Mysterious glowing orb in the sky? Meet the Warwickshire man who investigates UFOs

THOUSANDS of people phoned police and reported a UFO sighting earlier this week, after spotting a mysterious glowing orb in the skies.

The circular object spinning over Bristol, Gloucestershire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Lancashire turned out to be freezing fuel from a SpaceX rocket, but that doesn’t mean the truth is not out there. And if, and when, any close encounter comes to Stratford, we will be ready, thanks to retired CID detective John Hanson.

John, who runs the Great Britain UFO Information Archive Centre in Exhall near Wixford, has spent three decades researching UFO sightings.

During that time, he’s collected thousands of files, documents, testimonies, newspaper cuttings, magazines, books, photographs, audio recordings, videos and DVDs.

With his partner Shirley, he travels all over the world interviewing people who claim to have seen UFOs, and UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena).

As an ex-copper who spent nearly 30 years at the sharp end, first in uniform and then as a detective, it took him a long time to believe UFOs are a thing.

He said: “If I’d looked at a case like this involving UFOs and the paranormal all those years ago, I’d have thought these people were crackers, but you can’t dismiss the experiences of thousands of people.

“You develop a gut instinct about whether someone is fabricating or embellishing and the only people I’ve met who’ve done that tend to be UFO researchers – the public have been brilliant.”

He points out that most testimonies don’t come from cranks but well-respected members of the community such as RAF pilots, military personnel, nurses, teachers and doctors.

John’s own conversion began in 1994, when he saw something other-worldly outside his bedroom window and filmed it. He later discovered another witness had also seen it, as had somebody else working at a power sub-station in Birmingham. “That’s how I got involved,” he said.

Since then, he’s authored more than 20 books, including six under the ‘Haunted Skies’ series.

John says most UFO sightings take place over ancient energy lines or near ancient sites, explaining why Wiltshire features so often. He’s also spent years investigating goings-on at the UK’s best-known paranormal site, Rendlesham Forest in Sussex, where a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights in December 1980 were linked with UFO landings. It’s near RAF Woodbridge, used at the time by the US Air Force, and several military personnel, including the deputy base commander, claimed to have seen UFOs.

John filmed what he believes was a UFO over Rendlesham in December 2000 and has taken part in several documentaries about the events of 40 years ago.

Most sightings tend to be unidentified lights or spherical-shaped objects but many of the experiences John has been told about over the years also include electrical or mechanical malfunctions at the witnesses’ houses or cars during or following the sighting. Some theorise this is linked to the electromagnetic spectrum.

John said: “A lot of people poo-poo it, but you can’t ignore the medical evidence, the bruises, the marks and other things that happen to them afterwards. That is, in my opinion, a result of them getting too close to the object because it’s the ultraviolet fields of radiation that cover them that can cause ill-health.”

Here in the ‘spine’ of the country, Warwickshire and the West Midlands, there have been a “colossal” number of sightings and experiences, as John can testify. Over the decades, his work has landed him on the front page of the tabloids and attracted the attention of the great and the good such as Lord Louis Mountbatten, Prince Philip and even King Charles.

It turns out the late Duke of Edinburgh had a fascination with UFOs, sparked by his uncle, Mountbatten, and built up quite a library which included John’s books on Rendlesham and the Haunted Skies series.

King Charles is also said to have an interest in the paranormal, encouraged by his father and uncle.

“The men in power, the intellectual people, all know these things exist but they’ll never publicly admit to anything,” John pointed out. “I understand why they want to brush it under the carpet and stop the public from getting it, but surely we have a democratic right to carry out our own investigations and find out what these things are?”

John’s collection spans from archive material dating back to the 1900s, to contemporary testimonies gathered through hundreds of interviews. With so much information collected in one place, John and Shirley hope to attract more visitors to their archive.

“If anybody wants to come and have a look, I think they’ll learn something. They will certainly be very welcome, and we’ll probably offer them a cup of tea and a biscuit,” John said.

He summed up: “I believe there must be something to it, because if there was nothing, we wouldn’t be talking about it, would we?

“All I do is print the facts. I can’t prove where these things come from – that’s up to the public to decide.”