Is New England a favorite stop for extraterrestrial visitors? Check out our timeline of reported UFO sightings and alien encounters, and decide for yourself.

The first documented UFO sighting in America dates back to 1639, when Massachusetts Bay Colony cofounder and governor John Winthrop recorded a secondhand observation of unidentified objects in the sky over Boston. In his diary entry of March 1 that year, Winthrop wrote that a “sober, discreet man” named James Everell was rowing a boat up the Muddy River at night when he saw a “great light” in the sky. Winthrop reports that “when it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square; when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine: it ran as swift as an arrow towards Charlton [Charlestown], and so up and down about two or three hours.” By the time the lights moved away, Everell and his boatmates had been delivered one mile upstream, although they had no memory of how.