Secret UFO files released by UK government

May 15, CNN

LONDON, England -- Britain's Ministry of Defense has released files on UFO sightings dating back to the 1970s, including witness accounts and the government's response.

The ministry on Wednesday released the files as part of a four-year project to transfer all of the UFO documents to the National Archives to make them available to curious members of the public.

The documents include hundreds of police reports taken from witnesses who describe seeing lights or strange objects in the sky, from southern England and Wales up to Northern Ireland.

The files released Wednesday cover 1978 to 1987. The rest, dating from the 1950s and covering recent history, will be released over the coming years.

Reported sightings typically describe various shapes and colors of lights, moving in formation or hovering in the sky.

Witnesses reported orange, red, white and green lights that were diamond-shaped, square, or cigar-shaped. They reported them to police, who have a standard 16-question form specifically for UFO sightings.

"The vast majority of them are just ordinary people who've seen something unusual and thought that they ought to tell someone about it," said David Clarke, a professor at Sheffield Hallam University and a UFO expert who worked with the National Archives on the project.

In one sighting in January 1985, a man near Cardiff, Wales, was closing his living room curtains when he saw an object in the sky. He said it moved "up and down like a bouncing ball," then disappeared behind a mountain.

Two police officers in Woking, south of London, reported seeing a white light in the sky on Christmas morning 1985. The light, they said, moved into the nearby area of Horsell, where author H.G. Wells had placed the Martian landing in his book, "War of the Worlds."

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photo by AP