Last updated on May 1, 2024

Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1981

This page aggregates and analyzes all UFO sighting reports made in Nebraska during 1981.

How many Nebraska UFO sightings were there in 1981?

  • There were 3 officially reported UFO sightings in Nebraska in 1981.
  • In 1981, Nebraska ranked #25 on the list of states with the most UFO sightings for that year.
  • Adjusted for population size, Nebraska ranks #11 in the list of states with the most reported UFO sightings in 1981, with an average of 0.19 reports per 100,000 residents.

Nebraska Cities with the most UFO Sightings in 1981

Rank City Number of Reports
1 Columbus, NE 1 UFO Reports
2 Lincoln, NE 1 UFO Reports
3 Wahoo, NE 1 UFO Reports

Nebraska UFO Sightings Analysis

We analyzed all 3 UFO sighting reports in Nebraska from 1981 to identify possible patterns and gain insight into the phenomenon:

Nebraska UFO Sighting Reports in 1981

This is a sampling of 20 Nebraska UFO reports from 1981, 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).

Wahoo, NE

Full Report Text:

Green neon saucer rose from behind trees to the left, rocked back and forth then accelerated over highway to west then vanished out I was driving home from Lincoln from watching a Nebraska football game on Nov 14, 1981. I live in Fremont, 50 miles north of Lincoln, and the midway point is approximately at Wahoo. I was listening to the car radio, so I decided to take the longer way home at around 7:30 pm.

North out of Wahoo, Highway 77 turns east 5 miles, then turns north again toward Fremont. I had just made this turn north, when my radio started cutting out. The early winter hours made it dark by this time, and nobody was on this road.

I started to fidget with the radio tuner thinking it was going out, and within 100 yards-- in front and to the left of the road--a bright craft rose up behind a row of trees flanking a run-down shed. It was a weird neon green color-- surrounded by a halo. It rocked back and forth quickly and several times in a jerky, erratic movement.

It was in my sight for so long I was able to make out something like "windows", and inside these "windows" I saw these weird, creepy "things"-- silhouettes of beings or something-- flitting back and forth. The craft accelerated to the right-- over the highway to the east, and the minute it passed entirely over the road, it fizzled out like a fireworks display. My radio came back on again, and I looked at my watch wondering if I'd lost time, but it seemed about the same as before-- around 730 pm.

As you can imagine, I hit the gas and flew the last 10 miles back to Fremont. I told my family members over the next couple days and they didn't know what to think, I'm sure. Since then at this area north of Wahoo, the shed has been demolished, but the windbreak of trees are still there-- now only flanked by cornfields.

I've never seen anything like this, before or since, but it sticks out clearly in my head to this day.

11/14/81 7:30 PM

UFO Shape: cigar

Lasted: ~1 minute

Report

Lincoln, NE

Full Report Text:

Large Object hovering at low altitude in sky in Lincoln Nebraska This episode has bothered me for years. I just found this site and decided to relay information on what I saw this evening. Over the years, I have forgotten the exact date, but it's as close as I remember it.

My dad was diagnosed with cancer just a couple of days before this and was a patient at what was then St. Elizabeth's Hospital (I believe on South 70th St.).

My husband and I lived in South Lincoln South of Old Cheney Road between 27th & 40th St. As we were driving home from the hospital we saw what looked like a monstrous round spaceship. I actually feel silly putting this into writing, as most everyone I know would write me off a kook.

We spotted it about 5,000 - 8,000 feet up in the air over South Lincoln near 48th St. It was in the air long enough for us to come home and watch it literally "hover" in the air without a single sound (other than a dull hum) from the time we spotted it at approx 48th & O St. to our home.

My husband and I were literally frozen. We don't remember hearing each other talk, although I know I was speaking. The next day we asked people at work and found just one person who witnessed the same object hovering in the air that night before.

The best way to describe this object was that it was very similar in size & shape as the "Mother Ship" in "Close Encounters." I would swear under oath about this experience.

11/01/81 10:00 PM

UFO Shape: sphere

Lasted: 3-5 minutes

Report

Columbus, NE

Full Report Text:

The year & month is estimated above, but the exact date will coincide with sightings of lights all over the midwest.Radio reports the next day were calling the unknown lights in the sky everything from snow geese to northern lights. It should be easy to nail down this date from old records somwhere.

The lights in the sky were reported from South Dakota to Kansas, and from Colorado to Iowa. It seemed to me the next day from the radio reports that we were in the center of things, and that what ever direction you went from our point of view most descriptions varied, but none were what we had seen or experienced. My story: I and a friend had been riding our motorcycles that evening and had returned to my home, a double wide along the Platte River between Columbus and Duncan Ne.

, shortly before midnight. I had been a long day ang we went inside for a short nightcap before my friend was going to head back home to Columbus. We had just had a different odd experience minutes before we reached my home.

as we turned off hiway 30 onto the blacktop road that led to my place the road suddenly was alive literally thousands of glittering jhewl like things, actually covering the road. It was not long before we realized what we were onto. thousands upon thousands of small toads on the road.

I was all we could do to keep from crashing as we mashed though them. We had to ride slowly with our legs extended to stay upright. Not to mention the sound and the splattering all over our bikes and ourselves.

Nausiating to say the very least. I all my years living there, and all the other odd things I have seen and experienced in that area, I had never ever seen that many toads, & green frogs, at one time on the road like that. There could not have been a square foot of open space anywhere on that whole two mile run! Back to the main story: It was after we hosed off the bikes and ourselves that we went into the house for a nightcap.

I had borrowed a clean pair of pants to my friend who was prolonging his trek home , in the hopes the mass of creatures would be dissipated by the time he left. We were seated in my dining area by the east window, which was open as were the rest of the windows in the house on that warm midsummer night. It had started to cool slightly but not to a chill as of yet.

I had poured a Crown Royal on the rocks for each of us and had no more than taken the first sip,(This I want to make perfectly clear, we had not even had one drink when this happened!),when all went suddenly completly quiet. Till then all the usual night noises were going on as usual. Cows baying in the distance, frogs and crickets, chirping down in the slew.

Night hawks, owls ,neibors dogs barking ect. It was so sudden and so completely quiet that we locked eyes and and froze for a second or two. When we looked to the window there was a dull red light on the widow sill, and a dull red glow everywhere outside.

I leaned over to the window and tryed to look up to see what was causing this but could not see anything. We got up and went to the bay windows to the south, facing the meadow betwen us and the the tree line along the river bank, about a half mile away. There in the sky, almost directly above us was a ring.

It looked like a smoke ring actually. A fat smoke ring , bright white with a red fringe on the edges. We grabbed a matched pair of my 22 caliber rifles and headed out the door down the steps , across the yard , through the slew and about 75 to 100 yards out into the meadow.

The hat had not yet been cut and we were knee to hip deep in grass. The ring was slowly getting larger and thinner directly above our heads. We were trying to figure out what this might possibly be, anthing from a exploded rocket,bomb, metorite,we just did not have a clue.

We watched the ring slowly expand for several minutes. The brightness never dimmed as it got bigger and thinner. As it did this we became aware that although we could see the stars on the outside of the rings all round we could not see any in the black center area of the ring.

It was a t this point that we were beginning to get a real creepy feeling about the whole thing. The moon was in plain sight to our southwest, at about a 45 deg. angle to the horizon.

Half the horizon away from the ring above our heads. This whole time not a sound could be heard and it seemed that our words were falling on dead air as well, as if we could not have heard each other had we been only a few more yards apart. Hard to explain! About the time that the ring covered 1/4 or slightly less of the sky area red spears of light started arcing down from the rings outer edge.

When these were mabey 1/4 of the way to the ground then white ones did the same spaced evenly between the red. At first we thought that the beams were very high and following the arc of the horizon but when the first ones came down far enough to the ground we could see that the beams were between us and the home place,(My fathers farm about 3/4 mile north of us.), and on the south side seemed to be within the 1/3 mile of tree line along the north river bank.

We were in side what I have can only call a cereal bowl effect. Like beeing in a bird cage. We could see stars between the beams.

then a sweet sickening smell was in the air. it was hard to breeth withthis putred sweet smell. First a pricking static like electricity in the air, then nothing.

We both began regaining our senses some time later several tens of yards apart. wet laying in the wet grass,( sitting up actually.) disorientated, at least 2hrs had passed since we first walked outside.

All was gone but a hint of the sickening sweet smell. We made our way back into the house and sat back down on at the table. The ice in our glasses had long melted.

The clock read 2:20-somthing. After about an hour my friend left for home. The next morning on the way to work was the first I heard the radio talk of all the sightings for 500 miles around us in each direction.

There were so many different versions, and experts versions all I could do was shake my head. My friend and I worked together, and discussed this only with a shrt list of friends after that. NOTE: I want absolutly no publicity over this!!! I am relaying this to you hoping mabey that you may have some other info relating to this for me, or some other similar event somwhere else.

This is the only reason for any contact I will accept. The only contact with me is though my e-mail, thank you. p.

s. I and my father had a sighting when I was about 10 yrs old at the farm. Since I have had three others, each different, one was simply spotting a oval shped object passing from a cloud though open blue sky and into or behind another cloud, only this this was reflecting the color of the sky behind it.

It did not change from the white color to match the blue sky right away and that is how I caught sight of it. this was about two years ago heading east on hiway 33 west of Crete ne. The other was summer 2000,.

I had taken my 12 year old daughter out with me to star gaze on the hill behind the lake community where we live. I have beendoing this periodically for years, yet had never seen anything. This was the first time I had let her stay up this late to go with me.

We had been there for about 15-20 minutes, and she was already whining about going back when we saw two objects comming our direction from the northwest. There is a gravel road about 1/3 mile west of us. You can here the gravel crunching under a cars tires from where we were.

The objects each had a bank of 5 lights in front of them. One was following the other just behind and to the west. They crossed the road west of us and the lights lit up the road like search lights.

I thought they were helicopters untill they got that close and made no sound at all. All we could see was the lights because they were so bright. They passed us less than 1/4 mile away to the north and dipped down out of sight in the valley northof us.

A few minutes later they popped up several miles north headed west this tim and then dipped down out of sight again. Even looking with binoculars at them as they were headed away we could not make out any shape of a craft. Just after they dipped out of sight the first time a car passed on the gravel road with the radio blairing and we could hear that well.

This happened about 5 miles north of Crete ne. at about 10:30 pm on a wednsday night. That is all I have to report.

Pardon any tyo's I am doing this fast as I am @ work.

06/06/81 11:59 PM

UFO Shape: other

Lasted: unknown

Report

Nebraska UFO Sightings From 1981 By Shape

This is a standardized set of shapes a UFO report can be filed under.

Shape / Appearance Sightings % Of Total
Sphere 1 reported sightings 33.33% of all reports
Cigar 1 reported sightings 33.33% of all reports
Other 1 reported sightings 33.33% of all reports

Nebraska UFO Sightings From 1981 By Month

This data point is an aggregation of all UFO reports by the month the sighting occured in.

Month Sightings % Of Total
November 2 reported sightings 66.67% of all reports
June 1 reported sightings 33.33% of all reports

Nebraska UFO Sightings From 1981 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 2 reported sightings 66.67% of all reports
Sunday 1 reported sightings 33.33% of all reports

Nebraska UFO Sightings From 1981 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
06/06/81 1 reported sightings 33.33% of all reports
11/01/81 1 reported sightings 33.33% of all reports
11/14/81 1 reported sightings 33.33% of all reports

Nebraska UFO Sightings From 1981 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 2 reported sightings 66.67% of all reports
Evening 16:00 - 19:59 1 reported sightings 33.33% of all reports

All Nebraska Cities with reported UFO sightings in 1981

These are running counts of how many UFO sighting reports were filed per city in Nebraska, in 1981

City Number of Reports View Reports
Columbus 1 UFO Reports Columbus UFO Sightings in 1981
Lincoln 1 UFO Reports Lincoln UFO Sightings in 1981
Wahoo 1 UFO Reports Wahoo UFO Sightings in 1981

Other Years with Reported UFO Sightings in Nebraska

These are running counts of how many UFO sighting reports are filed per year in Nebraska.

Year Number of Reports View Reports
2024 3 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2024
2023 19 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2023
2022 14 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2022
2021 14 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2021
2020 34 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2020
2019 31 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2019
2018 21 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2018
2017 25 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2017
2016 16 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2016
2015 23 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2015
2014 26 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2014
2013 30 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2013
2012 47 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2012
2011 27 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2011
2010 38 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2010
2009 26 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2009
2008 18 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2008
2007 29 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2007
2006 22 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2006
2005 14 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2005
2004 37 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2004
2003 28 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2003
2002 19 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2002
2001 19 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2001
2000 14 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 2000
1999 8 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1999
1998 10 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1998
1997 8 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1997
1996 2 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1996
1995 5 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1995
1994 2 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1994
1993 3 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1993
1992 1 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1992
1991 3 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1991
1990 3 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1990
1988 1 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1988
1987 1 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1987
1986 1 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1986
1985 5 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1985
1984 2 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1984
1983 2 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1983
1982 3 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1982
1981 3 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1981
1980 5 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1980
1979 3 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1979
1977 1 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1977
1976 2 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1976
1975 1 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1975
1972 1 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1972
1969 1 UFO Reports Nebraska UFO Sightings in 1969