New York Ranks Top 5 For States With UFO Sightings

American's have been obsessed with Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFO's, since 1947 when pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed to have seen several UFO's while flying in Washington State. This is also when people started calling them "flying saucers" due to Arnold's descriptions.

Nearly 80 years, and countless UFO sightings later, folks are still enamored with the thought of alien lifeform, UFO's and close encounters of any kind. New York State ranks as one of the Top 5 States for UFO Sightings.

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Since 1974, the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has been dedicated to the collection and dissemination of objective UFO data. In the last 50 years the center has processed nearly 200,000 UFO reports, many of which are from New York.

Before we reveal the Top 5 States for UFO Sightings, take a look at an image if the NUFORC Map of the United States. All of the red indicates places where UFO have been reported and the green shows fairly recent UFO sightings.

According to the NUFORC Reports By Location these are the Top 5 States for UFO Sightings:

1. California - 16,725 reports
2. Florida - 8,615 reports
3. Washington - 7,437 reports
4. Texas - 6,465 reports
5. New York - 6,151 reports

One of the most recent New York UFO sightings was reported on Tuesday March 11, 2025 in New Paltz. This is a portion of the eyewitness statement:

I was in my car at 9:06 PM when I saw a disk shape above me, what was strange was how it looked at first like it was moving closer so I suspected it to be a drone or plane. But the 3 lights weren’t blinking, and the object wasn’t making any noise once I got out of the car. The object looked grey, and the whole object pulsated with a yellow light 3 times, then stopped.