Source: New York Post

UFO sightings across the city are up 31% from last year — 46, compared with 35 — and an eye-popping 283% from 2018’s measly dozen, according to the National UFO Reporting Center.

Brooklyn is tops in tin-foil hatters, with 12 close encounters. Not far behind are Manhattan with 11 and Queens with 10. Staten Islanders claim just eight — despite the borough’s rep for not social distancing. The Bronx is even more grounded, chalking up a mere five.

Two of the more memorable intergalactic incidents happened in the summertime, on Staten Island and in the Bronx.

In the wee hours of July 21, an Islander spotted — and stared at — at an “oval” aircraft that “looked and sounded like a helicopter. Then, the mysterious flying machine “sent a surge of heat/radiation through my body!”

The Islander “honestly thought it was the government putting something into the air with everything going on during these times and I thought I would wake up and find it all over the news or on Instagram.”

Late on June 8, a Bronxite watched 30 objects “flying in a perfect line, in perfect synchronicity” that “looked like a bunch of moving stars.”

The observer insisted, “I don’t drink, or take any drugs whatsoever. I’m not a UFO conspiracy theorist.”

An eerie episode can happen any time, anywhere.

On the night of Sept. 15, a Brooklynite stuck his head “out the bathroom window of my 2nd floor home” and saw “orange/metallic” orbs “standing still over the Canarsie/Jamaica Bay area.”

Reported the stunned stargazer: “By the time I called my son, they were gone. I could not believe my eyes.”

ETs can also put on a show. On Feb. 21, a Manhattanite reported six UFOs dancing at the Statue of Liberty on Feb. 21.

The reports offer time, place and lots of speculation — but not many details. And the observers don’t usually ID themselves.

Still, center director Peter Davenport has no doubt observers are seeing what they’re seeing.

“I believe we are being visited routinely by these things we call UFOs,” Davenport, 72, told The Post, adding he has had “five sighting experiences.”

Asked why outer-space types would want any part of our crazy world, the galactic gatekeeper said: “You are going to have to talk to the aliens. I don’t know what these creatures are up to. What their objective might be in being here.”

Source: New York Post