These South Carolina cities among top for UFO sightings in US. One declared a ‘hotspot’

Apr. 21—The Myrtle Beach area has long been on the radar as a top spot for UFO sightings.

Over the years, thousands have reported some unidentified flying objects along the Grand Strand.

«It’s the only place I can call a UFO hotspot,» Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center, said about Myrtle Beach.

The reporting center, founded in 1974, collects and documents reports of unusual and possibly UFO-related events back to 1939.

Myrtle Beach is among three Horry County cities with the most UFO sightings in the United States, according to TruePeopleSearch Insights. This online site offers searches for people and subjects. The site reported the top 10 cities with the most UFO sightings per 100,000 people. The list was developed based on an in-depth analysis of the National UFO Reporting Center’s database dating between 1910 and 2014 in the U.S. and Canada.

Surfside Beach was ranked No. 3 with 671 sightings per 100,000 people, Myrtle Beach at No. 6 with 507 per 100,000 residents, and North Myrtle Beach at 380 sightings per 100,000 people.

The site pointed out in its analysis that there is no way to definitively separate the hoaxes from the actual UFO sightings.

The National UFO Reporting Center lists 2,249 reports of UFO sightings from South Carolina. The most recent sightings in Horry County were Jan. 11, 2024, in Surfside Beach and Jan. 29, 2024, in Myrtle Beach.

In 2013, the reporting of UFOs from the Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach areas was so numerous that Davenport wrote an article about it, he said. Davenport said the reporting center would hear reports of red, yellow, and orange fireballs.

«(If you) look at the data for South Carolina, you can see all the reports from Horry County,» he said.

The reports of witnesses’ sightings describe what they saw, which often includes the object’s shape, how far in the sky it is and how fast it was going.

One sighting in Surfside Beach reported an object in the sky over the ocean that had an aura or haze around it. Another sighting in Myrtle Beach described an «amber orange fireball» that was moving fast in the night sky.

Some times there are explanations for the sightings. Davenport said there have been numerous sightings of Starlink satellites, which are low-orbit satellites launched by SpaceX to provide broadband internet across the globe. And since the Myrtle Beach area has frequent military flights and training exercises nearby, some of the sightings could also be attributed to those.

Davenport doesn’t know why the Myrtle Beach area has become a hotspot for UFO sightings.

«I hesitate to conjecture,» Davenport said.

Lights seen out over the ocean may be lights associated with fishing boats, but when they rise up to a 45-degree angle, «You can’t describe that to a fishing boat, Davenport said. «I don’t know what those orbs are.»