THE GREAT BRITISH SCARESHIP MYSTERY OF 1909

Britain was in the grip of a major UFO alert throughout the early months of 1909.

Suddenly ordinary people from all over the country started seeing extraordinary airship-type objects in the skies. The reports of strange craft that "whizzed" or "whirred" their way through the heavens flooded in from places as far apart as Belfast, Ireland, and Ipswich towards the east coast of England. To augment the mystery even further, reports of strange craft were even sometimes made from two far apart places on exactly the same night and at around the same time, presumably meaning that at least two unidentified craft were abroad concurrently.

Obviously, something tangible was out there - but what exactly? Could it really be possible that people were seeing some type of forerunner of the modern UFO? Or is there, after all, a more down-to-earth, albeit just as fascinating, answer to the very bizarre affair?

One of the very first reports of a Scareship, which is how the mysterious aerial craft later became known, came from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. Here, on the 23 March, two police officers out and about in the early hours of the morning - and interestingly enough in two different locales - witnessed a long oblong shaped object with a powerful light attached passing overhead at some considerable speed. Both witnesses stated that the mystery craft made "the steady buzz of a high power engine" as it ''sailed'' noisily by.

Efforts to explain this early sighting of a Scareship were later made, and these included the rather lame and unconvincing official statement that the witnesses had seen nothing more exotic than a kite. Unbelievably, too, a Chinese lantern fixed to the kite was cited as a plausible explanation for the powerful light seen by the two policemen. The engine sounds heard by the two constables been dismissed as nothing more than the whine of a motor kept running throughout the night at a local cooperative bakery. (Sound familiar In the light of equally ridiculous official explanations for some modern day UFO sightings?).

From the eastern counties, too, came reports of something peculiar haunting Britain's skies. In particular a Captain G.A.F. Horvey, Sturton, reported to be a Local Government Board Inspector for the Eastern District, said that whilst walking towards Broome, Near Eye, on Sunday 16, May, he observed a cigar-shaped craft heading in the direction of Lowestoft. The particular object traveled against the blustery northeast wind in an easterly direction.

Link - www.thelosthaven.co.uk...

I've read about these things with interest many times.