The odds of a hostile close encounter have reportedly never been higher in the Big Apple.<\/p>\n
New York was named the third most likely place to get abducted in the US, according to gambling guide Casino.ca<\/a>\u2018s annual ranking, which it conducted to honor National Alien Abduction Day \u2014 yes, that\u2019s real \u2014 on March 20.<\/p>\n The Empire State, which moved up a stellar two spots from last year, boasted a staggering 8,314 UFO sightings\u00a0reported since 1974, or one for every\u00a01,003 residents.<\/p>\n You could get abducted in a New York minute.<\/p>\n Dennis Anderson, a former member of the Center for UFO Studies, believes that the Empire State\u2019s high number of sightings is due to the sheer volume of people, most of whom don\u2019t know what they\u2019re looking at. rolffimages \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n That places it just behind Washington (7,595 reported sightings, or one for every 977 peeps) and first-place winner Delaware (one for every 928 residents).<\/p>\n California \u2014 despite having more than its share<\/a> of weird close encounters<\/a> \u2014 landed at a slightly more respectable No. 22 on the list, with one UFO sighing per every 1,708 residents. <\/p>\n For reference, the likelihood of getting attacked by a shark clocks in at about\u00a0one in 11.5 million.<\/a><\/p>\n A map detailing the US States where you\u2019re most likely to be abducted. Casino.ca<\/p>\n The gaming site said some recent sightings in New York included a \u201cwhite, Tic-Tac-shaped object in the sky\u201d and another that one witness reported as a \u201csilver orb flying overhead.\u201d This comes as a trio of mysterious, luminous dots<\/a> was spotted hovering over Corona, Queens \u2014 coincidentally (or not) the site of the climactic final encounter in the 1997 sci-fi hit \u201cMen in Black\u201d \u2014 sparking a fresh wave of conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n Among the most famous sightings in state history were the \u201cArthur Kill Lights\u201d of 2001, where between five and 16 bright orange \u201covals\u201d were spotted flying in a \u201cV\u201d formation over the waterway between New Jersey and Staten Island.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were big, and they were only about 1,000 feet up,\u201d\u00a0Dennis Anderson, a former member of the Center for UFO Studies who investigated the phenomenon, told The Post.<\/p>\n And they weren\u2019t all mere sightings, apparently. <\/p>\n Anderson recalled the highly-publicized Brooklyn Bridge abduction, in which aliens supposedly whisked Linda Napolitano out of<\/a> her lower Manhattan high-rise apartment in 1989.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s going up in this beam of light and there are these three little guys in kind of like fetal positions or something going up around her and going up into this thing,\u201d Anderson recalled of the incident, which was chronicled in a 2024 Netflix docu-series<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, the UAP spotter feels it\u2019s necessary to take such sightings with a grain of salt. <\/p>\n \u201cProbably 99% of what they say they\u2019re seeing in New York as a UFO is just somebody who doesn\u2019t know what they\u2019re looking at,\u201d the former head of Staten Island\u2019s Wagner College Planetarium told The Post. \u201cThey just look up and they don\u2019t recognize something that\u2019s common because they don\u2019t look up very much. Plus, you got such light-polluted skies.\u201d<\/p>\n Anderson chalked up many of the sightings to the fact that there are so many people who are unfamiliar with stargazing.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not used to seeing something, so they\u2019ll call it in. Because there are more people, there\u2019s more chance of somebody looking up and seeing something that they don\u2019t recognize,\u201d he said. \u201cWhereas out maybe in the Midwest, say, or something where it\u2019s nice and dark, people are more nature-oriented.<\/p>\n \u201cThey probably go out at night, look at the sky, they become familiar with it,\u201d he continued. \u201cThings aren\u2019t so unusual to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Happy National Alien Abduction Day to those who \u2026 celebrate? fergregory \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n