Appearance / Description of Object(s)

Large yellow-orange orb, trailing vapor as it passed horizontally across the highway, no sound, but not overly bright either.

Size of Object(s)

hard to estimate size since we couldnt really tell exactly how far it was. it appeared to be quite big.

Distance to Object(s) & Altitude

it appeared to be moving across the highway under a height of 75-100 feet off the ground.

Description of Area / Surroundings

rural highway area, covered in snow, day overcast completely, no sun whatsoever. No bases that I know of. The area was hilly with lots of vegetation and snowcovered. There was also a river before we got to the area that day. I took a picture on that highway of the area, but we'd run out of Polaroid film by the time we'd headed back.

Full Description & Details

On Dec 31, 1978, my boyfriend Frank Charles and I had been visiting Manchester, and had taken a day driving trip to Liverpool and then to Wales. The day was extremely snowy and they'd closed a few highways on the way back to Manchester. We drove down a highway that had just been closed as we left due to very snowy conditions, but the car we were in had 4 wheel drive so my boyfriend thought it would make the trip with no trouble.

On the way back, we stopped a few times to take Polaroids of the surrounding countryside, a snowy bridge and a hillside while it was beginning to snow quite heavily. The sky was completely overcast, no sun or any daylight of any kind could be seen. It was about mid-late afternoon, I'd say about 3-4pm. We had left for the day trip very early and the weather had turned bad on us.

On the way as we were approaching Runcorn, I beleive, we say what appeared to be a large Orb, sort of like a setting sun, in a yellow-orange color, with a lot of vapor trail surrounding it, moving slowly sideways from North to south across the highway some way ahead of us.

At first we thought we had seen the setting sun, but since there was no sky to view, we stopped the car and got out to see if it indeed was moving or we were imagining it.

At that time we watched the disc from a distance of about a half mile away, cross the highway going down at an angle at roughly 30 degrees and it passed smoothly behind a wooded hill on the right side of the freeway. We were driving from West to East at the time.

We were both confused as to what we were watching but what was interesting was that the vapor trail was NOT coming from behind the orb but was covering the entire thing and disappearing from the right to left, as if it were being dissipated by the movement of the orb.

There was no noise at all that we could hear, but it was quite windy that day. There was absolutely no traffic at all, since the policemen had told us earlier at a roadblock that the highway was to be closed soon due to snowfall.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up about that time and my boyfriend and I decided to not say anything to anyone for fear of ridicule. 'We continued on to Manchester and we tried to see if there was any sign of the orb as we passed close by where it had crossed the highway but the wooded hillside obscured any sight of it.

When we got back to Manchester, we went to Shaw, a village outside of the city where Franks parents lived and on the telly was a report of a sighting in Runcorn of a UFO and a young boy reported that it had landed in the wooded area outside his farm.

We then told the family we had seen the same thing, but no one wanted to beleive us, so we basically dropped it.

I found out later that the orb actually had landed in Dumfries or somewhere around there on the same day, and not knowing how far Runcorn is from there I had no idea if they were close by or not.

No one ever asked us about it later and it sort of just stayed on the back burner until I saw a report later that this same series of orbs was seen in Austrailia by pilots flying over New Zealand I believe. The description of the orb was exactly the same.

Can sighting be explained as any conventional man-made or natural object?

Nope, I'm from a military family and I've seen every kind of aircraft there is. This was NOT one of them. No natural event could explain what we saw.

Witness Background

College graduate, military family, world traveled, and professionally employed as a graphics artist.

Views on UFOs, before and after sighting

I was skeptical until I saw one. I didnt' read much about them at all.

Other Comments

Yes, this was covered on the tv and the newspapers and documented by others.

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