Breaking Down Douglasville’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 Douglasville using a database compiled by the National UFO Reporting Center. Spoiler alert: So far, no little green men have been seen running around since 2016.

4/1/18 22:00, duration: 40 minutes

Description: First, we saw a “Star” except it was way too close to the earth and brighter than the North Star. It stayed stationary for over 15 minutes and then started to slowly move down between the trees. It started moving when a smaller one hovered above it and eventually lined up perpendicular to the earth right above it in a straight line. It was fascinating. The other small one flew overhead and we could see the lights in a triangle when it got closer. It was moving WAY to fast to be a plane of any kind and way to far away to be a drone.

9/25/17 00:00, duration: 1-2 minutes

Description: While driving from Birmingham, Al. With a close friend I noticed A bright white light unlike anything I have seen before. With me working on military aircraft while in the Navy I have never seen anything like this. Bright lights cigar shaped object hovering over tree line. I showed my best friend and that's when we say it start dropping rapidly to the ground, before disappearing behind treeline on I-20 east near exit 34. I am still baffled alone with my friend.hope to find some kind of explanation. This isn't my first Ufo sighting.

10/12/16 20:35, duration: 22 minutes

Description: I observed an extremely bright object sitting stationary and low in the sky.

I was driving home from church on 10-12-16 and I called my sister at 8:18 pm and as I was talking to her, I noticed an extremely bright light sitting low in the sky that wasn’t moving. It was so bright that I mentioned it to my sister. I live near an airport but this definitely wasn’t a plane because it was stationary and there were many planes flying to and from the airport above the object. This object was incredibly bright and low in the sky. There were no sounds coming from it. As I was approaching my house, I got off the phone with my sister and continued to look at the object to make sure it wasn’t something else. I a brightly lit aircraft with three bright lights approach the object from the right side then it flew away but the object remained stationary in the sky and another of the same type of aircraft approached it from a lower angle and then it flew away but again the object remained stationary. I attempted to film the object as I was driving but! I didn’t push record and I needed to turn around and go back to higher ground due to the fact that I lost sight of the object due to tree cover. I found a place to safely pull my car over and film the object properly and I got about 57 seconds of it before it dimmed slightly and flew slowly away to my right. The time stamp on the video is 8:35 pm.

10/12/16 20:35, duration: 3 seconds

Description: Cylinder shaped craft fly's through opening in clouds.While driving along at about 30 mph on a two lane black top, I looked up at the clouds that were associated with hurricane Mathew. It was completely overcast except for one small hole that I could see blue sky. A cylinder shaped craft that was the color of the clouds flew through the opening. No wings, no tail. It had vertical lines on the front and back and a horizontal line or lines across the top third of the craft. I would estimate it to be about 3,000 ft off the ground and about 200 feet long.

5/9/16 20:00, duration: 5-8 minutes

Description: Observed a red light in the sky dodge out of the way of a commercial jet.I was outside in my back yard around 8:00 pm. It was at dusk and the sun was almost fully set. I noticed a red light high up in the sky a ways from my home. It then moved towards the direction of my house. It seemed to float or hover a little then move slowly, then hover, then move again towards my house. The light I saw was red, and didn't flash. At first I thought it was a helicopter, but it made no noise and the light did not flash like a helicopter would. I did see the light slowly change from red to a blueish-green color and then back to red again. I then saw that a commercial jet was heading right for the light. The light hovered for a while until it almost looked as if the jet and the light were going to crash, and the light moved out of the way of the jet. The light then moved further away from my home until it lowered and went behind a line of trees and out of sight.

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.