Flight of fancy – or a real UFO?

November 8 2006

A UFO was spotted hovering over Times Territory on TWO separate occasions at the weekend.

On Friday evening several drivers stopped in the road to stare at a "space craft" hanging in the air near the Galleria in Hatfield.

And on Sunday night a group of teenagers claim they saw lights moving slowly over a housing estate in WGC.

The WHT received several calls from startled witnesses on Monday and all were adamant that what they had seen was definitely NOT a plane, helicopter or firework.

One woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said she had been driving past The Galleria at around 5pm when she noticed lights in the air at about the "height of an electricity pylon".

She said: "The only way I can describe it is like a space craft. It lit up the sky with blue lights.

"Initially I thought 'oh my God there's going to be a plane crash!'. Its proximity to the ground meant it would have crashed if it had been a proper aeroplane."

The WGC resident said that, in a scene reminiscent of the Spielberg classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, she and several other drivers stopped to look up into the sky before exchanging amazed glances.

"I thought I was going crazy!" she said. "We were all baffled.

"I didn't believe in UFOs before but when I saw it I thought what the hell else could it be?"

Just two days later Lucy Smith, of Essendon Gardens, was called out into the garden at around 7.45pm by her two excited brothers Craig and Toby, 19 and 13.

The 15-year-old told the WHT she looked into the sky and saw three bright red lights low in the sky. "They were moving slowly over the houses," she said.

"It wasn't a plane or helicopter because we couldn't hear an engine and it definitely wasn't fireworks because they stayed for too long in the sky.

"The dogs were going crazy. It was just like in the films. It was a UFO!"

Previous reports in Times Territory

THERE have been at least two other UFO sightings in the area in the past 12 months.

On January 2 a family from WGC spotted what they thought to be a low flying plane experiencing difficulties at 10pm.

According to their email report on website ufoinfo.com, the sky was suddenly filled by lots of white light which would shoot around the sky and then return and stay still.

On October 20, 2005, a driver claimed to have spotted a "giant fleet" of "50 brightly illuminated flying objects" heading east from Potters Bar towards Enfield.

At the time he told ufocasebook.com that the objects were flying in a "scattered, fixed formation" and provided a mobile phone picture of them.

The website claimed the photo showed a fleet similar to one which was spotted over New Mexico in the 1990s.

In 2002 a "tangerine coloured disc shaped object" over WGC was reported on the Ministry of Defence website.