Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Date: 12/10/2023
In July 2023 I was contacted via the BUFOG website by a lady named Terri. She wanted to inform me about an impressive UFO sighting she had as a child back in 1979, an incident she had only spoken of with several people before. I got in touch and we discussed the sighting in depth over numerous conversations.
Sighting Details
Terri cannot be absolutely certain but she believes the incident took place in late August or early September 1979. She was 16 years old at the time and had left secondary school a number of months previously.
At the time she was living at home with her parents on Parkeston Crescent in Kingstanding, Birmingham. Terri has a disability which led to her having self-confidence issues, and at the time she was feeling quite lonely and was struggling emotionally. Her mother was in denial about her situation, and her father worked long hours so wasn’t around much. She had not yet found a job, so spent most of her time in her bedroom.
An ice-cream van would regularly do the rounds each evening, and it’s last stop would always be directly outside the house. The driver of the van was named Steve and he was quite friendly, so Terri began heading outside to chat with him each day after he had served the other children in the neighbourhood.
It was around 8.30pm on the evening of the incident. The weather was very pleasant. The sun had started to set but was still shining brightly. It was warm and still, and the street lights had just started to come on.
The houses on Parkeston Crescent are set down below the level of the pavement, with steps to climb up. Terri exited the house then waited patiently on the pavement for the other kids to be served.
She happened to glance up into the sky. What she saw immediately stopped any other thoughts that were going through her mind. There, positioned over the roof of the house, roughly 30 feet above the roof top, was a disc-shaped object.
It appeared to be approximately 40-45 feet across. It was dark grey in colour, not reflective. On the base of the object was a number of lines which separated it into distinct sections, almost like an orange slice. In the centre was a tightly concentrated grouping of small circles, and around the outer edge was a band and line of evenly spaced larger circles. There were no lights visible on it. Terri was standing roughly 16 feet in front of the house, so could only see the underside of the object.
It was hovering completely still in the air and was not making any detectable sound. She was absolutely shocked at what she was looking at. Her mind went completely blank as she realised it was clearly not a normal aircraft of any kind.
Terri thinks she stared up at the object for around 3 minutes. She did not have a camera on her, and was too awestruck by what she was looking at to try to draw anyone else’s attention to it. After this time she suddenly snapped out the shock she was in. She briefly looked down at the pavement and blinked hard several times.
When she looked back up the object had completely vanished! This was even more of a shock to her than when she had first set eyes on it. She started turning around looking all over the sky but it had disappeared.
At this point Steve called her name and snapped his fingers to get her attention. She looked at him, and then turned her attention back to the sky, asking “Did you see that?” In response to this Steve leaned out of the van and looked up. He asked her “See what…what was it?” For some reason Terri did not tell him what she had just seen, and simply replied “Oh, probably nothing.”
They chatted for a few minutes about other things, and then Terri headed back inside. She felt really strange. When I asked her more about this feeling she informed me that it was similar to the feeling of waking up after a really realistic dream, although she is certain that this was no dream as she had of course been wide awake.
She went and sat down in the kitchen alongside her parents and began staring at the TV, not really paying attention to what they were watching. She then loudly exclaimed “I think I just saw a UFO!” Her mother turned and smiled in a patronising way at her. Her dad suggested that it was probably just a helicopter. She responded to him saying “I know what helicopters look like and it definitely wasn’t that.” He then said “It could have been a military craft, they’re inventing new ones all the time that we know nothing about.” At their dismissal of the incident Terri decided to end the conversation on it with them.
Soon afterwards she wrote some details down in her diary about what had happened, but unfortunately lost this before leaving home a couple of years later.
The incident left a lasting impression on her and has led to a genuine interest in the UFO subject. She has looked online numerous times to see if she can find other similar sightings around the time, but so far has not found anything. She has learnt over the years that for most people it’s too big a leap of faith, and they will either dismiss the incident outright or not pay much attention to it. This is why she has shared it with so few.
Sighting Analysis
This is an extremely impressive daylight sighting of a disc-shaped UFO, and I am grateful that Terri has been brave enough to reach out to me to get it down on record.
Firstly, although Terri was the only witness and we only have her testimony to go on, she comes across as very trustworthy indeed. She answered all my questions in detail, and the drawing of the object was actually done several years ago, not directly for this investigation. I do not believe her emotional state and loneliness at the time (which she voluntarily pointed out to me) could have been responsible for what was seen. She also confirmed that she did not drink or use other drugs, medical or otherwise, at the time. I feel that the incident took place as she reported it.
It was clearly a solid structured object of some kind rather than a cloud or other atmospheric anomaly. Neither was it a normal aircraft of any kind. It hovered still for several minutes without moving so was not a plane, and looked nothing like a helicopter. It was also not making any sound, at the low height it was at the noise of the rotor blades or engines would have been audible.
The incident happened decades before drones were commercially available. The size of the object combined with the lack of sound also puts a radio controlled model out of the question. It could not have been a hot air balloon or other large inflatable as it was a clear evening, and the object suddenly vanished in a matter of seconds after hovering still for several minutes. It would clearly still have been there when she looked back up, yet it had completely disappeared. Also even though an inflatable can float quite still in pleasant weather conditions, a small amount of drift or rotation would still be expected.
To dismiss the sighting as a visual hallucination or “day dream” of some kind would also be illogical. If she had only briefly glimpsed it in passing then maybe this explanation would be valid, but she looked up at it in shock for up to three minutes, and it was close enough to see actual structural detail.
Taking all of the above into consideration it seems very likely that this was a genuine sighting of an advanced disc-shaped craft. She did not see any occupants, so a secret military aircraft explanation cannot be entirely ruled out. However it would be completely illogical for the UK military to fly such a craft over densely populated areas in broad daylight. In addition to this, I find it unlikely it could vanish in such a brief space of time without making a sound.
I have investigated many other cases of similar craft over the years, and are aware of many others on record. Often these craft suddenly vanish without trace, or shoot away at incredible speed from a stationary position. There are many cases where they have disappeared at precisely the moment the witness or witnesses have briefly lost sight of them, potentially indicating that they are aware they are being observed and use this opportunity to leave the area. There are also many cases linking craft of this type with non-human entities, including thousands of contact cases, cases where beings have been seen aboard through windows, landing cases with beings in close proximity and crash retrieval cases. This leads to a possible extra-terrestrial origin for what was observed.
I would again like to thank Terri for sharing the details of this fascinating sighting. If you have any further information relating to it please get in touch via the BUFOG website.
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2023