1972 – West Bromwich – White Orbs Sighting

Birmingham UFO Group Case Report

Author: Dave Hodrien

Release Year: 2016

Last Updated: 30/09/2025

Note: For reasons of anonymity a pseudonym has been used for one of the witnesses

In 2016 I met a man named Ian at a conference. He informed me that his stepmother Sue had a sighting back in the 1970s. I informed him I’d love to speak with her about it. Soon afterwards she got in touch via Facebook Messenger to go over the experience.

Sighting Details

Sue thinks the incident took place in 1972. One night at around 10pm her boyfriend at the time, “Jamie” was walking her home East along Pennyhill Lane, West Bromwich in the direction of Great Barr. It was a dry, clear and still night, with the stars visible in the sky.

 They noticed a brightly glowing orb of light in the sky. It seemed to be at high altitude, and a couple of miles away from their location. They both initially put it down to an aeroplane, but then realised it was stationary and also appeared to be spinning.

 After a number of seconds, the orb suddenly separated into two identical orbs, seemingly about 10 feet from one another! Then a number of seconds later they moved back together again into a single orb.

 After this five smaller sized orbs seemed to emerge from the main orb at equal positions around its outer edge and began to rotate around it in a clockwise direction. Again after a number of seconds these seemed to re-join the main orb.

 After this the orb shot away extremely rapidly to the North, and disappeared into the distance in just a second! Sue was convinced it was something highly unusual due to the speed that it departed. She says that she was frozen to the spot with shock watching it, and after it had gone Jamie informed her she had been squeezing his hand really tightly.

Sue claims that they were not the only witnesses to the object, as soon afterwards there was an article about it in the local newspaper. Unfortunately, she did not keep a copy of this article.

Sighting Analysis

This is an intriguing distant sighting. Although no solid structure to the object was visible (possibly because of the distance), the manoeuvres observed mean that this was very unlikely to have been aircraft or helicopters. The incident took place decades before drones were commercially available, and the orb left the vicinity far too rapidly for it to have been a cluster of lit inflatables or radio controlled models.

I find it unlikely that this sighting was of a number of searchlights being shone from a nearby venue or special event. Sue stated that it was a clear night with the stars visible, so there would have been no cloud for the search lights to bounce off. Also surely the lights would just have been turned off, not suddenly tilted so as to appear to fly away into the distance? That said, this explanation cannot be completely ruled out.

It is unknown whether the object really did split and duplicate or whether there were actually two objects which remained close to one another for most of the sighting. The smaller orbs which appeared certainly seemed to have emerged out of the main object and exhibited intelligently controlled movements.

It is a shame that Sue did not keep a copy of the article in the newspaper. She did not provide me with the name of the paper, and with only a rough estimation as to the date it would be extremely hard to track this down.

As Sue has now split from Jamie and they are not on close terms I am unable to speak with him to get a second statement. However, I have no reason at all to doubt that Sue’s story took place the way that she has mentioned.

Copyright Dave Hodrien 2025