See a UFO? Here’s How To Report a Sighting

We hopefully all know that, in case of fire, we call the fire department. When there’s an accident, we call the ambulance. But who do you call if you spot a UFO?

The question isn’t as preposterous as it might seem, and it turns out that the answer to how to report a UFO sighting is also far from cut-and-dry.

In turn, not having a clear way to report and catalog sightings of what the U.S. government and most scientists call unidentified anomalous phenomena means that there could be clues to what these curious and sometimes bizarre objects and occurrences really are — including potentially undiscovered phenomena.

To try and bridge the gap, NASA, the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies are trying to make it easier to see something and say something. Here’s what you need to know.

How To Report a UFO Sighting

If you are a government employee and work for the defense department, then the Pentagon wants to hear from you. On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced a new portal for government staffers to voluntarily report UAP sightings. The data that’s gathered will go towards the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s congressionally-directed Historical Record Report, to be released next year. 

NASA has set up a new office to look into UAP reports and study them to try and work out what can be explained and what cannot. While NASA has not named who will occupy that directorship, the agency is not actively searching for UAPs. Rather, it relies on the other databases and collections (and particularly, the Pentagon’s) out there to do any research into the reports — a data-sharing initiative NASA scientists have described as critical to future research.

But what if you’re not a government employee? According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the public can get in touch with a UFO data collection organization, such as the National UFO Reporting Center, a nonprofit that investigates sightings and whose hotline receives more than 40 reports a day. The Center’s database is available to the public online if you want to compare your experience with over 150,000 others. 

The Center isn’t the only non-governmental organization keeping track of possible unidentified anomalous phenomena sightings. An app, developed by Enigma Labs, lets users report a sighting and asks them specific questions about what they saw, including the location and time of the event and the shape of the object. The app’s developers say they are hoping to build comprehensive datasets to further study of the phenomenon. 

While the FBI doesn’t technically have a dedicated office for UAPs, (sorry, Mulder and Scully,) the federal agency has investigated their fair share of bizarre incidents: a whole trove of incident reports are available on their website.

You can also reach out to more local law enforcement: in June, Las Vegas police were called by a family claiming to have seen something in their yard — an incident that was eventually deemed to be “not a hoax.”