The truth is in here: book of UFO sightings
UNITED STATES: If aliens have been observing our earth from small craft that flash through the evening sky, they have not been able to conceal their operations from every human resident of the United States.
Sightings of unidentified flying objects have more than tripled since 2001, according to a book that gathers recorded UFO reports in the first 15 years of the 21st century, and lays out the data in charts as orderly and sober as a railway timetable.
The UFO Sightings Desk Reference has been compiled by a journalist from upstate New York and her wife, a librarian. It does not talk of extraterrestrials. ‘‘We don’t say who’s driving them,’’ said Cheryl Costa. ‘‘This is a reference book. The idea is you’ll be able to find it in the library next to Jane’s Fighting Ships and the agricultural reports.’’
Costa first saw a UFO at the age of 12, one afternoon in August, in New York.
‘‘I think it was 1965,’’ she said. ‘‘We were coming down a rural road off a hill, and I saw this silvery ball parked out there in the western sky. My mother pulled the car over, and we sat there watching this thing for 13 minutes. My mother explained it to me, she said it could be a balloon, it could be something the air force is doing, or it could be something from another world.
‘‘You know starships, in movies? It took off like that. It was gone in the blink of an eye.’’
She recalls another sighting while serving with the US Air Force in Vietnam, laying telephone cables. ‘‘You try going up a telegraph pole in a warzone. I broke out into a sweat every time I went up.’’
Since then she has served on submarines, worked as an aerospace contractor, undergone gender reassignment surgery and worked in production on a local paper.
She began writing a column on reported UFO sightings after spotting an apparently erroneous report on CNN. Pitching the column to various newspapers, she said that many editors asked: ‘‘What kind of tinfoil hat do you wear?’’ but The Syracuse New Times ran it online where it proved hugely popular.
Ever since the late 1960s when a study funded by the US Air Force concluded that it was not worth investigating UFOs, the job of collecting new reports has largely fallen to two organisations run by members of the public on the west coast of America. But there was no single source to offer researchers a full picture in all 50 states.
Costa began compiling one, starting from 2001, when widespread internet access already allowed for online reportings. ‘‘We wanted a nice crisp sample for the 21st century,’’ she said. There were 3479 reported sightings in 2001, the numbers peaked between 2011 and 2013, she said, and then dipped to 11,868 in 2015.
In total, the book records 121,036 UFO sightings in the US between 2001 and the end of 2015. The book offers times, locations and the shape of the object witnessed – at least two of a traditional news reporter’s ‘who, what, where, when, why’ inquiries. ‘‘If I knew why I’d win a Nobel prize,’’ said Costa.
— The Times