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Christmas and New Year is always a busy time for people, including those of us who write for, and read, UFO Review. So here’s a short article that takes a quick look at just a few of the UFO sightings that have been seen in the UK around this time of year. And, before you read on in the hopes of finding mention of Rendlesham …. I haven’t included it because it’s such a huge case that it deserves an article all of its own. But I’m not going to do one, and will have to leave you to Google for it if you don’t already have a folder full of Rendleham links!!!
Let’s begin in the Modern Era with a report from 1952. Richard
Hall copyrighted an article entitled Extraterrestrial Psychology,
back in 1988, that has a list of tables detailing UFO sightings. In 1952 he
catalogues a major wave between June and December over the North Sea; some of
which were observed during NATO manoeuvres. You can find the table at this link:
http://www.nicap.dabsol.co.uk/ncp-hall2.htm
A decade later, or at least sometime during the 1960s, there was what appeared to be a 'Mass Sighting' in Furness, Cumbria. Late one December night, from their bedroom window, a gentleman and his wife saw a UFO hovering over the rooftops. The sighting only lasted about one minute but they talked about it for the whole of the night, having previously been highly sceptical of the existence of UFOs. The gentleman tried to report it to the local press on the following day, only to be laughed at, after which he didn’t even mention it to his work colleagues. So imagine his surprise that evening to see the story, together with many other reports of people having seen it, on the front page of his local newspaper. A contact address was also printed and he wrote to it without expecting to receive any reply. Two weeks later a titled gentleman turned up on his doorstep, and the witness invited him in. After much discussion and investigation, including measurements being taken, it seems that the UFO may have been as large as a football pitch. He was also asked to make a drawing of what he’d seen and, having done so, it seemed to tally almost exactly with twelve other such sketches done by those who had witnessed the UFO. The titled investigator later returned to interview the witness’s wife, accompanied by his own wife, and another whole night was spent in conversation. Unfortunately the witness can only remember the last name of this person, the surname of whom was O’Brien. Was there, is there, a titled gentleman by this name? I don’t know, but the couple sent the witness a Christmas card for years afterwards.
Probably one of the strangest events to come out of the 1960s was what happened at Warminster, Wiltshire, and I won’t rehash the whole of the story here. But Steve Dewey, in his online Chapter 2 of The Start of Things tells it as he remembers it from his childhood in Warminster, and from how it was told in the books of Arthur Shuttlewood.
In it he mentions Arthur Shuttlewood’s book The Warminster Mystery and notes that Shuttlewood believed Warminster to be important because it was:
the focal point or node of some Earth encompassing navigational grid.
And that was the reason that Shuttlewood couldn’t understand why the UFOs suddenly seemed to stop visiting the area. Of course Shuttlewood had started out as a sceptic, but he became convinced that UFOs were real. His books covered most of the different aspects of the phenomenon, as it appeared to be at that time, although it’s worth pointing out that most of his alien contact was by telephone! When the events were taking place it was a topic of national attention by the media, and yet today it’s little talked of, and perhaps even little known about. But many of today’s modern UFO investigation methods come from the lessons learned back then.
Steve
Dewey gives some very good insights into what really happened in the case. And
the reason I’ve included it is because the origin of the Warminster case
came from Christmas Day 1964 when strange sounds were heard in the area. These
weird noises were thought to be coming from something that became dubbed as 'The
Thing'. According to Shuttlewood, it seems to have begun when a lady reported
hearing a very odd commotion on her roof at 01:25 a.m. that day. A few hours later,
and about four miles away, more than thirty soldiers were woken up by loud, and inexplicable, noises. 
Around 06:00 a.m. a lady on her way to the early church
service heard what she described as a menacing sound, adding that the air seemed
to be vibrating. She was made to feel numb from a force pummelling her head,
neck, and shoulders. The postmaster, who lived near by, corroborated the noises,
although their descriptions of what they heard differ, and they did not physically affect the postmaster. By the following summer Shuttlewood had claimed
that there had been almost fifty witnesses to the sound, and he also disparaged any idea that they may have been due to some type of poltergeist activity. But, eventually, the noises stopped and the UFO sightings began to appear. These included fireball reports of the sort that we know today as probably being due to meteorites.
Later in his article Steve Dewey relates some of the sightings that Shuttlewood wrote about. However, he warns us that:
I merely point out that Shuttlewood's reports could be vague, confusing, even misleading.” And he concludes by saying: “For those interested in ufology, the Warminster mystery is an essentially 1960s phenomenon. Apart from the unusual sounds, it provided nothing that had not been described for earlier UFO sightings, both in Britain and the US. What marked Warminster out in particular was the sheer number of sightings, as well as the fact that a whole town seemed to be enmeshed in the phenomenon. What was also unusual, perhaps, was that the phenomenon had one prime focus, through which all information flowed. Shuttlewood's position as a respected local journalist helped focus attention on the Thing. It was to Shuttlewood that many of the reports of UFO sightings were made, and it was through him that these sightings were articulated for the public ……
You
can read his online version here:
http://www.stevedewey.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ufo/
In the May/June 1997 issue of the UK's UFO Magazine, under the heading of Confrontations in the North Atlantic, NATO 1993, Tony Dodd wrote an article entitled Engaging Unknown Underwater Craft. He reports that during the Autumn and Winter of 1970, and the Spring of 1971, the:
Western Alliance became increasingly concerned at a speight of incidents involving UFOs over the north Atlantic Ocean and the eastern coastline of Britain. As a result, a highly secret operation was instigated to try to get to the bottom of the mystery once and for all.
During this operation, codenamed Aeneid, some UFO sightings took place that included one, during daylight hours, off the coast of Lincolnshire. The case involved a UFO one hundred and eighty feet long, with a number of glass-like, ball shaped, objects in attendance. The event lasted for quite a few hours, during which time the objects hovered over an RAF bombing range at Donna Nook, and were seen by at least half a dozen airmen.
In his article Tony Dodd described many other UFO sightings that took place during the operation, including one very intriguing incident where the pilot lost his life, although his body was never found. He also relates a report of what happened on 20th/23rd and 24th December 1992 when, on the 20th, a UFO was tracked entering the sea off the east coast of Iceland. On the 22nd fishermen off the northeast coast observed a:
very large, very fast, "moving underwater craft" which displayed flashing coloured lights.
These objects had also been seen, being escorted by a glowing object, travelling south towards the coast of Scotland. The fishermen’s nets were damaged, and they maintained that the underwater objects were definitely not submarines. On the 23rd Dodd tells us that:
an Icelandic Coast Guard vessel and two gunboats were ordered to take up station off Langeness, an area where UFOs had been seen entering the water. The operation was conducted in great secrecy and I was told the crews felt very uneasy. Their role was to observe and report. A short time later, three American warships took up station in the area and were eventually joined by a fleet of NATO warships, including some from Britain. A simple check with newspapers in the week leading up to Christmas of that year will reveal the gathering was described as a military exercise. Few bothered to appreciate that it was extremely strange and unusual for a massive NATO naval exercise to take place so close to Christmas.
And the following day, the 24th Dodd continues by saying that:
the crews of two British 'Hunter Killer' submarines were recalled from Christmas leave. HMS Endurance and HMS Warrior put to sea to link up with the NATO surface fleet. At the same time, Icelandic Coast Guard vessels and gunboats were ordered to take up station at Alice Fjord off the east coast of Iceland. British newspapers then put out a story that surface ships had entered the area to track a very large underwater craft, believed to be one of a new generation of Russian submarines. I then received further information from contacts that a further four UFOs had been seen to descend and enter the same area of sea. Icelandic sources also confirmed that the entire operation was linked to tracking "unknown underwater alien craft.
At
the same time a big search and rescue effort was taking place to find a ship that appeared to have gone missing, but even after several days, nothing was found.
This search was undertaken in immense secrecy. Two weeks later, on 12th January 1993, the weather seriously deteriorated badly, and remained so for the next three weeks. In fact it was so dreadful that only large ships could remain at sea, with all smaller vessels having to take shelter. When the weather improved, and all ships could put back out to sea, the operation continued, but
this wasn’t the end of the strange UFO events.
According
to Tony Dodd’s article very strange things were happening right up until
the time it was written in 1997. And, if you’re interested, you can read
the rest of it here:
http://www.stop-chemtrails.com/atlantic.html
This next report you won’t find online because it’s my own sighting
that took place in late November/early December 1973. My husband was driving
us along the main road, the A4, from Hungerford to Newbury. The time was either late morning or early afternoon, and the weather was cold, dry, and overcast.
Living
so near Greenham Common both of us were quite used to the the many different
types of aircraft that often flew over the area. Suddenly my husband drew my
attention to something in the sky, over the fields to our right. At first we
thought it was a plane because it was shiny and metallic looking, but we couldn’t
see a tail or wings of any sort. 
The nearest description I can give is of a
cigar. It kept pace with us, or we kept pace with it, for about six miles, there
being hardly any traffic on this long straight stretch of road. Eventually,
we went up a hill and into a built up area where it was no longer in our line
of sight. We didn’t hear any noise at all, but this may have been because our windows were closed due to the cold. At the time we both thought it might
be a UFO; this to the extent that it convinced my husband who, until that sighting, had been a confirmed sceptic.
I suppose it’s possible that the road we were on ran in line with the flightpath into GreenahamCommon Airbase, but we’d never seen planes come in on that trajectory before. And we’d never seen planes fly so low over a populated area, even when the cloudbase was so low. Years later we saw massive American C17s fly low into the airbase over a built-up area, but that was a case of the flightpath having been there long before the town had spread out underneath it.
As for our personal sighting, did we report it? No, we didn’t know who to report it to. And, did we ever find an explanation? Again, no, we never did. But the memory is as clear in mind now, over thirty years later, as on the day that it happened.
In
early December 1988, during an evening coach trip to a work’s party, a couple of the passengers saw what they described as being an upside-down cone
shape. 
It was seen from Sheffield Parkway, above a large tree covered hill,
and was described as being a bright neon yellow colour. Pressing their faces
to the coach windows, and shutting out the light, the object was not believed
to be a light reflection. It appeared to be twisting, as though not only moving
but also turning, and it disappeared within about a minute. However, it was
also described as seeming to have columns of white lights around it, slowly
twinkling in sequence. So was it perhaps a reflection from some Christmas decorations? The full report can be found here:
http://www.mysterymag.com/yourexperiences/
Just
under ten years later, from Llandoverry, in Wales, there was a report that on
19th December 1997 a UFO was seen in the early morning over a hydroelectric dam in the Black Mountains. It was spotted by two Forestry Commission employees,
however they were not working together but were, in fact, about five miles apart, although they were in radio contact with each other. The UFO was described as
being a ball of light with four glittering tails, and was thought to be about two miles high and three times the size of a large star. Then, after about half
a minute it shot upwards and was lost to view. The very short report can be
found here:
http://www.cwd.co.uk/alien-uk/index.htm
Two
years after that, on 29th December 1999, came a report from a couple driving
through Swaledale, North Yorkshire, one evening. They were unaware of any other
traffic and thus had their headlights on full beam. 
Suddenly, about one hundred feet
in front of them, they saw a grey trapezoidal object around twenty feet long and six to ten feet high. It shot across the road, just above ground level, at a speed
that seemed to be 100 mph. No real features could be seen, although it resembled
a flat plane tilted away from their viewpoint, with both ends sloping in at
the top. The whole event happened so quickly that at first the driver thought
it might have been a low-flying jet, although no sound was heard. Both occupants
in the car saw the object, but the passenger thought that perhaps it had been
smaller, and closer, than the driver believed. You can read their story here:
http://www.apra.org.uk/ufo_uk_yorks.htm
From the same website there is another report from December 1999, this time on the 13th of the month, in Swindon, Wiltshire. However, this was a daylight sighting by a gentleman on his way to work. According to APRA he described what he’d seen thus:
………. he noticed a bright white light in the sky, almost like a torch beam. This then changed into a shape of blue/ white lights, which was very similar to the object seen by the combined APRA/SUFOG skywatch team, while at Avebury on 1st August 1999. This time the object changed course by 90°, and then "just went out". Interestingly, this course, and disappearance, would have been over the Avebury area!
And also on that website is a report from Wanborough, Wiltshire, on 19th December 2002, in which the APRA co-ordinator had an early morning encounter. He was outside at 06:30 a.m. when he saw a very bright blue/white light in the shape of a cigar, only fatter. It gave off a red/orangey tail around two hundred yards behind it, and was travelling in a totally straight line. The observer adds that it wasn’t a meteor as he saw that the tail was completely circular.
You can
read both of the above reports here:
http://www.apra.org.uk/ufo_uk_wilts.htm
Finally
from the APRA website there is a report from the M4 Hammersmith flyover, London,
that happened on 28th December 2000 during a very cold, but perfectly clear,
day. The object seen was described as being diamond shaped, light on the top
and dark underneath. However, it didn’t appear to be a plane, or a balloon
and, after approximately another couple of miles, the witness reported that
it still seemed to be the same size, and remained in the same place as when he had first seen it. This particular report can be found here:
http://www.apra.org.uk/ufo_uk_london.htm
Also, just
after Christmas 2000, a sighting took place in Wooten Basset, just outside Swindon,
Wiltshire. It comes from a taxi driver who was working very early one morning.
Although still dark the weather was crystal clear, with little artificial light
around. While killing time waiting for a fare, the driver looked out of the
taxi window to try and see the International Space Station passing over, and
saw a very bright star near the moon. Getting out of the car for a better look
the driver’s attention was caught by another object that seemed to be
bright lights.
The first object appeared to have a searchlight, and the witness thought it might be from a plane coming in to land. However, the searchlight was pointing down towards the ground, instead of straight ahead, and it seemed to be coming right towards the driver. As it closed in it became apparent that it was a cigar shaped object, and another object was then seen flying behind it, a little to its right-hand side. This one was shaped like a golf ball and glowed red. When first observed they appeared to be low in the sky, but when right overhead they seemed to about five-thousand feet high, and they had also slowed down.
At
that point the cigar shaped object apparently divided in half, then into three, and finally into four, with all four objects maintaining a cigar shape. This gave the impression that they were escorting the red golf ball shaped UFO. When all were in place the cigar shapes began to send out a light sequence, and then started to leave, without changing course. The witness tried to communicate with
them on a telepathic basis; asking them to return. At which point they did change course and begin to turn. By this time the witness had stopped trying to contact
them, and they all left. You can read the whole of the report here:
http://www.cwd.co.uk/alien-uk/index.htm
From the next link come two more December reports. The first occurred in Chatham, Kent on 10th December 2001. It is very brief and merely states that, sometime between 02:00 and 04:00 a.m., two night workers had seen strange balls of light traversing the sky together with a craft that appeared to be out of control.
The second report, almost as brief, took place on 23rd December 2001 in Livingston, Scotland. The observer saw a flashing light high up in a clear sky, on a frosty day, and thought it might have been a plane. However, it didn’t seem to be moving, and it changed colour from red to blue to white. The witness also saw three white lights, in a triangular shape, that were moving closer to the flashing light. And then these disappeared leaving only the original object.
You can
read both of these reports here:
http://www.cwd.co.uk/alien-uk/index.htm
Again
from Scotland, and also on 23rd December 2001, but this time in Edinburgh, came
a report that, during the night, two hours of images had been captured on a Digicom camera. Apparently the footage unmistakably showed three gigantic Mother-ships
stationed over the estuary. One was said to be between a half to one mile long,
elliptical, curved at the front, and with the front ending in three large headlights.
It was also stated that one of the ships had lots of windows, and different layers, and disgorged shiny pod shaped ships, or beings, glowing white. The
report continued in similar vein for a few more sentences but, personally, I’m afraid I’m not convinced! However if you’d like to read it you can
find it here:
http://ufoinfo.com/ufonewsuk/v01/0110.shtml
In addition, the same page publishes a report from Ipswich, Suffolk, which happened on Christmas Day 2001. Around midnight a couple, who wished to remain anonymous, saw a very bright light from their bedroom window. The lady of the house thought it was, perhaps, a star, although there was no moon to be seen, but the light seemed to actually be shining into their room. She then fell asleep only to be woken a few minutes later by her husband, who told her the light was flashing and emitting a blue hue. This blue colour appeared to be coming from the base of the object, which seemed to be oval, with two diagonal protuberances on each side towards the base. The husband thought it was smaller than the moon but larger than a star. After ten minutes spent watching it the object disappeared from the skyline.
Two
days later, on 29th December 2001, an event took place in Wytham, Oxfordshire.
It seems that a lady was driving along a country road on that morning when she saw a UFO. It had a triangular shape with a light at each corner. The object
hovered above a wood, and remained in the same position for about four minutes, but no sound could be heard. The lady added that it was about two hundred feet above
the trees, and dark in colour.
You
can read those two reports here:
http://ufoinfo.com/ufonewsuk/v01/0110.shtml
Back on
the APRA pages there is a report from 22nd December 2003 that took place in
Wheatley, Oxfordshire. Two people had parked their car on a dark country road
when it developed engine problems, and were waiting to be rescued. The sky was
clear, with just a few high clouds, and the stars were bright. Around 03:00
a.m. they noticed three yellow/white lights about four-thousand feet high, in the shape
of a triangle. Two were horizontal while the third was at the object’s apex, and the lights remained motionless for at least three quarters of an hour.
The witness who reported this incident also added that they’d been in
RAF for twelve years and had seen many different types of aircraft flying at night,
including those from NATO countries. But they didn’t believe that what
they’d seen was either an aircraft or a weather balloon. You can read their story here:
http://www.apra.org.uk/ufo_uk_oxon.htm
Between
Autumn and Christmas 2003 numerous UFO sightings were reported from Cumbria.
These were mostly described as being of large orange balls that glowed in the
sky, before shooting away. And, late in 2002, a delivery driver had seen one
of these orange light balls ostensibly following him early one morning. After
a little way the ball sped up and veered off. It seems that Cumbria is quite
a UFO hotspot.
This next
case has no date, although the BBC interview was probably done not more than
a couple of years ago. The interviewee was Tony James, a UFO investigator, and
he was asked what his most baffling case was. He replied that it was possibly
an event that had happened over Bonsall Moor, Derbyshire, at least ten years
previously, that was highly intriguing. 
It seems that a family who had hired
a cottage for the Christmas holidays were packing to return home before dawn
on 31st December. They saw a bright light on the horizon that was flying around
erratically, and it then flew straight at their cottage. It came to a halt, at treetop level, right above the witness. The man got his family to join him
outside, and they were scared of the large, strange, object silently hovering
above them. Tony continued by saying that:
After a few minutes, this craft seemed to turn itself inside out (changing shape) to make a triangular shaped craft, without making a sound. The family was petrified and ran inside, except for the husband, who was amazed. The craft moved off at walking pace, again without making a sound and the husband followed. After about 100 meters, the craft gained speed and then shot off into the distance at tremendous speed.
You can read the whole of the Tony James interview here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/spotlight/
I’m sure that many of you have heard of the Halewood LITS. Halewood is on Merseyside, not far from Liverpool. They have been appearing since 2002, including sightings from this year, so I’ll just mention those seen during the month of December.
On
2nd December 2003, late in the evening, a lady reported seeing a circle of six
red lights flying so close together that they didn’t seem to be aeroplanes. About an hour earlier a gentleman had seen three white lights slowly travelling
across the sky. 
In fact he’d got not only his wife but also the neighbours
to go out and watch them for about ten minutes. At least a dozen lights were
seen, and they moved along the horizon, only to eventually disappear towards
the Moon, one by one. Photographs were taken, and the control tower at John
Lennon Airport had seen them, although they hadn’t shown up on the radar.
The control tower added that many other people had also called to report them, but so far there had been no explanation of what they were. A witness who had
seen them from his home in Woolton reported them to the Liverpool Coast Guard, but they’d received no other reports, and added that there had been no
meteor activity during that particular time.
A further witness had seen the lights on 4th December, and had also managed to take video footage of them. And yet another couple came forward to report their sighting on the same date. They described seeing ten to twelve reddish/orange lights travelling in groups of twos, quite far apart. Later the lights changed and all mixed together while still moving around.
These
lights were next seen on 29th December, and once again two separate witnesses
managed to capture them on film. One part of the footage, around twenty minutes
long, showed them moving relative to each other; which shows they were not simply
being blown around by the wind but had their own propulsion system.
On the same night another gentleman saw not only the lights but also what he described as looking like a carousel in the sky. It was round, and glowed with a bright white light, and had about a dozen orange lights at the bottom that seemed to be pulsating. The witness also saw three parachute shaped objects that were lit up, with another two appearing very shortly afterwards.
Meanwhile a whole host of people in a local supermarket car park saw the lights. In that report the lights were described as being bright orange, and floating in the sky. To begin with only one large light was seen, but soon there were two more groups, one of three and another of four. Shortly after that, the large one broke into two separate lights and went off in different directions. All the lights seemed to move at different speeds, with some even coming to a complete stop at times. And, as in some of the other reports, no sounds were heard.
You
can read a full description of the events in an article entitled Halewood Lights In The Sky (LITS) 2002-2005 at this link:
http://www.mara.org.uk/Halewood_LITS.htm
Bringing things right up to date I’ll finish with this story from Huddersfield that was reported on 2nd January 2004. An elderly gentleman said that he’d been very late going to bed a few days previously as he’d been watching television. What he’d seen was a bright light in the sky that appeared to remain stationary for the fifteen minutes he’d been looking at it before finally going to bed. During that time another UFO came into view, travelling very fast, and he was positive that it wasn’t a plane, or a helicopter, as he’d often seen those flying over. He described both UFOs as being round, with many lights on them. But the local police hadn’t received any other reports of this sighting.
These are just a few of the cases that have happened in the UK over the years, and I suspect there are far more if you want to go searching for them. Some of the ones I’ve included may be true, and some might simply be down to the affects of too much Christmas Cheer!
Have any of these cases been solved, or exposed as a hoax? I don’t know but, as I said at the beginning, it’s a busy time of year. So if you’re really intrigued you could always spend some time trying to find out, especially if you’re looking for something to do over this holiday season.
Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and keep your eyes on the skies!