How many ‘ufo’ sightings go unreported? (phenomena, UFO, lights)

[saltine]

I’ve known a few (12) people that claim to have seen unidentifiable/strange lights or craft. None have made official reports. I’m guessing for every report there must be at least 10 not reported. Any guesses?

[Vasily]

I don't know, but an internal survey in a company gets a 30-40% return rate on the average, and a survey sent to people outside the company gets a 10-15% return rate typically. As this article notes, it's a matter of motivation:

https://www.surveygizmo.com/resource...esponse-rates/

When a customer or client complains about something, a rule of thumb I've heard somewhere is that you can expect there are 10 people who do not complain; user complaints are the tip of an iceberg of unsatisfied customers.

There are few positives to reporting a UFO or a paranormal experience, and a lot of potential negatives -- unwanted publicity, being viewed as a nut case, getting on some government list, difficulty with employers, and so on. My guess is at least 10 unreported sightings for every reported sighting due to the strong disincentives. Out of all the people I've known in my life, there are seven who say they've seen UFOs (including me). None of them were reported. The sightings range from oddly behaving lights in the sky to near-ground sightings of apparent craft to possible abductions. I don't think any of these people were yanking my chain, and none of these experiences have an easy explanation.

[rstevens62]

Id say the number is very high, most UFO sightings happen very quick, you could be sitting in traffic and staring off at the sky and see something strange, its gone within seconds, its probable that many people would forget about it or chalk it up a mis-ID.

However if you read thru all the UFO sighting reports, there are many similarities, unfortunately it just raises more questions.

[Dd714]

Originally Posted by saltine

I’ve known a few (12) people that claim to have seen unidentifiable/strange lights or craft. None have made official reports. I’m guessing for every report there must be at least 10 not reported. Any guesses?

Not sure, but if this thread is correct and 92% of these sighting are explainable (and the rest they just don't know), I'm guessing that unless they are darn well positive it's not an airplane, or a satellite, or the neighbors drone, or the millions of other reasons, they stay unreported.

UFO investigators probably have a tough enough time keep up with all the crackpots making claims they saw something.

//www.city-data.com/forum/unexp...ings-were.html

[saltine]

Originally Posted by Dd714

Not sure, but if this thread is correct and 92% of these sighting are explainable (and the rest they just don't know), I'm guessing that unless they are darn well positive it's not an airplane, or a satellite, or the neighbors drone, or the millions of other reasons, they stay unreported.

UFO investigators probably have a tough enough time keep up with all the crackpots making claims they saw something.

//www.city-data.com/forum/unexp...ings-were.html

A crackpot may be more likely to report one. Us regular folks just don’t bother

[Mark S.]

Originally Posted by saltine

I’ve known a few (12) people that claim to have seen unidentifiable/strange lights or craft. None have made official reports. I’m guessing for every report there must be at least 10 not reported. Any guesses?

The sightings are unreported, then a guess is all we have.

I have seen a UFO 3 times in my life. Only one of them was truly weird. Other than telling friends and family about it and blathering about it on this forum, I didn't report it to any official agency.

[RocketDawg]

If I officially (meaning to some sort of organization, not necessarily the government) reported seeing a UFO, I'd be darn sure that it was something totally unidentifiable and not just some strange lights in the night sky. I have never seen anything worthy of reporting. I've actually never seen anything in the sky or on the ground that I either didn't immediately know what it was, or knew in pretty short order.

[Vasily]

There are also weird and rare aerial phenomena that sometimes get reported as the result of UFO activity. For example, crown flashes:

Ice crystals above clouds dance and flash according to electric fields.

and fallstreak holes:

https://cloudappreciationsociety.org...understanding/

It's a wonderful world out there, even without extraterrestrials zooming around in our atmosphere.

[bagster]

Originally Posted by saltine

I’ve known a few (12) people that claim to have seen unidentifiable/strange lights or craft. None have made official reports. I’m guessing for every report there must be at least 10 not reported. Any guesses?

At least 90%, and this goes for all things paranormal.

[C24L]

i saw a UFO near Carlsbad New Mexico but i didnt report it.