ON the Sunday morning of June 24, 2018, at around 6am, a 45-year-old man named Rod was driving along Barnston Lane in Moreton.
UFOs and the paranormal were the furthest things from his mind on that sunny morning.
The reason I will not give his full name is that Rod was driving home to his wife after spending the night with a woman he had met at work. He felt terrible about his duplicity, but could not stay away from the "other woman"; he was beguiled by her and could not bring himself to end the affair.
As Rod neared the Farmer's Arms pub, something in the sky caught his eye and he slowed down. Travelling towards him across the blue sky, at an altitude of around 300 feet, was a strange white object that looked like an enormous Tic Tac sweet, or perhaps a giant propane tank.
Rod estimated that the object was about 50 to 60 feet long, and it passed overhead in complete silence. He could see no wings, markings or other features on the hull of the mysterious craft, nor could he discern what means of propulsion it was using. There were no visible propellers or jet engines.
Rod soon lost sight of the UFO, but there were other reports of the craft being seen over Litherland Avenue in Moreton, as well as Upton Road and Grampian Way. Several motorists travelling along the M53 also reported seeing the UFO pass overhead, heading in the direction of Noctorum.
Many years before, in 2005, I had been on BBC Radio Merseyside talking about UFOs when a retired schoolteacher in her sixties, whom I shall call Margaret, telephoned the programme. She said that she and her sister Grace had seen a huge white UFO which she described as an oblong capsule with rounded ends.
The craft had allegedly landed on Bidston Hill at around five o’clock on the morning of June 22, 2004. Margaret said that two men wearing white spacesuits were standing beside the object, which appeared to be hovering a few feet above the ground.
Grace heard the men speaking to one another in Chinese, a language with which she had some familiarity because she had attended university with a Chinese friend many years earlier and had picked up a little of it. She recalled hearing one of the men say something sounding like “jìngdiàn de”, which she understood to mean “electrostatic”.
Margaret did not see the men’s faces, but Grace did. She said that, behind their visors, they appeared to be two East Asian men. Both looked towards Grace and Margaret but seemed completely unfazed by the women’s presence.
They later walked behind the craft, and shortly afterwards it took off silently at considerable speed, heading east in the direction of Flaybrick Cemetery.
Later that day, the women encountered two police officers and told them what they had witnessed. The officers said they had been in the vicinity of Bidston Hill at around the same time that morning but had seen nothing unusual. Margaret gained the impression that the policemen were particularly bemused by Grace’s description of the “spacemen” as Chinese.
The women’s account was not taken seriously by a few self-appointed ufologists. Yet since Tic Tac-shaped UFOs became internationally famous, there has been speculation that such objects might not be extra-terrestrial at all, but highly advanced experimental aircraft employing some unknown form of propulsion.
One of the most famous modern encounters involving a Tic Tac UFO occurred on November 14, 2004, when US Navy fighter pilots were sent to investigate mysterious objects detected by radar off the coast of Southern California.
Commander David Fravor, flying an F/A-18 Super Hornet from the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, encountered a smooth, white, oval object roughly 40 feet long, hovering above a disturbance in the ocean. The strange craft had no visible wings, rotors or obvious means of propulsion and became known as the “Tic Tac” because of its distinctive shape.
Fravor said that when he descended towards it, the object appeared to react to his movements before suddenly accelerating away and disappearing. The USS Princeton had reportedly been detecting unusual objects for about two weeks, sometimes appearing at around 80,000 feet before rapidly descending towards the sea. A later flight equipped with sophisticated infrared equipment recorded an unidentified object, resulting in the now-famous footage subsequently released by the US Department of Defense.
Long before the celebrated 2004 encounter, however, remarkably similar objects had allegedly been seen over Wirral.
On the morning of July 10, 1979, 58-year-old William York was at his flat at The Channel on Harrison Drive, Wallasey, suffering severe pain from a slipped disc, when something unusual outside his bedroom window caught his attention.
He initially noticed a mysterious light moving across the sky, but then four brilliant lights appeared, seemingly arranged around a horizontal object. According to York, the lights eventually became enveloped in what looked like a red cloud before vanishing.
A milkman working his early-morning round also reported seeing the objects and apparently had a clearer view. He described cylindrical craft with rounded ends — remarkably reminiscent of what would decades later become known as Tic Tacs. He watched them travel towards New Brighton before they disappeared near the lighthouse.
That particular area has featured in many UFO reports over the years, leading some ufologists to speculate that an unidentified aerial “portal” exists somewhere near Perch Rock.
Whether such a thing could exist is another matter entirely, although theoretical physics does entertain the concept of wormholes: hypothetical shortcuts through space-time which, in principle, might connect enormously distant regions of the universe.
Then, in 2001, I received an intriguing telephone call while appearing on Billy Butler’s programme on BBC Radio Merseyside. A man from Bebington told me that he and his wife had watched an intensely bright white object pass beneath the Runcorn Bridge before travelling towards Wirral.
He compared its peculiar shape to a Tic Tac. The description raised a few laughs in the studio at the time, but it was surprisingly apt. The object reportedly followed the eastern side of the Wirral peninsula before disappearing after passing New Brighton Lighthouse.
Perhaps the most dramatic local account, however, occurred during the Great Storm of October 1987.
As hurricane-force winds battered the country, a woman in her sixties whom I shall call Elaine found herself caught in terrifying conditions at New Brighton. Her car had been blown off the road and struck a bollard, and when she climbed out to inspect the damage, her poodle escaped from the vehicle and apparently disappeared.
Fearing that her dog had been swept away, Elaine struggled against winds so ferocious that she had to lean into them simply to remain upright. It was then that she noticed an extraordinary sight beyond New Brighton Lighthouse.
Suspended behind it was an enormous white object which Elaine compared to a gigantic pill.
Despite the tremendous waves and winds exceeding 100 mph, the strange craft appeared completely motionless. Elaine watched it for perhaps twenty seconds before, without warning, it shot away. Within moments, it had dwindled to little more than a point of light racing northwards across Liverpool Bay.
Elaine eventually fought her way back to her damaged car, where she discovered her missing poodle curled up safely on the passenger seat, terrified by the screaming wind. Her panic turned to relieved laughter.
The following day, however, Elaine heard a report that a pill-shaped UFO had supposedly been observed travelling northwards, apparently towards or beyond the Isle of Man. The description immediately reminded her of the enormous object she had witnessed during the storm.
And sightings around New Brighton have continued.
One warm, calm night in August 2022, a couple standing on King’s Parade noticed what appeared to be an oval patch of absolute darkness hanging approximately sixty feet above the sea. As they watched, six glowing red spheres emerged from the strange aperture in single file. The objects travelled silently inland, passing alarmingly close to blocks of flats near Wellington Road.
When the witnesses looked back towards the mysterious black oval, it appeared to be contracting. Within about a minute, it had completely disappeared.
In March 2023, a woman jogging along King’s Parade reported something remarkably similar. Approximately 600 yards offshore, she noticed what looked like a dark opening suspended above the water. At first, she assumed that her eyes were deceiving her, until two glowing red objects emerged from it.
The black aperture then seemed to close, while the two lights travelled eastwards and gradually faded from view.
If the mysterious “hole” off New Brighton ever appears again, perhaps someone with a drone could fly a video camera through it. I would certainly like to know what is on the other side.
* All of Tom Slemen’s books and audiobooks are available from Amazon.
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