UFOMYST Blog
Deep explainers on UFO history, classification, and the archive itself.
The 2017 New York Times Article That Changed Ufology Forever
How one December 2017 New York Times story — and a leaked Navy video of a Tic Tac-shaped object — restarted 50 years of U.S. government silence on UFOs.
The Best-Documented UFO Cases of All Time (And Why They're Still Unexplained)
Washington DC 1952, Tehran 1976, JAL 1628, Belgium 1989, and the Nimitz Tic Tac: the five radar-visual UFO cases with the strongest multi-sensor evidence.
Why Do People Keep Seeing Black Triangles? Inside UFOlogy's Strangest Recurring Shape
12,413 of our 138,296 UFO reports describe a triangle. Here's how the silent black triangle became the defining UFO shape of the 1980s-2000s — and why.
Brazil: The World's Most Underrated UFO Country
Trindade Island, Operação Prato, and Varginha: how Brazil's military quietly built the most transparent, well-documented UFO record of any nation on Earth.
What Skeptics Get Right: The 10 Most Common Explanations for UFO Sightings
Venus, Starlink trains, Chinese lanterns, drones and more: the ten mundane explanations that account for the overwhelming majority of all UFO reports, ranked.
Grey Aliens: Where the Most Famous Alien Look in History Actually Came From
Big black eyes, an oversized head, grey skin: how one 1961 New Hampshire abduction case became the dominant alien archetype worldwide by the late 1980s.
How to Report a UFO Sighting (And What Actually Happens Next)
Just saw something you can't explain? Here's exactly how to report a UFO sighting to NUFORC or MUFON, what each organization does with it, and what to expect.
The Hynek Scale Explained: What Close Encounters of the First, Second, and Third Kind Really Mean
What does "close encounter of the third kind" actually mean? A clear guide to J. Allen Hynek's six-part UFO classification system and why it still matters.
UFO Shapes Through the Decades: How the Flying Saucer Died and the Tic Tac Was Born
From 1940s discs to 2020s spheres: how 138,296 UFO reports reveal the shape of the phenomenon changing decade by decade — and what that says about us.
UFO Waves and Flaps: Why Sightings Come in Clusters
From 1947 to the 2024 New Jersey drone flap: why UFO reports cluster into sudden regional bursts, and what our 31 detected flaps reveal about the pattern.