Case 38886:
A couple was standing on the porch at approximately 10:38 p.m. when they saw two orange orbs side by side above the eastern horizon over Apple Valley, Calif. Within seconds, the third orb lit up, shaping a triangle hovering near the horizon. Then another one appeared to the right before the first three orbs disappeared.
This is the description a couple reported to the Mutual UFO Network along with a video clip the couple shot June 4. It is among 26 UFO sightings reported so far this year in San Bernardino County, according to the MUFON database.
A nonprofit organization investigating UFOs, the MUFON gets about 700 sighting reports per month from all over the country, International Director David MacDonald said. Whether or not these reports are signs of alien spacecraft is a divisive question, but the idea of UFOs keeps fascinating people.
"I think it's the whole concept of other life somewhere else, other civilizations, whether they're like us or how they differ," MacDonald said.
About 90 percent of the reports are explainable by science, he said. Airplanes waiting to land get mistaken for UFOs all the time, along with advertising blimps, satellites, meteors and Venus.
"But it's those 10 percent that make your eyeballs roll," MacDonald said. "They defy logic and our mind and the rules of physics. We would investigate them as far as we can. But at this point, you have to say we don't know. And we have to define them as an unidentified flying object, though it doesn't mean they are extraterrestrial."
"Right now, there are people in prison convicted with less evidence than we have to support suspicion that extraterrestrial life is real," he claims.
Most of the UFO sightings are normal things that people see in a way they don't understand, said David Meyer, president of the High Desert Astronomical Society and associate professor at Victor Valley College.
"I've been interested in UFOs, but I've never seen one," said Meyer, who was an Air Force pilot for 21 years. "I see things that are strange. I didn't know what they were, but nothing that I can say was so unusual as to be extraterrestrial."
California, Texas and Florida gets the highest number of sightings, and Southern California is among the busiest because the area has many military installations, said Georgeanne Cifarelli, MUFON's Southern California director. Also, in Southern California many people report Chinese lanterns as UFOs.
Meyer watched the video of the June 4 sighting posted on the MUFON website. He said the orbs looked like flares that military aircraft would drop near the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, though he needed more details to reach a conclusion.
"As a scientist, a former pilot and an astronomer, I'm skeptical of the idea of extraterrestrial (life) on Earth, but I don't discount it," Meyer said. "There are many cases that are really unexplainable in any other way."
To access the MUFON database, visit http://mufon.com/mufonreports.html.
