The 5 Most Legitimate Modern UFO Sightings
By: Jayden Yugie
Tags: Universe, History, UFO, Space, Aliens

The 5 Most Legitimate Modern UFO Sightings

Photo by christianplass on Pixabay

UFO’s have fascinated humans for decades. While most UFO sightings have been false alarms (usually an airplane, or helicopter flying by) there have also been believable ones that have even caught the attention of the U.S government and reignited a deep interest in Aliens worldwide. Below are five of the most credible UFO sightings of the past 40 years.

The city of Rendlesham Forest (1980)

In December 1980, members of the US Air Force established in various British bases reported seeing strange lights over Rendlesham Forest, about 100 miles northeast of London. A lumberjack who went into the forest to investigate claimed having discovered a spaceship there. The next day, other people confirmed that nearby trees had been damaged and that there was a radiation level higher than normal in that place.



For his part, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt recorded his observations on a tape while looking at the lights and, although it cannot be considered as definitive proof, specialists consider this to be more evident than the events themselves. However, the Ministry of UK Defense, which oversaw the reports of UFO incidents up to the early 2000s did not find there was a credible threat for the country and abandoned the investigation.

Rendlesham Forest began to cultivate UFO tourism and even created a trail that can be transited by visitors, at the end of which a model of a spaceship similar to the one that supposedly fell there in the 80s.

Belgium (between 1989 and 1990)

At the end of November 1989, Belgian citizens reported seeing a large triangular UFO floating in the sky. Months later, in March 1990, multiple objects in the night sky were spotted by two military ground radar stations.

Thus, two F16 fighter jets were sent to investigate such anomalies and, although the pilots could not see anything, they managed to spot the targets on radar. However, the UFOs moved so fast that the pilots lost sight of them.



An estimated 13,500 people witnessed the incident, making it one of the most popular UFOs sightings of the modern era. Air Force Belgian failed to give a logical explanation for the activity but recognized that an unknown phenomenon had taken place in midair. Thus, they communicated with their British counterpart to investigate further. Once they determined that the incident was not hostile or aggressive they stopped the investigation.

Lights on the New Jersey Turnpike (2001)

On July 14, 2001, motorway drivers in New Jersey tollbooth gawked at the

sky. For about 15 minutes, just after midnight, a bunch of orange lights appeared and yellows forming a V over the Arthur Kill canal Waterway, between Staten Island (New York) and Carteret (New Jersey).



Carteret Police Department Lieutenant Daniel Tarrant was one of the eyewitnesses, as well as other residents of the Throgs Neck Bridge metropolitan area, in Long Island and Fort Lee, NJ, near the George Washington bridge.



Initially, air traffic controllers denied that no civil, military aircraft, or special flight may have caused the mysterious lights, but the group New York Strange Phenomena Investigators (NY-SPI) stated that they have received radar data from the FAA that corroborated the UFO sightings that night.

The USS Nimitz encounter (2004)

In November 2004, the USS Princeton, part of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier group detected on radar the presence of an unknown ship a few kilometers from the Californian coast of San Diego. For several days the crew was tracking objects that appeared at 80 000 feet which ended up falling to hover right above the Pacific.



When two FA-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier arrived at that place, what at first seemed like agitated water turned into an oval-shaped shadow below the surface. Moments later, a white object appeared on the water. It had no visible markings that indicate the presence of an engine, wings, or windows, and infrared monitors did not reveal that it had any exhaust.



Various fighter jets tried to intercept the ship, but it picked up speed and appeared on the radar at kilometers of distance. The most curious thing is that it moved three times the speed of sound and more than twice the speed of fighter jets.

UFO at O’Hare International Airport (2006)

Flight 446 was preparing to fly to Carolina del North from Chicago O’Hare International Airport when a United Airlines employee, who was on the runway, saw a dark gray metallic ship hovering above the gate C17. On that day, November 7, 2006, a total of twelve United employees and several other witnesses (who were outside the airport) saw a ship again in the shape of a saucer, around two in the afternoon.



Witnesses indicated that the ship remained floating for about five minutes before shooting up, where it made a hole in the clouds big enough for pilots and mechanics to see the blue sky.

The news had international repercussions but the FAA did not spot it on the radar, they just said it was a “weather phenomenon” and refused to investigate further.