Unconfirmed UFO Sightings That Set Social Media On Fire

If there's one thing the internet loves to dig into, it's a sighting of an unidentified flying object, or UFO. Heck, even before the World Wide Web became a thing, people went positively gaga over strange lights in the sky, flying saucers, and perhaps even the appearance of an extraterrestrial or two, including some pretty wild UFO stories from far back in history. The rise of social media and of UFO-focused influencers and journalists has only stoked those fires, keeping the churn of UFO footage and the speculation swirling about it all going strong — though there are notable exceptions, like Albert Einstein's non-interest in the phenomenon.

While you might be able to dismiss many social media images and videos of UFOs (or UAPs, as the modern parlance has it — which stands for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or as NASA officially started calling them in 2023, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) as mistaken astronomical phenomena or outright fakes, a few more still manage to catch the eye. It's not that they're outright proof of interstellar visitors coming to Earth or even of shadowy government projects, but they certainly are fun to speculate about ... and, yes, argue about in the comments section, if you must. Some have been making the social media rounds for years now, generating plenty of discussion wherever they go even if they're not strictly confirmed by authorities.

If you're sick of flying saucers, then how about a jellyfish UFO? It's a striking shape, going by the footage that was allegedly recorded in 2018 at a U.S. military base in Iraq and released in 2024 (an officer from the U.S. Marine Corps later said the footage was from 2017, but offered little else). The video in question appears to show a bulbous, tangled shape with more tendrils dangling below, floating smoothly above military buildings, roads, and seemingly unaware humans strolling about below. Jeremy Corbell, a filmmaker and UFOlogist who released the video, claims that other footage also shows the "jellyfish" entering and then leaving water in the Persian Gulf before zooming out of frame.

Some maintained that it was a weird new UAP — after all, how could people clearly visible on the ground below have missed it? But not everyone is convinced. Mick West, another UFO researcher with a skeptical bent, told Popular Mechanics that the video appears to be legit, but that the tangled shape looks an awful lot like a mass of balloons (those "tentacles" might just be dangling strings). What's more, analysis suggests it's floating 1,000 feet up at night — pretty good reason for people on the ground to have missed it. But after it was sent directly to Corbell, with his handy social media following, West argues that it became too easy for people to jump to extraterrestrial conclusions.

Pilots often seem the most likely humans to encounter strange objects flitting about in the sky, but could one man have finally captured clear evidence of a UAP? Maybe. Pilot Jorge Arteaga was flying in Colombian airspace when he caught sight of an odd object moving nearby. He was able to catch footage of the thing as it hurtled past his plane, leaving us with a few tantalizing freeze frames of something that looks almost like a classic flying saucer. As Arteaga told UFOlogist Jaime Maussan in a 2023 interview, he and his co-pilot had actually spotted the object earlier and considered pursuing it, but then the angular UAP appeared to change course and began hurtling towards their plane, per LadBible.

Pilot Jorge Arteaga captures what some are describing as 'the best UFO footage ever'. pic.twitter.com/myE1Vv4lPR

— The JRE Companion (@TheJRECompanion) April 19, 2023

Social media commentators quickly began speculating on what the zooming shape could be. A mylar balloon? Arteaga believes the plane's altitude — about 12,500 feet — was too high and a balloon would have been ripped apart by cold temperatures and turbulent air. Others wondered if it was a drone. Then again, there's also the chance of something less-than-honest happening here. Maussan is infamous for his promotion of wild tales like the so-called "alien bodies" that were presented to Mexico's Congress in 2023. After lab testing that involved CT scans of the alleged remains, a doctor who's worked with Maussan before claimed they were made of single skeletons, but others argued it would be easy to fake with a mish-mash of human and animal remains.

Surely, UFOs didn't just visit one of the largest cities in North America unseen, right? For most people in Toronto in the summer of 2014, that may have been the case. But quite a few residents did post to social media saying that they'd collectively witnessed something weird in the skies above Canada's largest city — and that they'd captured it, as in video footage posted by a resident shortly after their sighting. For some, that was the appearance of lights in formations of up to five, while others claimed to see them flashing in an array of colors. Others claimed that airplanes were seen deliberately changing flight paths to avoid the apparent objects, though that was never officially confirmed. Toronto Police did say they received multiple reports of the weird lights on the evening of July 26, with one officer wondering if it could all be explained by an errant quadcopter.

Multiple residents of the city, and especially its North York neighborhood, took to social media to post their footage of the event. Given the blurry nighttime video taken over a decade ago, the results offer little expansion but were fertile ground for speculation online. Maybe it really was some type of drone, an odd reflection of regular earthbound lights, a kite, or even lanterns released to celebrate the culmination of Ramadan. Or heck, maybe it really was a group of extraterrestrial craft silently checking out Toronto and its environs.

Nearly everyone loves to see a happy dog posted on social media, but the footage showing one particular good dog in Gloucester, England, has a surprise in the background that's generated a fair amount of discussion. In it, a man who's been walking his dog outdoors has stopped on an idyllic hill to toss a throwing disc to the happy canine. All good, but then something weird zips through the upper right corner of the screen. Andrew Clifton, the man in question, maintains that he neither saw nor heard anything while filming the video in August 2025. But, once he reviewed the footage, he noticed the strange, tubelike thing zooming by and showed it to his friends, who encouraged him to post it to a UFO Facebook page. From there, social media speculation ran rampant.

🧃 UFO captured in slow motion over Malvern Hills, (Western UK 🇬🇧) pic.twitter.com/Dnnxe9lFdl

— 💭 think tank (@528vibes) August 7, 2025

So, could it be an alien craft or a mysterious creature, as some have speculated? Or is there a more earthly explanation? The footage does share similarities to an optical phenomenon widely known as "rods" or, more colorfully, "skyfish." To some observers, the rods seen in other examples (and often missed by people filming at the time) are evidence of something strange going on in our skies. But others maintain that they're more often normal creatures, like insects or birds, that, of course, wouldn't attract attention. They only gain their strange new look as a byproduct of how cameras and phones film things nowadays.

As if having a dangerous volcano that could erupt anytime nearby isn't enough, some residents of Mexico City claim that their particular volcano is host to mysterious unidentified anomalous phenomena. What's more, they have the footage to back it up (maybe). The volcano under consideration is Popocatépetl — El Popo for short — a highly active specimen that's been continuously releasing steam, gases, ash, and other volcanic material for about two decades. Seems like hardly a place to put down stakes, but Popocatépetl is allegedly really attractive to UAPs, per the various videos and pictures that purport to show lights zipping around, in, and out of the volcano. When it comes to the social media UAP zeitgeist, you can hardly do better than focus on El Popo, including one striking 2017 video of a bright ball that appears to emerge from it (via "The Proof is Out There").

So, what's happening? More out-there theories include not just extraterrestrials, but "cryptoterrestrials" that secretly live beneath the surface of the Earth and use Popocatépetl as an entry and exit point. If you want to embody Scully more than Mulder, you also ought to consider the fact that volcanoes throw out all manner of glowing material and can be so statically charged they produce their own lightning. Oh, and also there's the busy Puebla International Airport nearby, which requires planes to turn on their landing lights when they dip below 10,000 feet in altitude.