On Monday, Britain's Ministry of Defence released more than 800 reports of UFO sightings that occurred in Britain between 1993 and 1996 which the MoD logged, assessed and filed.
They consist of more than 4,000 pages of police reports, witness statements, descriptions of UFOs and official correspondence, including a detailed description of an "alien" dubbed "Mr Lemon Head."
In 1995, two young boys saw a strange object hovering over a field in Staffordshire and a bizarre-looking creature with a 'lemon-like' head, who appeared beneath the machine said (in English): 'We want you. Come with us.'
In 1996, a UFO was spotted firing beams of light into a cemetery in Widnes, Cheshire.
But is there a more down-to-Earth explanation for these reports?
What about the famous Rendelsham Forest incident that occurred near an RAF base in 1980 when military personnel saw strange lights in the forest in dead of night, the most famous UFO occurrence in Britain?
Apparently, it was just a hoax....
A close encounter with Mr Lemon Head: The very down-to-earth truth behind those UFO stories
By Jane Fryer
18th August 2009
Daily Mail
Could it be a bird? Or is it a plane? Or even a little green alien with a lemon-shaped head, an enormous pulsating spaceship and an impressive grasp of the English language?
Goodness knows how many people have squinted into the dark night sky, utterly convinced that they've seen a flying saucer.
But according to two terrified Staffordshire teenagers on their way home from a youth club, their close encounter - over a field at the side of the Rugeley Road in Burntwood at 10.55pm on May 4, 1995 - was most definitely with an alien.
Life on Mars? According to the MoD, there were more than 800 reported sightings between 1993 and 1996
Just in case there was any doubt, both experienced a burst of intense heat, 'beetroot red' faces and saw a large, inverted saucer-shaped object in darkish silvery-grey hovering 40ft away. They say it was 'four houses high'.
Oh yes, and both saw a bizarre-looking creature with a 'lemon-like' head, who appeared beneath the machine and said: 'We want you. Come with us.'
Goodness. UFO sightings never fail to thrill, chill - and, more often than not, amuse. The flashing lights, heat, odd wailing noises, gleaming spaceships and, if we're lucky, strange little aliens who pop out to say 'Hello!' in perfect English.
But while some of us haven't been taking these claims quite so seriously, the Ministry of Defence has been diligently logging, assessing and filing hundreds of 'close encounters' with unexplained flying objects.
Yesterday, as part of a three-year project by the MoD and the National Archives, reports were released of more than 800 sightings between 1993 and 1996.
They consist of more than 4,000 pages of police reports, witness statements, descriptions of UFOs and official correspondence, including a detailed description of Mr Lemon Head.
The MoD has always maintained there is 'no evidence whatsoever to suggest that intelligent life from outer space or alien spacecraft have landed on our planet'.
But try telling that to those two teenagers who cried all the way home. Or the
young man who spotted a UFO hovering over a cemetery when on his way home from a night out in Widnes in the early hours of July 15, 1996.
According to his file, the man ('a sensible sort of lad and genuine') claims the bright yellow light that was 'two houses high' followed him along making a high-pitched noise 'like cats wailing' before blasting light beams downwards.
A handout image from The National Archives shows a sketch of an alleged UFO drawn by witnesses
Indeed, when investigators arrived at the scene the following day, they found a hole burned into a railway sleeper - and it was still smouldering.
This all sounds splendidly mysterious but, according to UFO expert Dr David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University, things are never quite what they seem.
'There's no doubt that people see things - no one can deny that. It's just unlikely to have anything to do with aliens,' he says.
'The trouble is that a lot of people want to believe in these things, so if they see something out of context or lit oddly they're more likely to believe that it's a UFO.'
And once they believe that, they won't give up their belief without a struggle - even when the explanation is as clear as day.
This was demonstrated by the numerous sightings by excited Londoners of a brilliant white flying saucer with flashing lights floating across the night sky throughout 1993 and 1994.
Dozens rushed to their local police stations to report seeing an UFO and the sightings became the talk of the town.
When an MoD investigation concluded that the ' spaceship' was actually a Virgin airship advertising the launch of the Ford Mondeo, many simply refused to believe it.
'You have to be careful because UFO fans can be passionate and emotional about it all,' says Dr Clarke.
The Cosford Incident - more than 30 sightings (many by police officers and military witnesses) of unexplained bright lights across central England in six hours on March 31, 1993 - caused similar excitement.
While RAF radar tapes detected no unusual activity, Sir Anthony Bagnall, the assistant chief of the Air Staff, was briefed by officials that there was significant evidence of a UFO having evaded British defences.
However, it later turned out that those strange lights were caused by the Russian rocket that launched the Cosmos 2238 satellite re- entering Earth's atmosphere - bitterly disappointing legions of UFO enthusiasts.
Also listed in the MoD files is the sighting of a 'twirling set of moving lights attached to what must have been a circular object' by two 'sober' women enjoying the festivities beside Glastonbury's jazz stage in 1994.
'I immediately said it must be a UFO/spaceship . . . it was flashing in a way that was communicating to us,' one woman wrote in her police report.
'The hair stood up on my arms and my heart was pounding. It then glided to the right and away again.'
Her friend, a metaphysics student, related a similar experience. 'It appeared to be coming towards us and quite suddenly it changed colours,' she said.
'It went from red and orange to yellow and green. This really had an amazing impact on me, because I was wearing yellow and green.'
And the fact that not a single one of their tens of thousands of fellow revellers spotted anything untoward?
'They didn't look hard enough or take it seriously,' the women said.
But perhaps Britain's best known UFO incident (referred to in the files as the Rendlesham Forest Incident and known in UFO circles as Britain's Roswell Incident - alluding to the claim that a flying saucer crash-landed in the desert in New Mexico) occurred at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, in December 1980.
It started when two bored and tired military policemen, John Burroughs and Bud Steffans, saw a group of eerie flashing green and blue lights in the sky piercing through the fog.
Thinking a plane or a helicopter had come down, they radioed the base for back-up and ran into the forest.
What they saw was detailed in an official report by the deputy base commander, Lt Col Charles Halt.
'They reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest . . . described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately 2m to 3m across the base and 2m high. It illuminated the entire forest with white light.
'The object had a pulsating red light on top and a bank of blue lights underneath... It was hovering or on legs. As the patrol men approached, it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared.'
Another witness - an airman called Jim Penniston - described the spaceship's 'hieroglyphic markings' and claims to have touched it.
Amazing stuff. Until it emerged in 2003 that it wasn't an alien spaceship, but a battered 1979 Plymouth Volare - a standard issue U.S. police car with a top speed of 90mph, not two billion mph.
It was driven by Kevin Conde, another military policeman at the base, and not a crew of jet-lagged aliens.
'It was just a practical joke,' said Conde. 'I drove down the taxiway in my car. I put the spotlight on, after sticking red and green lenses on it.
'I then drove round in circles, in the fog, with the PA loudspeaker going, flashing my lights.'
Despite his revelations, many believers dismiss him as a fraud who was trying to rubbish the greatest UFO story in British history.
And what of the hieroglyphics Jim Penniston recalled in such detail? According to Dr Clarke, people who think they have seen UFOs can flesh out the experience in their mind.
'The detail is often filled in by the little details of what they've seen on screen - it's no coincidence that the type and shape of craft changes with what they've seen on TV or films at the time,' he says.
It goes without saying that despite all its diligent logging and filing, the MoD has found no cast-iron evidence of UFOs or spaceships.
But what of the two terrified teenagers (who insisted they were not drunk or on drugs) and their lemon-headed alien?
'I shouted: "Run!"' said one of them in his police report. 'I could hardly breathe.
'When we turned around, it just shot off in the air, but the sky didn't light up - it just went. Vanished.'
How extraordinary. Perhaps it's worth mentioning that the lads' distressed phone call came from the nearby Nag's Head pub.
And that a local farmer was out spraying his crops that night in that very roadside field in his enormous, well-lit combine harvester.
dailymail.co.uk
They consist of more than 4,000 pages of police reports, witness statements, descriptions of UFOs and official correspondence, including a detailed description of an "alien" dubbed "Mr Lemon Head."
In 1995, two young boys saw a strange object hovering over a field in Staffordshire and a bizarre-looking creature with a 'lemon-like' head, who appeared beneath the machine said (in English): 'We want you. Come with us.'
In 1996, a UFO was spotted firing beams of light into a cemetery in Widnes, Cheshire.
But is there a more down-to-Earth explanation for these reports?
What about the famous Rendelsham Forest incident that occurred near an RAF base in 1980 when military personnel saw strange lights in the forest in dead of night, the most famous UFO occurrence in Britain?
Apparently, it was just a hoax....
A close encounter with Mr Lemon Head: The very down-to-earth truth behind those UFO stories
By Jane Fryer
18th August 2009
Daily Mail
Could it be a bird? Or is it a plane? Or even a little green alien with a lemon-shaped head, an enormous pulsating spaceship and an impressive grasp of the English language?
Goodness knows how many people have squinted into the dark night sky, utterly convinced that they've seen a flying saucer.
But according to two terrified Staffordshire teenagers on their way home from a youth club, their close encounter - over a field at the side of the Rugeley Road in Burntwood at 10.55pm on May 4, 1995 - was most definitely with an alien.
Life on Mars? According to the MoD, there were more than 800 reported sightings between 1993 and 1996
Just in case there was any doubt, both experienced a burst of intense heat, 'beetroot red' faces and saw a large, inverted saucer-shaped object in darkish silvery-grey hovering 40ft away. They say it was 'four houses high'.
Oh yes, and both saw a bizarre-looking creature with a 'lemon-like' head, who appeared beneath the machine and said: 'We want you. Come with us.'
Goodness. UFO sightings never fail to thrill, chill - and, more often than not, amuse. The flashing lights, heat, odd wailing noises, gleaming spaceships and, if we're lucky, strange little aliens who pop out to say 'Hello!' in perfect English.
But while some of us haven't been taking these claims quite so seriously, the Ministry of Defence has been diligently logging, assessing and filing hundreds of 'close encounters' with unexplained flying objects.
Yesterday, as part of a three-year project by the MoD and the National Archives, reports were released of more than 800 sightings between 1993 and 1996.
They consist of more than 4,000 pages of police reports, witness statements, descriptions of UFOs and official correspondence, including a detailed description of Mr Lemon Head.
The MoD has always maintained there is 'no evidence whatsoever to suggest that intelligent life from outer space or alien spacecraft have landed on our planet'.
But try telling that to those two teenagers who cried all the way home. Or the
young man who spotted a UFO hovering over a cemetery when on his way home from a night out in Widnes in the early hours of July 15, 1996.
According to his file, the man ('a sensible sort of lad and genuine') claims the bright yellow light that was 'two houses high' followed him along making a high-pitched noise 'like cats wailing' before blasting light beams downwards.
A handout image from The National Archives shows a sketch of an alleged UFO drawn by witnesses
Indeed, when investigators arrived at the scene the following day, they found a hole burned into a railway sleeper - and it was still smouldering.
This all sounds splendidly mysterious but, according to UFO expert Dr David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University, things are never quite what they seem.
'There's no doubt that people see things - no one can deny that. It's just unlikely to have anything to do with aliens,' he says.
'The trouble is that a lot of people want to believe in these things, so if they see something out of context or lit oddly they're more likely to believe that it's a UFO.'
And once they believe that, they won't give up their belief without a struggle - even when the explanation is as clear as day.
This was demonstrated by the numerous sightings by excited Londoners of a brilliant white flying saucer with flashing lights floating across the night sky throughout 1993 and 1994.
Dozens rushed to their local police stations to report seeing an UFO and the sightings became the talk of the town.
When an MoD investigation concluded that the ' spaceship' was actually a Virgin airship advertising the launch of the Ford Mondeo, many simply refused to believe it.
'You have to be careful because UFO fans can be passionate and emotional about it all,' says Dr Clarke.
The Cosford Incident - more than 30 sightings (many by police officers and military witnesses) of unexplained bright lights across central England in six hours on March 31, 1993 - caused similar excitement.
While RAF radar tapes detected no unusual activity, Sir Anthony Bagnall, the assistant chief of the Air Staff, was briefed by officials that there was significant evidence of a UFO having evaded British defences.
However, it later turned out that those strange lights were caused by the Russian rocket that launched the Cosmos 2238 satellite re- entering Earth's atmosphere - bitterly disappointing legions of UFO enthusiasts.
Also listed in the MoD files is the sighting of a 'twirling set of moving lights attached to what must have been a circular object' by two 'sober' women enjoying the festivities beside Glastonbury's jazz stage in 1994.
'I immediately said it must be a UFO/spaceship . . . it was flashing in a way that was communicating to us,' one woman wrote in her police report.
'The hair stood up on my arms and my heart was pounding. It then glided to the right and away again.'
Her friend, a metaphysics student, related a similar experience. 'It appeared to be coming towards us and quite suddenly it changed colours,' she said.
'It went from red and orange to yellow and green. This really had an amazing impact on me, because I was wearing yellow and green.'
And the fact that not a single one of their tens of thousands of fellow revellers spotted anything untoward?
'They didn't look hard enough or take it seriously,' the women said.
But perhaps Britain's best known UFO incident (referred to in the files as the Rendlesham Forest Incident and known in UFO circles as Britain's Roswell Incident - alluding to the claim that a flying saucer crash-landed in the desert in New Mexico) occurred at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, in December 1980.
It started when two bored and tired military policemen, John Burroughs and Bud Steffans, saw a group of eerie flashing green and blue lights in the sky piercing through the fog.
Thinking a plane or a helicopter had come down, they radioed the base for back-up and ran into the forest.
What they saw was detailed in an official report by the deputy base commander, Lt Col Charles Halt.
'They reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest . . . described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately 2m to 3m across the base and 2m high. It illuminated the entire forest with white light.
'The object had a pulsating red light on top and a bank of blue lights underneath... It was hovering or on legs. As the patrol men approached, it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared.'
Another witness - an airman called Jim Penniston - described the spaceship's 'hieroglyphic markings' and claims to have touched it.
Amazing stuff. Until it emerged in 2003 that it wasn't an alien spaceship, but a battered 1979 Plymouth Volare - a standard issue U.S. police car with a top speed of 90mph, not two billion mph.
It was driven by Kevin Conde, another military policeman at the base, and not a crew of jet-lagged aliens.
'It was just a practical joke,' said Conde. 'I drove down the taxiway in my car. I put the spotlight on, after sticking red and green lenses on it.
'I then drove round in circles, in the fog, with the PA loudspeaker going, flashing my lights.'
Despite his revelations, many believers dismiss him as a fraud who was trying to rubbish the greatest UFO story in British history.
And what of the hieroglyphics Jim Penniston recalled in such detail? According to Dr Clarke, people who think they have seen UFOs can flesh out the experience in their mind.
'The detail is often filled in by the little details of what they've seen on screen - it's no coincidence that the type and shape of craft changes with what they've seen on TV or films at the time,' he says.
It goes without saying that despite all its diligent logging and filing, the MoD has found no cast-iron evidence of UFOs or spaceships.
But what of the two terrified teenagers (who insisted they were not drunk or on drugs) and their lemon-headed alien?
'I shouted: "Run!"' said one of them in his police report. 'I could hardly breathe.
'When we turned around, it just shot off in the air, but the sky didn't light up - it just went. Vanished.'
How extraordinary. Perhaps it's worth mentioning that the lads' distressed phone call came from the nearby Nag's Head pub.
And that a local farmer was out spraying his crops that night in that very roadside field in his enormous, well-lit combine harvester.
dailymail.co.uk