Pearls of Wisdom From the Northern Territory's Number One UFO Hunter

There's this website I'm a bit obsessed with. It's called UFO Territory and it chronicles sightings of unidentified objects across the Northern Territory. I don't know what is it about the site. Maybe it's the grainy photos of supposed unidentified objects, or the UFO Activity Scale, which is currently set to high. Maybe it's the endearing writing of the site's creator, "ufologist" Alan Ferguson. Or maybe I just like reading about the Territory's weird underbelly.

See, for the past 15 years I've lived in some of the most urban places you can name—Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, London—but I was born in the NT. When I came across Alan's site a few years ago his words brought me right back. He described the Territory as feeling "out of this world," which struck a chord. So I wanted to hear from Alan about what it was like to be a UFO hunter out in that vast, oddball desert.

Straight up I asked Alan was how he even got into UFOs. I thought his first sighting would have been in the NT, as on his site he explains there are more UFO sightings there than anywhere else in Australia. Turns out he started much earlier though, when he was just three years old. The story goes that he was in his mum's arms in the backyard of their home in Albury, NSW and a UFO came and sat above them in the sky. He recalls another brief sighting from when he was eight, but then there was nothing for 20 years, until he moved north and this happened:

"One night I was sitting out the back at my parent's place [in Humpty Doo] looking up to the sky," he says. "All of a sudden there was this triangle craft that came straight down before me eyes. That was one of the closest sights earlier on. First thing I did was get straight up and lock all the doors because I was just petrified."

After this Alan claims that his sightings increased to the hundreds, especially once he moved to Acacia Hills, where he "was seeing so many crafts and objects, it was just amazing."

Alan started UFO Territory almost 10 years ago, "just to get the truth out there." He explains that he wants to help others who may be wondering why this is happening to them. "I get people contacting me all the time, saying they've had these strange occurrences," Alan says.

Alan has gained himself some local notoriety in the NT. He's stuck in a bitter rivalry with the Territory's newspaper NT News and says he's "sick and tired" of them taking the mickey out of him. He doesn't want to be seen as a joke, he takes his work seriously. Since that first sighting in the NT, Alan has kept track of every inexplicable light in the sky. Here's one such report:

During a time of not feeling the motivation to get out there and do some UFO spotting I had the urge to have a go the last month. On Saturday morning around 10 am not only did I get this unusual craft, but there were three frames in the process that delivered a white round Orb. It seems that it was all happening that morning!

So how do you decide you'll go out and see some UFOs? According to Alan, it's all about instincts. In a recent post on UFO Territory he details a sighting that happened while he was cooking dinner. He had a sudden urge to go outside and soon saw a bright light, which he calls a "power up". As he explains, "you get this feeling inside your guts, a nauseating feeling. It's just urging you to go outside. It just overtakes you and it's like, God, alright! Get up, go. Nine times out of 10 there'll be one just sitting there."

I ask Alan why he thinks he gets this feeling when others don't. He explains that growing up in Melbourne and Albury, he always felt different. "I'm more connected to animals and nature than to all the crap that goes on in the human race. It just doesn't resonate with me." Leaving Melbourne, he travelled solo around the country, deciding to finally settle down in the place he liked most, the NT.

Seven years ago Alan started coming across other people with similar experiences. He describes a vast network: "Worldwide there'd be millions … I call them space bros and sisters." They are in constant contact, chatting on the phone or on Facebook. "It's like a big family," he says.

Alan refers to those who pilot the craft as "upstairs." For him, upstairs helps makes sense of society on Earth and offers the hope of another way of doing things. He believes that if people were to open up to each other and "get out of the rut," the world upstairs could help to redirect money from wars to fighting poverty and providing environmentally-friendly technology.

After we speak, Alan sends me an email to explain. "See the moral of my space family's story is that mankind can change the rut they are in. It's a greedy world which doesn't resonate with upstairs! Love one another and feel like all humans are your brothers and sisters, so we can all join together!"

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