A look back at East Anglia’s UFO sightings

As the Ministry of Defence prepares to release its latest tranche of UFO files we take a look back at previous sightings in the region

 A businessman was left scratching his head after seeing three mysterious grey objects in the sky over Dereham on March 19, 2012.
The man - who did not want to be named - noticed something amiss when he stepped into the back garden of his home for a cigarette at about 7.40pm.
The teetotaler described seeing three grey disc-like objects with an orange tinge in formation, slowly moving in a south-west direction.
He said: “At first I thought it was three geese. They were in formation like planes - it was two at the back and one at the front. They started to go a lot quicker and the orange glow was a lot brighter, and two split off to the left and one to the right.
“I mentioned it to my wife. I said ‘I’m not going mad but you will never guess what I’ve just seen’. I don’t know what it was.”
• Cromer residents may have experienced a close encounter of the third kind when they spotted a UFO hovering off the coast at the weekend.
A bright white and blue light was spotted near to the offshore wind farm at around 8.30pm on August 6, 2012 and after appearing to rise higher into the sky, its lights began to flash green and red around its base.
Andrew Cochran spotted the object and described it as “strange”.
He said: “I was walking along the sea front heading away from the pier looking out towards the wind turbine farm on the horizon when I noticed [it], then it appeared to move about them. I assumed it was a helicopter.
“The object then shot up really fast and stopped when it was very high in the sky.”
Mr Cochran was joined by a dog walker who also watched the phenomenon before returning to her home.
He added: “I watched the object as it just sat for an hour before it started to very slowly move eastwards. It was not a star, as I know my stars, so I am perplexed and curious.”
• Vanda James was woken up three times in early August 2012 to see the “bright, golden light” hovering over the sea to the east of her home in Great Yarmouth.
The 53 year old first spotted the light in the early hours of Sunday morning and then again on Monday and Tuesday.
She said: “I woke up early about 1.40am and what alerted me was how bright it was. It was a yellowy, golden (colour), I thought ‘that looks like a planet’ but what was really odd was the way these waves (of light) came out of it, they were almost curved.
“I sat in bed watching it and it didn’t move. It hung about for a long time, 40 minutes or more, and then it suddenly shot backwards, it disappeared within seconds. That was Saturday night.
“On Monday I woke up at the same time and there were two and last night (Tuesday) the same thing again but just one.”
• On January 24, 2002 a RAF officer reported seeing a UFO from his car in Cromer.
In a document released by the National Archives in 2011 entitled report of an unidentified object flying officer Green says he saw eight or nine lights in the sky about four to five miles off the coast.
He describes the UFO as a “like a large firework, too large to be flare”.
The report says the lights were also witnessed by Oxfam employees and shoppers.
In reply to the report a wing commander says “following enquiries through HQ 2 Gp and RAF Neatishead, there is no evidence that unauthorised military activity or any other activity of air defence interest occurred on 24 Jan 02 in the Cromer area”.
• According to top secret UFO reports released to the public on July 12, 2012 a UFO was seen hovering over St Saviour’s Church in Magdalen Street by a woman from the Lakenham area, who claimed she had a series of very close encounters with galactic beings.
In her email to the Ministry of Defence in May 2006, the woman says she had been in contact with the strange craft’s occupants, which she calls greys, since when she was a child.
Her email says: “It is a fallacy for the government to assume that these vehicles aren’t piloted by intelligences. I sensed the craft was like a living organism, but intelligences were inside it (biomechanical.)
“I have had experiences with these craft and their occupants from the age of four. I remember seeing the greys and having thought I imagined them by the bed.
“It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning with a small pin hole in my navel and it leaking that I knew something happened.
“As far as I am concerned I just lost a little bit of DNA with that encounter. No real harm done and no long term psychological damage.
“I have always come back intact. However I have developed a sixth sense, as it were, or they somehow communicate to me where to point the camera.”
A reply from the MOD to the woman states: “With regard to your particular observations, we are satisfied that there is no corroborating evidence to suggest the United Kingdom’s airspace has been breached by unauthorised aircraft.”
Included in the de-classified documents is a report detailing a UFO scare at RAF Lakenheath in August 1956.
The RAF scrambled two Venom fighter jets after a unidentified radar echo (URE) was reported travelling at 4,000mph over Suffolk.
Once the first jet was in air, the URE was reported as having made a “swift circling movement” and had got behind the RAF plane, which tried to shake it off.
The first RAF pilot told his colleague in the other jet: “I saw something, but I’ll be damned if i know what it was.
“He - or it - got behind me and I did everything I could to get behind him and I couldn’t. It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”
There is also a report from a sergeant at RAF Marham, who in November 1998 described a white bright light over Somersham, near Huntingdon.
Another airman from the base reports seeing a white ball with a long tail over the A17 at Boston, Lincolnshire in the same month.

• Check the website tomorrow for the latest UFO files from the Ministry of Defence

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