If the Americans can have The X Files, then so can we. A dossier on unidentified flying objects (UFOs), kept by the Irish Defence Forces for 37 years, has finally emerged.
But anyone hoping to confirm the existence of little green men will be disappointed. The best the file comes up with are flying saucers, objects shaped like fried eggs and flashing coloured lights - some of the sightings logged in documents dating back to 1947.
The file - released to the Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act - includes press cuttings about reported sightings of UFOs, along with classified memos and other correspondence.
In recent months, the British and French authorities opened their files on UFO sightings to the public. A spokesman for the Department of Defence said that, since 1984 the UFO file was no longer maintained by the Defence Forces.
The file up to then includes a report of a UFO sighting in Boherlahan, near Cashel, Co Tipperary, in 1984. It was "the same shape as a fried egg" and had "some kind of an aerial on top and it was brown in colour", local teenager Conor Dwyer told The Irish Times at the time. A 10-year-old boy reported it made a buzzing noise like a chainsaw and said the bright lights dazzled him.
The file also contains a classified memo on an alleged sighting of a flying projectile over a bog in Donegal in May the same year. An off-duty garda and a farmer were cutting turf near Falcarragh when they heard "a gushing sound". The garda looked up and saw a grey object travelling at speed over his head. It was shaped like a household iron with fins at the back.
The memo noted the garda was "extremely reluctant" to be interviewed but agreed after receiving assurances his identity would not be revealed. However, the garda's cover was blown a month later in Phoenix. The magazine speculated it had been a sea-launched guided missile.
An early entry in the file concerns a statement by a Cahirciveen shopkeeper and farmer in June 1947. He told gardaí he saw a circular object moving "faster than a motor car" through the sky. "It was flat and was like a big wheel or large plate . . . the rim was white and it was hollow in the centre".
Two months later, the Cork Examiner reported two priests separately saw a strange rocket-like object in the sky the same evening. A Garda superintendent wrote he was satisfied it was a shooting star: "The pressmen in Killarney like to keep abreast of the times and now that the age of 'flying saucer' has arrived, they like to keep in the news, particularly where any money can be made out of it."
