“And all of a sudden, it’s above us, sitting in one spot, And it’s watching us. For probably five minutes. Then all of a sudden the lights went out and we never saw it again.”
Curt Moseman, Montana resident discusses his experience seeing a UFO on his property outside Roy, Montana in 2007
Montana happens to be one of the most active UFO locations in the nation.
Is it our open spaces that attract these intergalactic travelers? Is it our stockpiles of advanced military tech? No one can say for sure, though the UFOs that have been spotted here seem to be interested in both.
Of the 150,000 UFO reports that the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has investigated and tried to debunk over the past 50 years, 1,000 originated in Montana, one of the highest numbers of sightings per capita nationwide.
These Montana UFO sightings include the well-known Mariana UFO incident of 1950 that took place in Great Falls and several nearby events in which activation controls for onsite warheads were unexplainably disabled in mere seconds as UFOs hovered above.
While this may sound too fantastical, some of these sightings even have video proof. And a rational explanation for them has yet to be found – even after federal investigations.
In this article, we have compiled a list of the most notable Montana UFO sightings. Have a look and decide for yourself.
Video summary of this blog (2:56):
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5 unexplained Montana UFO sightings
Table of contents:
- Mariana incident, Great Falls, 1950
- Malmstrom incidents, Great Falls, 1966-1967
- Havre incident, February 11, 2023
- Moseman incident, Roy, 2007
- Rapp incident, Fairfield, 1974/76
- Top 10 Montana UFO sightings from the NUFORC database
1. Mariana incident, Great Falls, 1950
One autumn afternoon in 1950 in Great Falls, Nic Mariana filmed two UFOs flying over Legion Ballpark. The incident attracted an investigation from the federal government, and has become one of Montana’s most well-known UFO sightings to date.
While it was one of many UFO sightings in Great Falls that year, this one had video proof.
One summer afternoon, the General Manager for the Great Falls Electrics baseball team, Nic Mariana, was at Legion Ballpark in Great Falls.
After climbing the grandstand to call the groundskeeper, he glanced north and saw two bright, shiny, metallic, spherical-shaped orbs cruising across the sky from north to south at about 10,000 ft (3,048 m).
The orbs were traveling at a speed much slower than several jets that flew by after he’d finished filming.
Suddenly, when the orbs stopped in mid-air, Mariana remembered his film camera was in his car. He rushed down the flight of stairs to grab it and started filming. The two orbs cruised across the sky together in a straight line before vanishing into thin air.
The federal government later conducted an investigation into Mariana’s sighting, interviewing him about what he saw. Though nothing more has come of the incident since it happened, it remains one of the most well-documented UFO sightings from Great Falls, Montana.
Below is a video of a rehearsed interview with Nic Mariana recounting the events of that day to a federal official. Although it is rehearsed, his description of what happened is accurate. The video includes his footage of the orbs:
2. Malmstrom incidents, Great Falls, 1966 – 1967
Malmstrom Airforce Base (MAB) is located a few miles west of Great Falls, the same city where the 1950 Mariana incident took place.
From 1964 to 1966, several UFO sightings took place at the airbase that involved the remote, simultaneous deactivation of multiple military warheads stored as UFOs hovered overhead.
None of the witnesses (security and management staff) got video footage of any of the incidents, and many of the witnesses later signed non-disclosure agreements with the federal government.
Not much has been said about them, but we’ve summarized the main three sightings below:
Malmstrom incident #1, 1967
On the night of March 24, 1967, 26-year-old U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Robert Salas was positioned in a concrete bunker 66 ft (20 m) below the earth’s surface monitoring and overseeing a group of 10 U.S. military warheads.
Suddenly, in one moment, power to all ten missiles cut out, and a phone call came in from Salas’ noncommissioned security officer (NCO) up above. He was screaming into the phone that an elliptical, glowing object with pulsating lights was hovering over the post.
On its approach, the NCO described the object as traveling rapidly forward, stopping, reversing, making 90° turns, and moving again.
Salas’ team rushed to other launch sites in an attempt to secure the facilities but found more spherical objects hovering over those sites as well. Within a minute, the objects were gone.
His squadron commander later informed him that the incident was indeed not a part of an air force exercise. Salas signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and agreed not to discuss the incident.
Later that year, a similar incident occurred under the exact same circumstances roughly 550 miles (885 km) east at Minot Airforce Base in North Dakota.
Malmstrom incident #2, 1967
Decades later, Silas learned that a similar incident occurred at MAB just eight days prior to the event described above. I’ve named this event “Sighting #2”, and I have found almost no information about it.
Malmstrom incident #3, 1966
Several months after Salas’ experience at MAB, in September of 1966, airman 1st class Patrick McDonough witnessed a similar event at MAB. While surveying the launch sites, he saw a brightly lit aircraft, with pulsating lights wrapping around it, hovering about 100 meters above the site.
He recalled there being no wind or noise, and a white light protruding from its center shining down into the silo.
Other Malmstrom incidents
According to affidavits signed by other officers working at MAB during this time, multiple similar incidents took place at MAB over a period of several months around the same time.
3. Havre incident, February 11, 2023
On Saturday, February 11, 2023, amid several other sightings throughout North America around the same time, the airspace over Havre, Montana, was closed due to an unidentified flying object that could interfere with air traffic.
Hi-Line Today described the event as follows:
“The airspace located directly over Havre was briefly closed while fighter jets investigated an unidentified flying object that officials said could potentially interfere with commercial air traffic. The jets were unable to identify an object that correlated with the anomaly.”
Below is a tweet from Montana Congressman Matt Rosendale regarding the incident:
“I am in direct contact with NORCOM and monitoring the latest issue over Havre and the northern border. Airspace is closed due to an object that could interfere with commercial air traffic — the DOD will resume efforts to observe and ground the object in the morning.”
Congressman Matt Rosendale, February 12, 2023
Meanwhile, within a few days of the Havre incident, Canada shot down a UFO in the Yukon Territory and the U.S. shot down another UFO near Alaska.
“I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.”
Justin Trudeau on Twitter, February 12, 2023
The lack of details from the federal government about what these objects were has resulted in more speculation, though an explanation has yet to be found.
4. Moseman incident, Roy, March 7, 2007
At about 10 p.m. on the night of March 7, 2007, about 20 miles (3 km) east of Roy, Montana, farmer Curt Moseman’s son was out checking on a herd of cows.
He was switching his flashlight on and off while watching one of the cows give birth. Suddenly, an object on a hill in the distance started flashing its lights back at him.
It hovered up to the boy. He immediately ran inside frightened and told his father what had happened. Initially, Moseman brushed it off, telling his son he must be tired.
But when Moseman stepped outside to see for himself, he saw a 90-foot-wide (27 m) ship sitting on the ground about 100 feet away in his pasture. Boom, boom, boom, its lights went on. It started hovering above the ground and took off.
Moseman later confessed to Great Falls Tribune that he had gotten a clear view of the ship and that there was no way it could have been human aircraft. While this sounds almost too fantastical to be true, Moseman’s account of the experience is quite compelling.
5. Rapp incident, Fairfield, 1974/1976
Gerald Rapp tells the story of a similar incident that he experienced near his home about 14 miles (23 km) west of Fairfield, Montana around 1974.
One night, he noticed blinking lights in the distance. Thinking it was a car accident, he and his boys drove out to have a look. On their approach, they noticed small, flickering lights that turned on, hovered above the highway, and returned.
Stepping out of the car, they walked up to the location of the lights and saw a huge, two-story, building-shaped object in the middle of a field, with lots of windows you couldn’t see into, and lights flickering around it.
Suddenly, from the Great Falls direction came a flying object. Initially, they assumed it was the Air Force coming to investigate, but as it approached, they realized it was a huge, disk-shaped object with a dome on top.
It descended behind the building-shaped object, lit it up, and together the two objects flew off into the night.
Top 10 Montana UFO sightings from the NUFORC database
In addition to the above, detailed accounts of Montana UFO sightings, we’ve compiled a list of 10 of the most detailed Montana UFO sightings from the NUFORC database.
The NUFORC is a private organization, established in 1974, whose main undertaking is to receive, record, corroborate (as best as possible), and document potential UFO sightings across the nation.
Some of the reports in their database have turned out to be Starlink Satellites. However, the rest remain unexplained.
Many of their reports only consist of a few brief sentences describing what happened, so they’re much more difficult to verify, but the similarities between them and the above sightings are striking.
1. Bozeman, Montana, August 21, 2023
“A triangle of lights with no sound and faint went across the sky super fast one of the lights in the back dropped off and caught backup.”
2. Stevensville, Montana, August 16, 2023
“3 white lights evenly spaced in a straight line.”
3. Billings, Montana, August 12, 2023
“This object was caught on video in 30fps when filming at the Blue Angles air show.”
After watching the video of this sighting, we suspect the UFO could be an insect flying across the frame, though we can’t say for sure. See the video here.
4. Helena, Montana, August 5, 2023
“Fiery “ball” object seen way up in the distance – it hovered in one spot, then moved to the east maybe 1000 yards and paused again.”
5. Missoula, Montana, July 30, 2023
“I was outside on my back deck when I looked up and saw a bright light moving extremely fast for an air craft and made no sound!”
I admit, without providing more evidence, I don’t have much faith in this one.
6. Billings, Montana, June 9, 2023
“Saw bright lights in the moved upwards and interacted with each other eventually fading out 1 by 1.”
7. Bozeman, Montana, June 1, 2023
“A round object that didn’t move, [hovering] in one spot.“
8. Somers, Montana, February 9, 2023
“Noticed stationary structure on mountainside of national forest land with no tracks or visible way of having gotten to location.”
9. Butte, Montana, April 7, 2018
“I seen two huge bright orbs hovering. One stayed stationary for three hours, the one next to it was moving up and down and made a sharp right then shot faster than anything I have ever seen East.”
10. Lunley incident, Great Falls, 1865 (first Montana UFO sighting ever recorded)
The very first Montana UFO sighting in the NUFORC database dates back to 1865. Trapper James Lunley was trapping 100 miles north of Great Falls when he saw a firey object split into pieces and crash into the ground, shaking the earth.
Upon closer inspection, what seemed like a meteor crash turned out to be something more. An excerpt from an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle dated November 14, 1865, describes what Lunley saw:
An examination of this stone, or so much of it as was visible, showed that it had been divided into compartments, and that in various places it was carved with the curious hieroglyphics. More than this, Mr. Lumley also discovered fragments of a substance resembling glass, and here and there dark stains, as though caused by a liquid. He is confident that the hieroglyphics were the work of human hands, and that the stone itself, although but a fragment of an immense body, must have been used for some purpose by animated beings.
Like most of these NUFORC reports, it’s impossible to confirm the accuracy of Lumley’s account.
Montana UFO sightings – One of the top UFO locations in the nation
The number of UFO sightings worldwide has continued to rise in recent years, particularly in the state of Montana, with similarities between each sighting including:
- Dome- or circular-shaped objects
- Bright lights
- Soundless motion
- Steady, undisturbed movement in a single direction
- Sudden, 90° changes in direction
- Sudden disappearance
Meanwhile, the federal government is paying increasing attention to nationwide UFO sightings.
The federal government established the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) in 2020, which later became the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in 2022, to formally investigate and establish standardized records of UFO sightings across the nation.
The Pentagon released a much-anticipated report in 2021 on the many encounters its naval airmen have had with UFOs in recent years. Although the report didn’t provide much of an explanation, some of the sightings included similar descriptions of UFO behaviors and appearances as in the above incidents.
header image: FolsomNatural, CC BY 2.0 DEED
