Venus was close to Earth and bright in the winter sky

PROJECT FIVE PER CENT

Early in January 2017 I received a UFO report from my small Stockport community. A middle-aged woman was awoken in the early hours by a strange noise – a deep humming mixed with a faint whirring – and a glowing light illuminating her bedroom. Looking outside, she could see that the object creating the glow – and, she inferred, the sound – was hidden behind trees to the south, as if “something eerie” had landed. So far, so intriguing; but my suspicions grew as her story unfolded and she noted that she returned to bed, wishing it away, and the next thing she knew (I suspect after falling back to sleep) both light and sound had disappeared.

Over the 45 years that I have investigated UFO cases I have heard many accounts like this, and while I might have a possible solution for many, some remain unsolved mysteries that can easily grow into legends. Here, that was not the case, because I quickly realised what the witness had seen. I knew this because I had seen and heard it myself, but had been merely miffed because it woke me up. I had discovered its cause because I lived much nearer to the source than she did: right next to the main line railway. The ‘UFO’, out of sight in a cutting, was a group of engineers working on the track overnight. They were using a large arc light with a generator that emitted a hum as described.

Although this case isn’t Earth-shattering, it does reveal the social factors and pure luck that can make the difference between a strange encounter being interpreted in a supernatural context or being resolved. Nobody who investigates fortean phenomena should ignore what this means.

Ninety-five per cent of reports of something ‘weird’ are nothing of the kind: they are normal events filtered through some quirk of circumstance that makes them seem stranger than they really were. But they can grow into something that enters the personal ‘folklore’ of a witness’s life to the extent that they retell the story over and over again. If, as is frequently the case, the witness never gets an answer, they go on to believe for the rest of their days that they have joined the ranks of those who have briefly touched the unfathomable. I suspect this is a template for how nearly all strange experiences evolve. That 95 per cent of such experiences do have resolution – of a kind that the sincerely bemused witnesses making up the remaining five per cent didn’t find – should set alarm bells ringing, yet it very rarely does. It leaves an unspoken question that researchers tend to evade, as if it’s a terrible secret that must be kept lest it destroy their dreams: how do we know for sure that there really are five per cent of cases that are not like the other 95 per cent? What if all those UFO cases are just the ones that got away in terms of finding resolution? The ones in which there was no lucky break allowing us to unpick the real cause? Are we right to say that five per cent of ‘unknowns’ will forever defy resolution? If not, then we stand on shifting sands.

Over the years I have seen this happen in too many otherwise baffling cases to dismiss the argument, even if – we tell ourselves – there really are some truly insoluble cases. It seems less disastrous to a fortean researcher, because the phenomenon itself and how society has then been changed by it is our focus: any cause is almost secondary. But many ufologists have a deep need to uncover some extraordinary cause for at least a few of the events they investigate. It’s worth pondering how this influences the dissemination and understanding of evidence, as investigator bias, albeit unconscious, can be insidious.

Dozens of UFO sightings were made during January 2017 of a huge ‘starship’ hovering in the south-western sky. The witnesses were not deluded, but were watching the spectacular sight of Venus, close to Earth and exceptionally bright in the winter skies, as pictured above; and in the case of those with less than 20/20 vision they saw artefacts created by their eyes that made it mimic a structured craft. Countless sightings result when we are caught unawares by changes in the night sky. We rarely understand how shapes and movements are the result of our less than perfect eyesight, not the ‘craft’ we think we are seeing.

Numerous classic and widely promoted cases have resulted from trained observers unaware of a natural event in the skies. The wave of ‘Flying Crosses’ that baffled many police forces in the 1960s and filled the national press is one example. There were no crosses in the sky: they were artefacts created in the human eye.

Sometimes witnesses develop the narrative of what they saw into an art form. I recall an excited witness who described a spectacular space vehicle he had witnessed. It was years ago, but stuck in his memory after he described it, over and over, to others as he added various features of the UFO ‘propulsion system’. It was pure chance that this didn’t become another classic encounter in our bulging files, because I had followed up other sightings of the same thing. This witness had really seen a spectacular burnup in the upper atmosphere when a piece of space junk in decaying orbit disintegrated. He did not know this and his understandable certainty that he had seen a ‘spaceship’ (which ironically he had!) meant he followed the path of unintentionally evolving his account into more than the sum of its parts.

One close encounter that I investigated makes this point well. On 21 October 1983, a couple had been visiting their son in Shropshire before driving back to Cheshire. Around midnight, they saw a ‘UFO’ swoop towards their car and engage in a game of cat and mouse, hugging the hedgerows. For about 50 minutes the terror of this encounter escalated as they were followed northwards. The UFO beamed a light at them, but cast no shadow. Both witnesses were scared and upset. One even suffered hypertension afterwards. The man was a skilled engineer and both were 100 per cent sincere in describing what they saw to Jodrell Bank space centre, which passed them on to me.

The object this couple described was a classic UFO with multiple lights. It could easily have become an impressive case had I not suspected what they had seen and asked them: Did you see the Moon? Surprised, they said the night appeared moonlit, but they had seen no Moon. Yet the Moon was almost full, and given the weather and the route taken should have been spectacularly visible. If you put two and two together you can make either a UFO or a baffling misperception of the Moon. The witnesses were sure it was the former. I am more cautious, because I know that amazing things can be seen by experienced witnesses; if they are thinking ‘UFO’ rather than ‘Moon’, then that is what they will see.

So did this UFO become an IFO? How many more of our unresolved five per cent sit in this ambiguous borderland, simply waiting for the right resolution? Perhaps we need a new study into the ‘Ones that Got Away’ to find out. I propose that we put together a team of analysts with a range of expertise to explore a few of these most baffling cases. We have new assets – such as the power and resources of the Internet and the ability to instantly exchange ideas online. Perhaps we can dig deeper into the five per cent and apply new knowledge and modern resources to currently unsolved cases. We should focus on multiple witness events and define a Strangeness Factor based on researchable evidence that helps us choose the best candidates to reinvestigate. If you think you can help such a “Project five per cent” then send an email to nufon@btinternet.com and volunteer. Perhaps in a future issue we can report our first conclusions.