Have you ever seen something in the night’s sky you can’t quite explain? Here are five times people in Welwyn Garden City, Hatfield and Potters Bar claim to have seen a UFO.
1. Hatfield House UFO
In July 2009, Welwyn resident Chris Middleton visited Hatfield House and snapped a number of photos on his day out.
It wasn’t until he got home and downloaded his pictures that he realised he’d captured an unexplained object hovering about the Old Palace.
“It made no noise and I didn't see it until I put the image on my computer,” Chris said.
“If you sharpen the image and zoom right in you can see it's no normal aircraft and you can see a red heat source behind it.
“I think it's impossible for there not to be something like that out there - the universe is so vast. I had the intriguing image examined by professional photographers - and none of them could explain it.”
Richard Wiseman, psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire, was not as convinced.
“It's very difficult to tell what it is because it is tricky to know how far the object is from the camera,” he said.
“I guess that it could be a bird or a paraglider in the distance, or a small piece of dust or debris very close to the lens.
“Either way, I don't think Hatfield House should be bracing themselves for a close encounter of the third kind quite yet.”
2. Crafts above the clouds
The very same month Chris Middleton snapped his Hatfield House photo, another claimed UFO sighting came from Welwyn Garden City.
One night at around 10.45pm, Andy Prior took his dog out into his back garden. When he looked up, he saw two strange objects overhead.
“They were above the clouds, swinging left to right,” he said.
“There was no noise whatsoever. I was absolutely gobsmacked. I have never seen anything like it before.
“It wasn't a laser show because you would have seen the light going up.”
Andy was convinced it couldn't have been planes, helicopters or Chinese lanterns, and he was sober too, adding: “The last time I had a pint was last Wednesday night.”
He reported the sighting to the Ministry of Defence, with a spokeswoman saying: “The MoD examines reports solely to establish whether UK airspace may have been compromised by hostile or unauthorised military activity.
“Unless there is evidence of a potential threat, there is no attempt to identify the nature of each sighting reported.”
3. Hatfield and the strange orange light
While Professor Wiseman was doubtful of a close encounter at Hatfield House, a father and daughter believe they had one near the University of Hertfordshire.
Gary Dinneen and his daughter spotted a strange orange light emitting an odd haze as they drove along the A1(M) in June 2008.
“My daughter asked what that strange light was over the A1,” said Gary.
“I thought it was a light rigged up by contractors working on the access road to the A1 which they had closed off.
“We were diverted towards the Galleria where we stopped to watch this light, which had the same colour as a street lamp except it was moving slow and steady.
“I thought it may have been a firework or aircraft, but it was not like anything I have ever seen before.
“It then continued heading north into the distance until it became just a glimmer. The light emitting from it was hazy, like looking through a window. However, I had the window wound down to make sure.”
While what Gary and his daughter saw is certainly unexplained, our guess would be they spotted a Chinese lantern floating in the sky.
4. The zig-zagging disk
There is very little information on this sighting, but it doesn’t make it any less weird.
An official Government document on UFO reports states that on an unconfirmed date in 2002, something was spotted in the skies above Marsden Road, Welwyn Garden City.
The reported described the craft as ‘one disc shaped object, that was tangerine coloured’, and it ‘zig-zagged for a while and then departed after fifteen seconds’.
Very odd indeed, and we’d love to know more!
5. In broad daylight
One of the more compelling sightings comes from 2017, when property manager Jamie Warwick spotted something strange while driving on the M25 near Potters Bar.
In a YouTube, he describes seeing a bright, white light appearing in the clouds before suddenly disappearing. Then, a dark shape he called ‘a craft’ nearby which separated into two objects.
“A good friend of mine who is a pilot and has worked in aeronautics has no idea what this can be,” Jamie added.
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