Aliens are back in vogue. Haven’t you heard?
Fascination with little green men piloting saucer-shaped UFOs was long the purview of tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorists and “X-Files” devotees.
But a series of high-profiles Congressional hearings about UFOs – rebranded as the less stigmatized unidentified anomalous phenomena (or UAP) – have thrust extraterrestrials back into the mainstream spotlight.
More recently, otherworldly visitors got a boost when former President Barack Obama claimed – and then walked back the claim – that aliens were “real.” Current President Donald Trump then chastised his predecessor for allegedly revealing classified information before saying he would be declassifying the Pentagon’s UAP files.
Now, the U.S. government has registered two website domains, Alien.gov and Aliens.gov – neither of which are live and still result in error messages if you try to visit them (it’s been a whole thing.)
All of this is to say, it should be no surprise that a lot of people remain convinced that beings not of our world are out there beaming unwitting victims up to their spaceships. And according to a new study, Florida remains among the top states for alien abduction reports.
To fittingly mark what is apparently National Alien Abduction Day, here’s why Florida is known as a hot spot for the infamous extraterrestrial pastime.
Florida ranks #5 in US for alien abduction reports, study finds
In a new report looking at UFO hotspots across the U.S., Florida ranked fifth among states in the country where you’re most likely to be abducted by aliens.
Casino.ca, a Canadian website dedicated to casino reviews and gambling guides, reviewed more than 150,000 UFO reports since 1974 on the National UFO Reporting Center and combined the data with information scraped from social media.
Florida’s ranking on the list is lower than in 2025 after the Sunshine State fell from third place. Still, the study notes that your odds of seeing a UFO – and, hence, being abducted by aliens – in Florida are 1 in 1,102. At least, if the witness reports are to be believed.
Delaware was crowned the top alien abduction hot spot, with one reported sighting for every 928 residents, according to the study.
The other states that outranked Florida include:
Washington (one reported sighting for every 977 residents)
New York (one reported sighting for every 1,003 residents)
Oregon (one reported sighting for every 1,054 residents)
How many UFO sightings have been reported in Florida?
Casino.ca’s study reviewed a total of 187,870 UFO sightings reported since 1974 across the U.S. to determine where you’re most likely to witness a strange object in the sky.
That includes 20,184 UFO sightings reported in the last five decades in Florida.
And it’s not as outlandish as it sounds. In the past three years, military officers, journalists and other witnesses have three times testified under oath to Congress about their knowledge of mysterious craft spotted in U.S. airspace not only outmaneuvering military aircraft, but moving in ways believed to be beyond the scope of known human technology.
Of course, many sightings are eventually dismissed as hoaxes or simple misidentifications. Even leaders at the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, tasked with investigating sightings, have insisted they’ve never found evidence that any UFOs are extraterrestrial.
What’s more, keep in mind that astrophysicists and other skeptics have long cautioned that the mere absence of obvious natural explanations for UFOs does not make an otherworldly one likely.
Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@usatodayco.com
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Florida among top states for alien abduction reports, study finds