These Thermal Cameras Captured Things They Cannot Identify

A shadowy figure lurking outside a family's front door, an apparition appearing on courthouse monitors, military sensors capturing silent hovering craft invisible to radar, and glowing orbs that shrug off U.S. missile strikes. These are mysterious things captured on thermal cameras. Back in November of 2014, a Chilean Navy helicopter crew was flying along the coast when their thermal camera picked up something that they couldn't explain. It ended up recording more than 9 minutes of footage showing a flat, oval-shaped object flying at the same speed and height as their helicopter, roughly 35 to 40 miles away. The crew radioed two different ground radar stations to see if anyone else was picking it up, but neither one showed a thing. They also tried calling out to it on a civilian radio channel and got no response. The weirdest part of the whole recording is that the object appeared to release a burst of hot material, not once, but twice, and neither release lined up with the direction it was flying. The footage eventually made its way to CEFAA, the Chilean agency that handles UAP reports. Military officers and scientists went over it and it still came up empty. Pilots described the object as flat and stretched out, while the person running the camera said he saw a bright, half-oval shape on his screen. Whatever it was, that crew never got a normal explanation for it and to this day, it's still considered one of the best documented UAP cases on record because of how much detail the thermal camera actually picked up. This next video comes from the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, who made the following statement. In 2022, the United States Africa Command submitted a report of an unidentified anomalous phenomenon to the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, consisting of 31 seconds of video footage from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform. The footage shows an apparent heat signature, characteristics consistent with those of a physical object. However, AARO cannot determine whether the observed signature originates from a physical source, either as a thermal emission or a thermal reflection, or other source, such as a heat differential, the environment, or sensor display error. The available data is insufficient to evaluate the phenomenon's performance characteristics. In other words, they have no idea what the thing is. In 2018, a former member of the Turkish Air Force was working a night shift in Diyarbakir when he noticed something strange through this thermal camera. Looking up with his own eyes, he didn't see anything in the sky, but through the thermal display, there was clearly something there. A solid-looking object, just hovering above the ground. It had a hot spot right in the middle, while the top and bottom parts of it stayed much cooler. He filmed about four minutes of it, and kept watching through the camera for another 30 to 40 minutes after that. The object barely moved the entire time until it suddenly shot upward and vanished. He said it made no sound, gave no visible light, and didn't move like anything he'd ever seen fly. He even called someone else over, and that person saw the exact same thing through the camera, but neither of them could spot anything with their own eyes. What makes this one stand out is that the entire sighting only ever existed on a thermal camera. The heat pattern is there in the footage, but nobody's ever explained what it actually was. This next video comes from Reddit user Ultraustigrip6939, who writes, Creepy thermal capture. We need answers. Any help would be appreciated. It is creeping my family out. This is a video my brother got on his thermal scope, while he was standing out the front door of our rural home in northeast Oklahoma. It was 2am. The object is 110 to 120 yards away. He said he stayed for five minutes, and it stayed still the entire time. And he even made noise to try and get it to move. We recreated the video later, with one of us standing there to gauge its size. And it's four plus feet tall from what we can tell. The object has much less definition than a human body had at that range when we stood out there. We know bears are in the area, but it really doesn't make sense that it would be a bear. Any ideas? I now pose that question to our audience. What do you guys think this is? November 2024, a hunter outside Bozeman, Montana, was out coyote hunting around 3am when he noticed something he couldn't explain. He was using a thermal camera in white hot mode, where warmer objects appear bright white against the colder landscape. The footage runs for just under three minutes. At first, you could see several coyotes moving across the field, but then another heat signature comes into view. Unlike the animals on the ground, this object appears to drift through the air above the field. According to the hunter, the strangest part was that it only showed up on the thermal camera. He later said he couldn't see it through his rifle scope at all. As the video spread online, people started throwing out explanations. One viewer said it might have been a cluster of helium balloons. The hunter was not convinced, saying, I guess I've never seen a helium balloon flying low across a field, keeping pace with a coyote, then take flight, then dive back down. They usually just disappear straight up. This is another piece of video from the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. It's a strange one. There's not a solid object captured on camera. It was an unexplained heat signature. The AARO wrote, In 2023, the United States Africa Command submitted a report of an unidentified anomalous phenomenon to the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, consisting of 4 minutes and 58 seconds of video footage from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform. The footage shows an apparent heat signature with characteristics consistent with those of a physical object. However, AARO cannot determine whether the observed signature originates from a physical source, either a thermal emission or a thermal reflection, or other source, like a heat differential in the environment or sensor display error. So very similar to the other UAP report from Africa we talked about before, but this one was a year later. Is something odd going on over the continent? Share your thoughts down below. This next clip was posted to Reddit by user subject__bottle8902, who believes they may have caught something unusual on a thermal camera while working at a local courthouse. According to the uploader, security at the courthouse includes both a metal detector and a thermal camera watching the front entrance. About a week before recording the video, they noticed what looked like a person appearing on the thermal feet near the doorway, even though nobody was actually standing there. They didn't think much of it at first. They assumed there had to be some simple explanation, but then it happened again. This time, they pulled out their phone and recorded the monitor. In the footage, the figure doesn't just stay still. It appears to move, even raising what looks like an arm, almost as if it's waving toward the camera. The uploader said they tried to explain it away as a reflection or some kind of camera glitch, but nothing they came up with really matched what they were seeing. Curious, they asked some of the courthouse employees if they'd ever experienced anything strange. That's when they found out a number of people working in the building already had their own stories. According to rumours, the figure could be the spirit of the woman who was once tried, convicted and sentenced to death in that very building. This thermal footage was recorded this past June near Area 51. Since the channel usually covers haunted locations, plenty of people were quick to dismiss this as a hoax. But then aviation photographer Anders Otteson stepped in. He's spent years filming military aircraft around Groom Lake, and he says the footage is real. According to Otteson, he helped the team pick the thermal camera they used and recommended places where they'd have the best chance of spotting aircraft. Whatever flies through the frame doesn't look like a normal fighter jet. It has a long, sharp nose, but beyond that, the shape is pretty unusual. There isn't an obvious tail. It doesn't match any aircraft that's publicly known. Because of that, a lot of people have wondered if it could be some kind of experimental craft. Some have pointed out that it looks similar to artwork the Air Force has released for its future F-47 program, but that's just a theory. Nobody's confirmed exactly what this thing is. One thing people kept bringing up was the lack of a big, bright heat trail behind it. If it's a jet, shouldn't the engines be glowing? Otteson says, not necessarily. He explained that thermal cameras can be unpredictable. The weather, the distance to the aircraft, and the camera settings can all affect what shows up. He backed that up with his own thermal footage of fighter jets where the engines barely stand out at all. Now, if somebody records an odd-looking aircraft over a random town, these days, people are going to forget about it within a day. But this was filmed near one of the most secretive military test sites in the world. So, we could actually be looking at some kind of experimental aircraft here. And this final clip's been getting a lot of attention. And it's not surprising why. Footage was recorded by a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone operating off the coast of Yemen on October 30, 2024. The thermal footage shows what looks like a glowing orb moving through the sky. A missile is fired at it, and instead of exploding on impact, the orb just keeps flying. The footage was shown during a House Oversight Committee hearing by Missouri Congressman Eric Burleson, who said it had been provided by a whistleblower. When the video was slowed down, the missile appears to make contact with the orb, but there's no visible explosion. Instead, it just continues past the object. Former Pentagon Intelligence Officer Lou Elizondo, who previously worked on investigations into unidentified aerial phenomena, commented on the footage, saying, We've never seen a Hellfire missile hit a target and bounce off. When a Hellfire makes a hit on something solid, there's usually not much left of whatever it is it's hitting. In the video, it seems like the missile is either redirected or glances off the object." So exactly what the object was is still a complete mystery.