Feb 20, 2024 - News
Interactive map: UFO sightings in Tennessee
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Area 51 isn't the only place in the country where people experience close encounters of the odd kind.
- People in the Nashville metro area have reported 657 UFO sightings since the dawn of the millennium, per National UFO Reporting Center data. That's a rate of 32.1 per 100,000 people.
Why it matters: Discussion and reports of UFOs — or the more modern term, UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomenon) — have been going more mainstream in recent years.
- Members of Tennessee's congressional delegation are part of the push for answers at the federal level.
Zoom out: The Nashville area's rate of sightings is less than the national average of 34.3 sightings per 100,000 people.
- The Tennessee counties with the highest rate of sightings per capita are in low-population rural areas — where the night skies skew a little darker.
Details: Anyone can submit a report to the UFO center, but volunteers there work to weed out what they consider obvious hoaxes or false reports.
The bottom line: Don't rush to stock up on Reese's Pieces. There's still no proof that we're being visited by extraterrestrials.
- Many of these sightings are likely military activity, satellites or scientific phenomena.