More UFO sightings have been reported in California than any other state, according to recently published research, and Los Angeles County alone outranks 40 states for alleged alien aircraft.
That analysis comes from UFO Sightings Desk Reference: United States of America 2001 to 2005, a compendium of sightings reported to the National UFO Reporting Center and Mutual UFO Network over those years, pulled together by journalist Cheryl Costa.
Costa writes a weekly column for the Syracuse New Times that tracks UFO reports and she got the idea to start diving deeper into the databases to see if any patterns started to emerge, according to SFGate. Several trends did pop out, including that spring and summer are the most popular seasons for sightings in general, and that you’re most likely to have a cosmic experience while outside to walk your dog or smoke.
From 2001 to 2015 there were more than 120,000 possible extraterrestrial encounters recorded with the clearinghouses. Of those, 16,000 were in California. (No data available on how many of them turned out to actually just be airplanes or meteor showers.)
While the data collected in the book ends with 2015, the local UFO reports keep on coming. In just the month of March 2017, the National UFO Reporting Center logged suspected sightings in in Miramar, Van Nuys, Palm Springs, Riverside and San Diego.
We guess this means that the next time some New Yorker claims that everybody in L.A. is spacey, you can tell them they’re absolutely right.
Want more? Sign up here to stay in the know.