Bentwaters, England
December 27, 1980

Known as "England's Roswell," this sighting occurred in the last days of 1980 near a U.S. Air Force base in the U.K. Over two nights, security patrols reported unusual lights in the forest beyond the base's perimeter. Armed with Geiger counters, two-way radios, and floodlights, on the second night they entered the forest to investigate.

U.S. Air Force security patrols encountered a 30-foot-tall craft at the same time their spotlights and radios began to sputter and fail; the next day, investigators returned to the scene to find broken tree limbs, three small, circular depressions in the soil, and radiation levels 25 times higher than normal background levels. Although some analysts accounted for the broken tree limbs as wind damage, this explanation didn't explain the radiation levels recorded at the scene. What's more, further investigation revealed a 1956 sighting in the same place, when British radar picked up signals from an object moving at speeds of up to 9000 miles per hour. This sighting and others persuaded England's top UFO investigator and Ministry of Defence officer Nick Pope that UFOs were possible, and prompted him to write a book titled "Open Skies, Closed Minds."