Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

British "X-files" Released to Public

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the insert-mark-snow-score-here dept.

Smivs writes "Britain's Ministry of Defence has just released files regarding investigations into UFO sightings between 1978 to 1987. Over the next three or four years, 160 files will be handed over to the National Archives. The first group of eight files, one of which is more than 450 pages long, is available today. The Guardian newspaper details many of the events in question, some interesting and many just bizarre. A similar release of UFO files by France's national space agency last year attracted more than 220,000 users on its first day, causing it to crash. To avoid such problems, the National Archives is using an external hosting company which can add extra capacity as needed to handle the web traffic."

4 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. UFO Expert by SimonGhent · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This was reported on BBC Radio 4 this morning. They had an interview with a "UFO Expert" who suggested that they had only released the files that conained no real evidence and that they were holding back much more than they had released.

    He, and his colleagues, knew all along that this is what would happen. Apparently.

    The interviewer tried to get him to say "the truth is out there" but he wouldn't bite!

    --
    simon
    1. Re:UFO Expert by lm317t · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I have been able to have these Awareness during Sleep Paralysis (which then after a while often spawn Out of Body Dreams), since I can remember. As a test when I was a teenager I shuffled a deck of cards and put five random ones in an open box on top of a high cabinet. Every time I checked when I was in these OBD's I wasnt even close to observing what was actually there, but it sure felt like I was right up until I physiacally checked!

      Since then I have been skeptical of so called OBE's and alien visitations/abductions.

      --
      EOF
  2. I believed when I was young by Joe+the+Lesser · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I was young I thought I had seen a UFO in our backyard. I was utterly convinced. I started to do research on it and couldn't understand why so many things (lochness monster, bigfoot) were not better explained and explored when man seemed to understand so many other things (elements of nature, physics, genetics). I though I was on to something big.

    As I matured it began to dawn on me. My experience, had it been real, would have been reported by somebody else. The memory was from my childhood, it could have been a dream before I understood the difference.

    The more I tried to relive the memory, the more an unnerving recognition hit me. Shit, I had seen the spaceship from ET in my backyard! It had been a dream created by my overactive imagination.

    I had wanted it to be true I swore that it was, because the memory backed me up, but my own memory betrayed me.

    Looking back I see that misconceptions are common human fallicies, and that is why scientific data, which is checked and doubled checked by many people is so critical in the search for truth.

    --
    "I only speak the truth"
    Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
  3. Re:I had one by Jerry+Beasters · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I was younger I had a couple of these, and I could absolutely see how people could interpret it as aliens/ghosts. It's such a feeling of overwhelming terror and/or dread with sometimes dreamlike "hallucinations," if that's the right word.