UK releases a treasure trove of UFO reports

       Lemon-headed aliens,scrambled fighter jets and mysterious lights over a cemetery were among details of some 800 UFO sightings released by British authorities on Monday.
       But another intriguing finding to emerge from the 1981-1996 archives was a surge in reports at the time of UFOrelated blockbusters such as 1996's Independence Day , not to mention the British television run of The X-Files .Among the most striking accounts released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is that of two boys who reported being spoken to by an alien with a lemonshaped head, who appeared before them in a field on May 4,1995.
       "We want you, come with us," said the alien's voice, according to a police interview with the youngsters, who seemed "agitated and distressed".
       "They stated the object was about four houses high in the sky and about [12m] away from them," said the report.
       In another account, a former armed forces chief urged authorities to take more seriously a report by US air force staff near an airbase in eastern England.
       The individuals "reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest",early on the morning of Dec 27,1980,according to a US air force commander.
       "It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs. As the patrolmen approached the object, it manoeuvred through the trees and disappeared."
       Then there is the report of how, between November 1989 and April 1990,the Belgian air force scrambled F-16 fighter jets to investigate a series of UFO sightings, and reportedly "locked on"to the objects with their radar.
       "The mystery remains unresolved,"wrote General Wilfried de Brouwer, Chief of Operations, Belgian Air Staff, adding that despite being sceptical,"the evidence was remarkable".
       One of the spookiest eyewitness accounts occurred in the early hours of July 15,1996, when a UFO was spotted hovering over a cemetery in Widnes,northwest England, before firing burning laser beams into the ground.
       Cynics would note that the man involved was heading home from a night out at the time, possibly in a similar mental state to two revellers who claimed to have seen a UFO hovering over the jazz tent at the 1994 Glastonbury music festival.
       Sceptics will also take heart from a more general trend revealed by the newly released archives, one that gives credence to the power of suggestion.
       "It's evident there is some connection between newspaper stories, TV programmes and films about alien visitors and the numbers of UFO sightings reported," said UFO expert and journalism lecturer David Clarke.
       "Aside from 1996, one of the busiest years for UFO sightings reported to the MoD over the past half century was 1978,the year Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released," he added.