I t’s easy to make assumptions about an organization that investigates UFOs, even the world’s oldest and largest such group. And we all know what those assumptions are. But 10 minutes of discussing the Cincinnati-based Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network (MUFON) with David MacDonald, executive director, is enough to quash those queasy feelings.
It doesn’t hurt that the day before MacDonald shares MUFON’s history and duties with me, a U.S. House Oversight Subcommittee heard a range of testimony from current and retired government officials about the existence of UFOs. Former intelligence official David Grusch, who used to work with a Pentagon task force that looked into unidentified aerial phenomena (government-speak for UFOs), told the hearing that “longstanding covert programs within the U.S. government possess materials of nonhuman origin that were taken from crash sites.”
The revelation doesn’t surprise MacDonald. MUFON representatives have been meeting with Congress—and even presidents—since the 1970s. “We do have a history of working with our government,” he says. “I’ve been in Washington, D.C., twice a month for about a year and a half now meeting with House and Senate intelligence committees,” as well as providing quarterly reports and white papers.
MUFON has been based in Cincinnati since July 2020. It’s the second time in its 54-year history the group has called the Queen City home, and the reasons for moving back are simple: Cincinnati is welcoming and centrally located within a six-hour drive of 60 percent of the U.S. population.
And you can’t beat the cost of living here. In Irvine, California, which was MUFON’s home from 2013 to 2020, rent ran about $3,600 per month. The new home on Airport Road in the East End is $824 per month. Plus, MacDonald is from the area, a Covington Catholic High School grad. “We tell everybody, Me and my wife sleep in Kentucky, but we live at Lunken Airport,” he says.
MUFON’s stated mission is “the scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of humanity.” It has 7,000 members, or “observers,” as well as 700 fully equipped and trained field investigators spread across all 50 states and 46 countries. The member-supported nonprofit organization maintains a 54-year database with more than 200,000 cases of sightings. Most of them have been explained: drones, satellites, the International Space Station. “We have an 85 to 87 percent solve rate,” says MacDonald of those previously unidentified flying objects. “So there’s 15 or fewer percent that we just can’t identify.”
Like that time in Buffalo, Oklahoma, around 2015. A woman was feeding her horses around midnight—“I guess that’s what you do in Buffalo, Oklahoma, at midnight,” says MacDonald—when she saw a light in the sky. It turned, descended, and headed straight for her. “She freaked out, so she grabbed the dog,” he says. “The dog was going nuts.”
MacDonald handled this investigation himself. He found three distinct flat spots in a triangular pattern in the grass. It looked like something had set down and scooted forward, he said. He took soil samples and called in hunters, who said no animal could have made those depressions; something heavier had to have been involved.
He also checked out the animals and found three triangular marks on the horses’ shoulders, where their hair had turned white. He contacted veterinarians, who said the marks looked like something called freeze points, made with a freezing device sometimes used in medical procedures on horses that can dye the skin white. Or, the vets said, maybe they’re bug bites.
During that initial investigation, the woman was terrified by every subsequent light in the sky. “Calm down,” MacDonald told her. “That’s an airplane. It’s got a red light and a white light.”
After a few moments, “her husband very calmly says, Well, Dave, what’s that? I look up, and my jaw dropped. It was five florescent green spheres in a V-shape silently moving across the sky. That’s the kind of stuff we deal with. When we eliminate everything it could be, you’re left with I don’t know.”
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