Close encounters: UFO sightings revealed
Updated on 18 February 2010
Strange lights over Chelsea's football ground, Toblerone-shaped aircraft and bizarre goings-on in the "Bonnybridge Triangle". The Ministry of Defence has published more UFO files, and you couldn't make it up.
The fifth release of "UFO files" is the largest to date totalling over 6000 pages of material spanning 1994 to 2000.
The documents, which are being published online by the National Archives, include sighting reports, letters parliamentary business and, for the first time, six "persistent correspondence" files.
UFO expert Nick Pope, who used to work for the Ministry of Defence (MoD), said: "Interest in this is massive. A while ago the MoD was getting more Freedom of Information requests on this than anything else.
"It's a massive job, which is why it has taken years."
In one file, from 20 March 1997, a Birmingham man arrived home at 4am to find a large, illuminated blue triangle hovering over his garden.
The craft "shot off" leaving behind a "silky-white" substance on tree tops, which he claimed he had saved in a jam-jar.
In another a West Lothian electrician described spotting a "Toblerone-shaped" UFO flying over a field.
Referred to another case, Nick Pope said: "One I was interested in was a local councillor in Scotland lobbying the prime minister, saying that 'there are so many UFO sightings in my town Bonnybridge that I call for the government to take action - there must be a public inquiry.'
"One of the others... involves a police officer who saw a UFO actually hovering over the Chelsea FC football ground.
"He described it as being like nothing he had seen before in his life."
In the brief report, he said four lights, square to diamond in shape, hovered over Stamford Bridge in southwest London.
They were also witnessed by the officer's colleague, over the Premier League club's home turf at 8.05pm on 10 March, 1999.
The report reveals that the policeman saw the object for 10 to 15 seconds as it "moved across the sky fairly quickly, changing shape slowly".
Click here for full details of the new UFO files: nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos.
