The Borehamwood Incident (From Times Series)

The Borehamwood Incident

4:10pm Thursday 15th May 2008

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In the USA, home of UFOs, aliens, the X Files and all things paranormal, it is the quaint town of Roswell that has apparently drawn the attention of visitors from other planets.

Quite why they would travel light-years in spaceships only to forego the obvious appeals of the world's wonders in favour of an unremarkable town of 50,000 in New Mexico is beyond me. But then, I'm no alien.

Similarly, as I browse through the Ministry of Defence documents declassified this week, detailing sightings of unusual lights flashing in the sky and strange objects floating above trees from across the UK, it strikes me that the same names crop up again and again.

Writ large in the reports are the names of High Wycombe and Borehamwood, the denizens of which have recorded dozens of visits from aliens while most places were lucky to be visited once.

As far as I can tell, there have been a reasonable number of sightings in the borough of Barnet, but they are decidedly tenuous. Our best shot at a close encounter was in 1984 when two women and two policemen in Stanmore were able to observe a clearly spaceship-shaped object through a pair of binoculars for a good hour.

Somewhat reassuringly, the unnamed woman who first saw the spaceship told police in her statement: "I am not a nutter."

It appears to be the clearest evidence of real alien acitivity in the papers but, perhaps inevitably, it appeared over "either Borehamwood or Mill Hill."

In view of the paranormal disposition towards Borehamwood it seems likely that, even if they were visiting Mill Hill, they were simply sidetracked on their way to the annual alien shindig in Hertsmere.

The most alarming element of the report, in any case, is the fact that in 1984 two policemen were able to spend one hour staring at an unusual object in the night sky.

Today, unless the Stanmore constabulary had not yet hit its Government-set targets for detection rates of UFOs (setting arrest rates would just be unfair, given the ephemeral nature of the criminals), the ladies who reported the incident would have been given a crime number, a friendly thank-you and the two bobbies who might have been dispatched to the incident would remain chained to their desks under a weight of paperwork.

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