Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Strange Lights over England

Sparse dark clouds dotted the sky over Chawton, Hampshire, England, on the evening of June 22, 2002 when Ashley Martin stepped outside with his camcorder. In the distance he could see the construction of his sister’s house, but was surprised when something dropped out of the clouds.

The time was 9:35 p.m.

“I noticed a very bright white light approaching from the east,” he said. “I decided to take a closer look at it and I zoomed in.”

The strange, hovering light he captured on video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgVWJ1vWen8) seemed to throb as it flew closer. Ashley’s video moves from lack of a tripod, but the object seemed to creep closer during the seven-minute recording.

“I soon realized that this was not a normal object,” he said. “It was pure white, pulsating … After a few seconds of travelling in a level direction it suddenly, and without warning, dropped down.”

At one point, the object almost disappeared into a cloud before dropping below it.

“When it emerged from out underneath the cloud it had gotten bigger but was still … traveling at an angle, then stopped stationery and flashed out several times,” Ashley said. “It then moved off again.”

The light hovered a few more minutes until it disappeared.

“During the course of me filming it, it gave off an orangey-red glow a few times, then completely disappeared,” Ashley said.

The object almost immediately dematerialized, then the video ends.

But this wasn’t the last unidentified flying object Ashley saw. Eleven days later, one appeared again.

“On July 1, I saw another alien spacecraft,” he said. “This was in the same place as the first object and was similar but not the same. I filmed this object for 20 minutes.”

Although already a firm believer in UFOs, the sightings gave Ashley something he’d never had – proof. But, they also brought more questions.

Ashley, considering the light might be something manmade, contacted people who might be able to explain the light in his videos. An American company expressed interest and asked to see the video.

“I had all the footage from my first video put onto a second video and sent it all the way across the Atlantic to America,” Ashley said.

He sent his video to a company in Lampasas, Texas, with the understanding the footage might make it onto a television program. He never heard from the company again.

“Disappointingly and annoyingly they never bothered to respond on what they thought of the footage,” he said.

Ashley’s sightings may be more common than not. Worldwide, eyewitnesses report about 70,000 UFOs yearly, according to the Mutual UFO Network, a UFO research organization. The reports range from lights to physical craft to alien contact, and there’s no way to gauge how many sightings aren’t reported.

Although Ashley is sure he saw something not of this world, he also realizes there could be a terrestrial explanation. Either way, he’s happy he saw the lights in the sky.

“I have always believed in UFOS and their existence,” Ashley said. “But never in my wildest dreams did I believe that I would actually see them myself. I count myself extremely fortunate and privileged to see them.”

Copyright 2007 by Jason Offutt

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1 comment:

Helen said...

That reminds me of a strange light I saw very close to me once. Like other small occurrences, I hadn't bothered to dwell on it; I just thought it was interesting.

My apartment complex was expanding; it had bought the field next to us and burned and bulldozed the land, which I was very displeased with, though I still liked to go over there nonetheless, because they never seemed to be working whenever I was home. I walked over one night, around nine, give or take some time--point being, it was dark. I didn't realize that a bright like was illuminating the field until it went out all of a sudden. Like, I realized that it was really bright, brighter than the moon could make it, looked up, saw an orb of white light directly above the field, and then it was gone. I continued to stare because I wondered if they had set up some sort of light to illuminate the area already, but there was nothing but air in the space where the light had been.