Date of Event: 8th August 2020
Reported: 28th June 2021
Case Reference: Reported to BUFORA
Investigator: Ash Ellis
The witness was sitting in his back garden in a fairly built up area of Cheshire at around 8pm on Saturday 8th August 2020, when he saw the underside of an ‘object’ sat silently at an altitude of at least 10,000ft (witness approximation). The object was described as being a ‘shield’ shape with the point of the shield being the front as it moved above him.
The underside of the object was described as moving with fluidity and had almost a reflective glow to it. As he noticed it, the object went from being still to zipping across the sky and within a split second had disappeared from view with a small flash. The object sat silent and stationary for 3-4 seconds before it moved, making no sound or leaving any trail.
The weather was a warm clear day, blue sky with minimal cloud cover and no wind.
There are some discrepancies in the witness report, as the time the object was there was stated as being between 3-4 seconds, 5-6 seconds and also “as long as it takes to have 4 drags on my cigarette”. I’m not a smoker but I would imagine that it takes a fair bit longer than 5-6 seconds to take 4 drags. In the initial witness report he also said the object was smaller than the moon, but when I spoke to him to gain further information he said that from his point of view it looked to be the size of a large car at his estimation of a height of 10,000ft, which would be near impossible to guess so this is to be disregarded. This report has also been made nearly a year after the event so the memory the witness has of what he saw may be different from the reality.
The witness is short-sighted and has astigmatism in one eye, and he was not wearing his glasses at the time of the sighting. Short-sightedness makes further away objects appear out of focus, so it’s possible that this can explain the “fluidity” of the underside of the object as he was observing it.
I asked the witness whether he had had any unusual or similar experiences or sightings either before or after this event, which he confirmed he had not. In a later email dialogue from the witness, he talks about Martyn Stubbs and his secret NASA transmissions, which claim to show video evidence of intelligent, or alien, life in space. The knowledge this witness has of these alien conspiracies leads me to believe that he has a predetermined interest in the UFO subject, which could lead him to interpret that what he is seeing is something unidentified and more likely to be something extra-terrestrial, rather than considering more mundane explanations. This thought was confirmed when I questioned the witness on his interest in the subject he told me that he has read a lot of books over the many years and mentioned a lot of ‘conspiracy theory’ type topics including ancient aliens, the Annunaki, deep underground military bases etc. This doesn’t mean that what he saw wasn’t something unusual or unidentified but it is something I will bear in mind as I continue this investigation.
To rule out some of the more common mis-identifications I checked with a number of websites to see if there was anything over the area at the time. The International Space Station, which is regularly reported as a UFO when it is particularly bright and lower on the horizon was over North America at the time of the sighting, and wouldn’t have been particularly visible any time that night, as shown below on the infographic from www.isstracker.com.
Next, I checked for any meteor activity around that time on www.UKmeteornetwork.co.uk. There were a few visible meteors recorded that night but they wouldn’t have been as clear or as visible for the length of time the witness describes.
Congleton isn’t too far away from Manchester Airport in the north, as well as a smaller airfield used for light aircraft just 9 miles away, also to the north. It is still daylight hours at 8pm in August and the witness says that it was a clear night so it could possibly be a light aircraft reflecting the sun. This could explain the “glow” as described by the witness and also that it disappeared with a flash, that flash could have been the sun catching the aircraft at an awkward angle which it could be as the sun would be lower down towards the horizon at that time of the day. Especially if this sunlight hits the front of the craft and the windows close together it can blend into one big light. This combined with the short sighted-ness of the witness as mentioned above, could make the aircraft appear very unusual, especially as in August 2020, there were less planes in the air due to the Covid-19 pandemic so it may have looked even more out of place in the usually empty sky. This image below shows a larger plane reflecting the light from a setting sun on it’s tailfin. The same type of reflection on a smaller aircraft, or an aircraft flying at a higher altitude, could hide most of the features that would identify it as a plane, such as wings, especially as the witness only saw it for a matter of seconds.
Conclusion
Based on the limited evidence and details provided and with no photographic footage, combined with the fact that the witness by his own admission only saw this object for up to six seconds, I am of the opinion that this was most likely an aircraft reflecting light from a setting sun creating the flashes and reflective glow that the witness describes.
