UFOs On Record: U.K. Sighting Reports Released

Aug. 17, 2009— -- Two teenage boys arrived out of breath, "distressed and agitated," at a police station in Chasetown, England, late one night in May 1995. They had just run from a field in nearby Staffordshire, where they reported that they had seen a spaceship land.

Haltingly, they told police that a "lemon shaped head" had appeared out from underneath the craft and tried to lure them near. "We want you, come with us," a voice said to them.

When police went out the next day to investigate, a farmer who had been out watering crops told them he'd seen nothing, and spoken to no one.

This account, found among some 4,000 pages of UFO files released this week by the National Archives, was just one of 117 sightings documented by the Ministry of Defense in 1995. The next year, the number of sightings skyrocketed to 609, the second-highest on record.

"The most likely explanation for the unusual spike in numbers during 1996 and 1997 was that public awareness of UFOs and aliens was at an all-time high," journalist and the National Archives' UFO consultant David Clarke wrote on his blog. "Those years were the culmination of a period in which images of UFOs and aliens had saturated popular culture."

It was the year of Independence Day – the summer blockbuster in which Will Smith battles hostile aliens – and X-Files mania. That year, too, UFO Magazine appeared on newsstands throughout the UK.

And in 1978 – the year that still holds the record for most UFO sightings in the UK – "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was a smash hit in theaters.

"I'm not saying people are imagining things," said Clarke. "When there's a film that raises public awareness, it gives people the impetus not to keep things to themselves, but to report them."

It was "Close Encounters" that first got Clarke interested in UFOs and alien sightings, at the age of 13. Since then, he has become an expert in the field. Part of his role as the UFO consultant for the National Archives was to read through all 4,000 pages of documents – which he did in three days – and pick out the highlights.