MUFON, Inc. was originally established as the Midwest UFO Network on May 31, 1969, in Quincy, Illinois, by Allen R. Utke, Walter H. Andrus, Jr., John F. Schuessler, and others.

[1][2] Most of MUFON's early members were associated with the SKYLOOK newsletter of Stover, Missouri and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), formerly of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

[3] In July 2020, MUFON Executive Director Jan Harzan, who at a 2013 symposium claimed to have been visited as a child by a "humming" alien, was arrested in Newport Beach, California, on charges of soliciting sex from a law enforcement detective posing as a 13-year-old girl.

According to science writer Sharon A. Hill, MUFON's focus is "decidedly unscientific with talks on alien abduction, conspiracy theories, human-ET hybrids, hypnotic regression, and repressed memories", and reflects "a wide range of pseudoscience".

[10] In 2020, Vice magazine reported that Ken Pfeifer, head of MUFON's Rhode Island chapter, posted racist memes and comments on Facebook during the height of national Black Lives Matter protests.