In the past three years, the reports of UFO sightings in Ireland has increased by nearly 70 percent, according to the UFO Research Association of Ireland. In 2011 alone, 59 incidents were reported, a sharp increase from the 35 reports in 2009.

The Irish Examiner reports that the founder of the UFO Research Association of Ireland, Adam Tallon, believes that there are two possible reasons for the increase in reports. “The first that there wasn’t really any place to report incidents prior to our organisation and secondly I would attribute the increase to people being more comfortable reporting an incident compared to say 10 years ago.”

Adam Tallon’s group was founded in 2005, but was it was officially made the UFO Research Association of Ireland in 2008 when it adopted its current system of tracking sightings. Today, people can lodge reports and sighting as ufoi.org and are not required to enter any personal information, which also creates a possibility for the explanation of increase.
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The association, however, says that it has been able to point to ball lighting and Chinese lanterns as the sources of most sightings recently. Its main interest lie in UFOs that “cannot be explained by conventional means.”

“I would like to believe that there is life out in the universe somewhere, whether it’s walking or talking beings or microscopic bacteria I don’t know,” said Tallon, who believes he saw something strange in the sky one night during his childhood.

“But as I was young it’s very possible that the incident was embellished over the years and was nothing more then a meteor or some other natural phenomena.”