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UFO Reports from the UK
UFOs over
Berkshire
[ Updated:
27/07/2008 ]
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26 July
2008 - Woodley area
Three
independent sightings and reports.
From 'K':
"At about
10.30pm, I was in my garden and saw a very bright orange light
travelling from the west in a south east direction. behind it came
several more - all going in the same direction in a long line. All
bright orange with no noise and no navigation lights. I am used to
planes, being near the flight path to and from Heathrow and have
never seen this colour on any plane.
In all, I
counted 12 in the space of about 10 minutes. My boyfriend suggests
it was reflected light in the atmosphere from sunspots. Its a very
clear night and I was intrigued - explanation someone please? "
K
subsequently came back to us:
"Further
investigation has led me to believe that these lights are in fact,
Chinese Fire Lanterns - available on Ebay!"
From
'AT':
"Last night
at 10:30 we just arrived back home (Woodley, Berkshire) when we
noticed strange lights in the sky. They were orange globes. When
viewed with binoculars they looked like a ball of fire with light
emitting equally all round. There was no noise and they kept
appearing from the horizon one or two at a time.
We must have
seen over twenty of these and we managed to get some good video
footage. My adrenaline was through the roof. I was so interested to
read the other recent reports of people seeing what must have been
the same thing. The globes all moved at the same speed and came from
one horizon and disappeared over the opposite horizon within 30
seconds. One of the globes faded and vanished- all on the video.
Wow... I still feel shakey; I seem to have a real sense of urgency
and interest to understand what these were? "
From 'JK'
"We have
just watched in amazement as around 10.20pm at least 20 may be 30
bright orange lights silently but purposely drifted across the sky
from left to right, NW to SE. Our guesses as to what they were
included hot-air balloons, hang-gliders and microlites, but they
seemed just a bit too fast and too high up for any of these.
The first
five were in a V formation and then the lights of one of the back
pair went out and we could not see it at all no matter how hard we
strained our eyes. The rest came gliding into view a few at a time,
all in the same flight path, and disappeared from view when they had
gone past, all in about the same place, as if they had gone into a
cloud, but we could still see the stars twinkling brightly as there
were no clouds."
While we
have yet to confirm the event or party that may have launched such,
we can be 99% certain that the three above sightings were of fire
lanterns - we would be surprised if the local media didn't cover
this event over the coming days.
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1 June
2008 - Reading
A very
curious sighting and report from 'J':
"I
would like to report seeing ‘something’ over Reading Town Centre
last night.
At approx between
12:45 – 01:00 I was standing in my back garden smoking when I heard
a low sounding droning noise, after hearing it for a good 10 sec I
saw an aircraft travelling from a
North West to South East direction. When I
saw it approaching I presumed I was seeing fixed navigation lights –
the first was the nose of the aircraft and two either side which
again I presumed were from the wings and I didn’t think any more of
it, until it passed over my head which was when I noticed there was
no tail light that I normally see on passenger aircraft. The object
I was looking at had 4 lights adjacent to each other spanning the
width of the object, the two lights at the extreme left and right
where fixed and the two light between them were blinking
intermittently.
Unfortunately I
could see absolutely no outline of the object, it was totally black
against a cloudy sky but the formation of the lights on the object
gave a perfect triangular shape much like a Black Manta used by the
USAF, I started thinking about the direction of travel which was
unusual as I don’t see that many aircraft travelling in that
direction and it was very low in the sky which made it more odd that
I could not see even the faintest outline of fuselage. I am
sceptical that I saw a UFO as the lights were no bigger than
standard navigation lights on passenger jets, but it was the
formation of the lights and the deeper droning noise that came from
it that got me thinking.
Anyone else see
this?"
These days it is something of a
rarity to have sounds - whether propulsion or otherwise - associated
with a UFO sighting. As yet we are unaware of any other
reports, but we know from experience how few people really look at
the sky to see anything unusual. It is intriguing that no obvious
'body' could be discerned between the lights, so does this suggest
they were small lights in formation? Certain aspects of the
lights are reminiscent of Brian James' sighting over Pangbourne in
March 2006.
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4 May 2008 -
Tilehurst
From "SK":
"On Sunday night
at 9.55pm my wife and I spotted 7 lights in the formation of 'the
Plough', we both said, 'there bright tonight', but then we both
realised that they were all moving in the same direction, they moved
until we could not see them any more, then 3 more came in a triangle
formation, again they moved all together until they disappeared.
Lastly a big
light came and hovered for about 45 seconds, then disappeared.
It was a very
very clear night, there were about 12 witnesses in my road in
Tilehurst, the lights were of a orange colour, when I got my binos,
it looked like a ball of fire. They were towards Pangbourne way.
It was all very
weird."
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4 May 2008 -
Maidenhead
From "K":
"Sometime after
10.15 last night I was out in my garden looking at the stars, it was
a good clear sky. I was amazed to see groups of orange-ish lights in
the sky. [There were] three groups of lights each with 4 or 5 orange
lights, which seemed to keep moving about in the group.
I watched these
for around 10 minutes, they moved slowly across the sky then started
disappearing one by one - sort of flickering before winking out."
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4 May 2008 -
Marlow
From "DJ":
"At approx
10.00pm last night (Sunday) I was out with my dog, and I was looking
at the sky to the South. In the distance I could see a number
of yellow/orange lights slowly moving across the sky. I've
never seen anything like this before, and they appeared to move
randomly into various formations.
Did anyone else
see these?"
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4 May 2008 -
Reading
"At 22.00hrs on
Sunday I filmed 9 flying orange lights over Reading, Berkshire, the
footage last about 6 mins of the flying lights in 2 formations.
The 1st [group
of] 4 flew over the hill in a straight line then formed into a
square formation. The 2nd [group] again came over the hill in the
same straight line then formed a triangle formation with one in the
centre. The last light came over the hill in the same flight path
but was by it self.
They all
vanished in the same point in the sky. They made no sound and moved
to fast to be a hot air balloon."
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4 May 2008 -
Purley
A report from
"S":
"We would be
interested to know if there is a logical explanation for what we
have just seen, we live in Purley on Thames. At approximately
10.00pm BST (about 40 minutes ago) we witnessed a very unusual
sight.
Travelling from
East(ish) to West(ish) we saw at least 10 orange lights travelling
quite slowly and completely silently with no navigation lights or
strobes. There appeared to be two groups - one widely and randomly
spaced and the other at times in a straight vertical line formation.
They were above cloud level. There were quite a few other
people who had noticed and stopped their cars to look."
"These objects
were quite large and at a height of approximately 9,000 to 12,000
ft. The cloud base was very high and these were above the cloud
base. Also, these things were flying in perfect formation some of
the time (a dead straight vertical line of five evenly spaced and an
arrowhead of five)."
S supplied
some photos taken on a compact digicam, however the ISO and shutter
speed resulted in grainy/noisy images with inadvertent false
movement of the lights - so analysis is difficult.
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21 March 2006 - Pangbourne, Berkshire:
Strange Aircraft Indeed
APRA researcher Brian James had a curious sighting of Tuesday
March 21; not necessarily a UFO, but it was a darned unusual
aircraft.
"I was on the way up to the wolf trust
for feeding, so around 9.10pm, on the way to Pangbourne in
Berkshire; an absolutely huge/bright 'headlight' came from the north
over the hills the other side of the river valley - I assumed it was
either a copter out from RAF Benson or another aircraft; anyway,
there were no other lights visible, but then it banked left to head
eastwards.
By now I'd stopped by the river in
Pangbourne, so had a good view eastwards; this aircraft was huge
(obviously difficult to judge without true reference, but I'm
estimating at least 2x the wingspan of a 747 if I'd seen one in a
similar position!), but all I could see were three large but not
overly bright white lights in a long row across the 'back', with the
occasional view of a dim white strobe above and below the centre
light - logically on top and below what should have been a fuselage
centreline.
This thing was low, and flying slow
directly eastwards; what got me was the size emphasized by the width
of the outer lights - while other aircraft in the sky were obvious
and 'small; I could still make out these 3 lights even when this one
was way in the distance, easily east of London by then. I'd been
watching this for around 5 minutes."
With the sightings by James Hill over
Swindon in February, this is now three sightings of extremely large
aircraft flying in very crowded air corridors...
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20 February 2005 - M4 at Reading
Seen at 09.48am
"I noticed a bright light, small but very intense,
travelling very rapidly across my path. It appeared to come from over my left
shoulder, and was heading slightly to the right of where the car was pointing
(i.e. approx north westerly direction).
It appeared to be about 100-200ft up. There was no detectable noise, and no sign
of any kind of a craft from which the light was emanating. I can best describe
it as the exhaust from a jet engine, but with no visible aircraft attached. The
colour, very intense is best described as turquoise.
The sighting lasted for a few seconds, and then the light disappeared into the
distance."
This sighting was one of several that morning, it was later confirmed as
a bolide skimming the atmosphere.
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January
2000 - Reading
On clear nights during the winter, Mark Barton has been
watching the skies from his home, and has on several occasions noticed orange
delta-shaped 'aircraft' moving very fast across the sky. The speed of
these is notably fast when compared to aircraft climbing out of Heathrow, which
take over a minute to disappear to the west.
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13 Oct 1999 - Reading
At 6.40am, reader Mark Barton
observed a large black triangle flying from the Northwest to Southeast. It
appeared to stop in the sky for around six minutes, or another one emerged from
behind a block of flats later than the first. No noise could be heard, but
navigation lights were evident.
The shape was similar to the
reputed 'Black Manta'.
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28 Jun 1995 -
Earley, Reading
The witness’s account:
“I was sitting in my back room on
the 2nd floor. I was suddenly drawn to the window by a glinting object.
I opened the window, and going in a slow straight line was a circular object.
The day was sunny with a blue sky. There was also a southeasterly wind
blowing.”
A drawing indicates a circular
metallic object, revolving in a clockwise rotation as it moved to her left.
Further details were not forthcoming.
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