In one of the strangest years of our lives, reports of UFO sightings have reached new heights in lockdown

Reports of suspected alien spaceships zooming over the UK doubled in the past 12 months

For all the unintended consequences of lockdown, a sharp increase in the number of UFO sightings must be one of the least anticipated. Whether grey discs over Liverpool, flashing lights above Lisburn or a ball of fire tumbling from the sky near Blaby, 2020 was a record year for UFOs.

Reports of suspected alien spaceships zooming over the UK doubled in the past 12 months, according to investigations by i.

 

Using Freedom of Information requests, i has discovered there have been at least 128 calls made to 16 police forces since 2016, and more than 40 of them – from the “two shining lights” above Northampton to the “multiple UFOs” at Shepway in Kent – were in the past 12 months.

But the true figure could be much higher, with more than 30 police forces including Police Scotland saying they have no easy way of counting the calls and three saying they would each have to search through more than 700 records where the letters UFO were used.

The truth is out there

 

It raises the question of what has caused the rise in sightings, whether it be that aliens have been paying extra attention to the Earth during the pandemic or that people have had more time to watch out for odd lights in the sky.

“If people are seeing more UFOs during the pandemic, it might simply be because they have more time on their hands and have been looking up more,” Nick Pope, who has investigated UFOs for the Ministry of Defence (MoD), says.

“But perhaps something deeper and more philosophical is at play – a yearning to escape from terrestrial misery and the hope that there’s something more than the drudgery of our everyday existence.”

When the MoD stopped investigating UFOs in 2009, people began increasingly reporting them to the police.

One caller in Llansadwrn, North Wales, even told officers in February this year after seeing a “very bright light” in the sky: “The MoD don’t take calls any more for UFO sightings.”

The calls identified by i during the Covid-19 pandemic have ranged from the mysterious to the frankly bizarre. They include a “round, grey disc with red lights” over Liverpool, “many flashing lights” above Lisburn and a UFO reported to have tumbled from the sky in a ball of fire at Blaby in Leicestershire.

 

Flying objects

 

With true British understatement, one spotter of “flying objects”, also in Liverpool, said they “just wanted it logging for the record”, while another who had seen a “UFO in the sky with a green light on it” told police: “No, I don’t need you to attend.”

Then there was the man who dialled 999 saying he “needed the RAF” as he had “seen two UFOs in Sunderland” and the person in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, who saw “a line across the sky the size of six football pitches before it faded away”.

In rural Staffordshire, a police call handler was still taking down details of the “Vulcan bomber-shaped craft lit up with white lights” when a second caller picked up the phone to report “a large, triangular thing,” nearly 40 miles up the A40 near Stoke-on-Trent, “with three creamy lights under each corner”.

At Evesham in Worcestershire, a caller reported seeing “a UFO-looking thing”, but then told officers: “It has just flown back over and it looks like a helicopter now.”

“It might not have been a UFO,” they added as an afterthought.

Mistaken identity

A number of the calls can be read as a case of mistaken identification – unless alien spaceships have the same green and red lights used by Earth-bound airliners.

This was certainly the case when another person in Bangor, Northern Ireland, told police in March they had seen a “flying object that appeared to have solar panels”, before later telling police they believed it was a drone.

Others had a more obvious explanation. When police checked an online star chart, they decided that a sighting at Gravesham in Kent “was determined to be Venus”.

Experts say that people’s interest in UFOs tends to ebb and flow and, in uncertain times, people often seem to be more likely to see them.

With passenger flights grounded during stricter lockdowns, the skies have been emptier, perhaps making anything flying seem more unusual.

Smokers and dog walkers are thought most likely to report UFO sightings as they are often outdoors at unusual times.

But the sightings have often raised concerns about people’s mental health – a sign, perhaps, of the increased stresses and strains many have faced during lockdown.

Concerns included a man in Salford who said he had seen a spaceship that “comes and goes”, and a half-naked man in Northern Ireland who said he had just been “delivered by a UFO”.

Strange things in the sky

 

In Sunderland, another witness calling police from a phonebox said he had seen a UFO flying over his house in the morning, adding: “This is not the first time I’ve seen it.”

Then there was a caller in Manchester who told police while reporting seeing lights in the sky: “I don’t believe in UFOs.”

But whatever their reasons, it is unlikely that people will stop seeing strange things in the sky when the pandemic is finally over.

“Hardly a week goes by without some new story about discoveries in space, and this makes people look up and wonder, because the question of whether or not we’re alone in the universe is one of the biggest and most profound questions we can ask,” Mr Pope says.

“Most UFO sightings turn out to be misidentifications of ordinary objects and phenomena such as aircraft lights, Chinese lanterns, satellites and meteors, but the sceptics have to be right every time, whereas the believers only need to be right once.”

Dean Kirby 

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