Focus: UFO sightings (TeleText, 5-14-2008)

From The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project

The Clipping

Files detailing hundreds of sightings of UFOs in the skies above Britain have been opened to the public for the first time at the National Archives in Kew.

But the Ministry of Defence was not probing the possibility of visitors from outer space stopping off on Earth.

Defence intelligence staff were more interested in checking that UFOs were not in fact signs of covert spying missions by more Earthbound powers.

Eight files have been released after a Freedom of Information request by UFO researchers. Over the next four years more than 150 files will be revealed.

But those hoping for proof of little green men may be disappointed.

An MoD memo from 1983 insists there are adequate explanations for the sightings, including space junk burning up in the atmosphere, unusual cloud formations and meteorological balloons.

Some sightings are easily explained, including one submitted by the customers of The Walnut Tree near Tunbridge Wells in 1982.

They reported repeated sightings of red and green flashing lights in the sky above the pub.

When quizzed on the location of the strange lights they explained that they were seen on each occasion in the direction of Gatwick Airport.

The power of suggestion may be behind many sightings - the number of reports doubled after the release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977.

But many observers could be thought above such suggestibility.

In 1986 a pilot reported an object passing just 1.5 miles away. The pass was so close that the crew were quite concerned but recorded that, if it was a missile, they were "not impressed".

There is also a report from two police officers in April 1984, who responded to a call from members of the public in Stanmore who had reported a UFO.

They saw the object and described it as circular, with a dome on the top and bottom, with multi-coloured lights.

Another report in October 1984 dispels the myth that such sightings are in isolated areas after numerous witnesses reported a saucer over Waterloo Bridge.

Little green men feature rarely in the files but one Wirral man does claim to have met such creatures repeatedly.

He reports one called Elgar visited frequently, but was killed by another race of beings in the 1980s.

The visitors were again hit by tragedy when one of their craft crash-landed over Wallasey Town Hall, he claimed. A note from the recipient of the report at the MoD says simply: "No Reply".