They’re your friends, neighbors and co-workers sharing a passion that might surprise you.
Folks here in Connecticut -- tracking hundreds of UFO sightings across the state in just the past few years. So could this be fact… or is it fiction that’s just out of this world? Mary Cunningham lives in Vernon and says she saw her first unidentified flying object as a teenager.
"I looked up there and there was a pulsating vehicle, it wasn’t blinking lights, it was actually pulsating it was going to chew chew chew, streaking across the sky," said Cunningham.
And her second just this month in Bloomfield. “It was bright silver, there were no blinking lights, this thing itself was silver, and it looked like a shuttle of some kind."
Armando Landrian says he’s seen UFOs too, "Orbs, red orbs, primarily they have been around the Newington area."
Always eager to get a closer look, even if the quick encounters, believers say, make pictures rare. Landrian said, "I just happened to look up and there it is and you know I always tried to get a little closer."
And these members of the Connecticut UFO Network is president Mike Panicello who said, "It’s not just a small handful of people they are being reported all over Connecticut."
According the National UFO Reporting Center there were 108 sightings in Connecticut in 2018. Your neighbors and friends calling in sightings in West Hartford, Newington, Danbury, Burlington and Bristol to name a few.
The 80-plus encounters from 2017 came from places like Hartford, Shelton and Manchester. And in 2016 people in Colchester, Canton and Watertown say they saw some of the 74 reported UFO sightings that year.
Panicello said, "It doesn’t make us look crazy, because we can say to the public, well look, all these other people have seen this stuff." Marc D’Antonio is the photo and video analyst for the Mutual UFO Network. He has an astronomy degree and tours the country talking about UFOs.
From the telescope in his front yard he keeps his eyes on the sky. Marc D’Antonio said, "My passion is in trying to find the answer."
And from his office he sorts through the UFO snapshots that come his way from around the world. He says what people are usually seeing are birds, bugs and everyday aircraft – So why so much confusion?
"These ordinary objects become extraordinary on film because they leave a funny streak or they look odd, so that, 99% of what we see are those types of things."
But what about the rest? D’Antonio said, "That one percent is what we’re after."
And he’s not ruling anything out. " Are there aliens on spaceships? There very well may be and there is no reason to suspect that that can’t be."
Mary and Armando agree.
These folks know there are people at home won’t buy into what they believe about UFOs. They’re not on a mission to change the way you think – they just hope you’ll keep an open mind the next time you look up.
D’Antonio said, "These people are not out of their mind, they are not crazy they are not nuts they just want to get to the bottom of the truth, to find out the answer."
For more information on the Connecticut Mutual UFO Network click here.