Mysterious Alien UFO Spacecraft Spotted Near Empire State Building May Have Been Visiting Earth For Tourism: UFO Researchers [Photo]

A tourist has reportedly photographed a mysterious and weird-looking UFO flying close to the iconic Empire State Building in New York. According to the witness, in a report filed as Case 75586 in the MUFON archives, he was visiting New York from the U.K. with his girlfriend and was looking through photos of the city he had snapped when he noticed the alleged UFO flying in the sky near the famous landmark building.

The image was captured at about 5:46 p.m. local time on April 2, 2016, using a Samsung Galaxy S6.

“I’m from the UK and I’m visiting New York City with my girlfriend and have just been looking back through my previous holiday photos of the city and seen this,” the witness told MUFON.

“I have tried to zoom in to see if it shows anything different,” the witness continued, “but hopefully you guys can sharpen the picture up and tell me what it is. I do not know what it is but looks freaky!”

The image has sparked discussions in UFO forums, with UFO enthusiasts speculating about its nature and origin. While many enthusiasts thought it was of extraterrestrial origin, others suggested it could be a Pentagon “black project” craft undergoing testing.

“If this is real, it’s the best pic I have seen so far. They are out there.”

“Our government is very advanced! That object could be anything to anything that they’ve created.”

UFO Sightings Daily’s Scott Waring suggested that the UFO was a cloaked alien craft, but the cloaking mechanism failed at the moment the tourist snapped the photo. The suggestion that the UFO was captured on camera at the moment its cloaking mechanism failed led some UFO enthusiasts to suggest that its weird shape could be due to a partial failure of its cloaking mechanism. The failure probably revealed only a small part of a larger UFO in the air.

“For this UFO to have been so close to the Empire State Building it had to have been cloaked,” Waring wrote. “Aliens have a high interest in how we try to preserve our old culture, and this building is a prime example of what they would like to see.”

Waring may have thought that the UFO was one of those allegedly operated by alien tour operators.

The Inquisitr reported earlier in February that some UFO researchers believe that the recent dramatic global increase in reported UFO sightings could be due to a thriving “Earth safari” tourism industry of extraterrestrial origin. Earth’s skies could be swarming with cloaked UFOs run by alien tour operators bringing curious alien tourists on guided tours of our planet, according to UFO theorists.

UFO hunters argue that the extraterrestrial tourism hypothesis appears to offer the most convincing explanation of the dramatic upsurge in recent decades of sightings of stealth UFOs that seem to have no hostile intentions towards Earth and its inhabitants.

According to UFO researchers, apparent care taken by alleged alien visitors to use cloaking technology to prevent their UFOs from being observed by humans could be due to alien tour operators wishing to allow their extraterrestrial clients to observe humans in their natural environment without disturbing them — just as African safari tour operators arrange for their clients to see animals in the wild without disturbing them.

Hypothetical alien tour operators conducting alien clients on a guided safari tour of our planet would need to use advanced cloaking technology because, unlike wild animals, humans are more intelligent and more aware of their surroundings and thus could take action against UFOs in the skies full of curious gawking tourists.

But occasionally, according to UFO researchers, the cloaking mechanism fails and the UFO becomes visible to humans.

The theory that many stealth UFOs with silent propulsion systems could be alien spacecraft run by extraterrestrial tour operators gained traction recently when classified documents containing memos dating back to 1995 were released in 2012 by the U.K. Ministry of Defense. The documents revealed that military officials had considered the same theory long before UFO hunters proposed it.

The documents revealed military officials urging the authorities to investigate UFO phenomena out of suspicion that frequent sightings could be evidence of a thriving tourism industry of extraterrestrial origin targeting Earth as a choice destination for exoplanet tourism.

“If the sightings are of devices not of the earth then their purpose needs to be established as a matter of priority,” an officer wrote in a memo.

“There has been no apparent hostile intent and other possibilities are: 1) Military reconnaissance; 2) Scientific; 3) Tourism,” the memo added.

The documents revealed that despite efforts by governments to give the impression that they were not interested in UFO phenomena, officials are intensely curious about reported sightings from across the world and have hoped to capture a UFO for reverse-engineering research purposes.

“[Devices may exist] that do not use conventional reaction propulsion systems; they have a very wide range of speeds and are stealthy,” a military official wrote. “I suggest we could use this technology, if it exists.”

An outstanding example of the type of sightings that prompt speculation about alien tourism occurred recently in Cumming, Forsyth County in Georgia. In a testimony submitted to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) on March 15, 2016, a witness reported sighting at about 2:15 a.m. on November 4, 2013, a massive rectangle-shaped UFO — about 300 feet long, 75 feet wide, and roughly the height of a three-story building — sailing leisurely at an extremely low altitude over the city and blocking out stars.

Details of the altitude, speed, and size of the UFO suggested to enthusiasts that it was probably filled with alien tourists on a pleasure space voyage to view exotic planetary terrain.

And this is not the first time that a UFO has been spotted flying near or past the Empire State Building in New York. UFO hunters have reported several sightings since the 1960s. The YouTube video (above) was captured in 2012 from a helicopter flying past the Empire State Building. It shows a UFO zooming at great speed past the iconic structure.

[Image via Shutterstock]