UK UFO Files Released

"Doughnut" over Sri Lanka

The British National Archives just released about 8,500 pages of UFO reports that date back to the 1950s. What do these long-classified files tell us? Was Stonehenge planted by extraterrestrials? Is Dr. Who based on real events? Is Kate Middleton a Species-like creature who will spear Prince William with her razor-sharp alien tongue when they kiss after saying, "I do?" Let's take a look!

There are plenty of accounts throughout the files; a former RAF officer taking a picture of a "doughnut" of light over Sri Lanka, a driver in Sussex who spotted two "cone-shaped" objects in the sky on 9/11, two hill-climbers who ducked a flying ball that sounded like a "Guy Fawkes rocket."

Unfortunately, the most memorable highlights from the documents are more Benny Hill than X-Files. Take this event in 1967, the closest example of a British response to an actual alien invasion. After reports of six downed saucers, officials deployed military and intelligence teams to the scene. The crafts were found, but they were part of a college prank. DELTA HOUSE!:

Early in the morning of 4 September police and RAF were flooded with calls from the public reporting six small "flying saucers" that had been discovered in locations in a perfect line across Southern England from the Sheppey to the Bristol Channel. Four police forces, bomb disposal units, the army and the MoD's intelligence branch were all mobilised, before it emerged the saucers were a rag-day hoax by engineering students from Farnborough Technical College.

Or this one, a man who mistook daylight saving time for an alien abduction:

File DEFE 24/1999 (p106) contains a letter from a man who believed he may have been abducted by aliens after witnessing an aircraft hovering over his house one October evening and waking the following morning to find he had experienced a period of missing time. The MoD responded to his letter stating the aircraft was likely to have been an airship and that the clocks had gone back an hour that night which would account for him gaining an hour.

Note to readers: clocks move ahead at 2:00 a.m. on March 13th. Don't check for probes when you notice the time change on your iPhone.

Newly released UFO files from the UK government [National Archives]