Britain's X-Files: UK's History of Most Compelling UFO Encounters From Flying Saucers to Supernatural Events

The United Kingdom has been a global hotbed for unexplained and bizarre phenomena. While a number of these events can simply be weather balloons, satellites, or even optical illusions, a few cases remain etched in the country's history because there were credible witnesses and physical evidence left behind.

While officials have often downplayed such events, government records confirm a long history of UFO sightings tracked by military radar and witnessed by service members. The following are the most mysterious encounters to ever occur on British soil.

1. The Rendlesham Forest Incident (1980): Britain's Roswell

This is considered the most well-known UFO event in the history of the UK. The Rendlesham Forest UFO was sighted several times, beginning on the night of 26 December 1980, Boxing Day in the UK. At that time, US Air Force personnel stationed at RAF Woodbridge in the Rendlesham Forest saw a strange craft on their radar equipment.

Airmen were ordered to investigate. While roaming in their vehicle, they came across a clearing and were aghast to see an otherworldly object surrounded by light.

Suffolk's RAF Woodbridge's Deputy Base Commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt reported the sighting to the UFO Desk at Whitehall on 13 January 1981. According to the UFO Files at the National Archives, he submitted the report under the title 'Unexplained Lights.' It outlined a string of surreal encounters witnessed by American security personnel and airmen within Rendlesham Forest.

Halt stated in his report that the first night, three personnel investigated what they initially thought was a plane crash. Instead, they discovered a triangular, metallic object about two meters by three meters in size. This unknown craft illuminated the surrounding trees with intense white light, and on top, it had a pulsing red light and blue lights underneath.

The object appeared to have steered through the forest to avoid the patrol, then vanished. Physical evidence was later found by British constables - three distinct impressions in the forest floor, but the inquiry on this was reportedly abandoned when they were called away to handle a local break-in. Thus, civilian authorities did not inspect the evidence.

Later, Halt also said that aside from indentations in the ground, they also detected higher radiation levels on the succeeding days of their own investigation. To this day, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) continues to say it was not a threat to national security, but the occurrence was still unexplained.

2. The Lakenheath-Bentwaters Incident (1956)

Historical records reveal that decades before the Rendlesham mystery, the UK's radar systems were already picking up impossible signals over East Anglia. On 13 August 1956, operators across several airbases tracked a fleet of up to 15 unidentified objects travelling through the sky at over 4,000 mph, a speed that is impossible to achieve with the most advanced technology in that era.

In a desperate bid to identify the intruders, RAF de Havilland Venom jets were scrambled into the night sky. The encounter took a chilling turn when one pilot reported that the unknown craft had effortlessly outmanoeuvred him, looping around to 'stalk' his jet from behind.

Official investigations conceded that while natural explanations are possible, they admitted the likelihood was minimal, making this encounter one of the most credible radar-visual mysteries in aviation history.

Nick Pope, a former MOD official who examined UFOs for the government between 1991 and 1994, said, 'Military jets were scrambled to try and intercept these things. At one point, one of the objects was recorded at speeds of around 4,000 miles an hour. And reliable witnesses, the pilots saw them. They're simultaneously tracked on radar. At one point, these things are going in formation, and then they appear to converge and form a single object.'

3. 'The Warminster Thing' (1964)

Another fascinating UFO story in the UK occurred in a single town on Christmas Eve in 1964. Mildred Head, a local resident, was startled by a deafening sound above her house. The noise was described as being like thousands of roof tiles being torn away and slammed back down in a frantic rhythm, sending a deep vibration through the entire home. Mildred initially thought that a secret drill was taking place at the local Royal Air Force base. But her perspective changed after her neighbour, Marjorie Bay, reported an exact similar experience.

The mystery deepened as Marjorie Bay reported a chilling physical encounter: a series of intense, rhythmic vibrations that seemed to resonate through her entire body. She was not alone. Scores of other witnesses soon came forward with identical accounts of an 'unseen force' that would seize and violently shake them, leaving the community of Warminster gripped by a phenomenon they could neither see nor explain.

Driven by repeated accounts of buzzing noises and mysterious light displays, the community took action, and around 300 residents assembled at the town hall to ask for an explanation. This escalated and made it to the national news, prompting 'sky vigils' in Warminster. It wasn't just locals seeing the phenomena; visitors at these nightly vigils reported their own sightings. Warminster's reputation as a hotspot for 'flying saucers' was solidified when the Daily Mirror published a compelling image of a disc-shaped craft taken by Gordon Faulkner.

4. Yorkshire Phenomenon: UFOs Under the Sea (2020)

Yorkshire is another premier hotspot for the unexplained, and it has a history of UFO sightings from ancient times to the present day. In 2009, private investigator Paul Sinclair and his team launched a project to document unusual occurrences.

They installed surveillance equipment along the rugged North Sea cliffs to capture definitive proof of the region's paranormal activity that was said to be happening almost daily. They reached their breakthrough one night in 2020 when they captured footage of a craft emerging directly from the depths of the ocean.

Based on their observations, the object travelled a distance of six miles during that 90-second window, while maintaining an estimated speed of 240 mph before submerging back into the sea.

This was not an isolated case, as other investigators have also successfully filmed luminous, glowing lights deep beneath the water's surface. But despite the extensive monitoring and studies, there is still no explanation for the sightings.