UFO/UAP
How to Report a UFO
If you see a UFO, report. You’re just as a much a part of this as anyone else.
There are few standardized, established protocols for UFO reporting. This is kind of a shame, because in the absence of protocols there can’t be informed scientific scrutiny. Since the 40s, there have been reports. People have called the local law enforcement and or news agency, often the local weatherman. We trust these people. Law enforcement saves lives. The local news team come into our homes and inform us about our world. They’re just not equipped for UFO analysis.
Academia is finally coming around to studying UFOs. Doctor Avi Loeb has become the champion connecting science to the phenomena. News media is still finding their way, but thanks to Leslie Kean and Ross Coulthart, there is a new benchmark for integrity of reporting on this subject.
It is imperative as we move towards finding answers that we don’t shut civilians out of this subject. It is most likely that the only reasons UFO interest didn’t get squashed to zero is because of the persistence and integrity of civilians reporting UFOs, and the non-profit, volunteer agencies that collected data.
The sky is big. No one person, not even one extraordinary astronomer, can find and see everything. Amateur astronomers find new objects all the time. They even get credit for it. They should. Everyone who looks into the sky and asks questions should be considered an amateur astronomer.
Science can’t exist without public interest and funding. Scientist have even created screen savers that allow people with interest to participate in the crunching of data. You can use your computer for tracking asteroids, helping climate, searching for alien radio signals, and fighting disease. Given how integral the people are to science and corporate endeavors, you would think there would be a way of sharing more of the rewards.
All humans participate in advancing and maintaining society. If you see a UFO, you should report. Here’s how.
Two Civilian places to report.
MUFON, Mutual UFO Network, and NUFORC, National UFO Reporting Center. MUFON is a non-profit organization, utilizing volunteers to help analyze data and UFO reports from civilians. They have chapters in every US State, and in many different countries. NUFORC is strictly US reporting, but has ties with MUFON. For example, Peter Davenport is the present director of NUFORC, but he was previously director of investigations for the Washington MUFON chapter.
Both sites are easy to enough to navigate. The FAA has this to say on reporting UFOs:
Section 8. Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) Reports
GENERAL
Persons wanting to report UFO/unexplained phenomena activity should contact a UFO/ unexplained phenomena reporting data collection center, such as the National UFO Reporting Center, etc.
If concern is expressed that life or property might be endangered, report the activity to the local law enforcement department.
Anyone can report a sighting by uploading images and videos to MUFON and NUFORC; you can tell your story at these sites. You are more likely to get a response from their personnel than government agencies. That is not a derogatory statement about government agencies, but rather a recognition they’re busy with serving in their designated area and don’t like going beyond. Naturally if there is a crash, or people are being harmed- law enforcement needs to be involved.
Discernment is a measurable qualifier for UFO analysis.
So, if you allow some insight from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, on seeing a UFO, don’t panic. There’s no end to speculation as to why UFOs might be flying in our skies. Just observe. Observe as many details as you can. Time. Weather. Sounds. Smells. Sights.
And above all, be safe. Be aware of your surrounding and your family and kids. If you’re driving, and it’s safe to do so, pull over before using a cell phone or camera to capture data. If you can’t, don’t worry about video or pics, focus on driving.
Making a report is as easy as visiting the MUFON and NUFORC websites. You do not have to join to make a report. Simply go to the site, click on the appropriate link at the top of the page, and follow the prompts. Provide only the information you experienced.
When to report.
This is important. The sooner you report an incident the better. Reporting a UFO report two to ten years later, the more difficult it is to gauge validity. Validity, in this instance, isn’t that a person didn’t have an experience, but rather- as time goes by, the ability to do good forensics decreases. There are many variables that can be assessed to authenticate a sighting. The closer a witness is in time to the event, the more likely they will be able to respond to questions.
Take the Phoenix Lights incident for example. If you were to open up the NUFORC page, click on data bank, open event date, and scroll down to March 1997- you will find 209 reports were filed nationally. When you click on March, you will find quite a few incidents reported for March 13th. You will find most of the reports were made a year or greater after the event date. Again, it doesn’t mean reports made 10 years after the event date didn’t happened, but any testimony becomes anecdotal.
Anecdotal information is useful in science, but the greater the time after the event, the more likely anecdotal memories have been skewed by other internal and external sources. Memory is fallible. For all of us.
If you can’t log on and make a report, write everything down in a journal or on any scrap sheet of paper. Give as much information as you can. Time and location is essential. If you know which way North is, great! If you don’t, this is an essential skill all humans should develop. If there are land marks, anything from mountains to overpasses, include this. Was there weather? If it was night time, could you see the stars or moon? Can you identify stars, planets, and or satellites?
You don’t have to precisely know the weather if you have a date, time, and location. This can be determined! If it was a night time sighting, try to take a photo of the skyline where you were standing when it becomes day time. This could help an investigator understand the terrain.
Most importantly, just write what you saw. If you can do that without inference, without trying to fit it into something you know- great! You’re going to do this naturally. When you see something, your brain will automatically start sorting known objects. While you’re asking, ‘what is that,’ your brain is looking to identify it. Most the time, we get it right. Airplane. Oh, Venus. And we move on.
It’s when the brain doesn’t easily identify artifacts that we can get stuck. Report. Get it out of your head.
If you never track Venus or the night sky, you might not recognize Venus. Sometimes, even people who do know Venus can be deceived. It can be unusually bright at times, varying with weather and air quality.
If others are involved, invite them to make their own report. Don’t discuss or corroborate. Every individual has their own thoughts or impressions. Let them hold those. Variance can be as useful as consensus.
If you make a report, expect to have a conversation.
You may not be surprised that many people who see things don’t make reports. Would you be surprised to learn that even those who report, many don’t respond to emails and or texts from investigators?
Please, do not be afraid of investigators. They’re civilians, just normal people who have interest in UFOs. They are not Men in Black, or aliens, or skeptics coming to invalidate your experience. I am pretty sure they’re not aliens. Do you suppose it’s possible to not be able to distinguish between human and aliens?
Most the time data collection is just a simple phone call. It is rare these days to meet in person. You can ask for that, if you like. A UFO on the ground or seeing entities, well, that might result in more boots on the ground sort of thing. Humans want data. It’s what we do.
Your experience is always yours. You can hold it in wonder and be amazed at the universe we live in, even if the artifact you experience turns out to be mundane. How we perceive things, how we process that information and attach emotions to our experiences, is also just part of life.
The sunrise can be another day, or a spiritual time out, breathe and renew.
If a mundane object, like Venus, reminds you how big the universe is and causes you to wonder if there is more to life- that, too, is amazing. It means Venus can be extraordinary! It’s why we have astronomers. We want to understand this place we live in.
Investigators have varied backgrounds and interests. Some are more skeptical than others. Some have had their own experiences. Some have had zero experiences. Some are more scientific than others. A smattering of investigators is likely a good sampling of the civilian population.
Investigators are trained in collecting data. There is a reasonable debate to be had in regards to training. The thing to remember is this. Investigators are volunteers. They can be experts in their fields. They work. They have families. They have schedules. They have personalities! There is no paid training. Investigators pay membership dues. They want to be in this organization, and they want this organization to be successful.
Just because academia has been absence in studying UFOs, does not mean the civilian operations have not endeavored to incorporate science into the collecting of data! In many ways, these organizations had to be more rigorous in regards to collecting and making interpretations because they know they will be held to a higher degree of scrutiny than most scientific endeavors.
Science comes with scrutiny. No way around that. Publishing a paper comes with a peer review. Saying something like ‘Omuamua may be a spaceship’ comes with grief.
Very few people have benefited from reporting UFOs or aliens. We have finally arrived at a place where the stigma of reporting isn’t resulting in backlash from academia and society at large. There can still be grief. The protocols can always be refined. Educating folks on how to collect can always be improved. Humans will misidentify things; that does not mean don’t look, don’t report, or don’t try to do science. We learn together. When in doubt, we always have our esteemed peers and a hierarchy of investigators that have years of experience to guide us.
We are a team. Humanity will figure this out when we work together.
Right now, if you wanted to become an investigator, you could join MUFON and take their training. An academic scientist might find it basic, but then again, in the absence of scientists taking this subject seriously, MUFON has become the standard of UFO data collection for civilians. The US Government, in activating its first UFO office, would benefit from including MUFON and NUFORC as part of the data collection and analysis process.
I am a field investigator for MUFON.
I am not special. I am not the smartest investigator. I am just me.
I get super enthusiastic when I get a case and see a pic. A sun flare on the camera lights my brain on fire. ‘OMG! A UFO.’ Then I am like, okay, calm down. Sun is there. This is likely a lens artifact. They happen! They happen a lot. This is one reason talking with the experiencer is important. “Did you see this with your eyes or just on the screen?” Just on the screen doesn’t rule out UFO, but it does increase the likelihood of it being a lens artifact.
What do I know about science? Well… It took me about 12 years to get my undergrad. Some of that was laziness. Some of that was financing. I paid my way through undergrad. Sometimes, I got mad and quit, but by the next semester, I was bored and wanted to learn again. Sometimes I took off time to travel. I told myself, traveling is also an education!
I worked at American Airlines for 24 years, and every so often I took off from school and work and used flight benefits to explore the world. I have traveled! I have arrived in countries with barely a hundred dollars in my pocket, walked the streets, and was back on the last flight home.
I started my education at the University of San Antonio, Texas, where I met James Doohan, Scotty, from Star Trek in person. I had a music scholarship at UTSA, and gave it back and switched majors to astronomy. I loved astronomy 101, and though I suck at math, I was running the lab- assisting with setup of all the telescopes and teaching how to setup and use. I loved that. I was thinking of switching out of astronomy to move into archaeology when I dropped out of school altogether.
I went to Hallmark Institute of Aviation to become an aircraft mechanic. I completed, went to Tempe, Arizona for my first job as a mechanic, was there six months, got laid off, came home to Texas and delivered pizzas for six months till I landed at American. Not as a mechanic. I learned a lot about being a mechanic. Mostly, I learned I didn’t want to be one. The thing I remember the most from aviation maintenance school are the stories.
Old mechanics come with stories.
I love stories! I continued to work towards a degree. I thought about psychology. I completed the basics to be an RN, but didn’t want to quit work to do the nursing internship. That would have been too much for me at the time. I did eventually complete a BA in sociology at the University of North Texas. I started working on my masters in that, but did not feel well received, and started shopping for a new graduate home. I seriously enjoyed UNT’s creative writing department, but they hadn’t formally accepted me and I was blocked from attending further courses.
I found my way to Argosy University, and they graduated me with a masters in community counseling. I have been working in mental health since. I retired from AA in 2014, overlapping my work in a hospital- so two jobs for a while. The birth of my first son, 2014 was the day I turned in my farewell to AA.
Sometimes I miss AA. I liked watching the planes come and go. I don’t miss working in the cold and wet. I still get dreams about it. I guess you don’t give half your life to an endeavor and not carry dreams.
UFOs have been a part of my life since the beginning.
I probably should have joined MUFON long ago, but quite frankly- I had low self esteem and didn’t think I would be good at it. I still don’t like math. I don’t want to triangulate and estimate size and distance.
Also, and this is probably silly to most, that while I have been fascinated with UFOs and the prospect of aliens, I have often been scared out of my mind and so I delayed searching!
I do love talking to people! I am particularly good at that. Ideally, I think I would like to work with experiencers. I am suspecting, to do that I will have to set up a private practice. That’s certainly feasible, within my capabilities, but I think I would rather join an established office than open my own.
And so, hypothetically, if you made a UFO report in Texas, in my region, you have a chance I would be the investigator reaching out to you. Even if it’s not me, you will find us all rather personable, and very human. We have our loves, our challenges, or hopes and inspirations.
I don’t have enough data to support this, but I suspect most the investigators just want to know what UFOs are. Why else join MUFON, much less become an investigator?
I think we all want to know. The civilians are the eyes and ears of society. We are on the front lines of the boundaries of what is known and knowable. We may be on a fringe of discovering the unknowable, but we have to cross through the potentiality of knowable to get there.
If you see a UFO, report. You’re just as a much a part of this as anyone else.
