The Voynich Manuscript While the world abounds with strange phenomena ripe for analysis in their raw state, there is a peculiar pleasure in scrutinising arcane information curated and obscured by the human mind. The Voynich Manuscript is one of the most well-known and studied volumes of occult knowledge. The book’... [Read more...]

Sealed and Buried In the previous three posts in our series delving into the cosmic horror of UFO sightings in the US, we have descended from the deceptively warm and sunlit waters of basic linear regression, through the increasingly frigid, stygian depths of Bayesian inference, generalised linear models, and the... [Read more...]

The Parallax View In the previous post of this series unveiling the relationship between UFO sightings and population, we crossed the threshold of normality underpinning linear models to construct a generalised linear model based on the more theoretically satisfying Poisson distribution. On inspection, however, this model revealed itself to be... [Read more...]

Crossing the Line This post continues our series on developing statistical models to explore the arcane relationship between UFO sightings and population. The previous post is available here: Bayes vs. the Invaders! Part One: The 37th Parallel. The simple linear model developed in the previous post is far from satisfying.... [Read more...]

Introduction From our earlier studies of UFO sightings, a recurring question has been the extent to which the frequency of sightings of inexplicable otherworldly phenomena depends on the population of an area. Intuitively: where there are more people to catch a glimpse of the unknown, there will be more reports... [Read more...]

Sightings of homo sapiens cognatus, or homo sylvestris, are well-recorded, with a particular prevalence in North America. Bigfoot, otherwise known as the Sasquatch, is one of the most widely-reported cryptids in the world; it is the subject of documentaries, film, music, and countless books. The Bigfoot Field Research Organisation has... [Read more...]

In earlier analyses of the UFO phenomenon, based on the NUFORC dataset, we have examined the global density of sightings, and the relative distribution of sightings against the location of military bases in the United States. All of these analyses have, however, considered individual sightings to be more or less... [Read more...]

In our last entry we analysed the relative frequency of paranormal manifestations in the British Isles according to the Paranormal Database. The results of that analysis showed that hauntings of various forms are by far the most commonly-reported paranormal encounter in the British Isles, followed by cryptozoological sightings. This is,... [Read more...]

The British Isles are ancient, haunted places. Pre-Roman legends and folk songs are filled with dragons, magic, and strange, wild creatures. Spirits, fairies, and all kinds of imps and goblins roam the countryside with intent ranging from the mischievous to the malevolent. Will-o’-the-wisps lead unwary travellers deep into marshes ... [Read more...]

What do they know? Since the Roswell Incident in 1947, UFO’s have been associated with secretive military installations where mysterious craft dart across the night sky. Skeptics might hold that many UFO sightings, far from being extraterrestrial visitors, are better explained as experimental or conventional military craft. Does this association... [Read more...]

Our previous post showed an interactive map of UFO sightings drawn from the NUFORC dataset. Whilst this did allow us to see UFO sightings over time, it remained a relatively crude tool that created a static visualisation for each year. In delving deeper into the NUFORC data, it has become... [Read more...]

Whilst an overview of a century of UFO sightings reveals a broad overall feature of the data, it is far more useful to be able to see how sightings change over time. The interactive plot below shows all sightings for a given year. We can clearly see that the number... [Read more...]

Where are you most likely to see a UFO? More importantly, where are they most likely to see you? Thankfully, the National UFO Reporting Centre (NUFORC) have diligently compiled and curated a dataset of over a century of global UFO sightings. The data has been processed, cleaned, and uploaded by... [Read more...]