UFOs in the daily Press:

Mystery in the sky above Loch Ness

FOLK around Loch Ness have been keeping watch on the night skies after mystery lights appeared above the village of Drumnadrochit last weekend.

Local astronomers have been called in to see if they can find the truth about what is out there, while residents in Drumnadrochit have gathered to watch the light in the early hours of the morning.

"It's the buzz of the village," said Liz Gresham, whose husband Ian first spotted the light.

"A lady who lives in the respite centre asked the kids if they had seen the light. When they said they had, she told them; "They should do something about that. It's not natural'."

Mr Gresham first noticed the light when he looked out of his window at around 1.30am last week to check for snow and has since filmed the light using the family camcorder.

"It's amazing, whatever it is, because it spins and rotates into shapes," Mr Gresham declared.

"It looks green when you look at it on the video, but it's actually bright blue. We sat and pondered about it. It can't be a shooting star, otherwise, it would shoot off, and its not an aircraft. It's amazing how it just hovers about and then heads off in different directions. When it slows down, you can see it's not round, it's oblong."

Mrs Gresham revealed that people were coming down every night to watch it. "I've never seen anything like it," she said.

"It looks as though there are two black things, one at the top and one at the bottom and colours in the middle. For the colours to blend like that it must be spinning round."

Mrs Gresham has even contacted RAF Lossiemouth to see if they have picked up anything on radar but was told there is no record of it. The station radar is not manned after 11pm at night.

The light gradually moves across the north-west sky, then appears to take off in a different direction. "It looks as though it's going down, but it's actually getting further away," Mr Gresham claimed. "With the camera, I've been trying to get as close in as possible. Whether you expect to see some little aliens waving back at you, I don't know."

The family are keeping an open mind about what the light may be, but are not ruling out an extra-terrestrial origin.

"The whole village, to be honest, thinks it's a UFO. That's what's putting worries in their minds," Mrs Gresham stated. "I have been on astronomy websites and there's not a star that does anything like that.

"We're now just waiting for the kidnappings to start!"

Less worried are the couple's three children, Nicole (12), Lauren (8) and Bradley (7), who are excited about the whole phenomenon.

"The two oldest were up on the first night and they thought it was fantastic," Mrs Gresham recalled. "Nicole came home from school and told us she had to stand there a hundred times aday and tell people about it."

Mr Gresham thought that the TV programme "The X-Files" had fired people's imagination. "I think people do believe there is a big place where they keep bits that have fallen off flying saucers," he said.

Maarten de Vries, of Highlands Astronomical Society, has studied the video with colleagues and, although he has not identified the object, he believes it is most likely to be man-made as it is too low to be a celestial body, he added.

"It's very unlikely it is extra-terrestrial or anything extra-terrestrial visiting, because there is no evidence of anything like that anywhere in the world. There are plenty of stories, but no concrete evidence," Mr de Vries stated.

"It is a UFO, because it is unidentified, but people confuse that with extra-terrestrials. It's very possible it's a single light source that has been blurred by the atmospheric conditions, and atmospheric conditions have been very bad.

"If I had seen this, I would be intrigued - so thumbs-up to the people for making the video."