Multiple UFO Sightings in California: What We Know

An apparent spike in UFO sightings has captured the public’s imagination after a spate of reports and footage coming out of California over the past week.
A series of videos are doing the rounds across social media, with some claiming they captured the Unidentified Flying Objects in the night skies above Los Angeles, Lancaster County, and Palmdale.
There has been renewed interest in UFOs nationwide after the Pentagon released a cache of newly declassified UFO information dating back to 1945 earlier this year. It followed a previous Pentagon report released in October 2023 that detailed a list of all the sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) from 2022 to 2023.
The U.S. is not the only government considering the existence of UFOs; two “alien” bodies were shown to Mexico’s Congress back in September.
There have been a host of mysterious sightings across the U.S. this year. Some incidents remain unexplained, such as pilots sharing unexplained phenomena they have seen flying alongside their aircraft. But other claims are debunked swiftly, such as footage said to show a 10-foot-tall gray alien walking past squad cars at a Florida crime scene in January; the mysterious extra-terrestrial was actually a long shadow cast by a police officer, officials said.
The latest claims began circulating late last week and intensified over the weekend in California.
A video shared by an X, formerly Twitter, user with the handle “think tank” shared a clip featuring a line of flashing red and blue lights in the sky. The clip was captioned, “a video from last night’s mass sighting in California.”
The 23-second video opens with a street view and then zones in on the “UFO” in the night sky. A male voice says off-camera, “Oh, what is that? Mom! Mom, you see this?” Then a woman’s voice can be heard saying: “Holy s***! What the hell is that?” The video then ends abruptly.
The clip contains some profanity.
The video was viewed more than 820,000 times and shared by almost 1,500 X users. Some replied to the video claiming that the flashing red and blue lights suggested the phenomenon came from more of a terrestrial source. “Police cars on the hill,” one opined. Another added: “Red and blue lights. Oh it couldn’t possibly be a police drone,” and added a laughing face emoji.
But others suspect that some of the footage being shared is not quite as it seems.
X user Dan Warren, who describes himself as an engineer and a “UFO fanatic,” attempted to debunk the claims by suggesting that some of the videos and photos being shared were misleading
They were most likely filmed near a drone light show in a completely different state, he said, posting: “I suspect that the footage was filmed in Hawaii, but shared as if it was filmed in Palmdale. It appears that the ‘Palmdale’ UFO footage is the Hilton Hawaiian drone show footage.”
The Hilton hotel hosted a Pokemon drone light show on Saturday and Sunday nights, and some of the footage they shared on X did appear to resemble the bar of flashing lights seen flying in some of the other clips.
But there were other, different, sightings too.
A TikTok account for the Etre Sombras y Luces Podcast shared a video on Friday, captioned: “UFO sighting in Los Angeles CA 8/15 at midnight. Did anyone else see this?”
The footage was apparently filmed in a backyard, with the camera panning up to show a steady bright light in the sky. The theme tune to paranormal-investigation show The X-Files played over the footage, with the account holder adding: “We saw a bright red light for about five-10 mins. It dropped off some type of capsule and then banished.” [sic]
A local community news account called 661 Lasd And Lacofd calls, which is based in Palmdale, shared a screengrab on X. The graphic showed a handful of collated messages that were reportedly shared on the Ring Neighbors app for the Palmdale and Lancaster area. Several people had posted to report seeing UFOs.
One person wrote: “Me and my daughter were hanging out in the backyard when we both thought we saw a shooting star falling east it stropped very abruptly and zigzagged going north. Checking to see if anyone else saw it or if we’re both going crazy.”
One person replied: “We counted six after being out there for about 10 minutes.” And another added: “You guys, I saw [a] UFO, I was walking my dog in my backyard and saw a bright light up in the sky[…]to my dismay it was a hovercraft! Please tell me I’m not the only one who saw !!!”
Some online commentators noted that the military has a site in Palmdale with the Edwards Air Force Base, while defense technology firm Lockheed Martin’s development division Skunk Works is also located there. That sparked speculation that the UFO sightings could be linked to a new model being trialled by the military or the defense giant.
Newsweek has reached out by email to the U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin seeking comment.