UFO Or Northern Lights ?

File: UFO241

This from the GARSTANG COURIER 9th July 1993

Spaceships or Northern Lights? The experts are not sure. A Garstang Couple had a Close Encounter of the Third Kind after spotting a UFO in the night sky.

Mrs Anita Tomlinson and Mr Bert Pendlebury were driving through the Tatham Fells outside Lancaster, When they spotted a strange rising object. It was bright pink and shaped like a top hat,The couple say that it was neither an aeroplane nor the sunset. Their sighting is further verified by a Garstang woman who also spotted the same object on the same day.

Mrs Tomlinson, who lives in Hollins Lane, Forton, and is manageress at Age Concern in Garstang, described to The Courier what happened. She and Mr Pendlebury were on their way home after a meal out at about 9 to 9:30pm last Wednesday. As Mrs Tomlinson looked out of her window which was facing west she saw the strange shape in the sky.

"It was a deep pink and very big" she said "It could not have been the sun". Mr Pendlebury then stopped the car for a better look and as they did so the object began moving upwards. "As it went upwards, it went paler and paler. Then it vanished" Mrs Tomlinson said.

Following a series of telephone calls, Mr Pendlebury, who works as a sales partner at Windmill Conservatories at Garstang Gardens, spoke to investigators at the British UFO Association who work with the Ministry of Defence. Their job is to try to turn UFOs into IFOs (Identifiable Flying Objects). They told him there had been numerous unidentified sightings on the previous Sunday,Monday and Tuesday from Bristol, Warwickshire and Leicestershire. But nothing as far north or on the same day. They are now in the process of going to carry out an investigation into the local sighting.

The couple say the sighting cannot be explained away and was not thin enough or the right colour to be a aeroplane. Mr Pendlebury, who lives at Calder Vale said "I am open minded. If anyone can say it was such and such, that is fine. But it has to be big especially when someone saw it 19 miles away in Garstang."

National Director of Investigations at the Association Mrs Jenny Randles said they would begin their investigations from a meteorological point of view. A sunset explanation has almost been ruled out as the sighting was in the eastern sky where it would not usually be seen.

As far as the other sightings earlier in the week were concerned, Mrs Randles said they would be looking into the possibility of linking them with a phenomena known as Aurora Borealis or Northern lights. But she added;"This is only a possibility and that was only effectively last Sunday and the usual effect is blue green."

She said that all sightings were taken very seriously and added that if they could not explain the couple's object in meteorological terms then it was likely to remain a UFO.