March of UFO spotters continues

It was a familiar tune, writes Ben Bentley. Like most people, Frank Jones had heard The Wedding March before - usually emanating from an organ on a happy day in church.

Never before from a UFO travelling 1,000ft overhead in the middle of darkened countryside at Prees Heath.

But reading a story in the Shropshire Star in which former RAF air traffic controller Alan Turner of Shrewsbury revealed a previously untold close encounter between himself and a series of UFOs back in 1971, Frank was transported back to the time in 1961 that he himself witnessed a UFO in North Shropshire.

Frank, at the time a builder, was on his way to deliver a quote to a client who had asked him to give an estimate on tiling his kitchen floor.

As usual, Frank set off on his bike near the old airfield at Prees Heath.

"I was cycling along on my old sit up and beg and suddenly my lights went as bright as search lamps," he said at his home near Cross Houses. "I jumped off the bike to check everything was all right and was just about to go off again when everything around was lit up with a flickering blue light. I knew we had engineering works two miles down the road where they did all sorts, but I've never seen welders light up all the sky - it was reaching five miles in any direction.

"I heard this strange noise of an organ and it was the first notes of Here Comes The Bride."

Not that this musical knowledge registered at the time. It was only later when he was visiting a church with his brother, an organ mender, that he heard the same sound again from a 16ft pipe - the 16ft diapason.

He continued with his description of what he saw that night on the heath: "I thought 'Hell, what is this?' I saw a thin strip of super-white light coming over Prees Heath Forest and as it came nearer it was elliptical and then overhead it was round and the underside appeared to be revolving.

"It was a wonderful sight. It was something out of this world."

Frank, now 72, describes how the wind from above beat down the grass and bushes and how within a couple of minutes at most the saucer had disappeared as quickly at it arrived.

Later that evening he recounted the whole episode to friends, some of whom had seen a similar thing. He said he rang the local police who contacted officers near Shawbury, where the RAF base is and where numerous other unexplained UFO sightings have been reported.

He was told "nothing had gone up" that night.

Frank, a man who likes to log things thoroughly, made extensive notes of his sighting at 7.45pm on October 25,1961, which he has turned into a document, details of which read: "A huge flying object passed over the airfield - and the writer - and then vanished into thin air!'

At the time Frank told members of his family about what he'd seen. They naturally thought he was crazy. But he was determined.

"My life changed from that moment on," he admits. "I became mathematically minded and worked as a quantity surveyor."

Using standard surveying methods of measurement and using other people's sightings from different locations across North Shropshire, he determined a number of calculations.

Namely that the altitude of the unidentified craft was 1,066 ft at 675mph.

Power dissipated as light was rated at 603kW, illuminating a ground area of almost 195 square miles.

He says he doesn't care what people think - what he believes is that there are other life forms out there.

"My thoughts are that there's got to be 'people' out there who are brighter than we are - and there have been for a long time," he says.

"Technically they are way above us. To find us alone in the universe? I don't think so. I'm not saying they are going to walk around like us but they are probably not little green men either."

Frank says he has not seen anything like it since. He's observed unexplained movements of light in the night sky but nothing so specific as what he says he witnessed that night on Prees Heath.

He adds: "There are a lot of strange things out there that defy physics. Some of them are way beyond any human understanding or physics, and I've 'quarrelled' with Einstein many times."

He admits, however, that he is naturally suspicious about reports of UFO sightings by other people, but of course Shropshire has become a hotbed for just this.

Former RAF air traffic controller Alan Turner MBE witnessed something and was told by the powers that be to keep it under his hat. But in September he came out and for the first time told the Shropshire Star how he and a group of RAF men witnessed on their radar screens a sustained series of unidentified objects flying in airspace over Salisbury Plain.

Frank himself admits that he's grappled with trying to understand what he saw.

But he says: "We are dabbling in a science that is beyond us at the moment - it could be that we are being taught by example rather than by interference."