UK releases more UFO sighting files
Source: Agencies |
August 12, 2011, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
MEN in black, Mork and Mindy, lights in the sky and more than 20 years of other alien visitations and bizarre sightings recorded in Britain's own "X-Files" were made available online to the public yesterday.
The nearly 9,000 pages of UFO-related documents, drawings, letters and parliamentary questions recorded by Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD) from 1985 to 2007 are the eighth batch of UFO files to be released to the National Archives (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos.)
The files are available to view free online for one month and include the tale of one woman and her daughter from the leafy London neighborhood of East Dulwich who said they saw lights in a worm shape, wriggling around in the sky before being visited by two men in space suits and dark glasses early one chilly January morning in 2003.
The men, who carried a clicking transmitter, introduced themselves as Mork and Mindy - the name of a hit US television comedy in the late 1970s and early 80s about an alien who lives on Earth. The beings warned the woman not to look at the shapes in the sky because of possible radiation and offered to wash her eyes with a solution.
After enquiring about her star sign, they left.
Although entertaining, the files may prove a blow to conspiracy theorists who believe the government is withholding information about extraterrestrial visitors.
"Lots of people continue to believe that the release of these files is a whitewash and the government is concealing the fact that we are not alone in the universe," said David Clarke, National Archives consultant and Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Sheffield Hallam University.
"There is nothing you can do to disprove this. If people don't see what they want in the files, they don't believe it's the truth," he said.
In one 1995 memo, MoD officials admit that "higher priorities" had prevented a full-scale study of the thousands of UFO reports they had received since World War II and state that the public perception of the MoD's DI55 branch as a defender of the Earth from an alien menace was "light years from the truth."
"The files suggest that the UK government knows as much as we do about alien visitors and has no evidence to suggest we have ever been visited, " Clarke said.
Still, the files document enough close encounters to whet the appetite of any Mulder and Scully fan.
Several of the reports are handwritten letters to the MoD from members of the public, adamant about what they saw.
"As God is my witness it's true and you should take note of it because, who knows, one day they might come in their hundreds," warns one man, who sighted a large, silent object with an orange light lift off from fields near his home in Wales in 2002.
Other files reveal that experts from the Defence Geographic and Imagery Intelligence Agency (DGIA) were called upon to examine a photograph of a "flying saucer" taken in 2004 outside a town hall in central England but could not reach any "definitive conclusions."
"Ultimately, unidentified flying objects are just that - unidentified, said Clarke. "They could have been caused by anything."
The nearly 9,000 pages of UFO-related documents, drawings, letters and parliamentary questions recorded by Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD) from 1985 to 2007 are the eighth batch of UFO files to be released to the National Archives (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos.)
The files are available to view free online for one month and include the tale of one woman and her daughter from the leafy London neighborhood of East Dulwich who said they saw lights in a worm shape, wriggling around in the sky before being visited by two men in space suits and dark glasses early one chilly January morning in 2003.
The men, who carried a clicking transmitter, introduced themselves as Mork and Mindy - the name of a hit US television comedy in the late 1970s and early 80s about an alien who lives on Earth. The beings warned the woman not to look at the shapes in the sky because of possible radiation and offered to wash her eyes with a solution.
After enquiring about her star sign, they left.
Although entertaining, the files may prove a blow to conspiracy theorists who believe the government is withholding information about extraterrestrial visitors.
"Lots of people continue to believe that the release of these files is a whitewash and the government is concealing the fact that we are not alone in the universe," said David Clarke, National Archives consultant and Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Sheffield Hallam University.
"There is nothing you can do to disprove this. If people don't see what they want in the files, they don't believe it's the truth," he said.
In one 1995 memo, MoD officials admit that "higher priorities" had prevented a full-scale study of the thousands of UFO reports they had received since World War II and state that the public perception of the MoD's DI55 branch as a defender of the Earth from an alien menace was "light years from the truth."
"The files suggest that the UK government knows as much as we do about alien visitors and has no evidence to suggest we have ever been visited, " Clarke said.
Still, the files document enough close encounters to whet the appetite of any Mulder and Scully fan.
Several of the reports are handwritten letters to the MoD from members of the public, adamant about what they saw.
"As God is my witness it's true and you should take note of it because, who knows, one day they might come in their hundreds," warns one man, who sighted a large, silent object with an orange light lift off from fields near his home in Wales in 2002.
Other files reveal that experts from the Defence Geographic and Imagery Intelligence Agency (DGIA) were called upon to examine a photograph of a "flying saucer" taken in 2004 outside a town hall in central England but could not reach any "definitive conclusions."
"Ultimately, unidentified flying objects are just that - unidentified, said Clarke. "They could have been caused by anything."
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
