Circle over Rayleigh, ESSEX · United Kingdom
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
Our back garden faces south. Approx 70 degrees up from horizon, this object I spotted with my partner against a cloud initially. Ran inside and got my phone to record what I could. Speed appeared to be constant until end when I felt it was accelerating and changing direction slightly. No sound. Object was black, spherical, no wings no vapour trail and not anything I have seen or could recognise. The snap shots of the object in screen shots appeared to show a slight halo or could just be the image distorting at max zoom
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #177749). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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UK sighting reports were handled by the MoD's UFO desk until 2009; later records answer to the Freedom of Information Act 2000, earlier files sit at the National Archives. Through Aletheca, the house instrument, anyone can commission the request — filed, chased, and published in the open, refusals included. The draft goes over already written: the records sought, and the date window they would live in.
Routed to: UK Ministry of Defence · records window 2023-08-17 → 2023-09-03