The truth isn’t out there

The latest set of government files on UFOs released by the National Archives show that the British Ministry of Defence had neither the resources nor the will to study thousands of sightings reported to them over decades, writes Sanchia Berg.

On Jan. 27, 2004, there was a light snowfall in Nottinghamshire. Alex Birch, a local photographer, grabbed his camera. He wanted to take a picture of his local town hall, Retford, for a competition, the BBC has reported.

He got the shot -- the picturesque winter scene you can see above -- and he says he did not notice anything out of the ordinary. When he developed the picture though he saw a clear flying saucer shape.

This was not the first time Alex had taken a picture of a UFO. In 1962, as a 14 year-old schoolboy, he had taken a picture which showed five saucer shaped objects in the distance.

It was widely reported in the press at the time, an era when the UFO mania was at its height. By his account, he became locally notorious for years after. Ten years later, he told me, he decided to pretend it was a fake - and he gave a different account to the press.

He maintains that picture was genuine. With the second image though, he decided to keep quiet about it, and make his own investigations.

He sent the original film to the Fuji lab, for them to examine, he also had his camera checked. Neither of these enquiries found any technical reason for the mysterious shape.

So, he contacted the Ministry of Defence. His file is one of those made public in the latest release of documents to the National Archives.

Though the ministry sent the picture to its specialist imaging department, they too could find no definite reason for the peculiar apparition. "Insufficient Information " was their conclusion - though they did suggest that a droplet of moisture on the lens could have been responsible.

For Dr David Clarke, who has made a close study of the government's UFO files over many years, Alex Birch's image stands out.

Dr Clarke is a lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University, not a scientific expert, but he said that most of the pictures of UFOs can be dismissed as fakes, or more easily explained through technical causes.

For instance, mysterious lights seen above Glastonbury in 2003, or other mysterious lights above a music festival in Wales in 2006, both documented in the files.

Perhaps the most bizarre account from the files is the 2003 sighting of "worm-shaped" UFOs "wriggling around in the sky" over East Dulwich in London.

A mother and daughter reported it to the police but according to testimony she later gave to the MoD's UFO desk, the two police constables who attended the scene were joined by two men dressed in "space suits and dark glasses who called themselves Mork and Mindy".

The woman complained of being made "to look foolish". In a letter dated Jan. 21, 2003, the woman says "your men have fed us with a lot of rubbish, presumably to make us look foolish and our story unbelievable, which they have succeeded in doing".

Alex Birch's sighting is unusual because it was investigated by the MoD. The vast majority of UFOs reported to the government were never looked into, as Dr Clarke explains elsewhere.