By International Business Times
New York City experienced 85 UFO sightings in the past two years, according to the New York Post Saturday.
The information comes from a database collected by the National UFO Reporting Center based in Washington state. The organization takes submission of UFO sightings by phone and online.
“Do I believe in UFOs? I absolutely believe . . . I believe what the data says,” Peter Davenport, the center’s director told the Post. “Read the cases and you come to the realization that these objects we’ve been calling UFOs for 70 years are being seen across the country and around the world on a daily basis.”
New York City’s borough of Manhattan experienced the most sightings — racking up 27 since 2016. The details of the sightings run the gamut from a paltry amount of information to much more descriptive.
“[I was] Looking out my 5th-floor apartment window in Astoria, Queens, which overlooks the East River and Manhattan's Skyline of the Empire State Building. All of the sudden, I see 2 triangles made up of lights floating by in the sky. There 1 second gone the next. One triangle was made of red lights and the other craft made of blue,” reads one entry from Oct. 20, 2017.
The bulk of sightings are mysterious lights viewed in the sky, sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes for much longer.
“Three very bright lights in sky, still. One would move away, then rejoin. Often a pair would be so close as to look as one light. Hovered over Queens … for at least 15 minutes. I saw from more than a mile away and the lights were very big and bright. Very still,” reads one report from the New York City borough of Queens from Nov. 1, 2017.
Davenport said that reliable and clear photos of these mysterious UFO sightings are hard to come by because people typically only have a few seconds to react. The sightings the organization compiles are self-reported, meaning there are only verified by the viewer.
In December, the New York Times revealed that the Defense Department ran a classified program between 2007 and 2012 to study UFO sightings, dedicating $22 million a year to the research. Former NASA space shuttle engineer James Oberg told the Times he was doubtful about the possibility of extraterrestrials but welcomed the research.
“There are plenty of prosaic events and human perceptual traits that can account for these stories,” Oberg said. “Lots of people are active in the air and don’t want others to know about it. They are happy to lurk unrecognized in the noise, or even to stir it up as camouflage.”
