Defence chiefs remain "open-minded" about life on other planets after revealing they logged more than a dozen UFO sightings above Oxfordshire in eight years.

Government files yesterday highlighted the number of sightings in the county reported by the public to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) between 1998 and 2006.

There have been three sightings in Oxford during the period, including a bright white halo seen heading north west in 2001.

City sightings also included an oval object with green, red and blue flashing lights spotted in 2000 and a spinning oval with about 250 lights reported in 1998.

In total, 13 reports had been logged with the MoD and the biggest year for sightings was the millennium, when four separate reports were recorded.

The most recent incident was of a structure which glinted like metal, spotted above Banbury in June last year.

Elsewhere, in June 2001, an object four times the size of a star was spotted shining brightly as it moved north over Eynsham.

Two months later, a person in Chipping Norton reported several very bright purple, green and white objects in the sky.

While in February 1998, a witness reported a very large object like a firework rocket descending over the A34 near Abingdon.

But UFO expert Michael Soper, from Marston, in Oxford, a member of the Contact International UFO research group, believes there have been hundreds of sightings in the skies above the county over the same period.

He said: "People here do report things relatively readily and state very closely what they see and with no embellishment at all."

He added that a family from Faringdon had notified him of a particularly nasty alien abduction, while Uffington and the Rollright Stones were known as 'window areas' because so many UFOs are spotted there.

He said: "Oxford gets exciting reports of objects in the sky and there are several reports of abductions in Oxfordshire."

Frances Morrill, 51, of Eynsham, saw a large orange and pink sphere above Wytham Woods in the late 1970s which she believes was a UFO.

She said: "It has stayed with me today. I know other people who have said they saw things up there.

"I think it's all kept secret because no one wants to scare us to death. I always keep my eye on the sky and haven't seen anything else - and I don't want to."

The MoD is preparing to publish all UFO files dating back to 1967, including witness reports of apparent UFO sightings - many by civil pilots and military personnel.

A spokesman for the MoD said: "We do not have any expertise or role in respect of UFO matters - or to the question of the existence or otherwise of extra-terrestrial life forms - about which we remain totally open-minded."

The MoD examines reports to see if UK airspace may have been compromised by hostile or unauthorised military activity.

The MoD said "rational explanations" - such as aircraft lights-- could be found if resources were pointed in the right direction.

by Ed Casson, Maghull and Aintree Star

ON the sunny afternoon of Wednesday July 25, Lee Jones of Anfield looked up from the back garden of his home and saw something which terrified and mesmerised him.

An enormous saucer-shaped craft emerged slowly from the cumulus clouds and hung in the sky.

The UFO was so large, a passing commercial airliner was dwarfed against it, leading Lee to estimate the unidentified craft’s size as over a mile in diameter.

He ran in and fetched his wife and mother-in-law, and they too saw the gigantic circular craft – the colour of ‘grey gun-metal’ – hanging in the summer sky as clouds drifted over its surface, obscuring the mysterious visitor.

After about fifteen minutes of peeping out from the clouds, the UFO was nowhere to be seen.

Had something its size taken off at high speed, a sonic bang would have rocked Merseyside, but no such boom was reported.

Lee’s account is just one of many reports I have received, describing what might be one and the same gargantuan UFO.

Earlier this year in January, a Mr Fraser of Childwall was taking a nightly stroll down Menlove Avenue when he noticed several lights in the sky.

Mr Fraser quickly realised these pinpoints of light were on some darker circular object of an enormous size.

The huge disc-shaped UFO moved slowly from the direction of Halewood across the sky, and Mr Fraser and a female passer-by watched it head towards Netherley.

That same week, a geometric formation of lights was seen over Huyton, Page Moss, Dovecot and Broadgreen.

One witness, a pizza-delivery man, said he saw a ‘giant round object in the sky with a mixture of coloured lights’ which he estimated to be about the size of the metropolitan cathedral.

The person he delivered the pizza to also saw this object and tried to video it.

Throughout June, this same colossal UFO seems to have been seen by people in the Dingle, Aigburth, Grassendale and Hunt’s Cross, and all these sightings were of a night.

A retired local policeman named Colin and an aviation expert from Runcorn named Greg have joined forces to get to the bottom of the giant UFO sightings, and initially believed the reports were misidentifications of the planet Venus, misinterpretations of aircraft landing and navigation lights and so on, but now they accept that these explanations do not pan out.

Electronics enthusiast Greg has built his very own radar unit using satellite dishes, and has even obtained data on the mysterious mammoth UFO.

He has ascertained that it is almost a mile in length and hovers at an altitude of around 7,000 feet.

His colleague Colin was a confirmed sceptic until he saw the UFO during a ‘skywatch’ vigil with five other people at Tarbock Green.

‘It blocked out the stars when it came into view at 3 am,’ says Colin.

THE Ministry of Defence has given a first glimpse into Cumbria’s own ‘X-files’ on UFO sightings in the county. Details revealed under the Freedom of Information Act show the MoD recorded four UFO sightings in north and west Cumbria since 1999.

The most recent was on September 13 last year in Whitehaven at 9.45pm. It is recorded as “a triangular object with lights. One green, one red and the other two amber. There was a strange droning noise as it passed overhead”.

Other reports from the MoD show a sighting in August 2000 at Crosby near Carlisle, where the entry reads: when it is claimed there was a “Disc shape with hump on top. Was definitely not an aeroplane. Was low down in the sky.” And in August 1999 there wasthe previous year also saw a report from Carlisle just before 9pm of “two blue balls of light – dancing around in the sky”.

The final sighting, also in Carlisle has no date recorded. However, the spotter said the vision was of “Lucifer-like things, that are seen every day. They hold people in their homes and are a nuisance.”

Every year more than 100 UFO sightings are reported to the MoD, which are detailed in the information just published. Although the MoD does not have any expertise in respect of UFOs, it is required to investigates every sighting in order to establish whether or not the UK’s airspace has been compromised.

The study of unidentified flying objects is known as ufology and if the reports are to be believed there were an additional five sightings in south Cumbria, plus a further record just listed as ‘Cumbria’ where 40 orange and red lights were seen in the sky.

Witnesses claim they saw a UFO in Kendal in 2005, a bright star moving around like a kite in Storth in May 2004 and circular flashing lights in Ulverston in August 1999.

Furthermore it is claimed in October 2000 there was a “bright metal star with no jet stream” in Keswick and in February the same year, two bright lights above Bowness-on-Windermere.

An MoD spokesman said: “The MoD examines reports solely to establish whether UK airspace may have been compromised by hostile or unauthorised military activity.

“If required, sighting reports are examined with the assistance of the Department’s air defence experts. Unless there is evidence of a potential threat, there is no attempt to identify the nature of each sighting reported.”

However, correspondence between the MoD and members of the public who report sightings of strange objects reveals that Whitehall officials remain “totally open-minded” about the existence of UFOs.

Details of the UFO sightings by members of the public between 1999 and 2006 were released in response to a series of Freedom of Information requests.

It comes as the MoD Prepares to publish its UFO files dating back to 1967.

The documents due for release are witness reports of apparent UFO sightings, many by civil pilots and military personnel.

It is thought most were simply collected and filed by a small, secret unit within defence intelligence, but a few were investigated further by the military. There are 24 files due for release, each containing 200-300 reports of sightings, plus internal MoD briefings and correspondence.

ENCINO, California — Motivated by curiosity, fueled by obsession and empowered by the Freedom of Information Act, John Greenewald Jr. has assembled what may be the largest collection of UFO documents in the world. John Greenewald Jr. has gathered half a million UFO-related government documents over the past decade. And it's all online for anyone to see — which is the way the 26-year-old Californian thinks it should be.

As a teenager, Greenewald was fascinated by UFOs. Like many other kids in the 1990s, he used the Internet to learn more.

But simple Web searches weren't enough for Greenewald. When he discovered something interesting about UFOs, he wanted hard copies, so he asked for them.

Before he even had a driver's license, Greenewald was writing to the CIA, the NSA, and the Defense Intelligence Agency — requesting government documents about UFOs using a 40-year-old law called the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

FOIA requests, frequently used by journalists and watchdog organizations, compel federal agencies to provide declassified information to any citizen that requests it. Greenewald says he's made well more than 2,000 FOIA requests.

And he says it's been worth the effort, yielding about half a million documents from the government.

The first one he requested concerned a UFO sighting in Iran in 1976 — a large rectangular object with pulsing colored lights. When a fighter jet scrambled to intercept it, the report says, its instruments went haywire.

Greenewald scans most of his documents and archives them online on a website he calls the Black Vault, where anyone with an interest in the paranormal can check them out.

"I thought to myself, 'Hey, if I'm looking for this, other people have got to be looking for this,'" Greenewald says.

Getting information from the government is no easy task. Agencies don't always jump to fill the orders — Greenewald has waited years for some of them.

"I've learned specifically that the U.S. government and military cover up a lot." — John Greenewald Jr.

And the agencies are finicky, rejecting requests if they are too vague or narrow. Even when a request is just right, the information may be classified.

"I've learned specifically that the U.S. government and military cover up a lot," says Greenewald. "It doesn't matter what subject you're dealing with, it doesn't matter what time frame you're dealing with."

The biggest cover-up of all, he says, is Area 51 in Nevada — which is the center of many UFO conspiracy theories. For years the government denied it even existed. It still doesn't appear on any maps. But Greenewald has a letter in his Black Vault from the Department of Energy acknowledging that Area 51 was annexed by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1958, and that the area now part of Nellis Air Force Base.

As to America's most famous UFO legend, the alleged crash of a flying saucer in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico, Greenewald says the government has changed its story several times — calling it everything from a weather balloon to an Air Force crash test.

The documents Greenewald has collected may show that the government has been less than totally honest about some of the incidents. But when asked what they're trying to cover up and why — he's uncertain.

"These documents, letters, memos, reports... they're not written like books," he says. "They're not written like storylines where you can read through and see. They're just clues. You've got to put them together. What does the story say overall?"

Greenewald has turned that puzzle into his profession. A sought-after expert in the UFO field, he produces TV documentaries and hosts a weekly Internet radio show that is available on his Black Vault site.

Does Greenewald himself believe in extraterrestrial life?

"I'm 99.9% sure and I believe in something out there," he says. "Have they been here? I don't know. Have I seen them? No."

Perhaps the mystery itself is enough — as long as it helps pay the rent.

(Editors Note: John and I are good friends, and our beliefs are one and the same. We are pleased to announce that the UFO Casebook contributing to John's new project.)

To see video, visit this page.