When a space ship brought fresh k’rakxza’a for M’ika’al Khau’ardd

If there was one other alien in the Prince of Greyness’s cabinet in those dark days when the tories were last in Number 10 (John Major himself being a Kraptonian from a small planet orbiting Algol) it was Michael Howard whose reptilian features struck terror into the hearts of virgins across the country (except Ann Widdicombe of course).

If confirmation of his extra terrestrial origins were required then the Telegraph provides it. UFO files released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) show that on 8 March 1997 there was a UFO sighting near Howard’s home in Kent while he still was Home Secretary.

Sophie Wadleigh, 25, from Hythe, reported the sighting to the Folkestone Herald. She told the newspaper: ''It was so peculiar, it all felt really odd and I heard this humming noise. As I looked across the field I saw a large triangular shaped flying craft hovering about 300 metres off the ground."

Further newspaper cuttings reveal Chris Rolfe, co-ordinator of group UFO Monitoring East Kent (UFOMEK), warned at the time the UFO could have been looking for Mr Howard. Mr Rolfe said: ''It would seem the UFO was disinterested in Sophie, the girl who reported it and watched it for quite a long time. ''This certainly makes it seem like it had a purpose and has left me wondering if its purpose had something to do with Mr Howard.''

An RAF investigation into the sighting was undertaken, but the findings found nothing unusual The Air Defence inquiry said there was ''no such security incident'' involving Mr Howard or and ''no such military activity reported anywhere, and, specifically, in the Kent/Folkestone area. Additional inquiries have confirmed that no unusual or unauthorised air activity, civil or military, was reported or observed in that area on that date.''

This rings a bell, I’m sure I read about this in UFO Magazine years ago, Or is my mind playing tricks on me,,, Anyway when Widdicombe said that there was something of the night about Howard perhaps she meant the stars as well as something sinister that lurks in the shadows....

New UFO files released by the National Archives

Oops wrong UFO photo...

Following the release of UFO files in May (in which we discovered, inter alia, that there were no aliens at or near Wallasey town hall) 19 further Ministry of Defence files have been released by the National Archives. According to the Guardian (and numerous other sources)the files cover the period 1986 to 1992. The reports include a close encounter by an Alitalia airliner near Heathrow in 1991 and a bomber-sized UFO over East Anglia in 1957 (but not reported until 1988)

On 20 May 1957 Milton Torres, a US air force fighter pilot based at RAF Manston, was scrambled to intercept a B52-sized UFO over East Anglia. He was ordered to fire a salvo of missiles at the UFO but before he could do so, it vanished.

Details of the East Anglia event only emerged after Torres, who was warned never to mention it, did discuss it with a military historian at a reunion at RAF Manston in 1988. The MoD, whose policy until 1967 was to destroy UFO files every five years, had no data on the event.

An account from Torres, now 77 and living in Florida, describes his anxiety at failing to fire after struggling to read codes on a scrap of paper in the cockpit of his F-86D plane. "It was totally black and the lights were down for night flying. I used my flashlight, still trying to fly and watch my radar. To put it quite candidly, I felt very much like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest," he said.

In April 1991, recorded a captain of an Alitalia airliner, flying at an altitude of more than four miles on route to Heathrow from Milan, seeing a missile-like object. At first this was labelled "cruise missile?" but it was quickly found not to be a military weapon. There were a number of similar sightings within the next six months. Four passengers on a Dan Air Boeing 737 spotted a "wingless projectile" flying under their plane.

On a more ludicrous note the files contain information on a Tina Turner concert triggered a spate of UFO sightings in London in 1989, and how one person was "contacted by aliens" descended from "legendary feathered serpents from ancient Peru". There is also a sketchy self-portrait of a pointy-eared woman in a gown, who told the MoD she had crash landed on Earth during the second world war, having left her home planet of warrior women.

Interesting stuff indeed! I have always been fascinated by UFO reports although I am firmly of the opinion that the vast, vast majority have utterly mundane explanation. As for those which remain unidentified, I strongly doubt that any relate to space craft coming from Zeta Reticuli or anywhere else in our galaxy. Hiho....

No aliens in or near Wallasey Town Hall

Like many other newspapers the Liverpool Daily Post has take a keen interest in recently released Ministry of Defence files relating to UFO sightings. Hundreds of supposed UFO sightings in the skies above Britain were recorded by Ministry of Defence staff. It would seem that the MoD was not investigating the possibility of visitors from outer space making a stop at Earth. Defence intelligence staff were more interested in checking that UFOs were not in fact signs of earthly covert spying missions by other countries.

Among the more bizarre stories to be recorded was one from a man in Wirral claiming to have met aliens on a regular basis. One, he reports, visited frequently and was called Elgar. Sadly, he says, Elgar was killed by another race of beings in the 1980s. It seems the visitors were again hit by tragedy when one of their craft crash-landed over Wallasey Town Hall, he claimed. A brief note by the recipient of the report at the MoD stated: “No Reply”.

One sighting in Liverpool, reported at 6.30am on April 14 last year, was of “a red, pipe-like object. It was seen for about 10-15 seconds, very close to the plane. It then disappeared into the clouds.” Another, also from Liverpool, reports “six to eight gleaming lights, moving in a straight line across the sky, changing patterns from diamonds to pyramids.”

The Ministry of Defence itself does not deny that there are “strange things to see in the sky.” but unsurprisingly the view was that there are adequate explanations for the phenomenon, including space junk burning up in the atmosphere, unusual cloud formations and meteorological balloons. “It certainly has no evidence that alien spacecraft have landed on this planet.”

Dr David Clarke, journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, has been campaigning for the release of the files.He said: “It has taken 10 years of campaigning to get these papers out and now that they are it lays to rest some of the claims of a cover-up by the MoD. But I don’t think for a minute that the conspiracy theorists will drop their theories. Personally, I think that some of the sightings have got to be of scientific interest. There are some that just cannot be explained.”

Cllr K’taak (Lib Dem Port Sunlight). Said “It is just as well that the MOD did not investigate El’Gaar but I do wish the police took a greater interest in his murder. His death was a great loss to the Antarean community on the Wirral.

Most definitely not the tinfoil hat brigade

A panel of retired pilots and aviation officials risked possible ridicule by sharing their personal stories of close encounters with unidentified flying objects. They urged the US government to reopen its investigation into extra-terrestrial spacecraft.

Among the incidents discussed at a recent gathering in Washington DC was an alleged sighting of a triangular-shaped flying machine with unfamiliar markings near the former US air base at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk in 1980. (Rendlesham Forest?) "Nothing in my training prepared me for what we were witnessing," James Penniston, a retired US Air Force pilot, told the panel. He said the UFO, with "blue and yellow lights swirling around the exterior", was "warm to the touch and felt like metal". Finally, "it shot off at an unbelievable speed" in front of 80 witnesses. "In my log book, I wrote 'speed: impossible'," Mr Penniston added.

Jean-Claude Duboc, a former Air France pilot, recalled spotting "a huge flying disc" about 1,000ft (305m) across which left no image on his radar as he flew over Paris in broad daylight in January 1994. He said the object started to become transparent and, within 10 to 20 seconds, had vanished without a trace.

Fife Symington, a former governor of Arizona, said that it was time for the US government to reopen Project Blue Book, the US Air Force inquiry into 12,500 UFO reports, which was abandoned as a "waste of time" in 1969. "Incidents like these are not going to go away," he said. "We want the government to stop perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms."

Talk of flying saucers resurfaced in the US media a few weeks ago when one of the Democratic presidential hopefuls, Dennis Kucinich, claimed during a televised debate that he had seen one. His comments may not have been total political suicide – two former US presidents, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, each spoke early in their careers of encounters with UFOs.