The following article was published in “The Rochdale Observer (UK)” 10^TH March, 2004

Kids thrilled by close encounter of mystery kind

MYSTERY in the skies... Daniel Hamer, Louis Stansfield, Jessica Hamer and Cameron Stansfield. 

A GROUP of children playing in Littleborough reckon they have had a close encounter with a UFO. So vivid was their experience at about 7pm on Thursday they have started to draw what they saw. They say the spacecraft hovered slowly just over the rooftops for several minutes and then shot off at hyper speed.

Lindsey Stansfield, of Timbercliffe, Summit, said her sons, Louis, aged eight, and Cameron, aged five, were playing with friends on a trampoline outside their home when they spotted the ‘extra terrestrial’.

She said:

              “The children saw the object flying slowly above the houses. Some of the children thought it was triangular in shape and others square, but it could have been to do with what angle they saw it. It had red lights around the edge and yellow lights in the middle. They rushed in to tell us about it, but the time we got out it had gone.”

The children say the object had stopped above the house behind us and then shot off in hyper drive. Later that evening they started drawing pictures of what they had seen."

“I would like to know if anyone else in Littleborough saw the object."

Louis said:

              “I looked up and saw some lights flashing in the sky. I went in the house to get my mother, but when we went out it had gone.”

A spokesman for the National Air Traffic service said:

              “There was no reported alien activity in controlled airspace that we are aware of.”

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defence said:

               “I am not aware of any other reported sightings. We do have a UFO report line telephone number so that people can report things which they cannot explain.”

She said sightings were checked to see if they had any defence significance, whether the UK airspace may have been compromised by hostile air activity. But this had not been found to be the case.

“We believe that there are rational explanations for such sightings such as aircraft lights or natural phenomena,” she added.

An Astronomer’s writes to The WHY? Files

 Dear Geoff,

                  I have just recently (two days ago), by idle browsing, come across The Why? Files, which should tell you just how little interest I have had up to now in ufology. On the rare occasions that I have seen other web sites on the subject they have struck me, frankly, as nothing more than sensationalized rubbish of the Omygosh! Geewhizz! variety. I have been an amateur astronomer for more than forty years, and I have to tell you that I am by no means a convinced believer in visits by alien space ships and little green men, or little grey ones, for that matter. However, as I found your site to be of a reasonable and serious nature, in fact pretty much the only one of its kind, I thought you might like to add an experience of mine to your records. I'm afraid it falls into the category of "just one more unverifiable story", but I tell it simply for what it's worth. I certainly don't want any publicity out of it.

               One day back in the summer of 1967 I was sitting in my garden enjoying the sunshine and planning an evening's observing. It was one of those rare days in England when the sky is totally clear of cloud and haze, and is a pure unblemished blue. A rare day indeed.  On getting out of my deckchair to go into the house I noticed almost at the zenith two tiny dots, like little seed-pearls, against the blue. As it was the season of garden fetes I assumed they were party balloons and thought no more of it. I eventually resumed my seat in the garden and for the next half hour went on planning for that night's astronomy. At some point I became aware again of these two "pearls", and in the intervening half hour or so neither had moved relative to the other, nor in their position in the sky. I decided that it was unlikely they could be balloons, so I went into the house and brought out the smallest of my telescopes, a 3-inch refractor, and fitted an eye-piece which gave 50x magnification. Through the scope, the first of the pearl-like objects appeared as a blank and featureless fuzzy disc, much like an illuminated household light bulb, so I took my eye away from the scope and adjusted it to focus on the second object, at which point both of them disappeared. They didn't shoot off across the sky, nor fade away; one second they were both there, plain as day, and the next second they were gone. I swept the sky more or less continuously for the next hour using wide-field binoculars and the small telescope, but neither object reappeared. I have not personally seen anything else similar in forty years of observation. I have no idea what they were, nor did I immediately jump up and down thinking "My God, I've seen a ufo!" They could have been almost anything at all.

          However, there is an interesting corollary to this story. A few years ago, I saw a piece of film on tv which was taken by a surveyor in one of the American desert areas, which showed two pearl-white objects, exactly similar to the ones I saw that day, but on the film they were moving, in parallel and towards the horizon. As far as I can remember, the commentary said that the objects were followed at a short interval by two US Airforce fighters.

         There it is, make of it what you will. As an experienced observer I'm familiar with all of the things astronomers come across, from birds to satelites to aircraft to hot air balloons, day or night: nor, as it happens, am I likely to mistake Venus or Sirius for a ufo. I've thought about the incident regularly over the years, but I'm no nearer to a solution.

     Good luck with your site. Maybe one day you'll turn me into a believer.

                Kind regards, P.