County 'hotspot for UFOs'

Shropshire has emerged as one of the country's UFO hotspots in the MoD's 2006 "X-Files".

See also: Space: The final 'frankfurter'?

Scores of sightings in the county were reported to the Ministry of Defence.

Over Shrewsbury, at precisely 6am, on January 30, "a light was seen travelling rapidly due south west".

One witness claimed to have spotted "two extremely bright lights" on the evening of August 21.

And at 8.30pm, on November 25, "three sphere-shaped, bright yellow/white lights were seen on a clear night" in Newport.

The sightings are among about 100 reported to the MoD last year from across Britain, secret details of which officials have released under Freedom of Information laws.

The news comes after the Shropshire Star yesterday reported seeing a "giant sausage" in the sky above Telford.

The strange banger-like object was seen by people in Hadley, Dothill and Arleston.

Rachel Preston, from The Grove, Hadley, said she thought it was a Goodyear airship at first but soon realised it was something different.

According to the latest information, witnesses claimed to have spotted all sorts of unidentifiable objects and bizarre happenings in the skies including flashing lights, fireballs, changing colours, darting lights and glinting metal spheres - many convinced they had experienced a UFO sighting. Two people thought they had seen "an alien" outside their kitchen window in Hastings, East Sussex.

A "mothership" was spotted twice within a month in Barlaston, Staffordshire, while a "rotating silver pyramid" was seen in Sunderland.

Reports of unusual aerial phenomena date back to ancient times, but started becoming more common after the first widely publicised UFO sightings in America in 1947, the most famous being in Roswell, New Mexico.