The concept has captivated Americans for generations. Is there life beyond Earth? In 1947, unidentified crash wreckage near Roswell, New Mexico sparked worldwide attention.
More than 31 years later, the sci-fi hit Close Encounters of the Third Kind rekindled a wave of interest.
"I was skeptical I didn't know."
Denise Murter of Levittown, Bucks County changed her mind, when her dog suddenly woke her up in the middle of the night last spring.
"He was actually sitting up in bed growling like somebody was in our house."
Denise went to her backyard, and says she saw a number of odd lights, and large shape descending on her yard.
"I am seeing this large object with beams coming down," she explained. "They face downward, there was three of them on the bottom and around the side is windows with this beautiful bluish green light that's shining out of the windows."
Her experience was just a blip on the radar screen. There were dozens upon dozens of UFO sightings in Bucks County and the surrounding areas, last year.
"Through the summer it went up 700-percent," said Bob Gardner the State Section Director of MUFON.
According to the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, Pennsylvania usually gets eight to 10 sightings per month throughout the state. Last July, there were 63 across the state, and 114 total for the whole year. Of the total, more than 40 were in Bucks County alone.
"We're trying to figure out what's going on in Bucks County especially the Oxford Valley Mall area, that's where a lot of these sightings originated and they've just grown from there," Bob said.What people are seeing differs from witness to witness. The objects vary from star-like shapes, to triangles, to boomerangs and delta-like formations. Those had three white lights and one red light in the center.
Once a report has been made, investigators like Bob Gardner check it out.
"I check to see if there are any traces, traces of electromagnetism left."
He will also look for mutation of vegetation, burn marks, and radioactivity.
"They said it was like someone came out and put a microwave on top of my tree the leaves were all curled up and it was like it was radiated."
While Denise believes she indeed saw something from another world last year, a lot of UFO investigators won't go so far as to say 'yes it's alien'.
Some of the sightings have been ruled out as a hoax or explainable object. That said, one of the primary tasks for investigators is to rule out what it could be.
"We have diagrams to compare things to we also check satellites to see if there's any satellites in the area," Bob explained.
The most common false sightings tend to happen when the International Space Station or the Planet Venus are visible in the night sky.
But the experts are still stumped on what occurred around here, last summer. So much so, that they are gather for a UFO conference at Bucks County Community College on Saturday, to examine the sightings.
Despite what is not known, Denise says she knows what she saw and is now a believer.
"I really feel it's a UFO from another galaxy or something."
For more information:
UFO Evidence
MUFON
UFO Reporting Center
Project Blue Book
UFO Digest
UFO Casebook
UFOmaps.com
UFO Hunters as seen on The History Channel
Center for UFO Studies
Real-Time Sighting Map
UFO Abduction Quiz
