Ethan Heitchew
palmettoreport@gmail.com

(Rock Hill, S.C.) — As the blockbuster Steven Spielberg film “Disclosure Day” premieres this weekend, many people are discussing the topic of UFOs and the potential existence of alien life in the universe, including in South Carolina, which is considered by some to be a hotbed for unidentified aerial activity.

The new film, released June 12, depicts a movement to expose the U.S. government’s cover-up of the existence of extraterrestrials.

Continued interest in the topic and the film’s debut comes on the heels of the latest release, last month, of government documents related to UFOs, which are now often called unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAPs.

There also seems to be an increase in interest in UFO sightings over the last few years, as Congress has held a number of hearings to discuss the matter, including testimony under oath from whistleblowers, military veterans, former government officials and journalists about their experiences with UFOs.

Additionally, a number of videos have been declassified and released by the Department of Defense, which have been seen in numerous news reports and across social media, that show these flying phenomena in action and other strange lights in the sky.

One of the most well-known is the “Tic Tac” video, released in April 2020, which documents an encounter between U.S. Navy pilots and an unknown object off the coast of California in 2004.

“I think (those who have testified) have a lot of credibility and a lot of these people are taking a big risk and have a lot of courage coming forward, in my opinion,” said Christian Stepien, chief technical officer at the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) based in Washington state.

“These are Navy pilots and Top Gun pilots. These are people who are deep within the defense department and have had access to this information and felt a duty to come out and tell the public what’s going on,” Stepien said.

NUFORC is an independent, non-profit group that has tracked more than 180,000 UFO sightings across the country, since it’s founding in 1974.

Stepien said he thinks more information will continue to surface, because more people feel comfortable sharing their experiences.

“We’re hoping that this momentum continues and we’re going to learn more and more, but there is still a group within the Department of Defense that is stonewalling this and it’s kind of a battle between those who want the story to come out and those who don’t,” he said.

Peter Davenport, the director of the National UFO Reporting Center, said the government should be more transparent with the American people about UFO sightings.

“It looks to me as though the U.S. government knows fully well that we’re dealing with a real phenomenon and that’s why they’re not sharing that with the American people. It’s their responsibility to share that information with the American people and to do so soon, sooner rather than later,” Davenport said.

He said he thinks there is an intelligence behind UFO activity.

“We’re dealing with a very technologically sophisticated civilization. It appears that they’re coming from different civilizations and there’s a great deal more we have to know about them before we can determine where they’re from, what they’re doing here or what their purpose is,” Davenport said.

And he’s not alone, as a recent CBS News poll found that a majority of Americans (63%) believe there is intelligent life on other planets. That’s up from 47% percent, who said they believed in life elsewhere in the universe, in 2010.

The poll, conducted June 2-4, also found that 84% percent of respondents think the government “knows more than it is telling” about UFOs.

Even former President Barrack Obama said aliens were “real” on a podcast in February.

Griffin Hollingsworth, a Rock Hill resident, said he thinks the government isn’t being truthful about its knowledge of UFOs, which some have argued if disclosed could cause a disruption in society.

“I don’t know if it’s as much about panic, as it is about being able to control information. Once information like that gets to common knowledge, then it gets spread, kind of like the game of Telephone. So, until they know everything, they can’t tell anybody anything,” Hollingsworth said.

Regardless, South Carolina continues to be a hotspot for UFO sightings, especially along the coast.

In the book “UFOs Over South Carolina,” paranormal author Sherman Carmichale details 65 different stories of sightings and experiences from pilots, law enforcement, military and citizens across the state.

Carmichale declined to be interviewed for this story, but he told My Horry News in 2015, shortly after the book was published, he thought the Earth has “always been visited” from other planets.

“There are UFO sightings in South Carolina every day or night, but most can be explained,” he told the news site. “But, there’s a percentage with no explanation, and a lot of them are over the beach area.

“There are lights in the sky that sit there and then vanish with no sound, no anything. What they are is anybody’s guess.”

In 2021, the website 24/7 Wall St published an analysis of data from the “UFO Sightings Desk Reference,” which concluded that Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach were two of the top cities in the country for UFO reports, per 100,000 residents.

According to NUFORC, there have been 12 official reports made to the center from South Carolina this year, with most coming from the Lowcountry.

The latest from Folly Beach, included a description of an orb moving over the water early in the morning on May 14.

“I was out on the washout side of Folly Beach, South Carolina around 4 a.m. when I looked over the water and started to notice strangeness,” the report said. “I started to see these balls of light slowly move across the sky, then rapidly accelerate before disappearing.”

Last year, there were at least 67 UFO sightings reported to the center, including two from York County.

The first was reported in Rock Hill on Feb. 23 in the Meadow Lakes neighborhood off of South Cherry Road/McConnells Highway.

“I saw a dull orange colored cigar-shaped flying object, flying sideways lengthwise with no sound coming from it, nor any end trails and definitely no tail wings,” stated the report from a person who said they were a Rock Hill firefighter.

“It was flying below the clouds, but above any birds ability. I watched it for about 4-5 seconds. I looked over to get my husband to grab (a) camera phone and I looked up and it was gone in that moment. It was like all nature sounds had dulled and I was pulled to look up. I spent the next two hours checking the sky to see if I was mistaking it for something else, but there is nothing like it,” the report said.

The second, from Fort Mill on July 6, described two fast-moving bright lights in the sky.

“I saw two very bright lights at what seemed to be a very high altitude. The two of them moved quickly across the sky,” the report said. “I saw two bright lights traveling in a straight line and then disappear upwards at what seemed to be a 90 degree angle.”

However, Stepien said there isn’t an exact location where sightings mostly happen, because reports come from all over the country.

“Some of the most incredible ones are the big triangles that people have been seeing pretty regularly since the 1980s. These are perhaps up to 50 to 100 feet on a side and perfect triangles that generally have big bright lights in each corner and sometimes a light in the very center that can hover silently over a car, over a house and then basically accelerate off to the horizon in the time you can blink an eye,” Stepien said.

For Davenport, the “most dramatic and most unsettling” night of reports occurred in March of 1997, which he said drew an overwhelming number of calls to the center.

“It was the Phoenix Lights event. For two hours, five or possibly six objects loitered over Phoenix and were intercepted by at least one flight of U.S. Air Force fighter jets,” Davenport said, recalling one of the most famous UFO cases in U.S. history.

“It was quite a night. We have enough evidence to be able to calculate or estimate the size of the objects. They were estimated to be between eight miles or eight and 1/4 miles in width. They were huge crafts,” he said.

It’s unclear if and when “disclosure” may come, but with all of the recent sightings, officials coming forward, and growing interest and belief, the world might be one step closer to discovering the truth about one of the greatest mysteries in history.

* Editor’s note: Some of this reporting was collected during the fall 2024 semester. And Joseph Kasko contributed to this report.

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