Table of Contents
Michigan UFO Sightings Analysis
We analyzed all 3,649 UFO sighting reports in Michigan to identify possible patterns and gain insight into the phenomenon:
- The most commonly reported UFO shape or appearance is "light" (739 reports, 20.25% of total).
- July is the month with the most reported UFO sightings (539 reports, 14.77% of total).
- Saturday is the weekday with the most reported UFO sightings (688 reports, 18.85% of total).
- 11/16/99 is the single date with the most UFO sightings reported (33 reports, 0.90% of total).
- 2012 is the year with the most UFO sightings reported (237 reports, 6.49% of total).
- Sightings occur more often during the night, between the hours of 20:00 - 23:59 (1,834 reports, 50.26% of total).
20 Most Recent UFO Sightings in Michigan
These Michigan UFO reports are presented as they were submitted other than paragraph breaks added for easier readability where necessary. You can click the 'Report' link to view the original report along with any photos that may have been submitted to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).
Full Report Text:
Bright white morphing UFO At approx. 11:33 A.M.
on April 18th 2024 in the sky above Clinton Township, MI. I witnessed what I can only describe as a bright white slowly morphing triangular, curved UFO that appeared to be moving across the sky from West to East. It moved silently at a height I can only guess was at about 5000 feet.
I watched it until it went past the sun then appeared to quickly ascend into a tiny dot which I couldn't see any longer. It appeared to morph from a triangular shape at first with a hole in the center then to a curved wing shape eventually looking like oval at times before completely disappearing. It did not dissipate like a cloud would have and looked to ascend rapidly out of site into the upper atmosphere when I could no longer spot it with the naked eye.
Full Report Text:
A fast moving line of lights breaking formation briefly then reforming a line before disappearing. This was a line of 5 (maybe 5) white lights, evenly spaced moving extremely fast, like a meteor. If you hold your palm to your face at arms length, they covered the distance of your pointer finger and moved in the direction they were oriented, so that there was one in the front and one in the rear.
At first we thought they were star link but they moved so fast and at the top of the arc, directly overhead, a few broke formation, swirled around the others and then fell back in formation just as they disappeared above the glow of Kalamazoo in the west. They moved from east to west. They appeared to be in space though I can’t exactly explain why I’m confident of that.
There was no sound. They covered horizon to horizon in about 2 seconds or less. I’ve never seen anything like it.
I’ve never seen a ufo before. I’m skeptical that alien technology has visited earth but it’s hard for me to explain what technology exists that would behave that way. I’m very curious to learn more.
Full Report Text:
Spotted a black object that was humongous, turned into 2 black objects. Others saw it, and said so on Facebook group Port Huron, MI Black object looking like a huge long statue turning into 2 as it moved further away west.
Full Report Text:
At first i thought it was just a partial moon, but it looked like a thin cylinder, then after about 3 mins it moved over my house. Bright white craft , with red and blue lights underneath it in some type of basket shape.
Full Report Text:
Did not fly in a straight line The light was steady as in sitting in one spot. It kept zipping around from one spot to another?? And seemed to stay in one area. I could not say it had a shape because it was too far away with the naked eye.
Full Report Text:
I saw a light going up down and all around. They weren't going straight and did not blink I went out back of my apartment to take my dog to go to the bathroom. I looked up into the night sky and saw the direction they were going.
Up down and around. Not straight. It was 10:15 and I heard voices coming from my neighbors apartment.
I knocked on the door and told them about it. They looked and were amazed.
Full Report Text:
Stunningly well-defined ball of white, green and red colored lights, as it was falling! Witnessed by myself with no others. Stepping out of my house at 10:11pmEST/NE lower Michigan To go to the garage and noticed a rapidly falling ball of light: red, green, and white, quickly falling to earth. The colors of red, green and white were stunning- bright and clear.
Approximately 50°F with clear Sky and no wind,a good night for stargazing. The quick fall lasted approximately a full second. I am former photographer / dark room tech who knows the difference between 1/1000 of a second and 1/250 of a second.
The white light seem to be brighter than the red and green, but the red and green were not dim by any means ! I almost called 911 because of the unusual configuration and clearness of the object. The ball of light did not Fade in nor Fade out. More akin to a light switch as it was falling.
The background was clear sky/no moon visible with the stars clearly visible, including Polaris. The big dipper clearly visible. There was No problem visualizing the red and green colors within the circle shaped object.
The colors were opaque and clear. No sound was heard.
Full Report Text:
I viewed an extremely bright white object falling rapidly with orange exhaust almost in lines. I think it was an object, but I do not know what it was. It was an extremely bright white object that was descending rapidly.
It appeared almost like a half-disc or shieId/or a down arrow but in 1-2 seconds it is hard to explain what I saw. It also had orange lines or "streaks" behind it of which what I would deem to be fire-type lines behind it in the fall. It fell so fast and was an extremely large object which tells me it was rather close.
I know I can't measure how far away I was from this object but this was very very close to me. There is an old AF base due North of me as well which I believe is still in some active phase. To me this object appeared to be crashing, so it being a meteor came to mind.
I just don't know. I have seen many many things in my life and being up late often or into the morning probably leads to these numerous sightings. I was out on a walk when I saw this.
Full Report Text:
@ 100 ft tall and 10 ft wide, looked like two vertical rows of lights, approx 300-500 feet high in the sky I have been seeing a lot of drones flying around and have been keeping an eye out early in the mornings. This morning I saw a massive object flying low across the sky. It was tall, maybe 100 feet tall, but very narrow, maybe 10 feet wide.
It looked similar to the examples of the Starlink sightings from a distance, but this was not far away and appeared to be a singular object. It was moving relatively slow, similar to that of a drone or a small aircraft. It startled me and I needed a witness, so I woke up my wife and she saw it as it moved off in the distance and disappeared into the horizon after about 5 minutes.
Looking at it through the binoculars, she thought it looked like 2 rows of vertical lights, but couldn’t make out the shape of a craft. To me, it looked like a huge ufo riding vertically through the night sky. But I was too busy trying to get footage on my cell phone and then waking up my wife to get enough of a view to have a firm opinion.
The speed makes me think it was man made, but I’ve never seen anything like it and here I am posting, so it was something!.
Full Report Text:
I witnessed a cylindrical craft flying through the sky and then it poof disappeared. At 1st I thought it was a contrail but there was no airplane or anything in front to be making a contrail and it was not acting like any contrail I’ve ever seen by maintaining consistent short length. ••I have a great video of this event but it won’t load or attach.
I’ll try 1 more time but if it doesn’t again work then you’ll need to email me for the video.
Full Report Text:
Very fast long white light! This was moving very fast, too fast to be an airplane. Was bright white, almost blinding. Was parallel to ground.
It was long and rounded like a cigar would be. It only appeared for 3-6 seconds and vanished. I kept looking in the direction it was traveling to see if I saw it again but nothing.
It did not have a trail or tail behind it to indicate a comet or similar. It was approximately 600-800 feet up. The area is wide open so nothing to obscure the sky and what was seen.
Full Report Text:
I saw something moving north leaving a white trail. Movement blur was to north too. it moved slowly and then shot off disappearing.
It seemed to only hold color as a faint outline a bit of yellow and the skin white. The movement blur you get when something moved was going on the wrong direction (north). It has almost no color on the top and bottom doom.
There was a dark grey to blackish line around the middle. It was moving north with a trail behind it. It was moving horizontal to the earth in a straight line.
It made no noise. It was going way slower than a plane it anything I've seen before. After about a minute it so it shot off and disappeared.
It like faded away. I stopped to pick up a passenger and I knew she had saw it too and she asked me what the hell that was. She's a proper old lady who doesn't normally cuss and hearing her made it all the more real to me.
Neither one of us knows what we saw but we know we'd never seen something like that before.
Full Report Text:
Hovered in one general area for almost an hour; quickly changed directions and made figure 8 patterns The brightest light I have ever seen in the sky. This was a clear night, very minimal cloud coverage. I could see almost all the stars in the sky.
It had almost like an omni directional white light coming from it but it wasn't quite white. I've never seen a white like this. Almost blue/white that seemed to move but it had a rainbow like luminescent glow coming from around it.
I could make out blue, green and red. I put my binoculars on it and it looked like an orb. I couldn't make out anymore details.
I watched it for almost an hour. It moved up and down, left to right, it made figure 8's, hovered in the same general area. I thought it might have been a drone, but even professional done batteries only last 30 minutes or so.
We also live near an International Airport, and being a pilot myself, I know what planes look like and sound like. I've never seen anything like this. I watched other commercial and general aviation aircraft move around it almost the whole time.
Full Report Text:
I witnessed a long black flat line flying through the sky but recorded a white tic tac ufo during the event I was in my backyard and I witnessed an object flying through the sky just beyond my yard, it appeared to be a long black flat line “_____”. I stumbled to get my phone to record and take images. I held the camera above my head because there were tall bushes blocking the view otherwise as I walked closer to the UAP while recording.
I was very surprised when I reviewed the video and images right afterward because the object in the video and images does not at all match what I seen with my naked eye. The video showed a white tic tac shaped object rather than the much longer thin black flat line that I had witnessed.
Full Report Text:
Saw large stone-pink vertical "cresent moon" out a West-facing window; it later moved right, then object became horizontal & went dark. I was laying on my back, feet in the West, watching a movie on my cell phone & was holding the phone horizontally. Behind the phone was a West-facing window overlooking Cyclone Park - and I could see the dark night sky through the window above the phone as I watched the movie.
I noticed in the sky what I perceived to be a large stone-pink vertical "crescent moon" that was largely blocked by a tall pine tree. More focused on the movie than the sky, I then noticed I could see the vertical stone-pink "crescent moon" more clearly, as it had shifted right - but was not higher than its original position. Next, I noticed the shape of the stone-pink "crescent moon" had rotated, so that it was horizontal, like a mushroom cap.
I have two cell phones, and while holding one for the movie, the other was in arm's reach. I grabbed the other cell phone in order to quickly snap a photo. It was as if the object had a dimmer switch, and while I snapped one photo with "some" of its light visible, when I went to click the video button, the brightness of the stone-pink object faded to black.
It was in its lit version, and then went black (no stone-pink glow, just darkness) as soon as I clicked the video button. Upon viewing the photograph, you can see it's a very massive grey metal disk, with 3 lights forming a triangle shape on the left of the disk, with at least 1 light visible on the right of the craft. The photo shows a 40°-45° angle from left to right.
The grey of the craft is seen in its entirety, but it appears more light/visible near the bottom of the craft. Since I saw the large nature of the object in the sky, it's easy for me to see it standing out in grey compared to the night sky behind it in the photo. As I wanted to share the photo with others who were not there, I experimented with making the craft stand out more from the sky background by using a sepia/brown tone visual filter, and also using a contrast filter which lightens the entire photo and shows the craft in its grey metal color.
The video shows only 2 lights on the craft, for example: one light at a 12 o'clock position & one light at a 6 o'clock position. Almost like safety tailights, but spaced on either side of the disk. Please note that I am a new visitor to the area, and when I visited approximately 3-5 years ago, I "also" witnessed what I thought was a very fast, smaller triangle-shaped craft.
Lastly, I took a final video about 1-3 hours after this sighting -- of a light very far overhead in the sky after having already captured the initial photo & video earlier, but "that" 2nd video could be capturing a planet versus an object (it bounces around & "dances" in a plasma-like orb).
Full Report Text:
I experienced a flash of green light that surrounded me and the entire area I was in caught on camera At 1:21 AM on Friday, January 12 I was outside shoveling and a flash of green light that surrounded me as if every thing around me turned green like the sun turned on at 1:21 green bright and I got it on my Waze camera. The recording is black-and-white , but the flash of light is amazingly bright, and it shines around my building across the street apartment complex next to me. I can’t explain it.
Full Report Text:
We saw 4 lights moving together across the sky We were looking up at the stars in our backyard in Grosse pointe farms, in the direction of Lake Saint Clair and saw 4 dots moving in sync across the sky from the North to the South. They were orange/yellowish in color and moved together quickly and unchanging in shape- they formed the shape of a V with three dots on one side and one dot on the other (my son drew a picture of it right after we saw it, so we wouldn’t forget). They were not as high up as a commercial airplane would be but not as low down as a bird or something like that.
It lasted less than 3 seconds and then they disappeared.
Full Report Text:
A bright orange light hovered motionless shining in my window. I was awake looking at my cell phone when suddenly I noticed a bright orange light shining in the window at the foot of my bed. I put my cell phone down so I could better discern what I was seeing.
With no other light on in my room, I could see that the orange light was not moving and bright enough to light the wall above my head. I got out of bed and walked to the window which overlooks into the back yards of the neighbor's houses to the west. At first it was difficult to discern the orb's distance.
Clearly it was not moving but was hoovering about 12 feet above the ground. I parted the curtains and as I did the orb slowly began moving south between the houses. As it disappeared behind the house nearest to me, I looked for the light's reflection on the wall of the adjacent house, but I could see none.
I looked for other evidence of the orange light above the roofs but could see none. I though the orb could have been a drone someone got for Christmas, but it made no noise.
Full Report Text:
Steady and perfectly horizontal flying bright orange orb It was right after midnight on new years, I had stayed up for the sake of the holiday. I hadn’t had anything to drink as I had just stayed home. I had heard what were fireworks going off so I looked outside to see if they were close enough.
Very initially as my experience started, my head goes to this being one of the fireworks. But then this thing was just going perfectly horizontal. And was way too perfectly circular to be a firework.
It wasn’t fast but wasn’t terribly slow either, just very steady and perfectly horizontal.
Full Report Text:
A simple sighting which lasted one second. As I was driving southbound down Woodward avenue (Woodward avenue runs at an angle so it isn’t true south) , before coming to the nine mile intersection, I had my eyes on the road. A sphere approximately the size of a basketball, which had no color but was shining in a way you can imagine some white shining light bulb.
This object flew across in front of my vehicle , the object was flying westbound coming from eastbound at a very high speed I can not really estimate. (Keep in mind this road doesn’t run directly south but at an angle) The object appeared to have been flying straight from the east to the west but as it passed my vehicle it went up at 3 o’clock. I estimate it came in at 9 o clock from how I could see, but I did not see what angle it flew in on before it came in front of my vehicle.
I do not know if it came from the sky before I got to see it. it couldn’t have been more than above 7 feet above ground, I am estimating. it flew in the middle of my windshield view of my sedan and its distance away was easier to estimate than its height above ground.
It was 4-7 feet away from the front bumper end of my car. am only writing this because there were other people around but I do not know if anyone else noticed or filed a report as well. It flew by so fast, that it’s possible not many people were looking at the spot I was during my drive.
Unfortunately, I don’t have too much more information for you because i could not look up to my 2 or 3 o’clock in my car to follow the sphere due to obstacles, and I couldn’t of seen much because there were many buildings blocking the view of potential paths the sphere would have taken as it went up. Someone else may have had some sighting and I hope this fits into some puzzle of other sightings in the vicinity. This is the first time I’ve ever seen something like that, and I am surprised it was so small and in a populated area.
I really wish I could of gotten a better view or more time. I hope someone else did and this information helps.
Michigan UFO Sightings By Shape
This is a standardized set of shapes a UFO report can be filed under.
Shape / Appearance | Sightings | % Of Total |
---|---|---|
Light | 739 reported sightings | 20.25% of all reports |
Triangle | 388 reported sightings | 10.63% of all reports |
Circle | 363 reported sightings | 9.95% of all reports |
Fireball | 270 reported sightings | 7.40% of all reports |
Unknown | 266 reported sightings | 7.29% of all reports |
Disk | 220 reported sightings | 6.03% of all reports |
Sphere | 217 reported sightings | 5.95% of all reports |
Other | 215 reported sightings | 5.89% of all reports |
Oval | 164 reported sightings | 4.49% of all reports |
Formation | 135 reported sightings | 3.70% of all reports |
Cigar | 84 reported sightings | 2.30% of all reports |
Changing | 81 reported sightings | 2.22% of all reports |
Rectangle | 76 reported sightings | 2.08% of all reports |
Cylinder | 53 reported sightings | 1.45% of all reports |
Diamond | 52 reported sightings | 1.43% of all reports |
Flash | 50 reported sightings | 1.37% of all reports |
Teardrop | 28 reported sightings | 0.77% of all reports |
Egg | 27 reported sightings | 0.74% of all reports |
Cone | 18 reported sightings | 0.49% of all reports |
Chevron | 17 reported sightings | 0.47% of all reports |
Orb | 17 reported sightings | 0.47% of all reports |
Cross | 10 reported sightings | 0.27% of all reports |
Star | 4 reported sightings | 0.11% of all reports |
Michigan UFO Sightings By Month
This data point is an aggregation of all UFO reports by the month the sighting occured in.
Month | Sightings | % Of Total |
---|---|---|
July | 539 reported sightings | 14.77% of all reports |
August | 430 reported sightings | 11.78% of all reports |
June | 379 reported sightings | 10.39% of all reports |
September | 365 reported sightings | 10.00% of all reports |
October | 309 reported sightings | 8.47% of all reports |
November | 308 reported sightings | 8.44% of all reports |
April | 245 reported sightings | 6.71% of all reports |
May | 235 reported sightings | 6.44% of all reports |
March | 216 reported sightings | 5.92% of all reports |
December | 195 reported sightings | 5.34% of all reports |
February | 179 reported sightings | 4.91% of all reports |
January | 177 reported sightings | 4.85% of all reports |
Michigan UFO Sightings By Weekday
This data point is an aggregation of all UFO reports by the day of the week the sighting occured on.
Weekday | Sightings | % Of Total |
---|---|---|
Saturday | 688 reported sightings | 18.85% of all reports |
Sunday | 573 reported sightings | 15.70% of all reports |
Friday | 528 reported sightings | 14.47% of all reports |
Thursday | 461 reported sightings | 12.63% of all reports |
Tuesday | 452 reported sightings | 12.39% of all reports |
Monday | 440 reported sightings | 12.06% of all reports |
Wednesday | 435 reported sightings | 11.92% of all reports |
Michigan UFO Sightings By Date (Top 5)
This data point is an aggregation of all UFO reports by the date the sighting occured on, limited to the top 5 dates with the most sightings.
Date | Sightings | % Of Total |
---|---|---|
11/16/99 | 33 reported sightings | 0.90% of all reports |
12/22/19 | 16 reported sightings | 0.44% of all reports |
07/04/11 | 11 reported sightings | 0.30% of all reports |
07/04/10 | 10 reported sightings | 0.27% of all reports |
07/04/09 | 9 reported sightings | 0.25% of all reports |
Michigan UFO Sightings By Time
This data point is an aggregation of all UFO reports by the time of day the sighting occured during. We took logical 4 hour windows in order to split the day into early morning, morning, afternoon, evening, night, and late night buckets for this analysis.
Time Of Day | Hours | Sightings | % Of Total |
---|---|---|---|
Night | 20:00 - 23:59 | 1,834 reported sightings | 50.26% of all reports |
Late night | 00:00 - 03:59 | 562 reported sightings | 15.40% of all reports |
Evening | 16:00 - 19:59 | 496 reported sightings | 13.59% of all reports |
Early morning | 04:00 - 07:59 | 278 reported sightings | 7.62% of all reports |
Morning | 08:00 - 11:59 | 204 reported sightings | 5.59% of all reports |
Afternoon | 12:00 - 15:59 | 203 reported sightings | 5.56% of all reports |
Years with Reported UFO Sightings in Michigan
These are running counts of how many UFO sighting reports are filed per year in Michigan.
Cities with Reported UFO Sightings in Michigan
These are running counts of how many UFO sighting reports are filed per city in Michigan