Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Date: 14/08/2014
For reasons of anonymity pseudonyms have been used
In most UFO cases the objects are only seen once and then never reported again. However in some cases UFOs can seemingly return to the same location numerous times and be witnessed independently by different people. This fascinating case involves a UFO observed in 2010 which was later found to have been seen 15 years before by two police officers over the same area!
Sighting Details
Thomas works as an occupational therapist at a hospital on Dogpool Lane in Stirchley, Birmingham. One day in late October 2010 he was standing outside on an open courtyard having his lunch with a work colleague. It was about 1pm in the afternoon and a clear sunny day with only light cloud in the sky. There was nobody else out on the courtyard at the time.
Suddenly a glowing light up in the sky to the East of the courtyard caught his eye. Looking up he was amazed to see a strange object hovering over the roof of one of the hospital buildings adjacent to the courtyard. It appeared to be only 15 feet above the roof of the building, so only about 60 feet off the ground. The object was quite large in size, almost as wide as the building it was over. It appeared to be a glowing orange coloured bar, approximately 40 feet in length and 10 feet in height, and set at an angle of about 280 degrees. Around this bar seemed to be a glowing field of energy, blue-white in colour with electricity flowing through it.
Arial perspective view showing the position of the witness (A) and the estimated position of the UFO (B):
Witness drawing showing the UFO hovering above the building and himself in the courtyard:
The object was hovering completely motionless and was not making any sound. Thomas pointed out the object to his colleague exclaiming “What the frigging hell is that?” His colleague dismissed the object as a helicopter, even though it quite clearly was not. Thomas responded asking “Why the hell would we have a helicopter above the building?” His colleague still seemed dismissive of the UFO and headed back inside.
Thomas continued to stare at the object for about 2 minutes. Without warning it then seemingly began to shape shift and shrink in size. This continued until it was nothing but a small white ball of light and soon afterwards vanished. It took about 1 minute to shrink down in size and disappear.
Thomas was left standing there amazed at what he had just seen. He walked back into the office. Knowing that one of the girls in his office was interested in the subject he told her about the UFO first, saying “You won’t believe what I’ve just seen!” She seemed to accept what he told her. Later in the evening he told his family and friends, which got mixed reactions. One of his friends, Mark, is particularly interested in UFOs. Thomas decided to ring him up and tell him about the sighting.
Later in the evening Mark excitedly rang him back up. He had searched various sites on the internet to try and find other matching sightings of the object. He told Thomas to go to his computer and load up the PRUFOS database. This is a website managed by ufologist Gary Heseltine. It contains details of hundreds of UFO sightings reported by police officers. Mark told Thomas to go to a particular page on the database. There in front of him was the details of another UFO sighting by two police officers from 1999. Like his own sighting, it had taken place on Dogpool Lane, Stirchley. And the description of the UFO was a complete match with what he had witnessed! It was clear that they had seen the same thing 15 years before over the same area!
PRUFOS Sighting Report
Below is the sighting report from the PRUFOS database (duplicated with permission from Gary Heseltine):
1850 hours. 19/01/95. Location – Birmingham, Warwickshire.
Following a number of reports by the public of a UFO in the skies above the city, two uniformed officers were dispatched to Russell Road in the Moseley area to investigate. However as they approached the scene they observed the UFO on Dogpool Lane, Stirchley. There they saw a UFO hovering above some nearby trees. They described the object as being the size of a double decker bus. In the middle of the object there was a horizontal bar of orange light, whilst on the outside there appeared to be a blue field of energy. After a few seconds the object appeared to shrink in size and vanish from view. Further reports from members of the public followed the police sighting. Unconfirmed reports allege that several other police officers also observed the object from the vicinity of the West Midlands Police training school at Tally Ho.
UFO CLASSIFICATION – CE1 (CLOSE ENCOUNTER 1ST KIND) On Duty sighting. 2 Officers. Source – John Hanson.
The actual report can be read at the following address:
Sighting Analysis
This is both an unusual and very impressive sighting. It is clear that the object that Thomas witnessed was not a normal aircraft or helicopter. It remained motionless for a number of minutes so could not have been an aeroplane. If it had been seen at a distance one could have suggested that it was a helicopter reflecting the sunlight. However it was low down, just over the roof of the building and at close proximity to the witness. It was also making absolutely not noise. If it had been a helicopter the sound of the rotor blades would definitely have been heard at that distance. It was clearly not an inflatable object such as a blimp, and was too large to be an unusual radio controlled model.
Could the object have been some kind of unusual atmospheric phenomenon? You could speculate this due to its strange appearance and the fact that it seemed to shrink down and vanish. However there is no known atmospheric conditions that would create such a sight. The energy field surrounding the bar appeared to be electrical in nature. Electrical phenomena such as ball lightning could possibly appear similar to this. However ball lightning only appears in stormy weather conditions, and would be relatively small in size.
As mundane explanations do not seem to fit with what was seen we have to consider the possibility that the object was some kind of advanced craft, perhaps extra-terrestrial in origin. If so then it appears to have been surrounded in some kind of energy field, perhaps involved in its propulsion. There are other sightings on record where orange glowing bars of light have been reported, including some which I have directly investigated. There have also been many sightings where the object observed has been surrounded in a field of energy, although many others where no such field is seen. Perhaps the field is only visible under particular conditions or on particular types of UFO, though this would just be speculation. When the object began to shrink in size and finally vanish perhaps it was passing through into another dimension or cloaking in some way.
The fact that the details of the UFO clearly match those from the case reported on the PRUFOS database is extremely compelling.
I have no reason to doubt that Thomas saw what he says he did in October 2010. He provided excellent initial information, and was happy to answer my additional questions to an acceptable level of detail. Given how unusual the description of the UFO is, it seems like far too much of a coincidence that both sightings would occur over Dogpool Lane in Stirchley. If the object was an advanced ET craft, maybe it was returning to the same area for a specific reason. This is what Thomas personally believes. He speculates that there could be some kind of portal in the area which the UFO has passed through on multiple occasions, at least twice, perhaps more. While we have no evidence that this is the case, it is still a possibility worth considering.
This is not the only UFO sighting Thomas has had, details of his other sightings will be uploaded soon in a separate linked report.
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2014