Videocast transcript, July 2012

One of the collections of papers in these files is about a series of sightings that took
place in west Wales in Pembrokeshire during 1977-78. This was the subject of some
particularly lurid tabloid headlines. At the time the Bermuda Triangle was very popular,
with many TV documentaries about it, and this area of Wales became known as the
„Welsh Triangle‟ because there had been so many mysterious sightings in that area.
There had also been reports from various people of people seeing silver suited
humanoids that were believed to have been the UFOs pilots that had been seen
wandering around the countryside late at night. The reason this turns up in the files is
because one of the people who made one of these reports contacted their local MP who
was Nicholas Edwards. She was a lady who ran a hotel on the Welsh coast and one
day in 1977 quite late at night she had been woken up by an object that she had seen in
the sky which this had descended into a field. She described it like the moon falling
down from the sky, and it landed in a field at the back of her property and as she
watched she said she saw two very tall faceless humanoids emerge from this object
about the size of a minibus and they appeared to wander around in the field taking
measurements. She was absolutely petrified by this experience, so much so that she
felt the MoD should be looking in to this. Particularly because in the field there was what
was later revealed to be a bomb shelter of some kind.
This was reported to the MP, he passed it to the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, and
this was a very unusual thing for them to do, they asked an RAF officer from nearby
RAF Boarding airbase to go and have an interview with the lady who had reported the
sighting. He went down there and examined the area where the thing had landed and
he couldn‟t find any obvious explanation for this. So he briefed the Ministry of Defence
on what he had discovered and the person who was the head of the UFO desk at the
time was so concerned about this he had a private word with the RAF police, he asked
them to make some enquiries locally and it turned out that they suspected, as a result of
this investigation, that someone had been involved in a practical joke and they had
borrowed a fire fighting suit that had been on display in a local shop. They said it had
been white with a big black visor over the face and this person had been walking around
in this suit late at night and maybe this is what had caused some of the weird sightings.
But even so, they still couldn‟t explain all the sightings, this was one possible
explanation. They weren‟t saying that they could forget about the „Welsh Triangle‟ but
there was some very clear suggestions that someone had perhaps been pulling
someone‟s leg.
Were there other sightings from around that country, in Brighton?
Around 2005-2006 people began to release Chinese lanterns on a regular basis and
they became popular at the Glastonbury pop festival from the summer of 2003. Lots of
people hadn‟t seen these things in the sky before, so when people started reporting
fleets of bright revolving lights moving in formation some people became very worried
about it. One report in the file from 2005 states that a lady from Brighton had seen a
group of these objects in the sky and she had rung the MoD to report this and was
absolutely petrified asking for an explanation and saying that all her friends were really
worried about it.
Looking at it now, looking at the details – orange lights that are revolving- and a very
good description of what we now know to be Chinese lanterns, but it shows that it is
quite possible to have an experience with these things and believe it is something
extraordinary when really it is just a small hot air balloon lit by a candle.