PRESS ROOM

22 November / December 2008 CURRENT

Find a word in both paragraphs which means ‘policeman’.

Which two-word phrase is commonly used to describe an unidentified flying object because of its appearance?

Which noun is derived from ‘to see’?

THESE FASCINATING reports, taken so seriously they were documented by the Ministry of Defence, have been revealed after a Freedom of Information request by UFO researchers.

And, according to the files, the number of reports of UFOs doubled after the release of Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi drama Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977.

One of the strangest reports in the files is the case in Northumbria where 12 police officers say they saw a UFO in December 1981. They all reported seeing an intense green light. In the same month of the same year another policeman in Shropshire claimed to see a UFO hovering above Wolverhampton hospital. He saw a 60cm-long, 45cm-wide object like an ‘inverted meat dish’ flying in the air. The cop said the dish had an arm which descended from underneath it for about 45cm.

Britain’s UFO• ‘X-Files’•

go public!

This summer, the highly-anticipated movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe was finally released. In the meantime the British Government have released their own X-Files – with details of UFO and alien sightings over the country from the past 30 years. Mulder and Scully1 would be impressed!

One file reveals how easy it is for people to be fooled into thinking normal aircraft are flying saucers. A group of drinkers at The Walnut Tree near Tunbridge Wells in 1982 reported seeing red and green flashing lights above the pub. When the local bobby investigated what direction the lights appeared to be travelling, he realised it was always towards Gatwick airport.

But other sightings were not so easy to dismiss. Two police officers recorded a sighting of a UFO in April 1984. The cops responded to a call from members of the public in Stanmore, Middlesex, claiming to have seen a flying saucer. When they arrived at the scene, the two cops saw a circular object, with a dome on the top and bottom, and multi-coloured lights.

1 Mulder and Scully are the two main characters in the TV and film The X-Files.

CURRENT November / December 2008 23

Answers ➜ Page 27

✱ WORDWISEUFO (abbreviation):

unidentified flying object

X-Files (n): originally the

title of a 1990s U.S. TV show

which featured two people

investigating paranormal

phenomena; ‘X’ was the FBI

secret boss to whom they were

answerable. It now means

any secret files referring to

unexplained happenings

MoD (abbreviation): Ministry

of Defence

sceptic (n): a person who

mistrusts or doubts people or

ideas

junk (US slang): anything

worthless which is discarded

or thrown away

cover up (n): deliberate

concealment, especially of a

crime

Your Turn

Why is ‘whom’ used rather than ‘who’?

The prefix mis means wrong, bad or incorrect. Which of the following words can be preceded by mis-? representation / promise / understanding / hope / fit / interpret In the above paragraph, find:

(i) a two-word verb describing a plane or any other flying object hitting the ground out of control

(ii) a noun meaning ‘a person’ or ‘something that exists’

Find a word that means ‘completely confused’.

MisidentificationNick Pope, who worked for the MoD● for 21 years investigating sightings said: “While there’s no evidence of little green men in these files, they should be of immense interest to sceptics● and believers. Most of the UFO sightings here are probably misidentifications of aircraft

lights and meteors, but some are more difficult to explain, and include UFOs seen by police officers and pilots, and cases where UFOs have been tracked on radar.”

In the first files released, an 1983 MoD memo admits that their experts were sometimes baffled by the sightings: “The sole interest of the Ministry of Defence in UFO reports is to establish whether they reveal anything of defence interest (intruding aircraft). The Ministry of Defence does not deny that there are strange things to see in the sky.”

The memo goes on to say that much of what is seen may be space junk● burning up in the atmosphere, unusual cloud formations and weather balloons.

It concludes that the MoD “certainly has no evidence that alien spacecraft have landed on this planet” .

AdvertisementBut many of the people who made the reports which feature in the files obviously feel that they have evidence. The Waterloo Bridge UFO was seen by numerous people, many of whom called police. One man, according to the files, certainly believes he has seen little green men in the UK. He claims he was visited frequently by an alien called Elgar who he says was killed by another race of beings in the 1980s. He also claimed to have seen a space craft crash land near Wallasey Town Hall.

Dr David Clarke, journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, was one of the people who campaigned for the release of the files: “It has taken 10 years of campaigning to get these papers out and now that they are, it lays to rest some of the claims of a cover up● by the MoD. Personally I think that some of the sightings have got to be of scientific interest. There are some that just cannot be explained.”

Another 150 files are due to be released over the next four years.

By Antonella Lazzeri. Reprinted and adapted with permission from The Sun, 13 May 2008.

Over 4 million Americans believe that they have at some time been abducted by aliens. Is this (a) crazy (b) an exaggeration (c) possible? Why are there so many sightings in America?

Does your own country keep ‘X-files’ on paranormal occurrences? What evidence do you have? Use the Internet to find some first-hand accounts from newspapers.