How we read the evidence

Every case is reviewed twice: once asking how it could be mundane, once asking what it would be if real. An official explanation or hoax label is treated as a claim with its own evidence tier, not a settled verdict. A debunk that shows a checkable method is credited; a bare assertion is not.

Two passes, every time

Each case is reviewed twice. The first pass asks how the footage or photograph could be entirely ordinary: a balloon, a drone, an aircraft, a reflection, a re-entry, a model. The second pass asks what it would be if it were real. Keeping the passes separate stops a strong mundane candidate from erasing a genuinely strange case, and stops a dramatic story from waving away an obvious explanation.

A debunk is a claim, not a verdict

An official explanation or a "hoax" label is treated as a claim with its own evidence tier. A debunk that shows a checkable method, an identified aircraft, a matched household object, a demonstrated model, is credited and can settle a case. A bare assertion is not, especially given the documented history of manufactured debunks: the era of Project Grudge, Project Blue Book and the 1953 Robertson Panel, when the official posture toward public sightings was explicitly one of debunking and reassurance rather than open inquiry.

Real, and what-it-is, are different bars

"Real and unexplained" is a lower bar than "non-human craft," and the two are kept apart. A case can be strongly supported as real and unidentified while what it actually is stays wide open. A single expert's debunk does not, by itself, collapse a corroborated case.

The evidence tiers

• Verified unexplained The material is authenticated or officially documented; the object is not explained.
• Disputed A counter-explanation or official finding exists but does not close the case.
• Unknown No official narrative exists. The sighting stands on its footage and witnesses alone.
• Discredited A method-shown debunk holds, recorded for completeness.

Who applies this method, and where the archive's data comes from, is covered on the about page.