National UFO Reporting Center

Reviewed by: Erin Livingston

Review date: April 02, 2025

Site Link: https://nuforc.org/

Archive Link: http://archive.today/7OEQ7

Keywords: Counter Archives, Crowdsourcing, Experimental Humanities

Data Sources:

• Publicly submitted UFO sighting reports
  
  • Metadata for each report: location, time, duration, UFO shape, summary/description of encounter
    
  • Images or drawings, note additional media on reports is rare
    
• Interviews with witness of notable reports, includes full transcripts and names/occupations of highlighted witnesses

Processes:

• Standardization of submitted UFO reports into summarized structured format of date, location, and sighting details
  
• Categorization of reports by description characteristics (craft shape or movement)
  
• Removal of personally identifiable information before publication
  
• Manually updating the online database of reports after review of submissions by a small team at NUFORC. Note this does not involve verification, only screening out entries as spam, offensive content, pranks, or other hoax submissions
  
• Collecting and highlighting particularly credible reports, such as those from pilots or ex-military personnel. These may receive follow-up interviews or blog posts.

Presentation:

The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) is a text-heavy web-based archive with a searchable database of UFO sightings. Users can submit reports of their own and browse submissions by date, state, or UFO shape. The website also highlights and features a small subset of reports deemed the most credible or interesting. These tend to be reports from trained observers like pilots, or those with clear video and photographic evidence. Highlighted cases live as investigation reports on the “Posts” page with more detailed information and witness interview transcripts. The site also includes a map page with UFO sightings marked in red and green dots, green noted as recent sightings.

Digital Tools Used:

• Static HTML/CSS based website with minimal interactive elements
  
• Manually maintained database or reports (Possibly CSV or basic SQL)
  
• Basic search with text-based filtering on date, state, and UFO shape
  
• Mapbox to display UFO sightings on a globe-style visualization

Languages:

• English

Review

The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) is a long-standing non-profit organization committed to documenting and preserving public reports of unidentified aerial phenomena. Established in 1974, there are over 150,000 reports collected on the site. NUFORC first started with a 24-hour hotline number, and an address to collect written reports. In 1995, the website and database was launched to make the extensive archive of sightings more accessible to the public, and to allow users to submit and search for reports digitally.

NUFORC is a unique community driven memory project which plays a crucial role in preserving historical and contemporary narratives of UFO encounters. This project operates at the intersection of folk memory and digital archiving, and challenges Western archival traditions that prioritize verification, institutional authority, and empirical evidence. Unlike traditional databases, NUFORC values subjective human experience as record and, in doing so, functions as a counter-archive that resists rigid demands of institutional legitimacy. This method is crucial and true to the unexplained nature of the subject-matter and creates a space for experiences that may not be believed or acknowledged within social frameworks. NUFORC’s value of personal testimony as a meaningful form of cultural record contributes to a broader discourse on how memory is sustained and legitimized in digital environments.

NUFORC not only archives UFO reports but also plays a role in shaping collecting imagery and mythology around unexplained encounters. The site’s images page compiles witness-submitted drawings which reflects how people visualize the unknown and contributes to a broader evolving cultural lexicon of UFOs and aliens. These material depictions, ranging from classic flying saucers to more abstract forms, reinforce the idea that myth and experience are intertwined. These images also create space for the importance of tactility in remembering and explaining experiences of the unknown. Witness generated drawings support a coalescing of memory around the unexplained and allows common visual themes to be explored.

While NUFORC excels at preserving and visualizing these narratives, its outdated infrastructure and opaque operational structure present limitations. The site operates with a small, largely anonymous team, with little public insight into the review process or preservation strategies. Additionally, while the Data Bank provides public access to UFO reports, its format of large, aggregated text-based reports, limits interactivity and data exploration. Filterable datasets, API access, and additional visualization tools could make it more engaging for researchers to explore witness reports.

The site also offers an interactive map, powered by Mapbox, that visualizes sightings on a globe. However, the effectiveness of this map tool is limited as the vast majority of submissions are concentrated in the U.S., creating a heavily skewed geographic dataset that distorts perceptions of global activity. The globe shows the U.S. in a near solid red, covered in sightings, with other countries practically empty. This imbalance likely stems from language barriers, with English the primary language of the site, limited regional awareness of NUFORC, and the site’s U.S. centric origin and outreach. Despite the belief in UFOs and alien encounters as a global phenomenon, the site does not realize its potential as an international platform for sightings, instead reinforcing a narrow view of siting distribution.

NUFORC’s significance lies in its role as an alternative archive that preserves experiences otherwise dismissed by mainstream culture. By providing a publicly accessible record of the unknown, it ensures that encounters with crafts and aliens - however ambiguous - are documented as part of a broader cultural memory. The project challenges traditional archival norms by valuing witness testimony and collective myth-making. While the site could benefit from modernization and more transparency, its presence creates a community for witnesses who want to share and make sense of the unexplained.

How are the collaborative aspects reflected in the project and are there elements that work particularly well?

The participatory nature of NUFORC creates a crowdsourced history of the unexplained, an inherently collaborative effort that relies on user submissions. This open-submission model allows for a diverse range of voices and experiences. The project provides comfort and validation to witnesses who are often emotionally affected by their experiences and may struggle to find support in their immediate circles. The collaboration of NUFORC provides a community of others and creates a network of understanding and open-mindedness. In this way, the project acts as a space for collective memory and emotional processing, where recording a UFO or alien encounter becomes part of its meaning.

Do you see an opportunity for collaboration that would be helpful to the project?

There is significant opportunity for NUFORC to collaborate with other myth and folklore repositories, as well as space-related archives, to deepen the cultural and historical context of UFO sightings and unknown encounters. Partnering with projects that track folklore, legends, or historical celestial events could provide insight on how these reports fit within broader patterns of myth-making. Additionally, integrating pop culture analysis, such as portrayals of UFOs and aliens in media/public perception could help examine shifts in reporting patterns over time. Fostering interdisciplinary collaborations could help NUFORC expand beyond documentation, offering more nuanced analysis of how cultural narratives shape encounters with the unknown.