Where Have UFOs Been Sighted in Michigan?

Earlier this year, a resident of Fenton reported seeing a long, skinny, rectangular shaped object that was “about the length of a maybe two large passenger jets outline with hundreds of lights.”

If the individual’s eyes weren’t playing a trick — and experts suggest they were — the unidentified flying object had multicolor lights, mostly white with a red, blue and green hue. Some were flashing, and they were about 10 miles away, according to a post on a database that collects information about UFO sightings from across the country.

Whatever it was made a sharp, 90-degree turn toward Flint as it got within three miles of Fenton.

UFO sightings have been common through the decades after the first well-known sighting in 1947 over Mount Rainier in Washington, that one reported by a businessman piloting a small plane who claimed to see nine high-speed, crescent-shaped objects zooming along at several thousand miles per hour “like saucers skipping on water.”

Though the objects Kenneth Arnold claimed to see weren’t saucer-shaped at all, his analogy led to the popularization of the term “flying saucers.” And since then, Americans have been more or less obsessed with the idea that alien life is among us.

Michiganders have posted dozens of UFO reports since the beginning of the year with the Seattle-based National UFO Reporting Center, or NUFORC. Sightings have been reported across the state, and also localities such as Royal Oak, Highland, Clinton Township, Canton, Farmington Hills, Dearborn, Rochester Hills, Lake Orion and Novi, to name a few of the southeast Michigan communities where sightings were reported.

Should you worry? Probably not, though History.com says that witnesses who report unusual happenings in the sky “consider the object to be of extraterrestrial origin or possibly a military craft but certainly under intelligent control.”

According to History.com:

“That the unaided eye plays tricks is well known. A bright light, such as the planet Venus, often appears to move. Astronomical objects can also be disconcerting to drivers, as they seem to ‘follow’ the car. Visual impressions of distance and speed of UFOs are also highly unreliable because they are based on an assumed size and are often made against a blank sky with no background object (clouds, mountains, etc.) to set a maximum distance. Reflections from windows and eyeglasses produce superimposed views, and complex optical systems, such as camera lenses, can turn point sources of light into apparently saucer-shaped phenomena. Such optical illusions and the psychological desire to interpret images are known to account for many visual UFO reports, and at least some sightings are known to be hoaxes. Radar sightings, while in certain respects more reliable, fail to discriminate between artificial objects and meteor trails, ionized gas, rain, or thermal discontinuities in the atmosphere.”

Though there aren’t any “contact events” listed on the NUFORC database, psychologists dispute the notion from the patients they’ve seen and say “sleep paralysis” is generally the culprit.

So, where have UFOs been spotted in southeast Michigan? Here are some of them from southeast Michigan, according to NUFORC:

• Highland: “Twinkling flying star?” Date: Sept. 14 Duration: 10 minutes
• Royal Oak: “Fat disc shape. Three lights. One light was red. I think other two were green and white. Went in different directions and hovered. Date: Sept. 3 Duration: 5 minutes
• Lake Orion: “Circular object flashing red and green, mimicking a star.” Date: Sept. 3 Duration: 20 minutes
• Warren: “Two flashing white lights, one not moving, the other moving in a circle pattern.” Date: Aug. 19 Duration: 20-plus minutes
• Inkster: “Saw a black saucer in the sky that started with being a red light.” Date: Aug. 12 Duration: 7 minutes
• Detroit: “Orange orb UFO's transform and possibly land on Detroit's westside.” Date: Aug. 5 Duration: 5 minutes
• Clinton: “Three crafts spotted hovering for hours over Lenawee County. Red and white flashing lights approached quickly, then slowly rise into sky.” Date: Aug. 5 Duration: 3 hours
• Livonia: “Slow floating led star-like bright light. Slowly moved west to east over sky, as high as the stars. No flashing light like satellite.” Date: July 26 Duration: 5 minutes.
• Commerce Township: “Saw nine orange / yellow colored lights in west sky, moving slowly in formation towards the north.” Date: July 23 Duration: 3 minutes
• Farmington Hills: “Orange / red ‘fireball’ passing east to west, with no noise, and seemed to be quite high in the sky. Not an airplane.” Date: July 22 Duration: 30 seconds.
• Clinton Township: “Four amber / red lights in a square formation.” Date: July 16 Duration: 2-3 minutes.
• Dearborn: “I saw a flickering orange light traveling west to east..I watched it until it disappeared which was approximately two minutes.” Date: July 7 Duration: 2 minutes.
• Rochester HIlls: “Flying object saucer shape with red and green lights seen in Rochester Hills.” Date: July 4 Duration: 10 minutes
• Fenton: “The craft was rectangular-long and skinny — about the length of a maybe two large passenger jets outline with hundreds of lights.” Date: June 29 Duration: 10 minutes
• Eastpointe: “Blue to bright red spherical light over Selfridge Air Force Base; landed.” Date: May 27 Duration: 6 minutes
• Eastpointe: “Witnessed a craft, which I cannot explain.” Date: May 27 Duration: 10 minutes
• Canton: “Driving north down I-275 (between Ford and Sheldon exits) at 4 a.m. and I see a green fireball rise up, then swoop back down …” Date: May 17 Duration: 1 minute
• Commerce: “Two bright fireballs stop and go, moving at differing speeds and towards different areas.” Date: May 9 Duration: 5 minutes
• Fraser: “Saw a bright blue light standing still then moving fast and repeating. Too fast and high to be a drone.” Date: May 9 Duration: 5 minutes
• Warren: “Two different moving white star like objects.” Date: April 14 Duration: 10 minutes
• Center Line: “Rectangular, blueish light, flying silently at high altitude, but below cloud level, at incredibly high velocity. Heading south, turned abruptly right then left, right and left again and then out of view.” Date: April 2 Duration: 15 seconds
• Canton: “UFO looked like Venus bright white light holding position in dusk sky, as planes came in view UFO cloaked out.” Date: March 20 Duration: 10 minutes
• Canton: “Silent triangular shaped object with flashing white / yellow lights was spotted hovering over neighborhood.” Date: March 8 Duration: 1 minute
• Novi: “I was unloading groceries from my trunk when a jet overhead happened to catch my eye. It was leaving a very short double streak against a totally cloudless sky. This was around 4 p.m. so the sky was exceptionally blue.” Date: March 4 Duration: Three minutes
• Warren: “Starburst object.” Date Feb. 22 Duration: 45 minutes
• If you go to this page and click on the date of the report, you can read more details.
• Pontiac: “Object was triangular in shape, it had 9 lights on it made no noise, was flying above tree tops, at a low rate of speed.” Date: Jan. 29 Duration: 2 minutes
• Royal Oak: “I saw a white light due south just above the horizon. It looked like a bright white star. It was motionless and it sat stationary in the sky until within about 5 seconds it faded and disappeared.” Date: Jan. 8 Duration: 5-10 minutes

How to Report a UFO

NUFORC has been operating since 1974 and gets many of its reports via a 24-hour hotline at (206) 722-3000, according to its website.

The group described what a good UFO report should include:

“Reports are most useful if they include an exact date, time, and location of the sighting. Other valuable information includes a description of the object(s) seen, what they were witnessed to do, how many of them were observed, what shape and color they were, how long they were observed, and any other facts the witness(es) believe were significant. The number of observers and a brief, one-sentence long description of their backgrounds are useful as well.”

As far as photographs and video, here’s what the NUFORC recommends:

“A photograph or video of the object is the most useful form of evidence in any sighting. Absent a photograph, an illustration of the object observed, even a simple outline drawing of its shape is very helpful. Also, a photocopy of an official map, indicating where the observers were located and what direction(s) they were looking is extremely helpful, and will permit a calculation of latitude and longitude.”

Photo: Jonas Bengtsson via Flickr Commons