UFO enthusiasts hope government reports bring answers about aerial phenomena
2 min readKANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – A local community has been following the skies over the metro area for years, watching for unexplained objects in the night sky.
Christian Vedder joined that community during the pandemic when he was out taking pictures of his classic muscle car, a Ford Galaxie no less, on the Liberty Square.
After he snapped a photo he noticed something strange, three glowing dots in the night sky.
“They looked saucer-shaped to me,” Vedder said. “It looks like they were flying in formation.”
Vedder reported his findings to the Missouri chapter of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), an international organization that tracks and reports UFO activity. The group has frequently been referenced in Sci-Fi popular culture, such as the X-Files.
Margie Kay, a local leader for the nonprofit, said the group takes sightings like Vedder’s seriously.
“There’s something happening that’s unexplained,” Kay said. “We all work together to collaborate and get answers.”
Some members, like James Bair, even keep equipment in their house to track anomalies. Bair has a device called MADAR that detects unusual electromagnetic activity and reports it to a database.
The MADAR unit sits by his computer in his office. It’s built off a small RaspberryPi computer connected to the internet. He soon hopes to connect his unit to a Geiger counter in his living room to add to the data it’s collecting.
He also keeps track of area sightings and can see the data other MADAR units are collecting worldwide.
“We don’t know what’s occurring. Unless you have data how do you make that judgment?” Bair said.
Over the last few months NASA and the US Military have declassified some information about UFOs, which the government now refers to as Unexplained Aerial Phenomena or UAPs. A Pentagon report acknowledges a growing number of sightings in recent years and that “UAP continue to represent a hazard to flight safety and pose a possible adversary collection threat.”
“People are speculating that there’s something big on the horizon,” Kay said.
She and others hope that the data collected and released by the government could help lead them to answers about sightings all over the world.
“It’s going to take more people sharing to connect the dots to get to the truth,” Vedder said.
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