Welsh UFO Sightings 1983

Welsh UFO sightings from 1983. For sightings from other years please click HERE.

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SUFON
1982 or 1983, night
Clydach, Swansea

Phil Prevel was walking his dog in Clydach and was walking through a small field on the edge of some woodland when he saw a dark hooded figure like a monk with his hood up standing on the other side of the field where the woods started. It was standing stock still. Phil did not attempt to attract its attention by calling out, but just continued his walk. The dog was unaffected by the apparition.

Source: SUFON Files - witness interviewed by Emlyn Williams 2016.

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1982 or 1983, 06:20
Fochriw

Year is approximate.

As dawn was breaking, a 52-seater coach was picking up miners on the way to work at Merthyr Vale Colliery. The bus, which had travelled from Pontlottyn with about 18 miners on board, approached a bus stop in the council estate in Fochriw, to pick up a further 9 miners. The nine miners were standing in the middle of the road staring up at a huge dull grey metallic cigar-shaped object, hovering motionless to the south, over the mountain towards Pentwyn. The 18 miners on the coach got out to see what their workmates were looking at.

For several minutes they all watched the object, hovering approximately 900 yards away from them, at a low altitude,with the low sun glinting off its metallic surface. After about ten minutes the driver called them all onto the bus as they had to go to work. They all climbed aboard and drove away, turning right, out of the council estate and away from the location of the object.

One of the witnesses, Mark Allen told investigator Richard D. Hall that he estimated the size of the object was the same as three articulated lorries parked end to end. It is possible, however that the object could have been disc-shaped viewed end-on.

Source: Richard D. Hall - 'The UFO Sightings in Fochriw, South Wales' an article in 'UFO Truth Magazine' Issue 19.

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PRESS
January
Llanilar, North Wales

Farmer Irwel Evans was greeted with hundreds of pieces of honeycombed metal foil strewn over an area the size of three football pitches on tending his newly born lambs. The Sunday Express (23/01/83) headline was Mystery of the Strange Debris from Sky. Huge twisted alloy plates painted green on one side, grey on the other lay everywhere and in a nearby copse, branches had been sheared off trees.

Mr. Evans telephoned the Police and they took away fragments of metal for analysis. A team of uniformed RAF men with plain clothes officers combed the land and nearby woods by using flashlights as darkness began to fall.

Among the debris were an aerial and a large chunk of metal with part of a serial number on it. Everyone concerned was convinced that whatever it was that covered Mr Evans's field had fallen out of the sky, but after two weeks the riddle still remained. Police are baffled so too are the RAF. No-one in the close-knit Welsh community heard a plane that night. Nothing· unusual showed up on RAF radar scanners.

Mr Evans farms his land single handed and stated that whatever tumbled from the sky broke up on impact, it must have been a fair size as wreckage was scattered across four field. Had it hit a building there's no doubt the devastation could have been terrible.

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BUFORA
Saturday January 15th, 18:00
Fairwater, Cardiff

A woman and her twin children saw what at first appeared to be a star. However it moved quickly towards them and appeared to chanqe shape and colour. It finally stopped 50-60ft above the road and, in her own words, "wobbled". The object at this time was in the shape of a large conventional saucer, green round the edges uith a large pulsatlng red light in the centre. No noise was heard and the witnesses now very frightened, ran down the road to a neighbour, purused by the object. She asked the neighbour to come and "have a look" whereupon the object twisted and shot off rapidly. (BUFORA Bulletin #11, 1983)

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Wednesday January 19th, 17:30-19:30
South Wales

Lionel Beer reported on the sightings for BUFORA Bulletin #9:

The sighting of the month took place over South Wales on Wednesday, 19th January. It was widely covered by the local press, radio and television, and police stations had numerous calls between 6 and 7pm. In fact police were amongst the hundreds of witnesses along a sighting line of up to 80 miles. Place names mentioned include: Milford Haven, Newton, The Mumbles, Skewen, Swansea, Port Talbot, Baglan, Llandough, Cowbridge, Llantwit Major, Wenvoe, Cardiff, Risca, Fairwater and Cwmbran. Witnesses saw one or no more than two gianc triangular objects flying silently, one larger than the other. The sighting period was between 5.3O and 7.3O pm with earlier reports coming from West Wales although reports suggested that the triangles were moving in various directions. The triangles carried a varying number of lights, some said three - one at each corner - while others said four lights or with lights along the borders. Some said lights were flashing, or some of the lights flashed but not all. Everyone agreed that the objects travelled slowly, one estimate said 3Omph. BUFORA member Bill Rich of Llandough and his 18 year o1d son saw one object and was convinced it was not a meteor nor aircraft. Swansea detective Sgt. Mike Troake said it was massive with a large main cluster of lights at the front, shaped a bit like a Zeppelin, followed by a triangular group of lights, and an estimated 1,OOO feet in length.

Twenty-two youngsters at Egwys Wen Primary School, Cardiff, (time not stated) saw one of the objects. Their teacher asked them to do individual drawings, and it will come as no surprise to UFOlogists that they were all very similar. Apparently no unusual activity was monitored by RAF Brawdy nor by Cardiff airport. Incidentally there was a short power-cut in the Kittle and Bishopston area. An unidentified police spokesman hinted at an explanation, by saying that certain activity was going to take place in connection with a meteorological station in west Wa1es. One reasonable suggestion put forward was a Sea King helicopter, which carries bright "rescue" lights. However due to the size of the objects and the lack of noise over some 8O miles, this seems hard to reconcile with the witness reports. To this writer's knowledge no firm, official explanation has been put forward.

The Sunday Mirror reported: Up to 200 people observed a huge triangular shaped UFO pass overhead in various places along the South Wales coast. They included a class of schoolchildren and a football team. In Swansea two detectives, DS Mike Troake and DC Gethin Humphreys saw the object glide overhead in total silence. DS Troake said, “I’m used to seeing aircraft in the sky but this was massive-much bigger than a plane. There was a large main cluster of lights at the front shaped a bit like a Zeppelin followed by a triangular group of lights. They moved gracefully across the sky about 1000 feet up.”

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CONTACT
16th February, 18:30
Hollybush, Cwmbran

The witness was walking home when she saw a craft which was saucer shaped, with bright flashing lights and spinning very fast. It was heading in the direction of Risca.

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PRESS
16th February, evening
Baglan

Anthony Williams of Hazel Close, Sketty, Swansea was driving past BP Llandarcy and saw a white light moving around and hovering over BP Baglan Bay. He said there were also flashes of orange. Swansea Coastguards said there had been no aircraft in the area, and had received reports of the light which was seen just before 8 pm but could not explain what it was.

Source: South Wales Evening Post, 17th February 1983.

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SUFON
April 1983 or 1984, 20:15 - 20:00
Fairwood Common

The witness is unsure if this sighting was in 1983 or 1984. However, he does remember that it was a Thursday in April. The time was about 8.15-20 PM. Brian Harry was living at 40 Hen Parc Lane, Upper Killay, Swansea. It was at dusk, clear sky, no clouds.

Brian was in his back garden when he saw a solid black disc approaching from the direction of Pennard in the south-west, and flying over Fairwood Common at a high altitude. It was travelling at a slow speed on a steady course. Its size he compared to that of the length of a Boeing 747 airliner.

He described it as like two saucers joined together at the rim, totally black, and above and below, but not touching the object, was a strobe light of a silvery white colour, like that of lightning, flashing very fast. There was no sound, and the object left no trail behind it.

He immediately called his wife, Jennifer, and the next-door neighbour, Bob, a truck driver, and the three of them watched it continue on its course towards Swansea Bay in the east, for 5 or 6 minutes.

Suddenly, without warning, it shot off at high speed in the direction of Cardiff.

Source: SUFON Files - Brian Harry interviewed by Emlyn Williams, 31st July 2015.

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MUFON 98163
15th May
Cardiff

Witness was living in Fairwater when they saw a black or dark grey spherical object spinning in the sky, hovering next to the Pearl Building. They reported the sighting to MUFON on January 29th 2019 but believe somebody wrote a letter into The Unexplained magazine about the same thing they saw.

"The object was faceted and appeared to be spinning, hovering next to the well known pearl building in cardiff | Cardiff, south wales, early 80´s - no later than 1983 i lived in fairwater, a suburb of cardiff.I was child at the time and had a history of seeing things; we had previously lived in house that you could call haunted. we only lived there a short time due to phenomenon - and it was was two years to the very day that we moved in that we moved out, oddly enough. the house we moved to was bereft of any strange goings on. i think my sighting took place in 1982/3. sorry i cannot be more exact - but there is corroborating evidence which could nail the date - see below. in the distance in the city centre i could see the pearl building - not a skyscraper but i think at the time tallest building in the city. the ufo was spherical and appeared to be spinning. it appeared black/dark grey, or certainly a dark colour. reason i think it was spinning is that it looked faceted, the light reflecting as it spun. i was getting into the car with my father when i saw it and was amazed that he either did not see it or if he did, chose not to mention it. with my history of seeing things, i chose not to mention it. we drove off and that was that. i never saw it again. in the uk in the early 80´s was a part-work magazine called "the unexplained". my family used to get this, but not *religiously*.. if we got it we got it.... military history magazines were really what we were into, especially my father. at some point years later i found an intact issue: i say intact - if you were to put them in the binders, you had to remove the cover - but the inside back cover had reader´s letters. to my amazement, somebody had written in, describing the very same thing i saw. of course i cannot say if it was the same incident or whether same phenomenon was visible to certain observers at different times. unfortunately, that issue is now lost to me but it most certainly exists. the magazine concluded in 1983 - so if it was the same instance, this would help pinpoint my experience. for this reason, in answer to the question "total number of witnesses" i will say 2."

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PRESS
June
Crofty

Clear sky. Crofty housewife, Anne Holland of Pencaerfenni Park, her husband and friend watched ‘a bright and beautiful light’ which seemed to be swinging gently back and forth ‘for ages’. Mr. B. E. Featherstone, president of Swansea Astronomical Society declared that what they had witnessed was just Jupiter which was visible at the time.

Source: South Wales Evening Post, 23rd June 1983.

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SUFON
Summer 1983 or 1984, c. 00:00
St. Athan, Vale of Glamorgan

Around midnight on a warm calm night. The witness thinks it may be 1983 or 1984.

Guy Davis (18/19) was with his brother and two friends parked on the side of the road on a country lane somewhere between the A48 (east-west road in the Vale of Glamorgan) and St. Athan to the south. They were located in a shallow valley with low hills on either side. Suddenly appearing above a hill to their right, about half a mile away, was an intense white light at an altitude of about 300 feet. They got out of the car to look at it better.

Guy said it was really intense and bright and shone a beam of light down to the ground. The beam moved around as if scanning or looking for something. The light itself was more or less static but may have moved slightly. There was no sound or flashing lights. They watched it doing this for about five minutes, when the light and its beam suddenly switched off.

Source: SUFON Files - witness interviewed by Emlyn Williams, 10th March 2017. 

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Summer 1982
Llanfyllin, Powys

Paul Devereux, author of Earth Lights, saw a presumed ball lightning event in clear conditions at map reference SJ 14051955. He 'was in a building on the hillside to the southwest of the small Welsh town of Llanfyllin ... and had a view through the window to the northeast. Weather conditions were stable and clear. A solitary cloud hung cose to the hilly northeast horizon less than two miles away between two hills called Grave and Jericho, at approximately SJ 160207, I saw a ball of pearly white light drop vertically but gently from the cloud to disappear in a few brief moments behind the horizon. There was no sound, nor any unusual meteorological circumstances that could be noted accompanying the event.'

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CONTACT
Summer
Conway Valley, Clwyd

Helen was spending the weekend at the home of her friend, a teacher at a school in Llandudno, who lived in a very rural of fields with slightly higher hills around them. This particular evening they were talking outside, when suddenly they noticed in the field above them a structure that was lit up and looked like an electric pylon in the shape of an A with the top cut off. She turned to her friend and said, 'is there a pylon in your field?' "No, none anywhere in the vicinity." From this lit-up 'pylon' then came numerous amber coloured balls of light which flew off in all directions. Shortly after they all returned to this pylon which then seemed to 'fold up into itself' and crumble until it just vanished. They were absolutely speechless.

Link to the Stars - Margaret Fry

"I have related this [account of a vanishing pylon structure topped by a dome, seen by two girls in Malden, Essex in 1972] as it is very similar to a report I received for the summer of 1983, which occurred in the Conway Valley of Clwyd, North Wales.  Helen was spending the weekend at the home of her friend who lived in a very rural area of fields with slightly higher hills around them.  This particular evening they were talking outside, when suddenly they noticed in the field above them a structure that was lit up and looked like an electric pylon in the shape of an A with the top cut off.  She turned to her friend and said, ‘is there a pylon in your field?’  “No, none anywhere in the vicinity”.  From this lit-up ‘pylon’ then came numerous amber coloured balls of light which flew off in all directions.  Shortly after they all returned to this pylon which then seemed to ‘fold up into itself’ and crumble until it just vanished.  They were absolutely speechless.  The friends, who were teachers at a school in Llandudno, asked me if such a thing could be classed as a UFO.  Well, I thought of the unbelievable display of lights my neighbours and I saw for about one hour and twenty-six minutes on the 26th July 1978.  How can one even begin to understand the UFO phenomenon?"

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SUFON
Summer 1982 or 1983
Langland, Gower

The witnesses are unsure of the exact date but know it was in the summer months of 1983 – possibly 1982. A couple (C and W), who live in Langland, were very interested in UFOs and related subjects, and ‘W’ in particular is a very spiritual person. Together with three male friends, Peter, Cus and Mark, they decided to walk down to Langland Point to conduct a skywatch. It was around 11 pm when they set out under a clear sky.

At the headland which is situated on the west side of Langland Bay they stopped by a bench to watch the sky. It wasn’t long before they saw a light high up moving west to east. Then along the coast to their right, i.e. to the west on the far horizon at the end of the Gower Peninsula they could see three lights in the shape of an equilateral triangle, one red, one blue and one yellow – all three primary colours.

Suddenly it moved almost instantly to a position on the southern horizon towards the Devon coast, and then it shot straight towards the at incredible speed, instantly taking up a position straight in front of them about 100 yards off the coast and hovering ten feet above the surface of the sea. Its lights were reflecting on the water below it.

Watching this from their elevated position on the point they all shouted ‘wow!’ and one of the men screamed as he dived down under the bench. They could hear an electrical hum like you sometimes hear power cables making. They could also make out other people screaming and calling out, down on Langland beach behind them. The craft was estimated as being the size of a large house.

‘W’ described it as a triangle with each coloured light at the corners and he could make out the left side of it, which was identical to the side facing them, so in essence, a three-sided pyramid. Suddenly a smaller version of the main craft shout out of the top, and ascended about 200 feet into the air, moving to their right (west) towards Caswell.

It too was making an electrical hum, but of a higher pitch. Half-way along the cliffs towards Caswell, still 100 yards off the coast, it shot out a beam of white light over the golf course. ‘W’ shouted, ‘Wow, give us another one!’ and as if on command it repeated the flash in the opposite direction, seawards. Following this it moved off upwards into the starry sky and out of sight.

Another identical small pyramid then came out of the top of the larger craft, as before, but this time the small craft went the other way – towards the east at an angle of about 45 degrees, heading for a point high in the sky in the direction of Bristol. They watched it until all they could see of it was a red dot.

They then saw around half a dozen of these red dots high in the sky, coming from different directions and all heading for the point where this latter object had disappeared high up over the Bristol Channel to the east.

All the time, the big object was still in position about 100 yards off the coast, and about ten feet over the waves. Then it moved steadily to their left (east), then further out to sea and finally speeding off at an angle into the night sky to become another red spot before disappearing.

The five friends stayed there for about another half hour when they saw what they presumed was the first small pyramid go over them at a high altitude from west to east, again heading for the point in the sky up channel.

Source: SUFON Files - witnesses, ‘C’ and ‘W’ interviewed by Steve Drewson, Gaynor Vine and Emlyn Williams at the home of the witneses, 4 February 2016.

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SUFON
Summer
Langland, Gower

We believe that this event could have happened at the same time as the events described in 'C & W's' report. They were located on Langland Point which is on the opposite side of Langland Bay. The following event takes place just east of Rotherslade, a cove on the east side of Langland Bay. The witness describes a completely different craft at his location, but seems to have happened at the same time.

Witness: David.

Time: 8 pm - 10 pm approx.

"The position overlooks the Bristol Channel from a height of 100 ft above sea level and range of view was from SSE to SSW with South being the direction of first sighting at '10-11 o'clock' elevation. The only remarkable feature of the site is a large geological fault line underneath (Doctor's Mine Cave). Prior to the sighting there had been a dense static atmosphere for a few hours.

I had just left Magpie's Chalet...shortly after darkness fell. I was with 11 friends and we had been visiting a holidaymaker staying at the chalet. We all left together and walked through fields to the cliff path. Just prior to joining the cliff path I heard a group of people shouting and also the sound of banging on the metal cliff-path railings; due to this I stopped, something unusual was happening for that time and location.

For some reason I Iooked above me into the clear night sky. At around 10-11 o'clock height I saw 3 stars (10 pence size in my field of view) blink in a pattern. They then began to rotate around themselves in an increasing arc and suddenly realised that around 1/3 of my field of vision was filled with a folding of the sky; then I discerned that instead of looking at the stars I was looking at a reflection of stars through a prismatic, clear surface that was distorting light. Then I recognised the surface on which the stars were located and that this surface was rotating slowly downwards.

This object was gargantuan, filling most of the sky. I looked to the left side of the object and it tapered and seemed to stretch into the distance fir a long, long, way. The object appeared to be miles long. I thought I could see the ambient orange glow from the lights of Swansea reflected on its underside a mile or so away. I could also faintly see architectural/engineering features on the body of the object. Similar feeling as seeing a large submarine or super-tanker but floating silently in the sky. It towered above me.

All of a sudden I felt as if being watched or scanned by something; almost as if the object was aware I had seen it. I had a feeling like a piano was about to fall from a building onto my head and I shouted 'Run!' or similar and ran as fast as possible along the cliff path to the west. As I was running I kept saying to myself 'Don't look back', repeatedly. I can't remember anything after that. I think I made it home but can't be 100% sure.

From first sighting the blinking stars to taking my eyes off the large object and running seemed like under a minute of time. I didn't meet any of the other witnesses and discuss the event until around 1995; I thought I had imagined it, but was told by 'L' (who was with me that night) that she and 10 other witnesses in our group all saw 'it' too and they had discussed it later. The shouting I heard on the cliff was 6 other people (I know) who saw something too [including C & W]. I think my sighting should correspond with C & W's (5 witness) sighting.

At no point did I see a triangle or any other recognisable shape. It is possible that I saw the tapered side of a triangular object and this gave me the impression that the object appeared longer than it was but must have been a lot closer to me (-200 ft) than I thought (-/+ 1000 ft) and at much lower altitude.

At the time (1980-2000s) I could not recall ever hearing about 'triangle' UFOs or 'black triangles'.... even when C & W told me they had seen a triangle UFO (over Langland Bay - late summer 1982/83) [Theirs was actually a pyramidal object] I did not link it to my own sighting. I didn't see a triangle shape at any point (during my own sighting) and whilst I believed C & W I didn't link it to other sightings or triangle UFOs until the 2000s when they were publicised. Until then I had assumed UFOs were disc, orb light or cigar-shaped.

This happened long before the internet was available to cross-reference other sightings and I assumed that the profound experience was unique. Having read other SUFON reports from Gower I realised that many people had witnessed this or a similar object and it makes sense for me to come forward to add validity. The description of a craft sighted near Three Crosses/Fairwood Airport (SUFON Dec. 1982) is almost an exact match for the type of object I may have seen in terms of the 'starlight technology' but either the size is different, or the object was much closer to me than I had realised.

Source: SUFON Files - witness email, 4th August 2017.

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PRESS
Saturday 6th August, 22:30
Swansea Bay

Mrs. R. Lewis, her daughters and two neighbours were sitting in her garden in Windmill Terrace, St. Thomas, when a light, which at first they thought was a plane, came over from the direction of Swansea Bay to the south. Eventually they realised that it was not making a sound. Underneath the object, which looked like a big bright white star, was a red light which seemed to be flying in circles around the object. After a few minutes the red light detached itself from the white one and they both disappeared in opposite directions over Kilvey Hill behind her house. Source: South Wales Evening Post, 18th August 1983.

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MUFON #3616
Wednesday 10th August, 00:30
Abergavenny, Monmouth

Witness was sat on the edge of their bed when something caught their eye through the window. It was a craft 'about the size of a large family saloon, saucer/disc shaped and dark metallic in colour'. There was a narrow band with black rectangular slats that appeared to be rotating about the circumference of the disc in an anticlockwise direction, while the rest of the craft remained still. It moved fairly slowly in a straight line, without sound or lights, before disappearing from view.

The sighting was reported to MUFON not long afterwards: