Close encounters with UFOs - or something from the movies

LONDON - Formerly secret files containing details of hundreds of close encounters with possible extraterrestrial life have been released by Britain's Defence Ministry.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the records is their suggestion that the shapes of UFOs spotted in the skies over Britain have changed markedly over the past 50 years, suggesting people's sightings are influenced by what they see on television and films.

The files, covering 1994 to 2000, contain reports of big, black, triangular aircraft with lights along the edges. In the 1940s and 1950s, the predominant form was saucer or disc-shaped.

Dr David Clarke, author of The UFO Files, said: "In the 1950s, the next big leap in technology was thought to be a round craft that took off vertically and it's intriguing to note that this is the same period when people began to report seeing 'flying saucers'.

In the period the latest file release covers, triangular-shaped US stealth bombers and Aurora spy planes featured heavily on TV, such as in The X Files ... and films such as Independence Day ... and the shape of reported UFOs corresponds."

Among the sightings is a large triangular UFO seen hovering above the home of former Home Secretary and Conservative Party leader Michael Howard in March 1997.

Eyewitnesses said they had seen a "humming" object the size of two passenger planes close to his house near Folkestone in Kent, but an RAF investigation found nothing unusual.

A police officer also claimed he had seen something hovering over Chelsea football ground in southwest London on March 10, 1999.

He described seeing an object with four bright yellow lights, square or diamond in shape, which hung in the air for 15 seconds before moving "across the sky fairly quickly, changing shape slowly".

The files also contain a 1952 memo from Winston Churchill, to a minister. "What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?"

The response said that UFOs could be explained by astronomical or meteorological phenomena; the mistaken identification of aircraft, balloons or birds; optical illusions and psychological delusions; and hoaxes.

The files, available for a month on the National Archives' website, also show some people have struggled to persuade authorities their sightings were genuine.

On June 11, 1997, a man claimed he had been visited by a "flying man" who lay on his quilt. The report said: "[The man] then called the police, who wouldn't come to his house because they thought he was a 'nutter'."

http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

- INDEPENDENT