We lived in a pub when I was younger, a rural spot a short way outside a market town in southern England. One of the places I used to drive out to was an old, decrepit hill-side pond in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by really gnarled trees. It was known as a the witch-pond, and it certainly lived up to the name — a very atmospheric place. It was a great spot to just sit and watch the stars from.
On several occasions up at the pond in the late 80s and early 90s, I saw light sources moving very anomalously through the sky. Typically, there were three of them, and the way they moved reminded me a bit of flies — lots of instant changes of direction, often through really radical angles; tending to move in straight lines, some slower and lazier ones but also some very fast darting ones; the occasional curving line; sometimes interacting with each other or moving synchronously, other times totally independent. It was like they were playing, or dancing, or something. They certainly must either have been inertialess or completely inorganic — I literally never saw them make a turn, they just switched direction, sometimes even to the point of doubling back, and at what looked like very high speeds indeed.
My approximate location, overlooking Vernham Dean valley in Hants
Obviously I couldn’t tell how distant they were, but they were moving through an arc of sky of about 90 degrees width, and from about 10 degrees above the horizon to 70 or 80 degrees — and they could cross this space diagonally in about a second. There was no sound. One or two nights they seemingly got bored and effectively just vanished, but most nights I ran out of time while they were still there.
On one occasion, I used the car headlights to flash a repeating square number sequence — 1, 4, 9, 16 — on the grounds that it seemed a reasonable demonstration of sentience (I was like 19 or something *grin*), and one of them did seem to come down for a look-see, but with no visible craft body or locational context other than a starfield, it is impossible to know for certain. The light definately got a bit bigger, and I thought I saw the curve of a globular craft body shape, but I don’t really know. It certainly didn’t fly overhead or anything.
I must have seen them eight or ten times, and I had one or two friends with me on at least three occasions. I didn’t have a camera at the time, so I didn’t get any photos, but they wouldn’t have been particularly interesting anyway. I’m still not entirely sure what to think about it — I’m keeping an open mind.
As an aside, a friend of mine worked in Air Traffic Control for the navy for a year or two around the same period — not in that location sadly, but down on the coast. I asked him about any odd stuff, and he said that at least once a month, he’d find a trace which didn’t conform to any lodged flight plans, and which was often moving anomalously, although he wouldn’t give me any details. He said that those traces weren’t logged in the regular book, but there was a separate book they were recorded in, and every six months or so, someone would come from the Ministry of Defence to take the book and leave them a new one.
(Obviously, if you have any questions about this, ask in the comments and I’ll reply as best I can!)
Someone I know has told me about an incident on the coast of Sussex when they saw similar lights. These lights appeared to be flashing, so he started to flash his headlights. The lights then started to flash back, and this went on back and forth for some time. Eventualy the UFO (whatever they were) appeared to come closer, going past his car so fast and in such close proximity that the car moved. He got spooked and drove away at that point.