UFO Sightings in Illinois

Illinois has two of the most-cited modern multi-witness UAP encounters on the U.S. civilian record: the January 5, 2000 Lebanon, Illinois police-officer chase and the 2006 Chicago O'Hare International Airport hovering-disc incident. In the Lebanon case, multiple police officers across five Illinois towns — Highland, Lebanon, Shiloh, Millstadt, and Dupo — reported pursuing a massive, triangular, low-altitude object with brightly-lit panels over the course of approximately 90 minutes. In the O'Hare case (November 7, 2006), at least twelve United Airlines employees reported a metallic disc hovering above Gate C-17 before accelerating vertically through the cloud deck. Neither incident is in the Pentagon's PURSUE Release 01, but both have been independently documented by the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) and by major news outlets including the Chicago Tribune. The FAA attributed the O'Hare event to a "weather phenomenon."

“Multiple Illinois police officers chased a massive triangular craft across five towns.”

PURSUE catalog coverage

Illinoisdoes not have any incidents publicly geolocated to it in the PURSUE catalog. The Pentagon's catalog covers 29 named incidents geographically; many “Western United States (undisclosed)” PURSUE entries — including the 2023 “Eye of Sauron” federal-agent encounter and the 2025 ODNI senior-intel-officer helicopter encounter — may include Illinois locations that were redacted to protect facility identity.

Famous historical sightings in Illinois