Sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are not unusual in America; the recent congressional hearing on the intriguing items has demonstrated this and brought them back into the public eye.
However, compared to other states, one state in particular appears to be witnessing a lot more UFOs.
According to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), California has had over 16,000 documented UFO sightings, with the oldest sighting occurring in 1928 and the most recent this past September.
The technical term for UFOs is unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), which is also a frequent word for them.
Most accounts describe a line of lights in the sky or a number of balls of light, many of which were said to be orange. Most of the sightings were recorded by people who were camping outside or on Navy ships that were berthed in neighboring harbors, both of which offered unobstructed views of the sky.
Because of this, many people at first mistook the lights for shooting stars.
But many also claimed to have seen UFOs while walking to work, driving their children to school, or just going about their daily lives in broad daylight.
The times of several sightings are between 10am and noon. A lot were also reported on radars of aircraft and by pilots watching the sky as they flew.
One particularly intriguing entry from 1953 detailed the experience a camp worker had with the kids she had been supervising at a summer camp near a lake. As the group chatted, a strange flying object came and landed near them to observe them.
The woman who reported it wrote: "It was silver, and looked like two saucers glued together with windows where they joined. It was so close, we could see figures at the windows that surrounded the middle seam. This was 1953, and none of us had ever seen anything move like this craft did."
She said it hovered for a while, then "completely disappeared" before reappearing diagonally across from where they had first seen it. "These seventh-graders were beside themselves enjoying this unbelievable demonstration of mechanical maneuvering," she added.
16,084 sightings have been reported in total throughout California over the years. Washington State comes in second with 7,145, followed by Florida in second place with 8,205. Texas is in fourth place with 6,107, and New York is in fifth with 5,834.
These five states and 24 others have each received more than 2,000 sighting reports.
So, for all of you Californians out there - keep your eyes peeled and let us know if you see anything unusual in the sky!