I was lucky enough as a child to go on wonderful holidays to Leckford in Hampshire, England. My mother worked for John Lewis back in the 70's and they had a holiday camp for employees and their families to enjoy. Coming from the SW of London, visiting the countryside was a big deal! It was where I saw my first wild Kestrel, rode my first pony and enjoyed the vast open fields and skies!
It was also the place where I saw my first unidentified flying object too- in fact, we, as a family of 4- my mother, father, big sister & I, all witnessed it together. We were taking an evening stroll- around 7pm so still quite light in the summer season and as we approached the next field to walk into, we happened upon 2 farmers. Both of these had large shooting rifles and they were both elderly- probably in their 70's.
The weirdest thing I felt about them was that they were identical twins. I had never seen identical twins of that age before. It did spook me a little.
We passed the time of day with pleasantries and they went off in the opposite direction.
It was then my mother pointed towards a windbreak of trees at the other end of the field, asking "What is that?"
These trees were very tall- but hovering around the top of the trees, was a silver, reflective horizontal object. It looked almost fluid or the solidness of it was fading in and out as though it was trying to fade out. We all saw it but none of us were afraid- not during this 15 second experience or after it.
It then just faded out and there was just the view of the tree tops and the sky. It was a few days after this that we were all in the family car as my parents wanted to find a pub for us to visit. This was around 8pm so it was still light but the sun was slowly heading towards setting. I was looking out the car window and spotted this object in the sky- the sky was a lighter blue but this object was mainly orange and it had a tail shape emitting from the main body of the object. The main part of this object was elongated and vertical.
The object was witnessed by all of us in the car. My father even stopped the car so we could all have a good look. The orange colour started to be joined by other colours such as blue, purple, green & yellow. It remained static in the sky for about 5 minutes. Now this, to me, felt very scary. I didn't feel safe with this in the sky and us below it but then it suddenly shot upwards but then just disappeared!
My mother felt fearful of it too but my father & big sister had just been staring at the object.
I have seen this object since then but this time it was on the tv. Someone in Lincolnshire filmed the exact same thing and it was shown on the UK teatime magazine programme Nationwide. I cannot remember if it was filmed in the same year but the year we saw this object, it was around 1976/77.
I do remember it being winter time when watching the programme.
I've not been able to track this footage down from the Nationwide show but would dearly love to see it again. The Leckford estate has now been turned into Waitrose Farm shop & Cafe along with its own farm too and the actual village of Leckford still has a small population.
