There have been many reports of UFO sightings in the past and in the present across the country and throughout the world. There have also been reports of crop circles in fields. Most sightings and reports of UFO’s have been in southwestern part of America.

The number of UFO reports in Area 51 have decreased every year. Why the sightings have decreased no one knows. A lot of sightings have been videotaped by civilian onlookers and reported to newspapers and show up on local news, the rest may have been covered up BY THE GOVERNMENT. Many of the sightings have turned out to be fraud, or coincidence. The two most famous places known for UFO sightings and UFO contact in America and possibly the world are Roswell and Area 51. Roswell is located in central New Mexico, and Area 51 is located in Nevada.

Sightings of UFO’shave varied in shape. Most are oval shaped others but some are square shaped, long shaped and even triangle shaped. Farmers particularly have reported seeing UFO’s and then the next day they discover farm animals slaughtered. They appear to have strange burn marks covering their body. One famous sighting began on a clear day in June 1947 when an Idaho businessman, Kenneth Arnold, was flying his private plane near Mount Rainier, Washington. Suddenly he saw a group of odd looking craft flying in formation. Arnold counted nine of the disk-like craft and noticed that they were making amazing maneuvers. When Arnold landed, he reported what he had seen: "They flew very close to the mountain tops …as if they were linked together….I watched them for about three minutes –a chain of saucer-like things at least five miles long….They were flat, like a piepan, and so shiny they reflected the sun….I never saw anything so fast." Arnold’s story was printed in many newspapers and in a few days the whole country was talking excitedly about it. Arnold had told one reporter that the objects skimmed along "as a saucer would if you skipped it across the water." When the reporter wrote his story, he made up the term "flying saucer".

Within a month, disk-like flying craft had been seen in every state in the country, and the flying saucer scare of 1947 was in full swing. It reached its peak during late summer with well over one hundred sightings reported. Early one afternoon, observers at an Air Force base in Kentucky saw a mysterious flying object overhead. Four Air National Guard pilots in F-51 fighters were ordered aloft to investigate. The flight leader, Captain Thomas F. Mantell; radioed back that he was closing in "to take a good look." A few minutes later Mantell reported that the object appeared to be metallic and very large. "it’s going up now and forward as fast as I am," he barked over his radio, "that’s 360 miles an hour. I’m going up to 20,000 feet and if I’m not closer, I’ll abandon chase." There was no further contact with Mantell that day or ever. Late that afternoon his body was found in the wreckage of his plane. The official Air Force explanation was that Mantell had blacked out from lack of oxygen and had died of suffocation before he crashed. The object he had pursued was at first identified as the planet Venus, but further investigation showed that Venus had not appeared in the sky that day where the object had been sighted. The thing Mantell lost his life chasing is still unidentified, although it may have been a research balloon flying in the area at the time.

The Mantell incident touched off a new wave of flying saucer sightings in 1948. Some of the mysterious objects were spotted by planes, others by observers on the ground. A number were also picked up on radar screens. These reports were all the more believable because many were being turned in by people trained as good observers: airline pilots, Weather Bureau observers, radar operators, and Air Force and Navy fliers.

At first, people outside the U.S. looked on the flying saucer excitement as just another American fad. It would quickly pass. But this craze did not go away. On the night of July 19, 1952, in Washington D.C., radar operators at National Airport saw something on their screens that alarmed them. Soon they were reporting seven targets; unauthorized craft over the nation’s capital.

At nearby Andrews Air Force Base, similar targets were reported on radar. A jet fighter was ordered into the air to investigate. By the time it searched the area, the targets had vanished from the radar screens. The next day flying saucer stories were all over Washington D.C.. Was the capital being invaded by UFO’s from outer space?
By dawn the strange radar targets faded away. It turned up to be a trick with the weather and that interfered with the radar system.

One of the earliest night light sightings happened in July 1948. Two Eastern Airline pilots, named Chiles and Whitted, flying a DC-3 aircraft after midnight, saw what they described as a metallic cigar about 100 feet long outside their cabin window. It had no wings and gave off an intense blue light that quivered up and down the cigar like a neon tube. The UFO had two rows of portholes that were brilliantly lit. Behind it trailed a jet of reddish flame some 40 feet long. When the UFO came within a few hundred feet of them, Chiles and Whitted saw the flame become a powerful beam and, jolting their DC-3 with its blast, the UFO zoomed upward and vanished.

The famous Gorman of the North Dakota Air National Guard was about to land his F-51 Mustang when he saw something trailing his plane. It was, he said, "a ball of intensely white light…with a sort of halo around the edges." It seemed to be only about on foot wide, and it throbbed. Gorman turned sharply and for half an hour tried his best to catch the ball. Then the UFO led him upward in a high climb until it vanished a great speed. Gorman later said he was sure he had been struggling against something that acted almost human.

Arthur Godfrey, the radio and TV star, had a similar brush with a UFO one night. He was flying his private plane near Philadelphia when he and his co-pilot saw a brightly lit object suddenly appear off their right wing. Godfrey rolled his ship to avoid hitting it, then checked with the ground control tower below to find out whether there was any air traffic in their vicinity. When ground control reported none, Godfrey radioed back: "well, there’s darned well something up here!". At that moment, the UFO reversed course and circled Godfrey’s plane. He tried to bank away, but the object banked right with him. "It stayed right with me," he reported later, "no matter what I did." Finally, Godfrey heaved a sigh of relief when the UFO veered upward and shot off into the night.

In July 1952, a U.S. Navy warrant officer and his family were driving along a highway near Tremonton, Utah. Suddenly the wife noticed a group of strange shining objects off on the horizon. She pointed them out to her husband and told him to stop the car. The Navy man was so impressed that he ran to the trunk of the car, got out a home movie camera, and began filming the UFO’s. The objects moved in pairs, then one reversed its path and flew away from the rest.