ALIENS ARE REAL AND THEY ARE AMOGUS

This dataset tracks the number of UFO sightings reported annually to the National UFO Reporting Center from 1908 to 2013. I also made another dataset that tracks the number of movies about aliens that were made in that same time frame.

This graph charts the number of UFO sightings reported to the center each year from 1906 to 2014. Each blue dot represents some kind of event that may have had some influence on the presence of aliens in the public consciousness. Some are movie releases, and some are real life events like Roswell.

The first point represents October 30th, 1938, the War of the Worlds broadcast. This was an event in which the CBS radio station broadcasted a news report of an alien invasion inspired by H.G. Wells’ novel of the same name. The broadcast was fake, but the people listening to it did not know this, resulting in a mass panic. This broadcast was never intended to trick people, but anyone who tuned in late and missed out on the introduction of the broadcast was none the wiser. Zero sightings were reported in 1938.

The second point represents the Roswell Incident of 1947, in which conspiracy theorists claimed that a weather balloon that crashed in New Mexico was actually… AN ALIEN SPACESHIP (dramatic music). The balloon belonged to the U.S. military. They are typically very secretive about everything they do, and this frequently leads people to suspect them of hiding aliens. 37 sightings were reported in 1947.

The third point represents February 10th 1949, the release date of Bruce Gentry - Daredevil of the skies. It is (supposedly) the first work of cinema ever to feature a flying saucer. This movie also signaled the beginning of a new era of movies. The 1950s are generally thought of as a golden age for science fiction, and were arguably when aliens really started coming into the public consciousness*. This is when the number of monthly sightings started regularly reaching into the double digits, but it barely shows up on the annual graph because later years had hundreds per month, translating to thousands per year. 16 sightings were reported in 1949.

The fourth point represents August 25th 1953, the release date of the original War of the Worlds movie. It was a hit with both audiences and critics, but it also was part of the larger sci-fi trend of the 50s. 33 sightings were reported in 1953.

The fifth point represents April 3rd, 1968, which is the release of 2001 A Space Odyssey, one of the most popular science fiction movies of its time. 220 sightings were reported in 1968.

The sixth point represents June 22, 1979, the release of the first movie in the Alien franchise, one of the most famous pieces of media involving aliens to ever be made. 245 sightings were reported in 1979.

The seventh point represents June 25th, 1982, the release of The Thing, another sci-fi classic involving aliens. 183 sightings were reported in 1982.

The eigth point represents 1989. This is the year that a man named Robert Lazar came out with claims that he had worked on a secret project at area 51 to reverse-engineer alien technology, and that he had read secret government documents that confirmed that there are aliens living on earth, and described their involvement in human affairs. Conspiracy theories about the government facility had been floating around since the 1970s, but this was the first instance I could find where someone actually came out and made explicit claims about it. I could not find any evidence to support the claims made by Lazar. 251 sightings were reported in 1989.

The ninth point represents the year 1993, which is the year when the original X-files started. The show ran until 2002 and got popular pretty fast after it started, and this point also represents a turning point in the data, where the number of sightings per year suddenly has a steep increase, which keeps up through all of the data we have for the 21st century. My best guess as to the reason is that while there was other media about aliens before this, the X-Files dealt heavily with the themes of government conspiracy theories, and the idea of shadowy government affairs with aliens that are kept hidden from the public. I think these themes very much fall in line with UFO sightings because UFO sightings, like conspiracy theories, have an inherent element of mystery and ambiguity. You can’t prove that the United States government is NOT hiding aliens in giant test tubes in New Mexico, and you can’t prove that those flashing lights in the sky are NOT alien spaceships. 309 sightings were reported in 1993. Also, 2 years into the X-Files’ run, in 1995, sightings hit 1078, breaking a thousand for the first time. In 1999 they hit 2805 and never dipped below two thousand ever again.

Another thing worth noting is that this is around the time that the conspiracy theorist David Icke started gaining traction. He was the one who originally came up with the idea that the government is secretly run by reptillian creatures. He gave his first press conference in 1991. I could ramble forever about the insane things he did so I’ll spare you the details but his theories became some of the most popular alien-related theories out there and his influence on pop culture is still felt today.

The tenth point represents May 9th, 1997, which is the release date of the Fifth Element, another classic sci-fi movie about aliens having secret interactions with human authority figures. 1255 sightings were reported in 1997.

After the nineties it becomes a lot more difficult to find specific high-profile events related to UFOs or conspiracy theories about aliens. My best guess as to why is that as claims of alien encounters became more common, they became less special. I also think that eventually, the people who genuinely believe in aliens galvanized into their own community, which at this point is more or less separate from mainstream pop culture. So there are still thousands of sightings every year, but no one really cares anymore.

I also think that these days aliens feel like the least of our worries. No one can afford rent or food, wealth inequality is greater than it was at the time of the french revolution, no one from my generation will ever be able to afford a home, and now many many countries are once again installing fascist governments. These problems make little green guys seem trivial in comparison.

The eleventh point represents Jun 25, 2013, which is the day on which the United States government formally acknowledged the existence of area 51. 7038 sightings were reported in 2013.

The graph on the left is the same annual sightings data from before. The graph on the right is a graph that charts the number of movies made per year within the same timespan that feature aliens as part of their plot. We can see that sightings start to increase into a visible range starting in the 1950s, the same time as the so-called golden age of science fiction I mentioned before. We can also see that when sightings started to really increase dramatically in the late nineties, that coincided with a sharp uptick in the number of alien-related movies being released.

I think the main confounding variable for this data is phones. People probably saw weird lights in the sky in the early 20th century, but if they weren’t near a physical reporting center or didn’t have a phone, they didn’t have any way to report it. The increases in sightings in the fifties and sixties coincide with the rise of science fiction, but they also coincide with the proliferation of landline telephones. And the massive increases we saw in the 2000s coincide with the advent of cellphones.