U.P.R.I.S.I.N.G case report
Author; Nath Lockley
Sighting time and date; early afternoon, July 1986
Location; Birmingham, UK
Witness name; Annie Lloyd
Annie posted about her sighting on the U.P.R.I.S.I.N.G Facebook group and I contacted her for more details. She agreed to let me write up her sighting in the hopes of finding any more witnesses or maybe a more mundane explanation.
Sighting details;
I asked Annie to describe her sighting to me in as much detail as possible. This is her recollection of the event:
“It was a sunny day in Birmingham with one or two smallish clouds in the blue sky, but no glaring sun from where I was stood in my mom and dad’s back garden. I remember the day pretty well considering I have a bad memory. I would have been 16. I was standing in the back garden just standing around in the sunshine, fussing my dog whilst my friend sat on the stairs in the house fixing my radio cassette and my dad and sister were in the back living room, watching TV.
The living room had french doors leading out into the garden where I was standing. I always look up to the sky to see if there are any planes etc. This time I looked up and saw six, round ball bearing like objects flying in a triangle formation. I couldn’t tell if they were small or just really high up, but I could tell they weren’t planes as they looked round in shape. (I used to play marbles when I was a bit younger and Dad used to be able to get me ball bearings from work which we used to call ‘steelies’ and this is what they resembled.
I was really surprised and I ran over to the window and shouted to my dad and sister to come and take a look. Instead of coming out, they were saying “look at what?” etc and I was telling them through the glass to hurry up and come outside.
When I turned back there was now just one object and it moved into the cloud. There were no sounds at all. Had I not happened to look up, I would not have been aware of anything at all. I asked friends and family if any of them saw anything but none of them mentioned seeing anything. The sky was virtually clear of clouds that day so how others did not see them I do not know.
They were angled almost straight up, above my head and they were moving from right to left (not sure of the exact direction). The speed wasn’t fast at all. When I looked back up and only saw one as it had gone behind the cloud, it seemed to have changed direction. The sighting seemed to last about a minute if that. If my dad and sister had come straight outside instead of getting me to elaborate on what I wanted, they would have seen it too and I would have seen where the other objects had gone.”
While discussing this case, Annie also mentioned something strange that happened to her around 20 years ago. As she was on her computer, out of her peripheral vision, she caught a glimpse of a big dark circle that appeared just above her old CRT monitor. She pretended not to see it and carried on looking at the screen. She then moved her eyes from side to side to make sure it wasn’t just a problem with her vision but this object stayed where it was, right above the monitor. It was about 18 inches from her head, and from what she remembered it was dark grey in colour and full of ‘“white noise” and made no sound. This object disappeared after a few seconds.
Sighting analysis;
Last updated 21/2/2022
This sighting matches probably thousands of sightings worldwide over the years, with round spherical ‘orbs’ being one of the most common shapes reported in “UFO” sightings. Searching through several databases online of sightings during that time, I have found no other cases of the same thing being seen in the area at the time Annie had her sighting. With the objects moving slowly, silently and either being very small or very high up, it is understandable how there may not be any other witnesses. Annie herself nearly missed the whole thing, if she hadn’t have looked up when she did. As with a lot of older cases, explanations of things like drones can be easily ruled out as these were not available back in the 80s. This reason also explains, along with how short the sighting was, the lack of photographic evidence. If Annie’s description of the shape is correct, this also rules out normal terrestrial aircraft. Could it have been something like balloons? Perhaps. But 6 silver balloons floating in a triangle formation? That isn’t impossible but very improbable. Another explanation for the formation could be migrating birds but that would mean that Annie’s descriptions of both the shape and colour of the objects were wrong.
As for the strange ball of static, she claims to have seen above her monitor 20 years ago, I could only put that down to either some sort of eye strain from using the computer monitor or something much more strange that I couldn’t even begin to explain happened. I would assume the eye strain explanation is much more likely though.
I will continue to investigate and see what other information I can find, and hopefully, some other witnesses come forward with new information. I will keep Annie up to date with any developments and I will update this report with any new information.
