Sighting record / 1996
July 15, 1996. The early hours. A young man was walking home from an evening out in Widnes, Cheshire. Over a cemetery beside the railway line, a bright spherical object hovered. There was a wailing noise. Then beams of light struck the ground, and smoke rose from it. The young man ran. Then he went to the police. The officer who attended found a railway sleeper still smouldering, a hole burned into it. The report called the witness "a sensible sort of lad and genuine." The attending officer's verdict was simpler. "It does look rather odd." The report sat in Ministry of Defence files until The National Archives released it in August 2009.
1996 was a busy year for British skies. The Ministry of Defence logged 609 UFO reports that year, against 117 in 1995. It was the second highest annual total on record. Most of those reports were lights and shapes, seen and gone. One, from Widnes in Cheshire, left something behind.