"I come from another planet baby…" Julian Cope

FT100: My mother had an experience when she was younger that I think is worth recording before it is forgotten. I haven’t read anything quite like this anywhere else. My mother grew up in a housing development that was built on an old potato plantation on Long Island in New York State. There was a road that led from the main highway to the old manor house that was now just a part of everyone’s properties. The only way you could tell it had ever been a road was the fact that there were two rows of maple trees running parallel and lining what had been the sides of the road. The old gatekeeper’s house was situated behind my mother’s. If you stood in her backyard between those trees and looked down the line of backyards, you could clearly see it had been a long winding road to the old house. Almost all of the properties were fenced off so that there was no way that any type of vehicle could drive between those trees and follow what would have been the old road.

One hot summer night at around 2 or 3am, something went at enormous speed down that road. It made a loud clicking or whirring sound and it woke my mother and the rest of the family. They all had the impression that their had been a flash of light associated with the noise. There was a faint smell of burning, but no sign of fire. When they went into the yard they saw that others had heard it because lights were going on everywhere and people were coming out of their houses.

The next morning they discovered that branches were blackened as if they had been burnt. Everyone had heard it, and many felt there had been a flash of light as well, but no one could offer any suggestions as to what it was. Mat Perrone, Scarsdale, New York.

FT105: Browsing through a copy of your Weird Year 1996, I found a report eerily similar to an experience I had on 24 June 1995 in my home village of Tiptree in Essex. I went to bed at about 1am and looked out of the window at the clear, starry sky above. My house is on the edge of Tiptree with fields to the left and there were no other house lights on at the time. After a couple of minutes I saw something zoom at great speed overhead and towards the horizon, where it disappeared.

It as the shape of an isosceles triangle with two long sides curving towards a rounded point. The end was blurred and yellow/orange, while the rest of the shape had a straight line through the middle. There was no colour in the line itself and it seemed almost as if the object was in two separate parts. It was heading north and appeared to elongate as it reached the horizon. I jumped out of bed, and after hooting in amazement drew the object and wrote down the details of my sighting. I then went out to the patio hoping for it to return, but of course it did not.

Imagine my surprise when I turned to page 9 of Weird Year 1996 and read of the British Airways UFO report, in which two pictures shown bear an uncanny resemblance to what I observed. One of the sightings (made by Boeing 737 pilots) was also made in 1995, the other in early 1996. Anton le Roy, Tiptree, Essex.

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FT115: On the afternoon of 3 February 1998, at 4:10pm, I happened to glance through the lounge window and saw a group of strange moving lights in the northwest sky heading west approximately 1-1.5 miles away, at an altitude of about 2,000ft. There were three diamond-shaped objects travelling quite quickly, and they either had undulating body surfaces, were rotating, or the light source was pulsating. The sky was clear with just the odd cloud.

I called my wife over to the window and we watched the objects together for about one minute. They then passed through a cloud and I lost them, but my wife picked them up again briefly before they vanished behind a house in the middle distance. We were both completely baffled as they were unlike anything we had ever seen before.

We are well used to normal aircraft passing overhead, as we have a large helicopter training base just a few miles away, and frequent aircraft from Manchester airport and the cross-Atlantic routes overhead. We were both quite convinced that our sighting was not sunlight gleaming on aircraft fuselage, as we are quite familiar with this. Jon Ellison, Whitchurch, Shropshire.

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FT115: In 1988 my husband and I were driving through the extensive farming area called Bayles in Victoria, Australia. Around 9pm we noticed a brilliant red mist to the right of us, high up in the sky. It was extremely dark outside and the red mist was so bright it was breathtaking. Underneath, two distinct "rays" emanated downwards, but at no time did they reach the ground. The lights were stationary and there was no sound.

At first we thought the "rays" were some kind of large spotlight, but this couldn’t be because there was no light coming from the ground.

The whole spectacle was extremely large and seemed to be about 5km away. My husband, who knew the area well, tried driving closer, but it seemed that no matter how far we moved the lights remained at the same distance. We eventually gave up and went to his parents house a five minute drive away. Someone has suggested that what we saw was the Southern Aurora which, unlike the Northern Aurora, is very rarely seen – a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Leanne Homicki, Wonthaggi, Victoria.

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FT115: In 1947 I was posted to Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory. Darwin was regarded as the gateway to Australia and had suffered a considerable amount of damage by Japanese aircraft during the war. In 1947 the population was around 6,000, so it was not crowded. There had been a large RAAF base, but most of the aircraft and personnel had been removed. However, there were still some operational aircraft which were frequently seen and heard, so that the sound or sight of an aircraft didn’t arouse interest.

I was a member of the Quantas Airway ground staff, and there were about 100 of us living in converted army barracks 15km out of Darwin. In those days, there was very little development other than in Darwin, and consequently I spent most of my off-duty time bushwalking and sketching the wildlife.

Some few weeks after I arrived, I was out in the bush when I heard an aircraft that sounded unusual. I cannot recall if it sounded laboured, was cutting out, or what the problem was, but it was sufficiently unusual that I stopped sketching and stood up to get a better look. The aircraft was flying at not much above tree height, and would pass almost directly overhead. It was a PBY or Catalina flying boat like those which had been used extensively on coastal patrols during the war and had a well deserved reputation for reliability. As it passed overhead I noticed two distinctly odd features: the port blister was armed with the gunner quite visible, his weapon at the ready, and the port engine was missing. When I say missing, I mean in the physical sense, not the electrical, as where the engine would normally be there was only a gaping hole. It was just as though the fitters had forgotten to reinstall an engine that had been removed for repairs.

The aircraft continued on its way and I eventually lost sight of it over the mangroves bordering a tidal inlet. I continued to hear it for quite a while some time after until the sound eventually faded. Over the next few months I saw the same aircraft on probably a dozen occasions, each time coming from the same direction, sometimes nearer to me than on others, but in every case there was no mistaking that it was the same aircraft. By this time I had become so used to seeing it that I knew the registration numbers, but time has erased these from my memory. I must emphasise that I did not at any time regard viewing the aircraft as being odd, the only unusual aspect being that it was obviously on wartime readiness and that, for some reason, the technicians had not refitted the missing engine.\

Then I happened to mention my sightings to a RAAF officer who was having a drink with us in the canteen. The subject came up only because we were talking about the relative reliability of various aircraft. The officer was at the time attached to RAAF Darwin and was familiar with all operational aircraft in the area. He was adamant that no such aircraft was currently flying and certainly not one with only one engine. The subject must have intrigued him, for he contacted me some days later and confirmed that no aircraft of that registration was flying or operational within Australia. It was only then that I realised that I appeared to be the only person to have seen the craft, although a number of the staff were ex-RAAF personnel and naturally took more of an interest in aircraft than others who did not have that sort of background.

Following the discussion with the officer, I never saw or heard the aircraft again, although I was in the area for a couple more years. I am told by aircraft technicians that although the Catalina had a good one-engine performance, this would hardly apply to take-off and continued operation, particularly where there was a great gaping hole which would cause monumental instability.

If I had seen the aircraft but once it is probable that I could be mistaken, but to see it frequently and at close quarters rather rules that out. I can but conclude that it was just another casualty of war, the difference being that this crew were determined to continue their patrol, at least until such time as they received recognition. Mervyn F W Nightingale, Londonderry, New South Wales.

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 FT131: I live in a fairly rural area with little light pollution, and so the view of the night sky can be impressive. This was the case at around 7:10pm last night (27 October 1999) as I stood on our back doorstep at home, which has a clear view south-southwest. A sudden bright flash just out of my eyeline directed my attention upwards. I didn’t think much of it, as there is a heavy military presence in the area, and night flying is common. However, I noticed a particularly bright light. Suddenly it was on the move, too slowly for a meteor, but way too fast for a high-flying jet or satellite. It then began to turn impossible angles and spiral in different directions.

I had been watching for a few minutes when two or three smaller lights shot off in various directions from the main body, but these were faster and burned up quickly like meteorites. Then all of a sudden there were military helicopters everywhere, far more than would usually be flying on a Wednesday night. I didn’t take much notice of them, but their presence made me uneasy. As the light continued its aerial display, it became apparent both to me and members of my family who had come outside that it was trailing a faint smoky "tail", and also seemed to be falling.

I had watched it for about 20 minutes, it was a cold night and my dinner was spoiling indoors, so I had to go in with a feeling of dread that at any moment a large chunk of satellite was going to crash into my garden or the roof. It seemed obvious: the sudden flash as it dropped out of orbit, the shooting lights as it disintegrated while it burned up. The strange movements are a little more difficult to account for; perhaps as it seemed to be falling it was drifting in the winds in the upper atmosphere.

The presence of the choppers showed that somebody knew about it, but so far I have heard nothing about it. I refuse ot believe that my family and I were the only ones to see it other than the MOD [Ministry of Defence]. Why was it not mentioned anywhere that a big bit of space-crap was likely to fall on our heads? Did it crash-land somewhere? Can anyone offer an alternative explanation? Esma Pearcey, Abbotts Ann, Hampshire.

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 FT137: I read the article about the "flying triangles" [FT133:24] with interest. At about 1am on 23 December 1998, having just left a party in West Bridgeford, Nottingham, I saw a series of green lights, outlining the forward edges of a triangle (about six or seven lights on both sides), low-flying (about 500ft/150m), slow moving (comparable with an aeroplane) and utterly silent. It was moving from the south-east to the south-west. Some months later I was told of similar sightings on the other side of the city. Has anyone else seen it? Anita Granger, Leeds.

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 FT139: Have there ever been any reports of UFOs being heard but not seen? I had a very eerie experience here in Sydney in about 1974 when I was about 16. Around dawn one Sunday morning I was awoken from a falling-type nightmare to find myself being pushed bolt upright in bed as if by some unseen hand. I was shaking and sweating profusely, in a very agitated state and filled with a sense of dread although I had no idea why. My first action was to sprint across the hall to my parents’ room and try to waken them. I found them both in a deep sleep from which they could not be roused by any amount of shouting or shaking despite my mother being a notoriously light sleeper; it was the same with my sister in the next room.

I then suddenly became aware of a sound coming from outside, a kind of oscillating electronic throb – very creepy, like something out of a fifties B grade sci-fi movie…and it was getting louder. I opened the front door and walked into the front yard. The sky was overcast and the pulsing noise seemed to be coming from several hundred feet above the house. As I walked into the middle of what is normally a very busy suburban street and stood there in my pyjamas, I realised I was the only living thing moving; no cars, no birds, no dogs, nothing; and there were no other sounds but the noise in the sky. It was as if the world was frozen.

I dashed back inside to get dressed and go a bit farther afield to investigate, but as soon as I crossed the threshold the sound vanished and all returned to normal. The sounds of birds, cars in the distance, trees stirring in the breeze, my family waking up and starting to walk around, all returned as if someone had flipped a switch. What the hell happened? Any suggestions or similar reports would be appreciated. Peter Campbell, St Helens Park, New South Wales.

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FT139: In response to the letter from Anita Granger [FT137:51], I saw a silent black triangle fly over Chester from the north-west to the south-east in late November 1998, about 6pm on a Sunday evening. It was a few hundred feet up and only visible because backlit by low clouds, themselves illuminated by the street lights of Chester. It had about nine reflecting discs in a V shape on the underside. It took about six seconds to go from horizon to horizon and was totally silent. Barry Elliott, Wirral, Merseyside.

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 FT141: On the afternoon of Tuesday 15 August 2000, I was sitting on a bench on the green in the village of Havering-atte-Bower in Essex when I noticed in the blue sky what can only be described as a flying stick, black, with a slightly V-shaped bend in the middle. I estimated that it was 15,000ft (4,570m) up and longer than the fuselage of a 747. It was moving fairly quickly from south-west to north-east and I observed it for about 12 to 15 seconds before it went behind stratocumulus cloud. I was facing south-south-east. Can anyone suggest what it was? Mr J Thorogood, Romford, Essex.

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