Our friend Jonathon was visiting us in Farnborough for a long weekend.
During the evening, we all got in the car to go up on the Hogs Back A31, with the intention of conducting a small sky watch there; we arrived at about 8:45pm.
The Hog’s Back is a noted Ley Line area which also boasts the Pilgrims Way crossing on its Southern side, running from Farnham, which is a good reason why this location is favoured by us for sky watching purposes.
Jonathon, who is a fellow mysteries researcher, had never been to this spot previously, but for me and Hil, this has become a good place to indulge in our passion, (no, not that!) of searching the heavens for possible UFOs - Unidentified Flying Objects.
We parked up as we normally do, wound the windows down, and along with our extra passenger, we began our vigil of the sky, gazing in the direction over Guildford, Surrey.
I remember me looking up and saying, (jokingly) ‘please give us a good sighting, nothing like last time, something so small that my camera would hardly pick it up, thank you!’...
...a sarcastic reference to a previous watch that we did which was a complete waste of time, where all we had seen were tiny LITS, (Lights in the sky) pinpricks that could have been anything.
It was a night of good visibility, clear with a bit of high cloud; the three of us sat quietly, binoculars and camera at the ready; we had been there a while, and I think that we were becoming slightly resigned to the idea that, (as with about 95% of the time when sky watching) we were not going to see anything out of the ordinary that evening.
But, just how wrong could anyone be?
Suddenly in the distance, something caught our attention; our jaws dropped!
Through the cloud appeared the most beautiful, red/purple mass of light, roughly oval in shape, which was steady, no flashing, with dazzling rays of brilliance emitting from it.
To our naked eyes this thing was huge, far bigger and brighter than any aircraft lights, and of a most unusual colour, the likes of which we have since failed to see or match. (Only through mixing the paints in an artist palette, have we come close.)
We all got out of the car, with me videoing and Hilary studying the situation through high-powered binoculars; she informed us that there were definitely ‘no wings, tail or navigation lights’ in fact, there was no metallic structure at all that she could make out, just this brightly illuminated oval.
What we were watching was obviously under intelligent control, as 'the mass' began to gently descend in a perfectly straight manner, over in the near distance and down behind some trees...
None of us could detect any sound, which one would expect for an object so big.
It was covering a pretty large area between Stoughton/Jacobs Well near Guildford, so we began calculating the size of this oddity.
Using Guildford Cathedral on the horizon as a reference point, we estimated that the UFO was at least half the size of the building!
So transfixed were we by this aerial spectacle, we had even become oblivious to the usual noise of traffic swishing by.
This 'thing' was still as brightly illuminated as it descended, exactly as we had first seen the object at higher altitude; then our view as to exactly where it landed, (if indeed, it did land at all!) became obscured by trees.
I tried videoing as much of the UFOs’ movements as I could.
After this the object was gone; we all gasped and started saying things like ‘wow, that has got to be in the papers tomorrow’, and ‘we are never going to see anything like that again in our entire lives’…
But later, at 9:15 pm, either the same or a similar object, once again suddenly appeared through the cloud cover, exactly as it had done before, this time though our guest Jonathon excitedly said to me, ‘have you got a torch in the car?’, ‘yes’ I replied – ‘quick, shine it at the object’ Jon said...
Normally I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing as it could prove dangerous to conventional air traffic; but egged-on by Jon's urgings, I grabbed my high candlepower halogen spotlight that I always carry in the boot in case of breakdowns, and flashed its powerful beam at the UFO, hoping to reveal any possible body/structure that might be behind all its radiance.
I swear, that the second my torch beam shone into the sky, the UFO instantly vanished before our eyes there and then!
This sudden vanishing left me feeling slightly guilty, as if I had offended whoever or whatever was responsible for the UFOs appearance by shining the torch beam on them; maybe 'they' saw this light as a threat and acted protectively in response.
I thought that I had frightened them away! but we waited to see if anything else would happen, and incredibly it did!
At about 9:30pm something suddenly came through the clouds over the same area... it was our UFO yet again!
As with the first object all of us had seen, no torches this time, instead we just watched the object in all its beauty and gracefulness, feeling privileged as we did so.
We waited half an hour longer, but that was it: We left the lay-by feeling elated after having experienced 3 incredible sightings all in one night!
Now for the bad news: Unfortunately back then, all we possessed was a really early, basic camcorder... a dinosaur that was fine when shooting in the daytime, yet which struggled to record in the dark as it had no ‘night shot’ or anything that fancy; even so, I had taken the gamble and attempted to video the UFO, but on replay, there was little of what we had witnessed, much to our disappointment, but not to my surprise.
Damn it! I muttered when I played the tape back; just blackness and fuzz, that’s practically all there was; hardly anything had been recorded except static and a couple of feint frames that showed a giant, glowing red orb, which is not how we saw the object at all.
What we had seen was best described as a pink-red chandelier of light.
And, as if things couldn't get any worse, these sightings were NOT reported in any of the local or national papers.
It was as if no one else had seen any of this, which we find very hard to believe, as it all happened so close to a busy dual carriageway!
We strongly suspected a cover up!
Hilary is ex-MoD and a trained observer: As for myself, I have had over 20 years of experience in the field of UFO research, and we can honestly say that what we encountered that evening was something very strange, the likes of which we were totally unfamiliar with: We had never witnessed anything like it before, nor have we observed anything like it since.
It definitely wasn't atmospheric phenomena, it wasn't an airship, a hot air balloon, Chinese lanterns, flares nor any sort of conventional aircraft, (as some cynics have tried to suggest) but a legitimate, intelligently controlled UFO.
Our Hogs Back observation was remarkably similar in certain respects, to another sighting report that we have since discovered, made by someone else in this area, back in 1977...
+ 2 more genuine, classic examples of a saucer-shaped UFO seen at close range, on, or flying over The Hogs Back.
Please click here to read the close encounter case of 77 year old Alfred Burtoo of Aldershot, Hampshire UK… and here for the report of two large saucer-shaped objects that were encountered by a family in a car in Bagshott Heath, Surrey.
Then there was Guildford: Yet more UFO's for the area.
15 years' worth of previously unseen UFO files opened-up by the National Archives, revealed a noteworthy sighting report for Guildford.
Two objects measuring ‘elbow to finger size’ were spotted for a couple of minutes hovering above the railway bridge footpath in Woodbridge Hill, Guildford, July 1994 at 10:20pm.
The unidentifieds, described as having a brown-grey colour, were spotted during a clear night and reported to police 12 hours later.
