By Lee Speigel
You're wrong. In fact, you need the right tools to capture UFOs -- whether alien in nature or not -- if you want anyone to actually believe your epic story. Luckily, HuffPost Weird News has compiled that list for you. Here's what you need on your UFO hunt tonight:
- Warm clothing (depending on your location)
- A good pair of binoculars
- A good, reliable camera (duh!), capable of actually capturing night images
- Fellow eyewitnesses and some snacks (in case it's a long stakeout)
- Information from a database that can guide you to possible UFO hangouts
According to the website IT World, there are several database sites used by UFO seekers to help triangulate possible hotbeds of activity of unidentified flying objects. It's not unusual to find locations where eyewitnesses claim to see UFOs several days or nights in a row.
If you're lucky, you may get a chance to capture a UFO on video, like some of these folks did:
Check out the following databases and start packing.
The National UFO Reporting Center
This database displays UFO reports according to event date, state, UFO shape and date posted. For an excellent look back in time, the site offers reports stemming from the 1950s and brings sightings right up to date. You can call a special hotline to report something if it occurred within the past week. And there's also an online UFO report form you can fill out. The site doesn't claim to validate the information in the reports, and that "Obvious hoaxes have been omitted."
*U* UFO Database
This is a very interesting database created over a 20-year period by UFO researcher Larry Hatch, who made it clear that his site is not a UFO reporting center. "The site is here to show the results of a long research effort, an attempt to find clues or patterns in sightings data," he writes. And he's very specific about presenting data on "flying saucers, disks and spheres... wingless fuselages, cloud cigars, cylinders, flying triangles, deltoids, diamonds and other odd shapes." He also wants people to know that he doesn't catalog "new-age, religious miracles, spiritual or cult events; Bigfoot, chupacabras, bogeymen or cryptozoology in general; no pyramids or faces on Mars, no crop circles or other forteana unless directly UFO-related." *U* UFO Database provides excellent regional and world UFO maps and statistics. Of particular interest is his section on Thematic UFO sightings.
According to AboveTopSecret.com, while Hatch dropped out of contact with the UFO community several years ago due to health problems, his site contains "18,552 carefully filtered UFO events, distilled from hundreds of books, major journals, catalogs, correspondence and other sources. [The] scope is worldwide, for all dates from antiquity to the present."
UFOdb.com
The UFO Sightings database specializes in pictures and videos, offering a variety of viewing and analysis tools to maximize your UFO footage viewing experience: "Speed control, Reverse play, Viewing filters, looping and more," as described on the site. There's also a UFO picture zoom magnifier and Google map that shows where the UFO sightings occurred. To help in your own search for possible places where UFOs might show up, the site includes "a synopsis, date, country, region, city, latitude and longitude" of previous locations of sighting reports.
Mutual UFO Network (MUFON)
In addition to a database of the most recent sighting reports and locations from the last couple of days, MUFON -- the 3,000-member worldwide UFO investigation organization -- is dedicated to studying UFO sightings and offers directions on how to correctly record or videotape a UFO encounter, something sorely lacking in the overall quality of many UFO images or videos posted on the Internet. The MUFON site also has an extensive UFO reporting form that you can fill out and post as a way of sharing your experiences with many people around the world.
You now have a variety of choices to help map out where you might want to go for a potential UFO encounter, and information on what to bring to record the experience. Good hunting.
