Compelling UFO Sightings

The Most Believable and Chilling Sightings of UFO’s in Human History and the Stories Behind Each One

By: Jamie Stromeyer

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 44 mins

Publisher's summary

The term “UFO” dates back to at least the 1950s. Donald Keyhoe, an American naval aviator and writer, used the acronym in his 1953 book Flying Saucers from Outer Space.

As the title suggests, in the earlier days of the twentieth century, these phenomena were usually given quirkier nicknames like flying saucers, foo fighters, or simply lights in the sky. Rather than fading into the obscurity of early postwar Americana, UFOs positively exploded in popularity starting in the 1950s. Their ubiquity in all sorts of media from books, movies, TV shows, and later in video games has cemented their staying power in the minds of millions. They’ve also earned a contentious reputation between believers and skeptics.

In the most basic sense, unidentified flying objects are aerial phenomena that are unable to be identified definitively. They don’t match any known aircraft or other airborne objects. More specifically, however, UFOs are often notable for their tendency to defy conventional physics—they can travel at impossible speeds, stop instantaneously, and move in any direction with no resistance.

It’s this disregard for our human understanding of the laws of nature that gives them an otherworldly, almost supernatural quality. It’s not hard to imagine why so many people worldwide believe these UFOs to be alien spacecrafts—how else would one explain their ability to perform maneuvers that no human vehicle or pilot could ever dream of doing?

That doesn’t stop experts from forming their educated guesses, however. A wide range of explanations are proposed to explain away these flying phenomena whenever they appear. Weather balloons. Ball lightning. Optical illusions. Malfunctions of radar and cameras.

And yet, by the US government’s own public admission in the 2020s, there are numerous instances of UFOs that confound even the most hardened skeptics. The five cases that follow are no pie tins tossed in the air before snapping a well-timed Polaroid; these cases have eluded satisfactory explanations to this day, and they can now be regarded as five of the most compelling UFO sightings in history.