UFO sightings have been reported all over the world, and Albania, a country on the Balkan Peninsula, holds one of Europe’s more extensive records of them, spanning more than a century and crossing the country’s monarchist, communist, and post-communist eras alike.
The earliest recorded sighting dates back to 1907
Mihal Grameno, a journalist, writer, and figure in the Albanian national movement, recorded Albania’s earliest documented UFO sighting, from 1907 or 1908, in his memoir “The Albanian Uprising.” Grameno was traveling with a guerrilla unit led by Çerçiz Topulli in the mountains when a glowing object suddenly appeared ahead of the group as they made camp one night. It hung in the air for several minutes before vanishing.
Airplanes had not yet come into wide use at the time, which is why later observers have argued the object was unlikely to have been a conventional aircraft. Its ability to remain stationary in the air also ruled out a meteor or comet, according to the same accounts.
Reports spread across Europe in the 1930s and 1940s
On July 8, 1933, a report sent to the provincial government of Milan, Italy, described an anomalous aerial event over the Albanian city of Vlorë. Two flying objects abruptly changed direction in a way that exceeded the aviation technology of the era, according to the report, leading it to be classified as an anomalous incident.
Fourteen years later, on July 18, 1947, a Federal Bureau of Investigation report noted that people around the world were reporting sightings of unidentified flying objects commonly known as flying saucers. The report listed sighting locations including Mexico City, New York, Boston, Paris, Milan, Bologna, Yugoslavia, and Albania, placing the country within the same wave of postwar UFO reports.
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Fighter jets scramble to intercept a glowing sphere in the 1960s
In the early 1960s, during Albania’s communist era, the Kuçovë military air base scrambled five MiG-19 fighter jets to intercept a spherical object emitting a blinding light, an episode later known as the Mount Tomorr incident.
According to accounts of the incident, the pilots’ vision was affected by the glare as they closed in on the object, and their instruments and radios began to fail. The lead pilot, identified in accounts as Veiz Lamë, received orders to open fire, but his aircraft crashed. Witnesses reportedly described a precise, clean cut through the rear of the cockpit, while the cockpit itself remained largely intact. Accounts differ on what ultimately happened to the pilot.
The incident was initially suspected to involve a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) operation launched from the direction of Greece, but Albania’s state security agency later ruled out that possibility during its own investigation and classified the case as top secret. In the years that followed, residents, local officials, and other officials near Mount Tomorr also reported seeing glowing round objects in the sky.
In January 1963, residents of a village in the Kurvelesh region reported a similar bright, glowing object in the sky. Amid the public speculation that followed, Albanian officials said residents had actually seen a new model of Air Force jet.
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Two glowing orbs in a mountain canyon
Ilir Malindi, a lawyer, wrote in his memoir that in 1969 he and a companion saw two round, glowing objects as they left a well known cave in the Pirogoshi Canyon. Deep in the canyon, the two orbs reflected a blinding light for about a minute before shooting into the sky and disappearing. Malindi was not the only witness: several residents of the nearby town of Çorovodë reported seeing the same thing, sparking widespread discussion. Some speculated the lights were NATO missiles.
Soldiers, fishermen, and villagers report sightings through the 2000s
In 1990, an active-duty air defense soldier said that during a shift on duty, he saw 100 to 150 points of light arranged in a diamond formation streak across the night sky at high speed, making almost no sound. Other air defense units reported seeing the same thing, though radar detected no corresponding target.
A glowing object moving rapidly across the night sky was reported by residents of Cërrik, a town in the Elbasan district, in 1993, disappearing around 10 p.m.
Roskovec became the site of one of Albania’s best known UFO incidents in 2006, when multiple residents said a gray, oval, disc-shaped object briefly touched down on the ground for 4 to 5 seconds. Three black circular marks were later found on the road where it had landed, and some residents claimed that rose petals placed on the marks turned scorched black.
In 2007, two coast guard officers on duty said they watched, with the naked eye and through binoculars, a disc-shaped object hover in place for 20 minutes, its light shifting between green, blue, and red.
Four hunters walking through a forest at night in 2008 said they were struck by a blue light followed by a vertical beam of red light, and their vehicle’s engine cut out immediately after. One of the men said he initially assumed a police car was chasing them from behind.
In 2009, several fishermen who had gone out to sea before dawn said an object roughly three meters in diameter and shaped like a satellite flew past above their boat at high speed and vanished within seconds.
In 2010, a woman living in Tirana and her family said they saw three orange orbs of light hovering in the night sky. One suddenly shot off toward the northwest at high speed, and the other two disappeared shortly after. Albania’s military did not comment on the incident at the time, and civil aviation authorities said they had received no reports of unusual flight activity.
