Sometime in 1996 I accidentally solved the UFO mystery, complete with evidence. Though in that trickster way the Universe seems to enjoy, there was no possibility of convincing anyone else. I’d been interested in UFOs since the 70s, and didn’t – quite – believe in aliens. My views seemed to vary depending on what book I’d just read. At 2am in the 90s they seemed the most real, less so during daylight

In the 70s, at Mill o’ Mains primary school in Dundee, I’d seen an F4 Phantom low and close over nearby houses. As an adult, now a veteran of many RAF Leuchars airshows, I now realised that it was too low, too close to have been real. The roar would have been tremendous at that range. Yet I heard nothing. A phantom indeed. Another of those hallucination qualities confirmed its status; I saw it neither arrive, nor depart. Just that mental image of a cool fighter jet, suspended in midair.

Having by now read UFOs: The Final Answer? I contrasted a 1989 case of the witness who saw a Tornado F3 chase a UFO, and fire a missile at it, over Blackpool in complete silence. From there I learned the term metachoric hallucination, one where the conjured image is not merely placed in the environment, but is the entire environment.

Sitting in the corner of my Dundee bedsit, one afternoon in 1996, I was typing away at an article. Scotland was a UFO hotbed in 1996. A “burger-shaped” object had descended on Orchar Park in February, scattering some frightened kids. That was just down the road from me. An October crash of something in the Hebrides prompted an air-sea rescue. UFOs were much on my mind. Then I happened to look out the window.

There, serene, silent, calm, a disc-shaped flying saucer floated above the block of flats opposite. A reflection of the light in the room? This was my workspace, I would have seen that endless times before. Immediately it disproved this by sinking downwards, oh so slowly. It was a translucent, smooth, classic, ovoid shape. I don’t recall if it faded out, disappeared behind the rooftops, or both.

But before it could do so, I grabbed the camera, handily sitting on the table, and calmly got off two shots before it was gone. But that wasn't the evidence. My reaction was.

I reacted calmly. And then I got back to my day and thought nothing more of it.

And that was, in retrospect, the strangest part of the whole experience. Had you told me beforehand that I was about to see an actual flying saucer, I would tell you what my reaction would be: jumping up and down, running around in circles, breathlessly fumbling with the camera controls. What's the shutter speed? What's the aperture? What’s the recommended ISO and exposure for alien spacecraft? Snap, snap, snap, until the roll of film ran out. I’d be on the phone to a friend. You will never believe what just happened! I’d hardly be able to speak. Every moment etched onto my memory forever.

In the event, none of that happened.

A UFO appeared, I picked up the camera, took a picture. Took a second as a guard against the first not turning out. (Pre-digital thinking.) Put it down again, and when the supernatural interloper had gone, returned to my article. I didn't press my face full against the window for a better look. I didn't even stand up. Jenny Randles’ Oz Factor was in full effect.

Now I had two photos of a flying saucer.

I didn’t run down to the chemist to get them developed. The spool got used up, leisurely, over the next few months. Pictures of me moving house. Pictures of comet Hale Bopp. And this was a time when I constantly carried a compact camera with me just in case I saw a UFO! I had a plan, to note the time to the second, to write up everything immediately, to wring the last detail from my conscious. And when it actually happened, did none of that.

I forgot all about it. Only recalling the event when the film roll ran out, and I had it developed months later. And there within the prints, ready to blow the lid off the phenomenon, were two perfectly blurry photos of the block of flats opposite and no flying saucer whatsoever.

Thinking back from the present day, it seems odder than at the time. Did I use my compact camera or SLR? I don’t know. The context didn’t survive. None of it seemed heightened. By contrast, later in 1997, I saw and videotaped a cluster of lights in the distance to heart-pounding amazement. Banging on the wall to alert my flatmate, and begging the autofocus to work, I shot half a minute of footage, wide-eyed and incredulous; the expected excitement maxed out. They were real and, as it turned out, army flares.

Looking over those negatives today, another factor in UFO sightings is revealed; how my memory and the event diverged immediately. There’s the two pictures of course, then some unrelated photos. And then there’s the same scene taken weeks later, for reasons I have no idea about. This photo, clearer and with a pleasantly blue sky, is the one stuck in my memory for a quarter-century as the event pic.

What’s clear to me nowadays is that a UFO sighting, when we get past the ones amenable to mundane explanation, is a highly personal event. Tuned to you, even. Visions not uncommonly feel “performed” for the witness; a sight meant only for them. If I’m typical, then a large part of it comes from within, shaping what’s seen.

Ultimately, my evidence could convince no-one but myself. But for me, it’s compelling. The very paragraph I was working on, in an article about UFO theories, when it happened? How belief influences perception.

Well, quite.

Steve Hammond

This article first appeared in Fortean Times issue 425 and is reproduced here by kind permission.