X-Files detailing the first of around 7,000 UFO sightings have been unveiled for the first time. HELEN GABRIEL reports on some of North Yorkshire's close encounters.

A FLAMING green light with gold pieces dropping off it, a whirring bright gold sphere and a glistening cigar-shaped object - these are just some of the North Yorkshire UFO sightings reported to the Government.

The secret files on UFO sightings have been made available for the first time by the Ministry of Defence (Mo).

The eight released files cover the period from 1978 to 1987 and are part of almost 200 files set to be made available over the next four years.

They include accounts of strange lights in the sky and unexplained objects being spotted by the public, armed forces and even police officers.

Nationally, the number UFO sightings soared in 1978 - the year after Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind had everyone scanning the skies for spaceships.

But In North Yorkshire 1987 appears to have been the best year for strange sightings.

In March 1987 a couple contacted RAF Fylingdales with a report that they had seen "a flaming green light with gold pieces dropping off" hovering in the sky about ten miles from Helmsley.

They spotted it during the daytime, and there was a clear sky and patches of medium cloud, according to their report. It moved horizontally and curved towards the end of the sighting.

On July 1 a "spherical, bright gold" UFO was spotted over Malton, moving from east to west over open country.

It was spotted between 10.15pm and 10.40pm and it was making a "loud whirring noise". The person who reported it was said to be particularly perturbed by the sound.

The sighting was reported to RAF Staxton Wold, in East Yorkshire.

Two weeks later, on July 14, a man reported seeing "a very bright white object, spherical and larger than an aeroplane, moving across the sky over Harrogate at about 7pm.

He reported it to local police officers, who said the man "seemed like a sober gentleman".

It was a bright evening, with good visibility and "some high cloud".

The man was standing still in some parkland when he noticed the object with his naked eye.

"It was travelling west and after about five to seven minutes it vanished over the horizon.

A "spherical shape, like a cigar, glistening" was seen by a woman in Knaresborough in November 1981.

The woman spotted it through binoculars, and her husband and their son said they saw it too.

It was during the day and the sky was clear. They reported the sighting at their local police station.

Each of the weird and wonderful documents will be available to download for free from the National Archives website for the first month after their release.

A spokesman for the National Archives said they were now becoming available after several requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, and also because of a "proactive move by the Ministry of Defence for an open and transparent government".

Much of the previously classified paperwork is made up of letters from members of the public to government officials, the MoD and even then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher. A videocast from British UFO specialist Nick Pope is also available on the National Archives site.

He said the most common explanation for UFO sightings were actually aircraft lights, bright stars and planets, satellites, meteors, or airships.

The documents also contain a briefing, which was prepared by the MoD in 1979 for the government's chief whip, Lord Strabolgi, for a debate on UFOs in the House of Lords.

"There is nothing to indicate that UFOlogy is anything but claptrap," it states.

It adds that the idea of an "inter-governmental conspiracy of silence" was "the most astonishing and the most flattering claim of all".

The briefing goes on to say: "Let me assure this House that Her Majesty's Government has never been approached by people from outer space."

Dr David Clarke, an expert in UFO history, and a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, said: "It has taken ten years of campaigning to get these papers out and now that they are it lays to rest some of the claims of a cover up by the MoD.

"But I don't think for a minute that the conspiracy theorists will drop their theories." He said conspiracy theories about aliens were "very difficult to disprove".

"I doubt the disclosure of these files will convince those who believe there is an official cover-up," he said."Inevitably, some have already dismissed this release as a whitewash. For them the truth' still remains out there, hidden no doubt in more above top secret files hidden somewhere else."