17-09-2009: Puzzling Phenomena - Bulkington,
Warwickshire, UK
My husband and I are both retired science teachers.
We live in Bulkington, a semi-rural location in Warwickshire.
Thursday night September 17th 2009
I went upstairs to go to bed at about 12:10am ( Friday Sept 18th ).
As usual, before getting into bed I went to the window, drew back the curtain and looked out over our drive, and the drives of three neighbours....one house to the right, and two to the left.
There is a street light on the righthand boundary of the house to our right, and another on the far left of the bungalow furthest away on the left. This is quite a distance between the lights, so this stretch of the lane is quite dark.
There are no lights at all on the other side of the road. The gate to the fields opposite is directly across the road from our house.
From the gate, to the left, trees bordering the field line the road for about 100 yards: To the right of the gate there is the garden of the bungalow which is directly across the road. There are more trees between the gate and the bungalow.
It was dark, quiet, and calm outside, ie no noticeable wind. There was high, dark cloud cover which meant I could not see many stars.
Briefly, my attention was drawn to what I initially thought was a gust of white smoke, high up, ( maybe 30+ feet ), by the trees to the right of the field gate and above the bungalow. (diagonally to my right)
I can only describe what I saw in the simplest terms
possible.
A circle of white blobs of cloud /mist /smoke, about 20 feet in diameter in total.
There was a distinct outer circle, and then inner circles of these 'blobs', all quite regular in shape and individually distinct.
I have to use the word 'blobs' because there was no suggestion of substance or solidity about them and yet they were not amorphous.
From my window they appeared flat, 2 dimensional.
The entire circle moved sedately from behind the upper area of the trees, rotating gently clockwise, and moving slowly across the road in an anti-clockwise path, disappearing from my view.
Juggling disbelief, curiosity and annoyance that it had disappeared, I toyed with all manner of explanations for what I had seen, none of which I could back up with fact or logic.
Then, within seconds , the rotating circle reappeared, seeming to execute a pendulum-style return to the point in the trees from where it had emerged initially.
I then counted seconds to see if there was a pattern. A good 20 seconds later, the whole rotating circle repeated the same journey.
The reappearance from my right was about 6 or 7 seconds.
At this point I wanted someone else to see it all, to verify the event. I considered ringing one of neighbours, but 12:30 am is a bit of an anti-social time to do that, so I woke up my sleeping husband and he came to the window.
Thankfully, the 'performance' was still happening.
"That's a bit unusual " was not exactly the response I expected !
Muttering about " electro-magnetic atmospherics", he returned to his sleep.
Needless to say, at that time of night, not many people are gazing out of their windows, or walking the dog and there was no traffic on the road.
I abandoned my viewing spot and went to bed.
By 1:10 am I was still driven by curiosity and returned to the window.
There it was.........exactly as it had been for the last hour.
..............................................
The instinct to look things up on the computer is deep-seated, but this posed problems.
What should I look for?
I first contacted the Met Office... maybe it could be explained as some atmospheric aberration ?
A very nice reply denied any understanding by them of what I had seen: They suggested the British Astrological Association and the MOD UFO Hotline.
To be honest, the idea of a UFO had not entered my consideration.
Kind Regards,
Shirl
