An international panel of former pilots and government officials has called on the US government to reopen its generation-old UFO investigation as a matter of safety and security given continuing reports about flying discs, glowing spheres and other strange sightings.

MSN’s reluctant expert probed deeper.

It sounded like something out of Apocalypse Now: the scene where a fleet of helicopters thunders over the horizon to the ear-rupturing Ride of the Valkyries. The only difference was no Wagner. When the house started to shake, I – a boisterous seven-year-old at the time – bolted for the front door, leaving mum paralysed with fear at the kitchen sink, bellowing at me to get back in the house.

Skidding to a stop in an arc of gravel on our garden path, I saw it. Filling our driveway (about 15ft across) – its topside level with the roof of our two-storey semi, its underside a few feet off the floor – was what looked for all the earthly world like a huge hot water tank.

Before I go any further, bear in mind it was 1980 and, like I said, I was seven. My career as a rabidly anti-establishment conspiracy theorist had yet to begin; it would be another two years before Steven Spielberg made ET, and discovering the joys of hallucinogenic drugs was still on my list of things to do (still is, as it happens).

But there it was, hovering – with no wings, rotor blades or other visible means of suspension. A vast slate-grey cylinder coated in what looked like the inside of a non-stick saucepan, filament-fine aerials poking out of it in various places, and dotted all over with small, square flashing lights.

I turned to scream at mum, who had regained the use of her legs and was propelling herself at impressive speed towards me, and when I looked back it had gone. No noise. No vibrations. No nothing (and no, I’m not insane: I have the psychiatric assessment, taken shortly afterwards, to prove it).

We are not alone... are we?

That same month, a triangular-shaped flying machine with strange markings was sighted near the former US air base at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, a few miles from where we lived at the time. It wasn’t reported by a fanciful seven-year-old, an X Files obsessive or even a mescaline-addled maniac. It was reported by a US Air Force pilot – who this week relived his experience in front of an international panel of retired pilots and aviation officials currently urging the US government to reopen its investigation into UFOs. And they can’t all be smoking crack.

"Nothing in my training prepared me for what we were witnessing," James Penniston told them. The UFO, with "blue and yellow lights swirling around the exterior", was "warm to the touch and felt like metal", he said. Finally, "it shot off at an unbelievable speed" in front of 80 witnesses. "In my log book, I wrote 'speed: impossible'.” The case became known as the English Roswell – a reference to the discovery of alleged UFO parts in New Mexico in 1948.

Project Blue Book
Risking ridicule (or worse), the panel is putting pressure on the Bush administration to reopen Project Blue Book, the US Air Force inquiry into 12,500 reports of extra-terrestrial aircraft, which was abandoned in 1969 as a waste of time. Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have long maintained these sightings are caused by natural phenomena such as meteors, but the panel insists alien spacecraft are “not going to go away” and wants to prevent officialdom from “perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms.”
One thing is for certain: unexplained sightings are in plentiful supply. A few weeks ago, one of the Democratic presidential hopefuls sparked fresh talk about flying saucers in the US when he claimed, during a TV interview, that he’d seen one. Dennis Kucinich isn’t the only prominent American politician to have had a close encounter: two former presidents, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, both spoke early in their careers of having seen UFOs.
They’re here
The UK is also popular with extra-terrestrial tourists, apparently. In June of this year, one of the largest UFOs ever seen was observed by the crew and passengers of an airliner over the Channel Islands, prompting an official near-miss report.
Aurigny Airlines captain Ray Bowyer, flying close to Alderney, first spotted the object, which he described as "a cigar-shaped brilliant white light". As the plane got closer, he viewed it through binoculars. "It was a very sharp, thin yellow object with a green area,” he said. "It was 2,000ft up and stationary. I thought it was about 10 miles away, although I later realised it was approximately 40 miles from us. At first, I thought it was the size of a 737. But it must have been much bigger because of how far away it was. It could have been as much as a mile wide."

Stunned stargazers
A month later, a crowd of 100 stunned stargazers brought Stratford-upon-Avon to a standstill when five mysterious objects were spotted hovering in the sky. Drinkers spilled out of pubs, motorists stopped to gawp and camera phones were aimed upwards as the five orbs, apparently in formation, hovered above their heads for half an hour – moving with extraordinary speed and agility.
Just two days ago, a young Sunderland mum trying to rock her baby back to sleep in the early hours paused to look out of the window and spotted a strange light in the sky. “It was like nothing I had ever seen,” she said. “It was bouncing around and there were different coloured bright lights coming from it.” She captured what she was witnessing – a full 10 minutes of it – using the video function on her mobile phone.

A conspiracy?
But what of the conspiracy theorists? In 2002, self-confessed “bumbling computer nerd” Gary McKinnon was arrested by the UK's national high-tech crime unit after being accused of hacking into Nasa to look for photographic evidence of alien spacecraft. He claims to have uncovered proof that, in building eight of Johnson Space Centre, they regularly airbrush out images of UFOs from high-resolution satellite imaging. America wants to put him on trial and he could face 60 years behind bars. McKinnon has just been granted the right to fight his extradition in the House of Lords.

In the immediate aftermath of the Stratford incident in July, a spokesman for the MoD said: "The MoD does not have any expertise or role in respect of UFOs or flying saucer matters or to the question of the existence of extra terrestrial life forms, about which we remain totally open minded.” Other minds, however, remain not so much closed as firmly welded shut – which, given the fact astronomers recently identified a planet with the potential to harbour life, is even more extraordinary than the notion UFOs exist.

Who do you believe?
Given the vast and ever-increasing expanse of the universe, not to mention the relative infancy of the human race within it, it is supremely arrogant of us to assume we are the only intelligent life forms that exist. Even more arrogant is the assumption discrediting anyone and everyone who claims to have had a close encounter will make this whole messy alien business go away.
"It's a question of who you going to believe: your lying eyes or the government?" once remarked John Callahan, a former Federal Aviation Administration investigator, who said the CIA tried to hush-up the sighting of a huge illuminated ball four times the size of a jumbo jet in Alaska in 1987. You’ll forgive me if I have more faith in my 20/20 vision than I do in any elected representative.

An opinion piece by Laura J Snook, MSN UK News EditorNovember 14, 2007

Should the UFO probe be reopened? Join the debate on our message boards.

Book Club Choices ~ St Yrieix

Book Club Choices for 2008


February ~ “The Zahir” by Paulo Coelho
March ~ “Great Apes” by Will Self
April ~ “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini
May ~ “The Time traveller’s wife” by Audrey Niffenegger
June ~ “We need to talk about Kevin” by Lionel Shriver
July ~ “Atonement” by Ian McEwan
August ~ “Firelight and Woodsmoke” by Claude Michelet
September ~ “Last King of Scotland” by Giles Foden
October ~ “Never Let me go” by Kazuo Ishiguru
November ~ “Grasshopper” by Barbara Vine
December ~ “A Piano in the Pyrennes” by David Hawkes

And not a book of poetry amongst them. Next time perhaps.................