Birmingham UFO Group Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Originally forwarded by Richard Hall
Release Date: 25/08/2011

Sighting Details

At 1.15pm on 28th December 2008, Ben Emlyn-Jones was out on a walk around Headington in Oxford. It was a windy day, cold with broken cloud between which sunlight could be seen. Ben was on the phone to his girlfriend. He turned a corner onto Bulan Road and glanced up at the sky.

As he did so he happened to notice something in the sky to the North West just visible over the roofs of the houses. It looked like a white or pale grey sphere. It was at an angle of 20-25 degrees in the sky. It looked to be at quite high altitude and of considerable size.

Aerial map of Bulan Road showing location the witness was at when he first noticed the UFO:



Photograph of the sighting location in the direction the UFO was seen in:



Ben immediately noticed that the object was completely stationary despite the fact that it was a windy day. This puzzled him, and he described what he was seeing to his girlfriend. He watched the sphere for several minutes, while beginning to walk along Bulan Road. During this time it did not move at all. It then became obscured by a cloud. He continued to watch for a further 5 minutes until the cloud moved away. At this point Ben saw that the object was no longer visible.

Witness drawing of his view of the UFO through the gap between the houses:



He was convinced that he had witnessed something out of the ordinary. Soon afterwards he mentioned it to his colleagues at the hospital where he works.

Ben decided to make a video covering the sighting in his own words:



Sighting Analysis

The fact that the object remained stationary for a number of minutes in windy weather conditions is one of the most important aspects of this particular case. If the object was nothing more than a drifting inflatable or balloon then it would surely have moved during this time. If it was a tethered advertising balloon of some kind then it would still have been visible after the cloud it was obscured behind moved away. The fact that it vanished from sight also puts out of the question the idea that it was the moon or a star visible through the atmosphere. Ben is sure that it was solid and not some kind of atmospheric anomaly or light reflection. He checked on an astronomy website and found that it could not have been the planet Venus as this was in a completely different part of the sky at the time of the incident.

Although he found it hard to accurately judge the objects size and height, he says it must have been quite large as it was high enough to be obscured by the cloud, and was at an angle of 20-25 degrees. A small object would not have been visible under these conditions.

It appears that it was some kind of controlled object, or something that was not affected by the wind around it. Spheres are one of the more commonly reported UFO types, and it is entirely possible that it was one of these that Ben saw. They are usually metallic silver in colour, but perhaps the object was metallic and was reflecting either the clouds or the sunlight, making it appear white or pale grey in colour. It is unlikely to have been a military drone, these tend to have visible propellers or other apparatus, and there would be no reason for them to fly a drone in the skies over Oxford. Therefore we must consider the idea that it was possibly of ET origin.

Copyright Dave Hodrien 2011