PALIN MITENK BLOG

By Tom Kelly

Fright: Witnesses saw a huge UFO over Michael Howard's Kent home in 1997


It wasn't just Tony Blair and New Labour that Michael Howard had to worry about in the run-up to the 1997 general election.

It was aliens, too.

Several witnesses insisted that they saw a UFO over the then Home Secretary's home less than two months before his Tory Party was crushed at the polls.

The large triangular craft, double the size of a jumbo jet, was hovering 1,000ft above the house near Folkestone, Kent, according to Ministry of Defence files released yesterday by the National Archives.

The spacecraft had lights around its edge, a giant spotlight at the front, a disc attached to its back and could be heard 'humming' in the night skies, observers said.

They claimed it had homed in on Mr Howard's house and appeared to have been monitoring him for some time.

Among the witnesses quoted in the files was Sophie Wadleigh, 25, from Hythe. 'It was so peculiar, it all felt really odd and I heard this humming noise,' she said.

'As I looked across the field I saw a large triangular craft hovering about 300 metres off the ground.'

Lane, 23, who lived close to Mr Howard's house, said: 'It was crazy - I was getting a drink in the kitchen when I saw these strange lights in the sky just over the field across the road from our house.'

Christopher Lee, 27, who also spotted it, said: 'It was a lot longer than a plane and moved incredibly quickly - I have no idea what it was.'


Another unnamed witness said: 'It was just a huge triangle thing, which was a lot bigger than an aeroplane or anything like that. It had lights all around the outside, and this disc attached to the back, and a big light on the front. I pulled up to a stop and as I did it shot off.

'I was really frightened by it and I'm not stupid. I don't believe in anything like that. This is not something I've ever seen before or like something we would have built.'

Chris Rolfe, from UFO Monitoring East Kent, investigated the sighting on March 8 1997 and submitted a detailed report to the government warning that aliens may have been tracking the Home Secretary.

The RAF launched a investigation into the sighting but found nothing to explain it.

The Air Defence inquiry said there was 'no such security incident' involving Mr Howard or and 'no such military activity reported anywhere, and, specifically, in the Kent/Folkestone area'.

The report added: 'Additional inquiries have confirmed that no unusual or unauthorised air activity, civil or military, was reported or observed in that area on that date.'

MoD responses to queries related to the sighting said there was 'no evidence' to suggest a security breach.

Soon after the Tory defeat in May, 1997, Mr Howard stood for the leadership of the Tory Party. One of his opponents who might have seemed more likely to be targeted by aliens was John Redwood, nicknamed 'Vulcan' because of his similarity to Star Trek's Mr Spock.

Mr Howard's campaign collapsed after his own former Home Office deputy, Ann Widdecombe, described him as having ' something of the night' about him.

William Hague won the leadership but the job eventually went to Mr Howard from 2003 to 2005, when he was replaced by David Cameron.

Other previously top-secret MoD files released by the National Archives revealed how a policeman spotted a UFO hovering over the Chelsea football ground in March 1999.


The officer described seeing four lights, square to diamond in shape, over Stamford Bridge.


It lasted for ten to 15 seconds as it 'moved across the sky fairly quickly, changing shape slowly', he said.

A funeral director told police he was physically sick and developed a 'skin condition' after an eerie 'tube of light' enveloped his car in Ebbw Vale, South Wales, on the night of January 27 1997.

Another man arrived at his Birmingham home at 4am on March 20, 1997, to discover an illuminated blue triangle hovering over his garden.

The craft shot off leaving behind a 'silky-white' substance on the tree-tops, which he collected in a jam-jar.

An object travelling at more than 1,000 knots was tracked by a senior air traffic controller from the control tower at Glasgow Prestwick Airport in February 1999.

And a 'near miss' between a BA Boeing 737 airliner approaching Manchester Airport and a UFO was investigated by the Civil Aviation Authority.

The pilots reported a lit object flying down the right-hand side of the aircraft at a high speed as they flew over the Pennines en route from Milan on January 6, 1995.

Manchester Air Traffic Control recorded no known traffic in the vicinity on radar.


source: daiylmail