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U.K. UFOs

David has not always been a sceptic. I have known him since he was 15 and a very good investigator he always was but that was long before he became as sceptical as he did pver the years.

I actually published in Northern UFO News about 35 years ago one of his first cases. He went to extraordinary lengths to resolve a sighting by a nurse inside a hospital - staking out the road to look for passing car numbers and visiting the ward at that time to compare what you could see from here. Made more significant by the fact that this was in the middle of the night!

He said it seemed likely it was some kind of astronomical object. I followed his lead and discovered via Jodrell Bank that the Moon was exactly where the UFO was that night.

I know then he was a genuine and skilful investigator. If he has become more sceptical over time that is fine by me. We all come to accept what we believe the evidence tells us. But he started out exactly like most of us did - just curious and keen to investigate further.

As for Silpho - it is a good story from his perspective as a journalist and commentator on the media and belief systems. Which he started out as working as a reporter in Yorkshire before he became a professor teaching media in Sheffeld.

I think the hows and whys belief systems develop is his main interest in UFOs these days. Which is a valid part of Fortean research,

We had a discussion about this on the FT Facebook page as he quoted some of my comments on the case in the original Yorkshire Post story (I wrote it up in my book UFO Crash Retrievals because I got access to the metallurgical analysis and the translation of the message on the script). I had not really pursued it past there as it was clearly a hoax. So worth clarifying that but not to pursue it later.

He wondered why I did not really dig deeper and I pointed out I was looking at it from the perspective of a UFO case snd once clear it wasn't one, as such, had no need to go further. He sees it as a social story of why someone would go to all this trouble and expense. A social historian's perspective.

I have no problem trying to help him but he is getting it publicised all over the world (on Fox News in the US today) so good luck to him. Hope he gets some answers.

By what he says on Facebook the museum are now more interested once they realised it was not just junk and might have a story behind it. I wouldn't put it past them exhibiting it at some point now.
 
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GNC said:
That's a real shame, they must have been around since, what, the 1960s? 50s even? Did they just get sick of the way the subject had been taken over by the conspiracy theorists, I wonder? That took a lot of the interest out of it for me, I'll say that much. I suppose it's all moved on drastically since they began.

But the next issue of the FT sounds like a winner, so there's that.
Click to expand...

I think it was just that the Internet has largely killed off the groups that used to exist for all sorts of reasons. I write about this question in the current issue of Northern UFO News linked above.

Pre internet if you saw something strange you needed a local UFO group to report to or to find someone else who saw something and form one.

These days you go on line, join a forum or google 'everything you ever wanted to know about UFOs in 10 minutes most of which is rubbish' and no groups are necessary.

Nationwide ones were ran like businesses and needed budgets and the money came from people who wanted to read magazines and the latest sightings. But not do anything. So BUFORA had over 1000 members when I first got involved in the early 70s (maybe 50 of whom were active members) and under half that when I left any active role in the md 90s. I expect it tumbled to unmanageable levels once the internet arrived and magazines and reports are freely available on line.

Britain misses this coordination and focus of a national group. But not sure there is any way back. A few regional groups do still exist, of course.
 
I notice that, on another site, MUFON is reporting 45 (I think it is 45) sightings for January in the UK. This is similar the Decembers.

Has anyone here even heard of these UK reports ? If so, how ?

INT21
 
Additional.

Here are the number of UK reports from MUFON for the UK in 2017.

Feb 43
Mar 24
Apr 35
May 38
Jun --
Jul --
Aug 43
Sep --
Oct 26
Nov 55
Dec 43
Jan 45 (2018)

I don't have the full lists yet. But you get the picture.
Also we appear to be third in the league. Next to Canada.

INT21
 
I really enjoyed the Silpho Saucer article, there seems little doubt it was one of many hoaxes across the UK, but it's a very well constructed one. One weird detail among many: it was partly made of fused metal and plastic, the plastic being polystyrene! Is it ordinarily possible to fuse those two? Also liked the message on the bottom of it, which seemed to be taking the Mickey. But nobody knows who the culprit was, nor why they went to all that trouble.
 
My first thought on the Silpho incident after reading a description
that I can no longer find was it sounded like they were describing a
strangely shaped battery, another thought was that it could have
been something to do with a Vulcan V bomber that flew across
the country on fire loosing bits as it went but that seems to have
happened in 71 quite a time later and further north.
 
RaM said:
My first thought on the Silpho incident after reading a description
that I can no longer find was it sounded like they were describing a
strangely shaped battery, another thought was that it could have
been something to do with a Vulcan V bomber that flew across
the country on fire loosing bits as it went but that seems to have
happened in 71 quite a time later and further north.
Click to expand...

Nah, it was definitely a manmade object designed to look like a saucer, it also had a message to humanity written on it. Always with the messages to humanity, these space brothers.
 
GNC said:
Nah, it was definitely a manmade object designed to look like a saucer, it also had a message to humanity written on it. Always with the messages to humanity, these space brothers.
Click to expand...


Absolutely a hoax. As David noted I read all the assessment work made at Manchester University by a metallurgist and it was 100% manufactured on Earth.

Sadly I was not allowed to copy it, just make notes, which I wrote up as a chapter in my book 'UFO Retrievals' in 1995 where I was clear it was almost certainly an elaborate hoax.

The message alone was straight out of 1950s earth society and the plot of that decade's sexist sci fi movies.

A dead giveaway as far as I was concerned.

But it cost more to make than it ever earned back so its source has long been a mystery.
 
The MOD and UFOs. Unexplained Plasma Formations, the MOD's equivalent of Swamp Gas.


No time for aliens: how the MoD tried to prove no one's out there
Report collating a decade of UFO sightings in 1990s was intended to protect ministry from more X-Files inspired requests

Damien Gayle

@damiengayle
Sun 6 May 2018 14.39 BSTLast modified on Mon 7 May 2018 00.11 BST




Lenticular UFO clouds over Perthshire, Scotland. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian
It was 1997, the 50th anniversary of the suspected flying saucer crash at Roswell in New Mexico, and the heyday of the paranormal mystery series The X-Files. The English-speaking world was gripped by UFO-mania. But what seemed a delightful mystery to some was becoming a headache for the spooks at Britain’s Defence Intelligence Staff.

Analysts at the DI55 office, the department lumbered with the UFO brief, were being peppered with requests from ufologists – and even parliamentary questions – for information on flying saucers, taking up time they felt would be better spent on terrestrial defence matters. So top brass decided to undertake a definitive study of the unit’s collection of reported UFO sightings to establish, once and for all, whether there was anything in them.

etc
Click to expand...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...w-mod-played-down-ufo-thesis-in-x-files-study
 
The 'Unexplained Plasma' explanation was shockingly bad, since they were just replacing one unknown phenomenon with another.

But I am of the opinion that 'Explained Plasma' is probably the cause of quite a large number of sightings. The tiny candle-light that is the active source of heat in a Chinese Lantern is a bona-fide form of plasma, and these lanterns have caused numerous sightings all over the UK (as well as few fires). So there might be something in it after all.
 
..The tiny candle-light that is the active source of heat in a Chinese Lantern is a bona-fide form of plasma,..

Not quite. In fact not by a long way.

Plasma is a form of matter created by stripping ions from a gas. And this requires great heat.

INT21
 
eburacum said:
The 'Unexplained Plasma' explanation was shockingly bad, since they were just replacing one unknown phenomenon with another.

But I am of the opinion that 'Explained Plasma' is probably the cause of quite a large number of sightings. The tiny candle-light that is the active source of heat in a Chinese Lantern is a bona-fide form of plasma, and these lanterns have caused numerous sightings all over the UK (as well as few fires). So there might be something in it after all.
Click to expand...
its my opinion that we are dealing with an interdimensional phenomena here
 
Jayceedove said:
It has a long look at the MOD ending all UFO interest and a case from Yorkshire where they broke up a press conference being given by the witness.
Click to expand...
Wonder why they would do that?
 
One thing I always wondered about in the Rendlesham Forrest incident was the part played or supposedly played by the Orford Ness Lighthouse, I live by the coast and there are 4 or 5 round the bay I have visited a few more and non as far as I know shine inland, they have blanked out segments in the lamp glazing to stop this after all who wants a dam great light in the bed room window every few seconds?

Pictures of the light do show a blanked of segment maybe for some navigational reason it does not cover the area in question.
 
..a case from Yorkshire where they broke up a press conference being given by the witness...

Could we have some details of this please.

INT21
 
The full story is in the May Northern UFO News issue on the website link above.

Go to the pages menu at the top and click on the last page shown Northern UFO News May 2018. The whole site is free to read.

Depending on device that you are reading on you might need to click More in the Menu as it is the last page and some devices do not show all pages in one line.

The previous 7 monthly issues of Northern UFO News follow on after it archived. Issue 192, March 2018, for example, has a detailed account of all we know about the PC Perks case from 1966 - another incident where the MOD visited a witness after an encounter and searched for physical evidence at the location.

A new issue comes out every month around mid month.

Northern UFO News was a regional magazine that I edited on subscription between 1975 and 2002. I promised readers when I had to end it because I became a full time carer that it would be back one day. It turned out to be 15 years, but it has been back since last October.
 
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Jayceedove said:
The full story is in the May Northern UFO News issue on the website link above.

Go to the pages menu at the top and click on the last page shown Northern UFO News May 2018. The whole site is free to read.

Depending on device that you are reading on you might need to click More in the Menu as it is the last page and some devices do not show all pages in one line.

The previous 7 monthly issues of Northern UFO News follow on after it archived. Issue 192, March 2018, for example, has a detailed account of all we know about the PC Perks case from 1966 - another incident where the MOD visited a witness after an encounter and searched for physical evidence at the location.

A new issue comes out every month around mid month.

Northern UFO News was a regional magazine that I edited on subscription between 1975 and 2002. I promised readers when I had to end it because I became a full time carer that it would be back one day. It turned out to be 15 years, but it has been back since last October.
Click to expand...
Ah, is that Ms R (rhymes with fork handles lol) .... ? If so 'tis an honour to share the Forum with you ma'am, enjoyed your work over many years. Yesterday I read through Dr David Clarkes blog (https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/) on the last of the governments UFO files which he has been trawling through prior to being made public and found it very interesting. I was wondering if you remembered a report about a chap who clearly thought he had been stalked by an unusually tall (over 7 ft), shadowy figure one night on Ilkley Moor ? Poor bloke was extremely freaked out by the encounter apparently and the presumption was that the figure was alien in origin, pretty sure it was back in the seventies and I think I read of it in a book about MIBs but I can't remember the author (female I think). I'm not too far from Ilkley and have been told it was a bit of a hotspot for UFO sightings at one time 'though the thought of spending the night up there now would play hell with my arthritis !
 
RaM said:
One thing I always wondered about in the Rendlesham Forrest incident was the part played or supposedly played by the Orford Ness Lighthouse, I live by the coast and there are 4 or 5 round the bay I have visited a few more and non as far as I know shine inland, they have blanked out segments in the lamp glazing to stop this after all who wants a dam great light in the bed room window every few seconds?

Pictures of the light do show a blanked of segment maybe for some navigational reason it does not cover the area in question.
Click to expand...
Rynner on this forum suggested that (even if the light from the lighthouse was hidden by a shield as seen from the forest) the so-called 'loom' would still be visible; this is the glow from the beam as it illuminates the air around the beacon.
 
eburacum said:
Rynner on this forum suggested that (even if the light from the lighthouse was hidden by a shield as seen from the forest) the so-called 'loom' would still be visible; this is the glow from the beam as it illuminates the air around the beacon.
Click to expand...

I live about half a mile from one at about 90 deg to it and I cant see any light from it, so how it could be seen 6 miles away and bright enough to fool a lot of military personal who shourly must have been in that area for some time I don't know but then again I have never been in that area so I cant be sure and as the light as now been decommissioned there not much chance of a test.
 
Regarding the Rendlesham event....the lighthouse explanation does not account for the fact that at least 2 personnel saw something in the woods itself and claimed it was on the ground at one point and that it was not just white in color.
Not saying this was an alien ufo but I don't see how that 6 mile away lighthouse could explain anything.
 
dr wu,

That has always been the case with Rendlesham.

Once the lighthouse is brought into the conversation the rest of the case is ignored.

It's the same with the Belgian Upen case. We get lots of explanations of what the radar returns may or may not have been caused by. But the fact that hundreds of people on the ground saw the objects is pushed to one side.

INT21
 
mmmhm, Rendlesham remains fascinating, especially in light of the UK govt files that were 'lost' or perhaps deleted (some of these were the responsibility of the now infamous secret 'DI55' MoD dept which investigated many cases under the 'potential threat to the UK's air defences' guise). Nick Popes old dept at the MoD appears to be uninterested in the story at the time because it took the US a number of weeks to forward a report (from the US base commander) thus it clearly can't be that serious or rather taken that seriously also the yanks stated they had no radar evidence related to the incident. Lord Hill-Norton, who was a retired UK Chief of Defence Staff and displayed an interest in UFOs was clearly not convinced as records released under the FoIA show, he pressed the MoD to reopen the case some four years later. It seems even he was fobbed off with the 'we have nothing unusual on radar at the time' arguement.
Trawling through the files Dr David Clarke checked once the MoD had released them (checkout his blogsite - https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/) under the FoIA, it appears successive UK govts have been extremely paranoid about giving any credence whatsoever to UFO phenomena, they also seem to just plain ignore many worthy incidents as not worth investigating further. I suppose there's a certain genius in this in that, in the US there are cover-ups and conspiracies at every turn to keep everything turning over whereas over here we just left work early and went down the pub, end of, ha !
 
..I suppose there's a certain genius in this in that,..

Indeed there is. If you were to admit to even one teeny sighting being the real thing, then where do you go next ?

Best to just hum and har and let the subject bubble away in the background.

INT21.
 
dr wu said:
Regarding the Rendlesham event....the lighthouse explanation does not account for the fact that at least 2 personnel saw something in the woods itself and claimed it was on the ground at one point and that it was not just white in color.
Not saying this was an alien ufo but I don't see how that 6 mile away lighthouse could explain anything.
Click to expand...
One of them even touched it. So the lighthouse explanation seems a lot weaker.
 
^I have always thought the whole thing was some kind of test for the personnel regarding experiencing a genuine ufo event. In other words how would soldiers react to such an event? But then Colonel Halt claimed he would have known if such a thing was going on and he has always maintained it was a legitimate event.
Who knows...?
 
Dr wu,

..I have always thought the whole thing was some kind of test for the personnel regarding experiencing a genuine ufo event. In other words how would soldiers react to such an event?..

I can see your logic. But the problem is they would have to have had some device that was capable of what was reported.
Remember, it was not just a one-off thing.

INT21
 
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..
But then Colonel Halt claimed he would have known if such a thing was going on and he has always maintained it was a legitimate event.
Who knows...?

We then hit the problem of credibility.

I would like to think that CoL Halt is an honorable and honest man.

But he is also a military man.

And the line between honorable and patriotic becomes blurred when national security is at stake.

INT21
 
Lights at night can be a very funny thing because the brain has no reference points for judging distance, so it could affect the way we interpret what our eyes are feeding us.
Example- some years ago I decided to do a bike ride just for fun on a summer's night (too hot to sleep) from Leicester to Grantham through country lanes, and as I crested a rise at about 2 in the morning I saw a vertical column of flickering red lights low on the horizon that looked as if they were almost in touching distance and for a few seconds I thought "What the heck???"
Then I realised they were the lights on the thousand-feet-high Waltham TV transmitter 12 miles away!
Apart from the pitch black surroundings, what also confused my brain was the fact that I was tired, AND the lights were flickering because of air currents, producing an almost hypnotic "dreamstate" effect.
So perhaps lights (e.g. lighthouses etc) near Rendlesham Forest also tricked the witnesses into thinking they were seeing something spooky because their brains couldn't process what their eyes were feeding them?
Alternatively they might have been seeing a craft from another galaxy..:)

waltham_zpsfa9u6vn0.jpg~original
 
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