The Golden State has more to offer than its beautiful mountains and beaches. According to a new book, California is the state with the most number of UFO sightings in the United States. Self-published by two authors, Cheryl and Linda Miller Costa, the book is called: UFO Sightings Desk Reference: United States of America 2001-2015.

Every UFO sighting reported to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) from 2001 to 2015 were collected and compiled into the 374-page book. This puts the total number at more than 120,000 accounts. Co-author Cheryl Costa stated that she used both databases for her weekly column in the Syracuse New Times, “New York Skies”.

Online publication SFGate.com reports that the book contains over 120,000 UFO sightings, and that 16,000 of them originated from California. Costa noted that Los Angeles County alone outranked 40 individual states with 3,200 reported UFO sightings. The states that followed California were Florida, Texas, Washington, Pennsylvania, and New York.

SputnikNews.com reports that Costa had a small number of observations about the sightings. Firstly, she wanted to point out that the reports were made by individuals of sound mind. “I found that the majority of sighting reports where by people who were very sincere, and it had energized them to find a place to report what they saw. They wanted to get this off their chest,” Costa told SFGate.com.

Secondly, she noticed a few common trends among the sightings. There appeared to be a spike in the number of sightings during summer and spring, except for states with consistent climates like Arizona, Texas, and Florida. Costa believes that the explanation for this is simply that people were outside more because of the pleasant weather conditions. “The people who see the majority of sightings are outside having a smoke, walking the dog, or outside smoking walking the dog,” Costa said.

The New York native has stated that her interest in UFOs came from her own personal UFO sightings. The push to write about sightings, however, came from a short news article claiming that UFO sightings were getting fewer and fewer. UFOs, the article suggested, were not real since hardly any people were reporting them. “That didn’t sound right,” Costa said. “I went out to one of the national data bases and the bar chart (of sightings) goes up like a rocket launch.”

Costa is a retired aerospace security engineer, two-service military veteran and published playwright. From 1998 to 2001, Costa hosted the “X Factor” talk radio program, which covered UFOs and other paranormal topics. She lives in upstate New York with co-author and spouse Linda Miller Costa.

For more information about UFOs, feel free to visit UFOs.news.

UFO Facts

• The first known UFO sighting was reported by Kenneth Arnold in 1947, who claimed to have witnessed nine objects near Mount Rainier while flying his plane.
• “Project Sign” is a 1948 investigation by the US Air Force into the increasing number of UFO reports. The initial opinion was that the UFOs were most likely nothing more than sophisticated Soviet aircraft. The program was succeeded by “Project Grudge” a year later. In 1952, Project Grudge was succeeded by “Project Blue Book”, the longest official inquiry into UFOs. The project lasted from 1952 to 1969 and collected over 12,000 UFO sightings.
• The only other official records of UFO sightings were kept in Canada and comprised about 750 sightings.

Sources:

SFGate.com

SputnikNews.com

UFOCongress.com

History.com