The database era: Mishawaka in the National UFO Reporting Center

1974 — present

The system now: Since 1974 the national record of sightings has been kept not by the Air Force but by the National UFO Reporting Center, founded that year by Robert J. Gribble — a volunteer center, reachable by hotline and web form, which states its own discipline on its databank page: "The National UFO Reporting Center makes no claims as to the validity of the information in any of these reports." The center logged its 200,000th report in September 2026. The counts below are report counts throughout: they measure reporting, not visitation. Indiana's totals, as the compilations give them, are these. The UFO Sightings USA compilation of February 2024 counts 2,667 reported sightings in Indiana from 1969 to 2023, seventeenth among the states, and ranks the state's cities Indianapolis first with 265 reports, Fort Wayne second with 118, then Evansville (101), Mount Vernon (87) and Newburgh (86). Mishawaka stands outside that top five. The center's own web index did not yield a machine-readable Mishawaka city total, and no total is invented for the city: the documented facts are its absence from the state's leaders and the specimen rows below. Stacker's state survey, built on the center's data, ranks Indiana twenty-seventh among the states at 40 reported sightings per 100,000 residents; a December 2023 reading of the same database by an Indiana broadcaster put the state's reports at "more than 2,700" — each figure printed with its source and date, and none merged with another, because the database grows daily and the counts are snapshots of it.

Specimens, at the database's own size: The center's Mishawaka reports, as its data reaches print through the mirrors that carry it, are the ordinary currency of the modern record — lights, shapes and durations, unadjudicated. Three stand documented. On 27 June 2014, at 10:54 p.m., a Mishawaka report in the center's June 2014 postings records a light: "Three reddish orange light moving across the sky." On 13 September 2017 the center's rows, as the UFO Hunters mirror carries them with the center as their stated source, give Mishawaka a "round" form watched for ten minutes. On 6 April 2019 the same mirror gives the city a circle, watched for thirty seconds. None carries an official finding; the center investigates none of them to a conclusion, and this section reports them as reports. The rows are printed as specimens of a stream, not as the stream's measure: the mirrors are partial, and the city's full count in the center's database stands unestablished, as the entry above states.

The second database:The negative is printed at that strength. What the public record holds for Mishawaka in the database era is the Reporting Center's stream, sampled above, and nothing from the Network's files that print can reach.

Sources:

1. National UFO Reporting Center, databank front page and "About Us" (nuforc.org) — the center's founding in 1974 by Robert J. Gribble, its purpose, and its disclaimer: "The National UFO Reporting Center makes no claims as to the validity of the information in any of these reports"; the center's announcement of its 200,000th logged report, September 2026.
2. UFO Sightings USA compilation (February 2024), as carried by WBKR (11 February 2024) and 103GBF (7 February 2024) — Indiana's 2,667 reports, 1969–2023, seventeenth among states; the top-five city table (Indianapolis 265, Fort Wayne 118, Evansville 101, Mount Vernon 87, Newburgh 86).
3. Stacker, "States with the most UFO sightings" — Indiana twenty-seventh, at 40 reported sightings per 100,000 residents (NUFORC data); WBKR, "Why Does Indiana Have So Many More UFO Sightings Than Kentucky?" (13 December 2023) — "more than 2,700" Indiana reports in the center's database at that reading.
4. National UFO Reporting Center, June 2014 sightings postings, as rendered by ufoscans.com — the Mishawaka report of 27 June 2014, 22:54, shape "Light": "Three reddish orange light moving across the sky."
5. UFO Hunters mirror of the National UFO Reporting Center database (source stated there as NUFORC) — the Mishawaka rows: 13 September 2017, "Round," 10 minutes; 6 April 2019, "Circle," 00:00:30; as carried in the mirror's nearest-sightings tables on its South Bend and area case pages.