Dateline: Thursday, December 11, 2003

By: GREG TAYLOR

By: Phenomena News Editor

Source: St Helens Star

For 5 hours in January 1978, 46-year-old Robert Bennett sat listening to his amateur radio with three police officers. What they were listening to was unbelievable - a UFO which had been sighted above a power station, and tracked by both enthusiasts and police as it travelled over the Mersey countryside, had apparently been seen landing in a field near the town of Rainhill.

Now 71, Bennett came forward with his memories after an article in The St Helens Star told of how the sighting had been placed at #44 in a police database of UFO sightings. A journalist with the newspaper, Ian Brandes, had reported that Detective Constable Gary Heseltine had officially entered the sighting of the mysterious lights above the Bold Power Station, in the Police Reporting UFO sightings database.

DC Heseltine even mentions that there is excellent circumstantial evidence that the report was a genuine sighting of an unidentified craft - the account mentions that the object hovered over the power station for a period, before shooting away at speed.

Now, 71-year-old Robert Bennett, a former maintenance worker at the old Varley's Foundry on Atlas Street, Fingerpost, has come forward to add his side of the story.

Mr Bennett recounted his memories. "With a bit of scepticism I phoned the St. Helens police and told them I had just had a radio call about a UFO sighting. Everything went hush, hush on the phone and then they said they were sending someone up straight away. Three officers, one who I think was high-ranking, arrived at about 10.15pm and stayed until about 3am," he revealed.

He added: "From what I heard there were officers in the car trying to follow it and I believe it did land in a field in Rainhill and two police officers, a PC and a WPC were 20 yards away from it when it started to take off."