The modern database era: NUFORC worked as a database for this ground

1974 – November 2026 · Run B #174

Counted and dated, and separated from the file era: the National UFO Reporting Center — founded 1974 by Robert J. Gribble, a Washington-state nonprofit that has processed more than 200,000 reports, freely searchable with no paywall — files reports by the locality the witness names. Worked as a database for “Osceola, IN,” it returns five reports, and they are the whole modern file for this ground: 28 February 2016, 01:00 — shape filed as Rectangle; the witness's own summary: “While I was outside, I observed an Orb flying low zipping around like it was filming the area” (the database's own month index for February 2016, read directly). 28 August 2016 — shape Bullet/Missile, duration one second. 17 February 2017 — shape Unknown, duration over an hour. 9 August 2017 — shape Sphere, duration two minutes. 17 April 2018 — shape Cylinder, duration fifteen minutes. The last four stand in NUFORC-derived listings (UFO Hunters' NUFORC-sourced index) at one-line strength and are printed at one-line strength. Penn Township has no NUFORC locality of its own: a township witness files under Osceola, Mishawaka or South Bend, and no report naming Penn Township was returned by the searches run. One namesake warning, in this build's standing discipline: the database's best-known “Osceola” report — 21 July 2001, a hazy amber orb over Long Lake with fifty witnesses — is Osceola, Wisconsin, and belongs to no Indiana file. NUFORC's own terms govern the reading: the Center makes no claims as to the validity of any report, and reports received before March 2023 are ungraded. Separated from the file era as the audit requires: the Blue Book record is an investigated file with dispositions; the NUFORC record is an uninvestigated intake with five entries, all of them from a single 26-month span, 2016–2018, and none since in the record reached.

NUFORC databank (nuforc.org): the February 2016 month index read directly (Osceola, IN, 28 Feb. 2016, 01:00, Rectangle); UFO Hunters' NUFORC-sourced sighting index, nearest-sightings tables for South Bend and Albion, Indiana (the Osceola, Indiana entries of 28 Aug. 2016, 17 Feb. 2017, 9 Aug. 2017 and 17 Apr. 2018); NUFORC's databank and about pages (scope, the 200,000-report count, the March 2023 grading line, the validity disclaimer); NUFORC sighting 18553 (Osceola, Wisconsin) for the namesake exclusion. Searched November 2026.