THE government's very own X-Files have revealed a series of fascinating UFO sightings over Wiltshire and even one over Swindon.

The documents, collected by the Ministry of Defence from military personnel and members of the public, have been revealed under the newly introduced Freedom of Information Act.

Almost 90 reports of UFO sightings were collected by the MoD in 2004 while a further five have been collected this year alone.

Among them are yellow-coloured spheres, transparent rings plus a house-sized black cylinder that was able to change colour from black to silver.

But among the most intriguing was a report from Swindon on September 24 where the witnesses reported a "big orange disc going from East to West."

The object was totally silent and moving quite slowly, yet despite oddly sounding like another orange object in the sky namely the sun the sighting was in fact one of three which occurred on the same day.

In Devizes, another witness reported seeing a big ball of fire coming down from the sky with a tail and sparks coming off the end of it while 100 miles away to the west in Newport, South Wales, another witness spotted an object which looked like a shiny disc with a tail, all three sightings taking place on the same day.

Although such reports are often discounted as meteor showers or astronomical phenomena, other sightings are not so easy to dismiss.

A report from Surrey on May 20 last year describes the UFO they saw as having "grooves and windows" but no room for humans. Even the MoD inspector notes that the "witness had seen the object so clearly."

Another UFO was spotted at Welford in Berkshire, not far from the American munitions base. The witness who reported the sighting on July 19 said they saw a "ball of flames with a solid underneath, the flames went out and came on again, and then it plummeted to earth."

Roy Lake, a UFO researcher from London, told the Advertiser that he was disappointed with the FOI releases about UFO sightings.

He said: "I have been studying UFO activities for years, and with the information they are releasing now, they are still only telling part of the story, only the information they want you to know.

"There have always been a lot of sightings over military establishments, so Wiltshire has always been a hotspot."

for seeing them with so many bases in the area.

"I have no doubt some of these sightings are military 'black projects'.

but where they get some of the technology for these machines remains to be seen."

There's never a quiet night over Wiltshire

A number of UFO sightings have been reported to the Evening Advertiser in recent years.

November 1970: A woman was returning to Swindon from Devizes with a friend one evening when they stopped to admire the view from the hill above Wroughton. Suddenly a large, yellow glowing light bolted over the former Princess Margaret Hospital.

July 1970: A Cirencester woman was convinced that a cigar-shaped object she saw move over her home in Berry Hill Crescent was a spaceship. The woman was hanging out the washing and spotted the object shoot overhead at between 2,000 and 3,000-feet in the direction of Northleach.

May 1994: A Swindon couple claimed to have seen an orange-coloured triangular-shaped spacecraft hover above their Pinehurst home.

Mid-1960s: Warminster became a Mecca for UFO sightings. People dubbed the sighting of a strange object The Thing, which took many forms by those who observed it between 1964 and 1977. In one year more than 1,000 sightings were recorded. Sceptics have insisted the strange lights come from military aircraft used on the Salisbury Plain.

August 29, 1965: Gordon Faulkner, then aged 17, photographed a UFO from Swindon town centre. The picture appeared in the national press and culminated in a number of sky-watches. In 1994 it was alleged that he had hoaxed the picture using a cotton reel and a button. He denied the claim.

August 2003: Drinkers at the Red Lion pub in Avebury, pictured, were wondering if they were hallucinating when they saw a UFO in skies over the stone circle village. But far from being an alien object, the spacecraft was actually a helium filled balloon stretched to the shape of a flying saucer by a TV special effects crew for a Channel 4 TV programme.

Anthony Osborne