The supposed alien UFO was snapped coming-out of Mount Shasta – a volcanic peak in Siskiyou County, California. A witness pH๏τographed the unidentified object on April 17 this year and submitted the pH๏τos to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). The UFO witness said the object was a “large light” with a cigar-shaped object directly below it. The UFO then supposedly took off and disappeared from sight.

The images have since been analysed by self-тιтled UFO expert Scott C Waring, who believes they are genuine pictures of an alien spaceship.

Mr Waring runs the website ET Data Base, where he analyses and compiles UFO sighting reports, video clips and pH๏τos.

UFO sighting: Scott Waring believes this is a genuine alien UFO (Image: SCOTT C WARING)

“It is correct. Even 40 years ago – yeah I’m old – I was told as a kid the stories of beings that lived below Mount Shasta, one of which is supposed to be the legendary Saint Germain who is famous for starting the new cultural Age of Aquarius, also called Master Rakoczi.

In his book Mount Shasta Sightings, he wrote: “Perhaps like the salmon, we grow in the safety of the river only to naturally migrate to the ocean when we are old enough to navigate it competently.

However, a more likely explanation for these unusual pH๏τos is a psychological mind trick known as pareidolia.

Pareidolia is a phenomenon where people, and in particular UFO-hunters, see shapes, faces and patterns where they of not exist.

Brigitte Nerlich, a professor of science at the University of Nottingham, explained: Pareidolia, is, it seems, ‘the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist’ – Collins Dictionary.

“As far back as 1965 Carl Sagan had talked about pareidolia and put forward an evolutionary explanation.”

The famous physicists proposed pareidolia developed as an evolutionary trait to better help infants recognise faces.