A SLEEPY town in the Midwest was thrust into the mainstream after a slew of UFO sightings in the 1970s.

Hundreds of residents in Piedmont, Missouri have claimed to have laid eyes on the unidentified flying object in the last half-century.

Local Jean Coleman is believed to be the first after reportedly observing a red light hovering over Clearwater Lake in 1973.

State Representative Chris Dinkins added there were around 500 reports to law enforcement of unidentified flying objects, with most claiming to see the mysterious object on Clearwater.

The state of Missouri mentioned that the UFO sightings over Piedmont occurred for 3 months between February and April of 1973 and also that summer as well.

Dinkins has since introduced House Bill 1261, which designates the town as the UFO capital of the state of Missouri. 

The bill added that “these incidents were part of a large pattern of UFO sightings throughout the United States in 1973.”

Recently, folk in Piedmont, a town with just shy of 2,000 people, celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first reported sightings with a festival called “Close Encounters of the Piedmont Kind.”

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”You can imagine a group of basketball boys coming back from a ball game and seeing this, just as soon as they got back to school it was all over school,” Jean Coleman said.

“Even the government was down here asking questions as to what was taking place.

“Just looking up at the sky and everything, and all of a sudden I saw down towards the water, a red light flash.

“Then when it got up so high, all of the lights came on and all of them remained on and then it went over the hill.”

It comes after a UFO whistleblower’s supposed knowledge about a top secret alien craft retrieval program could soon be released in full.

A US Congressman is pushing for David Grusch’s full story to be made public after he made shocking claims about alien life on Earth.

Congressman Eric Burlison passed an amendment in the House to encourage the US government to renew Grusch’s security clearance so he can share sensitive information in an ultra-secure facility known as a SCIF.

In June, Grusch made headlines after claiming that the US had found vehicles of non-human origins.