UFO files: Dog walker's alien encounter

Wattisham Airfield - which received reports of an alien in Norwich.

UFO files released by the Ministry of Defence today reveal an East Anglian woman's claim that she was approached by an alien with a Scandinavian accent.

The woman was walking her dog near Norwich in 1989 when she apparently met a man from another planet who said aliens were behind crop circles. She then telephoned RAF Wattisham in Suffolk in a state of distress.

The incident is one of hundreds of sightings reported in seven files produced by the DI55 branch of the Defence Intelligence Staff for the period between November 1987 and April 1993.

The military UFO documents, containing 1,200 sightings, have been made available online for the first time today by the National Archives.

The dog walker said she was “completely terrified” by the event and as she ran home she heard a “loud buzzing noise” behind her and turned to see a large glowing orange-white spherical object rising vertically from behind trees.

Other sightings across the country include a UFO seen hovering next to an RAF jet over Scotland. Witnesses reportedly saw the mysterious large diamond-shaped object hanging in the air for about ten minutes before it ascended vertically at high speed.

Military experts concluded the aircraft was a Harrier, but could not identify the UFO despite apparently commissioning detailed line drawings of it.

British military intelligence officers tasked with investigating UFO reports took a close interest in claims the US was developing a top secret spy-plane known as Aurora, and there are numerous cuttings from magazines and newspapers relating to these rumours in the files.

Attached to one article about Aurora from September 1991 was a note from an MoD official that read: “Attention is really focusing on this now, notwithstanding a recent USAF 'denial briefing'.”

Dr David Clarke, a UFO expert and journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, said the newly published documents showed the MoD was “not in the slightest bit interested in aliens”.

The files provide details of how the crash of a USAF pilot into the North Sea in September 1970 made headlines again in 1992 over claims that he was on an operation to intercept UFOs. There is also information on the MoD's decision to halt a project to computerise UFO records amid concerns about public reaction if it became known.

The files can be accessed at www.nationalarchives/ufos and will be free to view for the first month.