Tell someone that UFOs and nuclear power plants go hand-in-hand and you’re likely to get at a minimum, an incredulous rolling of the eyes. Many people have a hard time believing in something, or at least opening their mind to the possibility unless they’ve seen it with their own eyes – or if someone they respect says it’s so. This week Green Bay Packers star quarterback Aaron Rodgers revealed a UFO sighting he and friends experienced in 2005 right before he entered the NFL.  The mysterious sighting left them stunned and confused and cultivated a lifelong curiosity about weird things in the sky.

Aaron Rodgers UFO sighting

According to Rodgers, he was on the East Coast in rural New Jersey in February 2005 for a pre-draft interview (ESPN’s Cold Pizza show, now First Take).  He was staying with the family of former Cal teammate Steve Levy when he and several friends heard a siren go off in the distance. Not being familiar with the area, they were unsure what the alarm was, so they stepped outside to take a look.

“We were winding down at dinner and then there was a weird siren in the distance, so we go outside — it was a snowy night — and we went outside and it was one of those bright nights, where it’s overcast, but there’s enough light from the moon to see things and the next thing you know, we saw something in the sky.”

What they saw in the sky “stunned” them.

“It was a large orange, left-to-right-moving object. Because of the overcast nature of the night and the snow, you couldn’t make out…it was behind the clouds we were seeing, but it was definitively large, moving from left to right… It was like at 12:30 at night.  It was me, Steve, and his brother that saw it. And it goes out of sight, and we look at each other and go, ‘What in the f— was that?’”

Rodgers said you could hear the air movement as the object flew overhead and shortly after it passed above their position (about 30 seconds later), they saw (or heard) four fighter jets, afterburners roaring, fly over in frantic pursuit of the mysterious object.

UFOs and nuclear power plants

UFOlogists know that sightings such as this often occur near nuclear power plants. According to Rodgers, they found out later that the siren they were hearing was the warning alarm at a nuclear power plant just 30 miles away.

Rodgers recalled that the sighting was so clear and obvious, they expected news of the UFO to break the next day but when they checked the newspapers, there was no mention of the strange object in the sky.  His experience caused him to recognize that mysterious objects appear in the sky fairly often but in most cases are simply not noticed or understood by those who witness them.

This is the first time Aaron Rodgers has publicly revealed his story (although he says he thinks about it every day and has talked to several friends about it).  The story was relayed to comedian Pete Holmes during a podcast radio show.