Strange lights over Chilton Foliat
A FLASHING, silent light darting back and forth above fields has been puzzling villagers.
Now one Chilton Foliat angler has managed to catch some footage of the phenomenon.
The light initially looks unremarkable but later begins to make seemingly impossible, zigzag movements across the sky.
Rod Smith, who lives in the village and filmed the orb on his phone, said on occasions it changes colour from red to green and blue.
He said: "It's not a drone because it's too big and bright and it's completely silent.
"A friend of mine has a drone so I know how they behave and you can hear it.
"Also, I know the people who own the estate over which the light was darting and no one was flying anything.
"I really can't explain it."
The night skies over Hungerford and the Lambourn Valley have produced some startling, unexplained sights over the years.
In 2015 Newbury Weekly News reader Vanessa Cloete snapped this image, and many more like it, of an unidentified aerial phenomenon above her home in the Charnham Park area.
Ms Cloete said at the time: "I was so fascinated I went and knocked for my neighbours.
"They couldn’t believe what they were seeing and got their camera to take stills and video images.
"Whatever it is, it's round and sometimes flashes.
"It stays in the sky for up to an hour before suddenly vanishing.
"I think I’ve seen it more than most because of the shifts I work."
The mystery deepened when a man claiming to be a former Ministry of Defence policeman contacted an NWN reporter to reveal he had seen an identical object above the Greenham Common nuclear missile silos during the 1980s.
He said an American officer later swore him to secrecy and he had not spoken of the incident publicly until contacting this newspaper.
The retired officer, in his 70s, said: "I was on patrol near the missile silos with a colleague when we tried to fill up with fuel from the pumps.
"They suddenly failed for no apparent reason and then we saw it – just like your photograph; a big, glowing ballbearing with a halo round it.
"I know what aircraft and balloons look like.
"It was neither.
"It was just floating above the runway.”
After the object sped off at "an impossible speed” the officer reported it to the control room.
He said the following day he was grilled by a senior army official.
He added: "As I left the room I heard voices, looked back and saw a high-ranking Royal Air Force officer in conversation with a man with an American accent, wearing a black suit and carrying a black briefcase."
The officer said he was sworn to secrecy.
Greenham Common was used by both the RAF and the United States Army Air Forces and stored nuclear warheads in silos there.
After the Cold War ended, it was closed in 1993.