By Ash Ellis
After the success of our first ever conference in October 2021, we decided to go bigger for 2022 although we had trepidation due to the fact that the bigger and already established conferences from the likes of Outer Limits Magazine and LAPIS were back after being postponed during the Covid pandemic, and with new events such as the Awakening events in Blackpool and Manchester bringing some big names to the UK, we knew we had some competition rather than the effective monopoly of last year when there were pretty much no UFO conferences happening.
We didn’t need to worry.
Tickets started flying out as soon as they went on sale back in April with many guests taking advantage of our early-bird offer and with around a month to go before the conference on October 1st, we had officially sold out, and we could not be any more thankful for each and every guest, speaker, stall holder, and helper that allows these events to happen.
The venue, which was the stunning Stanley House Function Rooms in Audenshaw, Manchester was a great backdrop for the days events, with a separate room for our stall-holders selling a wide range of UFO and paranormal related books, merchandises, models, gifts and more. The room also allowed for a separate area to gather in for guests to chat, mingle and take some photos with our selfie board, away from the main conference hall!
The first talk of the day was a compilation of talks from some of the UFO Identified team. First up was Steve Yarwood talking about reported UFO sightings from around the M56 area of Manchester, this was followed by Natalie Pearce with a similar look but from around the River Mersey in Liverpool over the years. The first talk ended with myself, Ash Ellis, taking a look at the data and statistics from all the sightings we have collected from January 2020 to August 2022.
After a short break we then heard from Sacha Christie, standing in for Robbie Graham who unfortunately couldn’t make it. Sacha recounted her and her families incredible close encounter experience in Wales in the 1990’s, with additional video footage of her revisiting the location recently with one of the other witnesses.
It was then time for lunch, and our tongue-in-cheek Tin Foil Hat competition, which thankfully went down very well with the attendees and was took in the manner in which it was intended, and we had some outstanding efforts being made!
After lunch, it was time for the much-anticipated Podcast Panel, a new feature for 2022, which saw Frank from UFO Thinker Podcast alongside Andy McGrillen and Dan ‘The Zignal’ Zetterstrom from That UFO Podcast as they fielded many well-thought out questions from the audience with insightful, intelligent and sometimes humorous answers, with many focused around the recent developments in the US as well as the recently uncovered Calvine photograph.
The Panel could have gone on for some time but it was soon time for the final break, followed by the raffle and the crowning of our Tin Foil Hat competition winner who won an exclusive UFO Identified mouse mat for his efforts!
All the attendees now filled the conference hall as our final speaker of the day took to the stage, with the popular podcaster, author and TV host Ryan Sprague giving his first ever talk in the UK, looking at the human aspect of the UFO phenomenon with incredibly fascinating and at times emotional accounts from witnesses and experiencers to the UFO subject and the impact it has had on their lives, something that many of us in attendance and reading this can relate to.
As the day went on, it was great to walk around the venue, seeing everybody talking, sharing, laughing, making new friends, meeting old friends and all in all just having a great day. This is why we do it. We feel immensely proud to put on such a successful event which saw people coming together from all over the UK and abroad to attend. There was such a diverse group of people here, male and female, young and old, from all walks of life, all with the shared interest in this weird world of UFOs and related phenomena
The feedback we’ve received on social media in the days and weeks since has been incredible and more than we could have ever expected, we’ve even been invited onto a number of podcasts as a result and also to speak at other events around the country.
From a personal point of view, we couldn’t do this without the hours of hard work from the team, so please share my thanks for Abigail Hyslop, Natalie Pearce and Steve Yarwood, the UFO Identified team!
All of this just spurs us on to continue doing our work, putting on events, and planning even bigger things for 2023 and beyond!
Stay tuned… you don’t want to miss this…
