IDAHO, USA — A lot of people have claimed to see a UFO. A Pew Research Center Survey from 2021 found that about two-thirds of Americans, or 65%, think that life exists on certain planets.
Since 1947, the National UFO Reporting Center online database states it has received more than 80,000 reports of strange objects in the sky, and some of those were right here in Idaho.
The mysteries in the sky – unidentified and unexplained – and for years, videos and books fueled questions and speculation about what is beyond our planet.
While many associate UFOs with aliens from other planets or galaxies, the term simply stands for an "unidentified flying object."
Jim Millard is the Idaho State Director for MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network.
It's a nonprofit organization that claims to be the "world's oldest and largest civilian UFO investigation & research organization." Millard's interest in UFOs started at the age of 5.
"It's not a yeti, walking around in the mountains," Millard said. "It's not a ghost or an apparition floating through your house. It's something that you saw in the sky that you identified as being a physical device or physical object, but you have no idea what it is."
Millard said he saw something fly over San Diego that was round, and when he told people, everyone said he was crazy. Years later, he saw something else in the sky.
"I saw something dark behind a cloud," Millard said. "When I was driving down the freeway. I asked my girlfriend, I said, 'did you see that?' and she said, 'yes,' and I said 'good.' And no more was said about it, but something silver popped out from behind the cloud way out over in El Cajon in San Diego and then popped back in as soon as I saw it."
Just this month, the online sports betting site, bookies.com analyzed Google trends data from Feb. 4 and ranked the states most obsessed with aliens and UFOs. It found that Idaho ranked in the top 10 states, at number nine. That data stems from earlier this month when the suspected spy balloon from China entered U.S. airspace. A force fighter shot it down days later.
Three other flying objects were also shot down after they were spotted flying over North America.
While this incident sparked a renewed fascination at objects flying overhead, the fascination with UFOs started decades ago, with Idahoan Kenneth Arnold.
"In 1947, Kenneth was flying back from Seattle, and he saw nine objects flying over Mount Rainier in Washington that he really couldn't identify," Millard said. "He described them as moving as though they were saucers being skipped across a pond. That's where flying saucers came from the media. The press picked up on the word saucer and called it flying saucers."
Millard said that Kenneth couldn't identify what he was seeing but he was familiar with the terrain and timed the movement. He found the objects were moving at 1,700 miles per hour.
"Mind you, a jet airliner moves at about 650 miles per hour," Millard said. "So, that's three times faster than a jet airliner. It's also about two and a half times the speed of sound."
Two weeks later, Millard said that a man named Mack Braswell found fallen objects on his ranch in Roswell, New Mexico. This is what started the modern UFO interest.
UFO researcher and author Ella LeBain is all too familiar with those stories. In 1995, she lived on Indian Rocks Beach, Florida, which is off the Gulf of Mexico. One day after the sun set, she found herself about 100 yards from what she describes as a metallic, disc-shaped ship that emerged from the water.
"It hovered about 10 feet over the ocean for not even a minute," LeBain said. "I saw all the water and the seafoam just kind of swishing off of it and it just shot up into the sky like in a New York second. I watched it become like a star, it got really small, and then I saw what looked like it had created some kind of portal in space, and it just disappeared."
LeBain said she later found out MUFON received 350 calls that night of other people who had witnessed that same thing from different points on the beach.
"I always believed that we weren't alone," LeBain said.
In a 2022 study from myvision.org, a site that tracks evidence-based information on eye health, analyzed data from the National UFO Reporting Center and found Idaho topped the list of states with the most UFO sightings per 100,000 residents over the past five years, with 420 sightings.
Idaho in 2020 had the most reported UFO sightings of any state in the United States, quite the hotbed.
Brian Jackson is an associate professor in the physics department at Boise State University.
"I think the reason that there's a lot of recordings of UFOs in Idaho is because we have really dark skies and people do a lot of stargazing," Jackson said. "There's a lot of rural areas where stars are very easy to see. So, as a result, people are looking up a lot, and that means that they see a lot of things up there."
According to myvision.org, when it comes to states with the most reported UFO sightings overall, California came in first, followed by Florida and Washington. The Gem State came in at 32.
"Some of the best places to go look at the night sky in Idaho is the Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve," Jackson said. "That's a big region between Ketchum and Stanley. So, there's a partnership between municipal and federal agencies in the Dark Sky Reserve to keep light pollution to a minimum. So, when folks want to see neat things in the sky, that's the place I send them."
Millard said that another good place to see a UFO would be the Bruneau Dunes Observatory. He also said that there is a lot of activity around Coeur d'Alene. He added that, back in the day, there were a lot of sightings at the Idaho National Laboratory.
"It's not like it was during the wars," Millard said. "Especially in toward the end of World War ll. This area was a hotbed of, of activity for UFOs, military, you name it. There was an awful lot going on out here in the west."
In the month of January, MUFON collected 582 reports of UFOs worldwide.
In the United States there were 471, and two in Idaho.
Sometimes, UFO's are easily explained away. The satellite Starlink and SpaceX are often mistaken for UFOs.
"They look very distinctive and mysterious crossing the night sky – bright streaks that move from one horizon to the other very quickly, oftentimes, multiple all at once," Jackson said. "So, those are also another common, commonly misunderstood phenomenon that you see in the night sky."
Millard said people should look at the date and time and then check the Starlink launch site, to make sure you aren't seeing a satellite.
"The truth of the matter is 95% we figure out what they are, about 5% are unknown," Millard said.
Jackson said that people can confuse a lot of natural occurrences in the skies with UFOs.
"People should understand that very often we can explain these things in terms of natural phenomena," Jackson said. "But that doesn't mean they don't look very strange."
Last month, the U.S. Department of Defense released a report that the government received more than 350 new reports of UAPs. In lieu of UFO, the government now uses the term UAP, or "unidentified aerial phenomena."
"The recent report that just came down in January from the pentagon said that there was 171 incidents that could not be analyzed or answered," LeBain said. "So, this leaves us in that area of unidentified."
Millard said that he believes the universe is too vast for there not to be other intelligent forms of life. He said MUFON keeps track of the knowns and unknowns and that they have investigators in almost every country in the world. MUFON also has people investigating that have PhD's and scientists trained in different disciplines.
Jackson said that if you do see a UFO, take note of which direction you are looking in and when you saw the object. People can then contact the Boise Astronomical Society or the physics department at Boise State.
He added that people should learn to take pictures with their cameras correctly, don't zoom in and it's important to see more than just the object. Try to get a picture of the object and the sky around it, to give it context.
"What is the weather like? Those things are really important, and you lose all of that when trying to zoom way in with your image," Jackson said. "So, those are the kind of observations you collect. Time of day, which direction you're facing, those kinds of things are really important for understanding what it is that you're seeing."
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