|
UFO Reports from the UK
UFOs over Yorkshire
[ Updated:
03/07/2008 ]
|
|
31 May
2008 - Wakefield
A report
from two witnesses at their home near Wakefield:
"On the
evening of the 31st May 2008, at 22:25 myself and my wife witnessed
2 white lights in the night sky, the lights looked that of an
aircraft when in banking mode, however as we continued to watch the
lights, still in parallel state, the lights continued across the
night sky toward the East, at no time did we witness any flashing of
lights just constant white parallel lights, what was striking was
the distance the lights had, they could have imposed 100 feet apart,
the other striking thing was that although it was a clear evening we
could not make out any shape between/around the object.
Although not a believer in any UFO's could you inform me if others
in the area also make a statement to you, it should be noted also
there was a Police Helicopter in the sky to the North East, this was
not the lights visible as we could clearly see the separate light
formations."
Initially
we did wonder if this may have been a sighting of the ISS and
Shuttle in close proximity, but neither would have been visible from
the witness' location. 'M' also clarified:
"They were
only a few hundred meters above the houses, so you could possibly
rule out satellites....but at the same time there was either West
Yorkshire or South Yorkshires police helicopter in the sky about
half mile north of my location maybe they saw something?"
|
|
17 May 2008 -
Sheffield, Yorks
From "A" -
former RAF, and an experienced glider pilot, amateur astronomer and
observer:
"At around 22:27
to 22:31 BST, my wife and I observed around 12 to 14 aerial objects
flying on an East-to West track, over a 4 minute period, just on the
western outskirts of Sheffield. They flew directly over the Fulwood
district of Sheffield, heading out over the Derbyshire border. The
objects were a quite bright orange-red colour and almost circular in
shape. They exhibited none of the standard nav-light strobes which
would be displayed by either civil or military aircraft, but the
lights did have a slight flicker in appearance. All the craft looked
identical in appearance.
We had set out
from home to go to the pub for the last half hour; on the way we
picked up a friend and he stood and watched the scene with us for
about the last two minutes.
All the craft
were travelling on the same course. The height was impossible to
estimate. There was no noise. Three or four successive waves of the
craft came over. The first batch was of three lights in line. Then
came a batch of four, in two pairs. Then several more close
together, and finally another three in line. All travelling on the
same heading.
It did occur to
me that they were travelling in a direction which may have been
following the prevailing wind at the time. I am a former glider
pilot, and I know that there is a tendency for the prevailing
direction to be unusual in the UK at this time of year. I have
observed that the wind has been from the east for the past week or
two. During May each year our normal prevailing westerlies turn
round, and throughout the day today we have had a gentle easterly.
So this may give a clue that these objects may have been wind-blown
balloons. But the formation characteristics of the group was quite
unusual. I know these objects were not normal aircraft, there
is absolutely no way these were civilian craft.
I am aware that
there are scammers “UFO balloons” which exist, and the only thing
that I can think is that this is what they were. If this is the case
then someone or some group may have released them somewhere to the
east of Sheffield, in order to create a stir. If this is the case
then it must have been no mean task to organise and co-ordinate such
a release and probably needed several conspirators to effect it.
Could such an event been arranged? If so, where was the likely
release site?
We have been
in further correspondence with A. Having completed some
detailed research on the internet:
"Oddly enough, I
tracked back on the flight vector of last night's balloons to see
where they may have been released from. Calling up Google Earth, I
could identify one particular building which fell directly on the
flight path. It is a building used by one of the largest Chinese
fireworks importers in the UK, near the city centre about 3 miles to
the east of us.
One interesting
facet of last night was that during our observations we saw what was
probably a police helicopter approaching on a path which could have
intersected with the balloons. Before it got close, we saw the
copter turn sharply to the north, probably to avoid them. I wouldn't
mind betting that the pilot had come across them before and
recognised them as a hazard to avoid.
Sounds like a
multiple hazard activity to me. Possible risk of fire damage, debris
and such-like dropping from the air when the flight terminates."
|
|
2 November
2007 - Ripley
From the
witness:
"Me and my
partner were travelling through Ripley around 7.30pm with my sister
following behind in her car; I noticed there were around 13 orange
lights to my right, my initial thought was that they were street
lights but as I gazed I noticed that they were moving; 'Were they
suspended by wire?' I thought - but they moved too much to be
suspended.
I decided to
ring my sister on her mobile to see if she had seen them for which
she said she did; "What were they?" she asked; I suggested we went
back to have another look. We made our way back and stopped at the
police station to get a better look. They were still in the same
position but then one by one they started to move away soon they
disappeared out of sight.
The following
day my sister decided to look up it up on the web but there was no
sighting reported on that day but she found an article 31st August
2007 about similar sightings however one explanation was that they
could have been Chinese lanterns. I have looked at websites where
these lanterns are advertised and I can definitely say that these
were not what I spotted that night.
My question is
did anyone report such a sighting that night? There was one witness;
but they said they may be micro lights...this too is impossible."
We were and
are not aware of corroborative sightings from the Ripley area for
that night. It is interesting that the witnesses do not believe they
were watching fire lanterns, although the general
observation/description is strongly suggestive of such.
|
|
22 June
2007 - Robin Hoods Bay
"I have just returned from a weeks
holiday in Robin Hoods Bay. On our last night in the bay (Friday) we
were walking our dog at about 11.00pm; we walked down the steps from
the dock along the sea wall facing the big hill of Ravens Car,
Boggle Hole etc etc.
We noticed a bright orange/yellow light
which appeared to be moving up the hill. at first I thought it was a
car but it seemed far to bright and there is no main road running up
that hill. The light then continued moving up the hill and then I
realised that it was actually mid air, it came to the top of the
hill and carried on moving up into the sky. It moved fairly slowly
but progressively. it climbed higher and higher much higher than a
helicopter (for a brief moment we thought it may be a helicopter)
the object then moved slightly to the left (our right) climbed a bit
higher still and entered a small cloud. It never came out of the
cloud it just disappeared. It was very strange as there was no sound
or other coloured lights on the object, it seemed to fade as it got
higher.
We cannot explain it; my boyfriend is
very quick to dismiss peoples claims of seeing UFOs, but even he
said he cannot explain what he saw. The duration of time from when
we first saw the object to when it disappeared was around 2-3 mins."
|
|
10 April 2007
- Wakefield
Another report
of a laser-like light event:
"In the
South/South West we saw a circular shape with blue, green and yellow
lights alternately flashing in the centre, with a red light rotating
around the outside. It hovered in the same place for 30 minutes then
faded quickly and disappeared.
If you have any other sightings that correspond with this one, we
would like to know that we are not the only ones who saw it!"
There is a
strong similarity to event at Radstock in Avon on 30th January. So far we know of no other similar reports for the Wakefield area
on this night.
|
|
28 February
2007 -
Bradford
A brief report
from the 28th, of "hundreds" of individual lights moving across the
partly cloudy sky, seen by two witnesses in one family.
This again is
suggestive of fire lanterns, but curiously given the sheer number
reported, however, we were not aware of other corroborative reports
from the area.
|
|
30 January 2003 -
Stainforth, Doncaster
"I with my friend
recently had an experience that either of us could not explain away. The
date will have been three weeks ago today ( Thursday) so it would have happened
on 30th Jan 2003. I must point out that myself or my friend have ever noticed
anything that we could not put a logical explanation or theory to. In fact we
have decided that the only way to explain this sighting is to say it was not
something built on planet earth hence my letting you know about it.
The time would have been somewhere around 9.40 pm we were walking on a road
going from a village called Stainforth near Doncaster South Yorkshire. our
destination was to the next village called Fishlake - a journey of some one and
one half miles approx. There are no lampposts on this road at all so we
were being careful to observe keeping faced to on-coming traffic. Jupiter was
nicely prominent up to our right a lot of stars were twinkling too the moon was
below the horizon at that time. We had got just about half way to our
destination and were both remarking what a really nice night it looked in the
sky around us if you take the way were walking as the 12 o'clock position .
the10 o'clock position suddenly flared a roundish shaped blue light it was
momentarily stationary then suddenly moved about a 15 to 20 degree arc in sky.
In a matter of a few seconds the speed was nothing that we could have ever
imagined possible to occur from a standing start - it went from a given height
in an upwards diagonal plane to the right behind the only patch of cloud that
was to the front of us. We immediately said was it a shooting star we saw
- but why was it coloured blue? Why did it go up rather than downwards?
Then after a pause we both realised that it had also been totally silent no
noise whatsoever - oherrrrrrr!
We
agreed not to say anything to anyone for fear of ridicule but eventually we have
told a few folk who all said they believed us as we are not known at all for
being believers in ufos until this happened of course. I wonder if anybody
else saw anything that night one thing is for certain we both feel privileged
to have experienced this perhaps once in a lifetime thing."
|
|
December
29, 1999 – Yorkshire
Andrew
Ramsey and his girlfriend were travelling back to their B&B, in Reeth, after
sunset on Wednesday, from Askrigg in Wensleydale, where they'd just had
afternoon tea. Andrew was driving in his Cavalier and decided to go over the
narrow single track road from Redmire to Grinton. He hoped that it would be free
from snow as the road from Tan Hill to Keld earlier in the day had not been, but
the Buttertubs pass higher up the Dales had been OK.
He
drove north up the south-facing slope and there was only a little snow, but once
over the top, the road was covered in a thin layer of slushy snow and was quite
slippy. So he was concentrating very hard on not skidding as he started our
decent into Swaledale. They had not long gone over the top and the slope was not
too steep. They could now see clearly the lights of a large town (Darlington?)
over to the north-east - forward and to the right. There was no other traffic up
there - no one else was foolish enough to use that road in that weather! So
Andrew had his headlights on main beam. Suddenly, from the right-hand side of
the road, about a hundred feet or so in front of us, this grey trapezoidal
object, about twenty feet long and six to ten feet high, shot across the road,
just skimming the ground (or so it seemed from our position - it could have been
a little further away and since the road dropped away, getting steeper, it could
have been a little higher), at the speed of an express train (100mph?) and
disappeared into the darkness to the left of the road - as it left the headlight
beam. The object appeared featureless, as if it was a flat plane tilted away
from them - rather like the side of a large grey toblerone packet, though only
about half as long to get the aspect ratio right - with no lights on it. The
front and rear appear to be sloping in at the top - though this could have been
a perspective effect. The whole event was over in little over a second.
Andrew's
first thought, was that it was a (very) low-flying jet as you often get those in
the Dales, though he had not seen one all that day. But, there was no sound -
none at all. The car was not making much sound - as he was only travelling about
20-30mph at the most, so would have heard an aeroplane. The surrounding
moor was dark, though the road was lighter due to the snow still on it.
He would have stopped, only didn't want to suddenly apply the brakes and skid,
as to be honest he was beginning to wish they hadn't taken that road after all,
and this strange object rather spooked him! Andrew said to Rachel,
"What the hell was that?" to which she replied, "Oh, I'm glad you
saw it too - I don't know.". She got the impression that the object was
smaller and closer than he thought, but complained that her side of the
windscreen was a little murky as a result of all the grit on the roads that day.
Andrew's side, however, was quite clear.
|
Why not tell us about it? All reports and
accounts are handled in the strictest confidence.
You can
email us on:
reports@apra.org.uk
or print this PDF report form
APRA_Report and send to our mailing address
<< Back to UFO Page |
|