by Author, Charles Lear
In last week’s blog, we looked at UFO reports by Pennsylvania citizens that made their way from various agencies, including local police, to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, which recently released records of these. On February 2, 2024, an article by Millie Emmett headlined “UFOs reported to Essex Police highlighted in data” was posted on the Daily Gazette website that describes sightings found in a list of UFO reports released by the Essex Police. This week, we’ll look at some of the sightings described there as well as others in the Essex area.
The list, which has the title “UFO Reports 2018 to 2023” and is identified as Publication Number 1379, is said to be correct as of 12 January 2024. The reason for its publication is described in a response to a Freedom of Information request by Natalie Myers that can be found on whatdotheyknow.com:
Essex Police have developed a publication strategy, our aim is to reduce the demand within the FOI Department and to provide knowledge to the public to include previous and combined FOI requests together with relevant links and information. Please visit this area of our website before submitting FOI requests as information may already be available.
[1]https://www.essex.police.uk/foi-ai/af/ac…
According to Emmett, “In a Freedom of Information Request submitted by Newsquest’s AI team, there were multiple reported UFO sightings in north Essex to police from 2018 to 2023.” This is a clumsy and inaccurate sentence (generated by AI?) but the meaning seems to be that the information on the sightings was contained in the response.
The publication by the Essex Police only lists the year and the area of the reports. Below are the cases that stand out to this writer.
In 2022, reports came from three aircraft near Stansted Airport of a UFO in the vicinity. Information came from the tower that two planes had reported a UFO “about 500 feet below them as they were coming into [sic] land on runway 22.” According to the log, the closest plane was 20 km away, and the pilots were alerted by their Traffic Collision Avoidance System, but could see nothing when thy looked.
Another pilot report from 2022 came from a Ryanair pilot in the Hertfordshire area “climbing out of Stansted Airport” at an altitude of 4000 feet who said he saw a black object that “passed within 20 metres of the aircraft.”
Two local civilian reports that stand out are one from Chelmsford in 2021 and one from Colchester in 2023.
The Chelmsford witness said they were leaving a church at 2125 hrs that night, and with the church in back of them and Chelmsford in front of them, they saw “5-6 lights in the sky.” According to the witness, “The lights were dancing around and 2 shot off and then parted and disapeared [sic]. They were like balls in the air.”
The Colchester witness said that at 11:05 hrs that morning, “Mon 5th June 2023,” they saw an oval-shaped, metallic-colored object that was silent and moved “quickly across the sky very smoothly with no deviation in height or direction or without any affects [sic] of the weather is the only way I could describe it.”
Emmett focuses on a number of reports and ends the article with sightings described to the Gazette by two locals.
The first witness is a Holland-on-Sea resident, Susan Vousden, who described capturing an orange UFO on video in 2002, and seeing a triangular formation of lights in 2014, both while at home. She said that in the second case, she contacted the police and the coastguard “to see if anything was out.” She is quoted as saying, “No one has to feel silly about anything. I think it’s important that if people see something that’s strange I think it should be mentioned. It’s a very interesting subject and I’ve never forgotten it.”
The second witness is David Young, described as an “Essex-based radio presenter who hosts his own show, Strange Phenomena Investigations, doing his own paranormal investigations.” According to Young, he saw a big orange UFO in 1967. He said: “They’re pretty common in Essex and there’s a group I go to once a month to discuss them.”
The group Young mentioned appears to be the Essex UFO and Paranormal Group according to his post on Instagram: “Just home from another great presentation from Andrew Collins at our Essex UFO and Paranormal Group in Southend, Essex.” The group’s website contains the information that, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the very first pilot UFO sighting report came from Essex in 1916. It is described this way:
The report was made on the 31st JAN 1916 over Rochford in Essex. Unfortunately, the source is unknown but here is the brief description of the sighting as recorded by the Guinness Book of Records.
“The world´s earliest sighting of a UFO by a pilot occurred on 31 January 1916, when a British pilot near Rochford, Essex, reported seeing a row of lights, resembling the lighted windows on a train carriage, that rose up into the sky and disappeared.”
This is categorized as “1916/01/31 FIRST” by the Guinness Book of Records
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