MUFON: What It Is, How Reports Work and How Reliable the Data Is

What's documented: Its history, report form, investigator rules and database terms, all published by MUFON itself, plus its IRS filings and news coverage of its leadership. Every source is linked below.

What's claimed: MUFON's success rate, its database size and its influence in Congress are MUFON's own figures. We couldn't check them independently. Witness reports in its database are testimony, not findings.

Status: Active. MUFON still takes reports, trains investigators and holds an annual symposium.

Last checked: November 12, 2026, against MUFON's own pages and the filings linked in Sources.

What is MUFON?

MUFON stands for the Mutual UFO Network. It's a civilian group, not a government agency, and it has no official role in how the U.S. government handles unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP, the government's current term; we explain the name change in why UFO became UAP).

It does three main things. It runs an online form where anyone can report a sighting. It trains and certifies volunteer field investigators who interview witnesses. And it keeps the reports in a database it calls the Case Management System, or CMS, which paid members can search.

IRS records list it as Mufon Mutual Ufo Network Inc, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charity in Cincinnati.

A short history of MUFON

Most of what follows comes from MUFON's own history pages, written largely by John F. Schuessler, a founding member and former director. Treat it as the organization's account of itself.

• 1969: Founded on May 31 as the Midwest UFO Network. Allen Utke was its first director. Walter H. Andrus Jr. took over a year later and led it until 2000.
• 1970: First conference, in Peoria, Illinois, on June 13. Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force's longtime scientific consultant on UFOs, spoke.
• 1971: First Field Investigator's Manual published in December.
• 1973: Renamed the Mutual UFO Network. The newsletter Skylook became its official journal and was later renamed the MUFON UFO Journal.
• 1974: Representatives in 38 states, and a partnership supplying field investigators to Hynek's Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS).
• 1995: MUFON, CUFOS and the Fund for UFO Research formed the UFO Research Coalition. MUFON's history says Robert Bigelow suggested the coalition.
• 2000 to 2012: Schuessler, an aerospace engineer, led MUFON until November 2006. James Carrion followed until the end of 2009, then Clifford Clift until January 2012. Headquarters moved around Colorado in those years. Around 2006, a team led by Jan Harzan built the CMS database.
• 2012: David MacDonald took over and moved headquarters to Cincinnati. MUFON also created a Science Review Board that year.
• 2013: Leadership changed again at the Las Vegas symposium. Vice later reported that Harzan led MUFON from 2013.
• 2020: MacDonald returned as executive director in July.
• 2023: MUFON opened the Project Aquarius Digital Library, which it describes as almost 2 terabytes of old reports, witness drawings, journals and private collections.

How a MUFON report works

Anyone can file a report at mufon.com. The form asks for the date, time and exact location, a written account, and details like the object's shape, color, brightness and direction of travel. MUFON's history page says a new report goes automatically to its Director of Investigations and to the right State Director, who can assign a field investigator.

Before you submit, the form shows notes on two common false alarms, with a button to cancel. One is Starlink satellite trains. The other is the glowing spiral a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage can make as it tumbles back toward Earth dumping unused fuel. That they made the form is a fair sign of how many reports they cause. (We explain the trains in what that line of lights was.)

A few privacy terms are worth knowing before you file:

• MUFON says personal details in your written account stay confidential, but attachments can be seen by other members. It warns against uploading photos of your face, your house or other witnesses.
• By submitting, you agree to release MUFON from liability over the report's content.

If you want a full rundown of where to report and how to write a report an investigator can actually check, see how to report a UFO sighting.

Who are MUFON's field investigators?

Field investigators are members, not staff. To become one, MUFON says, you must:

1. Be at least 18.
2. Join MUFON as a paying member.
3. Buy and study the Field Investigator Manual.
4. Score at least 80% on a certification exam through MUFON University. It covers optics, sound, electromagnetism, physical traces, photography, radar and astronomy.
5. Pass a background check and sign a non-disclosure agreement.
6. Work as a trainee under a certified investigator.

An investigator's job, as MUFON describes it, is to interview the witness, measure what they can (the object's angle above the horizon, its compass direction, its apparent size) and rule out ordinary causes. MUFON lists Chinese lanterns, aircraft, drones, planets and stars, and reflections as the usual suspects.

MUFON University isn't an accredited school. It's MUFON's own training program, and its courses are open only to certified investigators.

What's in the MUFON database, and who can see it?

MUFON says the CMS held more than 140,000 witness-submitted cases by 2024. It has called it the world's "largest and most detailed database of UFO sightings," Vice reported. Two things limit how useful it is to an outsider.

First, it's members-only. MUFON's terms say searching the CMS is "a privilege of paid membership." Reusing anything from it in a book, video or website needs MUFON's written permission. When we checked, basic membership was listed at $6.89 a month or $59.88 a year.

Second, MUFON doesn't vouch for it. Its own terms say it makes "no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness" of the database. That's honest, and it matters: most entries are a witness's own account, sometimes followed by an investigator's notes. A report sitting in the CMS isn't evidence that anything unusual happened.

Is MUFON credible?

It depends what you need it for. As a record of what people say they saw, and when, it's one of the biggest civilian collections there is. As a source of conclusions, it has real limits.

What MUFON says about itself. Its "scientific method" page says each investigation starts from the hypothesis that "this event can be explained rationally," and that "we succeed in proving this hypothesis 95% of the time." About 2% to 3% of cases, it says, are "truly unexplained." Those are MUFON's numbers. It doesn't publish the case-by-case data behind them, so we couldn't check them. A 2% to 3% leftover is roughly what government studies have found too: Project Blue Book left 701 of its 12,618 sightings, about 5.6%, "Unidentified." "Unexplained" means not enough information to say what it was. It doesn't mean proven extraordinary. MUFON's Science Review Board, set up in 2012, has eight or nine scientists from fields including physics, engineering and astronomy, according to MUFON.

What critics say. In a 2013 Skeptical Inquirer article, writer Sharon Hill wrote that "MUFON is not in good shape." She said local chapter meetings had drifted to alien abduction, conspiracy theories and hypnotic regression, a mix she called "a wide range of pseudoscience in one place."

Government money, at one remove. MUFON's history says that after a 2008 meeting it signed a contract with Bigelow Aerospace, owned by businessman Robert Bigelow. The contract funded a rapid-response team to reach high-value cases within 24 hours, and it gave Bigelow Aerospace access to the CMS. Vice reported in 2020 that Bigelow Aerospace had received federal money to study UAP and had paid MUFON for technical reports. MUFON's history calls the conspiracy theories that grew up around the deal "nonsense."

The 2020 arrest. In July 2020, Huntington Beach, California, police arrested Jan Harzan, MUFON's executive director. They said he had tried to meet someone he believed was a 13-year-old girl, who was actually a detective. Vice reported that court records listed charges of communicating with a minor with intent to commit a lewd act. MUFON's board said he had been "permanently removed" and that David MacDonald would take over. An arrest isn't a conviction, and we found no primary record of how the case ended, so we don't report one.

Its claims about Washington. In an April 2023 director's message, MUFON said it had met more than 150 members of Congress, helped shape UAP language in the 2022 and 2023 defense bills, and sends Congress quarterly statistical reports. We found no congressional record that confirms those claims either way. Read them as MUFON's own description of its lobbying.

Where MUFON's money comes from

MUFON's IRS filings, as summarized by ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, show a small organization. For tax year 2023 it reported $796,228 in revenue, $515,362 of it from contributions and grants, and $724,674 in expenses. Most of its work is done by unpaid members.

MUFON vs. NUFORC vs. AARO

People often mix up three very different places to send a report.

The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) publishes its reports free online and says it "makes no claims as to the validity of the information." AARO, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, is the Pentagon's UAP office (our AARO explainer lists its reports by date). Its counts are the only ones that come with an official answer about what was explained, and its 2024 report said it "has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology." We look at how those government counts have changed in are UAP sightings declining?

How to use MUFON well

• As a witness: Check the easy explanations first (a flight tracker, a satellite app, a sky chart), then file with whichever group you like. Keep your originals, with their metadata, and don't upload photos that identify you or anyone else.
• As a researcher: Treat each CMS entry as one person's account. Look for an investigator's write-up, and check the time and place against flight records, satellite passes and weather before you lean on it.
• As a reader: When a headline cites "MUFON data," ask whether it means reports filed or cases investigated and explained. They're very different numbers. For the official tallies and how many get explained, see how many UFO sightings are reported and explained.

Old cases show why the paperwork matters. The Betty and Barney Hill story rests almost entirely on testimony recorded years after the event. And the reason "flying saucer" exists at all is one pilot's interview, covered in Kenneth Arnold's 1947 sighting. MUFON's Experiencer Resource Team, which supports people who say they've had contact experiences, was founded by Kathleen Marden, Betty Hill's niece.

Sources

• MUFON: MUFON Through the Ages (timeline)
• MUFON: A Brief History of MUFON, by John F. Schuessler
• MUFON: The Scientific Method
• MUFON: Become a MUFON Field Investigator
• MUFON: Sighting report information and terms
• MUFON: Search Database Terms and Conditions
• MUFON: About and membership levels
• MUFON: Director's Message, April 2023
• ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer: Mufon Mutual Ufo Network Inc (IRS Form 990 filings)
• Skeptical Inquirer: UFO research is up in the air: Can it be scientific? (Sharon Hill, 2013)
• Vice: Head of Major UFO Organization Arrested on Child Solicitation Charges (July 14, 2020)
• Wikipedia: Mutual UFO Network
• National UFO Reporting Center: Data Bank
• AARO: Fiscal Year 2024 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena
• National Archives: Project BLUE BOOK - Unidentified Flying Objects

Photo: a person works on a laptop beside a telescope at dusk, used here as an illustration of sky-watching. Nothing unidentified is in the frame, and it isn't a MUFON investigator. Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels.