The Haunted Skies Project: October 2011

From the Bromsgrove Advertiser following an appeal from us after having interviwed a witness who was one of a number of people who saw half moon shaped objects hovering over the town centre.

Residents have close encounter of the blurred kind

A COUPLE devoted to all things extraterrestrial have just published a new book in an on-going series about UFO encounters.

Volume 3 of Haunted Skies Volume Three of Haunted Skies

Dawn Holloway and John Hanson, from Alvechurch, have been hunting down information and witness accounts about strange things in the night sky for almost 20 years.All the collected information makes up Haunted Skies, a day-by-day account of UFO activity in the UK.

Volume Three, covering 1966 to 1967, has just been published, but not all sightings go back to the 60s.Only recently Mr Hanson, a retired West Midlands Police Officer, said a UFO was sighted over Bromsgrove town centre.

“I’m currently researching an incident that occurred at 8pm either on September 16 or September 9 when a number of people living in the Pennine Road area sighted an orange/dark red curved object hovering in the sky a few hundred feet above the town centre,” he said.“From descriptions obtained it is highly unlikely this was a Chinese lantern or misidentification of a planet.“I am satisfied that this was a genuine sighting of something highly unusual.”Haunted Skies Volume Three is currently on sale at Amazom.com.For more information or if anyone saw the UFO over Bromsgrove town centre, call 0212 4450340 or email johndawn1@sky.com.

This was sent to us by Don Ramkin our friend from London. Is it not ironical that while this newspaper will publish reports like this they dont seen prepared to publish any of our work despite having asked for two free Volumes of Haunted Skies. What have they to fear ? just the truth Im afraid.....

Volume 4 1968-1971 is now under way.The foreword is by Philip Mantleand the Dawn and I are working on the corrections and errors before we make that trek of 200 miles down to see our publisher Jon Downes. Which in the summer is great but the dark nights and winter thats not so good! Volume 5 will be commenced after Christmas and will cover the period 1972- 1976(we hope) as Volume 6 will probably be just one Year 1977!

Spoke to Kevin Goodman tonight he has been very encouraging and always makes us laugh, especialley when we remind him of the time we ate an uncooked Aunt Bessies lemon meringue pie together! And we also spoke to Mr T Roy Dutton about his new book which is on sale at the moment UFOs in Reality- what a very good book this is more on the book in the next blog.

Nicholas Maloret rang and hada chat about the 3rd Book which is getting some good reviews........Lionel Beer also telephoned,so did Don I was told he and his friend Andrea had no joy with finding out any more information on a suggestion made to me that the RFI Forum was showing Larry Warren's duty roster for December 1980, and photos of Aliens were also being shown as taken by him in the forest- first ive heard, wary of this information.........

U Real Sightings from real people....

UFO over Wigan 1987

Harold Hill a long standing member of the British Astronomical Association wrote to us with an account of what he saw while looking through his telescope at 6pm 8^th of March 1987.“I was surprised to see what appeared to be a stellar object north preceding the Moon by some degrees and thought it was a high flying aircraft reflecting the suns rays until I noticed it was showing regular fluctuations in brightness.

Looking through the telescope an 8 and a half inch Schmidt reflector, I was unprepared for the image under the magnification of x245 which is the power I normally use for the Moon It consisted of a bright central object on each side of which were irregular shaped sails or vanes, similar to solar panel appendages seen on our spacecraft, except whereas in the latter these are well defined rectangles, these 'sails' were constantly changing shape in a totally unpredictable manner, likened to a yacht sail which had broken lose and was flapping in the wind being attached to the principal object by slender filaments of lesser brightness."

The observations made carried out by Mr. Hill a man with a professional and scientific background painstakingly recorded in his detailed report, between 0604 and 0616 describes an object moving in an erratic approximated SSE position across the sky, before being lost from view as it entered the Earths shadow a sighting which would not have been seen with the naked eye.

In discussions with him about the event, Harold accepts he sought a rational and logical explanation for what he saw, such as a collapsed large balloon satellite of the 'Echo' type tumbling over and over in the sky, but felt this would not have explained the change of direction at least twice during the general drift of the object.

Harold sent a full report to the Astronomer Magazine who published the article as a result of which he was contacted by a reader from Lancashire who confirmed from his research into the time and date given there were no spacecraft or other such objects in the sky which could have explained away what was seen, but did suggest one possible explanation' a flock of several migrating geese flying from Martine Mere west of Denwortham, to the South of England,- an attractive hypothesis according to Harold, who firmly rejected this as the answer!

Appeal for information UFO crash lands in sea?
From Colin re incident from 1962 At sea off Aberdeen in winter.

Vessel: ss “Spray” owned by Ellis & McHardy, Coal Merchants of Aberdeen under command of Capt. Robert Andrews.
( I havnt even checked any of this on the Internet)

One hour after leaving Aberdeen on a moonless night in calm weather an “aircraft” showing several white lights flew at low level over the ship, there was no sound. It turned back and circled the ship once before crashing into the sea. This was observed by 6 or 7 officers and crew. The crash was immediately reported by radio to Aberdeen Harbour Office who ordered the RNLI to launch the lifeboat and sent out the pilot cutter to assist “Spray” with the search for survivors. A number of fishing vessels also joined the search. They searched right through the night and during daylight next day. Nothing found. The “Spray” resumed its ballast voyage to Sunderland to load coal back to Aberdeen. I was employed as a Shipping Agent in Sunderland and always attended “Spray”, knew the Master well, a typical Scot, serious, absolutely reliable. He had been Master of the vessel for many years. Early next morning, a man dressed in typical London Civil Service “uniform” including bowler hat and brolly arrived in our office and asked when “Spray” would arrive. He had come on the overnight sleeper from King’s Cross. The ship was due to arrive within an hour, so he waited and I took him to the ship, arriving as it berthed. He introduced himself to Capt. Andrews and asked for his report. He was shown the ship’s official log book where all relative times and information were entered. He wrote it all in his note book.

He then said that a thorough check of all military and civilian aircraft had been carried out and all were accounted for. No aircraft had been lost. His tone suggested that he did not believe the story. (But if this was the case, why travel all the way from London?). Just north of Aberdeen, around the headland known as Buchan Ness, there is the RAF base at Lossiemouth and in the 1960s they would fly Lancaster Bombers from there with strange, large “lumps” on one side. I wondered how they could fly. I used to see them when I made voyages up the Scottish coast on our cargo ships. At sea there was a circle of white buoys around one mile in circumference with a red buoy in the centre of the circle. These aircraft would make bombing runs to try to hit the red buoy. When a bomb hit the sea it gave off red smoke as a marker. So experimental aircraft were flying in that area, but Lancaster’s engines make a very loud noise whereas whatever crashed off Aberdeen was silent.