TV’s Torchwood could be making Wales report more UFOs

Feb 17 2008 by James McCarthy, Wales On Sunday

TELLY hit Torchwood could be behind rocketing numbers of flying saucer sightings, according to a top UFO expert.

In 2006 there were just 97 reports of spaceships made to the Ministry of Defence – but last year calls about alien invaders shot up to 135. In Wales the figure rose from two to nine.

Sheffield Hallam University lecturer, Dr David Clarke, is author of Flying Saucerers, A Social History of UFOlogy. He reckoned the show – about a hush-hush team of alien hunters working from an underground office beneath Cardiff Bay – could have had an impact on people.

He said: “Torchwood could well have brought an increase in the number of people looking at the skies rather than their feet when they are coming out of the pub.”

Dr Clarke said Wales had been a ‘hot spot’ for UFOs for a long time.

He warned against conspiracy theories that accused the government of covering up alien landings, adding: “The idea that the government has a Men in Black department and they send out Captain Jack or whoever... it doesn’t happen.”

The Torchwood press office were flattered they might be behind the increased sightings.

A spokeswoman for the BBC Wales programme said: “It’s nice of him to connect us, but basically it’s fiction.”

One of last year’s calls was from a holidaymaker in Cardiff claiming he had seen ‘spaceships’ and that little green men had ‘abducted his dog, car and tent.’

Dr Clarke said: “Perhaps aliens are interested in tents. Perhaps at this moment on the other side of the galaxy there will be alien intelligence scrutinising that tent and wondering whether that is where all humans live – it’s a bit like in the old Smash adverts.”

He said reports were not made by pranksters but by people who had seen something which left them genuinely baffled.

Others sightings included three red lights spotted moving clockwise in Llanpumsaint, Carmarthenshire, in January.

In May a 100ft high green and blue triangle was seen hovering over Pont Robert, in Powys. This was joined by a second object covered in ‘pink pulsating lights’.

And in Bryn, near Port Talbot, someone spotted two clusters of amber, orange and white lights in triangular formations heading for Liverpool. They moved ‘like a cork that was bobbing on water’.

Some calls probably had obvious explanations.

In September one skywatcher from Rhoscolyn, on Anglesey, contacted defence bosses to tell them had seen an object that looked like a ‘brightly coloured aircraft’ that was ‘moving quite fast’.

A spokesman for the MoD said: “The MoD examines reports solely to establish whether UK airspace may have been compromised by hostile or unauthorised military activity.”