NEW JERSEY — A “very fast, moving ball of light” appears near the parkway in Woodbridge. A “cigar-shaped object turns to smoke” in the night sky above Avon-by-the-Sea. A video of a jet fighter flying in Hackensack also captures “two white objects.” And in Newark, a “very large, round aircraft” was seen hovering over houses.

These are just a few of the unidentified flying object sightings that have been reported in New Jersey so far in 2022, according to a crowd-sourced list from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).

Don’t believe in UFOs? As World UFO Day approaches on July 2, here’s something to consider. In May, during the first public hearing on UFOs in half a century, a top Navy intelligence official told lawmakers the military has added more than 250 reports of aircraft flying at mysterious speeds and trajectories to its database in the past year, bringing the total to about 400.

What lawmakers didn't hear is evidence of extraterrestrial life. They also didn't receive any reassurance they shouldn't worry about the unexplained sightings, either. Read More: UFO Hearing In Congress: 5 Things U.S. Intelligence Officials Said

What have folks reported seeing in the skies above New Jersey this year? As seen on the NUFORC database:

While the Pentagon has finally acknowledged that it has been studying the subject, Garden State residents have been reporting UFO sightings for years.

In 2016, an Essex County resident sent Patch a video that allegedly captured what he termed “UFOs” flying over the township and heading towards New York City. There were four objects in total, including two that “were in a formation,” he said.

“My family and my neighbor saw them,” the local skywatcher claimed. “They just vanished after going northeast. I have no clue what they were, but they weren’t planes or balloons. They were silent, changing color and moving fast.”

World UFO Day on July 2 commemorates the Roswell crash, which more or less made it safe for Americans to talk about strange occurrences in the sky. The crash occurred at the dawn of the Cold War, a time of escalating tension over the arms race when school children were taught duck-and-cover drills to protect themselves in a nuclear attack, fueling wild speculation about the object’s origins.

The Roswell Army Air Field announced in a July 8, 1947, news release that it had recovered the wreckage of a “flying disc” from W.W. “Mac” Brazel’s ranch about 75 miles north of Roswell.

The release was straightforward, noting:

“The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County.”

Earlier that summer, on June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold, a businessman piloting a small plane, filed the first well-known report of a UFO over Mount Rainier in Washington, according to History. Arnold claimed he saw nine high-speed, crescent-shaped objects zooming along at several thousand miles per hour “like saucers skipping on water.”

The Roswell Army Air Field mentioned nothing in its press release about alien life, but people were already growing uneasy about what might be circling overhead. Brazel was among them.

He thought the object he found on his ranch was similar to what Arnold had seen, or to the objects described stories about flying saucers and discs, so he gathered some of the material from the wreckage, including rubber strips, tinfoil and thick paper, and deposited them with Sheriff George Wilcox, who in turn turned it over to the commanding officer of the Roswell Army Air Field.

Although the objects Arnold claimed to see weren’t saucer-shaped at all, his analogy led to the popularization of the term “flying saucers.” And since then, Americans have been more or less obsessed with the idea that alien life is among us. That brings us to the May hearings.

The Defense Department was loathe for many years to even acknowledge the existence of UFOs — or, as they're referred to in military and spy agency circles, UAP. But the Pentagon had to walk back years of public denial after a shadowy five-year program to investigate UFOs was exposed in 2017 by The New York Times and Politico.

The intelligence gathered over the five years of the program, which was initiated in 2007, included former Naval Cmdr. David Fravor's account of an other-wordly encounter with an oblong, Tic Tac-shaped aircraft flying erratically through his airspace at an incredible speed, defying accepted principles of aerodynamics.

"I can tell you, I think it was not from this world," Fravor told ABC News in 2017. "I'm not crazy, haven't been drinking. It was — after 18 years of flying, I've seen pretty much about everything that I can see in that realm, and this was nothing close."

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, now a ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called on the Pentagon in late 2020 to investigate the UFO sightings.

The military said in its 2021 report to Congress on UFOs that investigators found no evidence supporting alien life, a finding Scott W. Bray, the deputy director of Naval intelligence, repeated in the hearings in May, telling lawmakers the investigation hadn't turned up anything "extraterrestrial in origin," and that none of the documented objects had attempted to make contact with U.S. aviators.

All of the unexplained sightings appeared to be unmanned, Bray said.

Still, the sightings are of great concern both to the military and to members of Congress from both parties, who worry about threats to national security. Some of the sightings of aircraft flying without a discernible means of propulsion have been reported near military bases, raising concerns they are the stealth spy aircraft of U.S. adversaries.

The U.S. government is believed to be withholding technical information about the sightings of the mysterious aircraft near military bases and coastlines, raising concerns about Chinese or Russian spy technology.

"We are also mindful of our obligation to protect sensitive sources and methods," Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie said in his opening remarks. "Our goal is to strike that delicate balance — one that will enable us to maintain the public's trust while preserving those capabilities that are vital to the support of our service personnel."

Indiana Congressman Andre Carson, a Democrat who chairs the subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee that held the hearing, has previously said that pilots too often are reluctant to come forward for fear they'll be ridiculed.

"We want to know what's out there as much as you want to know what's out there," Moultrie told lawmakers, adding that he was a fan of science fiction himself. "We get the questions, not just from you. We get it from family, and we get them night and day."

The move to destigmatize UFO reports appears to be contributing to an increase in reports, and detection capabilities are improving, Bray said.

For example, he said, Navy and Air Force pilots and crews "now have step-by-step procedures for reporting UAPs," using onboard technology.

Also, sensors have been improved, and more drones and other non-military aerial systems are in the skies, which could account for some of the increased sightings.

Another possible culprit, Bray said: Mylar balloons.

This article contains reporting from the Patch national desk.

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