flight as we were approaching the airport.”

The flight was on time and approaching its scheduled landing shortly before 1 PM local time. The passenger witness—an experienced pilot himself—said weather conditions were clear as he looked out the window.

“I have been a licensed private pilot for 24 years, and a licensed drone pilot for 6 years,” the witness said in his report. “Typically when I fly commercially, I tend to book a window seat… on an exit row.” In addition to the exact row where his seat had been located, the witness also noted the jet’s approximate altitude and speed as it approached Jacksonville Airport.

“Flying over this part of the pattern is a thick, heavy forest,” the witness stated, noting that the leaves “are very dark green” in August when the incident occurred.

Then, something out of the ordinary caught the passenger’s eye.

“As I looked out the window, facing west, I saw three bright white objects flying in the opposite direction. I didn’t know what they were.”

The witness considered drones, as well as birds, but neither of these appeared to be a match for what he observed. However, as the objects moved closer it became apparent that he was looking at “three long cylindrical objects.” The observer judged that these white cylinders were somewhere between 75 and 150 feet above the trees, flying in a triangle pattern.

“I was completely stunned [by] what I saw,” the observer said. “It was crystal clear and their white fuselage stuck out against the dark tree line.”

As the objects flew over the trees below his aircraft, the witness said the objects appeared to be roughly 20 to 25 feet long, with a width roughly equal to that of an automobile.

“They clearly had a rounded front fuselage, and a rounded rear,” he added, noting that every surface on the objects appeared to be smooth, and that each appeared to be the same size and shape as they continued to hold their triangular formation as they flew.

The observer emphasized that the objects he saw had no wings, produced no exhaust, and had no rotors or any kind of visible propulsion system.

“I could not see any windows,” the pilot added.

The duration of the observation, while lasting only a few seconds, nonetheless offered a good look at the objects, which the observer watched as they passed below the left wing of the plane, blocking his view for a moment. As they became visible again, the observer watched the craft again until they were out of sight.

“I was completely stunned!” the observer said.

After landing, the observer approached the captain, whom he saw outside the cockpit. “I stopped and asked him if he noticed anything on radar right before he turned the base leg,” the observer noted, although the captain told him he had not seen anything on radar or otherwise.

Unsatisfied and concerned with what he saw, the observer stated that as he returned to his vehicle and left the airport, he felt compelled to report his encounter. Pulling his vehicle off the road, the witness then called Jacksonville Control Tower and filed a report.

“They took my information,” the witness said. “I told two people in the control tower what I saw. They probably thought I was nuts.” After returning home, the witness also contacted Naval Station Mayport, and left two messages with a Lieutenant of Air Operations.

Obviously impressed with the detailed account the witness provided, NUFORC Director Peter Davenport noted that after the report was filed a lengthy call with the witness also occurred.

“We spoke at length with the witness,” Davenport wrote, “and consider him to be exceptionally capable, and credible.”

Although no corroborating photo or video exists, this exceptional report bears similarity to other aviation-related incidents in recent months. In February, an American Airlines pilot reported seeing a similar cylindrical object while flying over New Mexico that he could not identify. The cylindrical shape and light coloration of the objects in such reports are also similar to an object likened to a bus-sized “tic tac” reported by Navy pilots Dave Fravor and Alex Dietrich during a widely-discussed incident in 2004 off the coast of California. Sightings of cylindrical, oval, or egg-shaped UFOs like these have been reported for decades, with some of the earliest sightings occurring in the late 1940s.

As for the pilot witness who saw the trio of objects over Florida in August, he was left confused and concerned by what he observed.

“To say that I am upset with what I saw is an understatement,” the witness emphasized. “Aeronautically speaking, what I observed is not possible. BUT I SAW IT!”

“I hope I’m not cracking up,” the obviously concerned witness said, concluding his report. To the contrary, this detailed account of unidentified objects provided by an experienced pilot appears to show, like the sighting by the American Airlines crew earlier this year, that good UFO reports do still happen, and fairly often.