UFOs Over Los Angeles County

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Editor's Note: the Almanac includes the following as speculation (or imagination) - not as established historical fact. We feature these and other stories in Mysterious L.A. as a part of the cultural fabric of Los Angeles County.

Since 1974, the National UFO Reporting Center has collected reports of possible UFO sightings from across the United States and provided summaries of these to the public. The non-profit organization was founded in Seattle by UFO investigator Robert J. Gribble. Its purpose is “to receive, record, and to the greatest degree possible, corroborate and document reports from individuals who have been witness to unusual, possibly UFO-related events.” The center has taken reports primarily by its telephone hotline, operated 24 hours daily, almost continuously since it was opened. Government and law enforcement agencies (such as FAA, National Weather Service offices, the U.S. military, NASA, and local emergency dispatch centers) are said to routinely refer callers from the public to its hotline with reports of possible UFO sightings.

The center says that it distinguishes its operations from other UFO monitoring organizations by providing summaries of its data to the public. Those determined by the center to be experienced UFO investigators are granted access to more detailed data.

With Los Angeles County in mind, the Almanac reviewed the center’s summarized reports from 1942 through mid-September 2021. Since 1942, 14,980 sightings had been reported in California and, of these, we found at least 2,970 in Los Angeles County. The number of sightings in L.A. County, broken down by community where pinpointed, are shown in the table below. For many reports since 2014, comments in the report note that the sighting might have actually been of Starlink satellites (a network of 1,600 SpaceX satellites that provide global internet access). We also noticed that, besides the obvious larger numbers reported for the county's most populated cities (Los Angeles, Long Beach, Burbank), there were also relatively large numbers of sightings reported in the medium-sized communities of Whittier and Lawndale.

As for the question of whether UFOs actually do visit the Los Angeles area, the question to us is - if we were visiting Earth from another planet, why would we not want to visit Los Angeles?

Also see: Underwater Alien Base Off the Coast of Malibu?

Number of UFO Sighting Reports by Community
Los Angeles County

Reports for 1942 through November, 2023

Source: National UFO Reporting Center.