Top ten states for UFO sightings

As we reported last week, there was a spike in the number of reported UFO sightings this summer. That information was presented in an article written by Benjamin Radford of LiveScience.com that appeared on the CBS News website on September 19. Clifford Clift, the international director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), is quoted in the article as stating, “When you average 500 a month [nationwide] and go to 1,013 in one month, that’s an interesting spike in sighting reports.” Clift postulates, “It’s likely that the media and [alien-themed] movies that are coming out, like ‘Apollo 18’ and ‘Paul,’ are piquing people’s interest in UFOs.”

There are several small groups that take UFO sighting reports from the public, but the National UFO Reporting Center and MUFON are the two main United States organizations that do this. MUFON is a much larger organization that investigates UFO sighting reports, and tracking data is something the organization does well. The National UFO Reporting Center, operated by Peter Davenport, is specifically a hotline for reporting UFO sightings.

LiveScience published an infographic today on their website showing the top ten states for UFO sightings. The National UFO Reporting Center’s data was used to create the infographic, and the data represents sightings from 1994-2011.