Whilst out walking their dogs initially across the Rugby pitches, the two female witnesses involved, at first saw nothing strange, yet when they turned and came back, they immediately saw the described object. One of the strangest factors of this sighting is their statement that everything appeared to be still, with nothing moving. Neither witness noticed this same stillness either before, or after the sighting, only during it.

Witness (A) stated: “Walking around the Coalville Rugby field, my friend and I were taking our dogs for a walk when we saw a huge ball of light that seemed to hang in the air for quite a while. It glowed for about 30 seconds then it dimmed, and just seemed to shoot off out of sight.”

Witness (B) stated: “As my friend and I were taking our dogs a walk around the outskirts of the rugby field, we suddenly saw a very large, round, as I thought at the time a vivid ball of fire that just hung there in the air. It was really bright and made me just stand and stare. Everything just seemed so still and quiet as it just hung there for around 30 seconds. The light then seemed to dim and then ’zoom’, it was gone. After it had gone, it seemed to go dark very quickly. We soon left afterwards. It was so real. I have only been down the field twice since then, but I haven’t seen anything else unusual since.”

This case came to my notice on the 10^th. March 1982, about 2 months after its occurrence. This means that any Airport checks are ruled out. The witnesses are both married with living husbands, and do not appear to be in the slightest bit lonely, or attempting to seek attention etc. They appeared to know nothing about UFO cases, and certainly the stillness they both remarked upon is a noted facet of past ‘close encounters’, but they did not recognise this as such. Both witnesses are very dear ladies and certainly not the sort of people that would take it upon themselves to fabricate a UFO sighting. Their case only came to light purely because recent publicity surrounding other sightings in the area. Both ladies were horrified at the thought of their own sighting appearing in the newspapers, and specifically asked that it should not. Both women are aged around 60 years, and in their lifetimes, they both admit that they have no recollection of seeing anything previously that was even remotely similar to this object. During the sighting, and immediately after it, witness (B) felt fear, and has only visited the sighting location twice since then, something that she admits is quite out of character for her, as she used to visit it quite often. Witness (A) still visits the field but tries to do so in daylight, with the part of the field from which she observed the object always drawing her eyes towards it. The weather at the time of the sighting was very grey and overcast with the clouds holding a threat of snow. There was a slight breeze blowing, and at the time of the sighting it was still daylight, but there was a pervading twilight condition caused by the setting Sun and the snow cloud cover. The object’s actual dimensions, as estimated by the witnesses, seems realistic, as the object appeared flanked on both sides by trees. Looking from the witness’s vantage point, the trees are at a dimension of 18 inches at arm’s length, and the witnesses stated that the object did not quite fill this gap.

This case cannot have a clear cut solution as there has been no time to run any of the normal checks, but one factor that should be borne in mind is that situated in the direction which the witnesses were looking is Whitwick Colliery, and it is possible that the twilight conditions and the low cloud reflected the pit yard spotlights for an instant.

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