Author: Dave Hodrien

Release Date: 01/09/2016

Note: For privacy reasons some of the witness names in this report have been amended.

Sighting Details

Early on the evening of Sunday 28^th August 2016, Alan, his wife Bernadette, his wife’s daughter Luna, son-in-law Nath and their three children were all out in the back garden of Luna & Nath’s house on Barnwood Road in Quinton, Birmingham. The weather was still but quite cloudy. It had been raining but now there were patches of blue sky beginning to appear. At around 5.30pm a storm cloud passed overhead. Luna and Nath are both interested in weather, so were looking up at it.

Aerial map of Barnwood Road:

They suddenly noticed an object in the distance to the South West coming from behind the tree line at the base of the garden. It was slowly moving across the sky to the South East in the direction of the block of flats on Welshhouse Farm Road. The object appeared to be metallic in colour and reflecting the light, and spherical in shape. There were no visible markings on it at all. It was below the low lying cloud, and looked to be between 500-1000 feet high. Judging by the estimated height, it appeared about the same size as the main body of a helicopter.

The UFO travelled on a straight and level course. However after watching it for a few minutes it suddenly came to a halt in the sky. It remained motionless for about a minute before continuing.

It stopped a second time when it was further away. At several moments it seemed to blend into the cloudy sky and was harder to spot but would then reappear.

After watching and puzzling over it for a while Alan took out his Samsung mobile phone and began to film the object. Nath informed me that he and his wife would have filmed it too, but his was broken and hers had unfortunately ran out of batteries.

 In total the witnesses watched it for about 10 minutes. Due to the length of time it was visible for, it appeared to be moving quite slowly, perhaps 30 mph. They were convinced that the object was not a conventional aircraft of any kind, and that it was under intelligent control as opposed to randomly drifting in the sky.

Video Analysis

Below is the video which Alan shot on his phone. He removed the sound as the children were being loud in the background during the sighting:

As you can see the UFO is clearly a solid object moving across the sky. It appears to be highly reflective and spherical/circular in shape, exactly how the witnesses described it. Alan says that it looked more impressive to the naked eye. Unfortunately due to the distance of the object not much detail can be made out.

Below is a still from the video with the UFO ringed in red:

Zoom view of the object:

Zoom view with sharpening:

Zoom view with edge find:

Due to the distance, Alan decided to zoom in on the object using his phone camera. This has the unfortunate side effect of pixilation of the image. The still frame analysis does not really shed any further light on what the object may or may not be.

Bernadette’s Testimony

I spoke with Bernadette via BUFOG’s Facebook page and she agreed to write up a statement of what she remembered seeing, which she sent to me soon after:

“On the 28th of August my family and I saw what can only be described as a UFO, my daughter and son-in-law were around for dinner with their children, it was a Sunday. At about 5.30pm I went outside for a cigarette and noticed it looked like it was going to rain. My daughter is very into meteorology, so asked her to come out and look at the clouds, they were dark on one side, but blue skies on the other, so thought best to get washing in anyway.

I was looking up at the sky after getting the washing in, and I saw a black object. I was unsure as to what it was, and said to my daughter, excuse language, “What the fuck is that?” She replied by saying it looks like a bird of prey. We carried on looking, and my son came out and said it could be a black bag as it was shiny. It was not windy that day, and was way too far up to be something like that. When I looked closer it looked white on one side but, thinking about it, it was most likely the sun shadowing it. It was above the trees in my garden when we first saw it, the trees are between 20 and 30 feet, and it was cloud level. It got smaller and smaller as it was moving higher and away towards Bartley Green way. I live just off Welsh House Farm Road, Quinton.

Alan started filming it while we observed it moving away. Between two tower blocks it seem to stop moving, it was as though it noticed we were looking at it and that Alan was filming it. It was a bit scary I might add. It then got smaller and smaller until it finally disappeared.

This was about 6pm at this point, Alan did not start filming it straight away as he was confused as to what it could be. Alan went and got his glasses so he could see it better, and then went on to filming it. It seems to go into different movements, going back and forth, as you can see in the footage.

Alan checked radar to see if there was any planes etc so to be ruled out, saying that a plane does not move that way, nor does it go up and down. We could not hear anything either. There is no way it was a satellite, plane, drone etc. When you watch the footage try and see if an explanation can be found, I do not think there is an explanation, only that it is most definitely a UFO.”

Sighting Analysis

This is an intriguing sighting, and it is great that one of the witnesses managed to film the object. It is clear that the object is not a normal aircraft or helicopter of any kind. Even at a distance it would be possible to make out the rough shape and perhaps navigation lights. From the video it seems that the object is reflective rather than glowing, so this rules out ball lightning as an explanation.

The most probable mundane explanation is that the object was a novelty silver-coloured inflatable. While the witnesses found the way it stopped on two occasions for a period of time to be indicative of intelligence, this may not actually be the case. As the object was moving quite slowly it is possible that it was drifting on air currents which temporarily stopped in places before continuing. The object did not perform any right angle turns or sudden bursts of speed, so this possibility cannot be disregarded. However the possibility remains that it may be a craft of some kind.

As it was still daylight it is possible that the object was seen by other witnesses in other parts of Birmingham. Please get in touch if you think you also witnessed. It.

Copyright Dave Hodrien 2016