It's 26 years since two friends witnessed a “bus sized” object in the sky during a camping trip in the summer of 1997.
Now the pair, who are among a select few to go public in Ireland on a UFO sighting, are set to revisit the location where they witnessed the unexplained phenomenon.
Mark Monaghan, 47, and Barry Brown, 46, were both 21 when they spotted the flying object near Lough Key in Co Roscommon.
The trip took a turn when they saw what Mark described as a “bus sized” metallic, cylinder shaped craft around 500 metres in the sky just ahead of them.
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Mark recalled a spine-tingling “fear” sweeping across his body as he claimed he watched the UFO travel towards the adjacent Lough Key and hover over the water.
The pals are preparing a return visit to the spot in the forest, all these years later, seeking answers for an extraterrestrial experience they’ve never been able to forget.
Their trip was prompted after the US Government revealed details of its investigations into UFO sightings which have been ongoing for decades.
Mark told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “It’s always been there in the back of my mind. I can’t remember who saw the UFO first, but me, Barry and another friend, Michelle, all looked up and passed binoculars around to get a better look.
“It was a cigar-shaped, sausage- shaped craft, the size of a bus, 500 metres above and just ahead of us, in the sky. It had four big lights on the side of it and smaller lights as well. It had a metallic look.
“It definitely scared us. There was a real sense that we were watching them and they were watching us right back.”
Mark described how the craft sailed silently through the air, over to the lough and then hovered over the water. The trio went to a nearby pub to try and process what they’d just witnessed.
Barry said: “This was a little country pub and they were singing Trad songs about UFOs, which was incredible. One song was about an alien ship landing in a farmer’s field.”
The area is known locally as a UFO ‘hotspot’ and the friends told of their sighting on a documentary by Dublin filmmaker Colum Stapleton aired on RTE in 2001.
It included footage of a similar cylindrical UFO near Lough Key, shortly after the friends’ sighting, which was caught on camera by local astronomer Eamonn Ansbro.
Barry, who runs a CBD store and is leader of the Drug Law Reform party in Co Tyrone, said: “I recall what I saw and what I said at the time. It was a UFO. I don’t know if it was aliens but it was flying in a weird way.
“I haven’t seen anything like it since but other people have told me they’ve seen UFOs. People from all over the country.
“I was afraid at the time, as we were deep into the forest. We were excited at first, then fear kicked in, as we realised we were out in the middle of nowhere. It was all very strange.”
Mark said though he experienced an eerie feeling in 1997, he’s accepted the possibility of alien life since.
He added: “That night has left me still with so many questions. I’d like to know more about what happened, what the UFO was. It made me question everything more.
“Growing up in Northern Ireland, we were fed nationalism and made to feel we were different to people in the Republic and Scotland. But we’re all humans, we’re all the same, regardless of where we’re from.
“I want to know what was up there that night. It was something very different to us. I have to admit, even though I was afraid – part of me wished I’d had a gun.
“Part of me wanted to shoot the UFO down, just to see what it was. I know that’s wrong and I wouldn’t have done it in reality.
“But I knew it was the only way I’d ever get an answer to what the UFO actually was.”
Documentary maker Colum – who also filmed UFO watchers in Norway several years later – seems sceptical despite talking to many UFO spotters.
He added: “I was always more interested in filming the reactions of the people who saw UFOs than in filming the UFOs themselves.
“In Norway, every second or third night, there was an orby type thing in the sky, when I filmed. But I was never interested in filming it because I was too busy looking at the faces of the people watching it. They were where the story was for me.
“I knew if I filmed the orb thing it would just end up being another bobbly looking thing in the sky anyhow, that the camera wouldn’t capture it properly.
“What I learned over the years when I was working on this stuff, was to respect those that say they see UFOs.
“There was a garda years ago who saw a UFO with his colleague. One would talk to me and the other wouldn’t. Then there was a married couple. One was determined they’d both seen the UFO and the other said they hadn’t seen it. They ended up splitting up.”
Though he’s retired from his UFO days, Colum said he still finds the human behaviour around the issue intriguing. And he’s always surprised by how different people react to seeing something they can’t explain.
He added: “I know a woman who’s the most straight person you can imagine. She’s so pragmatic and has a scientific way of looking at everything. She told me she saw a UFO one night and then sighed and said to me, ‘Oh God, I am one of them now, aren’t I?’.”
