That light you just saw zooming across the night sky, it was probably a shooting star. Or maybe a comet or something. It wasn’t a UFO, there’s just no way. Unless...

Questioning what you saw that night you were camping or having a fire in the backyard isn’t uncommon. There are literally thousands of people across the country, and many in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, who thought about the same thing and even went far enough to report what they saw as an Unidentified Flying Object.

The National UFO Reporting Center takes these claims and puts them in their database, which has thousands and thousands of reports that can be traced as far back as the late 1800s. It gets a bit spotty before that, though there are a couple of reports from 1561 (but someone is not happy with Hanz Glaser). The good folks over at NUFORC update their report lists every so often, most recently on Oct. 4.

Their database can be sorted by location, too, with tabs for each North American territory. Of all 50 states, Pennsylvania has the seventh most-reported sightings, and New Jersey comes in 14th. The Keystone State has 3,999 total sightings (who’ll be the lucky 4,000th?), while Jersey has 2,387.

For context, California has the most with a whopping 13,811 reported sightings. The second-highest (Florida) has 6,727. The state with the least? North Dakota residents have only seen 220. If you want to include Washington, D.C., it has 135 to its name.

It’s important to note NUFORC’s disclaimer that states they’re not making a comment on the validity of the reports; they’re merely compiling citizens’ claims of what they’re seeing.

What’s most useful about the database is it includes the dates and locations of each report. The most recently logged claim in New Jersey happened on Oct. 1 in Columbia, NJ. The observer, a truck driver, noted that they saw a hovering band of light. They wrote in the report that they were sleeping at a truck stop and woke up to use the bathroom, and it was then that the light appeared for about two seconds before “moving off in what exact direction, I don’t know, at an incredible speed.”

The Lehigh Valley’s most recent sighting happened in Allentown last month. The report from Sept. 19 is from a couple who heard a sound like a plane flying close to their house, and when they looked out the window, saw a triangle shape with “eight white, round lights underneath and blinking red ones on the end of it.”

Unless you’re sneaking into Area 51, there might not ever be conclusive evidence of UFOs even existing. But if you do see something weird, just know you’re not the only one. And make sure to have your keyboard ready.

Connor Lagore may be reached at clagore@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @clagore34. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.