(NewsNation) — Trish Bishop thinks every day about her first encounter in 2018 with an Unidentified Flying Object. 

“When I first saw it, I thought I’m seeing the formation of a tornado,” said the former Army intelligence analyst, who says she’s had six encounters. She told her story on Season 1 of UFO Witness on Discovery+.

There has been an uptick in UFO sightings in recent weeks, and former military and government officials are breaking their silence and sharing their run-ins. 

And while humans have wondered what’s among the stars for millennia, the rise of video shared through social media has some convinced there’s more than enough proof of other organisms beyond our planet. 

“If we’re not careful and we don’t stay ahead of this and help people assimilate to what might be coming — we could have a big, big problem,” said Ben Hansen, a former FBI agent turned paranormal investigator. He also is a host of UFO Witness.

A full report released last summer, mandated by Congress, revealed 65% of respondents think there is intelligent alien life on other planets. Another 87% said UFOs are not a threat, according to Pew Research Center, which conducted the survey. 

“The question now is when does the rest of the world … find out what these things are,” said former fighter pilot Mark Hulsey.

On a recent flight from Florida to Hawaii, he said he saw as many as seven “anomalies” at a higher altitude where he was flying at 47,000 feet. 

“You’d never expect to look up and see aircraft. Maybe a satellite, but this definitely wasn’t a satellite,” he said. “We just don’t know what it is.”

“I can tell you what it wasn’t. It wasn’t any conventional aircraft I’m aware of. It wasn’t a military aircraft, black ops,” he continued. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a NASA physicist or me, the laws of physics don’t change because you have a PHD.”