Top Ten UFO Encounters That Were Debunked the Least Accurately

In 1980, there was another very strange encounter, this time in a forest called Rendlesham, somewhere in England. What hits me the most about this one is that there was actually a big government official who saw this phenomenon, and almost everyone in the area argues with the explanation.

In late December, almost Christmas time (maybe Santa was the explanation?), there was a series of reports of strange lights around the forest. Most people said they were clearly UFOs or aliens. It sounds like a standard UFO sighting, but this actually took place around a government base of the United States Air Force. Many of the government officials there saw the lights too and even this really important guy, Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt, saw the same things.

The rest of the government refused to investigate, and even though they didn't investigate, they said the lights were "a lighthouse, a fireball in the sky, and really bright stars," all on the same night. Seriously? Maybe it was just some natural phenomenon but that explanation is very bad.

This one is known as the first ever UFO sighting, and it actually gave birth to the phrase "Flying Saucer." A pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying his aircraft in Washington when he apparently saw nine glowing blue objects fly past at an estimated speed of 1700 mph. He also said they were going in V formation.

He thought it was some crazy new military aircraft because the Cold War had just started, a couple of years after the Second World War, but the government said no tests were anywhere near where he was flying. The only theories people offered, which were not intelligent theories, were that he was either hallucinating or he had seen "clouds of snow" bloom from the sky. What really made this a big deal was that another famous unsolved UFO mystery happened just a couple of weeks later with the same "saucers."

In 1981, this standard farmer living on the outskirts of a small town in France said he heard a really weird, high-pitched sound, and right after that saw a flying saucer land in his fields, which was lead-colored and took off almost immediately.

It may sound like a standard make-believe UFO sighting right now, but it wasn't. The farmer immediately contacted the police, who took soil and plant samples, which had chemical evidence consistent with the heating of the soil and pressure of a heavy object. There were also traces of zinc, phosphate, and evidence of strange characteristics of the plants nearby.

The only explanation by skeptics was that the smooshed plants could have been caused by tires or that the French military was testing experimental craft. Not likely.

Alright, this is some creepy stuff. Like something straight out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (I honestly thought that movie was a little boring). Anyways, in that movie, there was a scene where the UFO makes the electronics in a car go crazy. One day, tons of citizens in this place in Texas, Levelland, said the exact same thing, either seeing a rocket or strange lights that made their cars go haywire. Engines died and lights cut out.

The police were informed and they thought it was all lies, but then they saw the same lights with their own eyes. The explanation (so the government says) was an electric storm and ball lightning. I think that's all garbage because there was not a single thunderstorm reported in the area that night.

On an otherwise normal day in Washington, DC, in 1952, there was another strange incident. It started off with an unusual and unexpected aircraft appearing on the base's radar. Air traffic controllers at Ronald Reagan Airport detected movement on their radar that wasn't from any scheduled plane and was so quick it couldn't be detected by the radar screens.

In the next week, citizens, government people, and airline crew members reported seeing flashes of light, and there was a whole big fiasco. The Air Force had the biggest press conference since World War II to say that it was just a sudden huge amount of meteors, but people definitely saw something not at all like a meteor, and it appeared as a different frequency on the screens, so something's not right.

Something highly unusual happened at a school in Melbourne, Australia, in 1966. Over 300 students and teachers from two schools flocked out of the building to look at five planes surrounding a silvery, flying saucer-shaped UFO. This event spread the famous "flying saucer" idea even further.

They watched as the five planes attempted to "herd" the craft in the air to some destination for about 20 minutes before the UFO disappeared. The only real explanation was given by some Australian Skeptics, who said it was some kind of military protocol, but that's really weak. Today, there's a UFO-themed park in the area, and witnesses still gather there to discuss what happened.

In 1951, some really strange stuff started to happen. A few people outdoors looked up and saw a semicircle of lights floating above them at a really fast speed. Over the next few days, dozens of other people saw the exact same thing all across town, and there were actually photos snapped of the strange phenomenon, so the explanation can't be "lies" or "imagination of people," as are the usual explanations.

Some people say that the lights were just birds reflecting the luminescence from the town where the sightings were, Lubbock's new street lamps. I personally think that's a garbage explanation, and people who saw it agree, saying that the lights were going way too fast for the explanation being birds. What do you think?

An air raid over Los Angeles during WWII resulted in several civilians being killed when anti-aircraft fire fell back to earth. No confirmed Japanese planes were ever hit or even seen, but "something" was hovering over the super-secret Hughes Aircraft "Skunk Works" weapons factory.

This was later laughed off as war jitters and even made into the comedy movie "1941." The probable UFO truth was covered up.