Staten Island is usually referred to as “the forgotten borough” of New York City, more often the butt of jokes rather than being seen as a tourist destination or a trendy place to live. Even the local politicians seem to ignore or forget Staten Island in their dealings. But it is forgotten when it comes to the paranormal, as well. And that’s a shame. From haunted historic locations like the Conference House, Snug Harbor, the Old Bermuda Inn, the Kreischer Mansion and more, to purported Bigfoot sightings in the 70s, there are far stranger things happening in Richmond County than most people realize. Our friend Amy from the Staten Island Paranormal Society tipped us off to this article in the Staten Island Advance today, detailing 20 UFO sightings on Staten Island from the past four years. I haven’t seen any UFOs in the few short time I’ve been living here, but I know some credible people who have seen weird things in the sky above the Island. Some good stories in here. Enjoy!
The National UFO Reporting Center has been logging UFO sightings across the nation since 1930.
The center is a privately-run organization with no ties to the U.S. government. It categorizes the sightings by year and month, asks for the date, time, city and state of the sighting; shape, duration of the sighting and asks for a summary of your experience.
According to their database, there have been 20 reported sightings on Staten Island since 2015.
Some were disk-shaped; others like cigars. Some had orange lights while others had white and green.
In one instance, a UFO was seen 100 feet off of the ground in South Beach.
Scroll through the slideshow below to read all about the sightings.
June’s sighting happened around dusk at 6:55 p.m.:
“Cross shaped object with lights hovers over Huguenot section of Staten Island, NY. Cross shaped consisting of multiple white lights does not seem to move. Lights stay on and don’t blink. I looked thought binoculars. This is not a plane!”
The sighting lasted 20 minutes, according to the posting.
October’s sighting happened just before noon at 11:41 a.m.:
“Shiny disc-shaped object clearly visible through clouds and also in clear sky. After seeing, object disappeared.”
The sighting listed five minutes, according to the post.
Unlike other sightings that were reported as objects, this sighting was reported as orange lights in the night sky:
“Driving NNW on Tompkins Avenue, towards Vanderbilt Ave., in Staten Island, NY (where I live), at about 21:50 (9:50 PM) on Sunday, October 8, 2017, I saw an array of maybe 8 to 10 orange lights, arranged roughly in the shape of a parallelogram, floating across the night sky. The lights were larger than stars or the flashing lights on the wingtips of airliners, and they were moving along in formation.”
This sighting lasted about three minutes, according to the poster.
This circle-shaped object was seen for two minutes headed towards Staten Island at 10:23 p.m., according to this poster:
“Looked up from my roof looking approximately West from Brooklyn toward Staten Island area, first notice a shooting star, then from that direction an decent size orange glow oval shape, watched it move wobbling toward Staten Island direction then disappear white.”
NJ.comAugust 18, 2017: 3:58 p.m.This oval-shaped spinning object sighting was gone in the blink of an eye during a lighting storm:
“I walked outside during a lightning storm right before it started to downpour and noticed a black metallic object in the sky traveling further away. As it began to pick up speed you could notice the object spinning and had a silver/metallic tint to it. After about 50 seconds you can see it reflecting the trees beneath it, and it disappeared.”
This poster said the diamond-shaped object scanned his brain in 30 seconds at 8:30 p.m.:
“Surprised a UFO that was hovering silently above me, then it shot away.I came outside and noticed a black, silent UFO was hovering right above me at about 20 to 30 feet off the ground. I then heard a machine sound, and it turned on a bright white light and shot upward. I initially looked away because of the intensity of the light and when I looked up again, it appeared that it was hovering totally still at about 15,000 feet.
The shape appeared to be hexagonal or octagonal and the outline of it was all lit up with yellow light. Next to it was a blurry streak of white light as if it had skidded to a stop or had blurred light somehow. I did not have my phone in hand at the time and had no time to get it for any pictures.
An egg-shaped object was spotted at 1:35 p.m. while this poster was working construction:
“While performing construction at a client’s work site in Staten Island, I noticed an egg-shaped silver metallic object hovering overhead. I decided to take a video of it on my iPhone and brought it to my co-workers attention.
The object seemed to be hovering, joined by two other objects of likeness, darting across the sky. It was a bright and clear sunny day with full visibility. Temperature of about 59 degrees.”This cigar-shaped orange object was seen by this poster and his Uber driver while traveling though Staten Island at 5:14 p.m.:
“I’m from Denver, Col., and was visiting New York. I took an Uber driver to Staten Island for sight seeing and visiting where my step mom was raised. It was around 6:30-7:00 just getting dark, but with some light left in the sky.
As we were driving I look over to a tree line decently far in the distance and see a very bright orange-ish long and skinny light hovering in the sky above the tree line. There was a plane as well flying above and a bit further in the distance from this object. I could see the noticeable flashing lights of the plane and could clearly make out that it was a plane, therefore this object was even more odd and off looking.This Friday night sighting was one of the longest of all the Staten Island sightings at 20 minutes beginning at 7:42 p.m.:
“Two to three lights following each other in the sky for 20 minutes where they moved from east to west.
The lights appeared after I left the gym with my friend. We were walking to my house after eating some food at a local restaurant when I spotted the Dim Lights in the sky. I have video evidence I took on snapchat. Then flown in a wide circle in the sky.
It appeared as if they were following each other and didn’t stop, but we’re moving in other spots in the sky, from east to west. I went in my house and when I came out about 10 minutes later there was three, two side by side and one they were following.”
NJ.comSphere-shaped objects were only 100-feet off the ground near the beach on Father Capodanno Boulevard at 10:52 p.m. on Thanksgiving:
Ate thanksgiving dinner, and went out onto my back porch for a smoke, followed by my two sons, my oldest son (4 years old) points towards the Moon and says, “What’s that?” and i look up preparing myself to say “it’s the moon” when I noticed two stars zig zagging left to right from each other like some meeting up then going apart this was going on about 4 inches away from the moons right side if you were to use actual inches and pointed it at the sky.
Click here to read the rest of this sighting.At 11:06 a.m., this fast, circular buzzing object was spotted for two minutes:
“We heard an very loud buzzing sound above our backyard so we decided to go out and look there was a craft with two green lights and two orange lights that were buzzing. I start to snap pictures which I have and it was like the craft spotted us doing that and it took off at extremely high non-human speeds. I will never forget this experience and definitely look forward to seeing these things again!”
Headed towards Manhattan, these bright lights were seen for just under 10 minutes at 10:31 p.m.:
“My father was outside and noticed a bunch of very fast moving lights, flying in a large group, heading towards the Hudson River/Manhattan. By the time I got outside, it appeared to be over and then one by one they just kept coming in a continuous line. Some of them were in a triangle formation while others were flying by themselves all in the same direction. There had to be between 20 and 30 as this went on for about 10-15 minutes. I was able to take two videos before they stopped entirely.
These were definitely not airplanes as they had no blinking lights at all. They were simply circular lights that gave off a glow bright enough to see that whatever they were had been completely surrounded by light.”NJ.comAnother cigar-shaped object was seen for mere seconds heading towards the Outerbridge Crossing at 9:34 p.m.:
“Cylinder/cigar shaped bright white lighted front, 1/5 rear yellow light- shot/flew past extremely fast and disappeared in 2-3 seconds. Heading South toward Outerbridge Crossing. Looked like flying at much lower altitude than plane-but a bit higher than a helicopter.”
This quiet-moving triangle was seen by three people at 9 a.m.:
“My girlfriend saw an orange/red shaped triangle object in skylight. She alerted me of it, and when we went outside my neighbor was also looking at it. It was moving quietly north by north east rapidly.”
“Took my German Shepard for her usual middle of the night backyard walk. My yard faces East looking over the entrance of Atlantic Ocean into NY harbor. Almost a bright half moon (oblong shaped) was to the southern sky. I know this sounds crazy, but above the normal air traffic patterns was the star of Bethlehem shining brighter than the moon.
I ran inside, got my wife, pointed up to it and it went from a bright white light to a greenish look, and in a second shot over to due south under the moon, then turned reddish, shot over to the west then turned blueish. Then shot over to the North with a yellowish look and then right back to its original East position. This thing was way up there and was huge. It moved at impossible speeds around the entire sky, and not 1 plane in sight.”NJ.comAccording to the website, this one at 3:53 p.m. was the longest Staten Island sighting at one hour:
“The light object was much brighter than the stars appearing, even brighter than a planet would normally look from the naked eye. Its shape was like a thin Christmas tree; I observed a red spot on the top of the “structure,” white triangular long base, and three white dots positioned under the base. From my perspective, the form was at least five times larger than the other visible stars, and at least two to three times bigger than planets I have seen in the night sky.
Click here to read more about this sighting.This sighting was no April Fool’s Day joke:
“Driving towards the Verrazzano Bridge at 5:51 a.m.. Bright silver sphere, like a blob of mercury, visible for 1-2 seconds. Zipped above us and same direction as we were driving. No sound. Appeared very fast. Unable to judge height.
Apparent size somewhere between a golf and tennis ball. Checked with passenger who also saw it. Time of sighting is +/- 10 mins.”
This is the second sighting for this poster, who spotted this sphere object at 9:12 a.m.:
“I was sitting in my home office and my desk is right in front of my window. Something caught my attention so I looked up. There’s an airport nearby, so I’m constantly seeing planes, but this was unlike anything I’ve seen before. Two spherical objects in the distance, probably silver in color (could not tell if it was the light reflecting off of it or if IT was shining light) where flying very strange patterns. There is no commercial flying object that can fly these sort of patterns, of this I am certain. The flying patterns were not even describable. They were almost zig-zaggy in nature, with weird circling patterns. This all lasted about 5-10 seconds and they suddenly just disappeared from the sky! ”
NJ.comThis light was seen for one minute at 10 a.m. on Holden Boulevard:
“Out of the driver’s left side window, the light caught my eye, as it streaked past my vehicle and I watched it either disappear or burn out while looking through the front windshield, it was also traveling East to West Just over the tree tops. I was completely sober lol, as I said just driving home from work.
It reminded me of a “shooting star” I’ve seen many meteor showers in August near Lake George growing up. But this was different it was much closer to the ground fireworks height. But I’ve never seen this color in fireworks. The tip of it appeared very dark black the body was an extremely bright cobalt blue with a long bright white tail that widened and sprayed out as it streaked across the sky. No one else was driving on the road at this time. The night sky was very overcast I could not see any other lights no stars, no moon either. It happened so fast there was not enough time to take a picture with my phone.”
This sighting was short lived at about 30 seconds at 7 p.m. :
“Three orange lights, triangular formation, not blinking, moving on southern sky, silently. Seen with binoculars until disappeared.”
