NEWS

In recent years, the U.S. Government has begun to take UFOs, now referred to as UAPs or unexplained aerial phenomena, more seriously. Both the Defense Department and intelligence agencies have begun releasing more information and NASA has formed a committee to study UFO sightings. In announcing this committee, NASA admitted that the stigma attached to such sightings has historically produced a lack of good data.

UFO sightings have been around for a long time. According to a 2022 report on WCNC, the first image of a supposed UFO was taken in 1870 from the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Between 1974 (when the National UFO Reporting Center or NUFORC was founded) and 2022, there were 90,000 reported sightings, 95% of which were found to be weather balloons, military tests, or other normal activities.

Despite the low number of questionable sitings, a Roper poll in 1991 suggested that around four million people in America believed they’d been abducted by aliens. Forty thousand people had bought alien protection insurance, which would pay out if a loved one was abducted.

Many such sightings have been reported in North Carolina, including many along the coast. According to a March 2018 report on WBTV, North Carolina was ranked by NUFORC as among the top ten states for UFO sightings. For many years the Charlotte area had its own UFO researcher. Lincolnton enthusiast George Fawcett spent 65 years investigating over 1200 sightings, including 600 across the Carolinas. He wrote numerous magazine articles and taught a course at Gaston College.

Fawcett also established the North Carolina chapter of Mutual UFO Network Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to tracking and researching reports of UFOs. According to his obituary in the Charlotte Observer, when he learned that an acquaintance had seen strange lights hovering over Lake James near Hickory, he noted that “a large body of deep water would be a good place for a UFO to hide.”

A big deep lake like Lake Norman, perhaps? The lake, originally filled in 1963, is thought by some to be a center for UFO activity. According to a 2017 story on KLTV, George Lund, then the state director for the Mutual UFO Network, speculated that alien spacecraft might be coming to the lake to feed off the energy that the McGuire Nuclear Plant produces. There have been a number of stories about UFOs in the Lake Norman area over the last seven years.

At 12:25 a.m. on January 1, 2018, a Mooresville resident let his dogs out to relieve themselves, and spotted three very bright lights in a V-shape over Lake Norman. According to the observer, “The lights were too large and too bright to possibly be any commercial aircraft and they were in a specific V or Triangle, flying faster than possible by airplanes. It was also massive in size, could not be a drone.”  No confirmation or rebuttal has appeared to his story.

One of the most widely publicized sightings occurred in 2018. According to an August 14 report on WCNC, on May 29, Jason Swing of Mooresville was near the Hager’s Point boat landing on Lake Norman when he saw a cigar-shaped object flying over the lake. He described the object as massive, maybe the size of two 747s. The sighting, which he described as “just really, really crazy,” changed his opinion on extraterrestrial life; he declared, “I feel like there’s another life form but after I saw this, I know there’s something, now.”

Jason’s story went viral, and accounts were published in newspapers and magazines all over the world. This despite the fact that, according to an August 16 report in USA TODAY, the Goodyear Company’s blimp team announced on Twitter that even though they didn’t want “to get in the way of a good story,” the sighting was really the Goodyear blimp. It seems it had been covering the Coke 600 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway and flew over Lake Norman afterwards.

Reported sightings continue, however. On August 7, 2019, the Charlotte Observer reported that during July witnesses had seen bright objects hovering above Lake Norman.

In March of 2024, however, the Pentagon released a report on supposed UFO sightings since 1945. Their conclusion was that there was no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence attached to any of them. Despite the government’s report, and whatever your individual thoughts on UFOs are, it might be fun to keep your eyes peeled when you’re on or around Lake Norman. You never know what you might see!