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Now there's been a sudden upsurge of interest in unidentified flying objects, or UFOs as

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the enthusiasts call them. Earlier this week a policeman in Staffordshire reported seeing

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a bright object in the sky and he took 12 photographs of it. Now a 7 day alert has been

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declared by the biggest of the UFO societies, the British Unidentified Flying Object Research

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Association. With me now is Mr Lionel Beard, the Association's Chairman. Now is this alert

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as serious as it sounds? Oh yes, definitely. With all the reports coming in that we've

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had recently we think it's essential that we should have called our members' attention

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to this to get them out watching the skies during the coming week. Now about how many

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sightings have you had reported to you recently? Well normally reports come in average about

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one a day I should think, but over the last week or so I'd say probably reports are

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averaging about three or four a day, probably more because they take a long time to reach

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us. Now can you tell me what kind of things have been seen by people? Well the other night

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I had one young lady foam in from Stanmore. They saw two lights at about 10.30, she described

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it as about a fifth of the size of the moon, squareish, and one of the lights flew off

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fairly soon afterwards and when she went to bed at about 12 o'clock the other light

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was apparently still with them so it couldn't have been aircraft landing lights and a number

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of her father and a number of her friends saw it as well and off the cuff we didn't

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have an immediate explanation for her. Have there been many similar reports to the report

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given by the policeman earlier on this week? Well we learnt recently that over the past

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two weeks egg shaped oval objects had in fact been seen over France, Italy, Germany, Spain,

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probably not in that order but very similar type of objects. I think they also reported

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conical shapes as well. In fact perhaps I should mention that UFOs are a little like

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the fairer sex. They seem to come in all shapes, sizes and colours. Can I mention the different

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perhaps some of them all common types? Thank you. Well the most common type of course is

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the typical flying saucer shape perhaps some people say like two soup plates placed together

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or a disc shape sometimes with a dome on top. Perhaps the next most common type is the elongated

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object frequently described as cigar shaped. In fact I've had so many unusual descriptions

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that one of the big problems about ufology is the fact that so few reports seem to be

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alike. Well why do you think there's been this sudden flurry of activity? Well in the

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UFO business we've learnt to trade on coincidences. Now as you already mentioned back in about

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three years ago in 1967 there was a big flap which I think started off in about November

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67 and there was two police constables in a patrol car somewhere north of Dartmoor,

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Devonshire and they saw this object and it was like a flying cross. In fact they chased

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on the countryside doing extremely high speeds. The report said they were doing 90 miles an

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hour and we thought oh this is probably just one off report. There probably won't be any

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more and we didn't do anything about it. We didn't alert our members. But the following

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week it wasn't just ordinary people but police all over the country reporting light splashing

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across the sky flying crosses and we just weren't ready for it but this time because

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of this coincidence and there's also a coincidence that we have a flap. A flap is UFO jargon for

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a lot of reports. When Mars is at a close approach to the Earth which it is at the present time

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so you're well covered now. Thank you very much Mr. Beir.