UFO hotspots, sightings, and triangles

Let’s take a rapid trip through some of the alleged UFO hotspots, sightings, and triangles (Bermuda, Michigan, Falkirk etc) that feature in stories regarding extraterrestrial encounters of the third, fourth, and fifth kind. The majority of these stories are in the United States but of course, UFOs have been seen all over the world.

Triangles and UFO sightings

The Bermuda Triangle is the most infamous of the “triangles” in which it’s claimed an unusual number of ships and planes have disappeared without trace. The reasons offered for this have become more spectacular over the last fifty years with claims that alien bases on the seabed suck human traffic overhead down to the ocean depths for analysis. Or that the ruins of fabled Atlantis can be found below the Gulf of Mexico emitting strange and deadly energy beams from powerful crystals.

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But the Bermuda Triangle has been joined by other similar triangles over the years. For example, back in 1977, there were hundreds of reports from a village in Wales, part of the United Kingdom. The village of Broad Haven was at the epicentre of this Welsh triangle with 450 alleged encounters including a cigar-shaped UFO landing near a school playground out of which emerged a seven foot alien-like figure. This triangle was featured in the Netflix series: Encounters. Sceptics at the time blamed paranoia provoked by the Cold War against the Soviet Union still being waged in the 1970s and the release of the very influential sci-fi movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Other triangles include the Bass Strait Triangle in Australia with a fighter pilot in 1942 reporting he was followed by a bronze disc-shaped craft and in 1966, school children and staff terrified by a UFO hovering over their cricket pitch. The Ossipee Triangle in New Hampshire, United States, is renowned for a 1965 UFO encounter involving hitchhiker, Norman Muscarello, near the town of Exeter. Meanwhile in Croatia, in south-eastern Europe, the Pag Triangle is visited by half a million people every year lured by tales of UFO visits in the ancient past. There is also a curious and seemingly unrelated account of Jesus visiting the Pag Triangle after his resurrection.

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Kenneth Arnold and the Washington State sightings

One of the most famous UFO sightings was by amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold on June 24 1947. Arnold was in his single-seater plane flying above the Cascade mountain range. He was looking for a crashed military transport plane that had disappeared in the area with 32 marines on board. Undoubtedly the reward money of $5,000 was a factor in Arnold’s intense interest.

But what Arnold ended up seeing was way beyond his expectations. In the mid-afternoon, he witnessed nine circular objects flying in a diagonal formation and moving in an irregular manner. The incredible speed was also noteworthy, exceeding anything achievable by 1940s aircraft. Arnold later talked about the objects darting through the sky at up to 1200 miles an hour. The circular nature of these UFOs gave rise to the term “flying saucer”, which was popularised in the contemporary newspapers and has lingered ever since.

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The Phoenix Lights Incident

In March 1997, stargazers were observing the skies over Phoenix, Arizona, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Hale-Bopp comet soaring overhead. Instead, what thousands of people claimed to witness was the underbelly of a vast spaceship. So big in fact that it obscured the stars. The same craft was reported to police and air traffic controllers across the states of California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona.

This has become one of the most famous ever UFO sightings although the authorities deflected attention to exercises conducted by nearby air force bases. Essentially claiming that this UFO was in fact state-of-the-art military technology or even a series of flares.

The Tinley Park UFO sightings

Tinley Park, Illinois became a UFO hotspot in the early years of this century. In 2002, a retired police officer and his wife caught sight of glowing orbs in the sky as they celebrated Independence Day on July 4. As they watched this V-formation, the couple realised these lights were not fireworks but something quite different. They moved steadily in a triangular formation.

Just over two years later on August 21, 2004, the same phenomenon occurred at Tilney Park – this time appearing to Bill Dooley and his neighbours. Separately, a resident named T.J. Japcon was at a party and also viewed the UFO. He grabbed his camcorder and filmed the curious vision in the sky. Police stations all over the area reported being flooded with calls that night. Question is – why did the UFO return to the exact same spot?

Illinois has its own version of the Bermuda Triangle – the Michigan triangle. It spans about 22,400 square miles and is located over Lake Michigan. In 1994, hundreds of callers described strange objects hovering over the eastern shore. These were apparently cylindrically shaped circles with blue and red lights. Supporters of the Michigan Triangle hypothesis list about 50 unexplained shipwrecks and 20 plane crashes in the lake – nothing on the scale of the thousands of alleged incidents in the Bermuda Triangle.

In fact Illinois has another UFO hotspot area, the Little Egypt Triangle, in the southern third of the state. Not only has this area seen many UFOs but also sightings of cryptids. It’s very noteworthy that areas prone to alien visitations also appear to contain unexplainable beasts like the Mothman or Jersey Devil. This has led some to conjecture that these cryptids are in fact beings from other planets.

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Cow mutilations and UFOs

In June 1976, police officer Gabriel Valdez in Dulce, New Mexico, attended an incident at a ranch owned by Manuel Gomez. The report stated that a large cow lay on the ground, torn open. The wounds had been made with surgical precision, as if by a laser, and the animal’s organs were missing. On the ground nearby were scorch marks made by some kind of vehicle with three prongs – like a space shuttle. Valdez went on to investigate a further thirty such cases of mutilation.

The cases in New Mexico form part of a pattern in the American south-west going back decades and possibly centuries. Locals blaming everything from depraved Satanists to extraterrestrials conducting medical operations. One factor that supports the UFO theory is the account of cows being dropped from a great height, such as an alien space craft. The reason these incidents have not been taken very seriously, according to paranormal experts, is the “giggle factor”. Something about cows as victims sparks amusement.

In the 1970s, reports of cow mutilations reached a peak but it was often the government blamed for these heinous acts. This was the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era when government was viewed with intense mistrust. But there were also claims of extraterrestrial involvement as the 1970s saw heavy interest in the existence of other life forms in the universe. Sceptics countered that ranchers had been facing touch economic times and generalised anxiety and fear about their prospects provoked an irrational belief that their livestock were being experimented on by aliens.