Birmingham UFO Group Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Date: 17/09/2012
Introduction
Usually when a UFO sighting occurs it is an individual incident. It is very rare for sightings to occur in the same location on multiple occasions. However this is precisely what happened in Cannock on the 20th and 21st August 2012, where Daniel Gannon and his friends witnessed some very unusual blue lights in the night sky. While the two sightings were quite different to each other, there are some interesting aspects which suggest they may be linked. This report covers both incidents in depth.
For reasons of anonymity pseudonyms have been used for some witnesses
20/08/2012 – Blue Line
At 11.25pm on the evening of 20th August 2012, Daniel and his friends Simon, Harry and Ben were out walking their dogs, as they tend to do most evenings. It was a clear and still evening, with a temperature of around 12 degrees Celsius. They were walking along Williamson Avenue in Cannock.
Aerial map of Williamson Avenue:
Daniel was looking up at the stars as they walked along the road. After about two minutes, without warning something strange appeared in the sky to the South. Daniel saw what appeared to be a diagonal dark blue glowing line in the sky. At one end of the line was a shorter straight trail glowing a brighter blue colour. It was hard to judge the size or distance of the line, but it was at an angle of about 60 degrees in the sky from his location.
Witness drawing of the blue line:
The object/light moved straight downwards very fast. It then stopped moving and levelled out. As it did so the bright blue trail appeared to vanish. It remained stationary for a further second then suddenly blinked out. Daniel exclaimed “Wow did you see that?!” But his friends had not been looking in the right direction so had not seen it. Daniel explained what he had witnessed. All four men waited a while staring at the sky, but the object did not reappear.
This is a very unusual sighting. What could this strange blue glowing line have been? The most obvious explanation we should first look into would be some kind of blue laser beam. However there are various factors which do not fit with this explanation. Firstly laser beams are rarely blue in colour; they generally tend to be green or red. If it was a laser beam it would have to have been quite strong as it was at a high angle in the sky. So it would have had to have come from somewhere such as a nightclub. However nightclubs are not allowed to use lasers due to the danger of blinding people, they can only use searchlights. Also Cannock is quite a rural area and there are no known nightclubs near to the location where the sighting took place. If it was a laser from the ground it would also have been visible right down to ground level, not just in the sky. Also there would have been no reason for it to have only been activated for a couple of seconds, it would surely have been on for a much longer period of time.
If we disregard this explanation for the above reasons then I find it very hard to explain what was seen using mundane terms. Perhaps it was a glowing strip light attached to a large inflatable which was not visible against the night sky. But surely if this were the case the light would have remained visible not just appeared briefly before vanishing. Whatever it was, it certainly appears to have been unusual.
21/08/2012 – Blue Flashes
The following evening Daniel again left the house to walk the dogs with his friends. When he came outside to meet them on Williamson Avenue, he found them all looking into the sky to the North East. Ben informed him that he had just seen a blue flash in the sky. They talked for a short while about it before starting to walk the dogs along the road.
At 11.10pm the flash occurred again. This time it was Daniel who saw it. It was similar to a camera flash only blue in colour and it remained visible for slightly longer. It was at an angle of 45 degrees and appeared to be coming from up in the air rather than on the ground. It was completely silent. He informed the others and they decided to stop and wait to see if it occurred again.
After a couple of minutes there was another flash, and then another several minutes after that. About five minutes after this there was a final flash. This one appeared to have a darker blue circular centre that was only visible for a brief moment. It also appeared to have come from higher up in the sky.
Witness drawing of the final flash with darker area at the centre:
The men continued to talk about what they had seen, but there were no further flashes. Daniel felt that because of the similarity in colour, the flashes were somehow related to the strange glowing line he had seen on the previous evening. Looking back at the incident he wonders if the circular area was the same object as the glowing line but just viewed from a different angle.
Again this is quite unusual. Could these flashes have been caused by lightning? Firstly there was no thunder heard, but sheet lightning tends to be silent. However it seems unlikely that the flashes were caused by sheet lightning, as it was a clear night with hardly any cloud cover. It cannot have been caused by a strobe on an aircraft as it sounds much too bright, was blue coloured instead of white, and was only intermittent, not regular or constant. It is interesting that the colour of the flashes seemed to match the “object” which was seen the previous evening. This could of course suggest that the two were related, but we cannot say this for sure, this similarity in colour could have just been a coincidence.
This sighting is very reminiscent of something I myself saw while on a skywatch down in Warminster back in Summer 2009. At around 11pm I and many others saw what appeared to be pale blue lightning-like flashes coming from behind a nearby hill. They lit up the sky quite brightly, but appeared to be coming from ground level. Like Daniel’s sighting the flashes were intermittent not in a pattern, and continued for about 10 minutes before stopping. Although we were puzzled at the time, it is likely that this had a mundane explanation of some kind. What is more interesting is what was seen half an hour later, which to this day has not been explained and is the most impressive UFO sighting I have had so far. You can read the report on what took place here.
Whatever the cause of the unusual glowing line and the blue flashes that Daniel and his friends witnessed, for Daniel at least they remain a true mystery and the most unexplainable sightings he has ever experienced.
If you have any further information regarding either of these sightings please get in touch with BUFOG.
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2012
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