07/10/1978 - Kettering/Finedon – Disc & Other UFO Sightings

Birmingham UFO Group Case Report

Author: Dave Hodrien

Last Updated: 08/12/2012

Introduction

In May 2012 I was contacted by a man named David who has through his life had several impressive UFO encounters. The earliest of these occurred in 1978 when he was 15 years old. He and a number of friends experienced a stunning sighting of a UFO in Kettering which would remain in their memory for many years to come. It soon became clear that theirs was not the only sighting, and that UFOs were also seen by many others in the area for a number of months, what is commonly referred to as a UFO flap.

In November 2012 another man named Kevin got in touch after finding this report online. He informed me that he was another witness to this same craft but prior to David’s sighting in Finedon to the South East of Kettering!

This report covers both sightings in detail, and also provides lots of information on other reported sightings in the area around the same time.

For reasons of anonymity pseudonyms have been used for some witnesses

Sighting Details

When David was 15 he would often meet up with his friends Tim, Leigh, Darren and Justin to go skateboarding at Skateside Skate Park on Rockingham Road, Kettering. On the 7th October the boys left the skate park shortly after 9.30 pm. Back in those days there was not much traffic on the road, so they used to skate along the road to travel home. It was a warm, still and clear night, and they were happy just wearing T-shirts. There was very little cloud in the sky and the stars were visible. It was quite a journey to get back home along numerous roads. The boys skated along Bath Road, then turned a corner into Cedar Road.

Aerial map showing the location where Skateside Skate Park used to be (A), and the junction leading into Cedar Road (B):

Cedar Road is not flat, it descends down a shallow hill, and then back up. In the distance over the housing of Walnut Crescent they were astounded by what they saw. There hovering in the air was a huge dark flattened-oval shaped object. It was massive in size, longer end to end than four house block. It had a symmetrical pattern of multi-coloured lights along it. In the centre were four bright white lights. They appeared to be slightly rectangular in shape. They were arranged in a rectangular pattern, with the lower two slightly further apart. At each end of the object were other smaller lights which were different colours – red, orange, green and blue. All the lights remained at constant brightness and did not flash. David says that the colours were “something I had never seen the like of before or since”.

The object was hovering motionless no more than 20 feet above the roofs of the houses. It appeared to be completely silent, which was amazing to the witnesses. They stared at the object in awe for about 15 seconds. Then suddenly without warning the object tilted to the left at an angle of around 30 degrees. It then made an incredibly fast movement to the left in a Northern direction and then halted again in the air. David finds this movement extremely hard to describe. It also appeared to have a physical effect on him. In his own words “I felt a strange warping effect as it moved. A slight tug inside my stomach. The movement was odd. Suddenly it was at the other position but it did not vanish and reappear, and yet it did not move sideways. This is odd, I stared at it the whole time and it had just moved.”

At this point the boys decided they wanted to get a closer look at the object. They began to skate down the hill towards it. It remained motionless in its new position, still tipped at an angle. After about 6-7 seconds the witnesses temporarily lost sight of the object due to the dip in the road. Seconds later when they began to ascend, they found that the object had completely vanished. David feels that the object had been aware of them and decided to leave when they tried to approach it.

Drawing of the UFO on top of a darkened photograph of the sighting location to illustrate its size and position, both before and after its sudden movement: