Strange how you end up researching something and end up going off down a random tangent, which is how I first started looking in to UFO sightings over Portsmouth in recent years. There was a high profile fake (according to popular opinion, of course) that made it in to the national press in 2008 and this image ended up linking through to photos, reports and even videos of strange objects spotted over our city, opening up a subject that is both fascinating and peculiar.
Portsdown Hill has been identified as a hot spot when it comes to sightings and does host sky watching evenings with people vigilantly observing the skies, hoping to view, film and photograph something out of the ordinary. Now obviously, living in an area with major military activity, the logical first thought is that all sightings will probably be something like a Chinook helicopter or oven something more ordinary like a light aircraft or Chinese lanterns caught in high breeze but not all the eyewitness accounts and even videos match those simple answers…resulting in literal unidentified, flying objects. The truth is out there, or something.
You can read many sightings over Portsmouth here and If you have any stories of your own we would love to hear them! Don’t be shy, please add them as a comment.
“I filmed these two strange metallic spheres floating in the sky late this afternoon (28th Feb 2011). Completely silent, no smoke contrail and the spheres where really shiny metallic and very reflective. Very bizarre!!”
“This astonishing, (and what we believe to be structured), object was filmed by a witness who was out trying his brand new, Sony HD handycam for the first time on a Skywatch. He initially saw this ufo as a red orb rising up from an area which is Farlington Marshes, Langstone Harbour, looking towards Hayling Island, Hants, UK.”
Photo by Hab Rahman
pedal pusher
11 May
video 1 is probably a glider under tow. Video two is almost certainly the International Space Station and the image is almost probably an artifact or an effect caused by the misty air refracting light unusually.
So, no UFOs then…..
Rob walker
23 January
I was a student in Portsmouth between 88 & 92 and myself and two house mates saw a UFO, took photos and word got out. It was reported in street life – the local paper and sadly they sold it onto the Sunday sport which discredited the sighting.
From memory I think it was 1991, summer time as we were all in the garden. I manged to take 3 photos of the object. I don’t know if street life keep archives, but thought you might like to know.
I think I have the old newspaper cuttings somewhere.
Martin
22 January
I saw something unexplained in the sky at night from Southsea beach in the summer of 2010 or 2011. I saw some other weird stuff that night too, it will always remain a mystery to me.
Mr Anon.
1 April
From the Isle of Wight there is a very good view of Portsmouth and portsdown. I’ve seen quite a few unexplained objects over Portsmouth. Mostly they seem to glow orange and sometimes it’s hard to say if they are Aircraft and often they are, but a few things stand out. Once I saw a metallic sphere that shot directly vertically with an orange glow whilst moving up. After reaching a very high altitude the orange glow turned off and it slowly floated back down. Bearing in mind I was miles away I should think this object was large. From the IOW it appeared about the size of a pea held at arms length. Also see lots of orange UFOs that appear stationary and also just disappear. I’m not a firm believer in aliens or anything and have an open mind at the moment. The amount of military sites in the area and especially on portsdown make me think probably its testing stuff. But it does not make much sense. Why would you test stuff in such a visible location?? Definitely odd stuff going on round Portsmouth. Also I did see a few videos once of apparent UFOs above portsdown but the guy who put them online just disappeared and I’ve never seen them again. Due to the military stuff round the area I’m not going to put my actual contact here for this reason but I’m happy to discuss this on here anonymously. I’ll check back sometime. Look forward to any comments or questions.
Darren
27 October
I live in Portsmouth and in the early 80’s a couple of friends and I were hanging out on Portsdown Hill late one evening and we all lay on the ground watching what appeared to be an aircraft (which was what we all believed we were looking at) – a light high above us in the skies. Until it started moving. It was literally zig-zagging very high above us. We were discussing what we were seeing and how no aircraft could or would move so dramatically, when suddenly very powerful spotlights appeared from the ASWE scanning the skies where we had been looking. The UFO disappeared and the spotlights which had previously been sweeping the skies abruptly stopped. That was it. Nothing else occurred that late-evening although we hung about for half an hour hoping to spot something more. To this day we all agreed that something had occurred in the skies over Portsdown Hill, enough to spook the ASWE personnel into searching high in the night sky with searchlights. We searched the press (as much as we could) but this was before the internet, for some form of validation …and found nothing …no stories, no other sightings ..nothing.
Ksmith
28 December
There have been strange lights over in Eastney. My husband and son filmed this where the ferry to Hayling is
We uploaded this to YouTube
https://youtu.be/wW428WkhqlE
Caz
14 November
I was 15 at the time I had an experience, I was in a car in the back seat with 4 other peoplein the car laughing and joking with my friends, along the top of portsdown hill, just passed the military base, it was the summer of 1988/1989.
As I looked out the window to the side where you can see the view of Portsmouth I noticed something come up to the car, it was really close metallic round disc shaped, hovering outside the window, my friends unfortunately could not see anything and as I was willing them to see it they could not, it was as if time had stood still, there was no time, it hovered over the front of the car and back and came to the side where I was looking at it, all of a sudden a flash of light went over me and then it flew off with speed of light, !