Location: West Overton Date: Mon 5th August 1996 Time: 11.45 - 12.00am Witness: P.Vigay + Others
I was returning to East Kennett along the Lockeridge road, having spent the evening in The Barge public house in Honey Street, some three miles to the south.
Driving towards Lockeridge and the left hand turn which goes up to the West Overton T-Junction and on to East Kennett, I noticed an object in the sky. At this point it appeared to be stationery, just above the sky line to the north west of the road I was driving along. Turning left towards West Overton I slowed the car down, thinking that there was something 'not normal' about the object.
It consisted of three red lights in a sort of shallow triangle. The two outer ones seemed to be pulsating whilst the inner, middle one seemed dimmer and steady. I watched for a couple of minutes as the object remained stationery above the horizon. The distance appeared to be fairly close, possibly above the A4 about a mile further to the north.
Becoming more and more intrigued by the object, I decided to turn right on reaching the T-junction and head towards West Overton, over the hill. I stopped the car on top of the hill and got out.
It was unfortunately too dark to locate the object in the viewfinder of my camcorder, so I was unable to film the object. However, I watched it for some minutes, before it started drifting slowly in a southwest direction - towards Silbury Hill/Devizes direction.
Rather than pulsating, the outer two lights appeared to be rotating around the inner, dimmer light. All were red, but seemed to have a blurred outline. This was no aeroplane. For a start, it was absolutely silent, and it had remained stationery for some five minutes before it started moving.
When it did start moving, it was still totally silent and sort of 'drifted' in the sky, very slowly. At the time, I remember trying to categorise the object and thinking that if it wasn't a plane and wasn't a helicopter with some weird lighting arrangement on it, then what was the object.
At this point, as I was on top of West Overton Hill, an ideal vantage point, I guessed that the range of the object was only a matter of half a mile at the most. The night was cloudy and it was well below the cloud base. It also appeared to be between me and the A4, which was only about half a mile to the north.
As the object was now moving, I decided to continue my drive down the hill and onto East Kennett. Once there, I thought I'd contact some friends of mine who live there and tell them to come out and view the object.
Having parked the car, I was just crossing the road when a van sped around the corner at high speed. Seeing me, it slowed down and the driver wound down the window. It was Michael Yudowitz, the American crop circle and UFO investigator.
"Quick, get in. I'm chasing a UFO", he shouted. "You saw it as well", I replied as I threw my things into the back of the van and climbed in.
Racing forward, we were eager to regain sight of the object, now out of sight behind nearby trees. It must have been virtually overhead by now.
As we cleared the trees and sped towards the A4 junction we could no longer see the object. It couldn't have disappeared, unless it suddenly accelerated whilst I was parking the car - because it was moving so slowly beforehand.
We guessed that the object was travelling towards Devizes so turned left on to the A4 and drove towards the Beckhampton roundabout, past Silbury Hill on the right.
Reaching the roundabout, we still couldn't see the object, but decided to take the Devizes road, as that had the best vantage points and was also where the object appeared to be travelling.
As we were travelling quite fast, we decided that we must be ahead of the object, and therefore decided to stop the van and take a look around outside. At this point it was beginning to lightly rain.
No. All was quiet outside and there were no strange objects in the sky. It must have disappeared. Feeling slightly disappointed, we decided to turn south and circle back, through Alton Barnes.
What seemed like a couple of minutes later, we could see Alton Barnes ahead of us, but also noticed a strange, bright light in the southern sky. Just on the horizon. Michael stopped the van again.
At this point, I looked at my watch and exclaimed that over an hour and a half had past since we left East Kennett. I was puzzled by this, but know this amount of time had past because I specifically looked at my watch as I had parked the car, not wanting to wake up the friends with whom I was staying. It had been 11.52pm. It was now 12.45pm
I hasten to add that I am not suggesting that we had a missing time experience or anything, simply that I hadn't noticed the time pass so quickly. I recall all the drive from East Kennett to where we were now, and I certainly don't recall any 'missing' bits.
However, we were now intrigued by this new light. Unsure if it was army manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain, we examined it through some powerful (10x50) binoculars. The object appeared to be a large white light, completely stationery, which occasionally faded and disappeared, only to re-appear in the same position a few minutes later.
Also, a small red light appeared to the left of the bright white light. At this point I was uncertain if it was a distant set of traffic lights and the white light was a car arriving at them.
However, as I watched through the binoculars, expecting the red light to change to amber, then green, the white light faded out again. Certainly not a waiting car - unless it just dematerialised!
However, the most puzzling thing was that every so often the white light would appear to 'merge' with the red light and become a single light. At one point while I was watching through the binoculars I saw two or possibly three small red lights detach themselves from the white light and fly away.
Our curiosity then got the better of us and we decided to drive towards the object to try and identify it, or at least get a better view of it. We headed through Honey Street towards Hilcott.
At this point the rain started to turn into a steady downpour and after driving around for some fifteen minutes, unsuccessfully trying to locate the light, we decided to call it a night and head home.
No other anomalous lights were seen and we eventually arrived back at East Kennett just before 2am.
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