Three Watertown-area residents stand overlooking the Fort Drum valley from Dry Hill during a clear night in this artistic recreation of a reported 1988 UFO sighting involving bright white orbs and pursuing red blinking lights believed to possibly be helicopters.
By Hans Wilder – Watertown, NY
For years, people in Northern New York have stood outside on cold clear nights, looked up over Fort Drum, the Black River Valley, the Adirondacks, or Lake Ontario, and seen things they simply could not explain.
Now, according to newly compiled UFO reporting data, New York ranks among the top states in America for reported UFO sightings — with more than 6,000 sightings logged statewide over the years.
The study, using data from the National UFO Reporting Center, places New York high on the national list for unexplained aerial phenomena. Cities like New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Utica and Binghamton all made the rankings.
But one place noticeably absent from the “top sightings” conversation?
Watertown.
And frankly, a lot of people around here would probably disagree with that omission.
Northern New York has long been one of the darker, quieter regions in the Northeast — the kind of place where people actually notice what’s in the sky. Add in the presence of Fort Drum, military aviation activity, vast forests, open farmland, and low light pollution, and it becomes easy to understand why stories have circulated here for decades.
The difference is that many people simply never report what they see.
Especially military personnel.
Many veterans and active-duty service members have historically avoided publicly discussing strange aerial sightings for fear of ridicule, professional consequences, or simply being labeled “that guy.” That culture has existed for generations.
One local witness — a former U.S. Army soldier stationed on the East German border during the 1980s — says he learned that lesson firsthand after discussing unexplained orb-like phenomena he witnessed while serving in Europe.
And according to him, Northern New York had its own strange encounter back in 1988.
The witness says he and two other Watertown-area residents were standing on Dry Hill overlooking Fort Drum at night when they observed three bright lights moving erratically in the sky. He described two red blinking lights — believed to possibly be helicopters — repeatedly attempting to approach the brighter objects.
“Every time the red blinking lights would catch up to them, the bright lights would dart away again,” he recalled.
The incident, he says, was serious enough at the time that both the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department and military police at Fort Drum reportedly acknowledged the sighting activity that night.
Was it experimental military aircraft? Helicopters tracking something unusual? Atmospheric distortion? Something explainable? Something not?
Nobody knows.
And that’s the thing about UFO stories. Most eventually turn out to have ordinary explanations. Some do not.
NASA itself has increasingly shifted into publicly discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial life, with agency officials openly stating that the odds of life existing elsewhere in the universe are likely high.
That doesn’t mean aliens are hovering over Northern New York every weekend.
But it does mean more Americans — including people right here in the North Country — are paying attention to what’s above them.
And if Watertown didn’t make the official top sightings list?
Some locals may argue that says more about underreporting than it does about what’s actually happening in the skies over Northern New York.
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