The modern record: the reporting databases

1974 — present, counts as pulled

What the counts are: Since 1974 the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has taken reports by hotline and web form, and its database is the modern record's backbone. The counts below are counts of reports — of people filing accounts — and this section states them as nothing more. NUFORC's location index, as read for the Indiana state analysis cited here, lists 2,885 reports for Indiana as a whole. For Fort Wayne itself, a February 2024 compilation of the NUFORC-derived data (UFO Sightings USA, as carried by Indiana broadcasters) counted 118 reports for Fort Wayne across 1969–2023, second in Indiana only to Indianapolis (265) and ahead of Evansville (101). Stacker's city ranking of 12 May 2025, built from NUFORC reports dating back to 1995 and excluding sightings listed across multiple cities, likewise places Fort Wayne among the Indiana cities with the highest reported totals, behind Indianapolis. The ranking is a map of reporting — of population, of a local culture of filing, of media attention — and the state analysis makes the same caution in terms: clusters reveal reporting patterns rather than confirmed anomalies.

What the reports look like: Read closely, the Fort Wayne file in NUFORC is mostly brief lights-and-shapes accounts, and NUFORC's own annotations often supply the ordinary reading. A report of 31 January 2009 — red, blue, green and white lights flashing from a circular object for an hour, five observers — carries NUFORC's note: "Object may have been Sirius." A daylight report of 5 November 2000, from Rockhill Park, describes three triangular, silverish-white objects first taken for hot-air balloons, watched ten minutes by a grandmother and three granddaughters; the witness reported the Fort Wayne Police Department had received no other reports, and NUFORC recorded that it found the witness credible and convincing — a judgment about the witness, not about the object. A report of 12 July 2013, from Union Chapel Road near Leo, describes three dozen fast, silent, oval objects crossing at night; the witnesses themselves measured them against the local baseline, writing that they moved at speeds consistent with the fast, low fighter jets of the city's own air base. The database's value to a history is exactly this: it preserves what people said they saw, dated and placed, with the reporting center's notes attached — and it does not, by itself, establish what any of it was.

Sources:

1. National UFO Reporting Center (nuforc.org) — the Indiana location index (2,885 reports, as read in the state analysis below); individual Fort Wayne reports cited: 31 January 2009 (Sirius note), 5 November 2000 (Rockhill Park), 12 July 2013 (Union Chapel Road), and the center's report files generally.
2. "The Indiana Town Where You're Most Likely to Spot Aliens," WBKR / 103GBF (February 2024), compiling UFO Sightings USA data — Fort Wayne 118 reports, 1969–2023; Indianapolis 265; Evansville 101.
3. Stacker, "Cities With the Most UFO Sightings in Indiana" (12 May 2025) — the NUFORC-based city ranking (reports since 1995; multi-city sightings excluded).
4. "How Contemporary Indiana UFO Sightings Are Catalogued and Evaluated," UAP State Files — the reading of NUFORC's Indiana index and its limits (duplicates, selection effects, reporting patterns).