There have been claims about UFO sightings for centuries from all around the world, from Alaska to the Antarctica. For whatever reason, most of the locations of sightings share similar landscapes, often vast and isolated. From the Kremlin to the CIA, it’s a topic of great debate that appeals to freethinking minds.

While humans are eager to make the first contact, it seems that aliens are a bit shy with earthlings, as seen from their pit stops of choice in expansive deserts and thick forests. For aspiring alien hunters, here are the 10 locations of the most discussed UFO phenomena that still continue to baffle scientists to this day.

  • 1

    British Columbia, western Canada

    British Columbia, western Canada
    • Unusual

    Canada is one of the top places for supposed UFO sightings, and it seems to have only increased in recent years.

    In 2015, a couple and a few neighbours in British Columbia filmed some bright spinning lights moving in the sky at high speed. A lot of sceptics tried to explain the object as a drone. However, no one had seen a drone with the capacity to move from one corner of the sky to the other in just a couple of seconds.

    In another case in British Columbia, in 1991, a woman recalled seeing a blanketing form of hovercraft. They seemed to smother all light and sound, to the point where it felt claustrophobic. The morning after, there were 15 other reports of the same phenomena that happened around the same time.

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  • 2

    The Roswell incident, New Mexico, USA

    The Roswell incident, New Mexico, USA
    • Unusual

    In 1947, a group of US Air Force officers reported sightings of “flying saucers” over New Mexico, but the Air Force suddenly changed its story within the same day. Decades later, a retired officer came out of the conspiracy closet to talk about a massive cover-up of the crash site, where alien bodies were also found.

    The government tried to create several reports about air force testing, but the public wasn’t convinced since there were more than 600 witness accounts from high-level military officers to civilians.

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  • 3

    Coastal encounters of California

    Coastal encounters of California
    • Unusual

    The Cisco Grove incident in 1964 was a close encounter in the Sierra Nevada forest, not far from Lake Tahoe.

    A hunter got separated from his friends but climbed up a large pine tree to sleep for safety. He later saw a bright light that he thought was a rescue helicopter, but then realised it was an odd-looking vessel with human-like silhouettes emitting noxious vapours in the bushes below.

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  • 4

    UFO parking in the Texas flat lands

    UFO parking in the Texas flat lands
    • Unusual

    In 1957, 2 workers in West Texas saw a flash of light in a field heading towards their truck. When the object came close, it interfered with the truck lights and caused an engine shutdown.

    The object came directly over their heads with high heat and wind, then changed colours to bluish-green and rose up into a fireball and then vanished into thin air. The morning after, there were 14 others that gave a similar description that a 200-foot long vessel, shaped like an egg, had shut down their car engines.

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  • 5

    Mysterious lights in Kolkata, India

    Mysterious lights in Kolkata, India
    • Unusual

    Recorded in Kolkata, a man saw an abnormally big star that turned into a white, flaming ball, with blue flame at the top. Air traffic controls did not have any information nor did they find any irregular radar activities. It was a bright, shiny object hovering behind the sun that started spinning and rising before disappearing in 40 seconds.

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  • 6

    The Kalahari crash, South Africa

    The alien cover-up that caused a mass uproar

    The Kalahari crash, South Africa
    • Unusual

    The May 1989 incident was known as South Africa’s Roswell. A UFO was seen flying over the Indian Ocean at 5,700 miles per hour. Spotted by naval personnel, jet fighters were ordered to intercept and shoot it with an experimental laser. The craft was hit and crashed in the Kalahari Desert where a giant skid mark was seen from a bird’s-eye view. In a matter of hours, a US recovery team was tasked to bring the evidence to Patterson Air Force Base. The craft was almost identical to descriptions by parole officers in New Mexico, but with a different symbol on the vessel. Because of the high-profile incident, the South African people demanded that the government release information and declassify top-secret documents, instead of ridiculing the witnesses.

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  • 7

    Brazil’s “Alien of Varginha”

    Brazil’s “Alien of Varginha”
    • Unusual

    About 400 km west of Rio de Janeiro, the Varginha incident was described as a grey submarine in the sky, like a small bus with no lights. In a nearby town, a group of young women also spotted a strange-looking lifeform crouching near a wall with terrifying bright red eyes. Needless to say, the girls didn’t stick around to say hello. It was suspected that a craft did crash here. Weeks later, government personnel had come forward anonymously, along with 200 other residents. Today, visitors can see the saucer-shaped water tower of Varginha City, erected as the symbol of this harrowing encounter in 1996.

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    photo by Oluap2512 (CC BY-SA 3.0) modified

  • 8

    Rendlesham Forest, East of England

    Rendlesham Forest, East of England
    • Unusual

    In England’s Rendlesham forest lies a site where a commercial airliner seemed to have crashed in December 1980. Instead, a black, triangular object was spotted shooting up and flying away at high speed, reappearing a few nights later.

    A military team went in and actually saw the UFO, with brilliant lights that left the crew dumbfounded. What they saw was a triangular craft weaving up and down the woods, with negative radar reports.

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    photo by Taras Young (CC BY-SA 4.0) modified

  • 9

    Westall High School, Melbourne, Australia

    • Unusual

    Known as the Westall Incident in Melbourne, the occurrence was witnessed by more than 200 schoolchildren and teachers. Three UFOs were hovering over the school. They were described as incredibly fast but could hover perfectly still. One of the kids fainted and was taken away by an ambulance, and didn't return to school again, with many odd stories surrounding her whereabouts.

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  • 10

    The almost-deadly encounter in Tunguska, the Soviet Union

    • Unusual

    Since the 1960s, thousands have witnessed inexplicable objects in the Soviet skies, but the event of Tunguska brought undeniable proof of strange debris. A blast hit the remote town of Tunguska in 1908, followed by mutations of plant life and human ailments. Joseph Stalin condemned this as a rumour in public but conducted secret tests behind the scenes.

    By the mid-1950s, pilots had reported more than 40 UFO sightings, with one of the fly-bys that bizarrely triggered a launch code for its nuclear missile. Luckily, it was aborted within 15 seconds of the disappearance of the UFO. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, even corroborated that UFOs are real, with 7 mysterious objects seen during his flight in space.

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Joy Sanyapongse | Contributing Writer