Hindley Police Sighting: PCs Haw and Parsonage and the Large White Object, 1967

1967 was a peak year for British sightings. In April there was Brixham. In September came Stoke-on-Trent, and the six fake saucers planted across southern England by Farnborough apprentices. In October, PCs Roger Willey and Clifford Waycott reported the Devon "flying cross". The Sussex flying cross came a day later. Then Angus Brooks, on Moigne Down.

In 1967 Hindley was an urban district in Lancashire, near Wigan. It became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, in Greater Manchester, in 1974. Liverpool Road runs west from the town centre, on the A58 corridor between Prescot and Bolton. It was once called Stony Lane.

The night of 9 to 10 August 1967. Two uniformed constables were on duty in Hindley. PC Lionel Haw was 30. PC Steve Parsonage was 20.

At 00:43, on Liverpool Road, they saw it. A large white object in the sky. Round in shape. It appeared to be travelling too fast to be either a comet or a plane.

For two minutes, the officers watched. Nothing landed. Nobody reported beings or strange effects. There was only the object and its speed. And when it was over, the two men were sure of themselves. They dismissed any notion that they had seen a trick of the light.

PC Haw made a pocket notebook entry about the sighting. That notebook has never been published. Chief Superintendent Tom Andrews of Wigan police had not seen the object himself, but he confirmed the officer's report. On Wednesday 16 August 1967, the story ran in The Times, on page 2, and in the Daily Mirror, on page 16. No photographs or film are known. No radar was mentioned. Nothing was left on the ground.

No official explanation was ever issued. Nobody has suggested a hoax, and no source puts forward a specific answer. The date does raise one question. 10 August falls during the Perseid meteor shower. Yet two minutes is much longer than a typical meteor. As for aircraft, the witnesses had already answered that. They said the object was too fast for a plane.

Today the case survives in two places. One is Wikipedia's list of UFO sightings in the United Kingdom. The other is the PRUFOS police database, an amateur compilation of police UFO reports from 1901 to 1972, which classes it as NL, a nocturnal light. No books, documentaries or podcasts have taken it up.

The trail is not quite cold. Any Ministry of Defence file would sit at the National Archives at Kew. The newspaper pages of that August week still wait to be reread. Until then, Hindley remains what it was in 1967. Two constables, one notebook, two minutes, and a large white object nobody ever explained.