Shape-shifting flying craft. A cigar-shaped orange light that shot into the sky and disappeared. A round flying object with hundreds of bright lights. A faint light that moved lighting speed and turned into a massive ball of fire.
These are just some of the UFO sightings reported on Long Island, where the number of suspected alien spacecraft reports so far this year are already flying above recent year’s totals as the region remains a Roswellian hotbed of extraterrestrial activity. That’s according to National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) statistics for Nassau and Suffolk counties reviewed by the Press.
“An oblong orange shape was suddenly visible in the sky in front of us, just left of center of our field of vision, maybe 30 degrees above the horizon,” one witness reported of a sighting while driving on Ocean Parkway at 1:19 a.m. May 27. “It gradually brightened as it appeared, like a slow flare, but constant in shape, speed, and utterly silent (the windows were down), and it traveled at a speed that, at the time and in recollection, seemed too fast to have been a plane or a drone, but far too slow to have been a meteor. It traveled upwards on a diagonal for maybe 5 seconds, give or take, before it gradually dimmed as it disappeared.”
The reported sightings come as NASA last month released a 33-page report that determined more scientific studies are required to understand UFOs.
NUFORC stats show 21 UFO sightings reported on Long Island through Sept. 26 of this year, up from 17 for all of last year and 20 in 2021. Nassau and Suffolk counties each had more than two dozen UFO sightings in 2018 and 2019, according to Cheryl Costa, author of UFO Desk Reference: United States of America 2001-2015.
Suffolk led New York State in the number of UFO sightings during the 2001-2015 period, with a total of 554. Nassau ranked fourth in the state, with a total of 276 reported sightings.
“An area with a larger population tends to have more sightings than a less populated area,” Costa has said. “That’s how it usually works.”
Experts say one type of sighting appears more often than others in reports.
“On Long Island, our major sightings typically involve orbs, often a group of seven or so at one time traveling in the sky,” Joseph Flammer, an LI-based field investigator with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), previously told the Press.
If true, the questions remain: Where do they come from and what do they want? As believers say, the truth is out there.
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