According to The Guardian on December 16, at the newly opened National UFO Historical Records Center in New Mexico, detailed records of unidentified flying objects and the fears of the people have filled dozens of filing cabinets.

For Director David Marler, this first-ever public archive of UFO records is the culmination of a lifelong passion and investigation of UFOs, or what the military now calls UAPs: unidentified anomalous phenomena.

The opening of the archive comes at an opportune time, as congressional and Senate hearings have brought the topic back into the spotlight in recent years.

A military report from September 13, 1959, details an object that made seven sharp turns and was tracked by four military radar stations in New Mexico. It was much faster than the fastest fighter jet of the time, the Convair 106.

“The Air Force was interested not from an alien perspective but from a national defense perspective, just like it is today,” Marler said. “That was the practical reason, especially when qualified military and commercial pilots reported these objects.”

In congressional hearings last month, witnesses testified that the government has kept a trove of information about UAPs for decades. Two former Navy pilots recounted firsthand accounts of unidentified objects that regularly violated U.S. airspace.

Retired Major David Grusch, who served on the Pentagon’s UAP task force, said the U.S. government ran a secret program to recreate technology based on non-human materials found at crash sites.

However, the US Comprehensive Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), established in 2022, said there was no single explanation for the vast majority of UAP reports and that it had found no evidence of extraterrestrial technology.

“Reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena, especially near areas of national security, must be taken seriously and investigated scientifically by the US government,” AARO Director Jon Kosloski said during a Senate hearing.

Marler said he remains neutral on the phenomena. “You have to be skeptical, look at the evidence objectively, and suspend any conclusions or beliefs. My beliefs don’t matter unless I have the data to back them up,” he said.

Earlier this year, a New York software company released an app called Enigma that collects UFO sightings by uploading videos and photos with descriptions, then sorts the data collected by geographic and other criteria.

Engineers determined that New Mexico had the highest rate of UFO sightings per capita, with 12.2 reports per 100,000 people, much higher than the next closest states, Nevada and Arizona. New Mexico has had some strange videos submitted this year, capturing lights over the cities of Albuquerque and Gallup.

The state that birthed the Roswell incident is also home to nuclear activity, military testing sites, and clear skies ideal for searching for UFOs.

“New Mexico has always been a hotbed for this topic because there are more reports per capita,” said Alejandro Rojas, an advisor to Enigma and anomaly researcher.

The UFO scare has been going on in waves since Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot, saw several saucer-like objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier in Washington state in June 1947. Newspapers picked up the story, calling them flying saucers. Since then, similar stories have continued to appear and have never really stopped.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Americans have been worried about a series of mysterious UAVs recently, according to CNN. The UAVs have been spotted near the Picatinny Arsenal military installation and on President-elect Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster. The sightings have prompted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to issue temporary flight bans over these areas.