Breaking Down Cartersville's Latest UFO Sightings

UFO sightings never really left the news, but they’ve arguably never been more prevalent. Navy pilots recently spoke of seeing mysterious objects — with no discernible engine or exhaust fumes — flying at hypersonic speeds.

President Donald Trump recently said he was briefed on UFOs. A group of Senate lawmakers received a classified briefing this week about such objects. And let’s not get started on that strange Facebook video that seems to show a creepy-looking alien doing some sort of jig down someone’s driveway.

Virginia Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Warner wants answers on UFOs, whether it’s “weather balloons, little green men, or something else entirely,” Rachel Cohen, his spokeswoman, told CNN. And the Navy has drafted guidelines to allow pilots to report UFOs, and so that the military can track them, though the military branch prefers not to use the term “UFO.”

“So, we don’t actually use that term,” Joseph Gradisher, a spokesman for the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, told Patch this week. “We use ‘Unmanned Aerial System.’”

The term, shortened to UAS, refers to things like recreational flying drones people can buy at a store. For the “other” things, the Navy uses the term UAP, meaning “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.”

“We constitute anything unknown or unidentified in the airspace as an ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon,’ no matter what it is,” he said

In that spirit, Patch took a peek at the most recent UFO sighting in Cartersville using a database compiled by the National UFO Reporting Center. Spoiler alert: So far, no little green men have been seen running around since 2014.

4/13/19 00:50, duration: 5-6 minutes

Description: Red/orange, glowing, triangular-shaped object with orbish glow hovering low in the sky. Appeared motionless and silent. Two small red/orange balls were released from it's right side a few seconds apart and fell to the ground but their light dissipated shortly after their release. Object began to rise slightly and moved steadily due south for about two minutes. Then rose steadily upwards moving west south west and disappeared high into the night sky.

5/31/15 01:30, duration: 2 hours

Description: Lights ranging from bright white to orange, stationary approximately 30,000+ feet in the sky. Maintains ranging triangular shape with color changing moving lights around it to circular. Movement was erratic in straight lines and colors changed, deer were running crazy which isn't abnormal but the frequency and direction they were traveling, even during the day one was struck in front of my house

12/12/14 12:40, duration: 3-6 minutes

Description: After getting off from work, I took out my garbage. Looking up towards the west, I noticed an object that flashed from white to green to red. I recorded it for about three minutes and thirty eight seconds. It moved like no other craft that I've seen before. It made no sound and it was like turning off a light when it was gone.

6/24/14 06:13, duration: 13 minutes

Description: Large oval object in red top mountains.At 06:12, I was opening the gate to the facility I work at. After opening the gate, I spotted three other people who was at the park that is located in front of the facility, staring out eat at the mountain line. When I went to see what they were staring at the pointed out a large bright oval disk. It seem to have stood still. Through closer inspection, it appeared to be metallic and glowing in a yellow tint. After 10 min of observation it faded behind the clouds and was gone out of sight.

5/10/14 06:00, duration: 7 seconds

Description: 100x20ft. UFO sighted -orange, yellow & on fire above Pilot Truck Stop in Cartersville Ga.May 2014 by truck driver !I just had fueled the semi up and I was leaving the Pilot truck stop. As I was turning left from the red light out into the road I seen a UFO that looked to be on fire. It was about 100 feet long and about the and about 20 feet high. The color was orange, yellow and fire just like when out space ship come in our atmosphere hot. It looked as tho it was going down jus beyond the tree line. It seemed like the ship had all control. I also seemed as it was trying to get down quick. The ship lit the sky up around it the entire time .It was coming from the south and heading north east. It was very dark outside at the time and traffic was busy .The flight path was over I-75 (major interstate) that runs between Chattanooga Tn Atlanta Ga. plus about 20 foot along side two large truck stops "Pilot & TA"! I am sure more people seen it than me because the way everyone slowed down and the way they were driving plus the quick reactions of wonder.

According to data compiled by the Center, there were nearly 500 sightings across the country in May and more than 300 in January, March and April. The most recent sighting logged by the trackers was June 6 in Roseville, Minnesota, just east of Minneapolis and north of St. Paul. In that sighting — which lasted all of four seconds — a resident was looking at the stars on a deck around 3:10 a.m. when they asked the sky for answers.

“I talked really quiet out-loud saying, ‘If there are any aliens up there please show me your space ship; do something,’” the person said, according to the incident report.

Sure enough, an object lit up for two seconds to the east and zoomed north, according to the account.

“I said, ‘Thank you; please do it again,’” the person reported.

And roughly one minute later, the witness saw the same thing, this time to the northeast, and moving in the same direction. The person described it as “what people who see UFOs call a power-up,” but noted it was for a very brief amount of time, almost as if “they only wanted me to see them.” The light was described as being in an oval shape and located about a mile away.

And if that sounds strange, get this — a day earlier, two people reported seeing a stationary disc shape with pulsing green, red, yellow and white lights moving back and forth over San Jose, California. The object was high in the sky and moved with the horizon, according to the incident report. The lights were in a straight horizontal line.

“Looked like five of these lights, which were square-shaped, tilted slightly up so it gave the appearance of a saucer,” the report said.

The Navy seems convinced of the existence of UFOs, telling POLITICO in a statement there were reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft “entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years.”

"For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report,” the statement said.

And Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress, told The New York Times last month he was one of multiple pilots who saw UFOs. The pilots began seeing the objects in 2014 and 2015 after receiving upgraded equipment.

Initially they believed they were getting bad readings.But the sightings kept happening, showing up at 30,000 feet, 20,000 feet and even at sea level. The objects could speed up, slow down and then reach hypersonic speeds.

“These things would be out there all day,” he said. “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.