Statistical Summary of UFO Cases Received by NIDS

In September 1999, NIDS began mailings to police stations and some media outlets around the country in order to alert people to the new NIDS 24-hour UFO hotline. The purpose of the mailing was to persuade agencies and organizations that normally receive unwanted UFO reports from the public to pass them onto NIDS.

Telephone calls that reported UFOs were screened by NIDS investigators. Obvious pranks, delusional, and repetitive calls were excluded from further investigation. Meteor showers, missile launches, plausible astronomical positions and other well-known explanation for eyewitness testimony were examined. In cases where up to 50 calls came in during a missile launch or a meteor shower, only a single case was put into the database. The data were then subjected to the Vallee credibility index (see Vallee, J., Confrontations 1990) which assigns a numerical value to the quality of the investigator, whether a site visit was conducted and the number of additions needed to the data in order to conventionally explain the eyewitness testimony.

This preliminary analysis includes the first 484 cases from the NIDS hotline database accumulated since late September 1999 and represents a majority (70-75%) of recent sightings from 1999 and 2000.

Of the 484 database cases analyzed: 42% involved multiple eyewitnesses, 19.8% occurred during the day (6am-6pm), 65.3% lasted for longer than 1 minute, 75.8% occurred during clear weather, 17% were triangular craft, 24.8% were round or orbs, 11.8% were discs, 0.6% were cylindrical, 4.8% were oval or egg-shaped, 27.7% were witnessed from less than 600 feet, 89.9% were silent, 15% were hovering, 26.3% were described as slow/very slow or moving less than 100 mph, 22.2% were described as larger than ½ a football field.