UK UFO hotspot home to 70 years of strange sightings

If you were to have an alien encounter, would you expect it to be in Grimsby? 

Locals say their patch of land is a UK ‘UFO hotspot’, where some pretty interesting accounts have emerged, including alien abductions and mysterious disappearances. 

Residents say ‘people will think we’re mad’ but insist what they experienced is real, with reports from the town dating back decades.

September 1956: The RAF escaper

Taking us back to 1956, one early alleged sighting happened around the Lincolnshire town when an 80ft UFO was spotted over nearby Cleethorpes – and it even gained the attention of the nearby RAF station at Manby. 

Sitting at 54,000ft, the alleged spacecraft was detected in radar, and then observed through telescopes – and was apparently composed of a glass-like substance.

The UFO was spotted at around 3pm, and when two RAF fighter planes approached, vanished from sight. 

July 1997: A cigar-shaped object 

On July 25 1997, at 7.30pm, a silver cigar-shaped object with sharp pointed wings was spotted flying over the Humber Bridge.

Reports say the object had a red light on one side and one green light, and it hovered before moving off quickly. 

However, in 2010 the Grimbsy Telegraph reported that the government revealed it was likely a light aircraft.

March 2000: A busy day for UFOs 

In March 2000, the paper reported that a fruiterer thought he had spotted a UFO hovering in the sky – but was almost embarrassed to admit seeing it.

He said he and his niece were washing his car when a ‘really pure, white object’ was clearly visible against the blue sky.

‘At first, I thought it was an aircraft, but what drew my eye was the fact it was motionless. It stayed totally still,’ he said. 

‘It was just so intriguing. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It stayed there for about three minutes then it faded away.’

Then, the same evening, the object was reportedly spotted again, but this time, by a pupil at St James’ School. 

He said: ‘I noticed this really bright round light in the sky, it was hovering in the same position then it dropped really steeply and left a white line behind it.

‘One minute it was there, the next it was gone, it was really weird.’

On the same day, a woman claimed that at 9.30am, she was abducted by aliens. 

She said she was transported from her bed to an alien spacecraft, that was made up of a steel-like material.

‘I was in bed and felt myself getting weaker and weaker like I was collapsing. The next thing I knew, I was in this corridor,’ she said. 

She carried on, saying that she found herself onboard an alien ship, and was shocked to find a human male ‘spread-eagled’ on a table and extra-terrestrials ‘peeled back his skin to look at his insides’.

‘There was a female being, who was milky white and wearing some sort of wig, I think it was to try to make her look less frightening and more human,’ she added. 

‘She communicated to me, telling me not to worry about my cats and dog, that they would be looked after.

‘She didn’t speak to me in words, just put these thoughts in my head. She didn’t scare me, I think she was trying to help.’

The woman thought she was going to die, but said that after 11-and-a-half minutes, she found herself back in her room. 

‘I was so shocked to be back, I thought I was gone for good,’ she said.

The woman said she knew people would perceive her as ‘mad’, but honestly believed it was a real abduction.

April 2000: A ‘fireball’ through the chest

Grimsby Telegraph reports one day in April had readers flooding the phones with calls. 

They report one couple in Cleethorpes had an unidentified red ball hurtled towards their house – and it passed through a body.

They say a woman was on the telephone when her husband shouted at her to look through the window.

‘I left the phone dangling as I saw a two-inch red ball of fire come through the window and pass through my husband’s chest,’ she said. 

‘We immediately lifted his shirt to see if it had left a mark, but there was nothing there – we daren’t tell anyone at first, it was very frightening. People will think we’re mad but there was nothing in the sky and not a soul around.’

The man involved said: ‘I’m too old to be scared, it didn’t hurt but we both saw it and my wife never drinks.’

Another couple in Cleethorpes were discussing UFOs on that day when a woman’s husband thought she was ‘cuckoo’ after telling him she saw a ‘bright light travelling really slowly across the sky down the Humber’ when she put her washing out.

She described the object as ’round and big.’

The paper reported another reader saw a ‘really bright light’ hovering above Blundell Park.

‘It was like a comet, it was so quick it couldn’t have been an aeroplane or a helicopter,’ he said.

‘It vanished in a split second. It was travelling at a height between 3,000 to 5,000 feet – I can’t describe it, I’ve never seen anything like it.’

July 2004: Eerie objects in the night sky 

In July 2002, lit objects were spotted darting off into the night sky above Grimbsy, and the paper reports one resident on Highfield Avenue saw them over People’s Park. 

‘I had just gone outside for a cigarette with a friend,’ he said. 

‘He saw three lights and pointed them out to me. They were a few hundred feet up in the air. The lights were in a row and one of them was changing places. There was a slight humming noise and then they dashed off.

‘They didn’t gradually disappear like a plane. I’m not the sort of person to believe in UFOs, but there can be no other explanation.’

January 2009: Wind turbine damage 

In the Conisholme area, south east of Grimsby, a wind turbine was mysteriously damaged after one of its 20m had disappeared and another were bent and gnarled. 

At the time, Robert Palmer, leader of East Lindsey district council and member of Lincolnshire County council, was interested in the notion of a UFO. 

‘I would be very interested to find out what it was,’ he said.

‘If we are being looked at by other people, by other planets, it would be interesting to find out why they have chosen this part of the country. It’s a rich agricultural part of the country and we have got a concentration of turbines here which may have fascinated them. You just don’t know, do you?

‘I am not counting it out that it was a UFO. There are things out there that you cannot explain. I would have thought that if it was a UFO, it would have been more sophisticated than to drive into the turbine.’

It was later reported the bolts of the blade failed due to material fatigue. 

April 2022: The Earth Day observation 

On this day, a man from Market Rasen said he noticed ‘something strange in the sky’.

‘It was in the sky for about 40 minutes – just there, not moving,’ said Malcolm Claxton, who claims to have spotted the UFO floating above Grimsby at about 3.20pm on April 22.

‘Then when a plane came, it moved along with the plane. It kept disappearing and coming back. It moved with the plane, parallel. There weren’t any clouds in the sky for it to hide. It was turning invisible in the video I got.

‘It left the plane for dead and was gone. Nothing on this Earth could have gone that fast.’

After turning the camera off, he said the unusual light ‘shot off’ out of sight. 

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