Green aliens and UFOs said to visit UK

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - Aliens from outer space have been visiting Britain for years and UFO sightings doubled after the film Close Encounters was released in 1977, according to secret files collating reports by members of the public.

The alien craft come in all shapes, sizes and colours but their occupants are uniformly green, the Ministry of Defence files show.

The archives (at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos) are the first batch of a four-year release programme of all the ministry's UFO files from 1978 to the present day.

The ministry dismisses 90 percent of the reports as having mundane explanations and leave 10 percent with a question mark and the assurance they are no defence threat.

A 1983 report from a 78-year-old out fishing at midnight tells of following aliens in green overalls on to a spaceship and then being told to go away because he was too old and decrepit for their purposes.

Two years later, a typewritten letter to the ministry tells of an alien spaceship being shot down in the river Mersey in northern England by another spacecraft and of the author developing a warm friendship with an alien called Algar.

Just as Algar was about to reveal himself to the government he was killed by other aliens, the author of the letter writes. He was still in telepathic contact with an alien called Malcben from the planet Platone in the Milky Way, the author added.

Written at the top of the letter is the terse comment "No reply".