As UFOs ‘Arrive’ In News, See Latest Hampton Sighting

HAMPTON, NH — UFO sightings never really left the news, but they've arguably never been more prevalent. Navy pilots recently spoke of seeing mysterious objects — with no discernible engine or exhaust fumes — flying at hypersonic speeds.

President Donald Trump recently said he was briefed on UFOs. A group of Senate lawmakers received a classified briefing this week about such objects. And let's not get started on that strange Facebook video that seems to show a creepy-looking alien doing some sort of jig down someone's driveway.

Virginia Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Warner wants answers on UFOs, whether it's "weather balloons, little green men, or something else entirely," Rachel Cohen, his spokeswoman, told CNN. And the Navy has drafted guidelines to allow pilots to report UFOs, and so that the military can track them, though the military branch prefers not to use the term "UFO."

"So, we don’t actually use that term," Joseph Gradisher, a spokesman for the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, told Patch this week. "We use 'Unmanned Aerial System.'"

The term, shortened to UAS, refers to things like recreational flying drones people can buy at a store. For the "other" things, the Navy uses the term UAP, meaning "Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon."

"We constitute anything unknown or unidentified in the airspace as an 'Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon,' no matter what it is," he said.

In that spirit, Patch took a peek at the most recent UFO sighting in Hampton — or UAP, if you prefer — and New Hampshire as a whole using a database compiled by the National UFO Reporting Center. Spoiler alert: So far, no little green men have been seen running around.

Hampton Beach — 7 p.m. on Sept. 23, 2018

• Summary: Red orbs in a long string 2,000 feet high over Hampton Beach.
• Duration: 4 minutes

North Hampton — 9:30 a.m. on Oct. 10, 2017

• Summary: Boomerang shape, incredible brightness and speed.
• Duration: 15 seconds

Hampton Beach — 9 p.m. on Aug. 16, 2017

• Summary: Small light, looked like a shooting star at first. Moved in a linear path, and then changed directions quickly, side to side.
• Duration: 30 seconds

Hampton — 9:51 p.m. on July 11, 2017

• Summary: Circular white light. Could also be a satellite
• Duration: 1 minute

Hampton — 7:55 p.m. on Nov. 21, 2015

• Summary: Solid bright red lights moving across the sky, then vanishing.
• Duration: 3-5 minutes

Hampton — 10 p.m. on July 10, 2015

• Summary: Two red lights in the sky
• Duration: Unknown

Hampton — Midnight on Jan. 23, 2015

• Summary: 25 small lights floating in the air for 10 minutes. Video recorded.
• Duration: 5-10 minutes

Hampton Beach — 8 p.m. on June 7, 2014

• Summary: Hovering then taking off quickly and disappearing.
• Duration: Unknown

Hampton — 11:47 a.m. on Oct. 14, 2013

• Summary: White cylinder with red light at the back. Didn't have wings. Moving silently very fast toward the southwest, then disappearing!
• Duration: Less than a minute

Hampton/Rye — 9 p.m. on July 4, 2013

• Summary: Multiple sets of two objects appear on the horizon over land and proceed to move off into sky of bf the coast
• Duration: 2 hours

Hampton — 8 p.m. on June 14, 2013

• Summary: Dark sphere or egg-shaped solid object, no lights, no sound, traveling as fast as a helicopter, moving straight 1,200 feet overhead
• Duration: 1 minute

According to data compiled by the Center, there were nearly 500 sightings across the country in May and more than 300 in January, March and April. The most recent sighting logged by the trackers was June 6 in Roseville, Minnesota, just east of Minneapolis and north of St. Paul. In that sighting — which lasted all of four seconds — a resident was looking at the stars on a deck around 3:10 a.m. when they asked the sky for answers.

"I talked really quiet out-loud saying, 'If there are any aliens up there please show me your space ship; do something,'" the person said, according to the incident report.

Sure enough, an object lit up for two seconds to the east and zoomed north, according to the account.

"I said, 'Thank you; please do it again,'" the person reported.

And roughly one minute later, the witness saw the same thing, this time to the northeast, and moving in the same direction. The person described it as "what people who see UFOs call a power-up," but noted it was for a very brief amount of time, almost as if "they only wanted me to see them." The light was described as being in an oval shape and located about a mile away.

And if that sounds strange, get this — a day earlier, two people reported seeing a stationary disc shape with pulsing green, red, yellow and white lights moving back and forth over San Jose, California. The object was high in the sky and moved with the horizon, according to the incident report. The lights were in a straight horizontal line.

"Looked like five of these lights, which were square-shaped, tilted slightly up so it gave the appearance of a saucer," the report said.

The Navy seems convinced of the existence of UFOs, telling POLITICO in a statement there were reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft "entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years."

"For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report," the statement said.

And Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress, told The New York Times last month he was one of multiple pilots who saw UFOs. The pilots began seeing the objects in 2014 and 2015 after receiving upgraded equipment.

Initially they believed they were getting bad readings. But the sightings kept happening, showing up at 30,000 feet, 20,000 feet and even at sea level. The objects could speed up, slow down and then reach hypersonic speeds.

"These things would be out there all day," he said. "Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we'd expect."

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.