Northern Ireland has become a UFO hotspot, according to police files. The Daily Star reports that experts say it has an “amazing” number of sightings for a population of less than two million people.
Around 24 incidents were dealt with by the Police Service of Northern Ireland between 2016 and 2022. The sightings included a “metallic spinning disc” and three spaceships.
In January 2021, there was a report of a spaceship and flashing lights in the Downpatrick area, while in May that year police had reports of white lights in Maghaberry and an odd disc in the sky over Slemish Mountain, Co Antrim. In July “strange images” on CCTV at a house in Newtownabbey were reported, along with a dome-shaped object bearing eight lights in the sky in the Saintfield area between Belfast and Downpatrick.
Nick Pope, who investigated UFOs for the Ministry of Defence, said the true number of sightings was far higher than those logged – due to the “stigma” of saying you have seen a spacecraft. The 56-year-old previously said that unexplained sightings of UFO's in the UK has been "consistent" since the 1950s and the author added that some regular sightings of potential extraterrestrial spacecraft "defied explanation".
Pope worked for the British Government between 1991 and 1994 and the author said the possibility of other civilisations in the broad universe is real and that can include friendly, "hostile", and "super predator" species, much to the worry of the earthlings.
The UFO expert was on Nicky Campbell's podcast Different, where he spoke on his time in the programme and the sightings he witnessed. He said: "The bread and butter of my job [in the MoD] was to investigate the 200 or 300 sightings we got each year.
"Most of those turned out to be misidentifications - meteors and satellites and fireballs, and airships and bright stars and planets, lasers and searchlights... all of that.
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"But in amongst that, consistently - not just in my time on the programme but dating back to the 1950s - there was this sort of hardcore of five per cent or so sightings that we couldn't explain, that seemed to defy explanation."
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