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California Reports More UFOs Than Any Other State In The U.S.
(Photo by Toban Nichols via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr)
Are extraterrestrials lured to California? Perhaps they're attracted to our picturesque beaches and agreeable weather? Maybe they're holing up at a writers' colony in Monterey to finish their long-in-progress memoirs?
Whatever the reason, they are (apparently) visiting us on a pretty regular basis. According to UFO Sightings Desk Reference: United States of America 2001-2015, a book released a couple weeks ago, California has had nearly 16,000 reported sightings of unidentified flying objects since 2001, reports SFGate. This means that the Golden State has the most reports of UFO sightings among all U.S. states. We're followed by Florida, Texas, Washington, Pennsylvania, and New York. Of course, our record likely has some correlation with our massive population. Still, we'd like to think that E.T. agrees that the West Coast is the Best Coast.
Looking at it from a more local perspective, Los Angeles County was home to a whopping 3,200 reported sightings since 2001. This puts the county above 40 U.S. states.
Cheryl Costa, the author of the 374-page reference book (and an UFO columnist for the Syracuse New Times), gathered her data from sightings that were reported to either the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) or the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON).
According to the L.A. Times, the NUFORC says that the latest sightings in the Southern California region happened in Van Nuys and Miramar, which is down in San Diego County. In a written report, a witness in the Van Nuys sighting claimed to see "items flying in formation, moving very fast in the night sky." The person added, perhaps in a fit of paranoia, “I am very familiar with the night sky and various normal items that one would see, this was not normal and too silent and too fast to be of terrestrial origin." I don't know, but it sounds like something an unhinged person would say! Also, a witness in the Miramar incident reported seeing “rapid blinking light that appeared to grow in size, first just one light was visible then the formation became visible.”
Exciting? Perhaps. Though we're wary, as L.A.'s last close encounter with space aliens was...not great:
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