UK ministers were alerted to Perthshire sighting of UFO
Photographs taken of a UFO hovering next to an RAF jet over Perthshire were treated seriously by military investigators, just-released Ministry of Defence files show.
Witnesses saw the mysterious, large diamond-shaped object hanging over the A9 at Calvine, north of Pitlochry, in August 1990. The object remained in position for about 10 minutes next to an RAF Harrier before the UFO ascended vertically at high speed.
UFOs are no stranger to Scotland. Bonnybridge and West Kilbride have a history of unusual sightings dating back decades. At the start of this year a man from Banknock recorded an apparent UFO sighting (pictured) that remains unexplained.
In the 1990 incident, two members of the public took colour photos and provided them to the Daily Record, which in turn passed six negatives to the MoD for comment. The military responded by drawing up guidelines for responding to media questions about the incident.
Military experts could not identify the UFO despite apparently commissioning detailed line drawings of the object.
Fearing there could be significant media interest, the MoD took the unusual step of briefing ministers about the sighting.
An official wrote in a memo: "Such stories are not normally drawn to the attention of ministers, and the MoD press office invariably responds to questions along well-established lines emphasising our limited interest in the UFO phenomenon and explaining that we therefore do not have the resources to undertake any in-depth investigations into particular sightings.
"On this occasion, however, the MoD has been provided with six photographic negatives of an alleged UFO by the Scottish Daily Record and has been asked for comments almost certainly for inclusion in a forthcoming story."
And in late 1991 the MoD apparently commissioned line drawings of the UFO, noting that the "sensitivity of (the) material suggests very special handling".
The incident also discloses that British military intelligence officers tasked with investigating UFO reports took a close interest in claims the US was developing a top secret spy-plane.
The sighting is included in military UFO documents made available online from Sunday by the National Archives.
Greece: Amazing UFO incident involving Air Force and airline
A remarkable UFO incident that occurred in the skies over Athens over a year ago but was kept secret by the Greek Aviation Authority and the Greek Air Force has recently come to light and is receiving extensive media coverage in Greece.
On 11 November 2007 at 3:20am the captain of Olympic Airways flight 266 from Athens to London noticed an extremely unusual object moving erratically to the west of Athens. The object was somewhat star like in appearance however much brighter and larger with a constantly shifting shape.
Meanwhile the captains of Olympic Airways flights 730 to Kos and 700 to Rhodes reported the same thing. The sighting was then confirmed by Athens Airport control tower, whose employees observed the object moving towards Karystos, a small town on the Greek island of Euboea. At this point the Greek Air Force was contacted.
The Greek Air Force confirmed that they too were visually monitoring the object from their radar station at the top of Parintha Mountain near Athens and had observed that it was travelling at incredible speed and did not fit the description of any terrestrial craft. The staff at the Air Force radar station later described the UFO as large, of an unusual shape and very bright. Air force staff were requested to photograph the craft and did so (no pictures have come to light yet).
At this point two F-16’s were sent up too intercept the UFO, while the various control towers monitored the object from earth. The object then shot off at incredible speed skyward and the Jets failed to indentify anything. While both staff at the Athens Airport and the Parintha Mountain Air Force Radar Unit confirmed that they clearly observed the object their radars picked up nothing.
Below is the recording and an unconfirmed translation of the pilots conversation with the airport control tower as well as the aviation authority document:
Narrator: Nov 11th 2007, Flight 266 London to Athens, during the flight the Olympic Airways pilot communicates with flight control at Eleftherios Venizelos airport (Athens International), listen to the conversation:
Pilot: Olympic 266, tower are you receiving me?
Tower: Go ahead
Pilot: Is another airplane flying near me?
Tower: Negative, why?
Pilot: I see on my right, at approximately the same altitude, an unknown target flying from the South to the East
Tower: No, there's nothing there, is it bothering you (in your way)?
Pilot: For the moment no, but its altitude and heading are not stable.
Tower: What exactly do you mean because I have no target on radar.
Pilot: It is increasing speed and its headings are erratic.
Tower: Olympic, continue on your present heading and altitude according to plan and we are staying in contact.
The Danish Air Force has followed the example of the US and UK and declassified secret archives on UFO sightings occurring over the last 25 yearsAt just 329 pages the newly-released ‘X-Files’, detailing previously secret unexplained UFO sightings in Denmark, might...
At just 329 pages the newly-released ‘X-Files’, detailing previously secret unexplained UFO sightings in Denmark, might not at first glance seem to offer much in the way of sustenance for the legions of hopeful stargazers out there. But detailed within the slender volume are over 200 unsolved UFO sightings which provide plenty of food for thought for the old question: are we alone?
One of the unsolved cases concerns an incident that happened on Funen in 1982. A 15-year-old boy was cycling through the countryside early in the morning one summer’s day when he noticed something unusual in a field. Dismounting his bike, he walked towards what appeared to be a large, brightly-lit object that resembled two discs placed on top of one another. Intrigued, the boy walked closer and was amazed to see five humanoid figures next to the object.
The files state that the figures were about 60cm tall, and had large heads and chests in relation to their puny legs. Whether the boy was making it up or not we can't be sure, but his story is one of the more detailed examples contained in the dossier.
‘We decided to publish the archives because frankly there is nothing really secret in them,’ says Thomas Pedersen, a captain in the Danish Air Force who said they had become tired of journalists requesting to see them. ‘The Air Force has no interest in keeping unusual sightings a secret. Our job is to maintain national security, not investigate UFOs.’
The archives cover unexplained events occurring between 1978 and 2002. The files reveal that most cases have never been solved, but also that many are precise and detailed enough to be explained by other phenomena. Military aircraft, weather balloons, bright planets and, in particular, Chinese lanterns can explain away the bulk of reports by worried observers. After 2002 the job of chronicling UFO sightings was taken over by the group Scandinavian UFO Information (SUFOI).
But not all sightings can be readily explained. In August 1991 two police officers on a night patrol in the northern Copenhagen suburb of Ordrup had an unusual experience. Sitting in their patrol car at 2:30am they suddenly saw a strange object hovering about 75-150 metres in the air above the car. The officers thought it looked like the underside of an airplane and they noticed that their communication systems had ceased to function. Intrigued, the officers followed it as it moved slowly away, eventually disappearing behind some tall trees a few minutes later.
A "spectacular" display of dozens of UFOs has been reported in the skies over the West Midlands.
Eyewitnesses told Sky News that up to 70 bright circular objects could be seen near Halesowen.
Stunned residents watched in disbelief, convinced they were viewing an extra-terrestrial spectacle.
Each object was encircled with lights and had lights in the middle, according to witness Steven Randall who lives in Halesowen with is wife and three children.
He said: "This was incredible and so spectacular. The lights seem to climb into the sky to the north of us, just before 8pm last night.
"A neighbour had shouted for us to come and look. There were so many objects. From a distance they looked like bubbles rising in a fizzy drink.
The objects were absolutely silent and travelling at probably twice the speed of a normal aircraft.
"Then they came towards us and flew right over the top. Some were so close they were almost touching and were only a hundred feet or so above us.
"The objects were absolutely silent and travelling at probably twice the speed of a normal aircraft.
"They were all circular and had 13 to 15 lights around the rim. Each had lights in the centre which were flashing on and off. They went south at a terrific speed."
Birmingham International airport is to the east of the sightings, but according to Mr Randall, the flight path comes nowhere near the houses.
"Aircraft are not allowed to fly over this area. We regularly see air traffic in the distance and I can assure you that this was something very different," he said.
Air traffic control at Birmingham International airport had nothing on their radar to suggest anything out of the ordinary.
An unidentified flying object has been photographed over Filton.
Taxi driver Paul Matthews spotted the object in the air near the Royal Mail depot on 2pm on Friday afternoon soon after he had driven into the Airbus site.
He quickly pulled over his car and watched as what he described as a disc-shaped object hovered in the air before disappearing as swiftly as it had appeared.
Now the Bristol Evening Post is calling on readers who believe they know what the object is to get in touch.
Mr Matthews said that at first he thought it was an aeroplane, microlite or parachute, but it wasn't behaving like anything he had seen before.
"It was very weird. It was so strange. I have been a lorry driver in my time and seen some strange things, but this is something else," said Mr Matthews, 45, from Patchway.
"I had never ever seen something like this before. I was really surprised how other people had not noticed it. I thought they would be stopping in their droves, but that was not the case at all."
Did you see the mysterious object in the sky over Filton on Friday – or do you think you know what it was? Contact the newsdesk on 0117 934 3333 or e-mail us. Click here to see pictures
Reports of UFOs sighted over North Central Texas last week are the latest in an apparent sequel to the Stephenville sightings in January, which made headlines nationwide.
Dozens of residents in and around Erath County reported seeing strange lights in the sky the evening of Oct. 23, according to the Stephenville Empire-Tribune, which also reported that the military has confirmed the presence of F-16s in the area at that time.
"I think more people are willing to come forward now that more people are talking about this," said Whitney White-Ashley, a reporter for the paper.
CNN reported last week’s sightings, interviewing Dublin resident Andy Monroe, who caught a 30-second video of a line of red lights he says encircled an oval shape floating in the sky.
Most of the descriptions are of an oval shape with lights around the outside, said Alejandro Rojas with the Mutual UFO Network, a nationwide organization created in 1969 to scientifically study UFO sightings. A MUFON investigator is interviewing witnesses, and the group has already sent requests for radar data from the F-16s.
"These are descriptions that were sent into our Web site the night of the sighting, so they could not have been something just copied from media coverage," Rojas said.
January sightings
In or around Jan. 8, dozens of people around Dublin and Stephenville — about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth — reported seeing something that did not move like conventional aircraft.
Descriptions varied. Some told of objects up to a mile long and hundreds of yards high. Others reported seeing two to eight lights that flew in formation, changed color and shone with intensity greater than a welding flame. Some witnesses said the objects were accompanied or followed by military jets.
Two U.S. fighter planes were scrambled and ordered to shoot down an unidentified flying object (UFO) over the English countryside during the Cold War, according to secret files made public on Monday.
One pilot said he was seconds away from firing 24 rockets at the object, which moved erratically and gave a radar reading like "a flying aircraft carrier."
The pilot, Milton Torres, now 77 and living in Miami, said it spent periods motionless in the sky before reaching estimated speeds of more than 7,600 mph (12,000 kph).
After the alert, a shadowy figure told Torres he must never talk about the incident and he duly kept silent for more than 30 years.
His story was among dozens of UFO sightings in defence ministry files released at the National Archives in London.
In a written account, Torres described how he scrambled his F-86 D Sabre jet in calm weather from the Royal Air Force base at Manston, Kent in May 1957.
"The order came to fire a salvo of rockets at the UFO. The authentication was valid and I selected 24 rockets," he said.
"I had a lock-on that had the proportions of a flying aircraft carrier," he added. "The larger the airplane, the easier the lock-on. This blip almost locked itself."
At the last moment, the object disappeared from the radar screen and the high-speed chase was called off.
He returned to base and was debriefed the next day by an unnamed man who "looked like a well-dressed IBM salesman."
"He threatened me with a national security breach if I breathed a word about it to anyone," he said.
The documents contain no official explanation for the incident, which came at a time of heightened tension between the West and the Soviet Union. Planes were on constant stand-by at British bases for a possible Soviet attack.
The files blame other UFO sightings on weather balloons, clouds or normal aircraft. Torres said he had been waiting 50 years for an explanation.
"I shall never forget it," he told the Times. "On that night I was ordered to open fire even before I had taken off. That had never happened before."
UFO expert David Clarke said the sighting may have been part of a secret U.S. project to create phantom aircraft on radar screens to test Soviet air defences.
"Perhaps what this pilot had seen was some kind of experiment in electronic warfare or maybe it was a UFO," he said. "Something very unusual happened."
This extraordinary incident took place in a compound in Kumburgaz/Istanbul was witnessed by many residents and filmed by the same night guard Yalcin Yalman as it was in 2007,
The images captured are expected to have a tremendous impact throughout the world and be listed as "the most important UFO/extraterrestrial images ever filmed in all the World"
During the 4 months, between May and September 2008, many nationwide UFO sightings were reported from different parts of Turkey, while some of them were filmed and photographed and aired. Within the same period of time, these objects also witnessed by the residents of Kumburgaz/Yeni Kent Compound, caught on video several times by a night guard named Yalcin Yalman and these footages are considered as the closest and the most significant images ever filmed around the world.
In these amazing UFO video footages which would likely have major repercussions around the world and be listed as the most significant UFO videos ever, physical forms of UFOs and their metallic structures are clearly noticeable. Whats more important is that in the close-up of some footages of the objects, entities in them can be distinctly made out.
RAF officer breaks 37-year silence on UFO radar mystery
RAF officer breaks 37-year silence on UFO radar mystery
IT IS a close encounter of the official kind. A former RAF officer has claimed that UFOs are real and may have invaded UK airspace, branding official resistance to such theories as "stupid and arrogant".
Wing Commander Alan Turner MBE was sworn to secrecy after he tracked a series of unidentified objects soaring over southern England at incredible speeds.
Turner, 64, a former head of air traffic control at RAF Lossiemouth, insists it is "stupid and arrogant" to rule out the existence of extra-terrestrials and is open to the suggestion that he witnessed craft from another world.
The incident, which has baffled and haunted Turner for decades, took place at RAF Sopley on the south-west coast of England in the summer of 1971.
At the time he was Duty Military Supervisor and had the responsibility of monitoring the skies on radar screens for potential Soviet incursions.
On the day in question, Turner and his 13 colleagues were alarmed by a sudden and unexpected development.
He said: "I can clearly remember people shouting: 'What the hell is that?' I got to a console and people were loudly telling me to look to the east of Salisbury Plain.
"Twenty miles east of the eastern extremity was a series of returns, or radar blips, which were appearing in that position. There were five of them initially. Then six and then seven all following the same track.
"They were tracking south-east, each exactly six to seven miles apart and moving at exactly the same speed. At about 40 miles from the point they appeared on radar, they disappeared, to be followed almost immediately by a replacement at the point of origin.
"The objects were about 3,000ft above ground level when they first appeared and climbed so rapidly that, by the time they disappeared from radar they were in excess of 60,000ft.
"To climb to such a height in only 40 miles was beyond the ability of almost any fighter aircraft at that time."
In a bid to solve the mystery Turner diverted an RAF Canberra jet, which was returning from West Germany, to intercept the intruders.
"When the pilot got within a mile or so of one particular blip, he reported, in a very agitated voice, that his radar had picked up something on his port side that was 'climbing like the clappers'. Neither the pilot nor his navigator made any visual contact with whatever it was."
Within days, Turner was summoned into the Squadron Leader's office and questioned by two men, who wore civilian clothes and were not identified, about the incident.
"I, along with all the others who were in the room on that day, were told in no uncertain terms not to relate what we had seen until cleared to do so."
Turner, who was awarded the MBE in 1984 and retired from the force in 1995, has been assured that there were no training operations, classified or otherwise, going on at the time and there were no weather balloons or probes in the area.
"I have no idea what they were, but I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility that they were UFOs. There is certainly a chance that we have been visited by extra-terrestrials," he said. "It is terribly arrogant and silly to think that we are alone in the universe."
"I have spoken to three ex-Air Force mates, who held senior positions, and they have seen similar things, but did not report them as they felt their personal integrity would be questioned. That is why I kept quiet for so long, but I know what I saw."
---
He said that the craft were equally spaced and shot from 3,000ft to 60,000ft at almost 300mph.
He revealed that every UFO would suddenly vanish from radar after a few seconds, and be replaced by an identical vessel moments later.
According to him, six military radars and operators at Heathrow spotted the UFOs east of Salisbury Plain, and filed reports on the unexplained phenomenon in 1971.
The RAF chief even drew a map charting their flight in between key sites like RAF Lyneham, Wilts, and the aircraft navigation transmitter at Brookmans Park, Herts.
However, staff members were instructed to “never speak about the incident again”, when the Ministry of Defence visited the RAF three days later.
Turner, who was a radar supervisor at the now disused RAF Sopley base, Dorset, in 1971, further said: “I instantly knew this wasn’t a convoy of military planes. The only craft with that rate of climb were supersonic lightning aircraft but they wouldn’t have been able to hold such a perfect formation. They also make a lot of noise. No one heard a thing on the night in question.”
UFO sightings connected to Large Hadron Collider experiment?
MORE responses to sightings of 'orange lights' UFOs near Louth – with some wondering if recent UFO activity is connected to the Large Hadron Collider experiment in Geneva.
A man called Anthony from Wales emailed a similar account of what he saw: "I was having a cigarette outside my front door on Saturday at around 9pm and I looked over the roof tops and saw two orange-red glowing lights coming from over the hill where I live.
"I called my wife and daughter to come and have a look, then a third light followed the other two. My wife phoned her father who lives not far away and he saw them too. I then went to get my camera but by the time I got it out the lights just vanished. Not knowing what they were I decided to search the net to see if any one has seen the same as us and I came across your picture which is exactly what we saw.
"We live in a little village in Swansea and after 47 years of looking up at night this is the first UFO I have ever seen."
He added: "Could it be something to do with that experiment they are doing under ground in Geneva letting out pockets of energy or something?"
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, intended to smash protons together in the hope of learning more about the Big Bang theory. It was turned on to much international press interest last week despite some scientists calling for the experiment to be stopped, in fear it could lead to the formation of mini black holes, which could expand and swallow the Earth.
Rachel Rijsdijk emailing from The Netherlands said she also saw similar orange lights last Saturday: "On Saturday night a week ago I was driving on the highway, past a city called Eindhoven, and I saw three orange round lights high in the sky. They were not moving, but hanging in a triangle form."
Reg Lambert from Rugby emailed to tell us about his own recent experience: "I and three others saw an orange light travelling south-west to north-east over Rugby at about 8pm.
"It was travelling quite fast and was above the height of a few clouds around at an estimated height of 5000ft. A few minutes after disappearing from view it reappeared travelling in the opposite direction."
He added: "There was no flicker or variation, or colour change, and it was in a straight line."
* Have you seen any UFOs in the Louth or Mablethorpe areas? Email gemma.gadd@jpress.co.uk
Latest Sighting Amazing! Aliens spotted by over thirty random witnesses in Serbia!
Serbian Radio Stations have been flooded by calls from the town of Zenta-where a cluster of cars leaving the town westward have been halted on the road as two craft identical one to the other land on the road-one was hazy completely and blue light covered it, the other was more clear and cone shape with flat top.
One hovered and a being described as grey-green four foot with large black eyes a small mouth and no ears?? floated to earth from a mere height of one meter then quickly returned to the craft and both sped off. Witnesses included two truck drivers, a town GP, two nurses, and other labourers. The authorities came to the scene and dispersed the crowd that gathered.
Local police are claiming what was seen was a set of party balloons-however all witnesses say this is out of the question-the crafts were sophisticated, humming, glowing-and shot off upwards. the alien life-like and moving as a human.
One witness Alexander Petrovic says " this was the strangest thing I ever saw and cannot accept it was a balloon."
A TERRITORY politician has added weight to growing claims there are UFOs flying around in Darwin's rural area.
Independent MLA Gerry Wood said he saw a strange object fly across the sky above Howard Springs early Wednesday morning.
"It was a dark grey object and it was flying parallel to the ground - it lit up white at the front for a short period, maybe one or two seconds, and then the light disappeared and the object melted with the sky," he said.
Mr Wood, a self-confessed sceptic, said the object moved across the sky at a tremendous rate, but he didn't believe it was a plane.
"There wasn't a sound, not even a whisper," he said.
"There was no trail of sparks like you see with a shooting star, it was just a white glow at the front and underneath. I know that people won't believe this because, for starters, I'm a politician ... that puts me in the category of 'what a load of crap'.
"I'm also a sceptic, but I saw this thing, clear as day."
Mr Wood's report is the second sighting of an unknown object in the skies above Darwin's rural area.
Do you believe? Canadian UFO sightings climb in 2007
Canadians in four provinces reported seeing a record number of unidentified flying objects in 2007, according to an annual report released by a Winnipeg-based non-profit organization that has recorded UFO sightings since 1989.
The UFOlogy Research Institute, which compiles data from sources including Transport Canada and the Department of National Defence, said researchers examined 836 alleged UFO sightings in 2007, an increase of almost 12 per cent over 2006.
While B.C. typically has the highest number of reported sightings, the 2007 compilation found that New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec all pulled in all-time high numbers of UFO reports.
The reports were filed by witnesses with government and military agencies, police and several online UFO websites. Witnesses ranged from farmhands to airline pilots and included teachers and police officers.
Chris Rutkowski, the lead researcher of the study, said that, of the hundreds of reports, only a fraction - about 16 per cent - were labelled as unexplained after review by his investigators. But he cautioned that while some UFO sightings can't be rationally explained, there is still no evidence to suggest extraterrestrial contact.
Some of the more bizarre cases from 2007 - those to which researchers gave a "strangeness rating" of six or more out of 10 - include one in Hammonds Plain, N.S., on March 10, when several witnesses saw a structured object with lights moving slowly over a lake. The object was also "humming," according to the witnesses.
In Halifax on Dec. 21, a helicopter pilot reported seeing a bright object flying overhead and curving around.
For reasons unknown, the highest number of UFO sightings is usually reported in British Columbia. On May 27 last year, a silent object was observed "manoeuvering oddly" over Chilliwack, B.C., while residents in the northern village of Granisle, B.C. saw a "black-light-coloured" object moving across the sky on Nov. 11 near an "odd looking" cloud.
In another instance, residents in North Tryon, P.E.I., saw a small, shiny object spiralling in the sky last Boxing Day. They reported the strange craft flew in a corkscrew manner, leaving behind it a mysterious dark smoke trail.
"This one really caught our attention," recalls Rutkowski, an astronomer who leads the research along with several engineers, journalists and pilots. "It happened during the day and two individuals saw it and they had enough time because it was visible for half an hour and they took video. The trail persisted for quite some time."
So what caused the phenomenon?
"At this time it is still unexplained," he conceded in an interview from Winnipeg, "but we are open to the possibilities."
Whatever the explanation, experts agree that the number of suspected flying saucers has hit unusual highs this summer.
Malcolm Robinson, who studies the phenomenon, said: "Something very bizarre is happening in the skies over the UK."
The founder member of Strange Phenomena Investigations, added: "There has been an unusual number of sightings recently.
"Some experts believe it could be linked to global warming and craft from outer space are appearing because they are concerned about what man is doing to this planet."
Among mysterious flying objects spotted in recent months was a 'glowing' disc spotted above the M5 motorway.
Royal Navy aircraft engineer Michael Madden said he watched the UFO for three minutes before it 'zoomed off' near Weston-super-Mare in Somerset.
Earlier, in Basingstoke, witnesses claimed to have seen a fleet of 12 orange objects in the night sky for half an hour.
And in St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan a police helicopter crew gave chase to another UFO after it appeared to veer at speed towards their aircraft.
A police helicopter crew gave chase to a UFO after it almost collided with their aircraft near a military base.
The pilot was forced to bank sharply to avoid being hit by the mystery aircraft as the helicopter was returning to the Ministry of Defence base of St Athan, near Cardiff.
The three crew, who described the UFO as 'flying saucer-shaped', then gave chase, getting as far as the North Devon coast before they ran low on fuel, it was reported.
The police aircraft was hovering at 500ft and waiting clearance to land on June 7, when those onboard spotted the other craft hurtling towards them from below.
A spokesman for South Wales Police said: "We can confirm the Air Support Unit sighted an unusual aircraft. This was reported to the relevant authorities for their investigation."
It was reported that the aircraft closed in at great speed, aiming straight for the helicopter which swerved sharply.
"They are convinced it was a UFO. It sounds far-fetched, but they know what they saw."
The helicopter crew are said to have crossed the Bristol channel in pursuit of the UFO, but lost sight of it and had to turn back due to a fuel shortage.
A SHAKEN soldier told last night how he saw THIRTEEN UFOs spinning in the skies above his military barracks.
Corporal Mark Proctor was among three squaddies who spotted the objects while out on night patrol.
He filmed them on his mobile phone and reported the close encounter to Army top brass.
Ministry of Defence experts were studying his report and video yesterday — after ordering Mark and his pals NOT to say anything else about the incident.
The sighting, at Tern Hill barracks near Market Drayton, Shrops, came two hours before helicopter police officers reported an encounter with a huge craft 80 miles away near Cardiff.
And three hours before a couple claimed they were followed by a strange light in the sky along the A5 near Shrewsbury.
Cpl Proctor, 38, of the 1st Battalion Irish Regiment, recalled how he saw the amazing “craft” just after 11pm on Saturday, June 7.
He said: “I was on duty in the guard room when the other boys outside began shouting. I went out to see what the commotion was about and could see thirteen craft in the skies.
“They were zig-zagging, but I filmed two before they disappeared. They were like rotating cubes with multiple colours.
“I made a full report to my commanding officers and gave them my footage. The other lads were as amazed by it as I was.”
A 19-year-old private on patrol said he also saw the “fleet”.
The soldier, who asked not to be named, said: “I saw these things flying in the sky and I told my guard commander.
“There were about 30 lights passing over for a few minutes, very high but not at a great speed. They were bright red. Another soldier saw them too.”
An MoD spokesman said: “We deal with any UFO sightings to see if there was a military threat.”
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt video: RAF Woodbridge
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt was deputy base commander at RAF Woodbridge in December 1980 when patrolmen from the United States Air Force (USAF) claimed they saw a small, triangular shaped craft moving backwards through the woods before taking off. The incident has been dubbed Britain's Roswell and was documented by the Ministry of Defence.
Larry King talks to Nick Pope, Bob Rosamond, Peter Davenport, Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Halt
KING: Welcome back.
Britain's Ministry of Defense has just released secret UFO files on sightings dating from 1978 through 1987. They include live, eyewitness accounts and the government's response. More files dating from the 1950s and recent events will be released over the next four years.
Joining us to discuss this in London is Nick Pope. He ran the British government's UFO project at the Ministry of Defense from 1985 to 2006.
Also in London is Bob Rosamond, chairman of the British UFO Research Association.
In Spokane, Washington, Peter Davenport, director National UFO Reporting Center.
And in Washington, Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Halt, retired from the Air force. He sited a UFO in 1980 while he was deputy base commander at Brent Waters Woodbridge Base in Suffolk, England.
Nick, what do you make of all of this? What's in these files?
NICK POPE, FORMER OFFICIAL, UK MINISTRY OF DEFENSE: Well, this is extremely exciting news here in the UK. It is a massive story. What we've seen is the first step in a three to four-year program to release the government's entire archive of UFO files. Now, some of the material in there and what we have got just in this first batch of about 2,00 pages of documentation -- some of it's quite mundane.
But in amongst those reports, we have got some absolutely fascinating cases. A lot of UFOs seen by police officers. We have got some cases where pilots have seen UFO. And we have got a really amazing case where a UFO was tracked on military radar traveling 10 nautical miles in 12 seconds.
KING: Bob, why did the government release these files? The French government, I know, they released some documents last year. Governments have always kept it secret, the United States included. Why now do you think now, Bob?
BOB ROSAMOND, CHAIRMAN, BRITISH UFO RESEARCH ASSN.: I don't really know. Perhaps from a cynical point of view, it is a good PR exercise. It's the Ministry's opportunity of showing the world, hey, we have got nothing to hide. Here's all of our files on UFOs. The motive, the reason could be anything, to be honest. Why now, I really don't know.
KING: Peter Davenport, will this tend to put naysayers away?
PETER DAVENPORT, UFO EXPERT: It's still heresy evidence. I find it interesting that the release follows hot on the heels of the Vatican just yesterday, I think it was, stating that they felt it was OK to believe in aliens and UFOs and life elsewhere in our galaxy. This is an interesting one-two punch.
KING: Lieutenant Chuck Halt, the only one of our panel, I guess, who's seen one. What do you make of it?
CHUCK HALT, RETIRED UNITED STATES AIR FORCE: I find it quite puzzling. Why is this being spread over four years? It doesn't really make sense to me, unless the volume is so great it takes that long to preview it.
KING: What do you think, Nick? Why four years?
POPE: Well, yes, that's the point. Under the Freedom of Information act -- and by the way, that's one of the reasons why the Ministry of Defense have decided to release this. The MOD get more FOI requests on UFOs than any other subject. So the administrative burden of dealing with that has been so big that the government decided it's better to just take all the files and put them in the National Archives, so that in future people can be referred there.
But, of course, there are all sorts of exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act. Personal information of witnesses, classified information such as, for example, the capabilities of military radar systems. And some poor desk officer has to go through all of this material -- and there are tens of thousands of pages of this. I mean, it is an absolutely massive job. So we're going to get maybe half of a dozen files every month for the next three or four years.
I mean, I know it's taking a long time. But of course, as you would expect in the Ministry of Defense, there are all sorts of competing priorities.
KING: Bob Rosamond, has the British UFO Research Association had many, many, many reports over the years about sightings?
ROSAMOND: We have a substantial archive, actually. We have somewhere in the region of 12,000 to 15,000 case files going back as far as 1925. So it's quite a substantial amount of documentation, quite possibly more than the Ministry itself has.
KING: Peter, why has this been in the United States and prior to this in Great Britain some dark secret? Why won't the United States release anything it knows?
DAVENPORT: Yes, a lot of people conjecture on that, Larry. None of us even serious-minded UFO investigators knows the answer to that question. But it is an intriguing question. Of course, Belgium and Chile and France and now England, to a degree the Soviet Union, and now Russia have all to one degree or another opened their files on this subject.
I would look to the United States government now to do the same. And what I would like to see somebody senior in the U.S. government, in the military and intelligence communities, say to its people, if you know anything about the UFO phenomenon, you are free to talk to the press and to the American public. That would solve the problem in a hurry.
KING: Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Halt retired from the Air Force, sighted a UFO in 1980. We'll hear one of his tapes when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: Colonel Halt, as you know, made an on the scene sighting when he was a lieutenant colonel in service in the United States. He made a tape while he was investigating the scene. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HALT: There was no doubt about it, there's some type of strange flashing red light here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw a yellow tangent in two.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Weird.
HALT: It appears to be making movement a little bit this way. It's brighter than it has been. It's coming this way.
It is definitely coming this way.
Now we've an object about ten degrees directly south, ten degrees off the horizon.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One's moving away from us.
It's moving out fast.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Colonel halt, how were you treated by the powers that be after this report was filed?
HALT: Well, I was treated with respect, but everybody kept me at arm's length. Nobody wanted to get too close or too deeply involved.
KING: Why?
WHY: Well, let's face it, there's a stigma that comes with this. Very few people are willing to speak out and tell the truth. It's just too awkward, you're criticized.
KING: Do you think the British government's actions might lead to somebody in the United States?
HALT: I would certainly hope so, but the situation here is a little different. Keep in mind, there are at least half a dozen or more intelligence agencies that have their own -- how should I say -- files, programs, whatever. They share when convenient. They trade when convenient. And they withhold from each other.
KING: Do you look in the sky a lot?
HALT: Do I look in the sky a lot?
KING: Yes, now.
HALT: No, no. I don't belong to any organization or any magazine or whatever.
KING: But you are convinced you saw something that wasn't an airplane.
HALT: I definitely saw something that can't be explained. Excuse me.
KING: Nick Pope, give me an example of a report you have seen in Great Britain.
POPE: Well, we had -- this is a report that's been in the public domain for a while, but just to show the sorts of spectacular cases we do get, we had a sighting from a commercial airline pilot who saw two UFOs estimated as being almost a mile long. And this thing was actually tracked on radar. There was a primary radar return.
Then a few years before that, we had a case with a UFO flying over two military bases in England, seen by numerous police and military witnesses. One of the Air Force officers described this thing as vast triangular-shape, moving from a virtual hover to a speed several times that of a fast jet, just in seconds. And this is an Air Force officer with eight years' experience talking to me.
KING: We have a question from a caller in Mobile, Alabama. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Larry.
KING: Hi. CALLER: I was wondering if there's any data in the files relating to alien life forms or is it all the data strictly regarding unidentified flying objects?
KING: Good question. Bob Rosamond, in your files, do you have anything relating to alien forms?
ROSAMOND: In our files, yes. Before we have vast number of files with reports of encounters of alleged alien beings, entities and alleged abduction experiences.
KING: Do you believe them?
ROSAMOND: Pardon?
KING: Do you believe them?
ROSAMOND: Before our strictly objective organization, it's not about belief. It's where the facts and the evidence takes you.
KING: Peter, do you think the events in Great Britain will open up things in other places?
DAVENPORT: It's an encouraging sign, Larry. It may suggest that there's a movement afoot to mete out information piecemeal, maybe to prepare us for something that the government knows and would like to have us know more about. But that's pure conjecture. We have been saying the same thing for now well on 61 years that it's just around the corner. So it's an encouraging note, I would say, but I'll wait to see if the U.S. government responds to this at all. It will be interest to see what the Vatican has to say about it, too.
KING: Do you think their reasons would be national security?
DAVENPORT: It's hard to know. That's what everybody gravitates to. Everybody says, well the government is not feeding this information to the American public because they're afraid we'd panic. That doesn't make an ounce of sense to me, frankly. I don't think we would panic. If you look at cartoons every Saturday morning, to my eye about 90 percent of them have to do with alien life and spaceships and so on and so forth. There may be some other reason they're doing that.
KING: More on the UFO files. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: We're back. Chuck Halt, do you think we'll ever know the whole story?
HALT: I rather doubt it. I think we have gone too far down the road and we're not going to get the story.
KING: So we'll -- we'll never know it?
HALT: I won't say never know it. If something strange lands in Times Square and the White House lawn, I suspect we'll find out something.
KING: That would be nice. Nick Pope, we hear that the Pope's astronomer said today that alien beings are a product of god's creation. Did that surprise you? Is that news?
POPE: Yes, it is made quite an impact over here in the UK. I mean, I welcome statements like that and I think it is interesting that the two things have happened so close together. I mean, just picking up on the idea of cover-ups and conspiracies, I should say that if people are expecting in these ministry of defense files to find definitive proof of extra terrestrials, they'll be disappointed. But they can find, I think, whether they're skeptics or believers this -- they'll find things which raise important defense, national security and flight safety issues.
By the way, I should say to anyone who wants to actually look into these files, it's on the UK National Archives Web site, which is NationalArchives.gov.uk/UFOS. They have set up a dedicated Web site for this. And this whole subject, I think, this move, I greatly welcome this move. It's going to propel this subject really into the mainstream.
KING: Want to repeat that Web site again, Nick?
POPE: It's NationalArchives.Gov.Uk/UFOS.
KING: Bob, when you get reports, what do you do with, you just file them? Look into them? What do you do?
ROSAMOND: No, we conduct a thorough investigation. Initially, we receive e-mail communication, sometimes a phone call from a witness with an experience or a sighting. We get them to file an initial report, which gives us solid data work from. And from there, we go into a detailed investigation, uncovering as many possible stones to get to the answer.
KING: Peter, same thing I asked Chuck. Do you think we'll ever know the whole story?
DAVENPORT: I think we will, Larry. In fact, I published an article about four years ago with regard to the use of passive radar for detecting UFOs. It is the answer to resolving the UFO issue. As soon as we get one of those system built, I think we'll be in a very good position to take the monopoly away from the U.S. government on UFO information. And if people would like to share their sighting reports with the National UFO Reporting Center, I'd invite to them to write out just a paragraph or two describing their sighting of a suspected UFO and submit it at UFOCenter.com.
We're a service organization to the American people. We provide a place for them to call. And when they send us information, we post it publicly, so everybody may know what information we've received. Anonymously, of course.
KING: Chuck Halt, you mentioned landing in Time Square. I guess it might have to take that that for it to happen. If it does happen, we'll have it on first, OK, Chuck? And you'll be on with us that night.
HALT: Sounds great to me, Larry.
KING: In fact, we'll fly you to Times Square to interview the first alien landing there.
HALT: Great.
KING: And fly in the Pope's astronomer, too. Thank you all very much for enlightening segments on this extraordinary story out of London today. .
The men were air traffic controllers. Experienced, calm professionals. Nobody was drinking. But they were so worried about losing their jobs that they demanded their names be kept off the official report.
No one, they knew, would believe their claim an unidentified flying object landed at the airport they were overseeing in the east of England, touched down briefly, then took off again at tremendous speed. Yet that’s what they reported happened at 4 p.m. on April 19, 1984.
The incident is one of hundreds of reported sightings contained in more than 1,000 pages of formerly secret UFO documents being released Wednesday by Britain’s National Archives. It is one of the few that was never explained.
The air traffic controllers’ ‘‘Report of Unusual Aerial Phenomenon’’ was filed from an unspecified small airport near the eastern coast of England.
The men, each with more than eight years on the job, described how they were helping guide a small plane to a landing on runway 22 when they were distracted by a brightly lit object approaching a different runway without clearance.
‘‘Everyone became aware that the object was unidentified,’’ their report said. ‘‘SATCO (code name for a controller with 14 years experience) reports that the object came in ’at speed,’ made a touch and go on runway 27, then departed at ’terrific speed’ in a ’near vertical’ climb.’’
The incident is one of the more credible in the newly public files because it was reported by air traffic controllers, said David Clarke, a UFO expert who worked with the National Archives on the document release.
‘‘They were absolutely astonished,’’ he said. ‘‘It was a bright, circular object, flashing different colors, and after it touched down it disappeared at fantastic speed. The report comes from very qualified people, and it’s one of the few that remained unexplained.’’
The truth is out there: Britons 'spotted' UFOs, records say
The British government recorded reports of alien craft flying over Liverpool and a UFO hovering over Waterloo Bridge in London, it was revealed in declassified files released on Wednesday.
Files have been opened for the first time detailing hundreds of sightings of unexplained objects in the skies over Britain.
They show that the Ministry of Defence was less worried about the possibility of visitors from outer space than in checking that Unidentified Flying Objects were not in reality evidence of covert spying missions mounted by other countries.
Nick Pope, who was responsible for investigating the sightings at the ministry, said: "Most of the UFO sightings here are probably misidentifications of aircraft lights and meteors, but some are more difficult to explain, and include UFOs seen by police officers and pilots, and cases where UFOs have been tracked on radar."
The eight files in the National Archives, covering the period from 1978 to 1987, were released under legislation governing freedom of information following a request from UFO researchers.
A ministry memo from 1983 says: "The sole interest of the Ministry of Defence in UFO reports is to establish whether they reveal anything of defence interest (e.g. intruding aircraft).
FIVE mine workers are convinced they saw a UFO fly over them on a remote Territory island.
Mine maintenance worker Arnold Murray said a bright object whizzed over the Gemco mine site on Groote Eylandt as he and his colleagues started the night shift last Friday.
Mr Murray, 32, said the bright light was slightly higher than a plane coming to land -- but it was silent. He and four workmates were at the mine site at 7.15pm when he saw an object flying towards them.
"I noticed a star in the sky and it was getting closer,'' he said.
"As it approached I realised it was at plane level.
"Four other lads walked out of the office and we watched it for a little while. It was vertical from us, there were no flashing lights or noise.
"The plant's pretty quiet at night. (It made) no noise whatsoever.
"All of a sudden it shot off and left a long orange trail behind it. That orange trail just faded out like a shooting star.''
Mr Murray said they wanted to know what flew over their heads in the night.
"It wasn't a chopper, it wasn't a plane, we knew that much, and it definitely wasn't ashooting star.''
"It blew us out of the water.''
Defence spokeswoman Kelly Cooper said the object was not a military plane.
"There were no military aircraft flying in that area at that time on that day,'' she said.
She said any navy ships letting off flares would have been at least 200 nautical miles off shore.
Groote Eylandt, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, is near one of the first and most famous UFO sightings in Australia -- the "light wheel'' reported on January 23, 1964.
Sailors on a vessel off the northeast point of the island reported seeing a circle of pulsing lights rotating clockwise, and they said their compass went "haywire''.
An unidentified flying object was reported to have hovered over southern Gran Canaria early on the morning of March 14 and was seen by dozens of people on their drive to work.
Traffic is said to have slowed down and some vehicles even pulled over as drivers tried to get a better look at the phenomenon.
One eye witness told local daily Canarias 7: “It was something very large, circular, with lights all round it and from below it gave out a great downward beam of light.”
The woman, who preferred not to be named, said the UFO hovered stationary for some time over the El Águila barranco in San Bartolomé de Tirajana.
She added that the beam lit up one side of the ravine.
A spokesman for the military air base at Gando said none of their planes had been in the area at the time.
Increased Sightings Spark UFO and Paranormal Conference in Kansas City
The first annual Mysteries of the Universe Conference is scheduled for June 7 in Kansas City, Missouri at the Intrigue Park Place Hotel from 8:30 am to 9:30 pm. The conference is the first of its type to be held in the area, and was sparked by the recent flurry of UFO activity in the U.S. and increased reports of paranormal activity in Kansas City.
Conference director Margie Kay said, "As a paranormal researcher, I am surprised at the number of UFO sightings and ghost activity reports that are coming in. It is almost like the movie Ghost Busters!" Kay gets reports on a daily basis now, compared to only a few per month just a year ago. This is what prompted Margie to hold the conference here since there is nothing similar that is convenient for KC area residents to get to. "It is time Kansas City had its own UFO and Paranormal event, and hopefully it will continue to grow each year. People need to know that this stuff is real and that more serious study is needed," she said.
Keynote speaker, nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman's topic is "Debunking UFO Debunkers." Friedman is an internationally known UFO researcher and was the first to write about the Roswell incident. Stanton has appeared on Larry King Live, the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel among others. Friedman will autograph books during the conference.
Lecturers include author, paranormal and UFO researcher and radio talk show host Margie Kay, authors Jason Offutt and Bill Hamilton, along with paranormal researcher Chris Brethwaite and UFO researcher Vince White. Topics include ghost hunting, strange stuff in the Midwest, near death experiences, extraterrestrial biological entities, and NASA's agenda with Mars.
A trade show will feature books, periodicals, and merchandise for shoppers.
Registrations must be made in advance due to limited seating. The cost is $59 by May 1, and $69 after May 1.
Contact: Margie Kay, Director 816-833-1819 margiekay06(at)yahoo.com www.ufokc.4mg.com
Strange lights spotted in Lincolnshire's skies may have been a warning of the earthquake which sent tremors across Britain.
Several sightings of lights appearing in the sky were reported in the days leading up to the quake, which had its epicentre near Market Rasen when it struck early on February 27.
And some believe that these could be "earthquake lights" - caused by changes in the electrical properties of the ground before a quake occurs.
There have been many similar reports of "earthquake lights" throughout history.
The most well known case was in Lincoln's twin town, Tangshan, in China in 1976, before a massive quake that killed 240,000 people across the country.
Husband and wife Jamie and Emily Goddard, of Alexandra Terrace, in Lincoln, managed to capture the lights on a mobile phone camera just as they appeared above Drury Lane at around 8.30pm on February 22.
And other people have contacted the Echo to say they saw lights on the same night - with some wondering at first whether it was a 'UFO' from an RAF base.
Dr Richard England, from the Department of Geology at the University of Leicester, said that there is little evidence to explain the phenomenon - but there have been enough sightings to suggest there could be a link.
A photographer who stopped on a whim to take some pictures at night might have chanced upon a real UFO.
The picture appears to show a mysterious object in the shape of a flying saucer. UFO experts say it could prove the existence of the phenomenon
Hab Rahman, a keen photographer, was stunned to see the image in the background when he looked again at some pictures he had taken at night.
The 28-year-old, from Portsmouth, Hants, was driving home from work through thick fog when he decided to stop and get some snaps of the eerie setting.
He pulled up and went to take the shots from a car park near Commercial Road, Portsmouth, just after midnight.
It was not until he got home and transferred the shots onto his computer that he spotted the mysterious glowing object.
Mr Rahman said: "I didn't spot anything when I took the picture but then later on when I looked a bit closer and zoomed in, there it was.
"I've never really believed in UFOs but this is a bit weird and quite freaky.
"I'm not really sure what to make of it but I can't think what else it could be."
Mr Rahman stopped off at this car park in Portsmouth on his way home to take the pictures but it was not until he arrived home that he spotted the 'UFO'
Hilary Porter, from the British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society (BEAMS), believes this sighting could be the real thing.
She said: "It would be very difficult to fake that photo and the UFO is at a tilt, which is the way they normally fly.
"You don't normally see that sort of UFO over this country, we generally get orange orbs, so the photographer who got this photo has got quite a coup."
The Ministry of Defence would not comment on individual sightings and said they could not check if there were any aircrafts in the vicinity at the time.
An MoD spokesperson said: "The MoD examines reports solely to establish whether UK airspace may have been compromised by hostile or unauthorised military activity.
"Unless there is evidence of a potential threat, there is no attempt to identify the nature of each sighting reported."
MoD reveal the number of reported UFO sightings in the UK has risen
The number of reported sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects in the UK has soared in the last year with people calling the Ministry of Defence with concerns about bright white lights, strange triangular-shaped objects and even alien abduction.
The MoD took details of 135 events in which mysterious objects were seen in our skies by witnesses including three pilots. Just 97 were reported in 2006.
In the last year, there have been reports of a flying saucer in Staffordshire, small stationary aircraft in Derbyshire and a fast moving triangular shaped object in West Yorkshire.
In the West Midlands in December, a woman was terrified when a UFO shone a light into her window. She said the UFO then "shot off fast at first to the North East and then started to move at a slow pace".
Meanwhile in Duxford, Cambridgeshire, on April 12, a witness reported seeing fifty objects, each with an orange light, assembling in the sky before ascending.
On another occasion, two pilots in different planes flying over Alderney in the Channel Islands reported seeing two bright orange aircrafts and another pilot reported seeing a strange "balloon-like" object when in the air.
Hilary Porter, from the British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society (BEAMS) said she is not surprised by the rise in the number of UFOs reported to the MoD, as they have been inundated with similar reports.
"We have had call after call, from business people right down to ordinary folk in their cars. There have been some very close encounters that have been quite unnerving for the people involved. We have had other people reporting orb sightings."
Stephenville, Texas - In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO.
Several dozen people — including a pilot, county constable and business owners — insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.
"People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times," said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts."
While federal officials insist there's a logical explanation, locals swear that it was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane. They also said the object's lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane. People in several towns who reported seeing it over several weeks have offered similar descriptions of the object.
Machinist Ricky Sorrells said friends made fun of him when he told them he saw a flat, metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture behind his Dublin home. But he decided to come forward after reading similar accounts in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune.
"You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal," Sorrells said. "It feels good to hear that other people saw something, because that means I'm not crazy."
Sorrells said he has seen the object several times. He said he watched it through his rifle's telescopic lens and described it as very large and without seams, nuts or bolts.
Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, said no F-16s or other aircraft from his base were in the area the night of Jan. 8, when most people reported the sighting.
Officials at the region's two Air Force bases — Dyess in Abilene and Sheppard in Wichita Falls — also said none of their aircraft were in the area last week. The Air Force no longer investigates UFOs.
Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan said that he first saw red glowing lights and then white flashing lights moving fast, but that even with binoculars could not see the object to which the lights were attached.
"I didn't see a flying saucer and I don't know what it was, but it wasn't an airplane, and I've never seen anything like it," Gaitan said. "I think it must be some kind of military craft — at least I hope it was."
A mysterious “flying Dorito-shaped” object which was seen by dozens of people just before Christmas has been spotted again – this time in the skies above Lower Gornal.
The strange unexplained flying object was seen by residents in Wallows Wood, off The Straits, at around 6.15pm on Tuesday.
Householders described the object as looking like an “arrowhead” with three orange lights arranged in the shape of an isosceles triangle.
Residents watched it move slowly across the sky before it disappeared from view in the direction of Wolverhampton.
It is the second time the triangular object has been spotted flying over the Black Country in recent weeks.
Scores of people contacted the Express & Star after seeing a UFO in the skies above Wednesfield and Dudley in December and Stourbridge-based UFO Research Midlands was deluged with calls and emails from onlookers who witnessed the object.
Lower Gornal resident Peter Wasdell, aged 57, said he could not believe his eyes when he saw the object.
“The dog started barking and when my wife went outside to find out what was going on she saw the object in the sky and called me out to have a look,” he said.
“There were three orangey lights in a triangle formation. They weren’t shaped like an equilateral triangle, more like an isosceles triangle, and shaped like an old fashioned arrow head. I don’t think it was a plane because we didn’t hear any noise.
“My daughter and her boyfriend and the next door neighbours all saw them and we watched them for about 15 minutes before they disappeared behind the trees.”
Birmingham International Airport spokesman John Morris said the airport took all reports of UFOs seriously. “We had a couple of inquiries before Christmas following the first sightings over Halesowen,” he revealed.
More people report seeing 'UFOs' flying over county
Unexplained lights seen in the sky over Flintshire on Christmas Day have prompted reports from other people of similar sightings.
Harry Hughes, of Mynydd Isa, reported seeing five round orange lights in the sky above his house in Grays Road on Christmas Day at about 7.20pm.
He said: "I looked up and saw what looked like five bright orangey-red fireballs flying through the sky, coming from the Bodfari direction.
"They were travelling quite fast, about 10-12 seconds apart and were revolving. They were travelling too fast to be aircraft and were completely silent."
Harry called to his wife Pam to look at the objects before they disappeared and as she followed him out to the garden, they began to change direction.
Harry's description of the unexplained objects matched that of Leigh and Lynn Williams, of Borras, Wrexham, who caught sight of several strange orange orbs in the sky in July. The couple managed to take pictures and these were posted on the Evening Leader website.
The latest report prompted two more Flintshire residents to speak out about their own strange sightings, both of which match the descriptions of the infamous orange orbs.
Mike Jones, of Sychdyn, was sitting outside his house in the early hours of New Year's Day, when he caught sight of two lights in the sky.
He said: "It was about 1.10am and I saw two orange lights in the sky, both travelling at the same speed, with no sound at all. Then they just disappeared.
"They definitely weren't planes or helicopters. They were something very strange."
Jenny May, from Sandycroft, also reported seeing strange objects in the sky above her home in July.
She added: "We were sitting out in the back garden in July with our next door neighbours and at about 11pm we saw four bright orange lights that came from the west and shot up into the sky, then shot off in different directions towards the north.
"They danced before they shot off and even my neighbour, who doesn't believe in that sort of thing, saw them. He was gobsmacked and didn't talk for the rest of the night.
"About two months later my brother, who is another non-believer, saw three bright orange lights in the sky. They then formed a line and shot off. They seemed to be above Airbus in Broughton. We don't know if they are from there."
There have been reports of sightings posted on the Evening Leader website from as far afield as San Diego, California, where a couple claimed they saw four similar glowing orange lights.
British UFO 'sightings' investigated by a secret branch of the MoD are soon to be revealed and officials are braced for a torrent of inquiries
Without warning, the orange UFO swooped toward them. The crew of the RAF Vulcan bomber banked hard and radioed they were being chased across the Atlantic by a large mysterious object. The incident was classified as a UFO sighting and the details were immediately locked away.
Now, 30 years later, the extraordinary encounter is among thousands of previously secret cases contained in the government's 'X-Files' that officials are to release in their entirety.
The cases, many from a little-known defence intelligence branch tasked with investigating UFO claims, will be published by the Ministry of Defence to counter what officials say is 'the maze of rumour and frequently ill-informed speculation' surrounding Whitehall and its alleged involvement with Unidentifed Flying Objects.
The public opening of the MoD archive will expose the once highly classified work of the intelligence branch DI55, whose mission was to investigate UFO reports and whose existence was denied by the government until recently. Reports into about 7,000 UFO sightings investigated by defence officials - every single claim lodged over the past 30 years - are included in the files, whose staged release will begin in spring.
The decision to release Whitehall's full back-catalogue of UFO investigations was taken last month after the Directorate of Air Space Policy, the government agency responsible for filtering sensitive reports, gave its permission to publish the biggest single release of documents in MoD history. Now the government fears a repeat of the unprecedented demand and the website crash experienced by the French national space agency in March when it released its own UFO files. Government IT experts are believed to have drawn up contingency plans to avoid a repeat scenario when Britain's dossiers are finally made public.
Among the first tranche of UK cases will be the official government files into the famous Rendlesham incident, dubbed 'Britain's Roswell' after the US incident when a flying saucer is said to have crash-landed in the New Mexico desert 60 years ago. On a foggy night in 1980 several witnesses reported a UFO apparently landing in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk. Statements claimed the craft was covered in markings similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics and aliens emerged from it.
Another case reported to the intelligence branch DI55 - Britain's version of the 'Men In Black' - chronicles a series of reports sent to RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire, by the crew of a Vulcan bomber on exercise over the Bay of Biscay early on 26 May 1977. According to documents seen by The Observer, five crewmen, including the captain, co-pilot and navigators, watched 'an object' approach their aircraft at 43,000ft above the Atlantic. The mysterious craft then appeared to turn and follow their precise course from a distance of four miles.
Initially, the crew said the object resembled landing lights 'with a long pencil beam of light ahead' but as it turned towards them the lights suddenly went out leaving a diffuse orange glow with a bright fluorescent green spot in its bottom right-hand corner. Then, according to signals sent back to Scampton, the crew noted a mystery object 'leaving from the middle of the glow on a westerly track... climbing at very high speed at an angle of 45 degrees'.
The Vulcan's navigator recorded interference on his radar screen from the direction of the UFO which continued for 45 minutes as the plane headed back to Britain. On return to the UK, the camera film from the aircraft's radar was examined by RAF intelligence. They found a 'strong response' from the direction of the sighting. The UFO was captured as 'an elongated shadow' of a 'large-sized' object travelling at a similar height to the Vulcan. An intelligence report sent to the MoD the same day says the crew 'were unable to offer a logical explanation for the sighting'.
Although hailed as the complete disclosure of the UK's UFO files, questions are likely to remain over whether all available information will be made public. Despite the Vulcan sighting being investigated by DI55, no details remain in the file indicating what they found or what became of the radar film.
The disclosures are more likely, claim some experts, to lend credence to the theory that such UFO incidents were, rather than alien visitations, military activities such as missile launches, testing of prototype aircraft and other activities during the Cold War.
David Clarke, a lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University and author of Flying Saucerers: A Social History of UFOlogy, said: 'Something was definitely going on, but really these files show that the government did not know either. This release will be a source of disappointment or vindication for some, and embarrassment for others.
Clarke, who has lodged hundreds of FoI requests, recently discovered that the government was considering destroying the 24 files created by DI55 because they were contaminated by asbestos. Not only were the UFO records polluted, but a total of 63,000 files estimated at between six to 12 million pages - most of them classified as secret - were facing the same fate. Having admitted the existence of the problem to Clarke, the MoD opted to instigate a £3m project digitally to scan the files before they were destroyed. Scanning of the 24 contaminated UFO files owned by DI55 was completed last year, although it is understood that names of officials in the reports will be removed.
Although the government remains reticent to discuss its intelligence work on UFOs, it is known that DI55 has been hot on the trail of flying saucers since the Sixties. Experts admit that they work closely with the security services MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to collect and assess evidence of potential threats to Britain.
The decision by the UK to open its files could lead to the US government following suit. A group of former pilots and government officials recently urged the Pentagon to reopen investigations into claims of UFO sightings.
UFO claims
1980 Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk. US servicemen claim to have seen an alien craft and its landing site.
1984 Minsk, USSR. Aeroflot pilots say they are pursued by a glowing shape.
1989 Bonnybridge, Scotland. Fire crew report objects rushing towards them before veering away at the last moment.
1990 Brussels, Belgium. Two F-16 fighter pilots recount being engaged in 75-minute mid-air chase with a UFO.
Japan defense chief mulling action in event of UFO attack
As Japan takes a more active role in military affairs, the defense minister has more on his mind than just threats here on Earth.
Shigeru Ishiba became the second member of the Cabinet to profess a belief in UFOs and said he was looking at how Japan's military could respond to aliens under the pacifist Constitution.
"There are no grounds for us to deny that there are unidentified flying objects [UFOs] and some life-form that controls them," Ishiba told reporters, saying it was his personal view and not that of the defense ministry.
Ishiba, nicknamed a "security geek" for his wonkish knowledge of defense affairs, noted that Japan deployed its military against Godzilla in the classic monster movie.
"Few discussions have been made on what the legal grounds were for that," the minister said with a slight grin, drawing laughter from reporters.
Ishiba said he was examining different scenarios for an alien invasion.
"If they descended, saying `People of the Earth, let's make friends,' it would not be considered an urgent, unjust attack on our country," Ishiba said.
"And there is another issue of how can we convey our intentions if we don't understand what they are saying," he said.
"We should consider various possibilities," he said. "There is no need at all to do this as the defense ministry, but I want to consider what to do by myself."
Ishiba's remarks came after the Tokyo government this week said it had no knowledge of UFOs, prompting a surprise rebuttal from the top government spokesman.
"Personally, I absolutely believe they exist," Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said on Tuesday.
Japan's chief government spokesman has announced that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) exist.
Earlier, in response to a question from an opposition lawmaker, the Japanese government issued a statement saying it could not confirm any cases of UFOs.
But Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura later told reporters he believed they were "definitely" real.
It is the sort of question politicians dread but, under Japanese rules, are unable to ignore.
A member of the opposition asked the government what its policy was to deal with UFOs.
He said work should begin urgently to try to confirm whether or not they exist because of what he called "incessant" reports of sightings.
The orange triangle with its three lights was seen over Wednesfield and Dudley by scores of people who phoned the newspaper after an appeal for information.
A flurry of calls was made to Stourbridge based UFO Research Midlands, UFORM, from those claiming to have witnessed an unexplained aircraft in the sky.
The flying object was spotted over Halesowen heading towards Stourbridge on Wednesday at around 7pm.Katherine Hemmings, aged 13, of Beechwood Avenue, saw it at 4pm over Wednesfield High School in Lichfield Road. She was walking home with friends Tasmin Jones and Chelsea Smith when the three felt compelled to turn around. “It was weird because it wasn’t making any noise but for some reason we turned around”, Katherine said. “We all saw this big thing with lights in the sky.
“We didn’t tell anyone other than our families at first because we thought everyone would laugh at us. Our families didn’t know what to think until they saw it in the paper. I have never really believed something like that would be real. I always just thought people who say they have seen a UFO are seeing aeroplanes or birds.” Pat Scotford and her husband Mick saw the UFO when they were in their garden in Devon Road, Wollaston at around 7.30pm.
Mrs Scotford, aged 61, said she too saw three orange lights in the sky. “It looked like it was heading towards Kinver”, she said. “At first I thought it was three planes flying in formation but the lights were far too close together. I’m sure we’re not alone in the universe.”
Steve Poole, chairman of UFORM, said one man filmed over 30 seconds of footage of the craft.
Driver Lisa Timmins, aged 38, saw the object while at her boyfriend’s house in Whitgreave Avenue, Bushbury, some time between 6.15pm and 6.40pm.
She said: “I haven’t got a clue what it was, but it was quite big.”
Last week there was a report of a UFO spotted over Limassol town and since an earlier article on UFOs in Cyprus. Anthony in Nicosia shared his experience, "just last week at 10:10pm we had a sighting of a UFO while we were travelling in the Kyrenia area that lasted for two minutes. It was an oblong shape, like a rugby ball on its end and was glowing very bright orange. It came from the coast inland near a village called Catalkoy in small but rapid zigzags then stopped and hovered for approximately 30 seconds before making a smooth ascent at 45 degrees up to the east towards a very bright star. It then disappeared. A friend had sighted a similar event at the same spot a month previously "
It is just the latest in a series of incidents of unidentified objects in our skies. A local TV cameraman posted a clip he filmed on the popular Youtube website of a 'strange craft' in the skies of Limassol.
The three-minute video shows a circular object hovering over the city. The UFO was a bright orange orb, which later changed to a rugby-ball shape.
There have been several sightings of UFOs on the island in the past five years. One of the earliest accounts of a UFO in Cyprus was in 1950, when two American soldiers described a "small, round, bright object flying fast, straight and level for 15-20 seconds across Nicosia".
Last month, a computer programmer and his girlfriend who were on holiday in Paphos had an experience which left them confused and dazed.
The man told a UFO news website, "It happend on Sunday 9th September at 1am. That night my girlfriend and I were lying down on sunbeds staring at the stars. After a while I sat on the sunbed looking and talking to my girlfriend when behind her over the rooftop I saw a circular irregular light moving quite fast. By the time I told her about it, it was already 45 degrees on my right.
She saw it as it was reappearing behind a building and finally it disappeared again behind trees. It moved quite fast and at a constant speed along an east to west straight line."
Last year a resident of Pygra had a similar experience: "The sound of my dogs barking alerted me to something. It was 1.30 in the morning and I headed out to try and discover what they were barking at. I noticed a bright light coming towards me, which then stopped and hovered. With binoculars, I could see it was a triangle-shaped object with amber, green and white lights. It was moving erratically left to right, back and forth - hovering there, observed by me for around 45 minutes. I tried to video it with a powerful zoom but the camera wouldnt operate. I checked the camera by filming other parts of the sky and the house and it operated perfectly. it simply wouldn't let me video the object. This thing then went behind a tree and stayed there."
In 2002, the self-styled Egyptian UFO Hunter, Dr.Ibrahim shot a five-minute video of a UFO above the carpark at Larnaca airport. The film shows a green 'shaking' object and can be seen on his website. (http://www.ufo-egyptian-hunter.org).
An unidentified flying object was also spotted over Kyrenia in 1998. It was seen on the Nicosia-Kyrenia road by a family from Kyrenia who were on their way home after visiting a friend's house.
They said an object "like a flying saucer" with white revolving lights had appeared around 50-100 metres above their car and that it had then followed them.
In July, a crowd of 100 stunned stargazers brought a UK town centre to a standstill when five mysterious UFOs were spotted hovering in the sky.
Drinkers spilled out of pubs, motorists stopped to gawp and camera-phones were aimed upwards as the five orbs, in a seeming formation, hovered above Stratford-Upon-Avon for half an hour.
The unidentified flying objects lit up the otherwise clear night sky above Shakespeare's birthplace in Warwickshire.
People across Sussex have been seeing strange objects in the sky.
Strange lights were spotted in land from Norman's Bay, a UFO was sighted over Battle on Wednesday and a mystery light was seen hovering over Cross in Hand.
Nicholas Munro of Norman's Bay made the sighting on Saturday night (November 17).
He said, "I first noticed them around 9pm and drew my wife's attention to them.
"They were still there at around 11 pm when I went to bed.
"They appeared to be a group of faint lights either in or above the low cloud rotating very rapidly in a horizontal circular clockwise direction.
"Either that or a group of lights being projected from something which was itself rotating rapidly in a clockwise direction."
Meanwhile Ann Drake of Battle said she spotted a UFO over the town this morning (November 21).
She said, "My window has a clear view east over fields. I noticed this incredibly bright light just hanging there in front of the clouds.
"It was too bright and in the wrong place to be a morning star.
"I had a cup of tea and went to pull the bedroom curtains ten minutes later and it was still there, just hanging stationary. Then I noticed a red light andit accelerated away at incredible speed.
"Whatever it was could not have been that far away as it was in front of the clouds.
"I have never seen anything like that before but am keeping an open mind."
In Cross in Hand a mystery light was spotted by local resident Lynnda Rose.
She said, "I was out with my dog and noticed a light above the field moving in a circular motion.
"I can only describe it as looking like an oval, thick mist which was quite bright."
"I've never seen anything like it before and can find no explanation."
A UFO spotter from Felpham has appealed to anyone else who saw the objects to contact him. Leo Lindsay and his wife, Rosie, watched from a bedroom window.
Mr Lindsay has since had unofficial confirmation from the Ministry of Defence that two RAF planes were sent up to investigate the phenomenon.
"The RAF don't do that unless there is a real reason," he stated. "I can't believe no one else saw the objects. I would estimate they were each about the size of a house.
"Anyone walking along Felpham seafront at that time would not have been able to miss them. I hope they will let me know on 01243 855728."
Mr Lindsay estimates the objects must have been above Felpham seafront in a beautiful light blue sky with white puffy clouds. He was looking out of a bedroom window in his home in Roundle Avenue at about 6pm on October 4 when he saw 'two round football-shaped objects' coming over the trees high in the sky.
He went downstairs to tell his wife. He watched as the objects changed to become 'multi-faceted diamond shaped discs which moved further apart'.
The fighter planes appeared on the scene ten minutes later. Two aunts staying with the couple also saw the incident.
Former pilots, officials call for new U.S. UFO probe
An international panel of two dozen former pilots and government officials called on the U.S. government on Monday to reopen its generation-old UFO investigation as a matter of safety and security given continuing reports about flying discs, glowing spheres and other strange sightings.
"Especially after the attacks of 9/11, it is no longer satisfactory to ignore radar returns ... which cannot be associated with performances of existing aircraft and helicopters," they said in a statement released at a news conference.
This photo depicts a possible UFO sighting in 1998. An international panel of two dozen former pilots and government officials called on the U.S. government on Monday to reopen its generation-old UFO investigation as a matter of safety and security given continuing reports about flying discs and other strange sightings.
The panelists from seven countries, including former senior military officers, said they had each seen a UFO or conducted an official investigation into UFO phenomena.
The subject of UFOs grabbed the spotlight in the U.S. presidential race last month when Dennis Kucinich, a member of Congress from Ohio, said during a televised debate with other Democratic candidates that he had seen one.
Former presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter are both reported to have claimed UFO sightings.
A panelist who once worked for Britain's Ministry of Defense said 5 percent of incidents cannot be explained.
But the sightings are often dismissed by authorities without proper investigations, UFO activists say.
"It's a question of who you going to believe: your lying eyes or the government?" remarked John Callahan, a former Federal Aviation Administration investigator, who said the CIA in 1987 tried to hush up the sighting of a huge lighted ball four times the size of a jumbo jet in Alaska.
The panel, organized by a group dedicated to winning credibility for the study of UFOs, urged Washington to resume UFO investigations through the U.S. Air Force or NASA.
"It would certainly, I think, take a lot of angst out of this issue," said former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who said he was among hundreds who saw a delta-shaped craft with enormous lights silently traverse the sky near Phoenix in 1997.
Aliens were responsible for a series of unexplained fires in fridges, TV’s and mobile phones in an Italian village, according to an Italian government report.
Canneto di Caronia, in northern Sicily, drew attention three years ago after residents reported everyday household objects bursting into flames.
TV news footage at the time showed electrical appliances as well as cookers, a pile of wedding presents and furniture smouldering.
Dozens of experts including scientists, electrical engineers and military boffins, arrived in the village 60 miles east of Palermo to investigate the phenomenon.
Arson was quickly ruled out and at one stage an amazed scientist was interviewed after he described how he saw an unplugged electrical cable burst into flames.
Locals were quick to blame supernatural forces and at the time the Vatican’s chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth backed up their fears and said: "I’ve seen things like this before. Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods. Let’s not forget that Satan and his followers have immense powers."
Now in an interim leaked report published by several Italian newspapers it has emerged that the Civil Protection Department has concluded the most likely cause was "aliens".
The report was ordered by the Italian government and brought together dozens of experts including a NASA scientist. Their two year investigation has cost an estimated £1 million.
According to the report the fires were "caused by a high power electro magnetic emissions which were not man made and reached a power of between 12 and 15 gigawatts."
The report also detailed a possible UFO landing close to the village, citing "burnt imprints which have not been explained were found in a field."
Francesco Mantegna Venerando, Sicily’s Civil Protection chief who coordinated the report, said: "This is not the final report. We are still working on our conclusions and this has been leaked.
"We are not saying that little green men from Mars started the fires but that unnatural forces capable of creating a large amount of electromagnetic energy were responsible.
"This is just one possibility we are also looking at another one which involves the testing of top secret weapons by an unknown power which are also capable of producing an enormous amount of energy."
Sutton's experts on the unexplained, the Ashfield Paranormal Investigation Team (TAPIT), are looking into reports of strange objects in the night sky on Saturday. Members of the team say calls have been flooding in from locals claiming to have seen a number of large orange balls in the air.
Says Lee Roberts, team leader for TAPIT: "We have had three reports from people at a restaurant in South Normanton describing the object as like a flame going across the sky which was not a plane or a firework."
One resident of Sherwood Street in Kirkby, who asked not to be named, told Chad she and her husband had seen a total of six of the objects in the sky.
She said: "They were definitely not fireworks or a plane or a helicopter. They were just silent and moved too fast. One of them was just hovering in the sky and then it shot off and five or six seconds later was a tiny dot.
"We were thinking we were going potty. But then we went to our local club the next day and someone else said they had seen them."
Now the paranormal investigators are making enquiries in a bid to discover the truth behind the sightings.
Added Lee: "We are doing investigations with East Midlands Airport and local air bases to see if there is anything they know of which could explain the sightings and what we can rule out."
SIX unidentified flying objects were sighted and photographed on Tuesday night (November 6) around 11pm by a local resident in Carvoeiro.
Robert Wilkinson, owner of a bar in Carvoeiro, told The Resident: “There were six orange glowing orbs in the sky at around 11pm. These were moving horizontally across the sky in the same direction, when suddenly one changed direction and the other five followed it before disappearing somewhere above the sea”.
Robert Wilkinson said that the distance of the orbs in the sky and their actual size was very difficult to judge, but he was certain that they were moving horizontally and not falling with gravity. The whole episode lasted approximately two minutes.
“I took photographs of the objects because they were unexplainable and silent,” said Robert Wilkinson, adding “I am certain they were not related to fire works or weather balloons”.
A spokesman from the Portuguese Air Force said: “We as a military force and government entity do not have a specific department to deal with these sightings. Our radars are only equipped to detect aircraft that enter our airspace but nothing abnormal has been reported within the last 24 hours”. She also said that no reported sighting had reached the Air Force related with the Algarve that night.
Luís Aparício, Director of the Associação de Pesquisa OVNI, the Portuguese UFO association, told The Resident: “UFOs are very common along the Algarve coast, especially between Cape St Vicent and Sines. Fishermen report many sightings of UFOs in the area”.
Luís Aparício also said that many objects disappear in land especially around Odiáxere, which is believed to have something underground that attracts UFOs.
Fife Symington says he nearly had a close encounter
Fife Symington says he nearly had a close encounter while governor of Arizona:
In 1997, during my second term as governor of Arizona, I saw something that defied logic and challenged my reality.
I witnessed a massive delta-shaped, craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, Arizona. It was truly breathtaking. I was absolutely stunned because I was turning to the west looking for the distant Phoenix Lights.
To my astonishment this apparition appeared; this dramatically large, very distinctive leading edge with some enormous lights was traveling through the Arizona sky.
As a pilot and a former Air Force Officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man-made object I'd ever seen. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares don't fly in formation.
The incident was witnessed by hundreds -- if not thousands -- of people in Arizona, and my office was besieged with phone calls from very concerned Arizonians.
The growing hysteria intensified when the story broke nationally. I decided to lighten the mood of the state by calling a press conference where my chief of staff arrived in an alien costume. We managed to lessen the sense of panic but, at the same time, upset many of my constituents.
I would now like to set the record straight. I never meant to ridicule anyone. My office did make inquiries as to the origin of the craft, but to this day they remain unanswered.
Eventually the Air Force claimed responsibility stating that they dropped flares.
This is indicative of the attitude from official channels. We get explanations that fly in the face of the facts. Explanations like weather balloons, swamp gas and military flares.
I was never happy with the Air Force's silly explanation. There might very well have been military flares in the sky that evening, but what I and hundreds of others saw had nothing to do with that.
I now know that I am not alone. There are many high-ranking military, aviation and government officials who share my concerns. While on active duty, they have either witnessed a UFO incident or have conducted an official investigation into UFO cases relevant to aviation safety and national security.
By speaking out with me, these people are putting their reputations on the line. They have fought in wars, guarded top secret weapons arsenals and protected our nation's skies.
We want the government to stop putting out stories that perpetuate the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth conventional terms. Investigations need to be re-opened, documents need to be unsealed and the idea of an open dialogue can no longer be shunned.
Incidents like these are not going away. About a year ago, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport experienced a UFO event that made national and international headlines.
What I saw in the Arizona sky goes beyond conventional explanations. When it comes to events of this nature that are still completely unsolved, we deserve more openness in government, especially our own.
Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has claimed he saw a UFO, according to Shirley MacLaine in her new book, "Sage-Ing While Age-Ing." Kucinich "had a close sighting over my home in Graham, Washington, when I lived there," wrote the actress, a close Kucinich friend. "Dennis found his encounter extremely moving. The smell of roses drew him out to my balcony where, when he looked up, he saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent, and observing him. It hovered, soundless, for 10 minutes or so, and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He said he felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind."
Bill Richardson promises that, in the unlikely event he’s elected president, he will get to the bottom of the Roswell UFO cover-up.
Answering questions at a townhall meeting Friday, a Dell employee asked Richardson about the 1947 incident in which many people still believe a flying saucer landed near the eastern New Mexico town. “I’ve been in government a long time, I’ve been in the cabinet, I’ve been in the Congress and I’ve always felt that the government doesn’t tell the truth as much as it should on a lot of issues,” said Richardson, who is governor of New Mexico. “When I was in Congress I said (to the) Department of Defense … ‘What is the data? What is the data you have?’ ”
He was told that the records were classified. “That ticked me off,” he said, as the crowd laughed.
“What do you want me to do? You want me to open up all those files?” he asked the alien enthusiast, who answered that he did. “I’ll work with you on that.”
NASA has agreed to search its archives once again for documents on a 1965 UFO incident in Pennsylvania.
It's a matter the space agency has fought in federal court, but UFO enthusiasts have refused to let die.
Eyewitnesses claim that something moved across the sky and crashed in the woods about 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh in December 1965. Traffic was tied up in the area and curiosity seekers were kept away by soldiers. After a search, the Air Force said the likely explanation was a meteor, but nothing was found.
One person claimed to have seen a flatbed truck driving away an acorn-shaped object about the size of a Volkswagen bus.
Four years ago, journalist Leslie Kean sued NASA for information. The space agency turned over several stacks of documents, but Kean says they were not responsive to the request. A federal judge agreed, leading to negotiations and finally NASA's promise to conduct a more comprehensive search.
A dossier on unidentified flying objects (UFOs), kept by the Irish Defence Forces for 37 years, has finally emerged.
The file - released to the Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act - includes press cuttings about reported sightings of UFOs, along with classified memos and other correspondence.
A spokesman for the Department of Defence said that, since 1984 the UFO file was no longer maintained by the Defence Forces.
The file up to then includes a report of a UFO sighting in Boherlahan, near Cashel, Co Tipperary, in 1984. It was "the same shape as a fried egg" and had "some kind of an aerial on top and it was brown in colour", local teenager Conor Dwyer told The Irish Times at the time. A 10-year-old boy reported it made a buzzing noise like a chainsaw and said the bright lights dazzled him.
The file also contains a classified memo on an alleged sighting of a flying projectile over a bog in Donegal in May the same year. An off-duty garda and a farmer were cutting turf near Falcarragh when they heard "a gushing sound". The garda looked up and saw a grey object travelling at speed over his head. It was shaped like a household iron with fins at the back.
An early entry in the file concerns a statement by a Cahirciveen shopkeeper and farmer in June 1947. He told gardaí he saw a circular object moving "faster than a motor car" through the sky. "It was flat and was like a big wheel or large plate . . . the rim was white and it was hollow in the centre".
A mysterious giant "fireball" was spotted exploding over the ocean off the Jersey Shore last night, but officials had no idea last night what it was.
The unidentified falling object was first seen at about 8:40 p.m. by people on Normandy Beach in Ocean County, and was also spotted as far away as Fire Island and South Carolina, officials said.
"It was dispatched as a fireball, out over the ocean, going into the ocean," Deputy Chief Tim Cook of the Toms River, N.J., Fire Department told The Post.
At least 15 witnesses on the beach all described the same thing, he said.
"It was a large fireball that came down and sort of dropped down into the ocean."
Coast Guard cutters and helicopters were dispatched, but found nothing, said Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Nyx Cangemi.
"It's a real mystery," he added.
The FAA also had no idea what it was.
"We have no planes reported missing," said agency spokesman Jim Peters who said he checked with area airports and nearby McGuire Air Force Base.
Following a report by the Gazette, the newsdesk received calls and e-mails from readers saying they, too, had seen a strange craft in the sky on Saturday, August 4.
As reported last week, lorry driver Kris Reed, 29, claimed to have spotted the pear-shaped object from his home in Richmond Road, Oakridge, Basingstoke.
He said it hovered overhead before moving off with a rumbling noise.
Learning and development assistant Helaine Brownhill, from Norden Close, claimed she, too, saw something other-worldly.
She said: "At about 11pm on the Saturday, a car alarm had been going off and I went to my daughter's room to see where it was coming from.
"I saw a large reddish orb appear in the sky over the Houndmills area before very slowly moving across the sky and towards town. It stopped mid-air and rotated in a circle.
Andrew Keeble, 64, a taxi driver from New Road, Bramley, claims to have watched the same UFO six days later.
He said: "I was taking two passengers to Winklebury and, suddenly, we caught sight of this bright deep orangey-red light flickering through the trees.
"We went nearer and sat in the car watching it hover almost above us for about four or five minutes, before losing sight of it behind some trees.
"About half-an-hour later, I was in between jobs in Oakridge and saw the same thing again. "I got out of my car to look at it and it vanished instantly."
IT was likely to be a night like any other for the crew of a Met police helicopter on patrol over Bromley borough..
But suddenly they found themselves in the middle of something resembling a science fiction film. All around them were flashing and pulsating red lights that made whirring noises.
Their report was filed among hundreds of others in a secret government storage facility. Now, less than four years on, their story can be finally brought to light thanks to a freedom of information request.
However Met police were reluctant to elaborate any further on what was released by the Ministry of Defence.
The accounts are varied and in some cases bizarre. A massive light, shaped like an iron that hung in the sky without moving was spotted in Orpington in 2005.
In Grove Park, Bromley, witnesses saw a black ruler-shaped object 'move across the moon' and disappear in 1998.
Most of the sightings are little more than just an entry in a log that gathers dust on military shelves, but some are willing to speak of their experiences.
The Kentish Times reported how in April this year, a couple Stacy Shaw, 19 and her boyfriend Gavin Drummond, 22, saw 'burning balls of fire' in the sky.
They had seen them hovering over the Tollgate Hotel roundabout, next to the A2. Astounded, they followed one light to the site of an old BP petrol station in their car.
She said: "When it got there it just shot up into the sky really quickly. That was the most amazing part, the way it moved so fast."
In south east London witnesses spoke of a 'cigar-shaped' object that looked like a disc side on, which accelerated to a speed that would outstrip a fighter jet.
A rotating silver pyramid, a “metallic spinning object” with green engines and a “mother ship with two smaller orbs” were among the bizarre UFO sightings reported to the Ministry of Defence last year, it has just revealed. On October 14 a resident in Sunderland reported spotting “a silver pyramid that was rotating at a low speed and off centre.”
Two weeks later “a black triangular UFO was seen, with three lights on it” hovering above nearby Hetton-Le-Hole.
Barlaston in Staffordshire was haunted for a week by a “mother ship and two smaller orbs”, one white and one orange.
And Eastleigh Cotswolds in Hampshire experienced a “metallic spinning object that had heat sources showing green”.
2006 Sightings
19 March, 6.35pm, Newquay, Cornwall
A bright disc was seen hanging in the sky. The object appeared to quiver, rather than move. Moved around and then just vanished.
8 May, 1.11pm, St. Tudwal’s Islands, Mid-Wales
The object looked like a black square hanging in the sky.
17 June, 9.45pm, Broadstairs, Kent
Five orange balls of light, going over one at a time, at about 10-15 minute intervals. 4 July, 10pm, Locherbridges, Dumfries
Dome shaped static object, with lights running up and down the dome, with another light swaying to and from beneath.
18 July, 4.15pm, Stevenage, Bedfordshire The object was oblong shape, and was also described as looking a bit like a scooter.
9 September, 9pm, Stamford Hill, London
There was a massive bang and then two large fire balls were seen moving from East to West. They were very bright.
29 November, 12.50am, Coatbridge, Glasgow
Triangular object which changed to a round shape, then became elongated. Had red lights on it. Plus a blue circle around it.
Derbyshire's real life X-Files have been opened for the first time to reveal more than a dozen UFO sightings across the county.
According to the Ministry of Defence, 14 unexplained sightings in the county have been investigated by the military since 1999, including one reported by a police officer in Derby.
Other sightings include one last year in Derby, when a witness described seeing "a bright, red light" in the sky.
"The light was moving too quickly across the sky to be an aircraft," the witness later told the MoD.
The year before, a witness in Matlock reported seeing a "descending white light" and "rotating beams of light going upwards from the ground".
Another person in Yeldersley, near Ashbourne, reported seeing a "missile-shaped" object, which was "turquoise in colour, metallic and looked reflective, and was the length of an estate car".
Other reports include "four bright lights, plus an outer circle of a round object" spotted in Derby in 2002.
Also in 2002, a witness reported seeing a "large triangle-shaped object, with a large, white light on the front, and, in the centre, a group of four, static, red lights".
Omar Fowler, from the Derby-based Phenomenon Research Association, said that the UFO information from the MOD came as no surprise to him.
He said: "It will be very interesting to see what they've recorded but I doubt they'll be able to tell us anything we don't already know. In that respect, I won't be expecting any surprising findings.
"It is, however, an interesting development that the MoD is publishing what is reported to them."
The Ministry of Defence has given a first glimpse into Notts' own 'X-files' on UFO sightings in the county.
Details revealed under the Freedom of Information Act show the MoD has recorded ten UFO sightings in Notts since 1999.
The most recent, in 2005, featured "two extremely bright, round lights" with a "lozenge-shaped" object nearby. The spotter reported the objects having "the speed of an arrow".
Other sightings logged by the MoD include one in Nottingham in 2002 which recorded eight objects which "joined into a circle, then separated."
In the same year, also in Nottingham, three "silver triangular objects" were reported as being seen in a triangle formation.
The log adds: "Was closely followed by a police helicopter."
Another sighting in Bingham on New Year's Eve 2001 reported seeing "one... object with lights that were orange, red, blue and white."
In January 2001, in south Clifton, an object the size of a helicopter, was seen.
The MoD log records: "Red and white stripes/lights, with wings like a Phantom [aircraft]... stationary, then darted about the woods."
UFOS have been spotted twice above Manchester in the past year.
Freedom of Information powers revealed that three silver unidentified flying objects hovering above Chorlton.
In the second sighting, an orange ball was spotted high above Irlam. According to witnesses, the ball was first seen low in the sky, but then gained height, moving very fast.
These were only two of the sightings of unidentified objects recorded by the Ministry of Defence's UFO section.
They were found using the Freedom of Information Act.
Reports from elsewhere in the north west included an incident in Crewe last year when very bright lights were seen for more than half an hour, hovering quite slowly from side to side. Meanwhile, in Macclesfield, observers spotted a spinning object which appeared to have a triangular shaped part on either side of it.
They reported it as a grey, almost dull, metallic colour.
Among sightings nationally, there was `a mother ship' with two smaller orbs moving around it, in Barlestone, Staffordshire, and an object which was oblong shaped and `looked a bit like a scooter' over Stevenage, in Bedfordshire.
In one case, in Co Durham, a police officer reported seeing six lights travelling in a line, slightly staggered, from north to south.
As revealed in the Manchester Evening News, between the year 2000 and last year, air crews reported UFOs on 13 occasions.
The Westcountry is a "hot spot" for sightings of UFOs
The Westcountry is a "hot spot" for sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects, according to a secret Ministry of Defence (MoD) database.
In the last eight years there have been almost 80 unexplained sightings in the skies over the far South West, ranging from 300ft white spheres in Tavistock to spinning orange lights over Glastonbury.
The WMN has also learnt that since 2000, the MoD has stopped investigating reports of unidentified flying objects and the list of sightings has only come to light following a Freedom of Information request.
It means the list of UFOs, just released from the MoD archives, has never been properly investigated by defence experts.
The reports range from a traditional "flying saucer" in Bideford in July 2000 to the more extreme object, the size of a small room "spinning on its own axis", in Torquay in 2001.
The UFOs come in all shapes and sizes too, from a very bright "half-a-mile-long object" over Probus in Cornwall in 2001, to a "silver, cigar-shaped object, moving faster than a nearby plane" in Harracott, Devon in December 2000.
While some of the reports are incredibly vague, others are detailed in their descriptions. On April 7, 2003 a "craft" was spotted in Falmouth with three yellow lights on the port side and three red lights on starboard side. Its shape was "between circular and triangular, or delta wing size" - although the timing of the sighting, at 2.30am, might suggest the spotter was not as alert as they might have been.
Dave Gillham, who founded Cornwall UFO Research Group in 1995, said less light pollution made it easier for people in the Westcountry to see the airborne objects.
"There are only small towns, so once you get out into the country you can see more clearly," he said. "The UFOs are really coloured lights, so they stick out quite a bit in the dark. They come in from the sea and go around the coast. There's a lot going on at the moment. I don't think everything can be explained."
There have been 29 sightings of unidentified flying objects in Lincolnshire over the last decade, the Government has revealed.
UFO sightings in the county have been a talking point amongst professionals and experts for years.
And some members of the public in Lincoln are convinced they have seen strange aerial goings-on themselves.
"It was like nothing I had seen before, it was cornet-shaped with bright orange lights, so there was no chance of it being an aircraft" said Beth Clarkson (59) from Skellingthorpe, near Lincoln. "The triangular-shaped object was hovering over the roofs of our houses.
"After contacting our local RAF airbase at Scampton, they denied any sort of activity, but there was definitely something unique about this."
Officially, the Ministry of Defence's policy is to examine reports solely to establish whether UK airspace may have been compromised by hostile or unauthorised military activity.
The truth is out there in Cumbria after government X-Files revealed a hive of UFO activity.
Witnesses claim to have seen circular flashing lights in Ulverston in August 1999.
And in February 2000, two bright lights were spotted above Bowness.
Other sightings include a bright metal star with no jet stream seen in Keswick in October 2000, a bright star moving around like a kite in Storth, near Milnthorpe, in May 2004, and a UFO over Kendal in 2005.
The most recent was on September 13, last year, in Whitehaven at 9.45pm.
It is recorded as “a triangular object with lights. One green, one red and the other two amber. There was a strange droning noise as it passed overhead”.
The dossier of information was revealed by the Ministry of Defence, under the Freedom of Information Act.
Every year more than 100 UFO sightings are reported to the MoD, which are detailed in the information just published.
A Barrow family claimed they had a close encounter with a possible UFO while enjoying a takeaway in April.
Janice Jackson of Devon Street, Barrow, saw bright lights in the sky lasting about 15 seconds, before the light show passed overhead and on towards Roose.
In 2005, we reported how Sharon Debenham, of Sycamore Avenue, Ulverston, caught on camera a strange silver shape in the sky, which she believed was a UFO.
On the sunny afternoon of Wednesday July 25, Lee Jones of Anfield looked up from the back garden of his home and saw something which terrified and mesmerised him.
An enormous saucer-shaped craft emerged slowly from the cumulus clouds and hung in the sky. The UFO was so large, a passing commercial airliner was dwarfed against it, leading Lee to estimate the unidentified craft’s size as over a mile in diameter.
He ran in and fetched his wife and mother-in-law, and they too saw the gigantic circular craft – the colour of ‘grey gun-metal’ – hanging in the summer sky as clouds drifted over its surface, obscuring the mysterious visitor.
After about fifteen minutes of peeping out from the clouds, the UFO was nowhere to be seen. Had something its size taken off at high speed, a sonic bang would have rocked Merseyside, but no such boom was reported.
Earlier this year in January, a Mr Fraser of Childwall was taking a nightly stroll down Menlove Avenue when he noticed several lights in the sky.
Mr Fraser quickly realised these pinpoints of light were on some darker circular object of an enormous size.
The huge disc-shaped UFO moved slowly from the direction of Halewood across the sky, and Mr Fraser and a female passer-by watched it head towards Netherley.
That same week, a geometric formation of lights was seen over Huyton, Page Moss, Dovecot and Broadgreen.
One witness, a pizza-delivery man, said he saw a ‘giant round object in the sky with a mixture of coloured lights’ which he estimated to be about the size of the metropolitan cathedral.
The person he delivered the pizza to also saw this object and tried to video it.
Throughout June, this same colossal UFO seems to have been seen by people in the Dingle, Aigburth, Grassendale and Hunt’s Cross, and all these sightings were of a night.
A retired local policeman named Colin and an aviation expert from Runcorn named Greg have joined forces to get to the bottom of the giant UFO sightings, and initially believed the reports were misidentifications of the planet Venus, misinterpretations of aircraft landing and navigation lights and so on, but now they accept that these explanations do not pan out.
Electronics enthusiast Greg has built his very own radar unit using satellite dishes, and has even obtained data on the mysterious mammoth UFO.
He has ascertained that it is almost a mile in length and hovers at an altitude of around 7,000 feet.
His colleague Colin was a confirmed sceptic until he saw the UFO during a ‘skywatch’ vigil with five other people at Tarbock Green.
‘It blocked out the stars when it came into view at 3am,’ says Colin.
A number of strange bright lights have been spotted in south Bucks skies in recent days and it remains a mystery as to just what they might be.
Reports of the weird lights have also been discussed on radio station Mix 107 and radio controller for the station Andy Muir was one of those who spotted the lights last Saturday evening at around 11pm.
Andy said: "I live in Totteridge and from the top of the hill I noticed eight or nine lights over West Wycombe late on Saturday night. They were moving very slowly until they got really dim and disappeared. They weren't moving like anything else I've seen."
Just a few days earlier, last Thursday at around 10.30pm, an unusual sighting also caught the eye of Duncan Lund from Waterside in Chesham who emailed the Star a photo, pictured right, of what he could see.
Duncan said: "I was out in the back garden when I saw two glowing orange lights. I don't know how else to describe them. It could be anything but I think I'm still sceptical, but it is certainly like nothing I have seen before."
Mr Lund also described that the lights were moving across towards the Amersham area at a very slow pace.
"It's moving very fast to the northeast, spraying fire-like gas and transforming into two objects, a ball and a cube."
It's not a line from a sci-fi movie, but from a tape recording of a conversation between a ground dispatcher and a passenger plane pilot who allegedly chased an unidentified flying object 16 years ago above Shanghai.
The tape, the only known in-flight voice recording of a UFO sighting in China, was released to the public for the first time during a UFO seminar held on Saturday in Shanghai, Beijing Legal Times reported today.
The recording has been kept by Wu Jialu, former senior engineer with the Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute. He said equipment needed to analyze the report wasn't available until now.
"The 26-minute-long tape recording on March 18, 1991, included the pilot detecting the object, following it and eventually, he watched it disappear," said Wu, now director general with a city's UFO research center.
Wu played the taped conversation to the newspaper. The following is a transcript of the conversation.
Airport dispatcher (A): 3603, what did you see?
3603: I took off, flying about seven sea miles (13 kilometers) at the Course 28 degrees. I found an unidentified flying object right at my front. It was three meters to five meters in length. It's red and it looks like it is spraying fire. It's flying to the northeast. I turned slightly to the north and the object was farther and farther from my plane. It's moving fast and suddenly it turned around.
I flew about 20 sea miles (37 kilometers). It is moving southeast. It's flying lower and lower. I turned a little to the west. It turned around suddenly to the north again. It turned black.
It separated into two, one ball on the upper side and one cube below it. The two objects flew northeast for a while and then they turned to the northwest. They climbed up and disappeared. They came out, and disappeared again. A: When did you last see the object?
3603: About 6:26pm at 10 sea miles (18 kilometers) from Wuxi City.
A: Well, what's its location then?
3603: It was right in front of me.
A: 3603, can you estimate its speed?
3603: Its speed, um, the maximum speed … … It's difficult to say. It's about 600 kilometers per hour to 700 kilometers per hour. I felt like it's flying at the speed of big planes.
Cui Yilin, a reporter with Shanghai-based Xinmin Evening News, told Beijing Legal Times that he received hundreds of calls from local residents on March 19, 1991, saying they saw a "red fire ball" over Shanghai the previous day.
"There were calls from Wusong, Xinzhuang and Bund areas. But the one that really got my attention was from Hongqiao Airport," Cui said.
Jin Xin, an on-duty dispatcher at the navigation tower of Hongqiao Airport on March 18, 1991, told Cui that he saw the flying object, which was engulfed by red light.
"I immediately asked a pilot that was about to take off to follow the object," Jin told the newspaper.
Jin gave a tape of the recorded conversation with the pilot to Wu after the incident.
Jin said pilot 3603 was Zhu Zhaoyuan, who flew for Jinan Airlines, which has since been taken over by China Eastern Airlines.
"He was piloting a small passenger plane when he chased the object," Jin said. Zhu was middle-aged and an experienced pilot, Jin added.
More than 100 people had a close encounter of the X-Files kind when they saw five unexplained flying objects hovering over a town centre.
Dozens of people spilled out of a pub to watch the spectacle – with one likening it to the Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster Independence Day.
The UFOs lit up the otherwise clear night's sky above William Shakespeare's birthplace of Stratford-upon- Avon in Warwickshire.
Tom Hawkes, 30, took pictures from outside the One Elm pub.
He said: 'Three had formed a triangular shape and one was to the right.
Then another one came hurtling towards the rest at what looked like a very fast speed.
'But as it neared them it suddenly slowed and stopped altogether.
'The objects were there for about half an hour. It was very eerie because they didn't make any sound and they stayed still before moving slowly beyond the horizon.
'It was the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen and the way in which everyone gathered in the street to watch them reminded me of a scene from Independence Day.'
Chef Kern Griffiths, 26, said: 'I saw five lights. We all thought they were hot-air balloons at first because the glowing spheres looked like a burst of flames.
'But I couldn't see any outline of the balloon itself and they were travelling far too fast. They were unlike any aircraft I've seen.'
Military chiefs and airports denied responsibility for the lights, which appeared on Saturday.
Hillary Potter, from the British Earth Aerial Mystery Society, said it was rare for such phenomena to be witnessed by so many people.
'Such incidents have been on the increase recently,' she added. 'There are reports at the moment coming in from all over the country.'
A Swindon taxi driver recently added to the growing list of supernatural occurrences spotted by locals in the district.
Having just dropped off a fare in Hungerford, Neil Whitby spotted four bright orange shapes in the sky.
Drifting silently across the sky at what he believed was a fairly low altitude, the lights began to flicker before suddenly disappearing.
A few weeks earlier, a man from Newbury rang the Newbury Weekly News claiming to have spotted circles in the sky the size of four football pitches hovering above Henwick Fields in Thatcham for five minutes. He said his son had also seen the lights.
The inexplicable phenomena are the latest in a whole string of local UFO sightings dating as far back as 1909, when an organist from St Michael’s Church in Lambourn spotted a shape coming from the East that he said intermittently let off loud explosions.
Three years ago locals in Hungerford were left baffled by a giant fireball attached to a solid cigar-shaped structure (pictured above), which some saw plummet to earth before rising into the night sky again.
People said pets were behaving strangely twenty minutes before the fireball appeared and police even dispatched helicopters to look for debris while firefighters scoured the area in search of a point of impact.
The mystery was never explained and a man even saw a similar ball of flame above Thatcham a year later.
In September 2006, a triangular-shaped formation of glowing lights was seen drifting across the sky above Greenham Common.
Some witnesses said the lights formed a V shaped formation, hovering over the com-mon for three minutes before disappearing into the night sky at lightning speed.
The MOD and Met office were left scratching their heads, unable to explain the Greenham sightings or the power cuts and bright flashes that accompanied them.
In the summer of 1968, a Newbury man was drawing his curtains when a huge circular object flashed across the horizon at break-neck speed. On the same evening, two policemen in Kent spotted an object of a similar description also travelling abnormally fast.
Fifteen years earlier the same man spotted a large cigar-shaped object moving through the sky while he was walking his dog in Love Lane.
In 1971, after two sightings, the man was so impressed that he founded the Newbury-based South-West Aerial Phenomena Society (SWAPS), members of which made it their mission to record and investigate UFO sightings in West Berkshire.
One of the club’s first investigations into the bizarre night time phenomena was to set up a “skywatch” to chart the movement of orange lights seen by people in May 1972.
SWAPS sent investigators to the home of Wickham actress Coral Atkins, who had told the Newbury Weekly News: “I saw a ball of orangey white light coming towards me. It seemed to come straight through the window and into my head.
“It was very painful but for a few seconds it seemed as if I was standing back from the world and I could see everything as it should be.”
The next recorded sightings occurred in February 1972 when two UFOs were spotted above Kintbury and Brightwalton on the same night.
Witnesses who chased the mysterious oval-shaped objects on scooters until they vanished into the night sky said the UFOs had beams of light radiating from them and red diodes flashing sporadically.
The first UFO sighting in Peterborough was in 1909, when two police officers reported a strange object hovering above the cathedral.
A Peterborough postman claimed a pyramid-shaped cosmic craft performed acrobatic tricks just yards above his head. Thomas Thompson, of Lincoln Road, Peterborough, said he witnessed the glowing orange spaceship at a friend's house, in St Neots, in 1981.
A jet black triangular-shaped UFO hovering above the A47, between Peterborough and Wisbech was seen by a student, his girlfriend, his mother and a friend in November 1997.
Bizarre crop circles, hundreds of metres wide, appeared at Sibson Airfield, near Wansford, in 1990. And Brian Dunnett, from Netherton, saw strange lights in the sky at his Heaton Close home, in 1995.
And then two black shimmering discs were spotted gliding above Millfield, Peterborough, in November 1997, by Graham Palk, of Gladstone Street.
Clair County in Illinois has become a UFO hot spot since a large triangular object was sighted in the area seven years ago.
The most recent report in the county east of St. Louis was in June.
Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center in Washington State told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the 2000 unidentified flying object was significant because many of the witnesses were police officers.
"The events that occurred constitute one of the most interesting and well-documented incidents our center has ever seen," Davenport said.
Mark Lopinot, a police detective in O'Fallon said the sight of the large object floating over his city in January 2000 was "shocking" and he still can't explain it. He receives a lot of telephone calls from people reporting mysterious objects in the sky and recently talked to a Japanese film crew making a documentary about UFOs.
Police officers from at least five towns reported seeing the object, which they said was completely silent. One described it as looking like a "floating house with bright red and white lights."
A couple spotted five round orange objects moving silently across the skies over the city on Saturday night in one of the first UFO sightings this year.
Liam King, who was visiting Norwich from Colchester with his girlfriend, spotted the glowing orbs as he was walking along St Giles' Street, Upper St Giles' Street and Earlham Road at 10.35pm.
Mr King and his girlfriend were walking back to their hotel on Earlham Road when they saw the mystery objects.
He said: “When we first saw the lights we were walking west up St Giles Street where it was reasonably quiet - and quiet enough to hear that the objects were not emitting any sound.
“Just as we lost the first two behind the roofs of the buildings on Upper St Giles Street we saw a third travelling in the same direction, then a fourth and a fifth.
“We were able to view the fifth light more clearly and were able to see that the light was flying between us and the nearest cloud.”
Another man, who also saw the UFOs but did not want to be named, said: “It was amazing - there were six fireballs in the sky, one was much brighter than the others. I took pictures on my camera but they've come out as white fuzzy blobs. When you zoom in it looks like a spiral in spirals. I watched and they all started disappearing, then, this sounds crazy, but one shot into the other one at a speed far faster than any plane could go. And then they shot into space. I feel silly saying it - but what I saw was not normal.”
Exactly 60 years ago, a light aircraft was flying over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, at a height of around 10,000ft.
Suddenly, a brilliant flash of light illuminated the aircraft. Visibility was good and as pilot Kenneth Arnold scanned the sky to find the source of the light, he saw a group of nine shiny metallic objects flying in formation.
He estimated their speed as being around 1,600 miles per hour - nearly three times faster than the top speed of any jet aircraft at the time. He described the craft as arrow-shaped and said they moved in a jerky motion - 'like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water'.
A reporter seized on this phrase and in his story described the objects as 'flying saucers'. The age of the Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) had begun.
Soon, similar reports began to come in from all over America. This wasn't just the world's first UFO sighting, this was the birth of a phenomenon, one that still exercises an extraordinary fascination.
Then, two weeks after Arnold's sighting, something happened that was to lead to the biggest UFO conspiracy theory of all time. On or around July 2, 1947, something crashed in the desert near a military base at Roswell, New Mexico.
Military authorities issued a press release, which began: "The many rumours regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc." The headlines screamed: 'Flying Disc captured by Air Force.' Yet, just 24 hours later, the military changed their story and claimed the object they'd first thought was a 'flying disc' was a weather balloon that had crashed on a nearby ranch.
Amazingly, the media and the public accepted the explanation without question, in a way that would not happen now. Roswell disappeared from the news until the late Seventies, when some of the military involved began to speak out.
The key witness was Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer who had gone to the ranch to recover the wreckage. He described the metal as being wafer thin but incredibly tough.
It was as light as balsa wood, but couldn't be cut or burned. Some witnesses described seeing strange inscriptions on the wreckage.
These and similar accounts of the incident have largely been dismissed by all except the most dedicated believers.
But last week came an astonishing new twist to the Roswell mystery - which casts new light on the incident and raises the possibility that we have, indeed, been visited by aliens.
Lieutenant Walter Haut was the public relations officer at the base in 1947, and was the man who issued the original and subsequent press releases after the crash on the orders of the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard.
Haut died last year, but left a sworn affidavit to be opened only after his death.
Last week, the text was released and asserts that the weather balloon claim was a cover story, and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar. He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies.
He wasn't the first Roswell witness to talk about bodies. Local undertaker Glenn Dennis had long claimed that he was contacted by authorities at Roswell shortly after the crash and asked to provide a number of child-sized coffins.
When he arrived at the base, he was apparently told by a nurse (who later disappeared) that a UFO had crashed and that small humanoid extraterrestrials had been recovered. But Haut is the only one of the original participants to claim to have seen alien bodies.
Haut's affidavit talks about a high-level meeting he attended with base commander Col William Blanchard and the Commander of the Eighth Army Air Force, Gen Roger Ramey. Haut states that at this meeting, pieces of wreckage were handed around for participants to touch, with nobody able to identify the material.
He says the press release was issued because locals were already aware of the crash site, but in fact there had been a second crash site, where more debris from the craft had fallen. The plan was that an announcement acknowledging the first site, which had been discovered by a rancher, would divert attention from the second and more important location.
Haut also spoke about a clean-up operation, where for months afterwards military personnel scoured both crash sites searching for all remaining pieces of debris, removing them and erasing all signs that anything unusual had occurred.
This ties in with claims made by locals that debris collected as souvenirs was seized by the military.
Haut then tells how Colonel Blanchard took him to 'Building 84' - one of the hangars at Roswell - and showed him the craft itself. He describes a metallic egg-shaped object around 12-15ft in length and around 6ft wide. He said he saw no windows, wings, tail, landing gear or any other feature.
He saw two bodies on the floor, partially covered by a tarpaulin. They are described in his statement as about 4ft tall, with disproportionately large heads. Towards the end of the affidavit, Haut concludes: "I am convinced that what I personally observed was some kind of craft and its crew from outer space."
What's particularly interesting about Walter Haut is that in the many interviews he gave before his death, he played down his role and made no such claims. Had he been seeking publicity, he would surely have spoken about the craft and the bodies.
Did he fear ridicule, or was the affidavit a sort of deathbed confession from someone who had been part of a cover-up, but who had stayed loyal to the end?
DIDIM became the UFO sighting capital of Turkey when several people reported seeing strange lights ?n the skies.
The strange yellowish melon-shaped ball was spotted by the Police Academy in Ye?ilkent, while regulars at the Ark Cafe Bar, in Hunters Valley, spotted the same UFO-style lights at about 9.30pm last Saturday night.
Phil and Lorraine Quibell said they spotted the strange lights heading towards them but hundreds of metres off the ground as they walked on the Ye?ilkent road, close to the police academy at about 9.30pm.
They described how the melon-shaped object was moving fast and in a straight line before swerving towards the police academy direction and towards the sea before disappearing over the horizon.
Mr Quibell, aged 52, formerly from Preston, said the object was a bright sun colour at the top but faded to a yellowish-moonlight colour below.
There was no noise coming from ?t either before or after they had seen it. He said: “It was something that I had never experienced in my life and I am still trying to explain it away rationally 48 hours after we had seen it.
“But both of us have said that we have never seen anything like it in our lives.” The UFO-sighting ironically comes nearly 60 years to the day when the unidentified flying object phenomena began.
Mr Quibell said: “There were two guards at the police academy who saw it and they were looking in the air and could not believe it. The object did not have wings or landing lights so it was definitely not a plane.
“It was probably the size of a plane. It is very difficult to explain it. I only wish I had taken my camera with me. I watched the object for what seemed a few minutes but may have been only seconds before it veered away and out to sea.”
Meanwhile, Mark and Alana Weatherall , who were with children Paige and Josh, had been with friends at the Ark Bar when they spotted the bright light over the Ye?ilkent area at about the same time.
Alana said: “It was like a bright light but nothing like a plane or a helicopter. It seemed to hover for a number of seconds and burn like a white ball of light and then it just faded out altogether.” Mark added: “What surprised us was that it seemed to go vertically up from its original position. It was a weird experience but it definitely wasn’t a plane. It must have been a UFO.”
Did you see the UFO? Then give our reporters a call now on 0505 851 1943 and tell us your experience.
A shining object was seen in the sky in the western city of Kouhdasht in Lorestan province Saturday night.
The information center of provincial police department reported hat a number of Kouhdasht residents observed "a yellow fixed object n the western part of Kouhdasht's sky which started moving after a short while towards the western city of Ilam in the nearby province of Ilam."
Meanwhile, some residents in the provincial capital city of Khorramabad contacted IRNA on Saturday night claiming that they had observed "an unknown shining object over local mountains." The citizens also said that the object was so shining that it had lit parts of the nearby mounts in Khorramabad's suburbs.
Maury Island’s UFO: 60 years later, the mystery lingers
Few people know that Maury Island was home to the first alleged UFO sighting in U.S. history, and it took place weeks before two crafts fell from the sky in Roswell.
It took place in June 1947, two years after World War II ended. The nation was abuzz with paranoia and suspicion, and it was in this atmosphere that first one, then two, then hundreds of Americans reported seeing strange, unidentifiable, usually saucer-shaped, objects whizzing through the sky.
“I consider (the Maury Island Incident) the most complex mystery in Washington,” said Charlette LeFevre, co-director of the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries, the state’s only paranormal science museum. “It wasn’t as well promoted as Roswell, but it was the beginning of modern UFOlogy.”
While no one can say for sure what happened that afternoon in the Puget Sound, after cobbling together the various eyewitness, secondary, government and media accounts, a story with a life of its own emerges:
At 2 p.m. on June 21, 1947, Tacoma seaman Harold Dahl was trolling the waters just east of Maury Island, looking for loose logs, which he collected and sold for profit.
“As I looked up from the wheel on my boat I noticed six very large donut-shaped aircraft,” Dahl later told one of the investigators of the incident. “I would judge they were about 2,000 feet above the water and almost directly overhead.”
He said the ships were 100 feet in diameter, had no “visible signs of propulsion” and made no noise.
One craft wobbled and dipped to about 500 feet, he told investigators. It then spewed what Dahl described as thin sheets of white metal and several tons of hot lava-like rocks or slag. As the slag rained down on Dahl, his son and his dog, it punched holes in the vessel, burned Dahl’s son on the arm and killed the family dog.
Another of the six saucers seemed to come to the assistance of the ship in distress, “jump-starting” it, according to Dahl. Then the crafts took off. Dahl gathered samples of the rocks and the white metal and went home for the night, shaken.
The next morning he had what modern UFOlogists refer to as the first encounter with a “Man in Black” — an ominous individual who warned Dahl his family would be in danger if he went public with his story, according to Kenn Thomas, who wrote the book “Maury Island UFO.” Although Dahl had not yet told anyone about his UFO sighting, the man in black knew many details of the incident, he later reported. Dahl said he suspected the man was a government official.
Later that day, Dahl told his supervisor Fred Crisman about his UFO sighting. Crisman, dubious, visited Maury and collected his own samples of the slag. He then contacted Ray Palmer, an adventure magazine publisher, to see if Dahl’s story was fodder for his magazine.
The next day, three days after Dahl’s sighting, UFOs went from obscurity to front-page news. On June 24, 1947, U.S. Forest Service employee and pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine “saucer-like” objects flying in formation at speeds of up to 1,200 miles per hour near Mount Rainier. Arnold contacted the press immediately, and the tale spread like wildfire. Soon, U.S. media were saturated with reports of Americans spotting UFOs, almost always saucer-shaped. “Flying saucer” became a household term.
Because Arnold had the eye of a highly trained pilot, his story became big news. Dahl’s story, however, remained obscure until Arnold was dispatched by Palmer to investigate just what it was Dahl saw off the shores of Maury.
Arnold flew to Tacoma in July 1947 and rented a room in the Winthrop Hotel, where, according to FBI reports, Arnold met with Dahl, decided the sighting was authentic and called two U.S. intelligence officers to tell them the news. The men, Capt. William Davidson and Lt. Frank Brown, became the first two Army officers to investigate UFOs, Arnold said in a book he later wrote.
After Arnold phoned Davidson and Brown on July 31, 1947, they flew to Tacoma within an hour, gathering in Arnold’s hotel room where they pored over the details of the incident and collected samples of the slag and white metal, according to Arnold.
The officers’ plane was due back the following morning for inaugural Air Force Day ceremonies, marking the separation of the Air Force from the Army. So, although it was after midnight, they returned to their plane, allegedly carrying UFO slag and metal, and headed for Hamilton Air Force Base in California. Twenty minutes into the flight, their engine caught fire, igniting the left wing. The two crew members aboard the plane with Davidson and Brown parachuted to safety. But neither intelligence officer jumped nor radioed distress, according to news reports. Instead, both died when their B-25 plane crashed near Kelso, Wash.
“Why didn’t they call in to land?” LeFevre said. “It was like they made up their minds they were going to go down with the plane.”
The military promptly sealed off the crash site and cleaned up the rubble from the U.S. Air Force’s first accident. But they left some of it behind.
Only a few locals knew the location of the crash, and none investigated it fully, LeFevre said. But in April 2007, now-owner of the site Bob Greear visited it, accompanied by LeFevre and Philip Lipson, co-directors of the Seattle Museum for the Mysteries.
The three retrieved a blackened, lava-like rock from the site, which now sits in their museum, as well as mangled pieces of the B-25 that went down that night.
Bill Beaty, a research engineer at the University of Washington and a member of the museum’s board, analyzed the rock and found that it was “almost certainly an Earth rock.” But more analysis should be done before writing the specimen off, he said.
After the fatal accident, the government staunchly denied any classified material had been on board the B-25.
But the media knew the names and mission of the deceased officers before the military released them. An anonymous caller contacted various Washington dailies on July 31 through Aug. 3, 1947. The caller gave such intimate details of the conversations that took place in Arnold’s hotel room that Arnold thought the room was bugged. The identity of the caller remains unknown. While newspapers differed on details, they were in agreement on one thing — the government wasn’t telling the whole truth.
The U.S. military cited Dahl and Crisman’s signed confession that the Maury Island Incident was a hoax. But upon government questioning, the two said they had only sworn their story was a fabrication to protect their families.
It wasn’t until 1979 that the government declassified the FBI files admitting Davidson and Brown had been investigating the Maury Island flying discs at the time of their deaths.
“It didn’t start with Roswell. It started here in the Pacific Northwest,” LeFevre said of UFOlogy. “People should be aware of that.”
Several people reported seeing a jellyfish-shaped unidentified flying object about 8pm in Shanghai on Monday.
A man surnamed Zhu told Shanghai Morning Post yesterday that he saw the UFO in the sky at the crossroads of Jiujiang Road and Xizang Road M. in Huangpu District that night. "It's definitely not a kite," Zhu told the newspaper. "It was flying quite high."
Zhu said the UFO was a blue-colored object and hovered around the area for several minutes and then flew away.
He tried to take a picture of the UFO with his cell phone, but since it was far away the photo only revealed a blurry image of a shiny object.
Zhu said the UFO was spotted by more than 100 people in the area, but so far, no clear picture of it has been released.
An unidentified flying object was seen above the boundary between Hongkou and Yangpu districts about 9pm on April 11.
One of the largest UFOs ever seen has been observed by the crew and passengers of an airliner over the Channel Islands.
An official air-miss report on the incident several weeks ago appears in Pilot magazine. Aurigny Airlines captain Ray Bowyer, 50, flying close to Alderney first spotted the object, described as "a cigar-shaped brilliant white light".
Aurigny Airlines captain Ray Bowyer, 50, described what he thought to be a UFO as 'a cigar-shaped brilliant white light'.
As the plane got closer the captain viewed it through binoculars and said: "It was a very sharp, thin yellow object with a green area.
"It was 2,000ft up and stationary. I thought it was about 10 miles away, although I later realised it was approximately 40 miles from us. At first, I thought it was the size of a [Boeing] 737.
"But it must have been much bigger because of how far away it was. It could have been as much as a mile wide."
Continuing his approach to Guernsey, Bowyer then spied a "second identical object further to the west".
He said: "It was exactly the same but looked smaller because it was further away. It was closer to Guernsey. I can't explain it. This was clearly visual for about nine minutes.
"I'm certainly not saying that it was something of another world. All I'm saying is that I have never seen anything like it before in all my years of flying."
The sightings were confirmed by passengers Kate and John Russell. John, 74, said: "I saw an orange light. It was like an elongated oval."
The sightings were also confirmed by an unnamed pilot with the Blue Islands airline.
The Civil Aviation Authority safety notice states that a Tri-Lander aircraft flying close to Alderney spotted the object.
More than 10 separate UFO sightings across the West Midlands have been reported to military bosses in recent years it has emerged.
Reports have been lodged with the Ministry of Defence from places across the region including Dudley, Wolverhampton, Lichfield, Barlaston in Staffordshire, Walsall and Oldbury. And they may have prompted military chiefs to check whether they were a threat to the UK’s airspace. One report from Walsall in March 2006 described “a UFO doing funny sharp turns over a field.” Another unexplained sighting in Dudley, reported in December 2006, simply described “a white light”.
Back in August 2005 someone in Lichfield reported that they had seen “an object that was circular with a dull orange colour/light that was the size of a medium aircraft.” And in Wolverhampton an RAF sergeant reported seeing “two triangular shaped objects” in 2003.
UFO images lead to internal investigation at Border Guard Service: Finland
Images published by the Finnish UFO Research Association FUFORA have lead to an internal investigation at the Guard Service.
The infrared video images, which according to FUFORA depict unidentified flying objects, were published in an issue of the Ultra magazine and on the FUFORA Internet pages, as well as in the association’s publication Uforaportti 13 (UFO Report 13). The images are claimed to have been filmed by the authorities.
The pictures were already published in April 2006, but they only became an issue within the Border Guard Service at the beginning of May this year, after an inquiry by a private citizen.
The Border Guard Staff is looking into whether an employee has misused official monitoring equipment and images and thus rendered himself guilty of malfeasance.
UFO ‘not from here,’ says local deejay - Chilliwack
Believe it or not, Dave Francis and his girlfriend Kelly McDonald saw something otherworldly Sunday night.
And their story backs up the report of neighbour Lisa McCubbin, who saw a large triangular-shaped object appear just after midnight in the skies over the UCFV campus in Chilliwack.
But unlike McCubbin, who’s holding out for a rational explanation, Francis, 29, and McDonald, 30, are sold on the belief they saw something not of this world.
“I really think it was a UFO,” says Francis, a local deejay. “I don’t really care if anybody else believes me ... it was the craziest thing I ever saw.”
“I know that I saw something that wasn’t from here,” says McDonald. “I’ve never seen anything move that way.”
Sarnia experienced a spike in the number of mysterious objects spotted in the sky last year, according a survey of Canadian UFO sightings.
Five unidentified flying objects were reported locally in 2006, up from single sightings in 2004 and 2005.
The Sarnia cases include everything from a light that appeared in the night sky briefly to more perplexing sightings.
On July 15 a witness described seeing a "large number of little black things" as well as a large yellow disk and an unmarked helicopter over the city around 9:20 p.m.
Another witness reported seeing an object drifting in the sky, which "seemed to have a glow around it.
There were 736 sightings of UFOs over Canada last year.
Chris Rutkowski, a Winnipeg-based UFO expert recalled a case in North Bay, Ont. last year in which a motorist reported seeing three blue lights ahead of him.
"He thought perhaps they were three motorcycles heading towards him, but then he watched and two of them moved up and into the trees," he said.
The remaining light continued to within a metre of the vehicle and appeared to the driver as a "ball of blue light about the size of a beach ball."
"Those are the ones that tend to make you think, hmm," Rutkowski said.
Another witness reported a large, black, triangular object surrounded by "little white Christmas tree lights" on the coast of Newfoundland.
After compiling the survey for 17 years, Rutkowski said one noticeable trend is that people tend to be spotting large, triangular objects more often than the traditional disc-shaped "saucers."
Experts say the Cleveland area is a hotbed for UFOs.
Aaron Clark is one of many UFO investigators and a member of the Cleveland Ufology Project. The group is not new. It's been around since 1952. Some experts speculate on why northeast Ohio?
"There are unusual things that are manmade here. Quite often they appear to show curiosity with new construction building a dam or a factory or something, and there is a UFO sighting in conjunction with it," said UFO investigator Richard Lee.
Two years ago, Olmsted Falls police officers followed bright lights in the sky after receiving numerous phone calls from residents who saw strange green and red lights moving across the sky. They were never identified.
Since then there have been at least 20 reported sightings in northeast Ohio.
UK: MoD opens its files on UFO sightings to public
The Ministry of Defence plans to open its "X-Files" on UFO sightings to the public for the first time. Officials have not yet decided on a date for the release of the reports, which date back to 1967, but it is hoped to be within weeks.
The move follows the decision by the French national space agency to release its UFO files in March, the first official body in the world to do so.
UFO buffs will be keen to find out what officials knew about some of the UK's most famous sightings and whether any action was taken. One celebrated event - at Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, in 1980 - has been dubbed "Britain's Roswell" after the UFO incident in the US in 1947.
At Rendlesham there were several witness reports of a UFO apparently landing. The released files should support or discount claims that radiation was detected at the site after the event.
David Clarke, a lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University and author of Flying Saucerers: A Social History of UFOlogy, said opening the MoD's files would make it harder to sustain the idea that evidence for the existence of aliens has been suppressed. "The more of this stuff that they put on their website or put in the national archives, the less it will cost the taxpayer, because at the moment people are writing in about individual incidents and they are having respond," said Dr Clarke, referring to requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
The documents due for release are witness reports of apparent UFO sightings, many by civil pilots and military personnel. Most were simply collected and filed by a small, secret unit within defence intelligence called DI55. A few are thought to have been investigated further by the military, but the details have never been made public. There are 24 files due for release, each containing 200-300 reports of sightings, plus internal MoD briefings and correspondence.
A close encounter in Norfolk Road, Huntingdonshire
A researcher is trying to unravel a Huntingdonshire UFO mystery that has just been uncovered after more than 30 years.
It took place in November, 1976, in the skies above Huntingdon.
A man, who gave his address as Norfolk Road, had been out walking his dog when he spotted an object in the sky. According to a letter, it was to be his 'close encounter'.
UFO researcher John Hanson, 61, has uncovered the letter, which was sent to the Ministry of Defence, detailing the unidentified flying object experience.
"It seems this gentleman had been taking his dog for a walk in the Sapley Playing Fields area at about 6.20am on November 5," Mr Hanson said. "As he made his regular walk, he came across a most unusual object hovering above the ground with the letters VAWCON marked on the side." Mr Hanson, a retired police officer, claims that an RAF investigator was dispatched from RAF Wyton to interview the man about the sighting.
The man, who only wished to be identified as Dave, was said to have told the official: "I saw a dome-shaped structure with coloured lights on the top, hovering above the playing field. It had a telescopic probe which appeared from its metallic dome structure. I was petrified and ran home."
The man also drew a sketch of the craft.
The documents have only come to light recently, following investigations by Mr Hanson, who lives in Worcestershire.
Mr Hanson, who has been researching the paranormal since his retirement from the police force in 1995, said: "This case is one of the most unusual I have discovered during my investigations. I've got an open mind about the existence of aliens but there does seem to be lots of evidence - and a lot of hoaxes as well.
"I would be delighted to hear from any Hunts Post readers who might be able to shed some light on the incident or help me find the man involved."
* Do you know the man who saw the UFO? Have you seen any strange shapes in the skies above Norfolk Road? E-mail editor@huntspost.co.uk with your story or call the news desk on 01480 411481.
Two experienced airline pilots on separate flights saw something up to a mile wide off the coast of Alderney on Monday afternoon. Surprisingly, Jersey radar equipment did not pick up the object, although an air traffic controller said he had received simultaneous reports from the Aurigny and Blue Islands pilots.
Aurigny’s Captain Ray Bowyer, 50, said he saw the strange object during a flight from Southampton.
He spotted a bright-yellow light 10 miles west of Alderney while his plane was about 30 miles from the island and at 4,000ft.
‘It was a very sharp, thin yellow object with a green area. It was 2,000ft up and stationary,’ he said.
‘I thought it was about 10 miles away, although I later realised it was approximately 40 miles from us. At first, I thought it was the size of a 737.’ A 737 is slightly smaller than a jumbo jet.
‘But it must have been much bigger because of how far away it was. It could have been as much as a mile wide.’
As he continued his approach to Alderney, Capt. Bowyer saw a second identical object further to the west.
‘It was exactly the same but looked smaller because it was further away. It was closer to Guernsey.’
The sightings happened at about 3pm. Capt. Bowyer, who has flown commercial planes for about 20 years, said he had described the objects to air traffic control and filled in an incident report.
Paul Kelly, 31, the air traffic controller who was on duty, said the Blue Islands pilot had made a similar report, but nothing had appeared on his radar.
‘The pilot from Blue Islands was en route to Jersey at the same time and as he went past Sark he described an object behind him to his left,’ he said.
‘The description was very similar to Captain Bowyer’s and they described it as being in exactly the same place. But they were looking at it from opposite sides.’ The pilot told him the object had been 1,500ft beneath his plane.
‘The Blue Islands plane was at 3,500ft at the time so, again, both pilots placed it at the same altitude.
‘If the object was stationary, our equipment would not have picked it up because the radar would have screened it out.’
736 reported UFO sightings across Canada last year shows an “underlying, real phenomenon” going on, says one of the country’s top UFO researchers.
“It’s true, we don’t have as many aliens on TV as we used to—they used to be on commercials selling us everything from Pepsi to decongestants,” said Chris Rutkowski, director of the Winnipeg-based Ufology Research institute.
“And yet the phenomenon persists, which to me says there is a basic underlying, real phenomenon that extends beyond media and pop culture.”
Rutkowski’s annual Canadian UFO Survey last year recorded the third-largest number of sightings in its 17-year history—down from a record of 882 sightings in 2004.
British Columbia and Ontario had the highest number of recorded cases, but Saskatchewan posted an all-time record of 98 sightings.
The tiny community of Maidstone, just east of the Alberta boundary, accounted for more than half of the reports from Saskatchewan.
Chilean Army Discloses Recordings and Secret Contacts with UFOs
Santiago de Chile - The Chilean Army revealed to the UFO community classified material regarding recordings and encounters between the military and UFOs over the past 30 years, according to the El Mercurio newspaper in early February 2007. The evidence was presented at the 10th International UFO Congress, highlighting the display of a video that captures a UFO pursuit by surface vessels and helicopters of the Chilean Navy seven years ago, according to Rodrigo Fuenzalida, director of the Agrupacio de Investigaciones Ovnilogicas (AION).
Another pursuit took place on March 27, 2000 when a Citation 2 military aircraft crossed an unidentified flying object, measuring 40 meters in length, at an altitude of 1000 meters and 100 kilometres away from the Chilean capital.
Disclosure of this information was authorized by Oscar Izurieta, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, and forms part of an official investigation undertaken by Rodrigo Bravo, captain of the Army's 5th Division, who participates in the congress, which is being held at the Viña del Mar resort 120 kilometres distant from Santiago de Chile.
A mysterious device looking like a satellite or UFO has landed and spotted near buulo burde town in south Somalia.
Villagers report that the device fell five days ago in area which lies forty kilo meters north of Buulo burde town.
The device is occupying in an area of one hundred Meters Square as villagers who spotted this device confirmed to Shabelle Radio.
“In the evening of last Wednesday, a large device flew over our head and moments later, we heard a large sound, BAM” said Ilyas Ali, a villager who lives nearby where this large device has fallen.
Ilyas spoke of the device, telling that in the daylight it glitters and in a nighttime, it turns lights and speaks a strange language which can’t be understood by the villagers.
The impact of the unidentified device has killed a camel which was grazing nearby.
Because of the remote area it fell, news of the device is emerging gradually now despite its fall of five days ago.
A British UFO enthusiast who hacked into U.S. military computers in 2001 and 2002 lost his extradition appeal Tuesday in London's High Court and may face trial in the U.S. Gary McKinnon faces up to 60 years in prison after he was charged with hacking into 97 U.S. military and NASA computers in the hopes of finding secret data on UFOs.
McKinnon admits to using "RemotelyAnywhere" software to hack into the government computers, but he maintains he never did any harm. The U.S. government, however, says he caused US$700,000 in damages and the shutdown of critical military computers.
The intrusions, which are considered one of the largest cyberattacks on the U.S. government, came in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Tuesday's news was the result of McKinnon's second challenge to U.S. extradition orders. The first such order came in May 2006, and McKinnon's attorney fought that order on the grounds that McKinnon could be treated as a terrorism suspect if forced to stand trial in the United States. John Reid, U.K. Home Secretary, approved the extradition order, however, and so McKinnon appealed again.
"This is a sad situation for a hacker," technology attorney Raymond Van Dyke told TechNewsWorld. "His timing, around 9/11 and its aftermath, and very sensitive targets, numerous military computer systems no less, were serious transgressions.
"The laws have become quite strict in recent years on computer intrusions," cybercrime lawyer Parry Aftab told TechNewsWorld. "We have to take these crimes seriously and recognize that what may sound funny is just an indication of how seriously computer intrusions can affect our security and financial well-being.
"The international angle doesn't make any difference," Aftab added. "A lot of people think that because a crime was perpetrated in cyberspace, special issues arise. But it's still breaking a law."
The recorded testimony of scores of military, government and other witnesses to Unidentified Flying Objects and Extraterrestrial events and projects from around the world establishes the existence of a UFO/Extraterrestrial presence on and around Earth. The testimony and evidence proves that these vehicles have been tracked on radar on many occasion, have landed and/or crashed on terra and have been retrieved and studied by specialized projects. This recorded testimony consists of thousands of first-hand, often top-secret witnesses to UFO and Extraterrestrial events, internal UFO-related government projects and covert activities, and reverse-engineered energy and propulsion system projects.
It is knowledge of profound importance to which all people throughout the world should have an inalienable right to know the truth about this important issue and it is time to put an end to the secrecy surrounding it.
This is so IMPORTANT for the consciousness of Mankind and to achieve PEACE on Earth and for the development of our global society
The technologies that are of an Extraterrestrial origin, when publicly released will provide solutions to global environmental challenges. Once this advanced technologies disclosed, will replace currently used forms of energy generation and propulsion and will enable the Earth to attain a sustainable civilization without pollution, energy shortages, or global warming.
World UFO Disclosure will provide unprecedented benefits and opportunities to all on Earth and humanity, also for the environment, world peace, world poverty and the human future.
The witnesses who are identified present or former military, intelligence, corporate, aviator, flight control, law enforcement officers, scientists and other witnesses will come forward when subpoenaed to testify at U.N hearings
WE, THE PEOPLE OF EARTH THROUGH “THE WORLD UFO DISCLOSURE CAMPAIGN” CALL ON THE U.N GENERAL ASSEMBLY;
* To hold open and secrecy-free hearings on the UFO / Extraterrestrial presence on and around Earth.
* To hold open hearings on advanced energy and propulsion systems related to the subject that, when publicly released, will provide solutions to global environmental and other challenges.
Former governor - Fife Symington - says he saw UFO
Former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington says he saw the Phoenix Lights himself and believed from the start that they were extraterrestrial.
Symington said he didn't acknowledge his own encounter at first because he didn't want people to panic.
Symington discussed the sighting with a UFO investigator making a documentary, and in media interviews this week.
"I'm a pilot, and I know just about every machine that flies," Symington, a former Air Force captain, told the Arizona Daily Star on Thursday. "It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it, responsible people. I don't know why people would ridicule it."
Symington told CNN the craft he saw March 13, 1997, was "enormous. It just felt otherworldly. In your gut, you could just tell it was otherworldly."
Symington said he initially told no one but his wife that he had seen the lights.
France became the first country to open its files on UFOs Thursday when the national space agency unveiled a website documenting more than 1,600 sightings spanning five decades.
The online archives, which will be updated as new cases are reported, catalogues in minute detail cases ranging from the easily dismissed to a handful that continue to perplex even hard-nosed scientists.
"It is a world first," said Jacques Patenet, the aeronautical engineer who heads the office for the study of "non-identified aerospatial phenomena."
Known as OVNIs in French, UFOs have always generated intense interest along with countless conspiracy theories about secretive government cover-ups of findings deemed too sensitive or alarming for public consumption.
Sightings -- in at least one case involving thousands of people across France -- and evidence such as burn marks and radar trackings showing flight patterns or accelerations that defy the laws of physics are taken very seriously.
Of the 1,600 cases registered since 1954, nearly 25 percent are classified as "type D", meaning that "despite good or very good data and credible witnesses, we are confronted with something we can't explain," Patenet said.
On January 8, 1981 outside the town of Trans-en-Provence in southern France, for example, a man working in a field reported hearing a strange whistling sound and seeing a saucer-like object about 2.5 meters (eight feet) in diameter land in his field about 50 meters (yards) away.
A dull-zinc grey, the saucer took off, he told police, almost immediately, leaving burn marks. Investigators took photos, and then collected and analyzed samples, and to this day no satisfactory explanation has been made.
Patenet's answer to questions about evidence of life beyond Earth was sure to inflame the suspicions of those convinced the government is holding back: "We do not have the least proof that extra-terrestrials are behind the unexplained phenomena."
But then he added: "Nor do we have the least proof that they aren't."
DID you spot something strange above the Bridlington area last Tuesday night?
David Hinde did and he wants to know if he is alone in witnessing two glowing red and orange balls in the sky.
He was travelling from a musical theatre group in Malton to his home in Bempton when he saw what he believes could be a UFO.
"As I apporached the Dotterel junction at about 10.45pm I could see in the distance, on the right-hand side, two glowing spherical objects, orange and red.
"I continued watching them and they were moving independently, diagonally, up and down and sideways, both quite close together.
"I pulled up just before Buckton and got out of the car and watched them for five or 10 minutes.
"It looked like they were at the back of the Honeypot Inn. They were distant but I could still see how they were moving.
"They didn't look like an aircraft I've seen before. The movements were too irrational compared to planes. I thought it was strange," said Mr Hinde, 50.
He tried to think of a rational explanation for what he had seen but nothing seemed to fit the bill. "I've always been interested in things like this and I have seen TV programmes but I've got no specific interest. I'm just intrigued.
"You hear from time to time that Filey Bay is supposed to be a hot spot but I have never seen anything before.
"It was a very clear sky last Tuesday and you could see the stars but you don't usually see something glowing orange and red," added Mr Hinde.
And his sighting has been backed up by a similar claim by a teenager from the Whitby area.
He saw something similar the night before Mr Hinde's observation.
Steven Dye, 18, who lives in Staithes, said he saw the phenomenon as he was driving at around 8pm last Monday.
He said: "I saw something floating in between Staithes and Hinderwell from where I was looking.
"It had about eight lights, red and orange coloured, and it just stayed in the same place for about 10 or 20 seconds before fading away.
"It is the first time I have seen something like that. I told my mam and we went back down there later on but there was nothing there."
* Did you see anything strange last Tuesday evening? Call the Free Press on 677338 or send an e-mail to newsdesk@bridlingtonfreepress.co.uk
Residents across Waterloo Region saw something unusual in the night's sky yesterday. Around 8 p.m., the calls started coming into police stations, describing a fiery display streaking across the horizon.
Some, worried they were witnessing a falling airplane, phoned authorities, who set off on a search and rescue that turned up nothing. Local airports reported no downed planes last night.
In the span of a few minutes, multiple calls came in from St. Clements to Cambridge, said Sgt. Sharon Havill of the Waterloo regional police.
"We did some searching around," she said. "We don't have an answer for sure as to what they were. There were definitely multiple callers, saying they saw a flash in the sky. They weren't sure whether it was a helicopter or whether it crashed."
Police in Guelph had calls about the sightings, too. They promptly phoned the OPP to go check it out, said Sgt. Neal Young.
"It was on the west side of town, something like flames falling from the sky."
Marie Keyes was driving home along Weber Street with her husband when she saw what she initially thought was a shooting star or fireworks. When she looked closer, she saw an object with a trail of sparks arching toward the ground.
"I screamed 'look at that!'" she said. "It was amazing. It was such a shock when it came into view in my windshield. It kind of like dropped.
"It was too low to the horizon, and too large, to be a shooting star. I saw a blue flame coming out the end, and it had a tail, with sparks. It was moving very fast, it was a huge ball. And then it just sort of burned out."
About 15 minutes earlier, in the parking lot of a Victoria Street restaurant, Keyes and her husband saw bright moving lights that passed overhead.
These rectangular-shaped objects moved "unusually" and didn't look like "a typical airplane," she said.
Xerpi
