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This article was published in the daily newspaper Burnley Express, Lancashire, England, on September 5, 2003.
See here for the explanation in another newspaper the next days.
Burnley cabbie Mr. Steve Haworth and a passenger watched a mysterious flying object suddenly appear, perform a series of mind-boggling manoeuvres and then simply disappear without trace above the town, early on Saturday morning [August 30, 2003].
"I thought it was an aircraft at first," said Mr. Haworth, of Burton Street. "Then, when I weighed up all the pros and cons, I decided it couldn't possibly be." The part-time taxi driver was taking a customer from his Hufling Lane home to work in Waterfoot. They were travelling along Bacup Road when they turned a corner and first saw the object in the sky.
It was only 7-45 in the morning, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky. "It was beautiful and clear," he said. "I immediately thought the object was a plane, but it wasn't small, it wasn't high up and it was moving slowly."
The silver cigar-shaped object with a small pulsating light in the middle, stopped and hovered. Then it changed shape as it started going forwards and backwards in a perfectly straight line.
It did this twice before vanishing into thin air.
"There was no noise and no vapour trail," added Mr. Haworth. "If it had been an aircraft we would have heard it from where we were. It did not take-off, it just simply disappeared." This is not the first time an unidentified flying object has been spotted in the sky above Burnley. Sightings date back to 1869 and have been reported at regular intervals throughout the decades since.
Descriptions have varied from a round, glowing disc and a line of bright lights, to a pulsating cigar-shaped object just like Mr. Haworth described.
He added: "The whole experience only lasted three minutes. I remember looking at the clock in the car, it was 7-45 a.m. and by the time the object had disappeared it was 7-48 a.m."
"I'm so glad I had someone with me who saw what I did, otherwise I would have been doubting my sanity. I'm just curious to know what it was. I have considered and dismissedall the sensible options, a UFO is the only logical explanation I can think of."
