But years before these now-world-famous craft sightings went mainstream, a little-known research group was analyzing them over and over again.

MUFON – the Mutual UFO Network – has 700 investigators in the U.S. and has been collecting evidence of strange encounters since the 1960s.

One of its top analysts, Bob Spearing, told DailyMail.com ‘Our slogan is, ‘Doing the Air Force’s job since 1969′.’ MUFON now has 137,000 reports of UFO encounters in its files.

Searing is today revealing the strangest cases which he believes could be the catalyst for further government investigations and congressional hearings.

Flying squids

The idea of ‘Jellyfish’ UFOs rocketed into the public consciousness thanks to a video on an Iraqi military base, released by journalist Jeremy Corbell.

MUFON debunked that video, which Spearing describes as having ‘so many flaws’ – but looked in its archive to find others.

‘What we found was startling,’ said Spearing – there were dozens of similar cases, both of larger squid-like craft – and smaller floating squid, some of which seemed to ‘suck the life-force’ from victims.

.

‘We found a lot of drawings and pH๏τographs starting from Denmark in the 70s of these giant cloud-like mushrooms, and it goes right up until today – but then we also discovered that there’s also a phenomenon of indoor jellyfish.

One strange encounter in Singapore found sleeping women attacked by floating objects with bioluminescent tentacles.

Spearing said: ‘They noticed that in the corner of the room there were these squid-like objects with bio luminescent tentacles.

‘In one case, the creature, whatever it was, had attached itself to the back of the woman, and she felt pain, and that’s what woke her up.

‘The thing was sentient because it jumped away. She could hear it actually feel disturbed in English, like she could hear it telepathically.’

The squid attached itself to her like it was sucking the life force out of her.

Other squid encounters included one in Vancouver in 2016, and one in 2024 – as well as two further encounters in Iran.

MUFON’s record of one of the Iranian encounter reads: ‘The witness is a 45 year old woman, married with two sons.

‘Few nights ago on October 24th the witness heard a sound again. She knew something was coming for her again. She woke up feeling a pressure against her chest. She said out-loud what is going on?’

.

‘That’s when she saw what looked like a Boxed Jelly fish with lots of short legs, Half blue and half red on her stomach. It looked like a sea creature. It was right on top of her and then it got up and sat on the floor.

‘Then disappeared after a few minutes. The next day she saw a scar few inches long on her abdomen. It has been itching and burning from inside out. Witness is very worried.’

The octagon spacecraft

Back in 2023, MUFON’s interest was piqued after the U.S. military sH๏τ down three alleged Chinese spy balloons – one of which was octagonal in shape.

The search for the octagonal object was called off by Canadian mounted police after it was sH๏τ down with a Sidewinder missile.

‘They could find the тιтan submersible in 12,000 feet of water, but they couldn’t find something in 142 feet of water?’ says Spearing.

MUFON accessed its database of 137,00 cases, and found many reports of octagonal objects – some of which were startlingly similar.

Spearing said, ‘It’s mostly drawings. It’s all drawings by witnesses, but there were a tremendous amount of cases, and the objects all look the same.

‘They were between 30 and 60 feet somewhere, octagons. They all had patterns of yellow, orange and white lights on the bottom.’

Many had been spotted near strategic military base – and one was in the Upper Michigan peninsula on Lake Huron, where the USAF sH๏τ down the first Octagon.

One California sighting in 2014 was described in a MUFON UFO report: ‘… I… thought it might be a helicopter, or a new aircraft, but ..it was neither one of these,.. no propellers or wings.

‘There was NO sound at all…..Marsh Air Force base is several miles away, and I also took that into consideration. I counted the points of the shape, which was eight.

‘It was dark out, but there were lights surrounding the craft in white, yellow red and orange.’

Cases stretched back to 1976, and were found in countries in Europe and beyond – often around military bases and other high-security installations.

In August 2023, a witness saw an Octagon over Fort Knox at 4.23 in the morning – and it sparked a reaction from a UFO-sensing device known as a MADAR detector built to detect changes in pressure and magnetism.

.

Spearing said: ‘These are all over the country. Volunteers have these hooked up all over the country.’

The witness wrote: ‘The entire object and lights appeared to be under shallow water changing the shape very slightly yet still very visible. I’ve been totally freaked out ever since my sighting and was totally frozen as the object past over me and my home.’

The octagon sighting coincided with a change in pressure which Spearing believes is related to a craft entering or leaving Earth’s atmosphere.

The Delaware encounter

One of the most disturbing encounters in MUFON’s archives involved a cylindrical craft which seemed to ‘suck’ a coyote up into the sky – and then turned its attention to human prey.

Spearing said: ‘We have one drawing, basically a girl was on vacation in Delaware, near the Atlantic Ocean, a summer community, and behind her, about 100 yards out, is a forest of pine trees.

‘She saw a silver-ish cylinder come down with purple lights on it. It comes down almost to maybe three feet above the ground. It was four feet long.

‘And she sees it drop something out of the bottom of the cylinder. And it turns out, it seems to be a chunk of meat.

‘The coyote comes up to the meat sucked up into the cylinder. It vibrates again, incredibly loud, and about three minutes later, she hears what sounds like bones crunching them, plop. The coyote gets dropped out, and the thing takes off.’

The girl ran back into the house to grab a camera and came out to take a picture, Spearing said.

Spearing said, ‘So she goes back in the house, and her mother says, Where have you been?

‘She goes, I just went outside to take a picture of something. She goes, you’ve been gone for four hours. It’s one o’clock in the afternoon, so the girl had four hours missing time.’

Spearing says that it may be that the girl was abducted and investigated – but she may have been ‘very, very lucky’.