The Mullinahone creamery UFO (RTÉ Newsbeat, 1969)

Mullinahone is a village in south Tipperary, in the district RTÉ's catalogue files under Carrick-on-Suir. Beside Mullinahone Creamery lay an ordinary field on an ordinary road. In February 1969, that field drew a television crew, a pair of Geiger counters and a lasting local legend.

The night of 9 February 1969. About 21:50, according to the NICAP record. John Shelley, an agricultural adviser, was driving with his wife Kathleen. Something in the sky caught his eye. "It looked like a cloud with two lights shining out of it," he said, "but they weren't flashing on and off as you would see in an aeroplane."

They kept driving. About two miles on, the object had dropped to what seemed like 100 feet above the ground. It was roughly 150 to 200 yards away. Now it appeared to be hovering.

"There were three colours," Shelley said. "An orange and crimson light seemed to come from the top of the object. The whole thing was surrounded by a mass of bluish fog or vapour, which partly obscured it." Asked about its shape, he gave one word. "Spherical."

The NICAP account adds more. The light was first seen at about 10,000 m. It descended in 4 minutes to just 30 m above the ground, to the couple's right. It was about 9 to 12 m across and gave off a dazzling light. When it came down to ground level, the Shelleys left.

They were not alone. Ellen O'Donnell of Carrick-on-Suir was on her way home with her boyfriend, Teddy, when she saw something similar. RTÉ places her sighting an hour and a half later. A Tipperary Live account says roughly a half hour after.

26 February 1969. RTÉ's Newsbeat sent reporter Cathal O'Shannon to Mullinahone. On film, John and Kathleen Shelley told their story. Then South Tipperary Civil Defence Officer Eddie Bergin and his assistant Eddie O'Neill swept the creamery field with Geiger counters. No traces of radiation were detected. On 1 March 1969, The Nationalist in Clonmel carried the story too.

Dublin's Evening Herald and Irish Press told it differently. Their version describes a hemispherical object 12 to 18 m in diameter and 4.5 m high. It came down in great half circles to a standstill near a local creamery. Its orange light deepened to crimson as it landed. That account is catalogued under March 1969, almost certainly the same event logged by the date it was reported. Even the names drift. RTÉ spells the family Shelly, and NICAP calls Kathleen Catherine.

No hoax was ever alleged. No official explanation was ever published, and no Irish Army, Air Corps or Department of Defence file on the case has been found. The Civil Defence radiation check remains the only official step on record. Today the Newsbeat film sits in the RTÉ Archives exhibition "Weird and Wonderful", and the story keeps returning in Tipperary Live retrospectives and podcasts. The lights over the creamery field have never been explained.