FOUR separate reports of UFOs in Cyprus’ skies over the past week have gotten extraterrestrial enthusiasts buzzing.
Ugur Kaptanoglu is a journalist working for Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris. He told the Mail yesterday that he saw a UFO over north Nicosia in the early hours of Sunday morning and took a photograph of it with his camera.
“It was a circular-shaped object and gave off orange light beams,” he explained.
“I can say that it was definitely not an aeroplane and was hovering silently before suddenly disappearing over the valleys to the right.”
According to Kaptanoglu, the object may have been a ‘wish balloon’, often used at weddings and which have candles inside, “But why somebody would release one at 3am is anybody’s guess.”
A man living in Limassol also contacted the Mail, saying that at 9.40pm last Saturday, “an orange, yellow, reddish ball of what appeared to be fire appeared over the Hawaii Grand Hotel. [It moved] in a circular motion, drifted behind where I live and disappeared. It was also seen by somebody else who I checked with and was seen several times at this time of the year last year.”
On the same day, a couple from Paralimni contacted the Famagusta Gazette to report a series of reddish circular beams which they claim could be seen for about ten minutes in the skies above Dherynia.
Their account was backed up by another eyewitness who said the lights moved and even circled around each other before disappearing.
Last Thursday, a man in Paphos reported seeing, “stationary lights in the sky moving off towards the east in a very rapid manner”.
The man, a self-confessed aviation buff, described the lights as, “definitely not coming from a plane.”
The episodes are the latest in a series of incidents of unidentified flying objects in the skies above Cyprus.
Last November a UFO was spotted above Limassol, while in September another couple, on holiday in Paphos, reported a circular, irregular light moving quickly above them.
Not the first UFO to visit
ONE OF the earliest accounts of a UFO in Cyprus was in 1950, when two American soldiers described a “small, round, bright object flying fast, straight and level for 15 to 20 seconds across Nicosia”.
In 2002, self-styled UFO hunter, Dr Ibrahim shot a five-minute video of a UFO above the car park at Larnaca airport. The film shows a green, shaking object.
An unidentified flying object was also spotted over Kyrenia in 1998. It was seen on the Nicosia-Kyrenia road by a family who were on their way home after visiting a friend’s house.
They described an object “like a flying saucer” with white revolving lights which appeared around 50 to 100 metres above their car and that it had then followed them.
When asked to comment after another incident back in February, Civil Aviation said: “There are no UFO sightings on record for Cyprus.”
John Knowles is a former Canadian military pilot and diplomat now living in Peyia who claims to have witnessed several UFOs in the skies across the world.
“I am sick of the constant, pathological, knee-jerk reactions of denial,” he said.
“The authorities must admit that all these people are not liars and the attitude of denial is caused by fear of the unknown and fear of what the authorities cannot control.”
He added: “People must wake up and start connecting the dots. We are not all crazy.”
